before us now the edge of the earth
Still not dead! This is somehow easier to talk about because it's now resolved: I got fired late last July, and was unemployed for quite a while before I suddenly got another job this June, and also moved to a new apartment with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
idriya. Which is great! But also stressful and kind of exhausting; I've been super-busy about half the summer, and the other half I've been aggressively not accomplishing anything, so as to keep my head from exploding.
I'm starting to ease back into the groove of the internet, though, at last, and what better way to do that than rewind all the way back to June and complain about Revolution? Between the last time I posted about it and now, the finale aired, and goddamn that was a hot mess. I don't think I've ever watched anything I would more decisively apply the phrase "hot mess" to than that.
It's been months, and I still remember some of the key things I hated:
- Nora's death. Well, fuck you, too, show. Goddammit. Having Druncle pieta her down the hallway was just adding insult to injury.
- Aaron, what even is the point of you? The eps leading up to the finale were all, oh, Aaron, you're in the book; oh, Aaron, you're so important; oh, Aaron, it's code you wrote! (Which is stupid for its own reasons: is it really possible to write nanite OS code without meaning to? Like, what was his version of the code originally for? WTF?) AND THEN he doesn't even do anything. Juliet from Lost tells him what to do and he does it. Why did the show waste time pretending he was important???
- The death of the entire east coast of the US. Specifically, Atlanta, because President Teri Bauer was so awesome and Georgia was so awesome and now it's irradiated ash. Introducing Georgia and its steam power and its tall ships and its trade with England was one of the few parts of the show I genuinely enjoyed, and now: irradiated ash. Of course. Also: wow, good thing everyone whose name we know all happened to go to the tower at the same time! Would've been a shame if we'd left anyone important in Philly.
- The lights coming back on. I'm sorry, no fucking way. Even without fifteen years of infrastructureless decay, the amount of maintenance you need to do to keep power lines operating is pretty staggering; after fifteen years of infrastructureless decay? Hurricanes, blizzards, regular old thunderstorms, rodents, rotting telephone poles - never mind people scavenging wires because wire is incredibly useful - and you expect me to believe that Aaron hits a key in Colorado and the lights come on in Atlanta? No.
After all of that stuff, the final scene with the president in Guantanamo honest-to-god made me laugh out loud, because, what. WHAT. I don't even know what to do with that. It's so silly. I can't.
There were a bunch of other small things - the bit with the lightning? I'm sorry, I still remember the episode with the storm, and there was totally lightning then, so if you are now trying to retcon the nanites into having prevented lightning I will laugh and laugh and laugh. Neville's maneuvering was incredibly transparent, so he's lucky Jason's so gullible; on the other hand, he's at least actually focused on ruling stuff, instead of on how to get Druncle to love him again, Monroe. I'd wash my hands of this show except a) Charlie and b) Rachel, and also the new season can only getworse better more Revolutiony. 2.01 aired yesterday; I'll probably watch it this weekend.
I think there were also some episodes of Once Upon a Time back there somewhere. Overall, this season basically made me progressively more dubious as it went on, and then gave me that transcendently tropey Regina redemption/Emma magic-sharing scene that was basically the only thing I wanted out of this show anyway. A couple eps earlier, and I probably would have settled for keeping a vague eye on the progress of additional seasons and reading up on it now and then on Wikipedia; but now I'm probably going to watch at least the beginning of S3. Just in case. Kind of hard to believe it'll be back on Sunday.
I haven't been keeping up at all on Defiance, but I should now that I can marathon it - with some shows, marathoning just works better for me. As for new shows this fall: the first two episodes of Sleepy Hollow; I really enjoyed 1.01! The plot of 1.02 made me less happy - an evil Romani witch? Really, show? - but the things that were not plot were great (the post-its, the doughnut holes, basically any time Ichabod and Abby are interacting) so I'm probably going to stick with it. Also, the pilot of Agents of SHIELD: yay! And double yay because Ming-Na! Also, Gunn! Maria Hill! Some of it was a little hamfisted, but it was hamfisted in ways I agreed with ("it matters who you are"), so it made me feel fond instead of annoyed. Also, I love that no one else was anywhere near as impressed with Agent Ward as Agent Ward was - he was set up like he was going to be the lone-wolf hyper-competent protagonist, and then basically the whole rest of the episode either chipped away at that or plain old ignored it, instead of validating it. ♥ so much.
Also new this fall: the second season of Korra. Probably the lack of exclamation points gives away that I am not in love with it so far. I actually did miss Korra; I still love her energy and her enthusiasm, how much she loves being the Avatar, and her willingness to dive into things and try even when she doesn't understand absolutely everything. But a) the writing is falling down so hard for me, and b) I think I'm suffering from some kind of variant on Teen Wolfitis, where in my head there is ~team and everyone is slowly knitting together into found family and it's beautiful! Except that on the actual show, Asami's off somewhere flying planes and trying to fix Future Industries almost by herself, and Bolin is sort of there with nothing to do, and Mako isboring David Caruso, and Korra and Tenzin apparently have never managed to have any real conversations about anything even though they've had six months. And it's not necessarily the show's fault; I'm hopelessly biased by my Teen Wolfitis, I can't even tell whether my expectations are realistic or what. (Probably I'm also influenced by how much ~team there was for me in A:tLA, and how much I enjoyed that and want more.)
I do like:
- more stuff about Korra's family! I really like her parents and I love that they're both still alive, and I'm also glad we're spending more time in the South.
- more stuff about the spirit world! I love knowing more about these things, the storm and the portal and the aurorae; and it also seems like it could tie in really nicely to Korra's personal struggles with spirituality and what being the Avatar actually means.please for the love of god let it tie in
- more stuff about how the world fits together now! I'll admit I didn't see the point of having the council dissolve and be replaced with a president, but I'm guessing that will come up later; and the relationships between nations post-Great War is interesting to me, so in that sense I'm intrigued by this Northern/Southern Water Tribe conflict. (Where does the Foggy Swamp tribe fit in? Does Unalaq know they exist? ... Do they still exist?)
Overall, I think I had better wait and see.
And: Yuletide already, what. Guess I'd better start reviewing the nominations spreadsheet and furiously drafting a preliminary letter!
And I know it's been a year (!!! THE GUILT), but at long last: the next chapter of Listen to the Earth is at 10k and counting.
idriya. Which is great! But also stressful and kind of exhausting; I've been super-busy about half the summer, and the other half I've been aggressively not accomplishing anything, so as to keep my head from exploding.I'm starting to ease back into the groove of the internet, though, at last, and what better way to do that than rewind all the way back to June and complain about Revolution? Between the last time I posted about it and now, the finale aired, and goddamn that was a hot mess. I don't think I've ever watched anything I would more decisively apply the phrase "hot mess" to than that.
It's been months, and I still remember some of the key things I hated:
- Nora's death. Well, fuck you, too, show. Goddammit. Having Druncle pieta her down the hallway was just adding insult to injury.
- Aaron, what even is the point of you? The eps leading up to the finale were all, oh, Aaron, you're in the book; oh, Aaron, you're so important; oh, Aaron, it's code you wrote! (Which is stupid for its own reasons: is it really possible to write nanite OS code without meaning to? Like, what was his version of the code originally for? WTF?) AND THEN he doesn't even do anything. Juliet from Lost tells him what to do and he does it. Why did the show waste time pretending he was important???
- The death of the entire east coast of the US. Specifically, Atlanta, because President Teri Bauer was so awesome and Georgia was so awesome and now it's irradiated ash. Introducing Georgia and its steam power and its tall ships and its trade with England was one of the few parts of the show I genuinely enjoyed, and now: irradiated ash. Of course. Also: wow, good thing everyone whose name we know all happened to go to the tower at the same time! Would've been a shame if we'd left anyone important in Philly.
- The lights coming back on. I'm sorry, no fucking way. Even without fifteen years of infrastructureless decay, the amount of maintenance you need to do to keep power lines operating is pretty staggering; after fifteen years of infrastructureless decay? Hurricanes, blizzards, regular old thunderstorms, rodents, rotting telephone poles - never mind people scavenging wires because wire is incredibly useful - and you expect me to believe that Aaron hits a key in Colorado and the lights come on in Atlanta? No.
After all of that stuff, the final scene with the president in Guantanamo honest-to-god made me laugh out loud, because, what. WHAT. I don't even know what to do with that. It's so silly. I can't.
There were a bunch of other small things - the bit with the lightning? I'm sorry, I still remember the episode with the storm, and there was totally lightning then, so if you are now trying to retcon the nanites into having prevented lightning I will laugh and laugh and laugh. Neville's maneuvering was incredibly transparent, so he's lucky Jason's so gullible; on the other hand, he's at least actually focused on ruling stuff, instead of on how to get Druncle to love him again, Monroe. I'd wash my hands of this show except a) Charlie and b) Rachel, and also the new season can only get
I think there were also some episodes of Once Upon a Time back there somewhere. Overall, this season basically made me progressively more dubious as it went on, and then gave me that transcendently tropey Regina redemption/Emma magic-sharing scene that was basically the only thing I wanted out of this show anyway. A couple eps earlier, and I probably would have settled for keeping a vague eye on the progress of additional seasons and reading up on it now and then on Wikipedia; but now I'm probably going to watch at least the beginning of S3. Just in case. Kind of hard to believe it'll be back on Sunday.
I haven't been keeping up at all on Defiance, but I should now that I can marathon it - with some shows, marathoning just works better for me. As for new shows this fall: the first two episodes of Sleepy Hollow; I really enjoyed 1.01! The plot of 1.02 made me less happy - an evil Romani witch? Really, show? - but the things that were not plot were great (the post-its, the doughnut holes, basically any time Ichabod and Abby are interacting) so I'm probably going to stick with it. Also, the pilot of Agents of SHIELD: yay! And double yay because Ming-Na! Also, Gunn! Maria Hill! Some of it was a little hamfisted, but it was hamfisted in ways I agreed with ("it matters who you are"), so it made me feel fond instead of annoyed. Also, I love that no one else was anywhere near as impressed with Agent Ward as Agent Ward was - he was set up like he was going to be the lone-wolf hyper-competent protagonist, and then basically the whole rest of the episode either chipped away at that or plain old ignored it, instead of validating it. ♥ so much.
Also new this fall: the second season of Korra. Probably the lack of exclamation points gives away that I am not in love with it so far. I actually did miss Korra; I still love her energy and her enthusiasm, how much she loves being the Avatar, and her willingness to dive into things and try even when she doesn't understand absolutely everything. But a) the writing is falling down so hard for me, and b) I think I'm suffering from some kind of variant on Teen Wolfitis, where in my head there is ~team and everyone is slowly knitting together into found family and it's beautiful! Except that on the actual show, Asami's off somewhere flying planes and trying to fix Future Industries almost by herself, and Bolin is sort of there with nothing to do, and Mako is
I do like:
- more stuff about Korra's family! I really like her parents and I love that they're both still alive, and I'm also glad we're spending more time in the South.
- more stuff about the spirit world! I love knowing more about these things, the storm and the portal and the aurorae; and it also seems like it could tie in really nicely to Korra's personal struggles with spirituality and what being the Avatar actually means.
- more stuff about how the world fits together now! I'll admit I didn't see the point of having the council dissolve and be replaced with a president, but I'm guessing that will come up later; and the relationships between nations post-Great War is interesting to me, so in that sense I'm intrigued by this Northern/Southern Water Tribe conflict. (Where does the Foggy Swamp tribe fit in? Does Unalaq know they exist? ... Do they still exist?)
Overall, I think I had better wait and see.
And: Yuletide already, what. Guess I'd better start reviewing the nominations spreadsheet and furiously drafting a preliminary letter!
And I know it's been a year (!!! THE GUILT), but at long last: the next chapter of Listen to the Earth is at 10k and counting.