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Lots of backlogged ramblings
Updates to things I talked about previously and/or just updated canons. Because there’s a LOT to update. I posted and soon deleted again a lot of this on my tumblr, but I hate posting random talky things there.
Pacific Rim
IT’S GETTING A SEQUEL. AND A CARTOON SET BETWEEN THE TWO MOVIES. AND A SEQUEL TO THE "YEAR ZERO" COMIC. This is relevant to my interests.
Sleepy Hollow
I don’t think I’ll be following Sleepy Hollow as it airs next season. It turned out to be too ‘monster of the week’ish to my liking. At first I thought it would be more linear, but every episode had a new revelation or twist that came completely out of nowhere and was barely related to anything that came before, and that just doesn’t do it for me. Though on the other hand, I was really fond of Abbie and Jenny. Maybe I’ll marathon it some time after it’s done. Hopefully the soap-opera twists and turns are done, a more ongoing plot can take its place, and not waiting every week will improve the experience.
Pottermore
I inhaled all the Philosopher’s Stone content when it first came out and then kinda sorta decided not to go back until all seven books had been covered. Except not really. I caught up everything that had been added or changed this week.
ALL THE PRETTY. ALL THE NEW LITTLE DETAILS. ALL THE FILLED OUT STATUS BARS. Except for the second scene in Snape’s office in CoS, but that one requires potion brewing, so whatever.
But, but – Dutch witches and wizards go to Beauxbatons a lot? Nooooooooo. D: /high-school French class induced France trauma
The Daily Prophet’s Quidditch World Cup 2014 coverage! I had seen the Rita Skeeter piece circulating and was vaguely aware there was some special event mirroring the IRL soccer world cup going on, but I had no idea it was part of a larger story! Reporter Ginny! Hexing Rita Skeeter in the solar plexus Ginny! (I can only imagine the willpower it must have taken for her to wait doing that until the Cup was over.) Teddy and Victoire’s relentless teenage passion! Hans the augury and the Japanese team’s hoo-hoo chick! KRUM. KRUM FULLFILLING HIS LIFE’S GOAL. KRUM WINNING HIS TEAM A WORLD CUP AT LAST. KRUM BACKING AWAY FROM THE SNITCH BECAUSE THE JAPANESE SEEKER GOT DISTRACTED FROM A FAIR RACE BY A LIFE IN NEED OF SAVING. KRUM. I cried, which I did not see coming.
I also cried over Remus’s biography, which I totally saw coming. These books are so dear to me, and Remus is so dear to me, it still takes nothing to hit all my most primal buttons.
Then I made the mistake of trying to find a complete version of his bio to reblog on my tumblr aaaaand yep people bashing Remus/Tonks still makes my blood boil.
Crippling self-esteem issues don’t magically go away even if you fall head over heels in love? Crippling self-esteem issues will fuck with your relationships and your ability to let yourself have and enjoy relationships, no matter how badly you’d like to make them work?
You don’t fucking say.
Wait, what? No, of course not. Clearly he just didn’t love her at all! And anyone claiming otherwise is writing "the worst fanfic I’ve ever read", and Remus being violently torn between how in love he is and how issue-riddled he is but, courtesy of a thorough verbal smackdown and lots of alcohol and soul-searching, buckling down to damn well make it work in the end and at least going out on a high note after struggling with himself for so long is "completely OOC" and "nothing at all like the Remus I’ve known and loved for so long"!
WAY TO BE SHITTY PEOPLEFOR THE SAKE OF YOUR OOC SLASH TRASH, FANDOM. If Sirius was boning any of the Marauders it was James, ffs. With Lily watching. And recording everything. Because fuck love triangles with an unwashed pitchfork.
Why was I expecting things to be better after all this time, though? I don’t even know what I was thinking. Christ. I high-tailed it out of HP fandom so long ago I forgot how mind-bogglingly easy it is to walk into people stomping on all that is good in the world, even when I’m looking for something completely different.
Robin Hobb
oh fuck me, there’s a new book about Fitz and the Fool coming out next month
dilemma!
I loved their books to pieces when I first read them (8? 10? years ago), but when I tried to read some of Robin Hobb’s other series last year I found the POV characters almost universally insufferable. they were all just so fucking whiny and spineless and willfully helpless and blind and victimized I wanted to SCREAM. which got especially egregious when I found myself yelling FFS IF YOU’RE GONNA BITCH AND MOAN ABOUT HIM UNTIL THE END OF TIME ANYWAY JUST DUMP THE FUCKING BRAT IN THE WILDERNESS AND LET HIM DIE LIKE YOU SO CLEARLY WANT TO at this one protagonist
about her austistic son
yeah
so now I’m worried that if I get this new book and reread my old Six Duchies books and/or finally crack open those new Rain Wild ones dad got me for Christmas a couple years ago, I’m gonna end up hating the one continuity of hers I’ve loved for so long too :\ Fitz’s angst never bothered me back then, but I’m pretty sure the pattern that drove me up the wall so recently held true in his character too to some extent
also the issue of bookshelf space is going to bug the fuck out of me
it’s getting a little cramped
(no I do not want to use another shelf. they go together they STAY together. grrr.)
Avatar: the Legend of Korra
THE THIRD SEASON WAS SUDDENLY SO GOOD. WHY WERE THE PREVIOUS TWO NOT THIS GOOD. I am not kidding, Book Three was in a whole different league of quality than Books One and Two. I LOVED THIS. HOLY SHIT. GIMME MORE. REWRITE THE PREVIOUS TWO TO BE LIKE THIS. PLEASE. Now I’m finally looking forward to a new season. ;A;
Is it some kind of rule that all Avatar episodes involving the Dai Li need to be unusually tearjerking? ;___; Jeeeeeet. Kaaaaaaaai.
Heaven help me, but some of those furry little spirits were SO CUTE. I am still deeply disturbed by their unacknowledged alien invaderness though. The show treats them like ‘well duh of course they belong here’, but the Avatar Wan episodes did not give me this impression at all.
So many female characters in Book Three! And I love them all!! And also Kai. Cutie. Please be Jinora’s boyfriend forever. JINORAAAAAA. Please be more awesome than your dad in all things for all time.
AtLA Comics
For the longest time, the AtLA comics (The Promise, The Search, and The Rift) were a lot more interesting to me than AtLOK. Even though they're basically vehicles for building up toward AtLOK. XP The latter is now finally interesting too, but I'm still enjoying the comics a lot.
Toph's dad, stop making your daughter sad. D:< (Of course he's gonna stop, The Rift pt 2 is anything but subtle. I just wanna say it now, while I still can. YOU'RE A JERK, DUDE.)
Ever since "The Search", I am completely squicked by Ozai/Ursa. I always liked to think that however horribly he treated Zuko later on, she had at least married him willingly back in the day. Now I can’t. Ew ew ew ew. Poor Ursa. :(
Sebastian Stan’s Filmography
For a while there, my consumption of fiction was ruled by the following thought process:
>have intense pre-Winter Soldier cravings
>go watch other stuff with Sebastian Stan in it to sate them
>run out of other stuff with Sebastian Stan in it
>regret everything
Kings was REALLY good - right up until the moment it ended with no permanent resolution and everyone miserable, because the damn show got cancelled. DAMN YOU, SHOW. YOU CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS TO ME. D: I was warned the series’ cancellation would ruin me, but did I listen? Noooooo. *head desks and then cries for a week*
Political Animals had a very similar set-up, and in it he ALSO played the troubled gay twin "prince", which is either an awesome coincidence, a hilarious and deliberate move on his part, or the most bizarrely specific typecasting I have ever seen. But either way, the show was mediocre but the parallel funny - until the last episode, when his character says some things about his sexuality that ensured all I’ll remember about the series is how badly I wish they’d brought up the possibility of him being bi. Even IF it was only to have him say "nah, that’s overstating it, I admit it’s a tiny bit more complicated than ‘pure Kinsey 6 forever and always’, but I can’t in good conscience identify as bi".
Hot Tub Time Machine was crude but surprisingly funny. Prime guilty pleasure material.
I also rewatched his episodes on OUAT, which my mom and I sometimes sit down to marathon together and is nice for the occasional boost of lady-centric action/adventure/everything else sans the ginormous gainaxing anime tits, though only Mulan/Aurora and (because of Sebastian Stan, wow I’m sad) Jefferson & Grace have so far caught my interest big time. Other than that, he doesn’t really have anything noteworthy. Too bad.
Once Upon A Time
Not impressed by the lack of Mulan/Aurora follow-up that was promised. B| Or the lack of ANY Mulan, for that matter. Apparently her going to join Robin Hood’s gang was a lie?
On a completely different but also bugging-me note, why all the "oh time travel is so impossible" hullabulloo when Jefferson reached into the past like no big deal in the first season? His portal hat broke the laws of magic before it was cool. And what happened to him and his daughter when everyone was temporarily sent back to fairytale land?! He wasn’t IN fairytale land when the first curse struck, he was in Wonderland. What if he got sent back there instead of to fairytale land?
(Don’t answer that. I’m amusing myself with an AU scenario wherein Jefferson is next season’s big bad, because he did get sent back to Wonderland when Regina reversed her curse, and somewhere during the lost year Grace, in order to save her papa, manifested/acquired the magical hat-making power he himself lacked and paid some terrible price for it, and now they’re back in Storybrooke and everything is more horrible and Jefferson’s mental balance more precarious than ever. Which is unfortunate, because Jeff’s hat-jumping skills have always laughed in the face of nature’s laws, letting him jump from realm to realm and place-within-a-realm to other-place-within-the-same-realm AND THROUGH TIME on a whim. Said whim now being 100% vengeful and desperate and still like 75% tripping balls because fucking Wonderland, man. He’s kind of a one-man eldritch abomination.)
Speaking of villains, funny how much more sympathetic I was to S3.5 Regina after taking several months hiatus. So much more likeable if you can’t remember all the evil she’s done clearly anymore. XD
Aidan Turner’s Filmography
Aidan Turner has, so far, played Mitchell the vampire from Being Human (bestest most favorite vampire on tv ever), Kíli the dwarf from The Hobbit, andLupin (bestest most favorite werewolf in a book ever) Luke the werewolf in the City of Bones movie. Color me amused. I hope he goes on to play every fantasy creature in existence and never ever grows a beard again like he did in CoB.
The Hobbit
I was pretty impressed, when I went to see The Desolation of Smaug with my family, that when I lifted my 3D glasses for a couple of seconds and then put them on again, I could track my eyes’ progress as they cancelled out the 3D effect. Like, I literally went from"hey, I can actually see the 3D!" to "nope, this movie is indistinguishable from 2D (except in 2D, I actually register and remember visual details without having to pay very very close attention)" in the space of a few seconds. This happened every single time I tried.
The wonders of 3D, people.
I ship Kíliel, and I might be more embarassed that that’s the most significant thing I took away from the movie, but... while it was much better than An Unexpected Journey, it still wasn’t a particularly engaging movie otherwise.
Agents of SHIELD
Got lots more exciting storywise, but the writing and overall presentation remained teeth-gnashingly dissatisfying. The show was just such a disappointment.
Coulson should still have stayed dead. He has no appeal whatsoever. Siiiiiiiigh.
I love Skye (her legal name is MARY SUE POOTS) and Trip (the grandson of a Howling Commando!!) and Akela Amador. Sadly they are literally the only ones.
The Asgard-related episodes were interesting for world-building curiosity, but Randolph whatshisface was written so incredibly fucking dully I just didn’t give a shit about him no matter the potential his backstory held. FUCK YOU FOR FAILING SO HARD, SHOW. T.T Lorelei was an unconvincing ham, and I’m not sure I like what the show did for Sif’s romantic backstory either. But at least she didn’t suffer anywhere else. The "primitive technology we and the other realms discarded eons ago" bit was priceless.
Ward being Hydra was a nice twist. I kinda liked pre-reveal!Ward for his interactions with Skye, but honestly that was the extent of it. He suffered from the same ‘oh my god I just don’t care for these people at all’ syndrome everyone else did.
Simmons’s exaggerated, cutesy-quirky faux!Hermione-esque mannerisms tilted the scales from disappointed indifference all the way to active dislike, and I wonder if anyone on the writing team ever looked at Fitz’s character and noticed all the icky uncomfortable implications of his character. He is not a macho man in, like, any way, which would have been a nice change of pace if he didn’t also have such a tiny, easily bruised ego about/because of? it. He spent the whole season bolstering his self-esteem by tearing the people around him down whenever their actions and/or mere presence made threatened his masculinity, which was especially unfortunate because that usually involved talking down on a (super chill and friendly, even in the face of Fitz’s dickery) black guy, or a woman who was never anything but perfectly kind to him but who happened to not feel quite the same way for him as he did for her. Sure, it seemed pretty clear that that was what was supposed to be going on, "lol that boy’s reaching, joke’s on him", but that didn’t make it any less irritating to me. He was just... ew. Was writing him like that really neccessary?
All Hail The King (Iron Man 3 One-Shot Epilogue)
Trevor Slattery aka "The Mandarin" and Justin Hammer got put into the same prison. If these were anyone OTHER than Justin Hammer and Trevor Slattery, I would suspect this was some third-party scheme to get those two to cook up revenge-on-Tony plots together.
But that’s not really why I’m bringing the All Hail The King one-shot up. I bring it up because JUSTIN HAMMER HAS A BOYFRIEND. I REPEAT, JUSTIN HAMMER FOUND HIMSELF A BOYFRIEND IN PRISON. And not the terrible insensitive jokes kind, either.
LOOK AT THEM:
Justin’s all pouty because Trevor gets all the attention, and Boyfriend’s all there there it’s okay, and Justin’s like not in front of the minions, babe.
He really calls him babe.
I AM LAUGHING SO HARD, because Justin is such an incredible tool and obviously Boyfriend has abysmal taste in men, but THAT MAKES IT KINDA CUTE?! XD
ALSO ALSO - Priscilla Everhart!!
The Dark World & The Winter Soldier
For all that I was super excited for both of these movies, I never posted about them here.
-- For TDW, it was because I had such conflicting feelings, it took ages to sort through them and by that time I’d been indulging in the fandom again for too long and just burned right out on it. The short version is: dark elves look silly (before the movie started I kept thinking Malekith’s face would be CGI-ed in and that’s why he wore that weird thing around his head, but nope); I loved Thor and Jane’s storylines; Odin hurt like a bitch and without any acknowledgement that his feelings for Loki have done a radical about-face and he has not, as Loki likes to claim, treated him like this his whole life, I can’t entirely bring myself to feel that it’s in a good way; I hate that Frigga died; I hate hate HATE that they cut down half of her scenes AGAIN even though the intended effect of her fridging depended so much on the relationships shown almost only in those cut scenes; and I think Loki’s storyline suffered immensely from what rumor tells me were massive rewrites. I am inclined to believe he really was intended to die in earlier versions of the script, because if I had the will and the energy I think I could pinpoint all the exact places where they decided to change and cut things to make his new storyline work. The effect of his character arc was crippled by not enough rewrites, in my opinion. As it stands, I feel like he would have been better off staying dead.
YEAH, I SAID IT.
As far as fandom problems go, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders when the powers that be confirmed that Loki didn’t deliberately fake his death, he really did get stabbed and then just... didn’t die quite as much as it seemed he was gonna. At least the "Frigga gets fridged so Loki can redeem himself" arc doesn’t feel quite so hollow knowing for sure he meant the sacrifice. Now if only a Marvel exec would tell us he didn’t then immediately go on to throw it all in the trash by killing Odin, I’d be a happy fan.
Also, Loki’s hair was hideous. This is why I wanted him bald and disgraced! XP It’s been hideous since The Avengers. I can’t take people seriously anymore when they claim otherwise. Or when they claim that his (helmet-and-cape-less) Avengers outfit was not, in fact, meant to look nasty and lopsided and outlaw-ish, but is just as princely and regal-looking as his first movie outfits. @_@ ON THE OTHER HAND, canonically wavy/curly hair is now undeniably canonical. Fuck yes.
OH, OH - as I reported way back when, I went to the local midnight premier. The theatre sometimes gives away souvenirs at premiers to fans that stand out in some way, and this time there were two girls who came in wearing comic book t-shirts and a big shiny home-made Mjolnir. So they got a huge poster that had hung in the theatre. I was so jealous. BUT THEN, afterwards, the manager lady approached me on my way out the door and was like ‘you must be a big fan too, huh?’. Because it was like three in the morning on a weekday, and I was there all by my lonesome. So yeah, you could say that. SO SHE GAVE ME A POSTER TOO. And now that I have told you this, YOU are the ones who get to be jealous. >:D
-- TWS, meanwhile, was... pretty much flawless. I just have no idea what I’d say about it, because every time I sit down to watch it I come out on the other end in an almost zen-like state of relaxation and tranquility. It is the most soothing thing, and I have no fucking clue why. XD
Every time I read or try to write a fic with Bucky Barnes in it, his voice in my head sounds like Danny Pino instead of Sebastian Stan, Cold Case accent included. The effort it takes to get the sound right is really starting to get on my nerves. On a related note, I can’t not make Thor's voice sound ridiculous in my head. It’s a lost cause. I kind of understand why people are always writing him as BOOMING ALL HIS DIALOGUE, because it’s just too bassy for words.
Guardians of the Galaxy
It was okay. Best laughs in the franchise! Drax is my favorite character, though my attachment to the cast was somewhat inhibited by the infodump-y way we learn about them. Worldbuilding thoughts will have to wait until I can pour over the movie in peace and quiet, but I started wondering about this when the first trailer came out and I’m still wondering about it now –
why
are there HUMANS and/or PICTURE PERFECT COPIES OF HUMANS
as well as Earth animals (the FUCKING RACCOON, WHAT)
in EVERY LAST CORNER OF THE GALAXY
when the MCU has been very clear, from the start that mankind (except half-alien Quill) has so far never wandered further than the moon
and the only other realm we’ve supposedly been in contact with (barring the occasional invasion attempt or pirate infiltration), is Asgard
parallel evolution does not work this way
do the human-lookalikes on Xandar count among ‘the Terran race’ or something? How else would they even know who and what we are and what Quill is or is NOT? I get really strong Prime Directive-type ‘KEEP AWAY FROM THE TECHNOLOGICALLY UNDERDEVELOPED SPECIES’ vibes from both the Thor and the GotG corners of the franchise, so wat?? ?
EXPLAIN PLEASE ;______;
also all the English everyone’s speaking all through the bleeping universe, I thought the Allspeak was a magical Asgardian/immortals-only thing, I can buy it with Asgard BUT THIS JUST MAKES ZERO SENSE ANYMORE
(I’m kind of expecting the language issue to be something I missed, because I saw someone online talking about translator chip implants??)
Future Marvel Projects
Agent Carter – SO VERY EXCITED. Peggy! Worldbuilding! Peggy! Literally half the show is written and/or produced/directed by the directors/producers of the Cap movies! and the show-runners are women! and the 8 episode format means no filler! and NO WHEDONS AND THEIR WHEDONASINCRACIES! and the time period means none of the bending into pretzel shapes to avoid trespassing into movie territory that made AoS such a limp hanger-on, and and AND :DDDDDD
Avengers: Age of Ultron – AGE OF ULTRON. So excited. SO EXCITED. The similarities between Wanda & Pietro and Simon & River make me squint suspiciously, and the Natasha/Bruce rumors are baffling, but otherwise I LIKE EVERYTHING I'VE HEARD ABOUT IT SO FAR. (The rumor that Thor and Jane broke up off-screen between TDW and AOU was apparently dispelled by Hemsworth saying on camera that Thor is single neither at the start nor at the end of the movie. HURRAH.) The Avengers becoming an official thing to pick up the slack after SHYLDRA's implosion? Worldbuilding development continuity! I'm gonna swoon. Tony creating Ultron for the reasons he does? Character development continuity! I'm gonna swoon. IM3 had me so worried about Tony's future, because after that, how could he possibly get another movie as Iron Man other than by going "lol I changed my mind, superheroing is magically fun again/battle fatigue and accumulating combat trauma will totally reverse itself if you just keep bullheadedly forcing your way through that temporary rough patch"? BY HAVING HIM TAKE STEPS TO ENSURE HIS RETIREMENT WON'T CAUSE ANY PROBLEMS, OF COURSE! *draws hearts around this franchise's commitment to having one cohesive universe where causes have consequences and those consequences turn into their own causes in turn and the development is organic and there is no reset button* I never would've thought I'd say this after The Avengers, but I think I would be happy if Tony hangs up his super suit after AOU (or at least Avengers 3, which looks like it'll be about Thanos, which would obviously require the fullest roster they can manage, and which I'm kind of hoping will be a two-parter because for once in the history if movie trilogy-closers getting split in two, it would actually make sense). His character has walked such a beautifully realised path, it would feel like a natural, organic, suitable, and dignified send-off. Tony wouldn't even necessarily have to leave the franchise (given the nature of the MCU, it's actually very unlikely we'd never hear from/about him again), it's just Iron Man who would retire. But other superheroes are popping up literally every half year, so the world would be in good hands.
Daredevil and the other Netflix series – I only know Daredevil from the Ben Affleck movie (was it Ben Affleck?) and the others not at all, but it sounds promising. Jessica Jones more than the others - wiki tells me there would be grumpy private eye shenanigans! - but mostly it's just me being biased in favor of YAY WIMMEN. :P
Doctor Strange – Meh. Never met him, see no reason for excitement before I do. Am just a little baffled about the magic thing – they depowered Loki and co, supposedly elite magic users from a vastly superior society, so much. How are they going to introduce Earth-based magic and not be limited by the comparison even further?? Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver seem to have gotten their powers from experiments on the Chitauri scepter left behind after The Avengers (Dear Asgard: LEARN TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION), but that seemed to have a huge fatality rate and from what I do know of Strange, his origin story’s got nothing to do with Hydra.
Ant-Man – I kind of don’t want to live in a universe where we get freaking Ant-Man before a Black Widow or any other female superhero movie, but it’s the only universe we have. *sigh* Rumor has it there might be flashbacks to Peggy’s SHIELD days though, when Michael Douglas’s character was young, which currently excites me more than Doc Strange, Ant-Man and Daredevil combined. :P
Random:
- Still not over that one person I followed once upon a time who, in all actual goddamn seriousness, claimed that the one big flaw in the Harry Potter books was that MURRICAH! didn't get called in to help save the day on the UK's behalf. Yes really.
- Ellen Page and Jodie Foster are lesbians. It is weird to have strong opinions on the sexual preferences of total strangers one way or the other, but color me delighted.
- In the Thor corner it was mpreg, in the Cap corner it’s rimming. Dear MCU fandom, I love you, but you have a really unfortunate tendency to focus on things that squick me right the fuck out. *BLERGH* *bleaches brain*
- It seems like western sci-fi/fantasy series with an overarching plot are becoming more popular. I like this development! The search for that type of narration is what made me turn to anime almost exclusively a number of years ago. It will be nice to have more access to western tropes as well. Variety is the spice of life.
- Approximately 25% of my enjoyment of Marvel movies probably stems from the fact that they don’t use that abysmal modern washed out, greyed-down, teal-and-orange color scheme for every second of footage.
- Bucky Barnes was not fucking drafted against his will. Because have you even watched the fucking movies? /end reasoning
Pacific Rim
IT’S GETTING A SEQUEL. AND A CARTOON SET BETWEEN THE TWO MOVIES. AND A SEQUEL TO THE "YEAR ZERO" COMIC. This is relevant to my interests.
Sleepy Hollow
I don’t think I’ll be following Sleepy Hollow as it airs next season. It turned out to be too ‘monster of the week’ish to my liking. At first I thought it would be more linear, but every episode had a new revelation or twist that came completely out of nowhere and was barely related to anything that came before, and that just doesn’t do it for me. Though on the other hand, I was really fond of Abbie and Jenny. Maybe I’ll marathon it some time after it’s done. Hopefully the soap-opera twists and turns are done, a more ongoing plot can take its place, and not waiting every week will improve the experience.
Pottermore
I inhaled all the Philosopher’s Stone content when it first came out and then kinda sorta decided not to go back until all seven books had been covered. Except not really. I caught up everything that had been added or changed this week.
ALL THE PRETTY. ALL THE NEW LITTLE DETAILS. ALL THE FILLED OUT STATUS BARS. Except for the second scene in Snape’s office in CoS, but that one requires potion brewing, so whatever.
But, but – Dutch witches and wizards go to Beauxbatons a lot? Nooooooooo. D: /high-school French class induced France trauma
The Daily Prophet’s Quidditch World Cup 2014 coverage! I had seen the Rita Skeeter piece circulating and was vaguely aware there was some special event mirroring the IRL soccer world cup going on, but I had no idea it was part of a larger story! Reporter Ginny! Hexing Rita Skeeter in the solar plexus Ginny! (I can only imagine the willpower it must have taken for her to wait doing that until the Cup was over.) Teddy and Victoire’s relentless teenage passion! Hans the augury and the Japanese team’s hoo-hoo chick! KRUM. KRUM FULLFILLING HIS LIFE’S GOAL. KRUM WINNING HIS TEAM A WORLD CUP AT LAST. KRUM BACKING AWAY FROM THE SNITCH BECAUSE THE JAPANESE SEEKER GOT DISTRACTED FROM A FAIR RACE BY A LIFE IN NEED OF SAVING. KRUM. I cried, which I did not see coming.
I also cried over Remus’s biography, which I totally saw coming. These books are so dear to me, and Remus is so dear to me, it still takes nothing to hit all my most primal buttons.
Then I made the mistake of trying to find a complete version of his bio to reblog on my tumblr aaaaand yep people bashing Remus/Tonks still makes my blood boil.
Crippling self-esteem issues don’t magically go away even if you fall head over heels in love? Crippling self-esteem issues will fuck with your relationships and your ability to let yourself have and enjoy relationships, no matter how badly you’d like to make them work?
Wait, what? No, of course not. Clearly he just didn’t love her at all! And anyone claiming otherwise is writing "the worst fanfic I’ve ever read", and Remus being violently torn between how in love he is and how issue-riddled he is but, courtesy of a thorough verbal smackdown and lots of alcohol and soul-searching, buckling down to damn well make it work in the end and at least going out on a high note after struggling with himself for so long is "completely OOC" and "nothing at all like the Remus I’ve known and loved for so long"!
WAY TO BE SHITTY PEOPLE
Why was I expecting things to be better after all this time, though? I don’t even know what I was thinking. Christ. I high-tailed it out of HP fandom so long ago I forgot how mind-bogglingly easy it is to walk into people stomping on all that is good in the world, even when I’m looking for something completely different.
Robin Hobb
oh fuck me, there’s a new book about Fitz and the Fool coming out next month
dilemma!
I loved their books to pieces when I first read them (8? 10? years ago), but when I tried to read some of Robin Hobb’s other series last year I found the POV characters almost universally insufferable. they were all just so fucking whiny and spineless and willfully helpless and blind and victimized I wanted to SCREAM. which got especially egregious when I found myself yelling FFS IF YOU’RE GONNA BITCH AND MOAN ABOUT HIM UNTIL THE END OF TIME ANYWAY JUST DUMP THE FUCKING BRAT IN THE WILDERNESS AND LET HIM DIE LIKE YOU SO CLEARLY WANT TO at this one protagonist
about her austistic son
yeah
so now I’m worried that if I get this new book and reread my old Six Duchies books and/or finally crack open those new Rain Wild ones dad got me for Christmas a couple years ago, I’m gonna end up hating the one continuity of hers I’ve loved for so long too :\ Fitz’s angst never bothered me back then, but I’m pretty sure the pattern that drove me up the wall so recently held true in his character too to some extent
also the issue of bookshelf space is going to bug the fuck out of me
it’s getting a little cramped
(no I do not want to use another shelf. they go together they STAY together. grrr.)
Avatar: the Legend of Korra
THE THIRD SEASON WAS SUDDENLY SO GOOD. WHY WERE THE PREVIOUS TWO NOT THIS GOOD. I am not kidding, Book Three was in a whole different league of quality than Books One and Two. I LOVED THIS. HOLY SHIT. GIMME MORE. REWRITE THE PREVIOUS TWO TO BE LIKE THIS. PLEASE. Now I’m finally looking forward to a new season. ;A;
Is it some kind of rule that all Avatar episodes involving the Dai Li need to be unusually tearjerking? ;___; Jeeeeeet. Kaaaaaaaai.
Heaven help me, but some of those furry little spirits were SO CUTE. I am still deeply disturbed by their unacknowledged alien invaderness though. The show treats them like ‘well duh of course they belong here’, but the Avatar Wan episodes did not give me this impression at all.
So many female characters in Book Three! And I love them all!! And also Kai. Cutie. Please be Jinora’s boyfriend forever. JINORAAAAAA. Please be more awesome than your dad in all things for all time.
AtLA Comics
For the longest time, the AtLA comics (The Promise, The Search, and The Rift) were a lot more interesting to me than AtLOK. Even though they're basically vehicles for building up toward AtLOK. XP The latter is now finally interesting too, but I'm still enjoying the comics a lot.
Toph's dad, stop making your daughter sad. D:< (Of course he's gonna stop, The Rift pt 2 is anything but subtle. I just wanna say it now, while I still can. YOU'RE A JERK, DUDE.)
Ever since "The Search", I am completely squicked by Ozai/Ursa. I always liked to think that however horribly he treated Zuko later on, she had at least married him willingly back in the day. Now I can’t. Ew ew ew ew. Poor Ursa. :(
Sebastian Stan’s Filmography
For a while there, my consumption of fiction was ruled by the following thought process:
>have intense pre-Winter Soldier cravings
>go watch other stuff with Sebastian Stan in it to sate them
>run out of other stuff with Sebastian Stan in it
>regret everything
Kings was REALLY good - right up until the moment it ended with no permanent resolution and everyone miserable, because the damn show got cancelled. DAMN YOU, SHOW. YOU CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS TO ME. D: I was warned the series’ cancellation would ruin me, but did I listen? Noooooo. *head desks and then cries for a week*
Political Animals had a very similar set-up, and in it he ALSO played the troubled gay twin "prince", which is either an awesome coincidence, a hilarious and deliberate move on his part, or the most bizarrely specific typecasting I have ever seen. But either way, the show was mediocre but the parallel funny - until the last episode, when his character says some things about his sexuality that ensured all I’ll remember about the series is how badly I wish they’d brought up the possibility of him being bi. Even IF it was only to have him say "nah, that’s overstating it, I admit it’s a tiny bit more complicated than ‘pure Kinsey 6 forever and always’, but I can’t in good conscience identify as bi".
Hot Tub Time Machine was crude but surprisingly funny. Prime guilty pleasure material.
I also rewatched his episodes on OUAT, which my mom and I sometimes sit down to marathon together and is nice for the occasional boost of lady-centric action/adventure/everything else sans the ginormous gainaxing anime tits, though only Mulan/Aurora and (because of Sebastian Stan, wow I’m sad) Jefferson & Grace have so far caught my interest big time. Other than that, he doesn’t really have anything noteworthy. Too bad.
Once Upon A Time
Not impressed by the lack of Mulan/Aurora follow-up that was promised. B| Or the lack of ANY Mulan, for that matter. Apparently her going to join Robin Hood’s gang was a lie?
On a completely different but also bugging-me note, why all the "oh time travel is so impossible" hullabulloo when Jefferson reached into the past like no big deal in the first season? His portal hat broke the laws of magic before it was cool. And what happened to him and his daughter when everyone was temporarily sent back to fairytale land?! He wasn’t IN fairytale land when the first curse struck, he was in Wonderland. What if he got sent back there instead of to fairytale land?
(Don’t answer that. I’m amusing myself with an AU scenario wherein Jefferson is next season’s big bad, because he did get sent back to Wonderland when Regina reversed her curse, and somewhere during the lost year Grace, in order to save her papa, manifested/acquired the magical hat-making power he himself lacked and paid some terrible price for it, and now they’re back in Storybrooke and everything is more horrible and Jefferson’s mental balance more precarious than ever. Which is unfortunate, because Jeff’s hat-jumping skills have always laughed in the face of nature’s laws, letting him jump from realm to realm and place-within-a-realm to other-place-within-the-same-realm AND THROUGH TIME on a whim. Said whim now being 100% vengeful and desperate and still like 75% tripping balls because fucking Wonderland, man. He’s kind of a one-man eldritch abomination.)
Speaking of villains, funny how much more sympathetic I was to S3.5 Regina after taking several months hiatus. So much more likeable if you can’t remember all the evil she’s done clearly anymore. XD
Aidan Turner’s Filmography
Aidan Turner has, so far, played Mitchell the vampire from Being Human (bestest most favorite vampire on tv ever), Kíli the dwarf from The Hobbit, and
The Hobbit
I was pretty impressed, when I went to see The Desolation of Smaug with my family, that when I lifted my 3D glasses for a couple of seconds and then put them on again, I could track my eyes’ progress as they cancelled out the 3D effect. Like, I literally went from"hey, I can actually see the 3D!" to "nope, this movie is indistinguishable from 2D (except in 2D, I actually register and remember visual details without having to pay very very close attention)" in the space of a few seconds. This happened every single time I tried.
The wonders of 3D, people.
I ship Kíliel, and I might be more embarassed that that’s the most significant thing I took away from the movie, but... while it was much better than An Unexpected Journey, it still wasn’t a particularly engaging movie otherwise.
Agents of SHIELD
Got lots more exciting storywise, but the writing and overall presentation remained teeth-gnashingly dissatisfying. The show was just such a disappointment.
Coulson should still have stayed dead. He has no appeal whatsoever. Siiiiiiiigh.
I love Skye (her legal name is MARY SUE POOTS) and Trip (the grandson of a Howling Commando!!) and Akela Amador. Sadly they are literally the only ones.
The Asgard-related episodes were interesting for world-building curiosity, but Randolph whatshisface was written so incredibly fucking dully I just didn’t give a shit about him no matter the potential his backstory held. FUCK YOU FOR FAILING SO HARD, SHOW. T.T Lorelei was an unconvincing ham, and I’m not sure I like what the show did for Sif’s romantic backstory either. But at least she didn’t suffer anywhere else. The "primitive technology we and the other realms discarded eons ago" bit was priceless.
Ward being Hydra was a nice twist. I kinda liked pre-reveal!Ward for his interactions with Skye, but honestly that was the extent of it. He suffered from the same ‘oh my god I just don’t care for these people at all’ syndrome everyone else did.
Simmons’s exaggerated, cutesy-quirky faux!Hermione-esque mannerisms tilted the scales from disappointed indifference all the way to active dislike, and I wonder if anyone on the writing team ever looked at Fitz’s character and noticed all the icky uncomfortable implications of his character. He is not a macho man in, like, any way, which would have been a nice change of pace if he didn’t also have such a tiny, easily bruised ego about/because of? it. He spent the whole season bolstering his self-esteem by tearing the people around him down whenever their actions and/or mere presence made threatened his masculinity, which was especially unfortunate because that usually involved talking down on a (super chill and friendly, even in the face of Fitz’s dickery) black guy, or a woman who was never anything but perfectly kind to him but who happened to not feel quite the same way for him as he did for her. Sure, it seemed pretty clear that that was what was supposed to be going on, "lol that boy’s reaching, joke’s on him", but that didn’t make it any less irritating to me. He was just... ew. Was writing him like that really neccessary?
All Hail The King (Iron Man 3 One-Shot Epilogue)
Trevor Slattery aka "The Mandarin" and Justin Hammer got put into the same prison. If these were anyone OTHER than Justin Hammer and Trevor Slattery, I would suspect this was some third-party scheme to get those two to cook up revenge-on-Tony plots together.
But that’s not really why I’m bringing the All Hail The King one-shot up. I bring it up because JUSTIN HAMMER HAS A BOYFRIEND. I REPEAT, JUSTIN HAMMER FOUND HIMSELF A BOYFRIEND IN PRISON. And not the terrible insensitive jokes kind, either.
LOOK AT THEM:
Justin’s all pouty because Trevor gets all the attention, and Boyfriend’s all there there it’s okay, and Justin’s like not in front of the minions, babe.
He really calls him babe.
I AM LAUGHING SO HARD, because Justin is such an incredible tool and obviously Boyfriend has abysmal taste in men, but THAT MAKES IT KINDA CUTE?! XD
ALSO ALSO - Priscilla Everhart!!
The Dark World & The Winter Soldier
For all that I was super excited for both of these movies, I never posted about them here.
-- For TDW, it was because I had such conflicting feelings, it took ages to sort through them and by that time I’d been indulging in the fandom again for too long and just burned right out on it. The short version is: dark elves look silly (before the movie started I kept thinking Malekith’s face would be CGI-ed in and that’s why he wore that weird thing around his head, but nope); I loved Thor and Jane’s storylines; Odin hurt like a bitch and without any acknowledgement that his feelings for Loki have done a radical about-face and he has not, as Loki likes to claim, treated him like this his whole life, I can’t entirely bring myself to feel that it’s in a good way; I hate that Frigga died; I hate hate HATE that they cut down half of her scenes AGAIN even though the intended effect of her fridging depended so much on the relationships shown almost only in those cut scenes; and I think Loki’s storyline suffered immensely from what rumor tells me were massive rewrites. I am inclined to believe he really was intended to die in earlier versions of the script, because if I had the will and the energy I think I could pinpoint all the exact places where they decided to change and cut things to make his new storyline work. The effect of his character arc was crippled by not enough rewrites, in my opinion. As it stands, I feel like he would have been better off staying dead.
YEAH, I SAID IT.
As far as fandom problems go, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders when the powers that be confirmed that Loki didn’t deliberately fake his death, he really did get stabbed and then just... didn’t die quite as much as it seemed he was gonna. At least the "Frigga gets fridged so Loki can redeem himself" arc doesn’t feel quite so hollow knowing for sure he meant the sacrifice. Now if only a Marvel exec would tell us he didn’t then immediately go on to throw it all in the trash by killing Odin, I’d be a happy fan.
Also, Loki’s hair was hideous. This is why I wanted him bald and disgraced! XP It’s been hideous since The Avengers. I can’t take people seriously anymore when they claim otherwise. Or when they claim that his (helmet-and-cape-less) Avengers outfit was not, in fact, meant to look nasty and lopsided and outlaw-ish, but is just as princely and regal-looking as his first movie outfits. @_@ ON THE OTHER HAND, canonically wavy/curly hair is now undeniably canonical. Fuck yes.
OH, OH - as I reported way back when, I went to the local midnight premier. The theatre sometimes gives away souvenirs at premiers to fans that stand out in some way, and this time there were two girls who came in wearing comic book t-shirts and a big shiny home-made Mjolnir. So they got a huge poster that had hung in the theatre. I was so jealous. BUT THEN, afterwards, the manager lady approached me on my way out the door and was like ‘you must be a big fan too, huh?’. Because it was like three in the morning on a weekday, and I was there all by my lonesome. So yeah, you could say that. SO SHE GAVE ME A POSTER TOO. And now that I have told you this, YOU are the ones who get to be jealous. >:D
-- TWS, meanwhile, was... pretty much flawless. I just have no idea what I’d say about it, because every time I sit down to watch it I come out on the other end in an almost zen-like state of relaxation and tranquility. It is the most soothing thing, and I have no fucking clue why. XD
Every time I read or try to write a fic with Bucky Barnes in it, his voice in my head sounds like Danny Pino instead of Sebastian Stan, Cold Case accent included. The effort it takes to get the sound right is really starting to get on my nerves. On a related note, I can’t not make Thor's voice sound ridiculous in my head. It’s a lost cause. I kind of understand why people are always writing him as BOOMING ALL HIS DIALOGUE, because it’s just too bassy for words.
Guardians of the Galaxy
It was okay. Best laughs in the franchise! Drax is my favorite character, though my attachment to the cast was somewhat inhibited by the infodump-y way we learn about them. Worldbuilding thoughts will have to wait until I can pour over the movie in peace and quiet, but I started wondering about this when the first trailer came out and I’m still wondering about it now –
why
are there HUMANS and/or PICTURE PERFECT COPIES OF HUMANS
as well as Earth animals (the FUCKING RACCOON, WHAT)
in EVERY LAST CORNER OF THE GALAXY
when the MCU has been very clear, from the start that mankind (except half-alien Quill) has so far never wandered further than the moon
and the only other realm we’ve supposedly been in contact with (barring the occasional invasion attempt or pirate infiltration), is Asgard
parallel evolution does not work this way
do the human-lookalikes on Xandar count among ‘the Terran race’ or something? How else would they even know who and what we are and what Quill is or is NOT? I get really strong Prime Directive-type ‘KEEP AWAY FROM THE TECHNOLOGICALLY UNDERDEVELOPED SPECIES’ vibes from both the Thor and the GotG corners of the franchise, so wat?? ?
EXPLAIN PLEASE ;______;
also all the English everyone’s speaking all through the bleeping universe, I thought the Allspeak was a magical Asgardian/immortals-only thing, I can buy it with Asgard BUT THIS JUST MAKES ZERO SENSE ANYMORE
(I’m kind of expecting the language issue to be something I missed, because I saw someone online talking about translator chip implants??)
Future Marvel Projects
Agent Carter – SO VERY EXCITED. Peggy! Worldbuilding! Peggy! Literally half the show is written and/or produced/directed by the directors/producers of the Cap movies! and the show-runners are women! and the 8 episode format means no filler! and NO WHEDONS AND THEIR WHEDONASINCRACIES! and the time period means none of the bending into pretzel shapes to avoid trespassing into movie territory that made AoS such a limp hanger-on, and and AND :DDDDDD
Avengers: Age of Ultron – AGE OF ULTRON. So excited. SO EXCITED. The similarities between Wanda & Pietro and Simon & River make me squint suspiciously, and the Natasha/Bruce rumors are baffling, but otherwise I LIKE EVERYTHING I'VE HEARD ABOUT IT SO FAR. (The rumor that Thor and Jane broke up off-screen between TDW and AOU was apparently dispelled by Hemsworth saying on camera that Thor is single neither at the start nor at the end of the movie. HURRAH.) The Avengers becoming an official thing to pick up the slack after SHYLDRA's implosion? Worldbuilding development continuity! I'm gonna swoon. Tony creating Ultron for the reasons he does? Character development continuity! I'm gonna swoon. IM3 had me so worried about Tony's future, because after that, how could he possibly get another movie as Iron Man other than by going "lol I changed my mind, superheroing is magically fun again/battle fatigue and accumulating combat trauma will totally reverse itself if you just keep bullheadedly forcing your way through that temporary rough patch"? BY HAVING HIM TAKE STEPS TO ENSURE HIS RETIREMENT WON'T CAUSE ANY PROBLEMS, OF COURSE! *draws hearts around this franchise's commitment to having one cohesive universe where causes have consequences and those consequences turn into their own causes in turn and the development is organic and there is no reset button* I never would've thought I'd say this after The Avengers, but I think I would be happy if Tony hangs up his super suit after AOU (or at least Avengers 3, which looks like it'll be about Thanos, which would obviously require the fullest roster they can manage, and which I'm kind of hoping will be a two-parter because for once in the history if movie trilogy-closers getting split in two, it would actually make sense). His character has walked such a beautifully realised path, it would feel like a natural, organic, suitable, and dignified send-off. Tony wouldn't even necessarily have to leave the franchise (given the nature of the MCU, it's actually very unlikely we'd never hear from/about him again), it's just Iron Man who would retire. But other superheroes are popping up literally every half year, so the world would be in good hands.
Daredevil and the other Netflix series – I only know Daredevil from the Ben Affleck movie (was it Ben Affleck?) and the others not at all, but it sounds promising. Jessica Jones more than the others - wiki tells me there would be grumpy private eye shenanigans! - but mostly it's just me being biased in favor of YAY WIMMEN. :P
Doctor Strange – Meh. Never met him, see no reason for excitement before I do. Am just a little baffled about the magic thing – they depowered Loki and co, supposedly elite magic users from a vastly superior society, so much. How are they going to introduce Earth-based magic and not be limited by the comparison even further?? Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver seem to have gotten their powers from experiments on the Chitauri scepter left behind after The Avengers (Dear Asgard: LEARN TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION), but that seemed to have a huge fatality rate and from what I do know of Strange, his origin story’s got nothing to do with Hydra.
Ant-Man – I kind of don’t want to live in a universe where we get freaking Ant-Man before a Black Widow or any other female superhero movie, but it’s the only universe we have. *sigh* Rumor has it there might be flashbacks to Peggy’s SHIELD days though, when Michael Douglas’s character was young, which currently excites me more than Doc Strange, Ant-Man and Daredevil combined. :P
Random:
- Still not over that one person I followed once upon a time who, in all actual goddamn seriousness, claimed that the one big flaw in the Harry Potter books was that MURRICAH! didn't get called in to help save the day on the UK's behalf. Yes really.
- Ellen Page and Jodie Foster are lesbians. It is weird to have strong opinions on the sexual preferences of total strangers one way or the other, but color me delighted.
- In the Thor corner it was mpreg, in the Cap corner it’s rimming. Dear MCU fandom, I love you, but you have a really unfortunate tendency to focus on things that squick me right the fuck out. *BLERGH* *bleaches brain*
- It seems like western sci-fi/fantasy series with an overarching plot are becoming more popular. I like this development! The search for that type of narration is what made me turn to anime almost exclusively a number of years ago. It will be nice to have more access to western tropes as well. Variety is the spice of life.
- Approximately 25% of my enjoyment of Marvel movies probably stems from the fact that they don’t use that abysmal modern washed out, greyed-down, teal-and-orange color scheme for every second of footage.
- Bucky Barnes was not fucking drafted against his will. Because have you even watched the fucking movies? /end reasoning