this was going to be a general update but it turned into yelling about marvel things
*taps* Is this thing on? Yes? Good.
Fandom participation is a weird thing for me right now, because at the moment my main fandom is ... the D&D campaign that Housemate A is running? I hear that often D&D campaigns are kind of cracky and fragmented and, while lots of fun, not full of really coherent narrative or character arcs; but we're a group consisting entirely of people who are really fannish and care a lot about character relationships and plot threads and so on, so we've been doing it ... very fannish RPG style, I guess. Shipping things and finding songs to give each other feels! I keep on making vids in my head! THERE IS NO FOOTAGE. But it's a lot of what my brain has been up to.
I've also been watching Leverage for the first time; we're two episodes from the series finale now, and I don't want it to ennnnd, but I do want every single Hardison/Parker/Eliot and/or perfect found family team fic; totally taking recs! Also probably going to comb through the AO3 with great enthusiasm. Other than that I'm not watching much telly; Sleepy Hollow is between seasons, I've sort of peaced out of both Elementary and White Collar until I can watch the whole season in a go, I'm rewatching all of Community by showing it to a friend, and I can't quite bring myself to keep going because Troy, and ... well, okay, I have been watching SHIELD.
Seriously, of all the shows, SHIELD is the one I'm keeping up with. I don't even fucking know either, but I have a lot of THOUGHTS. On the one hand, much to my surprise I've ended up liking all the regular characters! I still find Fitzsimmons much more interesting in relation to each other and to Skye than as people in their own right, and I still have only a fraction of a care about Ward, again in relation to Skye because I was dreading some sort of Ward/Skye bullshit and then he went all big bro instead and I'm easy for that, and Coulson is ... a whole other thing, we'll get to that in a second. But I like Skye so much! And I like May so much! And on the strength of that I really enjoy watching them be a family; possibly my favorite thing in the most recent episode is the bit where a doctor comes up to Coulson and says gently that he should notify Skye's family of her condition, and the whole team is sitting there, and Coulson says, "We're her family." LIKE. I AM SO THERE FOR THAT. WHEN THE SHOW MAKES THAT ITS STARTING POINT I LIKE IT SO MUCH, not least because at this point it's actually earned that, unlike earlier on in the show when they were three episodes in and going Found Family!! with no actual footage to back it.
But on the other hand, ohhhh boy, someone needs to sit the fuck down and figure out where the hell the narrative wants to make its stand on the team's morality/SHIELD's morality generally. And those can be at two different points in the moral continuum! In fact, I think the show really wants that! The problem is, SHIELD really is doing all the horrible stuff the bad guys say they're doing; just because the bad guys are worse doesn't make SHIELD actually good in comparison. But SHIELD is either helpful or a scary faceless government organization depending on the demands of the plot, and arrgh, decide whether the team is okay with it! My only faint hope is that one of the season arcs is them realizing that they're not? But that isn't gonna happen, Skye started there and has taken steps backwards, no one else is going to think about this except for Coulson, and frankly I have no idea what's going on with Coulson. Which shady dealings is he actually questioning at this point? Are we supposed to be distrusting Fury? or Coulson's judgement? or WHAT, fdskfdsjdfh.
In some ways the whole morality problem, for me, comes down to two scenes in the latest episode. In one, Melinda May has learned that Skye's probably not going to make it, so she goes to the locked-up man that shot Skye and starts to beat the shit out of him. In the other, Coulson and a third-party agent are talking to the same man, telling him calmly that he has no lawyer, no rights, no one coming to save him, and then hitting him. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that the show felt these two scenes were on the same level -- like, sure, you shouldn't do this to a prisoner, but this guy is really evil, he shot a main character, don't you feel catharsis at watching the characters you like abuse their power on a bad guy? NO, SHOW, NO I DON'T, FUCKING HELL WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING. I personally found May's scene much easier to deal with, and within my narrative comfort level: it was so totally within the bounds of her character, she also knew she shouldn't be doing it, and she was shut down almost instantly. The second scene is premeditated and isn't stopped and I just -- screaming, what the actual hell, how is this supposed to be remotely comfortable, make a fucking stand.
Uh, so really I'm watching in morbid fascination. And because I do still enjoy all the characters! I just keep being so HORRIFIED. Sigh, up next week: Lorelei seduces men because, what, you couldn't get Amora? Get me some Amora in the MCU! And then Sif comes down to stop Lorelei, so I'm really excited for that; I'm just praying to the tv gods that there isn't, like, funny rape and Supernatural levels of evil women or anything. JUST MEET MY MINIMUM STANDARDS, SHOW. Oh and PS get Amora on the MCU, please and thank you.
Okay, so perhaps besides the D&D campaign, Marvel is still my current fandom. Oh, and I've been reading the Agent of Asgard comics! They are SUCH tumblr fodder, but I'm really okay with that; it's kind of fun to feel squarely within the target demographic. Loki writes slashfic! Loki is always herself! Loki makes bizarre One Direction jokes! Hell yes I'm paying $3 every couple of weeks for this.
Relatedly, does anyone know if the Thor 2 deleted scenes & assorted other whatever special features are anywhere to be found? Amazon seems to have DVDs and Blu Rays and all that good stuff, but none of them list any actual special features! C'mon, Marvel, I'm trying really hard to give you money, just give me something in addition to the movie in exchange! I'll probably just keep compulsively checking amazon, but this is a little silly.
This entry was originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/215757.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.
comments.
Fandom participation is a weird thing for me right now, because at the moment my main fandom is ... the D&D campaign that Housemate A is running? I hear that often D&D campaigns are kind of cracky and fragmented and, while lots of fun, not full of really coherent narrative or character arcs; but we're a group consisting entirely of people who are really fannish and care a lot about character relationships and plot threads and so on, so we've been doing it ... very fannish RPG style, I guess. Shipping things and finding songs to give each other feels! I keep on making vids in my head! THERE IS NO FOOTAGE. But it's a lot of what my brain has been up to.
I've also been watching Leverage for the first time; we're two episodes from the series finale now, and I don't want it to ennnnd, but I do want every single Hardison/Parker/Eliot and/or perfect found family team fic; totally taking recs! Also probably going to comb through the AO3 with great enthusiasm. Other than that I'm not watching much telly; Sleepy Hollow is between seasons, I've sort of peaced out of both Elementary and White Collar until I can watch the whole season in a go, I'm rewatching all of Community by showing it to a friend, and I can't quite bring myself to keep going because Troy, and ... well, okay, I have been watching SHIELD.
Seriously, of all the shows, SHIELD is the one I'm keeping up with. I don't even fucking know either, but I have a lot of THOUGHTS. On the one hand, much to my surprise I've ended up liking all the regular characters! I still find Fitzsimmons much more interesting in relation to each other and to Skye than as people in their own right, and I still have only a fraction of a care about Ward, again in relation to Skye because I was dreading some sort of Ward/Skye bullshit and then he went all big bro instead and I'm easy for that, and Coulson is ... a whole other thing, we'll get to that in a second. But I like Skye so much! And I like May so much! And on the strength of that I really enjoy watching them be a family; possibly my favorite thing in the most recent episode is the bit where a doctor comes up to Coulson and says gently that he should notify Skye's family of her condition, and the whole team is sitting there, and Coulson says, "We're her family." LIKE. I AM SO THERE FOR THAT. WHEN THE SHOW MAKES THAT ITS STARTING POINT I LIKE IT SO MUCH, not least because at this point it's actually earned that, unlike earlier on in the show when they were three episodes in and going Found Family!! with no actual footage to back it.
But on the other hand, ohhhh boy, someone needs to sit the fuck down and figure out where the hell the narrative wants to make its stand on the team's morality/SHIELD's morality generally. And those can be at two different points in the moral continuum! In fact, I think the show really wants that! The problem is, SHIELD really is doing all the horrible stuff the bad guys say they're doing; just because the bad guys are worse doesn't make SHIELD actually good in comparison. But SHIELD is either helpful or a scary faceless government organization depending on the demands of the plot, and arrgh, decide whether the team is okay with it! My only faint hope is that one of the season arcs is them realizing that they're not? But that isn't gonna happen, Skye started there and has taken steps backwards, no one else is going to think about this except for Coulson, and frankly I have no idea what's going on with Coulson. Which shady dealings is he actually questioning at this point? Are we supposed to be distrusting Fury? or Coulson's judgement? or WHAT, fdskfdsjdfh.
In some ways the whole morality problem, for me, comes down to two scenes in the latest episode. In one, Melinda May has learned that Skye's probably not going to make it, so she goes to the locked-up man that shot Skye and starts to beat the shit out of him. In the other, Coulson and a third-party agent are talking to the same man, telling him calmly that he has no lawyer, no rights, no one coming to save him, and then hitting him. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that the show felt these two scenes were on the same level -- like, sure, you shouldn't do this to a prisoner, but this guy is really evil, he shot a main character, don't you feel catharsis at watching the characters you like abuse their power on a bad guy? NO, SHOW, NO I DON'T, FUCKING HELL WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING. I personally found May's scene much easier to deal with, and within my narrative comfort level: it was so totally within the bounds of her character, she also knew she shouldn't be doing it, and she was shut down almost instantly. The second scene is premeditated and isn't stopped and I just -- screaming, what the actual hell, how is this supposed to be remotely comfortable, make a fucking stand.
Uh, so really I'm watching in morbid fascination. And because I do still enjoy all the characters! I just keep being so HORRIFIED. Sigh, up next week: Lorelei seduces men because, what, you couldn't get Amora? Get me some Amora in the MCU! And then Sif comes down to stop Lorelei, so I'm really excited for that; I'm just praying to the tv gods that there isn't, like, funny rape and Supernatural levels of evil women or anything. JUST MEET MY MINIMUM STANDARDS, SHOW. Oh and PS get Amora on the MCU, please and thank you.
Okay, so perhaps besides the D&D campaign, Marvel is still my current fandom. Oh, and I've been reading the Agent of Asgard comics! They are SUCH tumblr fodder, but I'm really okay with that; it's kind of fun to feel squarely within the target demographic. Loki writes slashfic! Loki is always herself! Loki makes bizarre One Direction jokes! Hell yes I'm paying $3 every couple of weeks for this.
Relatedly, does anyone know if the Thor 2 deleted scenes & assorted other whatever special features are anywhere to be found? Amazon seems to have DVDs and Blu Rays and all that good stuff, but none of them list any actual special features! C'mon, Marvel, I'm trying really hard to give you money, just give me something in addition to the movie in exchange! I'll probably just keep compulsively checking amazon, but this is a little silly.
This entry was originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/215757.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.
comments.