and, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Through a combination of growing disdain for my own fail and the need to track words obsessively for 
inkingitout, I sat down on Monday and wrote several thousand words. \o/ Apparently word tracking makes me competitive against ... my own laziness? IDEK. But progress occurred, is the point!
The other significant event of 2012 for me is that I hurt myself. It is extremely cold here, and earlier this week the road was covered in ice, so of course I fell down, though thankfully the car that precipitated my loss of balance did not hit me. My knee is turning gorgeous colors, and you never realize how much you use the muscles in your armpit until you strain them and suddenly a million actions hurt. AWESOME START.
But! There have been Netflixen, and also a trip to the movies.
I am still a little vague on the correct order of the Donald Strachey movies; this was the first one Netflix suggested but is not the first movie, which fortunately was totally fine because I have already read some fic. :D And I liked it very much! I cannot rightly assert that it was mindblowingly amazing, but it was fun and interesting and there were possibly more gay people than straight people! And Nelson Wong was pretty hilarious as Donald's assistant. I am a little bummed that the lady cop turned out to be dirty, but the lesbian couple around whom the mystery revolved were AMAZING, and the closeted kid/struggling kid pairing was pretty adorable.
Nothing is ever as much about the plot as about the characters, for me, so I had essentially no investment whatsoever in the plausibility or mystery of anything; as soon as the real estate stuff got mentioned I was pretty sure it would have something to do with selling the house, although I did not expect the twist re: identity. And I am a sucker for people in love who do ridiculous things for each other in that Gift-of-the-Magi kind of way, so when it was revealed that Edith had done it all because she thought Dorothy loved the house, and Dorothy had known all along and had been mortgaging the house to save Edith, I WAS SO THERE. ♥♥♥ I added another to my queue, though I forget which, and hope to work my way through them all.
I enjoyed this to some degree, but not as much as I was hoping based on the description, which sounds like someone x-rayed my heart and used the resultant map to produce a movie summary. You can read characters out of stories! A girl saves the day - with her father, granted, but also her aunt, who is Helen Mirren and therefore AMAZING! Paul Bettany juggles fire! There is the potential for so much meta about storytelling and imagination, the relationship between authors and characters, and the nature of books!
Aaaaand almost none of it was realized. Okay, Helen Mirren was amazing and rode into the climactic scene on a unicorn, and Paul Bettany juggled fire and gave us all an excellent look at his excellent abs; the girl did save the day, in the end, and, bonus, HER MOTHER WASN'T EVEN DEAD. \o/
But overall there was a lot I would have liked to see in there that wasn't there. To some degree, this movie is quite literally about an AU fic saving the day where canon couldn't, which is pretty great; but for all the openings there are, it doesn't really say all that much about stories. When they found the author of Inkheart and he had that argument with Dustfinger, and then he was trying to compose something for Meggie to read and she ended up making it up herself, there was so much in there about authorship, and even copyright: who owns the ideas once they're in your head? Meggie read the Shadow out of the book, the Shadow was the author's, but then she held onto that idea and wrote a different story - the Shadow was the same character, but the story was hers.
But they didn't do anything with it. Dustfinger's fear of the end of Inkheart, his defiance over the idea that his fate was controlled by the book, didn't go anywhere - maybe because they were hoping for a sequel, I don't know, but that scene in the plaza was so striking and even kind of painful, and then ... nothing. (Honestly, it reminded me of Stranger Than Fiction, killing and saving people with stories, killing and saving people in stories.) And I was pleased as punch that Resa hadn't died in the book, but compared to what I was imagining when they first hinted that she had been read in, finding that she had been read out of it voiceless and been chained up in the kitchen was, uh, not quite what I was expecting. I REALLY want to know what happened when she first arrived in the book.
It's possible some of my dissatisfaction comes of not fully understanding how this Silvertongue thing works - they seem to suggest that every time you read something out of a book, someone or something goes in, and what happened to Resa suggests that that someone or something may then be read back out themselves. Which ... means ... the text of the book changed? How is that even possible? o.O I don't know, maybe the books explain this stuff better, but I think the vagueness surrounding that conceit - which is central to the whole thing - really didn't help my impression that the overall plot was not terribly coherent. ALAS. Not bad, precisely, but it didn't quite seem finished. Maybe the script needed to go through a couple more drafts or something.
And then also
idriya and I went to see Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Which had some things in it that I quite enjoyed: the dudeslash was immense and pretty much textual, Noomi Rapace as Simza was AMAZING (how much did I love her knife throw interrupting Holmes's carefully pre-envisioned fight scene? SO VERY VERY MUCH) and there should have been way more of her, and the reveal at the end that Mary had actually been sort of integral was pretty great. I have heard some people didn't much care for the very last end bit, but I didn't mind it - again, not here for plausibility. And the plot seemed to me to be approximately on a level with the first movie, which means that for a sequel it was excellent.
Mary and Simza were both underused, I thought, and while it worked out well in a story sense to show near the end that Mary had been integral to the blow Holmes dealt to Moriarty, it ... comes off as something like a retcon: "actually, Mary was totally important!" Mm, nice try; maybe give her more than two minutes of actual screen time, if you make a third one of these.
And, if you happened to stroll by
havocthecat's spoiler post about the movie the other day, you already know ALL MY FEELINGS about how Irene was killed. I realize that we did not precisely see a body; but the flashback of her collapsing to the floor and coughing out a last breath did not look to me like the clip choice of a filmmaker intending to bring her back alive in another installment. I really hope I'm wrong about that, but if I'm not wrong, I am getting angrier the longer I think about it.
Partly because of the awesomeness potential that was snuffed out - if Simza and Irene had been able to share the screen at any moment, I think I would have EXPLODED. And that was made impossible for no good reason. When Holmes "dies" at Reichenbach, he's made a deliberate decision to throw himself over so that he can take Moriarty with him; he actively chooses to do it that way instead of letting Moriarty defeat him and throw him over alone, and it advances the plot - concludes it, even. When Irene is murdered in the restaurant, it is because her best attempt to keep herself safe is apparently meeting in a "public" place, and Moriarty strips that safety away immediately by clearing the restaurant with a simple signal, and then kills her with a strain of TB that purportedly does its thing "in seconds"; she tries to run, but collapses only a few tables away.
She doesn't choose it; all her efforts - which should be tremendous and clever, this is IRENE FUCKING ADLER - are not enough to save her from it; and it doesn't even do anything. Relatively speaking, they barely milked the manpain, except for that one shot of Holmes with her handkerchief, and we already knew Moriarty was evil! It was ridiculous and thoughtless and kind of insulting. It didn't affect my enjoyment during the movie because practically up until the credits rolled I expected some kind of revelation that she was not dead, and if they do make another one and they manage such a reveal I will be happy beyond all expression. But as it is, right now, with no promise of reversal? That pretty much sucked.
Quite a text wall there, but: ALL THE FEELINGS. Honestly, it's a good thing I had the chance to get my thoughts in order the other day, or everything behind that cut would probably just have said AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]
inkingitout, I sat down on Monday and wrote several thousand words. \o/ Apparently word tracking makes me competitive against ... my own laziness? IDEK. But progress occurred, is the point!
The other significant event of 2012 for me is that I hurt myself. It is extremely cold here, and earlier this week the road was covered in ice, so of course I fell down, though thankfully the car that precipitated my loss of balance did not hit me. My knee is turning gorgeous colors, and you never realize how much you use the muscles in your armpit until you strain them and suddenly a million actions hurt. AWESOME START.
But! There have been Netflixen, and also a trip to the movies.
I am still a little vague on the correct order of the Donald Strachey movies; this was the first one Netflix suggested but is not the first movie, which fortunately was totally fine because I have already read some fic. :D And I liked it very much! I cannot rightly assert that it was mindblowingly amazing, but it was fun and interesting and there were possibly more gay people than straight people! And Nelson Wong was pretty hilarious as Donald's assistant. I am a little bummed that the lady cop turned out to be dirty, but the lesbian couple around whom the mystery revolved were AMAZING, and the closeted kid/struggling kid pairing was pretty adorable.
Nothing is ever as much about the plot as about the characters, for me, so I had essentially no investment whatsoever in the plausibility or mystery of anything; as soon as the real estate stuff got mentioned I was pretty sure it would have something to do with selling the house, although I did not expect the twist re: identity. And I am a sucker for people in love who do ridiculous things for each other in that Gift-of-the-Magi kind of way, so when it was revealed that Edith had done it all because she thought Dorothy loved the house, and Dorothy had known all along and had been mortgaging the house to save Edith, I WAS SO THERE. ♥♥♥ I added another to my queue, though I forget which, and hope to work my way through them all.
I enjoyed this to some degree, but not as much as I was hoping based on the description, which sounds like someone x-rayed my heart and used the resultant map to produce a movie summary. You can read characters out of stories! A girl saves the day - with her father, granted, but also her aunt, who is Helen Mirren and therefore AMAZING! Paul Bettany juggles fire! There is the potential for so much meta about storytelling and imagination, the relationship between authors and characters, and the nature of books!
Aaaaand almost none of it was realized. Okay, Helen Mirren was amazing and rode into the climactic scene on a unicorn, and Paul Bettany juggled fire and gave us all an excellent look at his excellent abs; the girl did save the day, in the end, and, bonus, HER MOTHER WASN'T EVEN DEAD. \o/
But overall there was a lot I would have liked to see in there that wasn't there. To some degree, this movie is quite literally about an AU fic saving the day where canon couldn't, which is pretty great; but for all the openings there are, it doesn't really say all that much about stories. When they found the author of Inkheart and he had that argument with Dustfinger, and then he was trying to compose something for Meggie to read and she ended up making it up herself, there was so much in there about authorship, and even copyright: who owns the ideas once they're in your head? Meggie read the Shadow out of the book, the Shadow was the author's, but then she held onto that idea and wrote a different story - the Shadow was the same character, but the story was hers.
But they didn't do anything with it. Dustfinger's fear of the end of Inkheart, his defiance over the idea that his fate was controlled by the book, didn't go anywhere - maybe because they were hoping for a sequel, I don't know, but that scene in the plaza was so striking and even kind of painful, and then ... nothing. (Honestly, it reminded me of Stranger Than Fiction, killing and saving people with stories, killing and saving people in stories.) And I was pleased as punch that Resa hadn't died in the book, but compared to what I was imagining when they first hinted that she had been read in, finding that she had been read out of it voiceless and been chained up in the kitchen was, uh, not quite what I was expecting. I REALLY want to know what happened when she first arrived in the book.
It's possible some of my dissatisfaction comes of not fully understanding how this Silvertongue thing works - they seem to suggest that every time you read something out of a book, someone or something goes in, and what happened to Resa suggests that that someone or something may then be read back out themselves. Which ... means ... the text of the book changed? How is that even possible? o.O I don't know, maybe the books explain this stuff better, but I think the vagueness surrounding that conceit - which is central to the whole thing - really didn't help my impression that the overall plot was not terribly coherent. ALAS. Not bad, precisely, but it didn't quite seem finished. Maybe the script needed to go through a couple more drafts or something.
And then also
idriya and I went to see Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Which had some things in it that I quite enjoyed: the dudeslash was immense and pretty much textual, Noomi Rapace as Simza was AMAZING (how much did I love her knife throw interrupting Holmes's carefully pre-envisioned fight scene? SO VERY VERY MUCH) and there should have been way more of her, and the reveal at the end that Mary had actually been sort of integral was pretty great. I have heard some people didn't much care for the very last end bit, but I didn't mind it - again, not here for plausibility. And the plot seemed to me to be approximately on a level with the first movie, which means that for a sequel it was excellent.
Mary and Simza were both underused, I thought, and while it worked out well in a story sense to show near the end that Mary had been integral to the blow Holmes dealt to Moriarty, it ... comes off as something like a retcon: "actually, Mary was totally important!" Mm, nice try; maybe give her more than two minutes of actual screen time, if you make a third one of these.
And, if you happened to stroll by
havocthecat's spoiler post about the movie the other day, you already know ALL MY FEELINGS about how Irene was killed. I realize that we did not precisely see a body; but the flashback of her collapsing to the floor and coughing out a last breath did not look to me like the clip choice of a filmmaker intending to bring her back alive in another installment. I really hope I'm wrong about that, but if I'm not wrong, I am getting angrier the longer I think about it.
Partly because of the awesomeness potential that was snuffed out - if Simza and Irene had been able to share the screen at any moment, I think I would have EXPLODED. And that was made impossible for no good reason. When Holmes "dies" at Reichenbach, he's made a deliberate decision to throw himself over so that he can take Moriarty with him; he actively chooses to do it that way instead of letting Moriarty defeat him and throw him over alone, and it advances the plot - concludes it, even. When Irene is murdered in the restaurant, it is because her best attempt to keep herself safe is apparently meeting in a "public" place, and Moriarty strips that safety away immediately by clearing the restaurant with a simple signal, and then kills her with a strain of TB that purportedly does its thing "in seconds"; she tries to run, but collapses only a few tables away.
She doesn't choose it; all her efforts - which should be tremendous and clever, this is IRENE FUCKING ADLER - are not enough to save her from it; and it doesn't even do anything. Relatively speaking, they barely milked the manpain, except for that one shot of Holmes with her handkerchief, and we already knew Moriarty was evil! It was ridiculous and thoughtless and kind of insulting. It didn't affect my enjoyment during the movie because practically up until the credits rolled I expected some kind of revelation that she was not dead, and if they do make another one and they manage such a reveal I will be happy beyond all expression. But as it is, right now, with no promise of reversal? That pretty much sucked.
Quite a text wall there, but: ALL THE FEELINGS. Honestly, it's a good thing I had the chance to get my thoughts in order the other day, or everything behind that cut would probably just have said AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]