enwrought with golden and silver light.
Two weeks late: I AM SO DELIGHTED by my 
rarelywritten assignment! YES. Just like last time, it wasn't necessarily the fandom I was expecting to match on, but OMG YAY YES THIS IS GREAT. I have a complete draft of one story that fulfills my assignment and I'm really really hoping to write at least one more; we'll see how it goes. SO EXCITE.
Ahem.
Aside from that, my sister and I have been watching Battle Creek, which is basically Due South (quirky cases, sometimes weird solutions, one rule-respecting polite procedure-following partner and one rule-breaking rude scruffy hunch-following partner) crossed with everything I wanted but didn't get from Almost Human, in the sense of cops with no reason to like each other having to work together and involuntarily getting to know each other. \o/ What can I say, I'm easy for that kind of dynamic. I can't remember disliking anything about the pilot-like, yes, okay, the cops are both white dudes, shocker, but having accepted that truth, the rest of the team (the captain! the medical examiner!) is great. And the show's better than I would have expected about keeping track of the ensemble-not that it's an ensemble show, but it does remember that there are people aside from Mayhem and Timothy Olyphant's Twin in the world.
The second episode had us both groaning and covering our eyes-there is NO WAY that it was sugaring season during the sugaring scene, wtf augh SO WRONG, we are VERMONTERS, you CAN'T FOOL US-but that's okay, I can forgive and forget. (Seriously, it was so wrong.) Anyway! I'm not 1000% in love, but I'm more than willing to give this show a season to convince me.
I also watched the new Cinderella, which was charming and well-made and occasionally funny, but ... didn't really do anything particularly interesting? I don't know. It was Disney, so of course there were going to be the mice, and of course the sisters were going to be silly and talentless and hateful, and of course the fairy godmother was going to bippity-boppity-boo. I don't mind the mice so much, though other changes to this version seemed to make them even more superfluous than usual, and Cinderella talking to animals seemed like it might be important and then ... mostly wasn't. But I long for a version of Cinderella where the problem with the stepsisters is simply that they're mean. I HATE having that conflated or correlated with the fact that they dress in silly clothes and aren't as pretty (or are at least intended to be less pretty, though that's tough when one of them is Holliday Grainger) and can't sing and dance badly and on and on and on-none of those things are bad! None of that makes you a bad person! Being a bad person makes you a bad person! SIGH.
I also thought a huge opportunity was missed with the fairy godmother. Having her disguised as an old beggar woman who asks for a drink was a GREAT idea, a wonderful reference to the archetype, and I really wish they'd stuck more closely to the archetype instead of sliding back into Disneyland. Cinderella having had a fairy godmother all along but not having gotten any help 'til the night of the ball is always the part of the Disney version that makes the least sense-like, terrible fairy godmother, or MOST terrible fairy godmother, right? But if the fairy isn't Cinderella's godmother, if she's just disguising herself as an old beggar woman who asks for a drink to mess with people (as fairies do), and then Cinderella is conscientious enough to be kind to her even in the midst of Cinderella's own distress, it makes PERFECT sense for the fairy to decide to give her a gift on that night in particular. And! Bonus points for the fact that Cinderella is kind being directly relevant to her getting to the ball. COME ON. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD. Sigh.
I did love a lot of the things they did-having Cinderella and the prince meet beforehand is now pretty much expected, I would say, but that's because it's a good idea. Cinderella's mother and the emphasis on kindness and courage, that it can sometimes take courage to be kind-YES. I wish they'd done even more with Lady Tremaine than they did, but what they did do was more than I was expecting and was good (and Cate Blanchett must have been having a BLAST). And that Cinderella turned around and forgave her aloud at the end was FANTASTIC. There were even some people who weren't white! Like, more than one of them! With dialogue.
So I didn't DISlike it or anything. It just-compared to Maleficent, it really didn't do much to improve on or add to its source material, and I wish it had. But it was pretty and pleasant and I don't find myself wishing I had those two hours back, so.
And! Jupiter Ascending, which was EVERYTHING THE INTERNET TOLD ME IT WOULD BE. Take that as you will. :D
The weather here has been veering back and forth between abruptly balmy and degrees in the teens Fahrenheit-but it is above freezing as of this moment and is supposed to remain above freezing for the next two days! It really IS spring.
(And now I should get back to work.)
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]
rarelywritten assignment! YES. Just like last time, it wasn't necessarily the fandom I was expecting to match on, but OMG YAY YES THIS IS GREAT. I have a complete draft of one story that fulfills my assignment and I'm really really hoping to write at least one more; we'll see how it goes. SO EXCITE.
Ahem.
Aside from that, my sister and I have been watching Battle Creek, which is basically Due South (quirky cases, sometimes weird solutions, one rule-respecting polite procedure-following partner and one rule-breaking rude scruffy hunch-following partner) crossed with everything I wanted but didn't get from Almost Human, in the sense of cops with no reason to like each other having to work together and involuntarily getting to know each other. \o/ What can I say, I'm easy for that kind of dynamic. I can't remember disliking anything about the pilot-like, yes, okay, the cops are both white dudes, shocker, but having accepted that truth, the rest of the team (the captain! the medical examiner!) is great. And the show's better than I would have expected about keeping track of the ensemble-not that it's an ensemble show, but it does remember that there are people aside from Mayhem and Timothy Olyphant's Twin in the world.
The second episode had us both groaning and covering our eyes-there is NO WAY that it was sugaring season during the sugaring scene, wtf augh SO WRONG, we are VERMONTERS, you CAN'T FOOL US-but that's okay, I can forgive and forget. (Seriously, it was so wrong.) Anyway! I'm not 1000% in love, but I'm more than willing to give this show a season to convince me.
I also watched the new Cinderella, which was charming and well-made and occasionally funny, but ... didn't really do anything particularly interesting? I don't know. It was Disney, so of course there were going to be the mice, and of course the sisters were going to be silly and talentless and hateful, and of course the fairy godmother was going to bippity-boppity-boo. I don't mind the mice so much, though other changes to this version seemed to make them even more superfluous than usual, and Cinderella talking to animals seemed like it might be important and then ... mostly wasn't. But I long for a version of Cinderella where the problem with the stepsisters is simply that they're mean. I HATE having that conflated or correlated with the fact that they dress in silly clothes and aren't as pretty (or are at least intended to be less pretty, though that's tough when one of them is Holliday Grainger) and can't sing and dance badly and on and on and on-none of those things are bad! None of that makes you a bad person! Being a bad person makes you a bad person! SIGH.
I also thought a huge opportunity was missed with the fairy godmother. Having her disguised as an old beggar woman who asks for a drink was a GREAT idea, a wonderful reference to the archetype, and I really wish they'd stuck more closely to the archetype instead of sliding back into Disneyland. Cinderella having had a fairy godmother all along but not having gotten any help 'til the night of the ball is always the part of the Disney version that makes the least sense-like, terrible fairy godmother, or MOST terrible fairy godmother, right? But if the fairy isn't Cinderella's godmother, if she's just disguising herself as an old beggar woman who asks for a drink to mess with people (as fairies do), and then Cinderella is conscientious enough to be kind to her even in the midst of Cinderella's own distress, it makes PERFECT sense for the fairy to decide to give her a gift on that night in particular. And! Bonus points for the fact that Cinderella is kind being directly relevant to her getting to the ball. COME ON. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD. Sigh.
I did love a lot of the things they did-having Cinderella and the prince meet beforehand is now pretty much expected, I would say, but that's because it's a good idea. Cinderella's mother and the emphasis on kindness and courage, that it can sometimes take courage to be kind-YES. I wish they'd done even more with Lady Tremaine than they did, but what they did do was more than I was expecting and was good (and Cate Blanchett must have been having a BLAST). And that Cinderella turned around and forgave her aloud at the end was FANTASTIC. There were even some people who weren't white! Like, more than one of them! With dialogue.
So I didn't DISlike it or anything. It just-compared to Maleficent, it really didn't do much to improve on or add to its source material, and I wish it had. But it was pretty and pleasant and I don't find myself wishing I had those two hours back, so.
And! Jupiter Ascending, which was EVERYTHING THE INTERNET TOLD ME IT WOULD BE. Take that as you will. :D
The weather here has been veering back and forth between abruptly balmy and degrees in the teens Fahrenheit-but it is above freezing as of this moment and is supposed to remain above freezing for the next two days! It really IS spring.
(And now I should get back to work.)
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]