Polyfannishness, now with recs
I finally watched the Dr. Who angels two-parter (our channel is a week behind? Or two weeks? I know I could download further ahead than that, but I am watching at my mother's pace) and you guys, it made me so upset I could throw things.
I could go on and on about how bad it was- about the complete squandering of a reasonably good setup, about the clunky, inane exposition or the desperate, incoherent "more is more" philosophy of plot, or about the redshirts-of-color, or the substitution of "dark secret and arch flirting" for the genuine warmth and connection and intelligence that previously characterized River Song, or about how this new Doctor has no characterization besides "talks too fast," as though the actor is doing a pathetically unskilled pastiche of Tennant's mania, even as the writers drop in self-conscious lines about "oh, see how fast he talks! Isn't he Doctor-ish!" Or -- primarily, overwhelmingly, unforgivably -- what they did to the angels. I can't even. How could they? I have no ability to be rational or articulate or even coherent on this. How COULD they?
hilarytamar said it best: "How can you ruin and pervert and tear down one of the most fascinating and richest creatures into simple meanspirited things with claws? They were, as I rhapsodized earlier, nearly Sophoclean in their abstraction and breathtaking in their execution and someone who could invert the Medusa myth while telling us he's doing it should feel his face burn with shame every second he writes anything less."
(Is it any wonder I have a brain-crush on her?)
So there it is: The new season of Doctor Who is bad. The new Doctor is bad. The companion is bad. The racial and sexual politics are bad. The plots are bad. The writing is bad. I can find not even a single redemptive scrap in it.
Do you remember Rose, and the careful, sympathetic, clear-eyed, painful way they handled her relationship with Jackie and Mickey, and the lovely understated fragile relationship with Ten? Do you remember Marth and her agency? Do you remember Donna, and what it felt like to have an adult on the screen, defined not even one little bit by her sexuality? Do you remember Eccleston's intensity, or Tennant's joy? Eccleston and Tennant alternately exhilarated and terrified me- this new guy just makes me go "Goddammit, he's mumbling again. Somebody rewind."
I could weep.
So instead of dwelling on the bad, how about an assortment of things (old and newish) that have made me happy in the last few days? Let's do one per fandom.
Star Trek: heresluck, one of my favorite vidders, gives us The Test, which absolutely pounds on my love of "Kirk remembers Spock and TOS through the mindmeld" while also capturing the movie's sense of grand and glorious potential, of beginning and newness and the lure of the open spacelanes.
Supernatural: I haven't read any SPN in over a year, and haven't watched the show in even longer, but Five Stages by oxoniensis reminded me of how very, very, very much I loved Sam and Dean in seasons 1 and 2, and how beautiful that intense, entangled, desperate relationship can be.
SG1:
princessofgeeks has posted three truly lovely J/D things in a row recently, and A Dream Within a Dream is my favorite of them. It's 'Beneath the Surface' fic that hits the thematic identity/memory kink and by structural intertwined-timelines button.
Glam RPF: In Lights, Brad and Adam's first real Christmas together by cjmarlowe -- because sometimes a girl just needs sappy, schmoopy, so-in-love domestic fluff, especially when it involves a red feather boa and a dollar store menorah and misapplied glitter. There's such gorgeous texture to the domesticity of this, seamlessly blending the mundane and the sparkly into something that just feels like them. Oh, I ship them so hard.
Skating RPF: *facepalm* I can't believe I'm doing this - I don't really read skating fic and I absolutely do not watch Johnny's reality show - but I'll trust a good rec, so I read Outtakes by the_spin. It's very loosely structured around the filming of the show, with the summary "A lot of his life doesn’t make it through editing." It hits a lot of the thematic buttons that would suggest, about a celebrity attempt to control image, about the disconnect between public and private identities, about the way we see our own lives through the lens of narrative and try to shape them accordingly, even when life doesn't want to follow the dictates of story-telling. But it's more than that, too - it takes a sympathetic look at a celebrity at loose ends, a performer without a script, an athlete at the end of a career and the end of his narrative with nowhere to turn next and no sense of what shape his story should take, and it gives him a happy ending (a happy ending so moving I would call it emotionally manipulative, if it wasn't also deft and funny). Plus, massive points for the adorable characterization of Stephane in this.
Poetry: I don't read much poetry, even though every time I do I end up thinking "I loved that, I should read more poems." But I saw drag king manifesto and it made me go "oh god yes this." There is such pride and determination and playfulness there.
And in conclusion:
( Here for more. No really, you want to see the rest of this photoshoot, I promise.)
This entry was originally posted at http://dragojustine.dreamwidth.org/118016.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I could go on and on about how bad it was- about the complete squandering of a reasonably good setup, about the clunky, inane exposition or the desperate, incoherent "more is more" philosophy of plot, or about the redshirts-of-color, or the substitution of "dark secret and arch flirting" for the genuine warmth and connection and intelligence that previously characterized River Song, or about how this new Doctor has no characterization besides "talks too fast," as though the actor is doing a pathetically unskilled pastiche of Tennant's mania, even as the writers drop in self-conscious lines about "oh, see how fast he talks! Isn't he Doctor-ish!" Or -- primarily, overwhelmingly, unforgivably -- what they did to the angels. I can't even. How could they? I have no ability to be rational or articulate or even coherent on this. How COULD they?
hilarytamar said it best: "How can you ruin and pervert and tear down one of the most fascinating and richest creatures into simple meanspirited things with claws? They were, as I rhapsodized earlier, nearly Sophoclean in their abstraction and breathtaking in their execution and someone who could invert the Medusa myth while telling us he's doing it should feel his face burn with shame every second he writes anything less."
(Is it any wonder I have a brain-crush on her?)
So there it is: The new season of Doctor Who is bad. The new Doctor is bad. The companion is bad. The racial and sexual politics are bad. The plots are bad. The writing is bad. I can find not even a single redemptive scrap in it.
Do you remember Rose, and the careful, sympathetic, clear-eyed, painful way they handled her relationship with Jackie and Mickey, and the lovely understated fragile relationship with Ten? Do you remember Marth and her agency? Do you remember Donna, and what it felt like to have an adult on the screen, defined not even one little bit by her sexuality? Do you remember Eccleston's intensity, or Tennant's joy? Eccleston and Tennant alternately exhilarated and terrified me- this new guy just makes me go "Goddammit, he's mumbling again. Somebody rewind."
I could weep.
So instead of dwelling on the bad, how about an assortment of things (old and newish) that have made me happy in the last few days? Let's do one per fandom.
Star Trek: heresluck, one of my favorite vidders, gives us The Test, which absolutely pounds on my love of "Kirk remembers Spock and TOS through the mindmeld" while also capturing the movie's sense of grand and glorious potential, of beginning and newness and the lure of the open spacelanes.
Supernatural: I haven't read any SPN in over a year, and haven't watched the show in even longer, but Five Stages by oxoniensis reminded me of how very, very, very much I loved Sam and Dean in seasons 1 and 2, and how beautiful that intense, entangled, desperate relationship can be.
SG1:
princessofgeeks has posted three truly lovely J/D things in a row recently, and A Dream Within a Dream is my favorite of them. It's 'Beneath the Surface' fic that hits the thematic identity/memory kink and by structural intertwined-timelines button.
Glam RPF: In Lights, Brad and Adam's first real Christmas together by cjmarlowe -- because sometimes a girl just needs sappy, schmoopy, so-in-love domestic fluff, especially when it involves a red feather boa and a dollar store menorah and misapplied glitter. There's such gorgeous texture to the domesticity of this, seamlessly blending the mundane and the sparkly into something that just feels like them. Oh, I ship them so hard.
Skating RPF: *facepalm* I can't believe I'm doing this - I don't really read skating fic and I absolutely do not watch Johnny's reality show - but I'll trust a good rec, so I read Outtakes by the_spin. It's very loosely structured around the filming of the show, with the summary "A lot of his life doesn’t make it through editing." It hits a lot of the thematic buttons that would suggest, about a celebrity attempt to control image, about the disconnect between public and private identities, about the way we see our own lives through the lens of narrative and try to shape them accordingly, even when life doesn't want to follow the dictates of story-telling. But it's more than that, too - it takes a sympathetic look at a celebrity at loose ends, a performer without a script, an athlete at the end of a career and the end of his narrative with nowhere to turn next and no sense of what shape his story should take, and it gives him a happy ending (a happy ending so moving I would call it emotionally manipulative, if it wasn't also deft and funny). Plus, massive points for the adorable characterization of Stephane in this.
Poetry: I don't read much poetry, even though every time I do I end up thinking "I loved that, I should read more poems." But I saw drag king manifesto and it made me go "oh god yes this." There is such pride and determination and playfulness there.
And in conclusion:
( Here for more. No really, you want to see the rest of this photoshoot, I promise.)
This entry was originally posted at http://dragojustine.dreamwidth.org/118016.html. Please comment there using OpenID.