The state of the fangirl
First of all, thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. I'm finding the post very hard to revisit, which is why I haven't replied to comments directly, but I did appreciate them.
Relatedly, yesterday Mag found this birthday card drawn by our Jan that I think sums up Moth better than any eulogy could:
And now, a return to your regularly scheduled fanramblings :) Some thoughts on things I've watched recently:
1. Last Exile: Hazel and I left off watching this for a while because the middle episodes weren't gripping us, but decided recently to give it another chance, as we'd enjoyed the beginning so much. And, erm, ended up watching the whole last 4hrs or so of the show in one go ¬_¬ So as you might surmise, apart from that dip in the middle, I thought it was really great. In particular, I thought the development of character and relationships was excellent; I loved Klaus and Lavie's Awkward Pubescent Friendship, Tatiana's oscillation between strength and vulnerability, Sophia and Alex's special kind of car crash, and, by the end (I have to admit, I didn't at all understand the depths of these two until the last few episodes), Dio and Luciola's relationship. My favourite characters I think were Lavie (who really should have been on my 100 female characters list, because SHE IS AWESOME), Tatiana, the sonar lady whose name I've forgotten, and ALL the mechanics; Alex would normally have been the type of character to really appeal to me, but I found he never quite had the Crowning Moment of Awesome I kept expecting him to have. I liked all the characters enough to start poking around in the fandom, though (am I likely to find any Tatiana/Alister, or femslash generally?).
2. Glee: Oh, Glee. It gives with one hand, and it smacks you around the face with the other. I don't really know how it manages to do so much stuff very right, and so much stuff very wrong - I mean, I love that Artie got to show Will and the other kids that their ~*activism*~ was short-sighted and self-congratulatory, and that Sue rightly pointed out how patronising Will could be, but the rest of Artie's episode mostly made me go GLEE, I AM DISAPPOINT; I really like what it does with Kurt and his dad, and the diversity of their cast is great, but, newsflash: ironically lampshading the fact that you don't do enough with your minority cast members does not change the fact that the white characters get a disproportionate amount of screen time and lines. Lots of things drive me mad about this show: the shallowness of its attempts to deal with social issues; the AWFUL AWFUL way the soundtrack is overlaid in the singing bits; the fact that you never get to see the kids rehearsing (sorry, galvani, but I love me some training montages); WILL - I actually dislike Will to a degree that is bordering on irrational, partly because he is so smug and yet so often so fail, partly because he activates second-hand embarrassment in me like whoa, but mostly I think because there are few storylines I like less than "so I'm practically cheating on my partner but you're supposed to think it's ok because my partner is really annoying and the other person is much better suited to me". Gah. BUT, otoh: I love all the kids (in fact, tbh, with the exception of Will, I love pretty much all the characters), and genuinely care about what's going to happen to them; I have an embarrassingly huge crush on Sue Sylvester, and when the writing isn't trying to Make A (Usually Clumsy and Slightly Misguided) Point, it's often really, really good.
3. Red Garden: Not very far into this, and the first thing that hits me every episode (well, apart from the awesomely daft translation of the opening theme lyrics) is how ropey the animation is, but it reminds me of a less relentlessly ironic version of Buffy, and for that I sort of love it. It also does very well at keeping things mysterious and intriguing enough that you want to keep watching to find out what's going on with them, without just becoming confusing and opaque. Plus, there is epic femslash potential.
4. Alice in Wonderland: I liked this a lot more than I thought I would! I was starting to find the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp-Helena Bonham Carter combination very tired, but Alice far exceeded my expectations. It was densely interesting, and I thought the idea of reimagining the books to focus on Alice and to frame what happens to her in terms of coming of age, bodily transformation, empowerment and self-realisation was a great one, and well handled. I especially liked how that reimagining was all tied up in the processes of adaptation and the cultural perpetuation of stories and characters; this new version of Alice was entirely bound up in the particular kind of Gothic that Tim Burton brings as a director, and in the fact that the film gives the original text an entirely new cultural situation, and it was stronger and richer because of it. And, yes, Alice herself was luminously gorgeous, and so engaging. I didn't love it whole-heartedly - I'm still tired of the character rut Johnny Depp seems atm to be stuck in; I thought the film entirely fizzled out at the end; I wish there'd been a few more women in Alice's life who weren't either insubstantial or cruel, and the whole film felt a little bit disjointed to me, maybe a little bit overstylised. But overall, I was very pleasantly surprised.
And, finally, I finished AA:I at last! I enjoyed it loads, especially case 5 and especially Franziska, and it's definitely given me renewed enthusiasm for the fandom. I'll write up a proper post about it in the not-too-distant future, but for now I'm just going to enjoy catching up on all the reviews, meta and fic I've missed by scrupulously trying to avoid spoilers (and, miraculously, succeeding) - feel free to drop links to anything you've written or read about it :)
In non-fandom news, this week has been a week of successful cooking - tomato & rosemary scones, vegan bakewell tarts, mango-ginger tofu and chilli bean-cashew tofu, cranberry-orange-walnut muffins. Nom. When not cooking, I have spent this week making a poster about my research for University Poster Day. It has Captain Jack Harkness, the cast of FFVII, a Darth Vader figurine and Giant Lego Batman on it. Sometimes, I can't decide if I have the best research topic ever, or if I am entirely wasting my life.
Relatedly, yesterday Mag found this birthday card drawn by our Jan that I think sums up Moth better than any eulogy could:
And now, a return to your regularly scheduled fanramblings :) Some thoughts on things I've watched recently:
1. Last Exile: Hazel and I left off watching this for a while because the middle episodes weren't gripping us, but decided recently to give it another chance, as we'd enjoyed the beginning so much. And, erm, ended up watching the whole last 4hrs or so of the show in one go ¬_¬ So as you might surmise, apart from that dip in the middle, I thought it was really great. In particular, I thought the development of character and relationships was excellent; I loved Klaus and Lavie's Awkward Pubescent Friendship, Tatiana's oscillation between strength and vulnerability, Sophia and Alex's special kind of car crash, and, by the end (I have to admit, I didn't at all understand the depths of these two until the last few episodes), Dio and Luciola's relationship. My favourite characters I think were Lavie (who really should have been on my 100 female characters list, because SHE IS AWESOME), Tatiana, the sonar lady whose name I've forgotten, and ALL the mechanics; Alex would normally have been the type of character to really appeal to me, but I found he never quite had the Crowning Moment of Awesome I kept expecting him to have. I liked all the characters enough to start poking around in the fandom, though (am I likely to find any Tatiana/Alister, or femslash generally?).
2. Glee: Oh, Glee. It gives with one hand, and it smacks you around the face with the other. I don't really know how it manages to do so much stuff very right, and so much stuff very wrong - I mean, I love that Artie got to show Will and the other kids that their ~*activism*~ was short-sighted and self-congratulatory, and that Sue rightly pointed out how patronising Will could be, but the rest of Artie's episode mostly made me go GLEE, I AM DISAPPOINT; I really like what it does with Kurt and his dad, and the diversity of their cast is great, but, newsflash: ironically lampshading the fact that you don't do enough with your minority cast members does not change the fact that the white characters get a disproportionate amount of screen time and lines. Lots of things drive me mad about this show: the shallowness of its attempts to deal with social issues; the AWFUL AWFUL way the soundtrack is overlaid in the singing bits; the fact that you never get to see the kids rehearsing (sorry, galvani, but I love me some training montages); WILL - I actually dislike Will to a degree that is bordering on irrational, partly because he is so smug and yet so often so fail, partly because he activates second-hand embarrassment in me like whoa, but mostly I think because there are few storylines I like less than "so I'm practically cheating on my partner but you're supposed to think it's ok because my partner is really annoying and the other person is much better suited to me". Gah. BUT, otoh: I love all the kids (in fact, tbh, with the exception of Will, I love pretty much all the characters), and genuinely care about what's going to happen to them; I have an embarrassingly huge crush on Sue Sylvester, and when the writing isn't trying to Make A (Usually Clumsy and Slightly Misguided) Point, it's often really, really good.
3. Red Garden: Not very far into this, and the first thing that hits me every episode (well, apart from the awesomely daft translation of the opening theme lyrics) is how ropey the animation is, but it reminds me of a less relentlessly ironic version of Buffy, and for that I sort of love it. It also does very well at keeping things mysterious and intriguing enough that you want to keep watching to find out what's going on with them, without just becoming confusing and opaque. Plus, there is epic femslash potential.
4. Alice in Wonderland: I liked this a lot more than I thought I would! I was starting to find the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp-Helena Bonham Carter combination very tired, but Alice far exceeded my expectations. It was densely interesting, and I thought the idea of reimagining the books to focus on Alice and to frame what happens to her in terms of coming of age, bodily transformation, empowerment and self-realisation was a great one, and well handled. I especially liked how that reimagining was all tied up in the processes of adaptation and the cultural perpetuation of stories and characters; this new version of Alice was entirely bound up in the particular kind of Gothic that Tim Burton brings as a director, and in the fact that the film gives the original text an entirely new cultural situation, and it was stronger and richer because of it. And, yes, Alice herself was luminously gorgeous, and so engaging. I didn't love it whole-heartedly - I'm still tired of the character rut Johnny Depp seems atm to be stuck in; I thought the film entirely fizzled out at the end; I wish there'd been a few more women in Alice's life who weren't either insubstantial or cruel, and the whole film felt a little bit disjointed to me, maybe a little bit overstylised. But overall, I was very pleasantly surprised.
And, finally, I finished AA:I at last! I enjoyed it loads, especially case 5 and especially Franziska, and it's definitely given me renewed enthusiasm for the fandom. I'll write up a proper post about it in the not-too-distant future, but for now I'm just going to enjoy catching up on all the reviews, meta and fic I've missed by scrupulously trying to avoid spoilers (and, miraculously, succeeding) - feel free to drop links to anything you've written or read about it :)
In non-fandom news, this week has been a week of successful cooking - tomato & rosemary scones, vegan bakewell tarts, mango-ginger tofu and chilli bean-cashew tofu, cranberry-orange-walnut muffins. Nom. When not cooking, I have spent this week making a poster about my research for University Poster Day. It has Captain Jack Harkness, the cast of FFVII, a Darth Vader figurine and Giant Lego Batman on it. Sometimes, I can't decide if I have the best research topic ever, or if I am entirely wasting my life.