Comments | hymnia: State of the Media

hymnia

State of the Media

Aug 06, 2013 23:11

Things I am currently watching:

I'm still following Friday Night Lights and The West Wing on Mark Watches, and I really wish I could find more time to comment on episodes, because these are both great shows and worth discussing. I am keeping up with watching and reading Mark's posts (and reading a selection of comments), but, alas, I just can't ( Read more... )

fma, friday night lights, the newsroom, newsflesh, the west wing, seanan mcguire, mark does stuff, tv, atla comics, books, tv shows, vernoica mars, toby daye, anime

Comments 12

eternitat August 7 2013, 11:10:30 UTC

I read The Neverending Story during a flight back in 2010. I did remember noticing that the movie only covered part of the book.

During a subsequent flight, I also read The Last Unicorn. Worth reading as well.

hymnia August 8 2013, 02:01:32 UTC

I love The Last Unicorn, too.

connielane August 7 2013, 11:48:35 UTC

Glad you're still keeping up with TWW. I've weirdly become more obsessed with it than I ever was when I was watching it live.

I watched the first couple of episodes of FMA:B and want to catch up once I get caught up on Breaking Bad (which will hopefully be this week, since the last batch of new episodes start Sunday). It's funny to see the TWW and FNL banner on his page, when the FMA:B posts are so much more of the action is right now. :P

hymnia August 8 2013, 02:10:47 UTC

Of course you're more obsessed with it! That's what fandom is for--to magnify obsession. :)

I don't know if you've had a chance to watch any of The Newsroom, but thanks to people at MW pointing out how much Sorkin likes to recycle plots and bits of dialogue, it's been really fun for me to look out for "Sorkinisms" in both shows. The most recent episode of The Newsroom had a subplot where a male character tried to fix his desk chair with FAIL-tastic results. <3

It's funny to see the TWW and FNL banner on his page, when the FMA:B posts are so much more of the action is right now. :P

Hee. I didn't even notice that, but you've got a point. There will probably be some attrition as the shiny newness wears off. (I seem to recall both TWW and FNL averaging more comments in their first season than they do now.) That said, FMA is one of the biggest anime fandoms of recent years, so it's not surprising that it's brought a surge of activity to the site.

mrs_bombadil August 7 2013, 13:20:34 UTC

I am interested in your opinion on ATLA comics.

hymnia August 8 2013, 02:25:22 UTC

Have you read them yet? I'm not sure if you're looking for low-spoiler comments or not, so I'm going to default to low-spoiler just in case. Let me know if you want me to get more specific w/ spoilers.

I liked the first story arc (The Promise) pretty well--I think I've already talked about that in a previous entry. But the current one (The Search--about Zuko's quest to find his mother) has a major plot twist that may be problematic in that it undercuts some of the themes and characterization from the original series, IMO. That said, it's hard to say how it's going to play out at this point, since there is one installment left in the story arc, which comes out in November. It's possible that things are not as they appear ( ... )

mrs_bombadil August 8 2013, 02:27:48 UTC

I have read them and I know what twist you speak of. I don't love it if it's true either, but I think it's a red herring.

hymnia August 8 2013, 03:31:48 UTC

A few years ago I read a manga series called Sand Chronicles in which there was a similar twist.

[Spoiler (click to open)]Basically, a character discovers clues he may be illegitimate, which presumably explains certain family dynamics. But later the twist re-twists, and it turns out his sister is the illegitimate child and he's the legitimate child. Anyway, the situation in ATLA is a bit different, but as soon as I read it, I found myself wondering if the twist was going to re-twist, perhaps in a similar way. Personally, I think it would be a pretty amazing twist if it turned out there was a misunderstanding and it's really Azula who is not Ozai's child.

But, yeah. If it's not some kind of red herring, color me not impressed.

coastal_spirit August 7 2013, 13:42:09 UTC

I really need to get over to Mark Watches and follow him through FMA:B, since it's one of my favorite anime. I was aware that he is watching it, but haven't had time to check it out. I'd love to re-watch it, and this might be a good time.

I have read the Newsflesh series, but not the novella; it's on my "to read" list, however. And I do have a copy of Discount Armageddon, but haven't got to it yet.

Have you considered watching Orphan Black? It's available on On Demand right now, and it's excellent.

hymnia August 8 2013, 03:02:11 UTC

FMA! Royai! EdWin! And lots of wonderful, heartbreaking stuff! <333 If you do end up joining in the fun, here's my profile if you want to follow my comments: http://intensedebate.com/profiles/hymnia/

Yeah, I've seen the Orphan Black promos on HBO, and it looks interesting, although the promos are vague enough that I can't really tell what it's about. I'll try to check it out some time--if I can wrest the TV away from my dad. ;)

Okay, so before posting this comment I decided to check if I should capitalize the A in Royai, and I ended up looking at fanart and gifs for...um, a really long time.

umadoshi August 7 2013, 16:22:31 UTC

Verity! Yay! *^^*

I keep wanting to check in with Mark Watches, but he's way ahead of where C and I are with FNL (which is to say, we're not very far at all), and even though I've seen FMA:B, the sheer number of comments is kinda daunting. O_O And with his Newsflesh read-through, at least, the comments were half of the experience.

(And Gale's right--Orphan Black is astonishingly good. Tatiana Maslany may literally be the best actor I've ever seen, and even if that's not technically true, she's way, way up there.)

hymnia August 8 2013, 03:15:19 UTC

...and even though I've seen FMA:B, the sheer number of comments is kinda daunting. O_O And with his Newsflesh read-through, at least, the comments were half of the experience.Yeah, the comments definitely are an important part of the experience. And most of the Mark Watches projects have more activity than the Newsflesh posts did, so I can see how it would be daunting. But as I said in a comment above, there seems to be a certain amount of attrition once the newness of a series wears off, so I doubt the FMA posts will keep going to three pages of comments throughout the series. That said, I find that I personally can't commit to reading *all* the comments on every post, so I try to compromise by just reading a reasonable selection of comments. I look out for certain commenters that I like (you can "follow" a commenter by clicking their profile and clicking "follow", which will then cause a different color header to appear on all their comments so they're easier to find), and I also look for posts that stand out to me in some way--for ( ... )