Follow-up Post and
~ Gossip Girl
All I really need to say about this is: Blair for President. I love her and her adorable face. The show is really at its best with Serena is obviously a parody of herself (which is most of the time post-Season Two), and Blair is being a BAMF. I’m not quite yet a Blair/Dan shipper - that’ll probably take me watching this year’s season, plus I’m not a Dan-fan (Jenny was much more interesting, I wish they had slowed down her plotline so that we could have seen more of her)… but I’m always a fan of Blair getting whatever she wants, so if she wants Dan - all the more power to her. I really love the little character moments that they start giving Blair/Chuck during their short-lived “happy” stage (aka: role-playing with him as a waiter!!!!) and while I know that the show couldn’t have stayed in that space, it was lovely while it lasted.
~ Doctor Who
I sum up the world thusly:
Ten makes me cry, every time. No matter what is going on, if he is on screen, you can bet your ass that I’m misty-eyed. He’s all that is darkness and angst and pain. And I love how he hurts so good.
Eleven makes me smile - I feel… full after an episode with Eleven/the Ponds. I love their little family unit. I love how fracking AMAZING Amy is, how loveable Rory is, how fracked up and child-like River can be. I love them ALL.
More than anything, I love that Amy’s mind is where the series now lives… without her, nothing is Real anymore. How they expect to replace her with a new companion? I’ll never know. (I’m hoping for an 18th/19thCentury Pond - a distant relation of Amy, not from our own Time, because I think an out-of-Time companion would be a real delight at this stage.)
I don’t ship Eleven/River. I’m of this mind: her true relationship is with Twelve. She constantly makes references to how “young” Eleven’s eyes are (she said the same of Ten, as well), which makes me think that the bulk of her romantic relationship is actually with Twelve. That in the Twelve-seasons we’ll see more of her, and (should there be) Thirteen will be life Post-River (this would be a spectacular opportunity for either [a] a Female Doctor OR [b] a Doctor/River-Offspring) … Also, I ship Tardis/Eleven the most. (I have a strong desire to know why Ten didn’t have River downloaded into the Tardis - rather than leaving her in the library with… all those people she doesn’t even know! Weird.)
I HAVE FEELINGS!
~ Camelot
Possibly the BEST adaptation of the King Arthur stories that is out there (in tv form specifically). I ship Merlin with… EVERYONE (it’s hard not to, the man walks into the room with an “I could totally bone you, but I’m choosing not to in this precise moment” look on his face) Also - he is the hero of the series and his utter devotion and love for Morgana is just! SO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS! Yes, this is all underlying, in-between the lines, speculation - but it’s also TRUTHY-TRUTH. Also - Eva Green plays Morgana. She has the best costumes. Also, is the best of all the best. Am completely in love with her. She hurts so good.
Also - Gawain is an adorable BAMF that they find in a decrepit old church, who just wants to (get this) LEARN HOW TO READ. Also I think he’s in love with Merlin. Possibly. Or I just want him to be.
~ Mockingjay
There are too many thoughts.
I finished the series.
I think Suzanne Collins is the most incredible writer of all time. She does what Feminists have been trying, in literature, to do for a very, very long time.
I love that even in the end, Katniss is still SHAFTED into the role of “this is womanhood” no matter what - her own actions are used as a parody of herself to the very end. There is no escape from capital-w Womanhood for Katniss - or for anyone. These novels were darker than they even appear; their commentary on the Symbol of Woman is just… beautiful in its accuracy, in its steadfastness, in its unapologetic portrayal of the gruesomeness of the fact. Katniss isn’t a hero, she should not be emulated, she is a warning - she’s an abused, used, broken person who is unable at any turn to be a real person, she is always the Symbol - the avatar for Meaning. It’s disgusting… it’s true. It’s hard and it hurts, because it never ends. And I just want to hug her always. Because even we, the readers of her story,need her to be broken, need her to Bear the Meaning of Womanhood for us; she is so much less and so much more than a character - she is a multi-layered symbol of socio-political need, for her own world and for ours as well.
And that! Is beautiful, awful, wonderful, vile, lovely, disgusting, needed …
… we betray her in reading her story, in needing her to be betrayed in order to understand our own place in the world. She betrays us by always being what we need her to be, by being the Symbol of her own story, by being always smaller and bigger than her story.
Katniss is.
I also think that she deserves better than Gale OR Peeta - but, it’s possible that I have been feeling that way about most love-triangles lately.
~ Cabin in the Woods
There have been a lot of reviews of this film. And I’m not really going to add to any of your wonderful words except to say this:
Dollhouse, to me, felt like Joss taking off the gloves - he was saying “Enough playing, enough dirty jokes, this Shit is for real and you’re gonna pay the FUCK attention this time.” It was serious, it was gross, it was heavy-handed, it was Joss at the end of his patience saying: There is something wrong and it has to change.
Cabin is the logical follow-up to all of that. He’s playing again, but he’s still serious. The joke is the zombies - the source of fear is two middle-aged white men.
It was pretty perfect, all things considered.
There were moments when I said aloud: “You ass” and yes, I was talking to Joss. There were moments when I felt him sitting next to me, nudging me: “Get the joke? Get the joke? Dontchagetthejoke?! AREN’T I THE SMARTEST OF ALL THE SMARTIEPANTS?!”
Yes, Joss. You’re a smartiepants. You win at this game. Don’t be an ass about it. And don’t let it go to your head.
Also - even if you aren’t a fan of Dollhouse, watch it before seeing Cabin - because Fran Kranz’ characters are reflective of each other… they are both more meaningful if you have seen him be BOTH, to go through the same struggle with two opposite outcomes. He is amazing.
~ Avengers
The Bromances! The Fandom! The whole time watching this (twice) I felt like I was seeing a glimpse of the set: of all these people who are fans of each other, who are fans of their work, of each other’s work, of comics, fans of fans … and that feeling infects every moment. There’s no moment where it feels like anyone on the set anywhere was working too hard - they’re all playing. One of the reasons why I love Clooney’s Ocean’s Eleven is because the whole thing feels like: “I wanted to play a game with my best friends, want to see what we did?” And that is what Avengersdid for me: it felt like I was watching people just have a delightful time playing together.
This is going to be best once I can watch the Director’s Cut and see that extra hour of character-study that Joss did.
Also - I’ve seen some rumblings about Loki’s character arc in this film; that it is lacking. I would like to play devil’s advocate and claim that in fact, it is just subtle. I felt that Loki was stuck playing the villain, whether he wanted to be one or not (which is why the Shakespeare-scene between him and Thor is so phenomenal). He is relying on a system that he knows is flawed - he’s trying to expose that Human Society is flawed while simultaneously taking advantage of the fact that Human Society functions. He points out why Society is wrong - and then tells everyone how he’s going to use that to his advantage. Basically saying: if you really want the world to work this way, fine - I’ll go all the way with it; I will make your world the most extreme version of itself that it can be, that’ll make me the villain and that’s totally cool: because you will always be wrong. What were the Avengers protecting? A corrupt system. And Loki makes that clear. He’s not the real threat, they are. He’s being used by another, larger Other - and he can please both sides, but not himself. He’s miserable and terrified. ----- I almost felt like he wanted Thor to “defeat” him so that he would once again have the protection of the Asgard.
Also. The best fight scene was between Black Widow and Hawk-Eye. Hands down
.
~ Dark Shadows
The first 10 minutes were inspired and everything after that was just silly. The Gothic tropes flying everywhere in the introduction were perfect and stunning and funny if you like that sort of humor… and then it dropped the ball. There was a quote at the beginning about Blood - and how Blood mattered and then began a story about a woman who didn’t have “high class blood” and how she worked to gain social power. Only the film failed. Eva Green, a woman who should win all the things - wins nothing, and that beautiful metaphor of
America vs.
Europe and $$ vs. Blood fell over to ridiculous comedy … there could have been some interesting things done, nothing interesting was really done.
Although - it was neat to see a world populated by Female power, Depp’s character was the only adult!male with any Supernatural leanings - the real power was in the hands of the women…. Yet… only to service HIS goals.
Ugh. I should learn how to just watch a popcorn-movie and make my brain stop whirring. Only I can’t. So.
~ The Vampire Diaries finale
Was lovely and I’m full of love and.
I want to have more to say, but I don’t.
LOVE! ((huggle this angsty show and my morally dubious princess))
In other news, I finally created a fanfiction-dot-net account for myself and ALL THE WRITING I’ve been doing lately. One of my first reviews just tickled me pink: I wrote a piece a little while ago about DElena reading
Wuthering
Heights… my review: “You’re sick. I don’t get any of this.” *pats head of anonymous fic-reader* Thank you darling, H/C & D/E are supposed to be “sick”. I have achieved my goal.