this is what the world is for, making electricity
Oh man, I totally missed posting yesterday. Even after a full 9 hours of sleep on Monday night, I was still out of it yesterday and I went to bed at 9:30 again last night, and slept a lot less well, but I feel a lot more awake. *hands*
Monday night,
innie_darling and I went to see Marlon James and Salman Rushdie at NYPL. I thought it was going to be James interviewing Rushdie, and I was a little sad I hadn't gotten around to the rereading I'd planned, but then it turned out that no, Rushdie was interviewing James, and it was all about his book A Brief History of Seven Killings, which is a fictionalized account of the assassination attempt on Bob Marley in 1976. It was a very entertaining talk, I thought (not least because the closed captioning was TERRIBLE and came up with some real 'damn you autocorrect' type doozies), and I now definitely want to read the book, so I think it was successful as well.
Speaking of books, somehow it's time again for What I'm Reading Wednesday:
What I've just finished
I finished The Maker's Mask by Ankaret Wells, which I enjoyed a lot - it's sci-fi that's dressed up as fantasy at first (kind of? they live in grounded spaceships but no longer know how they truly work, except for a class of people called Makers, and they've got kind of a medieval setup with the former spaceships as keeps held by the head of the family) - though it definitely needed another editing and formatting pass, because there are dropped words, and formatting and punctuation errors in the ebook I have.
What I'm reading now
But it was entertaining enough that I'm about halfway through the sequel, The Hawkwood War, now. Of course, The Maker's Mask doesn't actually end so much as stop in the middle, so I would definitely recommend having the second one on hand if you're enjoying the first.
What I'm reading next
The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway by Doug Most just became available from the library, so that will be next.
***
The December talking meme:
December 16:
d_generate_girl asked me to talk about Life and
grimorie asked me to talk about Crews and Reese.
Life was such an interesting and entertaining show (even in its less interesting/more conventional second season). On the surface it sounds like all the other "lone antisocial genius herded by woman partner" shows that have proliferated over the last decade, but it really wasn't. Because Crews wasn't antisocial by choice, and he wasn't cranky or superior, and Reese certainly didn't indulge him when they started partnering. I think that the slow growth of their partnership - both of them having trusted and been betrayed before - was a huge draw for me. They're both broken in similar but not the same ways, and seeing them learn to work together, to accept (if not indulge) each other's foibles, was fascinating. Like Crews pulling a knife on a suspect and Reese taking it from him, because she needs to know he's a cop, not a con. But then giving it back to him and not turning it into Lt. Davis when he proves to her that he is a cop and she can trust him to have her back. And I love love LOVE that Crews asks Reese in the beginning of the very first episode "has anyone ever loved you that much?" (re: the dog that took the bullet for the kid and bit the hand of the killer), and Reese is like, "...no" but then in the series finale, the answer is a resounding YES. Plus, the music was awesome. I still haven't bought the dvds because the music isn't right (it was surprisingly jarring when I did a rewatch via Netflix last year).
December 17:
vonniek said, Talk to me about Arrow and The Flash! What are some of your hopes and concerns about where they're taking their respective season arcs in the back half?
Broadly, without spoilers, I will say that I have been very pleased with the first half of The Flash's first season. I think nearly everything has worked exceptionally well, there was only one real dud of an episode that I mostly still enjoyed anyway - the casting has been good to excellent for the main and recurring cast, and the villains' casting has also mostly been on point, the special effects are surprisingly good for a CW budget, and oh, the music. I really love what they've done with the music. The score, I mean, and the Flash's theme, not the occasional strummy pop song that gets played over a montage. Gustin, Martin, and Cavanagh are knocking it out of the park, and they've even made me like Cisco, which was in doubt at the beginning. (CURSE YOUR DOPENESS, VIBE. (I never get tired of saying that!)) I enjoy reading the speculation about who the Big Bad is, and who the Man in the Yellow Suit is, etc. etc., and I'm willing to go wherever the show takes me on this, because I'm so charmed and delighted by 98% of it. The one thing I do not like, and that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, is Barry and Joe keeping the secret identity from Iris. This is a writing problem, not a character or actress problem. I mean, I think choosing to make Barry and Iris step-siblings was not the wisest choice if they're your endgame pairing, and I say that as someone who has shipped actual sibcest pairings! but they can't undo that so they have to fix this end of it! Because not knowing has not only not kept Iris safe, it's actually put her in more danger (because knowing Barry is Flash means she could CALL HIM FOR HELP, for example). I would like to think the writers learned from the mess they made with Laurel on Arrow, but so far, not so much.
Speaking of which, as for Arrow, I feel like the first half of the season meandered, mostly because they were never going to make progress on Sara's murder until midseason, and it ends up not even being about her! Which is a problem. I mean, I was so grateful she survived last season, because I dreaded Laurel-as-Canary (I still do, tbh, though the writing for her has improved now that she knows all the secrets and the show is letting her be active instead of passive about so many things), and then they killed her off and it looks like they did it simply to get Laurel to where she needs to be, and ugh. Couldn't she have just stayed with the League and let Laurel fill in?
I'm not even going to get into how they've improved some things with Laurel (I don't always tune out when she appears! I like her being trained by Wildcat, even if he's not the Dennis Farina style old school boxer I was hoping for), but then saddled her with the super dumbassery of NOT TELLING DETECTIVE CAPTAIN LANCE HIS OTHER DAUGHTER IS DEAD. AND THEN HAVING HER MOTHER AGREE. WHAT THE FUCK SHOW. This is one of those inexplicable decisions I have to just pretend don't exist because they make no sense and will only bring some weirdly contrived drama down the line.
I also feel like the show doesn't know what to do with Roy or Ray - only Brandon Routh's excessive charm has made Ray palatable and that's barely so - he's creepy and stalkery and he needs to stop being like that if he's actually going to be a hero, and we need to see Felicity calling him on it the way she did at the beginning. Diggle needs more to do, though I'm glad that we have seen more of him and his relationship with Lyla, which I definitely enjoy, and I hope that given the events of the midseason finale, he steps in as the Arrow while Oliver is...gone. And maybe Tatsu can show up in the present and Katana her way around Starling like a BAMF.
I have enjoyed Barrowman's supervillainy, even if Malcolm's plans don't really make sense at the moment. I figure there must be some reason he set all this in motion, and he had to have known that Ollie couldn't beat Ra's al Ghul, so it can't just be that he thought it'd get the League off his back. But this is also a guy who responded to his grief and anger over his wife's death by going to Nanda Parbat and getting trained as an assassin, and then building an earthquake machine to level the city, so...
I also feel like they've kind of regressed Oliver's character? Like, does he really think working with Felicity but not dating her is safer than working and dating? How does that work exactly? He still has the same feelings and she can still be used against him, but now they get none of the good parts? I realize that he is not as emotionally healthy as some, so in some ways, I can accept it as in character, but in others, I'm like, didn't you clear this hurdle already, bub?
I hope the show has kicked into gear now with the SHIRTLESS SWORD FIGHT (IT IS CUSTOM) and hope we get an episode or two without Oliver at all (though I would guess we're going to get a split storyline of "where's Oliver" and "what's happening in Starling" or one episode devoted to each), and I wouldn't mind seeing him have amnesia and get taken in by the League for a bit - maybe he can work off his 'crime' by killing some people for them or something. And then he could be all angsty about it when he remembers. I would be down for that.
As much as I ship Oliver/Felicity, I prefer them toning it down if they're not going to go there, because it was their friendship/partnership that made me ship them, not the DRAMA of it all.
Lastly, I miss Moira, and I hope Thea gets more to do in the back half.
I do really like that Barry is positioned as the Superman (light/hopeful) to Oliver's Batman (dark/dour), and I really enjoyed the crossover and hope that they can manage to do that again, and that the shows can also reach those heights individually.
***
So I have 600 words on my yuletide story and it's only about 1/4 of the way done. I guess this panicky feeling is what people mean when they talk about BEARS? I have never been this late with it before. I know I can do it, but...Eek!
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/714099.html.
people have commented there.
Monday night,
innie_darling and I went to see Marlon James and Salman Rushdie at NYPL. I thought it was going to be James interviewing Rushdie, and I was a little sad I hadn't gotten around to the rereading I'd planned, but then it turned out that no, Rushdie was interviewing James, and it was all about his book A Brief History of Seven Killings, which is a fictionalized account of the assassination attempt on Bob Marley in 1976. It was a very entertaining talk, I thought (not least because the closed captioning was TERRIBLE and came up with some real 'damn you autocorrect' type doozies), and I now definitely want to read the book, so I think it was successful as well.
Speaking of books, somehow it's time again for What I'm Reading Wednesday:
What I've just finished
I finished The Maker's Mask by Ankaret Wells, which I enjoyed a lot - it's sci-fi that's dressed up as fantasy at first (kind of? they live in grounded spaceships but no longer know how they truly work, except for a class of people called Makers, and they've got kind of a medieval setup with the former spaceships as keeps held by the head of the family) - though it definitely needed another editing and formatting pass, because there are dropped words, and formatting and punctuation errors in the ebook I have.
What I'm reading now
But it was entertaining enough that I'm about halfway through the sequel, The Hawkwood War, now. Of course, The Maker's Mask doesn't actually end so much as stop in the middle, so I would definitely recommend having the second one on hand if you're enjoying the first.
What I'm reading next
The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway by Doug Most just became available from the library, so that will be next.
***
The December talking meme:
December 16:
d_generate_girl asked me to talk about Life and
grimorie asked me to talk about Crews and Reese.
Life was such an interesting and entertaining show (even in its less interesting/more conventional second season). On the surface it sounds like all the other "lone antisocial genius herded by woman partner" shows that have proliferated over the last decade, but it really wasn't. Because Crews wasn't antisocial by choice, and he wasn't cranky or superior, and Reese certainly didn't indulge him when they started partnering. I think that the slow growth of their partnership - both of them having trusted and been betrayed before - was a huge draw for me. They're both broken in similar but not the same ways, and seeing them learn to work together, to accept (if not indulge) each other's foibles, was fascinating. Like Crews pulling a knife on a suspect and Reese taking it from him, because she needs to know he's a cop, not a con. But then giving it back to him and not turning it into Lt. Davis when he proves to her that he is a cop and she can trust him to have her back. And I love love LOVE that Crews asks Reese in the beginning of the very first episode "has anyone ever loved you that much?" (re: the dog that took the bullet for the kid and bit the hand of the killer), and Reese is like, "...no" but then in the series finale, the answer is a resounding YES. Plus, the music was awesome. I still haven't bought the dvds because the music isn't right (it was surprisingly jarring when I did a rewatch via Netflix last year).
December 17:
vonniek said, Talk to me about Arrow and The Flash! What are some of your hopes and concerns about where they're taking their respective season arcs in the back half?
Broadly, without spoilers, I will say that I have been very pleased with the first half of The Flash's first season. I think nearly everything has worked exceptionally well, there was only one real dud of an episode that I mostly still enjoyed anyway - the casting has been good to excellent for the main and recurring cast, and the villains' casting has also mostly been on point, the special effects are surprisingly good for a CW budget, and oh, the music. I really love what they've done with the music. The score, I mean, and the Flash's theme, not the occasional strummy pop song that gets played over a montage. Gustin, Martin, and Cavanagh are knocking it out of the park, and they've even made me like Cisco, which was in doubt at the beginning. (CURSE YOUR DOPENESS, VIBE. (I never get tired of saying that!)) I enjoy reading the speculation about who the Big Bad is, and who the Man in the Yellow Suit is, etc. etc., and I'm willing to go wherever the show takes me on this, because I'm so charmed and delighted by 98% of it. The one thing I do not like, and that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, is Barry and Joe keeping the secret identity from Iris. This is a writing problem, not a character or actress problem. I mean, I think choosing to make Barry and Iris step-siblings was not the wisest choice if they're your endgame pairing, and I say that as someone who has shipped actual sibcest pairings! but they can't undo that so they have to fix this end of it! Because not knowing has not only not kept Iris safe, it's actually put her in more danger (because knowing Barry is Flash means she could CALL HIM FOR HELP, for example). I would like to think the writers learned from the mess they made with Laurel on Arrow, but so far, not so much.
Speaking of which, as for Arrow, I feel like the first half of the season meandered, mostly because they were never going to make progress on Sara's murder until midseason, and it ends up not even being about her! Which is a problem. I mean, I was so grateful she survived last season, because I dreaded Laurel-as-Canary (I still do, tbh, though the writing for her has improved now that she knows all the secrets and the show is letting her be active instead of passive about so many things), and then they killed her off and it looks like they did it simply to get Laurel to where she needs to be, and ugh. Couldn't she have just stayed with the League and let Laurel fill in?
I'm not even going to get into how they've improved some things with Laurel (I don't always tune out when she appears! I like her being trained by Wildcat, even if he's not the Dennis Farina style old school boxer I was hoping for), but then saddled her with the super dumbassery of NOT TELLING DETECTIVE CAPTAIN LANCE HIS OTHER DAUGHTER IS DEAD. AND THEN HAVING HER MOTHER AGREE. WHAT THE FUCK SHOW. This is one of those inexplicable decisions I have to just pretend don't exist because they make no sense and will only bring some weirdly contrived drama down the line.
I also feel like the show doesn't know what to do with Roy or Ray - only Brandon Routh's excessive charm has made Ray palatable and that's barely so - he's creepy and stalkery and he needs to stop being like that if he's actually going to be a hero, and we need to see Felicity calling him on it the way she did at the beginning. Diggle needs more to do, though I'm glad that we have seen more of him and his relationship with Lyla, which I definitely enjoy, and I hope that given the events of the midseason finale, he steps in as the Arrow while Oliver is...gone. And maybe Tatsu can show up in the present and Katana her way around Starling like a BAMF.
I have enjoyed Barrowman's supervillainy, even if Malcolm's plans don't really make sense at the moment. I figure there must be some reason he set all this in motion, and he had to have known that Ollie couldn't beat Ra's al Ghul, so it can't just be that he thought it'd get the League off his back. But this is also a guy who responded to his grief and anger over his wife's death by going to Nanda Parbat and getting trained as an assassin, and then building an earthquake machine to level the city, so...
I also feel like they've kind of regressed Oliver's character? Like, does he really think working with Felicity but not dating her is safer than working and dating? How does that work exactly? He still has the same feelings and she can still be used against him, but now they get none of the good parts? I realize that he is not as emotionally healthy as some, so in some ways, I can accept it as in character, but in others, I'm like, didn't you clear this hurdle already, bub?
I hope the show has kicked into gear now with the SHIRTLESS SWORD FIGHT (IT IS CUSTOM) and hope we get an episode or two without Oliver at all (though I would guess we're going to get a split storyline of "where's Oliver" and "what's happening in Starling" or one episode devoted to each), and I wouldn't mind seeing him have amnesia and get taken in by the League for a bit - maybe he can work off his 'crime' by killing some people for them or something. And then he could be all angsty about it when he remembers. I would be down for that.
As much as I ship Oliver/Felicity, I prefer them toning it down if they're not going to go there, because it was their friendship/partnership that made me ship them, not the DRAMA of it all.
Lastly, I miss Moira, and I hope Thea gets more to do in the back half.
I do really like that Barry is positioned as the Superman (light/hopeful) to Oliver's Batman (dark/dour), and I really enjoyed the crossover and hope that they can manage to do that again, and that the shows can also reach those heights individually.
***
So I have 600 words on my yuletide story and it's only about 1/4 of the way done. I guess this panicky feeling is what people mean when they talk about BEARS? I have never been this late with it before. I know I can do it, but...Eek!
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/714099.html.
people have commented there.