now it's all a wash
You guys! There was another gift for me in Yuletide Madness:
Disgusted, of Milford Park (1174 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Montmaray Journals - Michelle Cooper, Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peggy Carter, Veronica FitzOsborne
Additional Tags: Crossover, Misses Clause Challenge
Summary: Peggy and Veronica, 1952.
So cool! Can you imagine what kind of awesomely formidable team they'd make? Thank you so much, yuletide treat writer person!
*
Christmas was good, though I have to say, I was already done with people even before they started showing up yesterday. But it was all fine in the end. Everyone seemed impressed and interested in my infused vodka gifts (and Alyssa LOVED the apple cinnamon one, so score!), and the apple crumb cake turned out really well, and I got some nice things - in addition to money and gift cards, I got a really nice scarf and gloves set, a pretty sweater, and a GIANT SUPERMAN MUG WITH A CAPE. Which I had to guard because my brother was eyeing it jealously.
My trip out there on Friday was easy - I had a really nice cab driver who took me through the park to avoid traffic and so I got a scenic tour of Central Park all dressed up for the holidays in the mist - and the train wasn't particularly crowded. Unlike going home this morning, when the 11:11 am train was shockingly packed. Like, people standing in the aisle packed. Usually that only happens on holiday weekends going away from the city. *hands* When I got home I took an epic 3 hour nap, and now I'm just poking around the yuletide archive and being sad that my assigned recipient apparently either doesn't like or hasn't read my story. It hasn't had many other takers, either. The two treats are doing all right though, even if I never actually get "yuletide famous." I'm really happy to see the main story written for me getting on recs lists and stuff. *preens*
***
December posting meme:
December 26:
lab said: I remember you writing about the mytharc a lot, and how shows collapse under its weight. I'd love if you talked about the mytharc front in one of your current fandoms.
Ha! Yes, the mytharc is always fucked up! It's true! It becomes a weight too heavy for a show to bear after a few seasons for a wide variety of reasons - you can see it in X-Files, BSG, Fringe, Supernatural, etc. Right now, I'm going to talk about Arrow, which has the double-whammy of being an adaptation of a comics source, and therefore having to bear up under that mytharc, which doesn't even make any sense. Like, the whole point of doing an adaptation like Arrow is so that you can change things up - the Oliver of the show is clearly not the Oliver of the comics (not that I have read many Green Arrow comics), nor is Arrow's Roy comics!Roy, and Arrow's Laurel is most certainly not the beloved Dinah Laurel Lance of the comics. And yet, the show is insistent that she become Black Canary anyway. They seem to have backed away from Oliver/Laurel as a couple (at least for now - I wouldn't be surprised to see it happening again in two seasons, even though I really hope not). The show produced a perfectly viable alternate Black Canary in Sara Lance, and then killed her off (and so far it has not been handled all that well by the show) because that was Laurel's designated slot, thanks to the comics.
I didn't watch How I Met Your Mother, but from what I've read, it suffered from one of the classic problems that cause this kind of mytharc fuckery: the writers had a vision for the last episode, and even though the show had run much longer than anticipated and grown into its own thing, they still felt wedded to grafting the original ending onto a thing that had far outgrown it.
I'm not in the entertainment industry and I have no qualifications but having watched a metric fuck-ton of tv and movies in my life (not to mention all the books I've read), but it seems to me that people who run/write/plan out tv shows need to walk a really difficult line of having some kind of plan, if it's serialized at all, but not being so attached to the plan that it can't be reworked on the fly as necessary. And if that means you never get to that SUPER COOL ROBOT KARAOKE BATTLE you've been planning for five seasons, well, you know, sacrifices must be made. Kill your darlings and all that.
Like, you can see how Fringe went off the rails once it stopped being about Olivia's superhero journey and started being about Peter's. Peter was NEVER the superhero! Peter was the mad scientist's lovely daughter! But the writers wanted Action!Peter and they did it at the expense of Olivia, who was the protagonist of the show for three seasons. But the only way to get to where they planned to go was to jump tracks and start riding that train where Peter was the most important one, where he'd always been a macguffin before. (I feel like this is also what's happening with Sleepy Hollow right now. ABBIE is the main character, or she was, but now it's all Crane Family Drama all the time. Sigh. I'm also a little concerned about how Orphan Black is going to hold up, but I guess as long as I get a murder clone road trip with Helena and Alison in season 3, I'll be okay.)
Interestingly enough, I think Gotham has also suffered in some ways, like Arrow, by being an adaptation of a source and yet also by being a prequel. The audience knows Jim Gordon can never win. But the showrunners don't seem to be confident that people can enjoy that kind of a tragedy, so it's all "He talks in riddles because he's going to be THE RIDDLER. *nudge nudge* GET IT?" I find their lack of faith disturbing.
I only made that joke to lead into this paragraph: while I thought the Star Wars prequel trilogy was pretty terrible (a recent rewatch confirms that), the Clone Wars cartoon does a much better job making the story and the characters interesting and engaging, even though you know how it's going to end (spoiler: badly; it's going to end badly).
However, all is not terrible! The Good Wife, after a big stumble in early season 4, has reinvigorated itself and managed to not collapse under everything that has gone before by taking chances and making unexpected choices. I don't believe I've ever a seen a show in its sixth season be so vital, still doing new things and finding new and interesting ways to tell the story it's trying to tell.
I hope that's something like what you were interested in!
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/716639.html.
people have commented there.
Disgusted, of Milford Park (1174 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Montmaray Journals - Michelle Cooper, Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peggy Carter, Veronica FitzOsborne
Additional Tags: Crossover, Misses Clause Challenge
Summary: Peggy and Veronica, 1952.
So cool! Can you imagine what kind of awesomely formidable team they'd make? Thank you so much, yuletide treat writer person!
*
Christmas was good, though I have to say, I was already done with people even before they started showing up yesterday. But it was all fine in the end. Everyone seemed impressed and interested in my infused vodka gifts (and Alyssa LOVED the apple cinnamon one, so score!), and the apple crumb cake turned out really well, and I got some nice things - in addition to money and gift cards, I got a really nice scarf and gloves set, a pretty sweater, and a GIANT SUPERMAN MUG WITH A CAPE. Which I had to guard because my brother was eyeing it jealously.
My trip out there on Friday was easy - I had a really nice cab driver who took me through the park to avoid traffic and so I got a scenic tour of Central Park all dressed up for the holidays in the mist - and the train wasn't particularly crowded. Unlike going home this morning, when the 11:11 am train was shockingly packed. Like, people standing in the aisle packed. Usually that only happens on holiday weekends going away from the city. *hands* When I got home I took an epic 3 hour nap, and now I'm just poking around the yuletide archive and being sad that my assigned recipient apparently either doesn't like or hasn't read my story. It hasn't had many other takers, either. The two treats are doing all right though, even if I never actually get "yuletide famous." I'm really happy to see the main story written for me getting on recs lists and stuff. *preens*
***
December posting meme:
December 26:
lab said: I remember you writing about the mytharc a lot, and how shows collapse under its weight. I'd love if you talked about the mytharc front in one of your current fandoms.
Ha! Yes, the mytharc is always fucked up! It's true! It becomes a weight too heavy for a show to bear after a few seasons for a wide variety of reasons - you can see it in X-Files, BSG, Fringe, Supernatural, etc. Right now, I'm going to talk about Arrow, which has the double-whammy of being an adaptation of a comics source, and therefore having to bear up under that mytharc, which doesn't even make any sense. Like, the whole point of doing an adaptation like Arrow is so that you can change things up - the Oliver of the show is clearly not the Oliver of the comics (not that I have read many Green Arrow comics), nor is Arrow's Roy comics!Roy, and Arrow's Laurel is most certainly not the beloved Dinah Laurel Lance of the comics. And yet, the show is insistent that she become Black Canary anyway. They seem to have backed away from Oliver/Laurel as a couple (at least for now - I wouldn't be surprised to see it happening again in two seasons, even though I really hope not). The show produced a perfectly viable alternate Black Canary in Sara Lance, and then killed her off (and so far it has not been handled all that well by the show) because that was Laurel's designated slot, thanks to the comics.
I didn't watch How I Met Your Mother, but from what I've read, it suffered from one of the classic problems that cause this kind of mytharc fuckery: the writers had a vision for the last episode, and even though the show had run much longer than anticipated and grown into its own thing, they still felt wedded to grafting the original ending onto a thing that had far outgrown it.
I'm not in the entertainment industry and I have no qualifications but having watched a metric fuck-ton of tv and movies in my life (not to mention all the books I've read), but it seems to me that people who run/write/plan out tv shows need to walk a really difficult line of having some kind of plan, if it's serialized at all, but not being so attached to the plan that it can't be reworked on the fly as necessary. And if that means you never get to that SUPER COOL ROBOT KARAOKE BATTLE you've been planning for five seasons, well, you know, sacrifices must be made. Kill your darlings and all that.
Like, you can see how Fringe went off the rails once it stopped being about Olivia's superhero journey and started being about Peter's. Peter was NEVER the superhero! Peter was the mad scientist's lovely daughter! But the writers wanted Action!Peter and they did it at the expense of Olivia, who was the protagonist of the show for three seasons. But the only way to get to where they planned to go was to jump tracks and start riding that train where Peter was the most important one, where he'd always been a macguffin before. (I feel like this is also what's happening with Sleepy Hollow right now. ABBIE is the main character, or she was, but now it's all Crane Family Drama all the time. Sigh. I'm also a little concerned about how Orphan Black is going to hold up, but I guess as long as I get a murder clone road trip with Helena and Alison in season 3, I'll be okay.)
Interestingly enough, I think Gotham has also suffered in some ways, like Arrow, by being an adaptation of a source and yet also by being a prequel. The audience knows Jim Gordon can never win. But the showrunners don't seem to be confident that people can enjoy that kind of a tragedy, so it's all "He talks in riddles because he's going to be THE RIDDLER. *nudge nudge* GET IT?" I find their lack of faith disturbing.
I only made that joke to lead into this paragraph: while I thought the Star Wars prequel trilogy was pretty terrible (a recent rewatch confirms that), the Clone Wars cartoon does a much better job making the story and the characters interesting and engaging, even though you know how it's going to end (spoiler: badly; it's going to end badly).
However, all is not terrible! The Good Wife, after a big stumble in early season 4, has reinvigorated itself and managed to not collapse under everything that has gone before by taking chances and making unexpected choices. I don't believe I've ever a seen a show in its sixth season be so vital, still doing new things and finding new and interesting ways to tell the story it's trying to tell.
I hope that's something like what you were interested in!
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/716639.html.
people have commented there.