list time!
I met up with spyscribe yesterday and we had sushi for lunch, then went to the one-dollar bookstore in Burbank and bought faerie porn guilt-free books, and we finished off the day with ice cream at Ben & Jerry's. It was a very good afternoon.
Some top-five lists:
For scarletts_awry:
Top Five Danny/Mac Moments
1. The final scene in "On the Job," when Mac tells Danny that he's off the promotion grid and then dismisses him. Gut-wrenchingly painful to watch (seriously, this scene makes my stomach hurt), but absolutely dead-on for both of them, and the unfortunately natural culmination of everything that's happened for them to get to that point. Actually, the entirety of their S1 arc could count as one very long favorite "moment" for me, because it's all set up so precisely: the simultaneous tension and need for each other is established in "A Man A Mile," and they kind of keep that delicate balance for awhile. Then we hit "Tanglewood," and over the next ten episodes or so, it all slowly falls apart. The show details that dissolution in its typical ruthless, subtle fashion, and it's because of all that set-up that "On the Job" ends up being so painful yet so inevitable.
2. The phone call at the end of "Risk" in S2. Mac isn't even in the scene, but Danny chatting away on his cell to him as he gets on the subway combined with his little smile at the end and the way he tells Mac to "Take care...you too," made me make high-pitched noises when it first aired. Okay, it still kinda does.
3. Mac's words to Danny in "Run Silent, Run Deep": "I believe you." With that, we get the culmination of the slow healing of their relationship, which feels just as believable and just as inevitable as the breaking of it in "On the Job" did. That scene is followed by Mac going to, metaphorically, the ends of the earth for Danny (I mean, dude even smokes for him), and, of course, the scene of magic and wonder hugging and crying OMG that, aside from the subtext-is-rapidly-becoming-the-text under/overtones, is another emotionally raw moment, and works because the two of them have earned this. (It's also the first time we see Mac touch anyone voluntarily or with affection.) However, I think the true climactic moment happens with "I believe you." Three words, and the entire world shifts.
4. The scene in "Heroes" where Mac ropes Danny into reenacting the knife fight with him. It's another scene in which the subtext is suddenly, um, not so much sub, but beyond that, Danny's pathetic little groan of pain when Mac "disarms" him and the way Mac happily pats him on the back and wanders off while Danny is still trying to figure out if his spine works crack my shit up every time. ...Look, they can't all be deep, okay?
Danny setting Mac on fire in "Sleight Out of Hand" is also a delight, for similar reasons.
5. The conversation about guilt and responsibility in "Child's Play." I've been saying for a few years now that Mac and Danny are more alike than either of them would ever care to admit. The scene in "Child's Play" is a subtle, low-key indicator of the fact that their relationship is in a good place right now: Danny is willing to turn to Mac for help when he's grieving, and Mac does his best to reach out and offer that help, without making any false promises to Danny about how it will all get better soon. Aside from that, it goes a long way toward establishing those parallels between them: so far, Danny's arc this season explicitly parallels Mac's during the 333 storyline, both narratively and thematically, and this scene pretty much lays that all on the table.
Top Five DCU Characters
1. Batman: The classic, the original. One of the characters who got me into comics in the first place. The line between vigilante and detective, between sanity and insanity, can be very fine, and Batman is most compelling to me when he's balanced right on that knife's edge. It's all about the ambiguity. (And about the identity question; see below.)
2. Jack Knight: A very modern and very reluctant superhero, and a good man almost in spite of himself. Starman is about legacy and history and family, and about what it means to construct your identity under the weight of all that. In other words, it pushes a number of my narrative buttons.
3. Renee Montoya: She is, very simply, made of awesome. Her coming-out in Greg Rucka's "Half a Life" story arc in Gotham Central was beautifully handled. Renee is brave and smart and fucked up and scared, and she struggles with all of those things every day, particularly as she faces her new responsibilities and challenges in the post-Crisis world.
4. Sasha Bordeaux: All of those identity issues that are present in Renee's and Jack's and Bruce Wayne's stories are also present for Sasha, and her early storylines focus on her struggle to maintain her sense of self when those around her persistently try to take it away. Batman denies her a name, and then she loses both her old life and her original face before finally taking back control of herself and her destiny.
5. Cris Allen: Renee's former partner when she was still on the Major Crimes Unit. Smart, takes no shit, and engaged in a constant struggle with his faith, or lack thereof -- a struggle that has now taken the most ironic twist possible.
More lists tomorrow.
Some top-five lists:
For scarletts_awry:
Top Five Danny/Mac Moments
1. The final scene in "On the Job," when Mac tells Danny that he's off the promotion grid and then dismisses him. Gut-wrenchingly painful to watch (seriously, this scene makes my stomach hurt), but absolutely dead-on for both of them, and the unfortunately natural culmination of everything that's happened for them to get to that point. Actually, the entirety of their S1 arc could count as one very long favorite "moment" for me, because it's all set up so precisely: the simultaneous tension and need for each other is established in "A Man A Mile," and they kind of keep that delicate balance for awhile. Then we hit "Tanglewood," and over the next ten episodes or so, it all slowly falls apart. The show details that dissolution in its typical ruthless, subtle fashion, and it's because of all that set-up that "On the Job" ends up being so painful yet so inevitable.
2. The phone call at the end of "Risk" in S2. Mac isn't even in the scene, but Danny chatting away on his cell to him as he gets on the subway combined with his little smile at the end and the way he tells Mac to "Take care...you too," made me make high-pitched noises when it first aired. Okay, it still kinda does.
3. Mac's words to Danny in "Run Silent, Run Deep": "I believe you." With that, we get the culmination of the slow healing of their relationship, which feels just as believable and just as inevitable as the breaking of it in "On the Job" did. That scene is followed by Mac going to, metaphorically, the ends of the earth for Danny (I mean, dude even smokes for him), and, of course, the scene of magic and wonder hugging and crying OMG that, aside from the subtext-is-rapidly-becoming-the-text under/overtones, is another emotionally raw moment, and works because the two of them have earned this. (It's also the first time we see Mac touch anyone voluntarily or with affection.) However, I think the true climactic moment happens with "I believe you." Three words, and the entire world shifts.
4. The scene in "Heroes" where Mac ropes Danny into reenacting the knife fight with him. It's another scene in which the subtext is suddenly, um, not so much sub, but beyond that, Danny's pathetic little groan of pain when Mac "disarms" him and the way Mac happily pats him on the back and wanders off while Danny is still trying to figure out if his spine works crack my shit up every time. ...Look, they can't all be deep, okay?
Danny setting Mac on fire in "Sleight Out of Hand" is also a delight, for similar reasons.
5. The conversation about guilt and responsibility in "Child's Play." I've been saying for a few years now that Mac and Danny are more alike than either of them would ever care to admit. The scene in "Child's Play" is a subtle, low-key indicator of the fact that their relationship is in a good place right now: Danny is willing to turn to Mac for help when he's grieving, and Mac does his best to reach out and offer that help, without making any false promises to Danny about how it will all get better soon. Aside from that, it goes a long way toward establishing those parallels between them: so far, Danny's arc this season explicitly parallels Mac's during the 333 storyline, both narratively and thematically, and this scene pretty much lays that all on the table.
Top Five DCU Characters
1. Batman: The classic, the original. One of the characters who got me into comics in the first place. The line between vigilante and detective, between sanity and insanity, can be very fine, and Batman is most compelling to me when he's balanced right on that knife's edge. It's all about the ambiguity. (And about the identity question; see below.)
2. Jack Knight: A very modern and very reluctant superhero, and a good man almost in spite of himself. Starman is about legacy and history and family, and about what it means to construct your identity under the weight of all that. In other words, it pushes a number of my narrative buttons.
3. Renee Montoya: She is, very simply, made of awesome. Her coming-out in Greg Rucka's "Half a Life" story arc in Gotham Central was beautifully handled. Renee is brave and smart and fucked up and scared, and she struggles with all of those things every day, particularly as she faces her new responsibilities and challenges in the post-Crisis world.
4. Sasha Bordeaux: All of those identity issues that are present in Renee's and Jack's and Bruce Wayne's stories are also present for Sasha, and her early storylines focus on her struggle to maintain her sense of self when those around her persistently try to take it away. Batman denies her a name, and then she loses both her old life and her original face before finally taking back control of herself and her destiny.
5. Cris Allen: Renee's former partner when she was still on the Major Crimes Unit. Smart, takes no shit, and engaged in a constant struggle with his faith, or lack thereof -- a struggle that has now taken the most ironic twist possible.
More lists tomorrow.