stuff about stuff
22 May 2012 23:43![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
domarzioneA second test, this time with attempts at cut-aways and posting from a client...
* DC is apparently queering an established heretofore heterosexual character. Grant Morrison thinks it's Batman, but he seems to have forgotten that there's this tiny little indie arthouse film coming out in which Bruce Wayne has romance with at least one woman. Dan DiDio has made an incalculable number of really, really stupid decisions during his tenure, but turning Batman gay right before The Dark Knight Rises would shoot straight to the top of the list. Even beyond bringing back Barry Allen and Jason Todd.
DiDio is a big enough idiot to make it Wonder Woman, because he'd totally not understand that it would be validating the BS about every physically strong woman being a lesbian and why that's not good.
Regardless of who it actually is, my general response is that this is a Bad Idea. Not because having gay/lesbian/minority/Other major characters is bad, because it's not. And it's not like DC wasn't quietly building up their stable of interesting characters who happened to be gay (Rene Montoya, Kate Kane, Piper, etc.) But to pull a stunt like this... there's no way they don't mess it up so badly that it's going to leave them, narratively and meta-wise, in a worse position than if they hadn't tried. DC needs the attention and the money, I get that. And shafting their long-term fans in favor of a short-term blast is how they respond to any cash call. But this is just so... Kardashian.
* I tried to start Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and had to stop; I always forget how much I dislike his cyberpunk stories. I love the Baroque Cycle and think quite highly of The Cryptonomicon, but I just don't like the rest of his present and near-future stories at all. I don't like the genre, really, and not even a good writer can overcome that.
* Avengers: Is there any actual canon on movieverse Hawkeye or can we just go with whatever combination of Ultimates and 616-verse we want to supplement our imaginations if we were at all inclined to write fic?
side note: I want Captain America 2 to be the Winter Soldier arc and I want an excuse to hoist my Bucky/Natasha 'ship flag.
second side note: thank you to everyone who has given Avengers fic recs; I am always open to more because I am greedy like that.
* Television: I sort of stopped watching everything this season; The Mentalist was just so OOC it wasn't fun, Criminal Minds was just too depressing, and the NCISes were so dopey that they kept getting pushed off in favor of sports. I kept up with Hawaii Five-0, but I don't know how long that's going to last in the wake of the finale. Although I will remind everyone that I totally called who was going to be in Shelburne's room.
re: H50: Am I the only person who kept being bothered by Lieutenant Kelly taking orders from Sergeant Williams? I get that the task force has its own chain of command, one that was established while Chin was a civilian, but at some point during the season, they should have mentioned this bit of weirdness. Especially with military characters featuring so heavily. It could have been a one-liner and I would have been fine.
Next season, Katherine (Steve's ladyfriend) will be a regular, which I was so happy to see happen, but the rest of it... Chin's faced enough crap in two seasons, yeah? He used to ride a motorcycle and brandish a shotgun; now he's a woobie. And we're all getting whiplash with Rachel going from Bitch on Wheels to Actually a Nice Dame to Danny's Love to Flighty But Not Evil to Bitch on Wheels with Bonus Crappy Parenting in the course of two seasons. Look, we get that not all of your female characters work out. Most of 'em don't, honestly, although Jenna was awesome. But Mary McGarrett didn't translate from the page to the screen well, either, and you just wrote her out. You could have done that here, too.
On a lark, I watched the finales of both NCISes and... Did Shane Brennan have some kind of budgetary crisis that he decided to eliminate every recurring character on both shows? I am a big fan of populated universes -- I had a gazillion OCs in my SGA writing because there were more than seven people in Atlantis and it helped if they had names. Brennan just whacked the entire OC list. And what's worse is that almost all of the deaths were totally pointless and entirely to have a body count that didn't feature a principal actor. (Ducky is as likely dead as Callen is likely going to spend life in prison for first degree murder.)
I've created OCs for the purpose of killing them off, but I've always done it with more style and more impact than these. Feh, feh, feh. Call me when Coast Guard Abby returns.
side note: Christophe Lambert -- qu'est-ce que se passe? Lay off the botox, sir, please. Conversely, Jamie Lee Curtis = silver foxy.
* DC is apparently queering an established heretofore heterosexual character. Grant Morrison thinks it's Batman, but he seems to have forgotten that there's this tiny little indie arthouse film coming out in which Bruce Wayne has romance with at least one woman. Dan DiDio has made an incalculable number of really, really stupid decisions during his tenure, but turning Batman gay right before The Dark Knight Rises would shoot straight to the top of the list. Even beyond bringing back Barry Allen and Jason Todd.
DiDio is a big enough idiot to make it Wonder Woman, because he'd totally not understand that it would be validating the BS about every physically strong woman being a lesbian and why that's not good.
Regardless of who it actually is, my general response is that this is a Bad Idea. Not because having gay/lesbian/minority/Other major characters is bad, because it's not. And it's not like DC wasn't quietly building up their stable of interesting characters who happened to be gay (Rene Montoya, Kate Kane, Piper, etc.) But to pull a stunt like this... there's no way they don't mess it up so badly that it's going to leave them, narratively and meta-wise, in a worse position than if they hadn't tried. DC needs the attention and the money, I get that. And shafting their long-term fans in favor of a short-term blast is how they respond to any cash call. But this is just so... Kardashian.
* I tried to start Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and had to stop; I always forget how much I dislike his cyberpunk stories. I love the Baroque Cycle and think quite highly of The Cryptonomicon, but I just don't like the rest of his present and near-future stories at all. I don't like the genre, really, and not even a good writer can overcome that.
* Avengers: Is there any actual canon on movieverse Hawkeye or can we just go with whatever combination of Ultimates and 616-verse we want to supplement our imaginations if we were at all inclined to write fic?
side note: I want Captain America 2 to be the Winter Soldier arc and I want an excuse to hoist my Bucky/Natasha 'ship flag.
second side note: thank you to everyone who has given Avengers fic recs; I am always open to more because I am greedy like that.
* Television: I sort of stopped watching everything this season; The Mentalist was just so OOC it wasn't fun, Criminal Minds was just too depressing, and the NCISes were so dopey that they kept getting pushed off in favor of sports. I kept up with Hawaii Five-0, but I don't know how long that's going to last in the wake of the finale. Although I will remind everyone that I totally called who was going to be in Shelburne's room.
re: H50: Am I the only person who kept being bothered by Lieutenant Kelly taking orders from Sergeant Williams? I get that the task force has its own chain of command, one that was established while Chin was a civilian, but at some point during the season, they should have mentioned this bit of weirdness. Especially with military characters featuring so heavily. It could have been a one-liner and I would have been fine.
Next season, Katherine (Steve's ladyfriend) will be a regular, which I was so happy to see happen, but the rest of it... Chin's faced enough crap in two seasons, yeah? He used to ride a motorcycle and brandish a shotgun; now he's a woobie. And we're all getting whiplash with Rachel going from Bitch on Wheels to Actually a Nice Dame to Danny's Love to Flighty But Not Evil to Bitch on Wheels with Bonus Crappy Parenting in the course of two seasons. Look, we get that not all of your female characters work out. Most of 'em don't, honestly, although Jenna was awesome. But Mary McGarrett didn't translate from the page to the screen well, either, and you just wrote her out. You could have done that here, too.
On a lark, I watched the finales of both NCISes and... Did Shane Brennan have some kind of budgetary crisis that he decided to eliminate every recurring character on both shows? I am a big fan of populated universes -- I had a gazillion OCs in my SGA writing because there were more than seven people in Atlantis and it helped if they had names. Brennan just whacked the entire OC list. And what's worse is that almost all of the deaths were totally pointless and entirely to have a body count that didn't feature a principal actor. (Ducky is as likely dead as Callen is likely going to spend life in prison for first degree murder.)
I've created OCs for the purpose of killing them off, but I've always done it with more style and more impact than these. Feh, feh, feh. Call me when Coast Guard Abby returns.
side note: Christophe Lambert -- qu'est-ce que se passe? Lay off the botox, sir, please. Conversely, Jamie Lee Curtis = silver foxy.
