Entry tags:
Endgame meta
My Endgame thoughts are still all over the place, but this is one I really want to set down and organize before it gets lost in the haze of memory and oh-shit-I-have-a-term-paper-due Sunday.
One of the things that, upon reflection, intrigued me was how all of the Avengers were depicted at the five year mark. The choices were at times incredibly insightful and, in at least one case, incredibly misguided. The insight might have been unintentional, but...
( for length )
One of the things that, upon reflection, intrigued me was how all of the Avengers were depicted at the five year mark. The choices were at times incredibly insightful and, in at least one case, incredibly misguided. The insight might have been unintentional, but...
( for length )
Endgame drabble: Heritor
Heritor
( probably should've been a story, but I have a paper due )
1k words; Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes (Steve Rogers, Avengers)
Post-Endgame, Sam's got something in his hands he's never not had to give back before. Bucky Barnes is probably feeling some deja vu.
( probably should've been a story, but I have a paper due )
Entry tags:
Endgame!
I saw it last night, have some thoughts that will be burped out in random order as I organize them. Starting with the end of the movie first:
( here be spoilers )
( here be spoilers )
*waves*
What a strange, miserable day. Went to work on three hours' sleep because I'd been writing a major paper that I didn't even proofread before submitting because I was so fried -- it was one of four assignments due on Sunday. Spent half the day watching Notre Dame burn in numb shock and commiserating with work colleagues and RL friends because we're watching the destruction of something beautiful and precious and significant. Then went to the doctor and he expressed surprise that I was upright considering all I have on my plate. ("When is your down time?" "I don't usually do homework on Thursday and Friday evenings after work?") But today is still Monday and now I sit and prepare to do homework because I have an assignment due tomorrow and I haven't even watched the lecture yet, let alone done the reading.
I have an Avengers ticket for the 30th, which is the Tuesday after it opens. I could have gotten a ticket for the Sunday, but that's Orthodox Easter and I am expected to chow down on lamb with the family-of-choice. I see the family-of-blood this Friday for Pesach and I'm grateful for the wine. I'm excited and not for the movie; I am three movies past being over The Tony Show and I'm not the fan they are servicing. I might be the fan they are servicing with the Falcon and Winter Soldier show, though, even if it's going to be a hard PG. I want it to be like Running Scared, the Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal movie, which I loved a lot. (Half of my favorite movies list is stuff Gregory Hines was in; the man had fine taste in projects.)
Speaking of ancient movies... NYC has internet kiosks all over the city like fire hydrants, far more of them than the phone booths they supposedly replaced. The sides are LED screens and they show NYC facts and subway info and weather and art about the city. (The NYC facts were great on 1 April because they were all bullshit.) Anyway, their latest thing is to have a very stylized scene from a movie that takes place in NYC where they don't give the film's title, but instead the date and the location inside the city. Some of them are super-obvious -- Ghostbusters, King Kong -- but I'm pleased that I was able to parse out the ones for The Highlander and The Warriors instantly because those were more challenging if you'd never seen them.
I have an Avengers ticket for the 30th, which is the Tuesday after it opens. I could have gotten a ticket for the Sunday, but that's Orthodox Easter and I am expected to chow down on lamb with the family-of-choice. I see the family-of-blood this Friday for Pesach and I'm grateful for the wine. I'm excited and not for the movie; I am three movies past being over The Tony Show and I'm not the fan they are servicing. I might be the fan they are servicing with the Falcon and Winter Soldier show, though, even if it's going to be a hard PG. I want it to be like Running Scared, the Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal movie, which I loved a lot. (Half of my favorite movies list is stuff Gregory Hines was in; the man had fine taste in projects.)
Speaking of ancient movies... NYC has internet kiosks all over the city like fire hydrants, far more of them than the phone booths they supposedly replaced. The sides are LED screens and they show NYC facts and subway info and weather and art about the city. (The NYC facts were great on 1 April because they were all bullshit.) Anyway, their latest thing is to have a very stylized scene from a movie that takes place in NYC where they don't give the film's title, but instead the date and the location inside the city. Some of them are super-obvious -- Ghostbusters, King Kong -- but I'm pleased that I was able to parse out the ones for The Highlander and The Warriors instantly because those were more challenging if you'd never seen them.
Spring Break ficlet: Particle of Light (Captain Marvel)
I have not written anything but grad school assignments in forever, so excuse the rust....
Particle of Light
( Maria Rambeau's life does not return to the status quo ante after Carol flies off )
Particle of Light
Maria Rambeau, Carol Danvers
1400 words; gen
( Maria Rambeau's life does not return to the status quo ante after Carol flies off )
good old days
I just posted this to tumblr, but really, it's meant for here (and LJ) because, well, it's still dinosaur country.
‘I met my wife on LiveJournal’: stories of love, friendship and joy from the web’s early days
I have RL friends of *gulp* twenty years’ standing I met online. I met my first love on a hockey mailing list I’d found on Gopher. I flew to another country to hang out in person with a bunch of people I knew only from IRC and a comics mailing list (OTL!) and most of us didn’t know each other’s real names. This article hit me in the feels, as the kiddies say.Entry tags:
captain marvel
Originally posted on the tumblr, but...
* We’re getting Spectrum/Pulsar/WhateverMonica’sCallingHerselfThisWeek in Phase 4. We have to be. You don’t do what they did to set her up like that without doing it. And I am here for it.
* Also for Maria, who was the heart of this movie. She should come back, too.
* I was so happy to see Kelly Sue DeConnick make a cameo (she’s the magenta-headed lady who gives Vers a look in the LA subway near the beginning) because she’s as important to this movie’s existence as Ed Brubaker was to Captain America: the Winter Soldier and he got a cameo for it there.
* The opening credit tribute to Stan Lee was lovely.
* Brie Larson was really, really good. I was not sold on her casting, even after they said the movie was taking place in the 1990s, but she was fabulous.
* This movie was built on banter and I loved all of it.
* Thank christmas there was no love interest. There was a lot of love in this movie, more than usual for an MCU movie, but it was all of the good kinds that don’t involve eros. Love in this movie deserves a more thorough treatment because it drives everything that happens.
* OMG, Goose.
* I am exactly the right age to desperately want the soundtrack. And to laugh at the aliens being gob-smacked at our computers.
( a little bit of spoilery stuff below: )
* We’re getting Spectrum/Pulsar/WhateverMonica’sCallingHerselfThisWeek in Phase 4. We have to be. You don’t do what they did to set her up like that without doing it. And I am here for it.
* Also for Maria, who was the heart of this movie. She should come back, too.
* I was so happy to see Kelly Sue DeConnick make a cameo (she’s the magenta-headed lady who gives Vers a look in the LA subway near the beginning) because she’s as important to this movie’s existence as Ed Brubaker was to Captain America: the Winter Soldier and he got a cameo for it there.
* The opening credit tribute to Stan Lee was lovely.
* Brie Larson was really, really good. I was not sold on her casting, even after they said the movie was taking place in the 1990s, but she was fabulous.
* This movie was built on banter and I loved all of it.
* Thank christmas there was no love interest. There was a lot of love in this movie, more than usual for an MCU movie, but it was all of the good kinds that don’t involve eros. Love in this movie deserves a more thorough treatment because it drives everything that happens.
* OMG, Goose.
* I am exactly the right age to desperately want the soundtrack. And to laugh at the aliens being gob-smacked at our computers.
( a little bit of spoilery stuff below: )
of the feline persuasion
Copied from the tumblr:
MCU fandom: Modern Day Steve Rogers is absolutely a dog guy and every cute animal representation of him will be as a golden retriever.
MCU Modern Day Steve: Solitary creature. Has precisely one person he loves (Bucky) and a small group of people he tolerates to varying degrees (the Avengers) and that’s it for beings he willingly spends time with. Jumps from high places because he can. Is more than capable of being an asshole before dawn for his own entertainment (ask Sam, who is never running with him again). Generally prone to property damage. Is working on his third life, at least. Is not going along with whatever you have planned for him if he doesn’t feel like it. Let’s emphasize that disregard for authority one more time.
MCU fandom: Modern Day Steve Rogers is absolutely a dog guy and every cute animal representation of him will be as a golden retriever.
MCU Modern Day Steve: Solitary creature. Has precisely one person he loves (Bucky) and a small group of people he tolerates to varying degrees (the Avengers) and that’s it for beings he willingly spends time with. Jumps from high places because he can. Is more than capable of being an asshole before dawn for his own entertainment (ask Sam, who is never running with him again). Generally prone to property damage. Is working on his third life, at least. Is not going along with whatever you have planned for him if he doesn’t feel like it. Let’s emphasize that disregard for authority one more time.
stuff about stuff
* The Spider-Man: Far From Home international trailer (which apparently has a few extra bits than the US version -- Eurominutes?) Which looks well enough, although a pal thought there was something off and disjointed about it. My response was that you have to remember that the movie (1) has to pretend that Peter did not have the most dramatic death scene in Infinity War and yet is alive now in a movie that is in MCU continuity as after it and (2) comes out three weeks after Endgame and cannot spoil anything apart from the fact that Peter's not dead anymore. There's only so many scenes they can pick and choose from.
* I am so chuffed that the cat in the Captain Marvel trailer, the one that Fury's so fond of, gets a one-sheet. And that his(?) name is Goose. Because of course it is.
* People give me strange looks when I tell them that The Flintstones was possibly the best comic I read last year. They are possibly going to give me strange looks in 2019 as well because I just got my hands on Volume 2 and I'm even more in love.
Saying that it's the Flintstones fanfic you never knew you wanted is deeply underselling it. It works so well because Russell goes all-in and what comes out is an ingenious combination of razor-sharp social satire and life-affirming faith in humanity that even the best TV sitcoms can hardly reach. It never loses the goofiness of the cartoon or the surreality of television co-existing with saber-tooth tigers, but it also takes itself completely seriously and that makes everyone pop as people instead of just as sitcom characters. Fred has some post-war trauma issues, Wilma is figuring out how to follow her dream... and the appliances talk to each other after the humans have gone to bed. The appliances possibly have the best arc in this volume, certainly the most deeply-felt, but the humans do pretty well here, too. There's an alien thing happening that sounds like it could be series-killing awful but turns out brilliantly (hey, Dino!) and there's a story about faith -- and faith and science -- that does not go anywhere you think it's going to go. Also a history of economics that doesn't quite become the broadside on capitalism that it appears to be, plus a sharp satire on consumerism (a recurring theme.) There's a parable about domestication. And Carl Sagan and Werner Herzog and Tony Danza are in it. What more do you need?
* I am so chuffed that the cat in the Captain Marvel trailer, the one that Fury's so fond of, gets a one-sheet. And that his(?) name is Goose. Because of course it is.
* People give me strange looks when I tell them that The Flintstones was possibly the best comic I read last year. They are possibly going to give me strange looks in 2019 as well because I just got my hands on Volume 2 and I'm even more in love.
Saying that it's the Flintstones fanfic you never knew you wanted is deeply underselling it. It works so well because Russell goes all-in and what comes out is an ingenious combination of razor-sharp social satire and life-affirming faith in humanity that even the best TV sitcoms can hardly reach. It never loses the goofiness of the cartoon or the surreality of television co-existing with saber-tooth tigers, but it also takes itself completely seriously and that makes everyone pop as people instead of just as sitcom characters. Fred has some post-war trauma issues, Wilma is figuring out how to follow her dream... and the appliances talk to each other after the humans have gone to bed. The appliances possibly have the best arc in this volume, certainly the most deeply-felt, but the humans do pretty well here, too. There's an alien thing happening that sounds like it could be series-killing awful but turns out brilliantly (hey, Dino!) and there's a story about faith -- and faith and science -- that does not go anywhere you think it's going to go. Also a history of economics that doesn't quite become the broadside on capitalism that it appears to be, plus a sharp satire on consumerism (a recurring theme.) There's a parable about domestication. And Carl Sagan and Werner Herzog and Tony Danza are in it. What more do you need?
don't cross the streams!
* I hate group work on school projects. This is bad news because apparently I am going to be doing a lot of them. I don't think I'd done any since high school before this. I was a math major as an undergrad and that's a keep-your-eyes-on-your-own-paper field of study outside of tutoring and my first masters degree didn't involve any, probably because they assumed we were grown-ups working full time and did not need that kind of crap. But twenty years (in the workforce being on committees) later, I'm stuck learning how to collaborate because this program is making no such assumptions.
I'm a misanthropic control freak with high standards and low tolerance for stupidity, which in theory is the worst possible combination for teamwork. In practice, though, people at work are generally happy to cede control of things so long as they look good in the end. Here, I have to play nice and it's making me nuts.
* The instructor for a webinar I participated in had all sorts of fannish sites on her browser bookmark bar -- tumblr, DW, ao3 -- and I was a little distracted by it. Do I know this person in my fannish life? Also, I keep my fannish life and RL separate and this person is at least unashamed to be seen as fannish and I'm not sure if that speaks well of her or poorly of me that I marveled at that.
I'm a misanthropic control freak with high standards and low tolerance for stupidity, which in theory is the worst possible combination for teamwork. In practice, though, people at work are generally happy to cede control of things so long as they look good in the end. Here, I have to play nice and it's making me nuts.
* The instructor for a webinar I participated in had all sorts of fannish sites on her browser bookmark bar -- tumblr, DW, ao3 -- and I was a little distracted by it. Do I know this person in my fannish life? Also, I keep my fannish life and RL separate and this person is at least unashamed to be seen as fannish and I'm not sure if that speaks well of her or poorly of me that I marveled at that.
stuff about stuff
* Over on the tumblr, I posted a link to an article that confirms (from Feige's mouth) that pretty much all of the Avengers: Endgame trailers/teasers/clips will be coming from the first fifteen or so minutes of the movie. So in addition to the usual context-free and intentionally-wrong stuff, we're working with nothing. Something to keep in mind as the ramp-up begins.
* Someone gifted something called Dreamwidth Points to me and I keep meaning to say thank you to my anonymous donor, but then forget because I haven't had much else to say to make a post. Also, I had to look up what they were. But! Thank you, Anonymous, for the gift and I shall make use of it now that I know what they do. :)
* Holy carp and other religious fish, my hockey team is in a funk. Eighteen goals in seven periods the Rangers gave up. EIGHTEEN! That is a lot and that's terrible. They're not supposed to be very good, but when they put in effort they can sort of fake mediocre and recently they haven't even managed that.
* I am officially back in school, getting stuff graded and everything. I'm on the bunny hill right now and the semester starts for real in a few weeks, but... school! I am not worried about the material very much, but what has become quickly apparent is that I have a bit of work to do to learn how to be a student in the 21st Century. I finished my first masters in 2001 and I wrote the exams for that longhand. Things have changed a little since then. I am going to finally have to learn Powerpoint and conferencing software and figure out how all of these new research tools work. The first go-round, if I wanted to strip-mine an article for citations, I had to sit there with a pen and paper and transcribe them upon encounter. Now, all I have to do is click. It's a brave new world, I'm telling you.
* Someone gifted something called Dreamwidth Points to me and I keep meaning to say thank you to my anonymous donor, but then forget because I haven't had much else to say to make a post. Also, I had to look up what they were. But! Thank you, Anonymous, for the gift and I shall make use of it now that I know what they do. :)
* Holy carp and other religious fish, my hockey team is in a funk. Eighteen goals in seven periods the Rangers gave up. EIGHTEEN! That is a lot and that's terrible. They're not supposed to be very good, but when they put in effort they can sort of fake mediocre and recently they haven't even managed that.
* I am officially back in school, getting stuff graded and everything. I'm on the bunny hill right now and the semester starts for real in a few weeks, but... school! I am not worried about the material very much, but what has become quickly apparent is that I have a bit of work to do to learn how to be a student in the 21st Century. I finished my first masters in 2001 and I wrote the exams for that longhand. Things have changed a little since then. I am going to finally have to learn Powerpoint and conferencing software and figure out how all of these new research tools work. The first go-round, if I wanted to strip-mine an article for citations, I had to sit there with a pen and paper and transcribe them upon encounter. Now, all I have to do is click. It's a brave new world, I'm telling you.
stuff about stuff
* I had to replace my desktop monitor after it blew on NYE. The new one is only an inch or two wider, but it feels like a completely different thing because it's HD. The old one had been good for what it was and it had lasted a long time: it still has a mark indicating that it's suitable for Windows Vista. :)
* In the Stupid Human Tricks department: managed to clock myself in the temple hard enough to leave a bruise this morning. I wasn't watching what I was doing and when I bent down to pick something up off the floor by the dining room table, I whacked my head against a chair back. It's sore to the touch and sore in general, but it's mostly hidden by my hair, which I'm grateful for because I don't want to look like a domestic violence victim when I'm just an idiot.
* I posted this to tumblr, but it probably makes more sense here:
* In the Stupid Human Tricks department: managed to clock myself in the temple hard enough to leave a bruise this morning. I wasn't watching what I was doing and when I bent down to pick something up off the floor by the dining room table, I whacked my head against a chair back. It's sore to the touch and sore in general, but it's mostly hidden by my hair, which I'm grateful for because I don't want to look like a domestic violence victim when I'm just an idiot.
* I posted this to tumblr, but it probably makes more sense here:
I am not going to do a Year in Fic review because pretty much the only thing I produced in 2018 was Buratino and two glorified drabbles.
I was going to be a wiseass and do the Year in Fic 2013 instead, but that was the year I started in the MCU so it was literally just the Freezer Burn series.
So then, out of curiosity, I checked 2008′s year in review and it was such a long list of SGA stuff that I had had to split it into two entries, Jan-June and July-Dec.
I don’t have a compiled list for 2003 – I started it in 2004 – but it was comics fic, X-Men and then my freefall into DC.
I can only guess what I was doing in 1998 because that was Mailing List Era and while I’m sure I have the Homicide stuff I wrote for Schism somewhere, that somewhere might be a zip file on my external drive.
I am unsure about doing any kind of author meme; I am seriously delighted when people ask me about fic or want something elaborated upon, but requiring it from others in meme form makes me feel like a diva demanding attention and prattling on unprompted feels very self-absorbed. It’s probably not healthy to be so sure that nobody cares.
So, basically, if you have questions or thoughts, I have Opinions and answers.
I was going to be a wiseass and do the Year in Fic 2013 instead, but that was the year I started in the MCU so it was literally just the Freezer Burn series.
So then, out of curiosity, I checked 2008′s year in review and it was such a long list of SGA stuff that I had had to split it into two entries, Jan-June and July-Dec.
I don’t have a compiled list for 2003 – I started it in 2004 – but it was comics fic, X-Men and then my freefall into DC.
I can only guess what I was doing in 1998 because that was Mailing List Era and while I’m sure I have the Homicide stuff I wrote for Schism somewhere, that somewhere might be a zip file on my external drive.
I am unsure about doing any kind of author meme; I am seriously delighted when people ask me about fic or want something elaborated upon, but requiring it from others in meme form makes me feel like a diva demanding attention and prattling on unprompted feels very self-absorbed. It’s probably not healthy to be so sure that nobody cares.
So, basically, if you have questions or thoughts, I have Opinions and answers.
hopefully a harbinger of 2019
Growing up means you can sit at home on NYE with your hockey and your hot toddy and your pile of tissues and not feel like you're missing out. (Except on the two-working-nostrils thing. That I'm resenting.)
A drabble, for values of drabble that are whatever I say they are. Post-CA:CW, pre-IW. In my head it's a POV shift for Buratino, but it's completely canon compliant, so that's optional.
Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova; 700 words that probably don't need a cut
( Orpheus but with better impulse control )
Happy New Year, folks.
A drabble, for values of drabble that are whatever I say they are. Post-CA:CW, pre-IW. In my head it's a POV shift for Buratino, but it's completely canon compliant, so that's optional.
Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova; 700 words that probably don't need a cut
( Orpheus but with better impulse control )
Happy New Year, folks.
fannish eras
This post is wandering around Tumblr with a not-inaccurate description of fannish eras, from the Great Foremothers of the Zine Period to the current zeitgeist. By this metric, I fall into the Dawn of Networking era, which happens to be the vaguest one and I added the following to it, in a slightly less endearing style, because it was more than webrings:
There have been a few reblogs with comments and "you forgot..."s and, since tumblr sucks for that sort of thing and I've known some of you fannish people for decades now, I think we might be able to carry on about it here. So go there, find your fannish era, or if you're my era, what did I leave out?
* Usenet and the trees of alt.whatever.whateverelse.thisthing.thatthing
* DIAL-UP. You wanted to read that longfic? Nobody in your household could use the phone for hours. Corollary: someone else in your household picking up an extension and dropping your connection. Sometimes on purpose.
* Mailing lists. Mailing lists were a HUGE part of that era.
* Tonnage limits per day: you could only post so many bytes (not words) per day because downloading the emails over dialup would take forever. Your chapters were 5kb over the limit? You either split them up over two days or got slapped by the listmod. [I posted a 203k word story to a mailing list. It took more than a month and it wasn’t a WIP.]
* That One Person With the Unreadable Formatting.
* That One Person Who Double-Spaced Every Line.
* That One Person Who Wrote Fic Nobody Else Read, But Was Very Prolific.
* Pairing lists and general lists and the people who cross-posted to all of them on the same day, so you got four copies of the same story in your inbox.
* Fandom pissing matches that resulted in offshoot mailing lists, so you had to subscribe to both so you could read all the fic.
* Saving stories by downloading emails to .txt files and crying at having to fix the formatting. Or realizing that you missed a chapter in a longfic.
* Archivists who had actual websites before Geocities or Tripod were a thing. They would ask authors for permission to put your fic on their site and it was like getting into university: you wanted to be asked by the picky archivists, not the ones who took everything in the fandom.
* IRC. At least in comics fandom, that was a huge part of the culture. *Glomping* new arrivals and apologizing for disappearing because a family member needed the phone.
* DIAL-UP. You wanted to read that longfic? Nobody in your household could use the phone for hours. Corollary: someone else in your household picking up an extension and dropping your connection. Sometimes on purpose.
* Mailing lists. Mailing lists were a HUGE part of that era.
* Tonnage limits per day: you could only post so many bytes (not words) per day because downloading the emails over dialup would take forever. Your chapters were 5kb over the limit? You either split them up over two days or got slapped by the listmod. [I posted a 203k word story to a mailing list. It took more than a month and it wasn’t a WIP.]
* That One Person With the Unreadable Formatting.
* That One Person Who Double-Spaced Every Line.
* That One Person Who Wrote Fic Nobody Else Read, But Was Very Prolific.
* Pairing lists and general lists and the people who cross-posted to all of them on the same day, so you got four copies of the same story in your inbox.
* Fandom pissing matches that resulted in offshoot mailing lists, so you had to subscribe to both so you could read all the fic.
* Saving stories by downloading emails to .txt files and crying at having to fix the formatting. Or realizing that you missed a chapter in a longfic.
* Archivists who had actual websites before Geocities or Tripod were a thing. They would ask authors for permission to put your fic on their site and it was like getting into university: you wanted to be asked by the picky archivists, not the ones who took everything in the fandom.
* IRC. At least in comics fandom, that was a huge part of the culture. *Glomping* new arrivals and apologizing for disappearing because a family member needed the phone.
There have been a few reblogs with comments and "you forgot..."s and, since tumblr sucks for that sort of thing and I've known some of you fannish people for decades now, I think we might be able to carry on about it here. So go there, find your fannish era, or if you're my era, what did I leave out?
I am become Death.... warmed over
I don't get sick often -- major stuff, yes, but I don't really catch cold at a rate commensurate with my cramped exposure to other humans on the NYC subways. I'm sick now, however, and I (for values of the person behind DMZ) have had an utterly devastating week otherwise, so... frivolity it is.
* Infinity War was trending on twitter the other day and apparently it was because it went up on Netflix. I'm all set to watch Steve's five minutes of screen time once I finish the current season of GBBO.
* I have been getting a ton (for me) comments on Maqqaba over the last fortnight and I know it wasn't because I put it on tumblr. So, whoever it was that recced it and sent people who comment my way, you have my earnest gratitude. Especially because it's Yuletide season and most folks are off reading that.
*Speaking of reading:
(L) I have a graduate degree in history of science and technology and a love of food, so this book was pretty much written for me. So far, it's a lot of fun. It's broad rather than deep -- considering much more than the fork rather than just the fork -- but I don't think that's a problem here. It's a social history more than a history of product design (although that gets covered, too) and rightly addresses class and gender issues as part of the tale. For example, smooth and finely textured food has gone from aristocratic fare (they were the ones with the laborers to pound something for hours) to proletarian (enter the food processor!) while 'rustic' and textured food has become fancy because now it's what proves the human labor that is the actual valued bit. Also the fun stuff, like how eating eating meals with a fork was at best odd and at worst a sign of moral deviancy until fairly recently.
(R) The actual mystery's a bit of a let-down for the way it resolves because it's pretty good until that point, but it's really a terrific depiction and exploration of a particular time and place and the way it addresses race and racism from all perspectives and how very clearly cut it was not. Who associates with whom and why and how and a pointed exploration of 'passing' and what comes with it, both the privileges and the price. But it's not a lecture or a harangue, it's a story and one worth reading.
* What're you all up to?
* Infinity War was trending on twitter the other day and apparently it was because it went up on Netflix. I'm all set to watch Steve's five minutes of screen time once I finish the current season of GBBO.
* I have been getting a ton (for me) comments on Maqqaba over the last fortnight and I know it wasn't because I put it on tumblr. So, whoever it was that recced it and sent people who comment my way, you have my earnest gratitude. Especially because it's Yuletide season and most folks are off reading that.
*Speaking of reading:
(L) I have a graduate degree in history of science and technology and a love of food, so this book was pretty much written for me. So far, it's a lot of fun. It's broad rather than deep -- considering much more than the fork rather than just the fork -- but I don't think that's a problem here. It's a social history more than a history of product design (although that gets covered, too) and rightly addresses class and gender issues as part of the tale. For example, smooth and finely textured food has gone from aristocratic fare (they were the ones with the laborers to pound something for hours) to proletarian (enter the food processor!) while 'rustic' and textured food has become fancy because now it's what proves the human labor that is the actual valued bit. Also the fun stuff, like how eating eating meals with a fork was at best odd and at worst a sign of moral deviancy until fairly recently.
(R) The actual mystery's a bit of a let-down for the way it resolves because it's pretty good until that point, but it's really a terrific depiction and exploration of a particular time and place and the way it addresses race and racism from all perspectives and how very clearly cut it was not. Who associates with whom and why and how and a pointed exploration of 'passing' and what comes with it, both the privileges and the price. But it's not a lecture or a harangue, it's a story and one worth reading.
* What're you all up to?
stuff about stuff
(1) Is there a way to filter your reading page so it's just people and not communities? I can't figure out how to make scans_daily's pictures not gargantuan and yes I've tried the setting on my page.
(2) I posted these preview images from the Deadwood movie over on Tumblr and I'm just getting so much joy out of the tags and the replies. It's nothing to do with me at all, of course, but just to see other people giddy at the actually-really-happening return of our favorite hoopleheads is fun.
Also, if you never watched Deadwood, watch Deadwood. Three short seasons, pretty sure it's on Amazon and HBO's streaming channel.
(3) I have recced books here, so I should rec a comic I read recently and was thoroughly charmed by:
Yes, I'm reccing fantasy romance. Yes, I am reading a fantasy romance. But it's really well done and well-considered. There is impressive political/cultural/social worldbuilding and a female-led creative staff that sticks a pin in all of the tropes of the genre that pit women against each other. Also, it's gorgeous.
(2) I posted these preview images from the Deadwood movie over on Tumblr and I'm just getting so much joy out of the tags and the replies. It's nothing to do with me at all, of course, but just to see other people giddy at the actually-really-happening return of our favorite hoopleheads is fun.
Also, if you never watched Deadwood, watch Deadwood. Three short seasons, pretty sure it's on Amazon and HBO's streaming channel.
(3) I have recced books here, so I should rec a comic I read recently and was thoroughly charmed by:
SLEEPLESS
Lady 'Poppy' Pyppenia is guarded by the Sleepless Knight Cyrenic, but danger is around every corner once the new king is coronated. Writer SARAH VAUGHN (ALEX + ADA, ETERNAL EMPIRE) and artist LEILA DEL DUCA (SHUTTER, AFAR) team up with editor / colorist ALISSA SALLAH and letterer DERON BENNETT for this new fantasy romance.
Yes, I'm reccing fantasy romance. Yes, I am reading a fantasy romance. But it's really well done and well-considered. There is impressive political/cultural/social worldbuilding and a female-led creative staff that sticks a pin in all of the tropes of the genre that pit women against each other. Also, it's gorgeous.
*chirp*
So I went over to Tumblr and my dash has plenty of stuff on it, but no fannish content at all. It's like Garfield minus Garfield over there. It's very odd. I mean, my dash is all sophisticated and cultured now, but that's not why I went on there in the first place.
Also, belated greetings to everyone who has followed me in the last few days. Welcome and feel free to (re)-introduce yourself. :)
Also, belated greetings to everyone who has followed me in the last few days. Welcome and feel free to (re)-introduce yourself. :)
Entry tags:
not that kind of test
This is the recipe I'm making for dinner tonight: Spicy Chickpea and Sour Tomato Curry with Noodles. (Yes, it's 9pm and I'm still making dinner.)
I am, to be completely immodest, a very good cook. I consider the recipe oddly written, but extremely easy to follow. The oddness throws me a little, though, which is why I'm putting it up here.
The first step is 'caramelize the onions' in a lot more words. It has a description of what's supposed to happen, more or less, but no sense of how long it should take beyond "a while" and leaves the end state at "browned to your liking."
The second step has the similarly unhelpful "let the sauce simmer."
I know caramelizing onions takes a half-hour or so and what kind of brown it's supposed to be and I have a good sense of how long a simmer it would need for the flavors to meld, since that's the point of that action. But if you are not familiar with these processes or if you are just starting to stretch your culinary wings, does this kind of instruction make things easier or just anxiety-inducing because it's so laid-back and vague?
I am, to be completely immodest, a very good cook. I consider the recipe oddly written, but extremely easy to follow. The oddness throws me a little, though, which is why I'm putting it up here.
The first step is 'caramelize the onions' in a lot more words. It has a description of what's supposed to happen, more or less, but no sense of how long it should take beyond "a while" and leaves the end state at "browned to your liking."
The second step has the similarly unhelpful "let the sauce simmer."
I know caramelizing onions takes a half-hour or so and what kind of brown it's supposed to be and I have a good sense of how long a simmer it would need for the flavors to meld, since that's the point of that action. But if you are not familiar with these processes or if you are just starting to stretch your culinary wings, does this kind of instruction make things easier or just anxiety-inducing because it's so laid-back and vague?
Entry tags:
squeekiller
The Cloying Fantasia of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
It took two minutes of Season 2 before someone said the words: “Gosh, you’re amazing.” The speaker was one of Miriam (Midge) Maisel’s colleagues at the B. Altman switchboard, but, really, it might have been anyone: a genius painter at the Cedar Inn, who says, “It’s like Vermeer painted you! Or you swallowed a light bulb”; a Johnny Mathis-esque crooner at a telethon; Lenny Bruce; Jane Jacobs; Midge’s estranged husband, Joel, who is still stuck on her; her boyfriend, a choosy doctor who prefers Midge to the vapid gold-diggers in the Catskills; her devoted agent, Susie; or even some Parisian drag queens, who dub her Miss America. Is there anyone who doesn’t love Midge?
Me, as it happens. Last year, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was a boffo hit for Amazon and for its top-hatted creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino. The series swept the Emmys. It sent shivers of delight up the spines of vintage-shoppers everywhere. Lusciously art-directed, from Midge’s classic six to her kitten heels, the production landed at an ideal moment, tapping into a desperation—particularly among women—for something sweet and inspiring. No more “Handmaid’s Tale,” no more pussy-grabbing. “Mrs. Maisel” offered a bright-pink escape hatch from 2017.
I craved such an escape myself—but I was also mystified by the show’s reception, because the first season struck me as both treacly and exhausting. This was true despite its having a premise that was so far up my alley it was practically chopping onions in my kitchen: a Jewish girl does standup comedy in the late nineteen-fifties in New York, when Joan Rivers first rose to fame. And, in fact, the show’s heroine, played by Rachel Brosnahan, is—exactly like Rivers was—a college-educated rich girl in her twenties, who is forced to move back home after her marriage blows up. When Midge enters show biz, her shtick, just like Rivers’s was, is to dress for a date, in a black dress and pearls, then free-associate truths about women’s lives. As with Rivers, the radical “sick” comic Lenny Bruce is Midge’s inspiration—and, in the show, Bruce (Luke Kirby) becomes her mentor. (In real life, after Rivers once bombed, Bruce left her a note: “You’re right, they’re wrong.” She kept it in her bra, for luck.)
But “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” makes two major adjustments. First, it gives Midge kids, a baby and a toddler. It also makes her a winner. Whereas Rivers was an alienated oddball, a loner fueled by rejection, gagging onstage at her own “ugliness,” Midge is popular and pretty. She’s skilled (and brags of her skill) at everything from sex to brisket. When Joel, a wannabe comic, cheats with his secretary, Midge gets drunk and jumps onstage, and, right away, she kills. She keeps on killing—at cocktail parties and dive bars, even at a Washington Square rally, where she awes Jane Jacobs with a speech about how women “accessorize” the world, as a multiethnic crowd cheers. “Oh, that’s good, write that down,” Jacobs tells her assistant....
Many people found this fantasy invigorating. For me, it felt grating, and not just in terms of verisimilitude—the verbal anachronisms (“totally”), the sitcom clams (“Good talk!”), the cloying Disneyfication of Midge’s Jewish family—but in its central psychology. In “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” sexism exists. But it never gets inside Midge. Her marvelousness comes from the fact that she’s immune, a self-adoring alpha whose routines feel like feminist TED talks, with some “fucks” thrown in. Brosnahan delivers them with moxie, but they’re rarely funny. They’re also the opposite of Rivers’s act, which relied on the tension between looking pretty and calling herself a dog—provoking taboo laughs from the revelation that even this nice girl felt like a loser, desperate, unfuckable.
In “Mrs. Maisel,” Rivers’s more unsettling qualities—her vengefulness, her perception of women as competitors, her eating disorder—all get displaced onto Midge’s foe, fat-joke Sophie, who lives in an opulent French-themed apartment, like the one Rivers lived in, collects furs, and, like the real Joan, wanted to be a serious actress. It’s as if Rivers has been split into good Joan and bad Joan, because it’s too hard to make such a caustic trailblazer seem cute, to acknowledge how much her success derived from being shaped by misogyny, not from transcending it.
I really wanted to love this show because, like Nussbaum, it's squarely up my alley. I had to overcome a few quibbles to be charmed by the pilot -- is pretty Irish girl Brosnahan the best they could do for an Ashkenazi Jew? Why the hell is Midge (a) a regular at a butcher shop that sells pork and (b) why is she going there to get High Holiday food... to serve a rabbi?!? -- but I just kept noticing more things that annoyed me. And Midge being a Mary Sue eventually got to be too much for me.
The show was recced to me by a good friend and I passed the rec on to my BFF, who loves it a lot. So I just sort of stopped watching without explaining why because I didn't want to harsh anyone else's squee and because I thought I was just being a sourpuss. But apparently I'm not the only one, so here I am, letting my squeekiller flag fly.