Ordinary Day

We just finished watching last week’s Doctor Who, “Kill the Moon”–because we’d gotten behind what with my having to do a hard press through finishing Victory of the Hawk. But even aside from that, I’d been having a very hard time mustering up enough give-a-damn to actually watch this one. I did ask Dara and Paul if we could watch this one finally back to back with this weekend’s episode, and as it happened, we just watched “Kill the Moon” without moving on to today’s episode.

Dara just declared herself done with the show until Moffat’s gone. Me, I’m not sure if I’m bailing completely yet, but the show’s now on very thin probation with me.

(ETA: Adding in a cut tag because I do have a spoiler for the episode in here.)

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Dara and I never finished up watching the second season of Avatar: The Legend of Korra while it was airing, so we missed the finale at the time. We were feeling ambivalent about the whole thing, given that through several of those initial episodes, the characters felt like flat caricatures of themselves–especially Lin Beifong, which was just unforgivable. And I found much of what they were doing with Bolin and his relationship with Eska from the Northern Water Tribe painfully unwatchable.

But now that season 3 has started airing and I’ve been seeing delighted buzz about it, and since our housemate Paul was going to ASPLODE FROM SPOILERS if we didn’t hurry up and get caught up, we made a point of doing that this weekend.

And wow, I’m glad we did. The last few episodes of season 2 were utterly delightful. Bolin stopped being annoying. Lin finally stopped being stupid. Eska and her brother returned to being the Vulcans of this entire cast, which was great. Tenzin and his siblings all got great character development.

And Korra, oh my mighty and awesome Korra. She was amazing in the finale.

Now that series 3 is starting up, that momentum is continuing. A few spoiler-y comments behind the picture and the fold!

Mako, Korra, and Bolin

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Dear cast and crew of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,

After seeing this interview linked to by james_nicoll, I’ve got to ask: seriously? Seriously? Did your lead actor just call those of us who’ve bailed on watching your show “not geeks”? And “losers”?

If so, I’d like to note that just in case you were wondering, this is not an effective strategy to get those of us who tried your show and bailed to come back and check you out again. I’M JUST SAYIN’.

Because look. I get the whole idea of “not all heroes are super”. I really do. I am coming at this out of general love for the universe that Marvel’s set up in the movies; I don’t have any particular history with Marvel comics outside a few years in my adolescence reading the X-Men, so I have no particular investment in whether specific characters out of the comics show up in your show. But specifically because of the affection I’ve built up for the portrayed universe in the movies, I wanted to like your show. I really did. I swear.

I didn’t bail because you had no superheros in your cast. I bailed because with the exception of Coulson and maybe Agent May, I didn’t like any of your main characters. And for the most part, I’m sorry to say, your stories just were not engaging me, and that’s not accounting for the parts where they were actively pissing me off.

This isn’t a question of me being impatient for stuff to happen, either. I also understand the notion of a show sometimes needing several episodes to get its feet under it. I gave Torchwood a good season and a half before I finally bailed on it–again with the primary reason being “not liking any of the characters”.

And I’m sorry, if I just don’t like your main cast, I don’t see much reason to be spending time hanging around hoping they’ll change my mind. What incidental other characters you bring in to drive the plots means very little to me if I’m not invested in your central cast and what happens to them.

Before you tell me I’m not patient enough either, I’ll point out that I hung in there through Babylon 5′s first season as it got its act together–because even though it was rough out of the gate, I was nonetheless engaged by the characters and the plots. Likewise with Castle. Castle was REALLY rough in its first short season, and Castle as a character had all SORTS of flaws. But he was engagingly flawed, enough to keep me watching.

I’m just not getting that with S.H.I.E.L.D.

I’d say I’m sorry if you think this makes me “not a real geek”, except I’m less sorry and more pissed off by that, too. If any of you have awareness of geek culture at all, you’ll be aware that geek women have been fighting against accusations of not being real geeks for too damn long as it is.

For the record, cracks like “those aren’t geeks, those are losers”?

NOT HELPING.

Disappointedly,
Me

Edited to add:

Other places reporting on this. I’m seeing in particular in those articles that Mr. Gregg appears to have realized that shooting his mouth off in this particular fashion is, shall we say, unwise. I’m glad he’s realized this, but still, I’m not pleased at the waffly tone of “I guess I don’t mean to say that people who have been frustrated by that discovery period are necessarily losers. I just think they should be, perhaps, a little more patient.”

• sciencefiction.com
• comicbook.com

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I’m beginning to see rumblings going around the Net of disappointment in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m beginning to sympathize with the rumblers.

Cora Buhlert calls out some race and gender fail in the show here, and has a followup post here. Likewise, James Nicoll has a big discussion on race fail in the show here on his LJ.

And Dara’s got strong opinions on the politics of the show over here.

Likewise, I saw two different critiques pop up on the Whedonesque blog. TVGuide.com and HitFix.com have disappointed reviews, and meanwhile, the aforementioned Cora links off to EW.com’s thoughts on how the show could be fixed.

Me, I’m just a bit sad that something with Whedon’s name on it so far is just completely failing to grab me. Just about all the critiques I’m seeing aired are ones I’m agreeing with. I find the cast mostly really bland, even Coulson–and I’m sad to have to say that given how awesome Coulson is in the movies. But he’s only occasionally gotten interesting in the episodes that have aired so far. Telling us with big stone hints that OH HEY LOOK SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS HAPPENED TO COULSON is feeble characterization. I liked it much better when we saw Coulson’s frustration at having lost his skill at the quick draw. That was a tantalizing little bit of characterization, showing us his actual reaction to what’s happened to him, rather than trying to drop anvil-sized hints on our heads.

No one else in the cast is impressing me yet, either. Particularly Agent Ward, who Dara dubbed Agent Truthserum. And really, that’s about the only really interesting thing he’s done so far. About all I can say about his characterization is that he’s gotten slightly less assholish in five episodes. But this is not enough to get me on board with his character.

I’d like to like Agent May, since she seems to have the greatest concentration of clues–except that so far she has no interesting characterization beyond “stereotypical female badass”.

Likewise, I’d like to like the nerd duo–except that they have no interesting characteristics either. And in fact, they’ve been specifically set up to be so interchangeable that their own teammates have trouble thinking of them as individuals. Instead, they’re “Fitzsimmons”. Because it ain’t like the brains on the team need to be interesting characters above and beyond spouting nerdy technobabble.

And I’d like to like Skye, of course. She at least has had glimmers of character development, and she’s been generally entertainingly competent by comparison to the others in the cast. And I did like the reveal of her motives in the last episode that aired, at least a bit.

But after seeing what Dara’s pointed out about where the show’s going with its politics, and seeing the trend of problematic treatment of the PoC guest characters… well. I don’t have much time for TV as it is, and I especially don’t have time for TV that’s got too much fail in too many ways.

Just sayin’, S.H.I.E.L.D. I’d like to stick around. Get your shit together, won’t you? Thank you.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I just saw on tumblr this disturbing bit of reboot news: NBC is apparently planning a half-hour, comedy “sequel” to one of my all-time favorite shows, Remington Steele, according to this.

To which I must respond with an unequivocal NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NONONONONONO. Also, NO. With this helpful visual aid!

Because I mean seriously. #1, the lack of any female names associated with this project raises red flags with me. The entire point of the original show was gender issues, i.e., Laura trying to thrive in a traditionally male job. And given that the issues in question haven’t improved much in media in the intervening decades, let’s just say my faith in a show team WITHOUT A WOMAN ON IT tackling a storyline about that character’s daughter is not very high.

#2, the original show worked beautifully as an hour-long comedy/drama. It was often very funny, yes, but also often very serious. If you’re going to do a show about the daughter of those two characters trying to follow in her parents’ footsteps, why are you going to fuck it up by turning it into a straight-out comedy? In half an hour, no less? She’s going to be a private detective, right? So are you going to cram much simpler mysteries to solve into 30 minutes? UGH.

#3, the entire NOTION of the show being based on Laura and Steele’s daughter makes me facepalm. Cliche much? So you guys are pretty much stealing a play from Fanfic 101 here?

Okay sure, a serious attempt at a Steele followup would have the considerable problem of trying to compete with its own descendants, the most shining current example of which is of course Castle. I adore the hell out of Castle in no small part because Steele has more than once been cited as its spiritual ancestor, with the whole will-they-won’t-they romantic couple solving crimes dynamic. But that’s the thing–we’ve got Castle now already rather filling this niche. So you’d have to raise the bar.

I think it could be done. Like I said above, it ain’t like gender politics have particularly improved in media representation since then. Look at the whole recurring sexism in SF/F issues we’ve had the last couple of years, the whole “fake geek girl” bullshitfest, and such. Look at the rape threats women get online. Look at the particularly toxic shit women in gaming go through. Gender politics are still here and you could still totally do a current-day adaptation of Steele that would have that same core concept: i.e., Laura Holt needing to prove herself every bit as competent as a man in a traditionally masculine job. Because, yeah, apparently, this message still needs to be heard.

But I’m definitely not seeing that a 30-minute “ha ha wouldn’t it be funny if Laura and Steele’s daughter reopened her parents’ agency and had wackyfun laughytimes?” is the way to do it.

And even aside from that, it’s just not something I want to see. I’d much rather watch Castle. Or hell, the original Remington Steele. That show was pretty awesome.

ETA: And oh yes, for the record? Remington Steele? Direct ancestor of my character Richard/Julian on AetherMUSH, who was in turn the original template for Julian in Valor of the Healer and the forthcoming Vengeance of the Hunter. Pierce Brosnan is also directly responsible for my ongoing affection for J.D. Robb novels (mmmmmm Roarke mmmmmmm) and by extension, black-haired, blue-eyed Irishmen with criminal pasts.

SO I MAY BE A TAD BIASED HERE.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I’m seeing initial waves of nerd rage over this news that CBS is trying to develop its own pilot for a modernization of Sherlock Holmes, set in New York City. The timing of this, given that there is another active modernization of Sherlock Holmes in production with the BBC, is not a coincidence; note that this article says that the producers of Elementary apparently approached the producers of Sherlock to ask about taking their show over to the States, and were rebuffed.

I’m just full of “buh?” about this, myself. Mostly negative “buh?”, too, expanded out from the comment I just dropped on criminalelement.com’s post on the matter.

Part of it is the ongoing weariness of the trend of remaking every single idea that was ever popular in the last 50 years over and over and over and over and over. This goes for TV AND for Hollywood movies. Enough with the remakes and reboots already.

Part of it is the disgust with the idea that any fun concept out of non-American media or culture has to be Americanized in order for American audiences to actually watch and enjoy it. Certainly this doesn’t seem to be a problem at all for American geek culture–though I sadly admit that it’s a legitimate concern once you’re outside said geek culture.

Part of it is certainly the bad timing of trying to launch this show while Sherlock itself is still in active production.

But really, what it boils down to for me is just not trusting that the idea won’t suck. Mostly because of the fear that in transferring Holmes and Watson not only to the modern day but out of England entirely, too much will be lost that make these characters recognizably Holmes and Watson. And even more importantly, I’m leery of the risk of cultural appropriation, since so much of what makes these characters who they are is that they are, in fact, British.

I’m not inherently opposed to another attempt to modernize Holmes, mind you. I’m not even inherently opposed to porting Holmes and Watson over to the States–in the hands of suitably awesome writers, such a porting could be pulled off. There was a graphic novel a while back that explored an alternate history for Superman, asking the question of what would have happened if baby Kal-El’s ship had crashed in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas. solarbird, who’s read it, liked it quite a bit.

However, I’m much leerier about American TV writers, who by the very nature of their work are trying to attract as many viewers as possible and therefore have to think about things like “how much do we have to screw around with the source material to make it appeal as much as possible to our target audience?”, doing this with non-American cultural icons. Even if those icons are now in the public domain.

So yeah, I’m extremely dubious. Though I also have to admit that I’m curious enough that I’ll keep half an eye on this and see what reviews are like once the show finally shows up.

What do you all think? Does this have DO NOT WANT stamped all over it for you, or are you willing to check it out when it airs? Here, have a poll! (And if you’re reading this on LJ or DW or Tumblr, please to click over to the original post to leave your answers!)

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I’ve been total Scattershot Girl when it comes to blogging for some time–like many, I’ve found most of my day to day online communication shunted over to Twitter and Facebook. But that said, I’ve had several recent lovely things happen that are worth sharing with you all in longer, blog-based form. So! In no particular order:

• Finally saw The King’s Speech, since spazzkat got it via Netflix. That was a very satisfying film, and I’m not at all surprised that it’s spawned so much fanfic across my various Friends lists and such. Everyone in that film did an amazing job, and I have much increased respect for Mr. Colin Firth now. Also, mad love for the scene where the speech therapist’s wife comes home and discovers the King and Queen in her dining room. :D

• Also, as of today, finally saw Source Code with solarbird. Mad, mad props to mamishka for recommending that! It’s a nice, tight little SF flick, and if you like alternate-reality type plots, try to catch this before it vanishes entirely. If you’re local to Seattle, it’s still playing at the Meridian 16 downtown, and it’s running at the Crest as well.
• I have finally found a way I might actually read more comic books: the Dark Horse comics app for the iPad. I installed this on the grounds that a couple weekends back, Dark Horse had a sale of all its digital versions of Serenity and Firefly comics. Since I didn’t have Shepherd’s Tale yet, I thought what the hey, I’d buy ‘em all. The iPad is definitely more suited to digital comics reading than the iPhone, that’s for sure, although the iPhone does actually talk to this app as well.

Also on the iPad, I have a shiny new app called TunePal, recommended to me by Marilyn, one of the fiddle players who attends the weekly session solarbird and I have been going to. Those of you who know the Shazam app will find the way this works familiar; it basically identifies songs. But in this case, it identifies traditional Irish tunes! You can play them at the app on an actual instrument, or, it’ll identify ‘em if you’re playing them in iTunes as well. Then it goes out and hits up a big ol’ database and yoinks back several guesses as to what it thinks you just played it. It’ll show you sheet music for its guesses, and it’ll play the sheet music for you as well. And, you can add tunes out of the database manually by searching for them as well. You can’t import your own tunes, which is my only complaint about the app, but it’s otherwise very, very cool. Any of my fellow music geeks out there who are interested in trad tunes, you should be checking this out.

• Speaking of the iPhone, my coworker Joe pointed me at my new favorite iPhone game: Tiny Wings. You play a birdie with, of course, tiny tiny wings, and the object of the game is to get the birdie to fly as far as possible by tapping. It’s super-cute and only 99 cents, so check it out.
• FOLKLIFE! Well, that deserves a whole separate post, but I’m noting it here anyway.
• And while I am still technically on book buying hiatus, I’ve picked up a few freebies. And I will unrepentantly, UNREPENTANTLY I TELL YOU, break hiatus wide open to buy seanan_mcguire/Mira Grant’s Deadline this week. Because GIMME. Seriously.
• My friend ravyngyngvar is sending me a Blu-Ray of a-ha’s last concert in Oslo! Thank you, Yngvar!
• I am sorely behind on Doctor Who posts, and will shortly be doing a catchup post. It’s an indicator of how much I’ve not been paying attention to the net lately that I totally missed that BBC America did NOT air the second half of the two-parter on Saturday, to wit, bah. I did not however give enough of a damn about this to actually try to find and download the episode; it’ll air next week as far as I know, and I can wait that long. Especially given that we’re about to have the mid-season hiatus anyway. Just nobody spoil me, mmkay, those of you who’ve already caved and downloaded the ep anyway?
• And because it’s always worth saying, mmmmm blackberries of my marketboys mmmmmm.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

And I blame this on sleep deprivation after being up until 2:30am with last night’s release for work, but nonetheless, here you go, peeps!

Massive, MASSIVE spoilers for seasons 5 and 6 lie beyond the fold. Do not clickie if you are not caught up on Matt Smith’s Doctor episodes!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Picoreview: Even after several days I’m still not entirely sure what the heck happened in that episode. Or, for that matter, what I think of it.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Picoreview: Really needed to scale back on the oversaturation of color, and in some ways too clever for its own good–yet solid nonetheless.

Don’t look away from the fold, so you can be sure to remember the spoilers!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.