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cimoreneYou know how after writing for a while, your brain gets thirsty and you just want to read and read and read and watch and watch and watch tv and movies until you're full of snippets and things again? It's not even like I ran out of ideas, because if you twisted my arm I could've written all this time, I just haven't been able to squeeze it in around the compulsion to consume books and/or fanfic and movies and television. I've watched a season of
I felt cheated when I discovered Kristen Bell isn't actually in it except as the voice, and the plots were just as dumb and teenie as expected. I kept watching for the fashion, though. It was a definite step up from Next Top Model, which is what I am usually reduced to when I really want to look at clothes. And then there was the fascinating way that all these plot elements seemed to be ripped off from VM even though the producers are different and it's based on books that predate the VM series; maybe Daddy issues, omg-incest! scares, and Good Girl-Bad Girl/Dumbass Nice Boy-Bad Boy BFF pairings are bog-standard teenie television, even though I never noticed them being quite like that on the teenie television I found myself unable to avoid in the past.
, all of Heroes up to the point where Wax stopped watching a month or so ago which was
I've been somewhat surprised because in the course of time, and all of the times I've watched over Wax's shoulder and sat next to her reading while she watched, I think I've caught about 1/4 of everything that happened, but I still had no concept of how very much the plot is driven by stupidity. As I expressed to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
perhael, it's a bit like watching the climax of a Disney movie over and over, and I generally despised those as a child because I can't stand plots that depend on protagonist stupidity - I just stand there in disgust, shouting at the screen, "Don't do it! Don't say it! Don't go there! Are you a cretin?" Alternatively, it's like reading Nancy Drew, because in Heroes there's a lot more of the desperate criminals and dark rooms and physical danger and that sort of thing, although combined with more pedestrian problems, like telling people not to do things and then not telling them why, because a simple "Because he's a near-omnipotent serial killer" or "because you're being stalked by [insert whoever here] and they know where you are" or something would barely take any longer to say than "because I said so" or "because it just isn't a good idea". The show would be a lot shorter if they ever did that, though, or if anyone ever learned from their past stupidity, and they don't seem to, do they?
Papa Bennet is my favourite character, and his stupidity in never trusting his family is horribly egregious but perhaps the most excusable since real adults have a long, mind-bendingly idiotic history of trying to protect their children from knowledge in ways that only result in tears/death/unprotected teenage sex. Everyone on the show has to be stupid about 80% of the time to keep the plot going. Some are worse than others, of course. I actually want to kill off DL and Ando, preferably with my own hands, at this point (unless DL stays dead? I can hope), whereas I'm in favour of Hiro and Peter being allowed to live. Claire escapes my wrath only because she's a teenie and they're supposed to be stupid.
From my earlier, more casual watching, I had no idea how annoying all this was. I wonder if editing every plot down to a third its current length would make the whole thing a lot more watchable. And this is even though on balance I like the show - it's shiny and nicely produced and at least there's a lot of plot to follow and a dose of mysteries to keep up with, even if they're kept in the air with a lot of annoying characterisation. Also, it has Papa Bennet and Jessica and George Takei (well, had), and also canonical kidfic. And Kristen Bell.
, a lot of movies, the entire Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert fandom (full of badfic, I assure you), and two more Heyer novels that I got for my birthday. Bath Tangle was a solid, classic Heyer effort with a bossy and argumentative pair of leads and then a secondary male and female character who were both amusingly wet-blanketish, and they were mismatched at the beginning and eventually sorted themselves out. The Talisman Ring, on the other hand, was absolutely the most fun thing I've read in months, and by far the best Heyer I've picked up so far in my collecting-and-rereading project.
The Talisman Ring is set during the French Revolution and also contains four principal characters and is sparklingly hilarious, adventurous, and rollicking all the way through. Clearing the name of the heir to the fortune, who has been framed by his wicked dandy cousin, is the object of the quest, and recovering an heirloom ring which the plot hinges around. Meanwhile most of the action takes place in an inn in town, where the heroine meets the secondary heroine (a hot-headed, romance-reading teenie of French birth), and they spend most of the book hiding the fugitive and trying to break into the culprit's house in search of the ring. It's absolutely dazzling. Heyer takes her classic drawling dandy figure, who is often a hero and frequently a sidekick, and turns him into a Gothic (ish) villain for this piece to great advantage; it's only a pity that he doesn't have more stage time. Meanwhile the adventuresome framed heir and the French teenie, who have an epic love, are used mainly as objects of hilarity, both because of their melodrama and because they're kind of naïve and feather-witted and always dying to go rushing off into adventure. The protagonist-heroine, who acts more or less as their sidekick in the traditional adventure sense, adds a whole brilliant dimension of meta and irony to the whole thing by her style of affectionately mocking narration, and the gentleman who provides the romantic interest for her is cast as a straight man in most of the comedy scenes with his depressing insistence on being practical and using logic. They make an excellent team, in fact. It turns the genre somewhat on its head, but just as affectionately as the protagonist treats the French-born teenie and the framed heir (who's also become a smuggler, of course) - and while making use the entire time of a plot which might belong to that genre, unlike, say, Austen's wonderful Northanger Abbey, another brilliant meta work of this type. Because the protagonist and her romantic interest participate in the plot with a lot of humour and eye-rolling, it's sort of like an MST, with the MST characters stuck right into the plot. This has jumped right up there with The Grand Sophy in my list of favourite Heyers.
My parents and my favourite aunt sent me money for Christmas and we couldn't use it at Threadless like we planned to because they're one of the twenty million online stores that won't let your billing address conflict with your shipping address. Again I say, what if my parents wanted to buy something for me? Or what if I were a citizen of the US with a bank account there studying at an international university? OH, WAIT. I AM. Jesus Enya-listening Christ, I am getting sick of this. It's just stupid! The world is internationally networked! How many people do I know with family and best friends in other countries? It might be time for internet businesses to catch up with that considering the internet is how those people keep in touch with each other.
I felt cheated when I discovered Kristen Bell isn't actually in it except as the voice, and the plots were just as dumb and teenie as expected. I kept watching for the fashion, though. It was a definite step up from Next Top Model, which is what I am usually reduced to when I really want to look at clothes. And then there was the fascinating way that all these plot elements seemed to be ripped off from VM even though the producers are different and it's based on books that predate the VM series; maybe Daddy issues, omg-incest! scares, and Good Girl-Bad Girl/Dumbass Nice Boy-Bad Boy BFF pairings are bog-standard teenie television, even though I never noticed them being quite like that on the teenie television I found myself unable to avoid in the past.
, all of Heroes up to the point where Wax stopped watching a month or so ago which was
I've been somewhat surprised because in the course of time, and all of the times I've watched over Wax's shoulder and sat next to her reading while she watched, I think I've caught about 1/4 of everything that happened, but I still had no concept of how very much the plot is driven by stupidity. As I expressed to
perhael, it's a bit like watching the climax of a Disney movie over and over, and I generally despised those as a child because I can't stand plots that depend on protagonist stupidity - I just stand there in disgust, shouting at the screen, "Don't do it! Don't say it! Don't go there! Are you a cretin?" Alternatively, it's like reading Nancy Drew, because in Heroes there's a lot more of the desperate criminals and dark rooms and physical danger and that sort of thing, although combined with more pedestrian problems, like telling people not to do things and then not telling them why, because a simple "Because he's a near-omnipotent serial killer" or "because you're being stalked by [insert whoever here] and they know where you are" or something would barely take any longer to say than "because I said so" or "because it just isn't a good idea". The show would be a lot shorter if they ever did that, though, or if anyone ever learned from their past stupidity, and they don't seem to, do they? Papa Bennet is my favourite character, and his stupidity in never trusting his family is horribly egregious but perhaps the most excusable since real adults have a long, mind-bendingly idiotic history of trying to protect their children from knowledge in ways that only result in tears/death/unprotected teenage sex. Everyone on the show has to be stupid about 80% of the time to keep the plot going. Some are worse than others, of course. I actually want to kill off DL and Ando, preferably with my own hands, at this point (unless DL stays dead? I can hope), whereas I'm in favour of Hiro and Peter being allowed to live. Claire escapes my wrath only because she's a teenie and they're supposed to be stupid.
From my earlier, more casual watching, I had no idea how annoying all this was. I wonder if editing every plot down to a third its current length would make the whole thing a lot more watchable. And this is even though on balance I like the show - it's shiny and nicely produced and at least there's a lot of plot to follow and a dose of mysteries to keep up with, even if they're kept in the air with a lot of annoying characterisation. Also, it has Papa Bennet and Jessica and George Takei (well, had), and also canonical kidfic. And Kristen Bell.
, a lot of movies, the entire Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert fandom (full of badfic, I assure you), and two more Heyer novels that I got for my birthday. Bath Tangle was a solid, classic Heyer effort with a bossy and argumentative pair of leads and then a secondary male and female character who were both amusingly wet-blanketish, and they were mismatched at the beginning and eventually sorted themselves out. The Talisman Ring, on the other hand, was absolutely the most fun thing I've read in months, and by far the best Heyer I've picked up so far in my collecting-and-rereading project.
The Talisman Ring is set during the French Revolution and also contains four principal characters and is sparklingly hilarious, adventurous, and rollicking all the way through. Clearing the name of the heir to the fortune, who has been framed by his wicked dandy cousin, is the object of the quest, and recovering an heirloom ring which the plot hinges around. Meanwhile most of the action takes place in an inn in town, where the heroine meets the secondary heroine (a hot-headed, romance-reading teenie of French birth), and they spend most of the book hiding the fugitive and trying to break into the culprit's house in search of the ring. It's absolutely dazzling. Heyer takes her classic drawling dandy figure, who is often a hero and frequently a sidekick, and turns him into a Gothic (ish) villain for this piece to great advantage; it's only a pity that he doesn't have more stage time. Meanwhile the adventuresome framed heir and the French teenie, who have an epic love, are used mainly as objects of hilarity, both because of their melodrama and because they're kind of naïve and feather-witted and always dying to go rushing off into adventure. The protagonist-heroine, who acts more or less as their sidekick in the traditional adventure sense, adds a whole brilliant dimension of meta and irony to the whole thing by her style of affectionately mocking narration, and the gentleman who provides the romantic interest for her is cast as a straight man in most of the comedy scenes with his depressing insistence on being practical and using logic. They make an excellent team, in fact. It turns the genre somewhat on its head, but just as affectionately as the protagonist treats the French-born teenie and the framed heir (who's also become a smuggler, of course) - and while making use the entire time of a plot which might belong to that genre, unlike, say, Austen's wonderful Northanger Abbey, another brilliant meta work of this type. Because the protagonist and her romantic interest participate in the plot with a lot of humour and eye-rolling, it's sort of like an MST, with the MST characters stuck right into the plot. This has jumped right up there with The Grand Sophy in my list of favourite Heyers.
My parents and my favourite aunt sent me money for Christmas and we couldn't use it at Threadless like we planned to because they're one of the twenty million online stores that won't let your billing address conflict with your shipping address. Again I say, what if my parents wanted to buy something for me? Or what if I were a citizen of the US with a bank account there studying at an international university? OH, WAIT. I AM. Jesus Enya-listening Christ, I am getting sick of this. It's just stupid! The world is internationally networked! How many people do I know with family and best friends in other countries? It might be time for internet businesses to catch up with that considering the internet is how those people keep in touch with each other.
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Date: 16 Dec 2007 10:23 pm (UTC)