Being Human 4.04

You know, I enjoy the current season, but still, it feels like we're back in season 1 territory emotionally and intellectually, which after the narrative heights of season 3 is... weird. It's not necessarily a bad choice and allows you to breathe which s3 did not, but all the same, there's this sense of - well, backslide. I'm trying to decide whether Miracle Day after Children of Earth or season 5 of Angel after season 4 (*waves s4 of AtS was the best* banner as determined as ever*) is the most appropriate comparison.

( Also, if your title is a Priestly pun you should have made the story more Priestley-esque )

Oh Really? ( Wednesday Edition)

I know I've writtten and posted a rant about this very subject, the trivialization of the term "Nazi" in English, and now I can't find it again. Did anyone by any chance preserve it in their memories? Anyway: this post reminds me just how much I'm irked by it again. So do several of the comments. On the other hand, you learn something new every day: one of the comments brought up the Hitler-refused-to-shake-Jesse-Owens'-hand story which btw I grew up with as well and another poster replied that Owens had said: "Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." This was news to me, I googled, and it was indeed an authentic Owens quote.

Anyway, being linguistically and historically annoyed (and newly informed about a detail), I also met my quota of being annoyed by fannish habits, subsection: response to female characters before they even utter one word on screen. Re: Lucy Liu casting news, what she said. This is the very first detail making me remotely interested in Elementary, but if I come across much more "zomg! our holy slash pairing RUINED BY GENDERSWAP!" reactions, I'm tuning in for that reason alone. And hope the next Batman movie will have a surprise!female Robin which Nolan somehow managed to smuggle by the spoiler hounds, so there. (Otoh Christopher Nolan, aka the man who gave Commissioner Gordon a son as a plot point while totally ignoring the canonical niece/adopted daughter... I doubt it.) I'm also having flashbacks to Dirk Benedict making an utter ass of himself by ranting about how horrible a female Starbuck was. Incidentally, I anti-shipped Kara/Lee, but they do demonstrate effectively that making one half of a popular slash pairing female in a new tv incarnation might lead to on screen sex, it does not necessarily lead to a happy ending. Or even the conclusion that sex was a good idea. More the opposite. (Kara's Starbuck and Lee's Apollo made good friends and absolutely catastrophic lovers. Which thankfully they figured out at last.)

And while I'm at it: you know what else annoys me? The whole nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach in various so called "bromances". Sherlock and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes actually being prime examples. Look, it may have been fun when Gore Vidal wrote his Ben Hur script like that in the 50s, but, current American Republican candidates for the presidency not withstanding, theoretically we live in more advanced times. Asexual Holmes is fine with me. Gay Holmes is fine with me. Bi Holmes is fine with me. Straight Holmes is fine with me. (Ditto for Watson.) But what is so getting old is the endless playing coy and runnig "gay! only not!" gags. Either go for main text or find another running gag, I say.

British Trailer for The Avengers

...which has a lot of scenes the American one didn't have. Best of all: it's finally a trailer wherein Natasha speaks (repeatedly) and gets as much trailer time as the guys do. Yay!