Link time

[selenak]

For some recent, in recent days I got more spam on lj than I got otherwise in five years. Are we due for another breakdown?


Until then, have some links, both fanfiction and meta:

Prometheus:


Persephone . It's post-movie fic by legendary-in-several-fandoms Yahtzee, developing the complicated relationship between Elizabeth Shaw and David, it's long, and it's layered. What are you still doing here instead of reading it?

Galaxy Quest:


The Headaches, the Heartaches, the Backaches, the Flops. Gwen DeMarco and the first rise and fall of Galaxy Quest. What I appreciate especially about the world buildling is that for all that Galaxy Quest obviously takes the majority of its inspiration from Star Trek, the fictional show is one of the late 70s (i.e. presumably, like the original Battlestar Galactica, made to cash into the Star Wars craze), not 60s as ST was, and this story remembers that. Characterisation wise, this is very plausible, giving us younger versions of the people we meet in the film, and catches the film's atmosphere perfectly in its mixture between funny and poignant.


Gone With The Wind:

Scarlett O'Hara meta. I love discussing Scarlett, and had fun doing so in the comments.


Sherlock, Elementary, The Avengers, Batman:


How not to act as part of the creative team, take one:


Jonathan Ross disses Elementary, Mark Gattiss agrees. Now my own take on this is that Sherlock for all its flaws is undoubtedly the more original and better written show, but so far I like Elementary more because it gives me leads and a relationship I can honestly cheer for. But even if I loathed every second of screen time Elementary ever broadcasts, I'd still consider this bad form, because the one thing you don't do is dissing the competition in public. It only makes you look petty and pisses off those fans of your show who enjoy both. Which brings me to:

How not to act as part of the creative team, take two:

Wally Pfister (cinematographer for Christopher Nolan) disses The Avengers, calling it "an appalling film". Again, obviously I'm biased (guess which superhero film I saw multiple times this summer and own the dvd of? Not The Dark Knight Rises), but that's not the point. However, luckily this particular dissing also caused a response that may serve as a lesson:

How to actually act as part of the creative team (especially as the head of one):

To wit, Joss Whedon's response, also quoted in the article I linked. He only said, when asked about Pfister's remark: “I’m sorry to hear it, I’m a fan.” Now I don't care if you think The Avengers was a waste of space, but this is brilliant, PR wise. It a) avoids pissing off fans of Nolan's Batman trilogy, who may or may not also like The Avengers, b) utterly avoids responding to Pfister's more specific criticism (about the camera angles used in The Avengers), and c) instead makes Whedon look modest and classy, and Pfister look even more petty and envious. The man hasn't been writing dialogue since decades for nothing.:)

Comments

[lonelywalker]

Oooh, Prometheus fic... Anything with "haircuts" and "cunnilingus" in its tags cannot be bad :)

[monanotlisa]

*giggle*

Agreed.

[selenak]

Quite.:)

[monanotlisa]

Like you I feel that was well-played, well-played indeed by Joss. Dear God. These other people...you've said it all.

[monanotlisa]

And oh -- I too got lj spam, but only one comment so far. Do you too only allow registered users to comment?

[selenak]

No, but I have the IP adress noted thing.

[andraste]

Gattiss really should know better. Between this and Lucy Liu's facepalm-inducing remarks on Letterman the other week, I would like to suggest that everyone involved in in making a modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes carefully remove their collective feet from their collective mouths, and then close them for a while.

Joss's response, however, is pure class *g*.

Speaking of which, I don't know if you happened to catch article from io9, but I am so with JMS on this one.

[selenak]

Haha, no, I hadn't seen this gem from JMS before!

[andraste]

A witty response to a stupid question *g*. (Who on Earth would want to know all those things about B5 before watching it? And why are there always so many people telling new viewers to skip Season Five?!)

[selenak]

My personal explanation for the "skip s5" people is that they must be the ones who never cared for Londo's and G'Kar's storylines as the heart of B5. Which is why there's a huge overlap between them and the "skip season 1" fools. Bah, as Londo would say.

[andraste]

True. They also seem to not like Sinclair, and I guess they don't think Lennier's story is worth following to its conclusion, either. And I guess they aren't big Bester fans. (I mean, the telepath storyline is weak on the whole, but: Bester!)

Someone there had actually posted a list of 'Season Five episodes you should watch' that DID NOT INCLUDE The Fall of Centauri Prime. Sure, JMS only spent five years setting up Londo's fate and G'Kar's forgiveness, feel free to skip it.

[selenak]

And I guess they aren't big Bester fans. (I mean, the telepath storyline is weak on the whole, but: Bester!)


Oh absolutely, agreed. I mean, there's a reason why on none of my rewatchs I skipped to the middle of s5. Bester! (Also Neil Gaiman.)

Any philistine who can recommend skipping The Fall of Centauri Prime is not someone I would ever want to know, full stop. Seriously.

[andraste]

Oh absolutely, agreed. I mean, there's a reason why on none of my rewatchs I skipped to the middle of s5. Bester! (Also Neil Gaiman.)

I've been scanning through the entire show grabbing clips for my remaster of Brothers in Arms, and have just this week reached Season Five. I was reminded that there are actually quite a few neat things in the first half: Lochley arriving and getting settled in, Garibaldi dealing with the aftermath of Season Four ... and of course Londo and G'Kar being Londo and G'Kar. It really is just Byron and his storyline that drags it down.

Any philistine who can recommend skipping The Fall of Centauri Prime is not someone I would ever want to know, full stop. Seriously.

I would be worried about hitting them with a large, heavy object of the cluebat variety every time I saw them. Even if you don't care about Londo and/or G'Kar, it's the pay-off to five years worth of build-up! Surely everyone wants to see exactly how the future in War Without End got that way, at the very least?

[jesuswasbatman]

Jonny Lee Miller, on the other hand, has very nice things to say about Cumberbatch's Sherlock in Metro this morning. Although they did act together on stage recently.

[selenak]

Which didn't stop Benedict Cumberbatch saying, a few months ago when getting the news re: Elementary, "Well, I suppose he has to pay the rent somehow". :( Anyway, I've never head Jonny Lee Miller be anything but complimentary about him, though of course no sooner do I write that than I expect someone to correct me and link me to a Miller outburst, for such is the rule of the internet. :)

[legionseagle]

Cumberbatch has explicitly denied making that remark and Miller seems to have accepted that view and called him "supportive" but I suppose the alternative makes a better story.

[vaznetti]

Thanks for the link to the piece about GWTW -- it's everything I've always thought about Scarlett O'Hara but didn't know how to say.

Also, I saw you mention that Lindsay Davis book aboutthe English Civil War, which I've just finished. ::waves hands around wildly:: What on earth was that ending? The whole thing just dragged on so slowly for so long, and then exploded. I kind of want to talk about it, but don't know where to start.

Rebels and Traitors.

[selenak]

We can discuss it here.

[saturnofthemoon]

These people really need to grow up. It's rather common, when a popular show comes about, for other similar shows to pop up. Last I checked, no one has a copyright on Sherlock Holmes. I enjoy both shows, Gatiss' comments are discouraging me from watching S2 of Sherlock. Quite a pity, as I rather enjoy his take on Mycroft.

[sabra_n]

It truly cracks me up that the Sherlock people are holding themselves up as bastions of originality, when...guys. You're adapting one of the best-known literary canons in the Anglophone world, and 52 trillion people have done it before you. And that's before you count all the less-direct takeoffs, from Poirot to House, the latter of which is a such a touchstone of the "genius bastard" subgenre I thought Sherlock was a bit derivative of it when I first watched.

[bobbiewickham]

That Scarlett meta is brilliant. Thanks so much for linking.

And yeah, you're so right about Whedon. There's a portion of fandom that loves to hate him, and you know, I agree with some of the criticism of him, but DAMN. Every so often he does something that gets me cackling, "Whedon, you clever bastard," and that's pretty much where that response falls under.

[meri]

It's sad to hear that the Elementary and Sherlock crews seem to be as one edge about each other as the fans can be. There is enough room in the world for two interpretations of Sherlock Holmes at a time on TV. Especially when they are so different in tone and approach. (And I, like you, vastly prefer the relationship between Sherlock/Joan than Sherlock/John.)

That being said, Joss' classy remark makes me doubly gleeful because I've been dealing with a lot of politics at work and it's amazing how keeping clam and keeping responses simple like that can really make a person seem like they're the good guy not losing their shit when everyone else is running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

[jeeps]

stay classy, Joss. ♥