this and that, mostly that
Nov. 7th, 2013 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBreaking Bad rewatching unfortunately leads to Breaking Bad missing, badly. How so good, show? So very very very good?
...also it contributes to considering dropping Homeland. I don't know, I've watched the latest ep, and during the exposition about Saul's backstory with a certain s3 character I kept thinking, show, I can't help associating real life politics here and you just don't want me to, because seriously? The history of the US and Persia of the Shah era, and the time immediately preceding that, where then-Persia actually had a parliamentary democracy and the US got rid of its democractically elected leader and helped re-installing a monarchy instead, making itself popular forever more, long before Khomenei & Co. came to power - that's what comes to mind when trying to imagine a CIA agent best buddies with Shah secret service agent" relationship. So postulating that Saul was SHOCKED, SHOCKED when said guy turned out to be a villain switching sides by working for the Ayatollahs next makes me comment "you mean he was doing anything good before? As the Shah's agent, working with the US? In Persia? Seriously?" But leaving rl associations aside, it seemed to be to have a sense of emotional diffusion and not really going anywhere. Maybe I'm wrong. A few more eps, and we'll see, I suppose.
In other news, two more days until the Doctor Who Remix ficathon goes live, and I'm starting to get nervous. Writing in the larger Whoverse again after quite a while has been emotionally challenging and satisfying to me, but it also made me look for stories on some of the characters I was writing about to see whether there was anything new in the last two or three years, and, well, some, but what those stories also reminded me was that my pov on certain issues and characters remains definitely a minority pov. So I tell myself, self, be prepared. Not in a Scar-in-Lion-King way, since he wasn't, or in a Torchwood way, since they weren't. :)
Speaking of the Whoverse, it's getting harder to avoid spoilers for the big anniversary episode, because spoiler cuts apparantly are a strange and unmasterable thing to mainstream publications, which makes me wary of navigating the 'net until November 23rd because I don't want to be spoiled.
****
Not entirely unrelated: I was thinking about how flexible, or not flexible, affection for characters is. For me, since I can't speak for anyone else. Some characters you immediately take to (or against), sure, but maybe it's a part of getting older than in the last decade, especially in the last five years or so, the number of characters I developed deep affection for not at first sight or even in their first season but later in their respective canons has risen whereas the number of characters I immediately fall for has shrunk. Which, incidentally, contributes to frustration when fandom friends (or acquaintances) start those canons and make snap judgments that make me inwardly go "but wait, yes, such and such certainly seems that way this early, but later she/he becomes so fascinatingly layered that you'll even see those early canon moments with other eyes". To get a bit less abstract, Skyler, Marie and Hank in Breaking Bad or Gwen Cooper in Torchwood are all characters that in their respective first seasons I was indifferent to. Didn't hate them, as lots of fans apparantly did, but I also had no particular fondness for them. Whereas later on they became my dearly beloved favourites I would get defensive about to no end. Or: on good old (well, new) Battlestar Galactica, both the affection for Gaius Baltar or Ellen and Saul Tigh and the dislike of Bill Adama definitely wasn't there at the start for me. I was amused by Gaius and Ellen, and okay with Bill, but my instant favourite in the first season had been Laura Roslin. By the time the show wrapped up, I still liked Laura but didn't love her anymore, deeply loathed Adama, whereas I loved Gaius B., and both Tighs. (The Sixes in their various incarnations are a special case; I had been intrigued by them from the get go but it wasn't love until late s2.) All of this makes me approach long term (i.e. both tv and book series, as opposed to movies) canons in a sightly different ways than I used to: I no longer assume that character x I fell for on sight, on the rare occasion when I do, will still be my favourite later in canon time, and I'm more attentive to and patient with characters that don't immediately fascinate me because who knows, maybe they'll be the ones who sneak up on me when I least expect it.
...and then there is the tried and true method of changing character affection, which I've found works in two thirds of all the cases for me: a majority of other fans decide X is absolutely the worst and turn nearly every fannish discussion around to bash X, often in comparison to extolling the virtues of Y. Now, even if at the start of all this I myself was more fond of Y and had no opinion on X because frankly, X never was that interesting to me, few things are more guaranteed to make me bristle, decide to examine events from X' pov and look at Y with a more critical eye. It's perhaps a bit silly - after all, it's a reaction to other people's reactions, not to something the characters in question did - but it's undeniably there within me. And it works about 70% of the time.
...also it contributes to considering dropping Homeland. I don't know, I've watched the latest ep, and during the exposition about Saul's backstory with a certain s3 character I kept thinking, show, I can't help associating real life politics here and you just don't want me to, because seriously? The history of the US and Persia of the Shah era, and the time immediately preceding that, where then-Persia actually had a parliamentary democracy and the US got rid of its democractically elected leader and helped re-installing a monarchy instead, making itself popular forever more, long before Khomenei & Co. came to power - that's what comes to mind when trying to imagine a CIA agent best buddies with Shah secret service agent" relationship. So postulating that Saul was SHOCKED, SHOCKED when said guy turned out to be a villain switching sides by working for the Ayatollahs next makes me comment "you mean he was doing anything good before? As the Shah's agent, working with the US? In Persia? Seriously?" But leaving rl associations aside, it seemed to be to have a sense of emotional diffusion and not really going anywhere. Maybe I'm wrong. A few more eps, and we'll see, I suppose.
In other news, two more days until the Doctor Who Remix ficathon goes live, and I'm starting to get nervous. Writing in the larger Whoverse again after quite a while has been emotionally challenging and satisfying to me, but it also made me look for stories on some of the characters I was writing about to see whether there was anything new in the last two or three years, and, well, some, but what those stories also reminded me was that my pov on certain issues and characters remains definitely a minority pov. So I tell myself, self, be prepared. Not in a Scar-in-Lion-King way, since he wasn't, or in a Torchwood way, since they weren't. :)
Speaking of the Whoverse, it's getting harder to avoid spoilers for the big anniversary episode, because spoiler cuts apparantly are a strange and unmasterable thing to mainstream publications, which makes me wary of navigating the 'net until November 23rd because I don't want to be spoiled.
****
Not entirely unrelated: I was thinking about how flexible, or not flexible, affection for characters is. For me, since I can't speak for anyone else. Some characters you immediately take to (or against), sure, but maybe it's a part of getting older than in the last decade, especially in the last five years or so, the number of characters I developed deep affection for not at first sight or even in their first season but later in their respective canons has risen whereas the number of characters I immediately fall for has shrunk. Which, incidentally, contributes to frustration when fandom friends (or acquaintances) start those canons and make snap judgments that make me inwardly go "but wait, yes, such and such certainly seems that way this early, but later she/he becomes so fascinatingly layered that you'll even see those early canon moments with other eyes". To get a bit less abstract, Skyler, Marie and Hank in Breaking Bad or Gwen Cooper in Torchwood are all characters that in their respective first seasons I was indifferent to. Didn't hate them, as lots of fans apparantly did, but I also had no particular fondness for them. Whereas later on they became my dearly beloved favourites I would get defensive about to no end. Or: on good old (well, new) Battlestar Galactica, both the affection for Gaius Baltar or Ellen and Saul Tigh and the dislike of Bill Adama definitely wasn't there at the start for me. I was amused by Gaius and Ellen, and okay with Bill, but my instant favourite in the first season had been Laura Roslin. By the time the show wrapped up, I still liked Laura but didn't love her anymore, deeply loathed Adama, whereas I loved Gaius B., and both Tighs. (The Sixes in their various incarnations are a special case; I had been intrigued by them from the get go but it wasn't love until late s2.) All of this makes me approach long term (i.e. both tv and book series, as opposed to movies) canons in a sightly different ways than I used to: I no longer assume that character x I fell for on sight, on the rare occasion when I do, will still be my favourite later in canon time, and I'm more attentive to and patient with characters that don't immediately fascinate me because who knows, maybe they'll be the ones who sneak up on me when I least expect it.
...and then there is the tried and true method of changing character affection, which I've found works in two thirds of all the cases for me: a majority of other fans decide X is absolutely the worst and turn nearly every fannish discussion around to bash X, often in comparison to extolling the virtues of Y. Now, even if at the start of all this I myself was more fond of Y and had no opinion on X because frankly, X never was that interesting to me, few things are more guaranteed to make me bristle, decide to examine events from X' pov and look at Y with a more critical eye. It's perhaps a bit silly - after all, it's a reaction to other people's reactions, not to something the characters in question did - but it's undeniably there within me. And it works about 70% of the time.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 02:19 pm (UTC)With Skyler, the fleshing out starts a bit earlier than it does for Marie - back when I had finished the first season with no idea of what was to come, I thought the last two or three eps made her interesting to me, though emotionally I still wasn't connected - but I think in addition to BB being that kind of show, it's the general first season thing: Walter is the main character, who needs to be established, so naturally the show explores him first, and Jesse is the most important supporting character, so again, ditto.
BTW, I'd be curious what you think of 1.04 anyway, because Vince Gilligan as well as the fans saw it as an early turning point of the show, and which story it was going to tell about its main character.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 02:24 pm (UTC)I wasn't planning to watch further right away but since you mentioned that episode 4 is a key one, now I might have to.