must be the truth
Mar. 23rd, 2011 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
langwidereAll right! So. Yes. Armageddon happened/is happening in Japan! That is/was pretty awful, is/wasn't it? Also, additionally, ew, America is now engaged in a fun new war with some profoundly unlucky Arabs who were no threat to our security in either the short term or the long term, and also, randomly, there's going to be a guaranteed-awful Buffy reboot appearing in a theater near you, so it looks like God or the Spaghetti Monster or Father Dis or Satan or whomever has a hand steering the tiller of fate really, really liked 2005. Um. I was following news of the inspiring uprisings in the Middle East & North Africa as closely as it is possible for someone like me to follow them, and then things started kind of turning to shit, with US-backed dictators & their armies turning on their own people or on people adjacent to their empires, Sarah Palin launching herself at India and talking in public, the American establishment ignoring/laughing at pro-democracy protestors all over the place because all the American establishment cares about is who will sell it oil and protect Israel's nutty interests, etc. and so I stopped. Also, I am not going to say anything about the horrors people have suffered/are suffering in Japan, because what would I say? Gee, bummer? Hope things turn around for you soon, Entire Nation of Japan? Nothing is the way to go there. If we went with a little more "nothing" in this horrible, horrible country, just in general, I think the world would really be a better place (no homo) (literally).
Also, speaking of which, I am not ever voting again*. I don't care who gets elected president next. I don't care if the sticky illiterate scooter-powered hordes elect John McCain, or Haley Barbour, or a genetic recombinant of Jefferson Davis and Ronald Reagan, or Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Fuck you, America. I hope the evil clown (by which I mean "Haley Barbour") eats every last one of you.
Anyway, so, watch as I change the topic with painful obviousness:
Sherlock
I still can't find my damn links, which I know are around here someplace, but let's give it a go anyway. As the official last person to comment on this series I will keep things really brief, because I love you. But, so: Firstly, I would like to draw a distinction here between Sherlock the show, which is a flashy, fun, showbiz extravaganza on the order of Doctor Who, which I find pleasantly mediocre but not terribly exciting, and Sherlock the Sherlock, who is an entirely separate order of awesomeness. I'm not sure Sherlock the show is really picking up what Conan Doyle put down in his stories (although I was impressed by the Victorian-appropriate characterization of Chinese mobsters -- AND WHAT, BY THE WAY? -- in The Blind Banker; spot-on, lads! tally-ho! view-halloo!), but I cannot say enough drooly things about Benedict Cumberbatch, whose theatrical, neurotic portrayal of the totally impossible title character is every bit as accurate and arresting as Jeremy Brett's iconic interpretation. I cannot wait until he is actually forced to play the violin on camera. Word. Secondly, I want to say that Martin Freeman's intolerably cute Watson is pretty much the reason the show is historical-grade teevee entertainment: Sherlock is a compelling but remote archetype, the antecedent of a long line of shadowed arbiters of chaos who stand between ourselves and darkness -- but Watson is the human lens through which Sherlock's abnormal brilliance is both refracted and magnified. To that end, Sherlock's Watson is somehow both perfectly ordinary and unique. His slate is blank enough that he can serve as a Mary Sue for fanfic authors all over the internet; simultaneously, though, he's so specifically calibrated that he's really difficult to write correctly. Freeman somehow communicates his epic, melancholy good-guyness by just wandering into a scene and standing in the background wearing a slightly worried expression -- this is pretty close to being a magic trick, actually -- and his obvious appreciation of Sherlock's talent comes off looking like a natural reaction, with no hint of fantardian, zeta-male creepiness. He and Sherlock, together, form a unbroken continuity of Victorian heroism. They could be horsed. It is adorable. Uh, there were things about the show itself that I liked a lot, too, including a really neat opening-episode montage that depicted Sherlock charting the streets of London on a backlit mental map while chasing a cab, the characters' pedestrian fondness for technology, and the improbable architecture of 222B Baker Street (← ETA: BAHAHA ♥). But honestly, I think that the actors, all the actors, could've been performing on a blank stage to similar effect. I find peculiar the idea that the series is 'derivative' -- the joke there, of course, is that the "detectives" of CSI, Law & Order, and NCIS et alia have been using Sherlock Holmes's magical, science-free backwards processes of deduction to solve crimes since their inception. In this case, the origin-story is merely taking back its own territory. (Haters gonna hate.) I give the series an A-, splitting the difference between the production's solid B and the actors' A+.
(Also, Lestrade is hot.)
Yes, that was "really brief."
Anybody hiding any good anime around here anyplace? I didn't even bother to finish Hakuouki; it was becoming dangerously historical. Apparently there are some OVAs coming out this summer. Yay?
I should stop announcing my web projects months in advance, I think. Probably nobody cares, but it takes me actual non-hyperbolic years to get shit online. Right now I'm having some trouble typing up scripts, for example. I do a couple of pages and then wander off to play Angry Birds for an hour.
Links
1. Check out "The Pen," by Veda, an era-appropriate Victorian gothic romance which is hot, sweet, and actually kind of creepy. Hard to hit all those targets at once, I imagine.
2. Anybody recognize the artist for this totally NSFW picture? Looks a little like Mentaiko, but sort of not. Maybe his style is evolving.
3. These sorts of things tend to annoy me -- I have to walk past Jonathan Safran Foer's idiot new book with my hands in my pockets to stop from punching myself in the head (something at which I am fairly practiced after more than a decade of bookstore-related exposure to TokyoPop's oeuvre) -- but I think this one is really, really pretty.
4. Crows: They're like people, only not completely worthless and full of shit!
5. I haven't actually watched this yet, but everybody seems to think it is amazing.
Haven't had one of these in ages:
Also, too:
Also, I am both Tumblring and Twittering again, because usually I don't have enough material for an actual post and I'm probably also preoccupied trying to figure out if that sentence-terminal て means "please do or don't do [verb]" or "I am a mangaka who likes run-on sentences."
The end.
* The Daily Beast is profoundly retarded, but in this case we're giving it a pass.
ETA: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUYYYYY!!!
Also, speaking of which, I am not ever voting again*. I don't care who gets elected president next. I don't care if the sticky illiterate scooter-powered hordes elect John McCain, or Haley Barbour, or a genetic recombinant of Jefferson Davis and Ronald Reagan, or Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Fuck you, America. I hope the evil clown (by which I mean "Haley Barbour") eats every last one of you.
Anyway, so, watch as I change the topic with painful obviousness:
Sherlock
I still can't find my damn links, which I know are around here someplace, but let's give it a go anyway. As the official last person to comment on this series I will keep things really brief, because I love you. But, so: Firstly, I would like to draw a distinction here between Sherlock the show, which is a flashy, fun, showbiz extravaganza on the order of Doctor Who, which I find pleasantly mediocre but not terribly exciting, and Sherlock the Sherlock, who is an entirely separate order of awesomeness. I'm not sure Sherlock the show is really picking up what Conan Doyle put down in his stories (although I was impressed by the Victorian-appropriate characterization of Chinese mobsters -- AND WHAT, BY THE WAY? -- in The Blind Banker; spot-on, lads! tally-ho! view-halloo!), but I cannot say enough drooly things about Benedict Cumberbatch, whose theatrical, neurotic portrayal of the totally impossible title character is every bit as accurate and arresting as Jeremy Brett's iconic interpretation. I cannot wait until he is actually forced to play the violin on camera. Word. Secondly, I want to say that Martin Freeman's intolerably cute Watson is pretty much the reason the show is historical-grade teevee entertainment: Sherlock is a compelling but remote archetype, the antecedent of a long line of shadowed arbiters of chaos who stand between ourselves and darkness -- but Watson is the human lens through which Sherlock's abnormal brilliance is both refracted and magnified. To that end, Sherlock's Watson is somehow both perfectly ordinary and unique. His slate is blank enough that he can serve as a Mary Sue for fanfic authors all over the internet; simultaneously, though, he's so specifically calibrated that he's really difficult to write correctly. Freeman somehow communicates his epic, melancholy good-guyness by just wandering into a scene and standing in the background wearing a slightly worried expression -- this is pretty close to being a magic trick, actually -- and his obvious appreciation of Sherlock's talent comes off looking like a natural reaction, with no hint of fantardian, zeta-male creepiness. He and Sherlock, together, form a unbroken continuity of Victorian heroism. They could be horsed. It is adorable. Uh, there were things about the show itself that I liked a lot, too, including a really neat opening-episode montage that depicted Sherlock charting the streets of London on a backlit mental map while chasing a cab, the characters' pedestrian fondness for technology, and the improbable architecture of 222B Baker Street (← ETA: BAHAHA ♥). But honestly, I think that the actors, all the actors, could've been performing on a blank stage to similar effect. I find peculiar the idea that the series is 'derivative' -- the joke there, of course, is that the "detectives" of CSI, Law & Order, and NCIS et alia have been using Sherlock Holmes's magical, science-free backwards processes of deduction to solve crimes since their inception. In this case, the origin-story is merely taking back its own territory. (Haters gonna hate.) I give the series an A-, splitting the difference between the production's solid B and the actors' A+.
(Also, Lestrade is hot.)
Yes, that was "really brief."
Anybody hiding any good anime around here anyplace? I didn't even bother to finish Hakuouki; it was becoming dangerously historical. Apparently there are some OVAs coming out this summer. Yay?
I should stop announcing my web projects months in advance, I think. Probably nobody cares, but it takes me actual non-hyperbolic years to get shit online. Right now I'm having some trouble typing up scripts, for example. I do a couple of pages and then wander off to play Angry Birds for an hour.
Links
1. Check out "The Pen," by Veda, an era-appropriate Victorian gothic romance which is hot, sweet, and actually kind of creepy. Hard to hit all those targets at once, I imagine.
2. Anybody recognize the artist for this totally NSFW picture? Looks a little like Mentaiko, but sort of not. Maybe his style is evolving.
3. These sorts of things tend to annoy me -- I have to walk past Jonathan Safran Foer's idiot new book with my hands in my pockets to stop from punching myself in the head (something at which I am fairly practiced after more than a decade of bookstore-related exposure to TokyoPop's oeuvre) -- but I think this one is really, really pretty.
4. Crows: They're like people, only not completely worthless and full of shit!
5. I haven't actually watched this yet, but everybody seems to think it is amazing.
Haven't had one of these in ages:
Also, too:
Also, I am both Tumblring and Twittering again, because usually I don't have enough material for an actual post and I'm probably also preoccupied trying to figure out if that sentence-terminal て means "please do or don't do [verb]" or "I am a mangaka who likes run-on sentences."
The end.
* The Daily Beast is profoundly retarded, but in this case we're giving it a pass.
ETA: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUYYYYY!!!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 02:37 pm (UTC)I am wildly excited by the news of that Terry Pratchett crime drama. Especially because it contains the name, Terry Jones. Let's hope they actually bother to give it the budget it deserves :D
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 02:15 pm (UTC)et's hope they actually bother to give it the budget it deserves :D
I KNOW RIGHT. Somebody wasted a lot of money on that awful Dirk Gently pilot; let's hope Vimes escapes a similar fate.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 09:35 pm (UTC)Wait wait wait. I'll stop there before it gets any more embarrassing. I can't do a Yorkshire accent to save my life, much less type one.
While we're speaking of Sherlock fic recs. I read this one today:
http://wafflestories.livejournal.com/6650.html
It were right nice.
I am longing to read some gen fic though. I should search for some. If any exists D:
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 04:23 pm (UTC)Actually, now that I look at it, maybe it's a cockney accent?
...Oh, who knows.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 05:51 pm (UTC)Sometimes though, I get a bit impatient, and try scouring the Sherlock fic comms myself but, as you say, most of it is kinda argh argh argh bad, so I tend to give up pretty sharpish.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 05:50 pm (UTC)She should set up a service. I would pay to avoid the awful fic. Also the people who have vanished so far up the, uh, arse of Anglophilia that they have Sherlock stand up and salute in the direction of the Tower of London ten times a day, and John going to war for the Queen. Because that is a perfectly normal British reason to join the armed forces, which makes sense and is not at all insulting to anyone. (Also most Americans join the service because of George Washington.)
I'm surprised no one has sent them to Hogwarts yet.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 09:20 pm (UTC)Each action has an equal and opposite FIC SET IN HOGWARTS
As for recs, she's always adding people to the mailing list, so I'm sure she'll be happy to send them to you too if you want. Just let me know and I'll make introductions :D
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 12:35 pm (UTC)NEWTON'S FOUTH LAW, FASHO.
Oh, hey, yes! That would be great and awesome, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 09:50 pm (UTC)My Dad then went on to talk about cows or something, idk, because my brain had just whacked me with the 'this is a great idea for a story!' mallet, and I couldn't concentrate on anything else afterwards XD
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 04:25 pm (UTC)But still -- any number of people might've heard something like that at some point in their lives. Only you heard it and then turned out a great short story. (That totally counts!)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-29 02:45 am (UTC)I am disappointed that you haven't waxeed ze poetree on Orlando Bloom's upcoming mazterpieze, Three Mousketeers. He's gets to be a bad guy with a pointy moustache and big hair in 3D!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 06:00 pm (UTC)If he puts on the elfsuit again, I will reconsider our annulment.
That movie looks HORRIBLE. Even more horrible than you might expect, based on the cast and the fact that it was shot in 3D (why?). It has Pirates of the Caribbean-itis. Ick. Why is d'Artagnan, like, twelve? That is no good.
Too bad Alan Rickman is wizard-aged now. He always killed parts like that :[
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 09:41 am (UTC)He came into a restaurant I was having dinner in, and sat at the booth behind mine (minutes after I'd finished telling the table at large how swell he is), and I kind of lost it, like, "SHHH, EVERYONE, JUST, SHHHH. EVERYONE. SWITCH SEATS SO I CAN STARE AT THE BACK OF HIS HEAD. SHHHHHHHH!" So. On our way out, my friend asked him to say hi to me. He shook my hand, and I think I said, "YOU ARE GREAT, I THINK YOU ARE JUST THE GREATEST," so he thanked me, and, probably seeing how hard I was trying not to puke/cry, gave my hand the loveliest little squeeze. His precious little face is, just, ugh! So precious! I'm not 100% sure I didn't already tell you this.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 11:57 am (UTC)So, in addition to being incredibly talented and superhumanly adorable, Martin Freeman is also, like, totally awesome??? Wow, that's kind of not fair :[
(That is an amazing story with which to regale your grandchildren/cats for many years in the future, by the way.)
Anyway, hi, hello, how are you doing? I hope things are going great for you, just generally.