Spontaneous Musings

1. So I decided to put up a fandom stocking for the first time ever. I've no idea if it will work. When it goes up...I'll show it. Mainly I want Cyclops fic, but I doubt I'll get any. I gave a lot of fandom options.
( Read more... )
We'll see. It's been a tough couple of months. And I'm dreading next week...for reasons I won't go into. Really wish I could just fall madly in love with someone and be whisked away on an all expense paid trip to Hawaii.

2. Watching another James Marsters Q&A...okay listening to it. This is the November 2018 London one or the October, can't remember which. I like them because he really goes into the process of what doing television is like for an actor.
( Read more... )

3. Doctor Who Finale

I have to admit I found most of this season rather slow and difficult to get into or follow. I'm not emotionally invested in anyone, really. Sort of like YAZ, but don't know a lot about her. Graham also is fun. But outside of that...meh.

I want to like Jodi Whittacker's Doctor, but frankly she irritates me in the same way that Matt Smith did at the beginning, until he grew on me, and David Capadali. Too frenetic and crazy energy all over the place. I want to tell her to chill.

This episode was okay. It's clear that the writer's were hammering home the theme of solving problems without violence and restraining from doing any lasting harm or killing anyone.

I'll write more later. When it's not 12 midnight and time for me to go to bed, or long past it.

1. Nicholas Brendan according to the SlayAlive post does not like the Dawn/Xander pairing.
In related news, at Hallowhedon, Brendan revealed that he and Gellar talked about Xander and Buffy getting together and pitched it. Whedon said no. And apparently Whedon had planned on killing Xander off in S7, but the other writers talked him out of it - stating the fans would be *really* upset, *vehementally* upset.

They weren't wrong about that - but it does bring up a question that I'd like to throw out there: Should fans have a say in the plotting, etc of a story? Should the writers have convinced Whedon to cater to their fans? Should it matter that it would upset the fans if a character was killed or a beloved character did a horrible thing? Should a writer EVER cater to his or her fans? And if so, when? And to what extent would catering hurt the story? And what extent does this kill the reality of the story - after all people we love do die, and people we love do horrible things - to what extent should writing reflect that reality and to what extent should it merely entertain and comfort?

Okay that's a lot of questions. I don't know what I think on this right now. I really don't. I know that I wish sometimes the writer would ignore the fans, but other times, I don't. I can argue it both ways to be honest. So feel free to persuade, discuss, etc!

As a sub-thread of that question - to what extent has the internet changed how fans can affect the writing/plot of a tv show, novel, or movie? Is this a good thing, bad thing, or neutral thing??

2. James Marsters on youtube did a really interesting bit on kissing on camera - how difficult it is to do well, how awkward, and how much you have to trust your partner. He said if you do it for pleasure - it looks horrible. So you never enjoy it. And if he had to choose anyone to do it with again it would be John Barrowman - who went out of his way to make Marsters comfortable. Marsters also gives some great hints on how to keep a guy from mauling you - which I already knew but are quite useful - sneeze, step on his foot, elbow him in the gut.

3. Apparently Caprica has three cameras, a bit budget, and is scarey - with great scripts.
Marsters plays a terrorist that everyone is terrified of, and he's been told he's doing rather well. Hmm. Okay, that and the trailer and Eric Stolz is making me really look forward to Caprica. (Of course it helps that I love Espenson's tv writing, and adored BSG).

4. Apparently Georges Jeanty is better at drawing Joss Whedon than Sarah Michelle Gellar, who knew? (Brad Metzler's blog has a picture of Whedon and Buffy together drawn by Jeanty.)

[Okay am reprinting my essay from ATPOBTVS & ATS here, so new people can read. And I can save it. I am lj-cutting of course, so if you've seen it before, you can safely ignore. It is chop full of errors - such as 24 (I was wrong about that series), and I have not looked at it in ages. But most of the quotes are correct. Posting for angeria who was hunting links.]

http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/aug03_p12.html

[Warning - Evil Footnotes are included. When I wrote it, I was making fun of people on posting boards who kept putting footnotes on everything. Footnotes are evil!!! Most people don't put pertinent info in them. I did. And at the time I posted this, circa 2003 on the Angel's Soul Board - I got crucified for one my footnotes...lol! And yes, I had far too much time on my hands back then...as you can tell.]
( BTVS (also ATS) and the Pitfalls of The Television Medium...lengthy meta and posted in three parts as a result. )

Comic books have been a guilty pleasure of mine for more than a decade. I first discovered them in the 1980s, when my brother sat for long hours with the boy across the street drawing tiny superheros. Mostly though they read TinTin which I found again in France along with Asterix. TinTin reminded me a great deal of the old Johnny Quest cartoons, but did not appeal to me all that much for some reason. I was too young to get into the literary references and there were no women to speak of for me to identify with. Also, to be honest, obscure literary references never had that much appeal for me. I can't abide footnotes or anything that gets in the way of my enjoyment of the main story, while for others they are like frosting on the proverbial cake - the best part. I guess that's an apt analogy - some people prefer the cake, some the frosting, some eat both at the same time, some like both, but eat one and savor the other.

At any rate, it was not until college that I *really* discovered and fell in love with the comic art form. Sat for hours in one of my dorm-mates rooms with her box of old X-men, Spiderman, Superman, and Batman comic books. Later, on my own, I discovered Sandman, Alan Moore's Watchmen, Frank Miller's Dark Knight, and others of that ilk. But my first love was those superhero comics. It was a love that I hid from the world at large. Stealing off to the comic book store on Cache La Poudre, the main drag from my small college in Colorado Springs, just at the foot of mighty Pikes Peak. The comic store was towards the end of the two lane street that also housed an eatry/used book store/ and independent movie house entitled Poor Richards. Few people from the college patrolled the comic store - so I was often on my own. I had a few friends at school who adored them like I did, we kept our love to ourselves, hidden in boxes beneath beds and in closets only to be shown to people who understood and shared our passion.

Paul Theroux famously or rather infamously wrote in one of his many travel books that comics were pedesterian past-times for the uneducated or illiterate. The man clearly never sat on the floor of his dorm room, back hurting, pouring over illustrations and dialogue bubbles.
He and others like him are the reason most comic fans keep their love to themselves. A private guilty pleasure to only be shared with like minds and hearts.

Superman:Doomsday or more commonly known as The Death of Superman is one of the few comic arcs that hit mainstream. It lead up to the gut-wrenching "Death of Superman" and crossed the front page of numerous papers when it first hit the shelves of comics stores across the country (this was before book stores started selling comics or graphic novels). Selling out and bringing comic sales to an unprecedented height. The final issue containing Superman's Death was wrapped inside a black bag with the Superman signal on the front, the cover of the book hidden from view. It had two variant covers - a black one and one with Superman's cape swinging like a flag on a bunch of rubble. The second cover was the most popular. This was back in the early 1990s or thereabouts, before I moved to NYC, when I was still living in KC making guilty trips to the comic book store. So it was with a bit of nostaglic glee that I watched the history unfold on one of the features of the Doomsday DVD. It is detailed in a little documentary feature. Takes about 30 minutes to watch, maybe a bit longer - and includes interviews with the writing team, which included Louise Simonson, one of the few female comic book writers in the biz at that time, who wrote superhero comics. She also worked for a brief period of time on X-Factor (an X-men book) back in the late 1980s. The art is realistic, with lots of lines, well defined anatomy, and every emotion explicitly expressed. It is as close to a photograph as one can get in some ways without the smooth photo image.

I remember that arc - because it was the first time I collected or got interested in Superman comics. I collected them from the beginning of the Doomsday arc up to Superman's return and eventual marriage to Lois Lane. They'd originally wanted to marry Superman and Lois that year, but got derailed because of the tv series Lois & Clark - which did not want the comic to marry Lois and Clark until they did it or better yet, have do it at the same time. Lois & Clark was in its first season at this point. As a result, the writers sat in a room with a scraped story board, exhausted, and wracking their brains for an idea, any idea to fill the pages of four different books - which included at that time: Man of Steel. Action Comics. Adventures of Superman and I think Superman. One of the writers, suggested as he always did at this point in the proceedings - "I know, let's just kill him." And instead of telling him to go take a nap or shrugging it off, they leaped on the idea. "Why not?" It's not like it hadn't been done before. No. The real challenge would be how to make it convincing and heart-wrenching to a cynical and somewhat sap-proof contemporary readership. They'd have to find a way to convince their readers they really meant it. And at the same time, tell a new story about both the universe and characters. Not as easy as it sounds.
( Plot Spoilers on the comic arc )

The story took a few years to unfold. The marriage occuring around the time the tv show's did. And like all good stories - was told in a series of chapters, some better than others.

Having read the original, albeit many years ago, I was eager to see what they would do in the film. I love animation. So the film - animated - was a must-see for me. It also was by one of my favorite animation directors Bruce Timm, who had directed and wrote JLA, Batman Beyond, Batman, and Superman cartoons. And...it featured the vocal talents of Adam Baldwin (Superman), James Marsters (Lex Luther), Anne Heche (Lois Lane), Swoozie Kurtz (Mrs. Kent), and Ray Wise (The Editor and Chief of the Daily Planet).

The film surprised me. It was much better than expected. Not your average Superman cartoon. The main characters are - oddly enough Superman and Lex Luthor. Doomsday is wisely only used as a device. The real story takes place, much as they did in the books, after Superman's death. It starts with Lex Luthor - who tells the tale in flashback - he is our narrator, with Marsters husky and somewhat wry vocalization, an excellent contrast to the stalwart baratone of Adam Baldwin, which sounds clear as a bell. You can hear the years of smoking in Marsters raspy delivery, which is a bit like the purr of jaguar or panther. Lex himself moves a bit like one. Or maybe the hiss of a snake. We, like Lois Lane, are repulsed and intriqued by Luthor. All lean lines, and jagged edges.

( spoilers on the Superman:Doomsday Film )

The fact that both stories work, the graphic novel original and the animated film - demonstrates how you can tell a story more than one way. That is one of the benefits of comics - the story can be retold from multiple angles. There is no one way or one story. Or one universe. It is unlimited or as unlimited as our imaginations. Canon in comics is what we decide to make it. It is also one of the benefits of adaptations - as John Le Carre once stated in regards to a film version of one of his books, in this instance The Constant Gardners, "the best films adaptations are not close or replicas of my novels, but rather a new take on the work from a completely different angle, an interpretation as it were. I don't expect to see them do my novel exactly as I wrote it. They aren't me. Nor do I want that, for that is uninteresting to me. What I want to see is a new take on it." (not exact, paraphrased). Timm succeeds in doing just that with Superman:Doomsday. Providing a new and innovative take on an old tale.

Highly recommend to anyone who loves Superman comics, animation, and a good yarn.