beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I started today idly wondering how far north I would have to move to get back to the weather I remember from thirty years ago (probably goth Whitby would work for a while), and then I ended up mildly frustrated once again at how John Constantine's house in Legends of Tomorrow isn't something you are likely to be able to place on a map in Britain.

Also someone is paying the council tax on that thing and that is going to be So Much Money.
So much.

I acknowledge it is cool and pointy and looks like the House of Mystery in the comics, but as someone who just read through over ten years of Hellblazer comics omnibus, I feel like this is just signs of how comics only refer to themselves now.

I am a grumpy, obviously.

The thing is though in those comics omnis John's income is precarious and intermittent, and when he gets chucked out of his flat because breakup he ends up homeless for a bit. Or before that when he went home and found some nasty murders he was a suspect for and took up with travellers and learned to bend a tent. His is a life with actions and consequences and occasionally being implied to be sleeping with someone primarily because it is warm with a solid chance of breakfast. That's a specific type of guy, right?

But then he isn't in Vertigo any more, he gets swept into the sliding timeline, Thatcher has ever less to do with his personal experience, and instead of a specific economic reality, he is whooshed off into suoerhero world. In superhero world people have a place to live because the story says so. Even going broke means they've only got their arrow cave to live in and a steady source of income so they don't have to quit their night job. The square footage stretches to television rules, and suddenly you have to wonder how rich Constantine is, if he ever converted it back to money. You can contrast the comics where he's forever scrounging, finding things to sell, trying to find somewhere that will take a bet, with even the half season of his own show, where he sends Chas out to make some bets once and now nobody in the show has to think about money ever again. Money ceases to be relevant, let alone a problem. They change his entire implied social class!

They erase the foundational difference between him and the non trenchcoat mages. They drag him out of his political framing. He ceases to be the same guy.

I mean from that perspective I actually like when they change the house into being a pocket dimension. A scooped out bit of hell to live in keeps things focused on the Deal, at least potentially, and not the bank balance. Which makes it really dodgy everyone else is so easy about using it.

A house with enough rooms for the Legends to stay in without sharing is a seriously swish house.

You go from a guy who grew up in a terraced house, to a guy with a mansion, and there is So Much Politics in just that decision.

But no, it looks cool, it looks like the House of Mystery, the story moves on.



Watching Torchwood I can see from the visual language of set dressing and what they out in the kitchen what kind of social background class background money a given character is meant to have. I can read those signs. I am aware I cannot translate the American version.

But this is more annoying, because everything communicates, but it doesn't make sense.




Okay, I should go have lunch. Also breakfast. At tea time.
... yes i am a grumpy indeed...

I rewatched a few more Legends of Tomorrow today
with the sound either off or turned up real loud, because something power tools related has been happening in the hall and also I still have the fan on.

Just got to the point John has rescued Des and been turbo dumped for the whole dropping him into hell thing, as is fair.
Also Sara just got Ava back from off brand Ikea purgatory.
Which John didn't think was possible but let her try anyway.
Also John trusts Gary when he turns up to help. The story still treats him as funny help, but he does things correctly and is indeed helpful.

Assorted characters keep calling John arrogant but I keep noticing how the story treats him as support for everyone else's stories so along the way he trusts and supports and trusts the judgement of... at least Sara Gary and Nora today alone. ( Read more... )

I am once again watching an entire ensemble through the lens of what does it say about John Constantine
but Legends is being really interesting about love and relationships and taking chances but building from mutual respect and supporting each other's dreams but also being there for the everyday realities
only it is doing all that through the medium of involuntary Bollywood pride and prejudice, dragon theme parks, and purgatory warehouses.

You really have to roll with the medium and the tonal changes.

John's living in a horror story for sure, but everyone around him has like a sliding scale of horror, even when they have been tortured by a demon. It's a really fun and interesting way to tell a story.

A story where John is always really really depressed.



But again I notice the contrast with the comics. John is noticeably drunk and depressed here, and he has mirrors talk to him. But unlike in the comics you are left in no doubt which bits are objective mystical experiences, because it is most of them. There is less sense that here is a man grappling with both mental illness and demons. But it keeps mentioning addiction. TV seems fine with telling addiction stories but leaves much of the source comics mental illness stuff muted.

Also though, when the demon calls it arrogant that John believes the world needs John to save it... I mean, read the genre, the world needs bloody everybody to save it. The world needs saving more times per year than there are shows set in it. That's a lot of world saving to go around. I think there's room for many volunteers.

I also did like it when the demon calls John out on quitting the field as soon as he is threatened. Sure he kept busy, but also it was true he left behind the bit he knew was a threat.

Tricky man.

Have watched the first episode of the Constantine series.
... many characters need therapy; John needs therapy from the correct century without the malpractice.

I am not a fan of the framing
the mental patient is the only one who can see the truth
or of this whole bit with the not-hallucinations revealing real threats

but having someone who knows he is both mentally ill and dealing with demons?
compelling.

I finished watching the rest of Titans season one.
Grimdark bullshit that just stops instead of getting near resolving.
I mean if it were a story about new characters I wouldn't like it either, but as it is, saying it is about familiar characters? Rot.

Sadly I own three more seasons of this.
... there's a non zero chance I will watch them and get mad about it, but I keep telling myself this is an unhelpful use of my time, even by local standards.

I found that boring. It didnt leave itself anywhere to go. The ending was the only available space since very near the beginning, and I didnt find the journey interesting, because it wasnt doing like cause and effect, just effects. The story happened because that was the story that happened. Arbitrary.

I can buy it as the dream logic of where she's at emotionally, but as an actual set of events, no.

Maybe it'll look different after the rest of the season.

I finished watching Discovery today.
I really liked season 4 and the compassion and optimism of the ending.

... I kind of dont think about it when I'm not watching though?
... I think about Torchwood.
( Read more... )


So I liked watching Discovery and think it is very good
but my brain is still full of Torchwood
and I can't think of a proper Disco review
because not being Torchwood
is not its most important relevant significant feature.




... meanwhile I have been reading a bunch of Jack/Ianto CoE fixits this week.
... talking about things I think of a lot.

Actually it's part of why I dont endlessly chew on Star Trek, with rare exceptions it just doesnt wind me up enough to get the fixit urge.

I have finished watching the 8 episodes of Wheel of Time.
It has a lot of good points.
Any set of beings you can tell are evil by looking at them is a major minus point, genre conventional or otherwise.

I like watching all the characters though I get the feeling they're mostly wrong about everything at this point.

And the whole thing felt like it just about managed the setup. A whole season of beginning. But in today's television climate the chances of a really long story getting told approach zero.

The thing is, the world seems to me to be a set up so in need of healing they've forgotten healing is a possibility, but, it is possible the author just genuinely thinks solving things by killing things is a possibility. So now I want to know how the story works out before spending more time seeing how the story works out. Except waiting to be shown has been working quite well so far. So. Don't know.

... I'll probably wait for the next bit on inertia.

Lots of interesting characters, worth the time so far.

Today I watched two episodes of actual Torchwood on the TV
and I discover the audios consistently make me feel more.

And okay, I am developing a headache and suspect I need new glasses, that's getting in the way of enjoyment some, but, the audios focus in so much tighter they give you more about less, and it turns out I've been liking that a lot.

Yet the characters I want to hear about are the ones from the TV. It is these episodes that made me care about them, built the initial connection. These are the baseline originals that I got so passionate about.

... it's odd seeing PC Andy getting ignored. He's done so much on audio now it seems like he should be in episodes more. Even though it's quite important to the audios that he feels left out.

So it's still a joy to watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but it's also weird, because there's so much more to the characters since then, the actual adventure feels like... skim reading.

On the plus side I am getting a lot out of my audio investment.

But it feels weird going back to the distance and pacing of the TV.

Today I reread that one short story by Seanan McGuire where Alice meets Naga
got v angry and glared at imaginary persons for a while
then started rereading Spelunking Through Hell.

... just for reasons...


I had taken a break from watching the Flash because it was making me angry.

I do appear to have some anger to go around at the moment.


... with the Flash it's because the story always thinks Flash is right and Reverse Flash is irrational, while giving us a whole lot of reasons why Reverse Flash makes perfect sense and the Flash is terrifyingly selfish. Which makes me want to not watch those stories.

With Seanan it is because she is a terrifying delight who sets things up very, very, well.

So obviously I will keep reading
and manage to be very full of reaction to the events of the story
however many times I reread.

I mean the context changes so skillfully a reread can be a whole other experience anyway.


Is rather good.

The thing with Fort Salem is
I didnt feel while I was watching it that season three took a radical swerve or became a different show
but
a couple days after finishing it
I have this vague feeling that I ought to go watch Fort Salem
to see the third season
that would answer the first two.

... difficult to articulate that feeling, but, safe to say the ending did not satisfy, somehow.

I think I liked the end of this one, but when I was listening I stopped it and did something else for a whole bunch of hours
partly because mum phoned (we went to her house and finished watching Loki season one, so that was a nice day)
but also because when a story is being weird and confusing I tend to get fed up of that at least five minutes before it feels like explaining itself.

This one was definitely big with the confusing before it went anywhere I could figure out.

It was proper creepy by the end, but the beginning lost me pretty thoroughly.

Not a winner, to me.




Loki was good though.
... having seen tumblrs gif version made it less epic in parts, but also, Glorious Purpose!
really very epic.

This last season of Supergirl has taken developed a theme
and that theme is
prison sucks and people who get out of prison should have more support so they can actually live okay again.

Now I'm interested.

... it is not being subtle but it is using Supergirl to tell social justice stories so that's neat.

I really hate 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' (Arrowverse)
because they lose
everything everywhere is all gone the end antimatter annihilated
and we're meant to just
like
roll with that
and go watch another chapter.


And I realise in fanfic we read infinite variations on these guys and do indeed roll with it, thinking of them as fundamentally the same characters, but those stories expect us to therefore care about all of them, not to therefore not care about all the dead ones.

Like, here is this medium that is thus far the world's most powerful empathy engine, getting us to care, a lot, about all these made up people,
and then they kill them all
but we're not supposed to care about that.




... I am watching the last season of Arrow, so rewatching Crisis, and Earth 1 just died, after all the other Earths, and I am just going to feel some feelings about that.

And possibly get a snack.