gen_is_gone

You know, I feel like Dreamworks' Anastasia falls along the same lines as Disney's Pocahontas in terms of altering a historical narrative to the point of honest-to-god offensiveness, within a work of lovely animation and music.

Things I have noticed:

1. The set-building and scenery hold up beautifully. The CG maybe not so much, but since older and more noticeable generated effects is a fondness of mine, that's no issue.

2. The lack of Chinese/Chinese-American cast is very consipicuous. Like, overwhelmingly noticeable.

3. Having spent much of this summer reading the epic-length recovery story of someone in an uncannily similar position to River's, her whole talking-in-riddles mooncalf shitck is coming off more than a might offensive, and deeply frustrating given the story that could have been told, without changing any of her backstory.

4. Ye gods, do I ever want to smack Malcolm Reynolds. It's funny; when I was a wee middle-schooler, watching for the very first time, Mal's whole unpredictable, sometimes angry sometimes funny sometimes affectionate sometimes an asshole routine didn't bother me, and mostly I didn't even notice. Mal wasn't the most interesting member of the crew, but as a kid I sort of understood that he was the Main Character, and had to be there. Becoming acquainted with the shocking notion that the lead role didn't have to go to the straight cis white guy obviously made me question the roles of most of the formative stories of my younger years, but Mal is an interesting case.

He was never my favorite by any means, but I didn't mind him, and I really do remember an attitude of "well, he needs to be there, might as well go with it" in regards to him and his often sideways actions that I didn't feel even for others in his mold, either because I did dislike them, or because I loved them, flaws or not.

These days my response is pretty much "no, he doesn't need to be there, everyone would have had an easier time without him, the only thing he's done is get them all in one place by dint of owning the ship in question, so godsdammit Mal, shut up and go away". That's hyperbole, but damn is he annoying. Between the constant, unending alpha male dominance games and the absurd, truly reprehensible Madonna/Whore complex thing over Inara, he ends up causing half of all of his problems from his own bad attitude.

*grumble grumble bitch moan* The irritating thing is that Firefly really is such a cultural byword now that not having an opinion is next to impossible and having any opinion other than the steadfast belief in its flawless martyrdom as proof that geeks are still getting screwed by the Man is me and my bitchy feminazi hatred of anything cool. (Again, hyperbole, if there's anyone actually playing along at home). And there is still enough to recommend it and make me wistful for the show it could have been, not just because of its cancellation, but because of the directions within the few episodes it has that Whedon didn't have the knowledge or bravery to take.

I'm not saying any of this to Roommate, because I'm tired of being the one jump all over peoples' favorite thing or taint someone's experience before they've had it (try though I might to find an RL friend who feels the same way about the Tenth Doctor as I do, who wasn't a convert of mine). But I'm glad that she likes what she's seen of it, and I haven't asked her for an opinion on the show's many flaws.

I feel I should get a gold star.

Sometimes (most of the time, even) Winter Soldier is just a happy fluffy fandom thing that I can enjoy and like the characters a great deal and tolerate other people's *feels* on tumblr with a sort of fond indulgence, but then I'll actually rewatch the damn movie or even just remember a certain scene or go over the implications of something (usually pertaining to Bucky because that is where all of the Fridge Horror comes from) and then I'll end up literally shaking under a blanket, unable to process past the bank vault scene, and all that it implies.

Imagine that fandom, or fiction really (fandom just acts as a sort of additive that stretches the recipe out longer) is sort of like a wood varnish for the brain. It keeps me sane by painting layer after layer of beautiful unreality over me, and gives me filters for dealing with the constant, unending slow apocalypse that is living as a sentient creature on this planet, in this universe. And most of the time, ninety-nine percent of the time, it does its job magnificently.

But that one percent of the time, fiction stops being wood varnish and is instead fucking turpentine.

Sometimes a story short-circuits the wrong wire in my head, creates a reaction when up against a certain song or something else, and flays me alive.

In this case, because a war that was already hell without the help of comic book melodramatics was made into a hell unimaginable times worse, (and that had the benefit of writing and acting decent enough to make it riveting and not a terrible cheap fake) and because James Barnes was that dedicated, that suicidally (perhaps intentionally) loyal to Steve Rogers, he went from all charm confident ladies' man, beater of bullies and excited for the future, to cut down and ground up and exhausted by war and experimentation, to functionally dead or much worse off.

And outside of the exact details of method, that is not at all out of the realm of possibility.

Humans are shit. We are awful to each other without cause but our own amusement, and we as a species have been actively or inactively been trying to destroy every other human who isn't Me/Us throughout the history of our existence. We are, in fact, capable of all kinds of violence and horror and we as a species don't care. We can't. It takes a hell of a lot to break through the necessary callousness to make people feel for other people at all, and then we find that actually? trying to feel for all of the people in the world and all the horror everyone else faces and process all of that will. drive. us. mad. So we have to put the barriers up.

Thus fiction, until one piece of fiction or another happens to be too honest with its subject matter and the whole agonizing ritual starts over again.

I adore this movie. It doesn't make me happy.

I am also up at stupid 'o clock again, so this is what I write.

I was watching this 40s black and white movie starring Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable called Boom Town with the sound off, and viewed without context it looks an awful lot like two cowboy boyfriends meet a nice city lady, have a bunch of adventures and then settle down to raise a kid together. I have no idea what it's actually about, but it's really cute.

So going in for a job interview, I was told by my mother to dress conservatively. Not bad advice. However, apparently a black felt sunhat is not considered appropriately conservative. The blue streaks in my hair are, but not the godsdamned hat. This is a small, unobtrusive hat meant to keep the blaring New Mexico sun out of my face, and look stylish while doing so. I didn't wear the hat to the interview, although given the environment and the manager's general attitude I doubt anyone there would've disapproved.

I don't know if this is a generation gap or what. Though I was at the time, I'm not being petulant now. I genuinely want to know just why the hat could be construed as ostentatious, and what the Boomers' problem with hats indoors is anyway. It just seems like a pointless and frustrating unwritten rule that no one tells you and then is scandalized when you don't follow it. I can understand No Hats in a religious setting, but otherwise, why?

My icon does seem oddly apt for the situation though.

So again talking about Agents of Shield, because I can't get off a topic to save my life, my biggest source of frustration from it is also the reason I'm still watching. Yeah, I'm somewhat curious as to how things play in relation to Captain America 2, but really? not that much. My thing is that I both hate and adore FitzSimmons.

To clarify, they really ping a writers' kink of mine in terms of relationships, at least on the surface. They are, for lack of a better term, incredibly drift-compatible. They orbit each other and complete each others' sentences and communicate almost entirely through techno-babble and playful bickering. They're so close that other people refer to them as a single entity, one name. My problem then stems from a typical case of the Writers Are Writing Them Wrong. It's a common and tragic fan disease.

It might not make sense, given I'm describing a straight couple, but they're being written too heteronormative. Or, erm, perhaps that's not right. They're being written too neurotypical. Or maybe it's some combination of both.

See, the FitzSimmons in my head are much, much less "normal" than the FitzSimmons onscreen. Headcannon dump time: I think they're both bi, and probably lean more towards a grayish asexual than anything. They share the same tastes in people, and oddly enough those tastes don't actually run towards each other. They're both more interested in very cis, standard types of masculine/feminine beauty, but are also more than likely indifferent to actual physical sex. It's a thing they can do or not, and they're just as happy working or watching silly movies as they would be banging. They are a "couple" for a given definition of the word, in that they've both acknowledged that they're in love with each other, and all of the other, more standard couple things come secondary to that. As such, either of them showing interest in someone else is more likely to be met with curiosity, and often mutual interest rather than jealousy, as both of them know that the other comes first.

Unfortunately, that's all in my head, and not on the screen. Fitz gets put out every time Simmons looks sideways at another guy, and they aren't together, and Simmons's interest in Tripplet prompt boring jealousy and unrequited love pining. It's just so standard. Honestly, screw the jealousy plotline. Have Fitz be jealous of Simmons for getting to hang with the hot agent. Have the two of them pause in the middle of making out to babble about some science thought that drifted into their heads and then totally forget about sex and start theorizing. Have the two of them scheme about ways to get Skye into bed. Anything but the oh so common unrequited love/oblivious to love thing going on. I want them to be less normal.

Also, it continues to be Weird and Wrong that I'm talking about a British guy named Fitz who isn't a guitarist from 1963.