throbbing light machine

Abigail Nussbaum has a cool article up on three stagings of Much Ado About Nothing: the Branagh film, the Whedon film, and the Tennant/Tate production.

Although I liked the Whedon adaptation more than she apparently did, and saw it as definitely expressing an interpretation, albeit a nihilistic and chaotic one. I was struck by the way Whedon's characters stumbled from scene to scene, how drunk and out of control they all were, how random their choices are - in contrast to the Branagh film, where you see Beatrice and Benedick warming to the thought of one another and genuinely deciding to match themselves, I saw Whedon's characters as very much the victims of their friends' tricks, tricked into sex and love and marriage and betrayal and penance and forgiveness, tricked into doing wrong and tricked into doing right.

I suppose it also doesn't help, in my case, that looking at Sean Maher's little faaaaaaace makes me go all melty and trusting, whereas I don't trust Reed Diamond as far as I can pitch him.

I had a thought while finishing the Serenity commentary track. When Joss talks about killing Wash, I was thinking that the reason why that choice was so galling is actually very clear in Joss' defense of it: he killed Wash in order to make us worry more about the other characters. Wash's death is instrumental in the trajectory of other characters, rather than being about himself. It develops others, not him. Which is also the problem folks have been identifying in the fridging of female characters, the dead bro walking problem, the Dances With Wolves/Samurai/Na'vi thing.

So this was sort of bothering at me, and then when I got to the bit where Simon gets shot Joss points out the payoff: you're more worried now, because Joss has established that everyone isn't getting out alive. I get the logic of that, but I've never experienced those emotions myself – I don't think Wash's death made me more worried about the rest of the cast, just as I wasn't more worried for Cap and Tony in Avengers after Coulson went down. Instead, what I think would absolutely gutpunch me – and what I now really really wish Joss had done with Serenity - would be to reverse the structure. If he had almost killed Wash, faked you out, and then last-minute-reprieved him – you thought he was dead but he wasn't – and then Simon went down, you would think at first that he was probably safe, by the same logic that killing one makes killing two more likely. He'll survive; this isn't a killing movie. So think if Joss had done that, and then Simon had really died. Not destroying viewers' comfort, but using it to lure them in to a false sense of safety, and then kill the character who really is the one that should die.

It would make sense in Simon's character arc, in a way that it totally doesn't with Wash's. Wash has everything to live for – he's a very futury sort of guy, in the 'verse. You get the sense that he's the sort who thrives more in new worlds than in old ones. He and Zoe and their babies could be a beautiful sort of image of the 'verse's happy ending, a reverse image of the white rich exclusive detached Tam family. Wash/Zoe is the Sam Gamgee/Rose Cotton of Firefly. But Simon – well, okay, so he could definitely pull a sort of Sacrificial Prince thing, Siddharta-esque, and dying for love, for River, would have a lot of meaning to and for him. It would also be sort of bleakly beautiful to have the adventure of Miranda, the purge that clears River's psychosis, be the thing that also kills her brother and caretaker. Miranda represents the worst sins of the Alliance; Joss says in the commentary that Simon is the best of the Alliance, the handsome talented principled knight-doctor. Having the two polarities cancel each other out might be pretty freaking cool.

And it would set up the end scene with Mal and River better, I think. I love that scene, but there's always been a way that it doesn't quite fit for me – a sort of thematic skip, if you will. The link between the theme of purity/sin/freedom and the theme of love isn't built up enough, maybe. “Love” isn't the final keyword that the end scenes have set up. But it totally should be, because “love” is an excellent final keyword. If Simon died for love, if River was experiencing pain and grief because of the loss that's the inevitable end of love, it would make Mal's paen to it much more resonant and sweet.

I think this might be my headcanon now. Bury Simon out in the stars, out in the desert, Simon, and Book, and Mr. Universe. There's a way that, in the same way that River and The Operative and Mal are involved in a shared plotline of dealing with their own demons and powers, Simon and Mr. Universe share a plotline about government, subversion, and whistleblowing; it would make thematic and practical sense for neither of them to survive.

I'm finally reading Elaine Scarry's "On Beauty and Being Just," - one of the ones I've been pretending to have read for years - and, idek, guys, I kind of hate it. Like, the prose is gorgeous, of course, hers always is, but I feel like she's strawmanning all over the place. I'll agree that extrapolating from feminist critiques of beauty to argue that, say, a vase is negatively reified when looked at is silly as anything. But similarly, I feel like extrapolating from a vase or a flower to human aesthetics is just as wrongheaded, and that's what she keeps doing. The feminist critique doesn't object to beauty qua beauty, it objects to the weaponization of beauty in the service of racism, classism, and misogyny. So I just. Don't know what to do with this book. And am frustrated.


some linkspamming:

oursin, 'Adequate' and 'competent' are not, in fact, pejoratives - this conversation was something I really needed to read. When I was in fifth grade, my parents convinced me that even top marks were meaningless, because all my As meant was that I was doing better than the other kids, not that I was working at my own maximum potential. So I just possibly have some issues.

Abigail Nussbaum reviews the Avengers - everything she said, please.

new Regina Spektor Album with streaming option!

eta: Garland Grey, Buffy Vs. The Beige Demon: Good Riddance to Riley Finn: Most modern television shows display their enlightenment by unleashing paper sexists at their heroine and allowing us to take the clobbering of these shadows as a triumph over sexism. Which, in the unscripted world, is too often not a douchebag saying “You can’t cuz you’re a girl” but is instead someone internalizing that belief and using their power to punish you for it. This scenario creates a false image in the culture of “What Sexism Looks Like” which men use to calibrate their understanding of misogyny. Which means anything less blatant than THAT is just the moaning of people who can’t compete AND once the show has labeled itself NOT SEXIST, it is free to deal in subtler, more insidious forms of sexism. Also with lovely Classic Trek exempla.

Luminous firefly lavender
Star Wars OT fusion with Firefly, in the form of a drabble sequence. Gen, Luke&Leia, Han/Luke
racebending, smuggling, meditation, cooking, rebellions, Jedi powers, tech-geeking, hair-braiding, and hot sex in engine rooms
1400 words, G

( Hey, did you know your engine's got a bad motivator? )

Lat night, watched a single episode of Buffy S3. Instantly fell back in passionate love with Angel. How does he do that?! Ten minutes and I'm reduced to a lump of quivering jelly.

Guys, I'm stuck in job training busywork land, so I'll be around but somewhat distracted for the next while here. I have all this fic open to work on and I haven't the time or the concentration to write - it's driving me bats. Argh.

JOSS WHEDON DIRECTING GLEE HOMG WHUT?!?! (actual non-shouty reportage here)

Because this one is always fun. Works-in-progress meme: post a few lines from the fic you're working on.

*

“You remind me of someone,” he said at last, which was partially true – if Darla had ever been a sweet young thing, which Angelus privately doubted, she may have been not unlike this gilded knife of a girl. “What's your name?”

“Rebecca Sharp. Becky. And I shan't ask yours,” she answered pertly. “By your voice you're an Irishman, and by your face you're not low born, but by your voice I should call you quite a wicked personage, for no virtuous man would ever speak so sweetly of buying and selling.”

*

Jack knew that Daniel needed an anchor. He just didn't know where to find the chain. Sha're possessed links by the score: her lips, her voice, her finger in the sand, the smell of her body. The breathing artifact of her skin, her language straight out of Daniel's work, Daniel's dreams. Egypt had been his home as a child, surrounded by love and care and the dusty remnants of history. Sha're – Abydos – was that home come again.

*

It was just as well, Angel thought. He didn't really want to see them cover her over with cold earth. He didn't really want to have to remember what it felt like to claw a way through clinging soil, pull yourself up onto the wet grass and feel the demon pawing over your dead heart. He didn't want to have those memories get so close to her, as if their gore might splash her pretty bright clothes, stain her mouth bitten red.

*

Prospero opened the chest, and it was full of bright and beautiful cloth, and pearls, and small dainty things that shone like jewels. Miranda gave a little gasp and fell to her knees before it, her hands going out to touch and caress the luxurious silks and velvets, the like of which she’d never seen. They were softer than the fur of any creature, cooler than the sea at night. The gowns that she pulled out to their length were heavier than she expected, and longer than she was tall. “Try them on,” her father said. “They belong to you.”

*

Because I love the girls and women in my fandoms, and think they're awesome.



( spring on horseback like a lady )

Hi internet! I'm moved in, and I have wireless, and I can breathe a sign of relief now that I'm reunited with my political news and weatherbugging and fandom shiny.

Classes start in a week, and I'm petrified and excited and still think that I'm making this whole thing up, no way it's really real. But, gods thanked, I've got my student loans for the year - the uni took forever to get me the info, and I was seriously starting to panic. I'm really glad that isn't a crisis I have to deal with at the moment.

We bought Buffy Season 5 for pretty much no money at Target a couple of days ago, and we've been watching during our separation from the interwebs. And, wow, I forgot just how much red I end up seeing in "Fool for Love" and "Into the Woods." Riley Finn needs to die in a fire, and Xander isn't much better, and I get so frustrated by the narrative's tolerance for Spike - the camera seems to expect me to care about him moments after showing him murdering slayers of color, and it's just gross.

I like Ben a lot more than I'd remembered - I kind of wish, if they felt the need to give Buffy a morally ambiguous love interest, that they'd gone with him instead of Spike. His issues are unique and interesting.

Watching "I Was Made to Love You" right now, which is pretty much my favorite thing ever. Best Buffy ep, or bestest Buffy ep?