Lurker Central

I'm enjoying DC's big Blackest Night much more than I thought I would, especially considering that the company was all but dead to me this time last year. Most of that is a combination of Guy and Kyle's epic Guy Love, the "bring dead titles back to life" stunt from this month, and how ridiculously awesome Wonder Woman has been, but what really makes this storyline fun is that it infects you. Watching a show becomes an exercise in figuring out which characters would wear what color ring, or gleefully announcing what color they'd be projecting to a Black Lantern, like announcing your favorite color to cross the bridge in Holy Grail. (Blue! No, Yellow---Arggghhhh!) It came up during a Doctor Who marathon last week, when all agreed that Rose would rock a green ring. (For the uninitiated, the power rings in DC all have ties to individual emotions, both positive and negative. Green=will, red=rage, yellow=fear, orange=avarice, blue=hope, indigo=compassion, sapphire=love. Yes, DC's definition of "emotion" is a tad broader than most. And yes, indigo and sapphire look virtually identical a lot of the time. Work with me here.)

So of course I started giving everyone else power rings, too.:)

The Doctor would be Blue, with indigo and sapphire as secondary colors (hey, if Hal can wear multiple rings!). Not that he doesn't have a strong will, he does, but the Doctor is always strongest when he has something to fight for. He needs a cause, the bleaker the better, and the blue rings are interesting in that they're the weakest until things get so bad there's almost no chance of victory, then look out. That's the Doctor in a nutshell.

Of course, the blue rings are at their best when working with the green rings, and that's where the Companions shine. Rose would indeed rock a green ring, but so would Martha and Donna and Sarah and pretty much everyone else who travels with the Doctor. You just don't last as a Companion unless you have a fearsome will; look at poor Adam, who was an orange ring if I ever saw one. (With some exceptions: I would argue that Fitz was a sapphire ring, for example.) The differences come in what their secondary colors would be; Rose and Donna both have Compassion as their secondaries (Rose is really marvelously empathetic; there's hardly an episode where she doesn't bond with one of the NPCs, and her pain over the idea of the Doctor being alone is compassion at its finest, whereas you only have to see Donna trying to hear the Ood's song to see her glow sapphire.) Martha and Sarah Jane have Love as their second, love for the Doctor and for their families and for Earth (Martha reminds me so much of Sarah Jane, right down to the Doctor putting them in impossible situations.)

Let's leave Jack aside for the moment (he's complicated) and jump to the rest of Torchwood. Gwen is another Will/Compassion combo, very like Rose (I've always theorized that Jack recruited Gwen because she reminded him of an older Rose, especially considering how hard he's working his Nine impression in "Everything Changes.") Tosh and Ianto are both sapphire rings, while Owen is probably red. He's so unhappy and resentful and gleefully takes it out on everyone, especially in S1 ("I sabotage happy relationships.") He actually gets better at compassion after he dies.

The Master is either yellow or orange, depending on the incarnation.

Which brings us to Jack. This question actually came up watching Torchwood and no one could agree. It's not green; the man runs from his problems and he falls into despair too often to be hope. Unlike the Doctor, Jack doesn't get stronger the worse things get, he buckles. And the strongest emotion he has in S1 of Torchwood is rage. Rewatch that season: he is an angry SOB. He snaps at everyone and has no patience and even all of his efforts to find the Doctor again stem as much from anger at being left as from love. So yeah, he probably could power a red ring pretty well. Which is not someone you want in charge.

Oh, Jack. S2 and afterwards he shines sapphire a lot more often; hopefully by the time he comes back he'll have figured out a way to push that ahead of the self-loathing and resentment.

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The Oscar noms (put it that way and it sounds like muppet food) came out today and...look, I'm a Watchmen fangirl. I love that movie beyond all reason, but this isn't coming from a fangirl place: it's a crime that Jackie Earle Haley isn't on one of those acting lists. The man put in a performance that I would bet good money is as good as any of the ones nominated, and he did half of it wearing a full face mask. Gah.

At least I have Christoph Waltz to root for.

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New Lost tonight! Loooooooossssssssttttt!

I am just terrible at updating. For the past two weeks I've been all, "Oh, I'll post something tomorrow!" and now it's "Well, hello, New Year!" and I haven't posted anything since Christmas.

Also, there's been so much Left 4 Dead 2 going on in the house since bringing home the XBox that I actually had a dream about it last night. About trying to find fic for it, actually; my subconscious apparently ships Ellis/Nick and in the dream I was looking up fic while being mocked for it by my flist. I don't even know. I've barely even played the game! (I'm terrible at fps games, especially multiplayer ones. Which is why I've been contenting myself with Dragon Age and my entitled little princeling rogue.:)

Although now that it's been brought to my attention, I do kind of ship it. Definite Yuletide nomination for next year.

In other gaming news, I am doing something terribly wrong and can't get past the first Reaper battle in Day One of the Joshua chapter of The World Ends With You. I keep finding walkthroughs saying this is an easy fight and I wind up shouting at the screen, "But I've died three times. REDEFINE EASY!" Can anyone clue me in as to where I'm going wrong here?

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I'm super excited for the fandom_stocking unveiling tomorrow, even I didn't get to write half of what I'd planned on. New tiny fics!

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As you've no doubt cunningly deduced from my icon, I did in fact see Sherlock Holmes on Christmas. ( *sings* It's Guy Love! That's all it is! )

Non-spoilerly: Fun, fun movie. Not a better Holmes than the Granada series (but how could it be? Although I might actually like Jude Law's Watson a teensy bit better. Shhhhh!) but much closer the the source that you might believe and filled with lots of little references for Holmes aficionados.

I hope I'm wrong about Avatar. I really do.

It has my girlcrush Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver and Uhura and the guy who played Angel in the last X-Men movie, and I hate it when actors I like wind up in bad movies. And I just saw The Abyss a couple of weeks ago, so I'm thinking fondly of James Cameron and it would be awful if the project he's spent twenty years trying to make turned out to be crap.

But from the trailers it looks the plot is "White Dude #1 infiltrates a troublesome band of Indians In Space but is seduced by their savage yet noble ways. And also by the chief's daughter." And I can deal with that plot when it's in a fifty year old Western, but it's not what I want to pay $10 to see in 2009.

We went to see Zombieland last week (at the midnight showing! Because that's the kind of dorks we are). Not only was it the funniest movie I've seen all year (probably the best movie I've seen in the theater since Watchmen), but it also serves as an excellent zombie survival guide. Go see Zombieland. Learn the rules. Love the rules.

But now I want to talk about the trailers.:)

We had an excellent ratio of good movies to probable crap; the only movies I didn't want to see was Saw VI (just no) and 2012 (I know people on my flist are excited about this, but I just can't watch a whole movie of people trying to out-drive the Apocalypse. I think The Happening broke me.) But as much as I liked the look of Wolfman and Legion nothing, nothing was going to beat the Nightmare on Elm Street trailer for pure squee.

Freddy Krueger is my very favorite boogeyman. You can avoid Jason by not going to Crystal Lake, Michael Myers by not being Laurie Strode but you can only stay awake for so long. Freddy's victims are helpless in a much more profound way than the doomed teenagers in other movies; he gets inside their heads and kills them from the inside out (what Freddy does is such a violation). There's no way to predict where he'll come from, what tactic he'll use or even what he'll look like. Even his Last Girl, Nancy, eventually falls later in the series. And the kids he kills haven't even done anything wrong; they're paying for the sins of their parents.

Which is what makes the preview for the Nightmare reboot so very interesting.

( Cut for trailer discussion and speculation on the Nightmare reboot. )

Man, do I ever want fic where Sam and Dean try to hunt down Freddy. Talk about the ultimate evil spirit.

Everyone made it back from Massachusetts in one piece and I'm savoring the last day of vacation before I'm dragged back to work tomorrow. Because we lead lives full of adventure and excitement, we spent the whole week lazing around and watching stuff. How much stuff?

Three full series of Blackadder (They had to say that George had an Uncle Bertie. Now I have to believe he makes it out, because the alternative is imagining Bertie Wooster getting that telegram and people, that is just wrong.)

Supernatural Season 4

Two full collections of MST3K ("This is where the fish lives!")

Scrubs Season 8 (One of the best finales I've seen. Not that it wound up actually being the finale since Scrubs got renewed after all, but if it had been the finale it would have been a great note to leave things on.)

Various episodes of Psych and Dirty Jobs

The Wonder Woman movie (Easily the best of the animated features DC's put out so far)

Plus we went to see Inglourious Basterds (Fantastic movie. I loved Shoshanna.) and District 9 (also fantastic, and I admired the film maker's courage in having a protagonist who's so unlikeable for so much of the movie.)

And I added to my massive to-read mountain, picking up a Dresden Files book and biographies on Edward VI and Andrew Jackson...and seanan_maguire's Rosemary and Rue! Yay!

I also reposted Loose Ends, my Question/Huntress/Question II story from the dc_kink meme; I'm please with now it came out and had been meaning to post it here for a while. And I made solid progress on the Watchmen fic I've been wrestling with, so I might be able to finish that in the next couple of days.

And now I'm lounging and watching 9th Doctor episodes. Ahhhhh. *relaxes*

My guys! I could not be happier with them. This is the first season in a long time the Yankees have actually felt like a team and not a collection of randomly shuffled stat cards. And it is so good to see A-Rod having a good time in the dug out. His first few seasons he was so super-professional and serious and tightly-wound, and it is such a change watching him cheer on his teamates and goof on the new guys. I don't know if it's because Teixiera being there is taking some of the pressure off or if the guy just thrives on his personal life being a roiling chaos, but whatever it is, it's working.

Actually, you know what he reminded me of this weekend? There as scene in The Bronx Is Burning where Reggie is sulking in the dugout because Billy Martin benched him, and suddenly there's a moment where he suddenly stops pouting and starts cheering everyone else on. That's when things start to turn around for that team, and I feel like things are starting to roll for this one.

Andy is pitching like he's back in 1998, Joba's found his fastball again, and even with Mo's age creeping closer to his number his cutter still keeps fooling people. This team is starting to feel special, and I'm starting to get my hopes up.

The Yankees haven't been this much fun to watch in years

My three favorite little things from this series:

1) After hitting the walk-off on Friday A-Rod immediately went over and hugged Hinski, who was so upset when he flew out the inning prior.

2) Joba acting like a goofball in the dugout.:) I love how into games he gets, especially games he's not even pitching in.

3) After Coke gave Boston the lead, the camera panned over to show Phil Hughes stilling with his head in his hands, as if he was the one who gave up those runs. Now that is a guy who wants to be in that spot. You can't buy passion like that (although God knows the Yankees have tried).

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I was thinking about movie ratings today. You know how lately they'll take on warning like, "This movie contains depictions of smoking" or "This film contains cartoon violence"? I was thinking what other, actually useful warnings there should be. Like:

Transformers 2: "This movie contains a horrendous cover of a song you love." For all of that movie's sins, I still think I'm most upset about what they did to "Burning Down the House."

Max Payne: "This movie requires the use of hallucinogens." Not contains. Requires

Semi-Pro: "The tone of this movie is not accurately represented by its trailer." How they made this despairing sports movie look like a zany comedy might actually qualify as some sort of alchemy.

What warnings do you wish were standard issue?

kalichan gave me: Top Five Moments in Canon Where You Would Have Gone Differently. And I've tried to stick to moments, because I could fill up a general "What you would do differently list" with Smallville examples alone.:)

( spoilers for The Matrix, Deadwood, Heroes, Angel, and Voyager )

Added over 1000 words to my apocalyptothon fic. If I can repeat this feat over the next few days, I'll actually be in good shape the meet the first draft deadline on the 11th. It's, um, taking longer to get to the plot than I'd first envisioned, but I should finally be able to work in Character #2 after this next section, and I'm managing to use a character the prompt had requested, which I hadn't been confident I'd be able to do.

I'm not sure if this is any good, mind; I'm happy with the voice so far, but I'm worrying as always that I'm indulging in way too much set up. Sigh.

I'm not allowing myself to work on any Watchmen fic until I have this finished, and that includes the 3/4 done follow-up to Reflections. I will not bend!

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Check out this interview Robert Englund did with fear.net, mostly about the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street reboot. He's just so classy about the whole thing, and he has nothing but praise for Jackie Earle Haley. So many people would be bitter about being replaced in the the franchise he made, but Englund is nothing but generous and good natured. It makes me want to watch Dream Warriors again.

( possible Game of Thrones casting spoilers ) Assuming this is true of course, knowing IMDB. *mumblefilthyHeroesfinaleliemumble*

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So we saw Terminator: Salvation yesterday and I thought it was solid but not up to the bar set by Star Trek. And obviously ( spoilers )

What a summer Anton Yelchin's having, huh? His agent must have spent the past two weeks twirling around in a spinny chair laughing maniacally.

So last night I had a dream where I was reading an issue of Nightwing (which should have been my clue that it was a dream; Nightwing doesn't have his own comic at the moment and even when he did I didn't read it) where Dick was being followed by a mysterious figure...a figure that went "Hurm" in the last panel. Before I could even start going OMGWTFRorschach! the scene shifts and he and Dick are in the middle of a fight scene ("Hurm. You fight soft." "Who the heck are you?!"), presumably because they were tailing the same target. (The fight winds up more or less even, IIRC.)

Then the scene shifts again and Rorschach is in the Batcave, messing with the Bat-computer and going through the Bat-files; Dick's in this scene too and is all Dude, you can't be here, so I don't know if Dick let him in there or if Rorschach ninja-ed his way in. Then Rorschach gets to Blue Beetle's file; when he reads what happened to Ted Rorschach gets tremendously upset, and he can't understand why.

Then I woke up and just lay there going "Aw, dammit!" I wanted to finish that storyline.:)