Spectacular Summaries Sunday :: top 10 gifts 2012 gave me

It’s not showing any signs of stopping yet.  And there will be much linking.

10. The Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy
No, really.  Hear me out on this one.  I will admit, this is sort of my wild card in-joke gift of the year, but for some reason, man.  That strange animated swirling glowing spectral star system is something my people and I absolutely cannot stop making jokes about.  (We realized that True Blood‘s Iraqi smoke monster is another of the Ghost Galaxy’s cousins, too.)  It wasn’t like it was creepy, but it was just so random that we can’t stop talking about it.

9. A Minor Bird by Sucré
Due to the way the days of this year panned out, I’m still putting my Top 10 albums of the year up tomorrow, but three of them go into this category, none of which should be surprising.  (Not that any of this list should be an overall surprise, but hey.)  Anyway, though.  Stacy has always been my favorite DuPree sister (I mean, I love them all very much, but Stacy plays keyboards, and that endeared her to me from the get-go) and her solo project, or solo-ish project at least, is just a legitimately good album in and of itself.  It’s become one of my favorite I Am Getting Ready To Go Somewhere Fancy albums (it’s got that certain je ne sais quoi about it) and also one of my favorite I Am Doing Creative Things Alone albums, and certain of the songs I just love to turn up at full blast and listen to as I take in the world around me.

8. Brave
As I just said on Friday.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who could say “but I don’t think I can actually explain how much this movie means to me,” and that actually makes me very happy.  This is one of the few movies I’ve actually gotten into heated almost-arguments about; “but I heard it was really feminist,” I once heard someone say, sounding sniffy about the premise.  “Yes, so?” was my immediate retort, and I proceeded to summarily dismiss just about every argument I had ever read a critic making against the movie (there are plenty of dude role models, why can’t a little boy have a girl role model because little girls are expected to have boy role models, Merida is not a lesbian just because she doesn’t want to get married and likes archery BUT EVEN IF SHE WAS why is that a big deal but I’m pretty sure her sexual orientation is the opposite of the point, etcetera).  I mention to you guys every time I go off on these giant rants, which might make you think I do it a lot, but not so.  There are plenty of rants I’ve wanted to rant that I’ve refrained from, but Brave is one of those rants I will rant forever.

7. Mad Men season 5
As I alluded to on Tuesday, I’m still not sure what to make of the situation with my Joanie (Christina Hendricks).  Because Mad Men has so much going on, I’ve noticed they have a habit of spending an episode dealing intensely with one character’s emotions, then just alluding to it for the next few episodes, and the situation with Joan was close enough to the season’s end that they didn’t circle back around to another Joan Feelings Episode.  We did, however, get Meaningful Looks between her and Don (Jon Hamm) and her being a Super Total Badass both at the meeting and in their new office space, so that’s something.  I was happy for Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) deciding to do what felt right for her and go elsewhere, but I really do miss her around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  I do.  I, as mentioned, mourn Lane (Jared Harris); I am intensely curious about many of the other characters and the paths they’re taking, particularly Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Megan (Jessica Paré).  This was largely a gift just because of how long we had to wait for it, I admit, but it’s also one of those cases where my ambivalence about many of the situations they explored is actually a compliment.  I’m intrigued, I’m just torn.

6. Game of Thrones season 2
I never actually did a season 2 wrap-up post about Game of Thrones, largely because of the fact that the schedule I watched it on would have made it too late.  So I’m just going to link to my Game of Thrones tag, because gods know there’s plenty of meta scattered through the thousands of posts in there (and also because everything else gets a link, so consistency demands it).  Season 2 differs from A Clash of Kings more than season 1 differed from A Game of Thrones, and some of those differences were strange, yes.  (Having recently finished A Storm of Swords, finally, I’m looking forward to how they deal with the obvious changes Talisa [Oona Chaplin] is going to cause in the next seasons.)  But some of the changes, I actually… don’t entirely mind?  I don’t know exactly why Ros (Esmé Bianco), but a lot of the functions she serves are ones that other characters directly served and they’re just condensing it into one beautiful redhead, so that’s okay I suppose, and I’m fond of her for silly personal reasons.  For example.  And though I’ve gone off about this on my tumblr just a tiny bit, I guess this is the best time to really address the matter of Dany (Emilia Clarke) and her dragon drama (well, beyond the Doreah [Roxanne McKee] side of it, which I’ve already analyzed to pieces) here: anyone who says that Dany spent the entire season “just running around screaming about her dragons” is wrong and silly.  You know how long Dany actually spent “just running around screaming about her dragons”?  The equivalent of about one episode.  It was really “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?” (a reasonable question) then “OH you have my dragons” then she wasn’t in an episode then “OKAY I’M GOING TO GET MY DRAGONS NOW.”  I’m copypasting from a tumblr meme rant I did now, because this is also important: “Oh, and I actually really liked the changes to the scene in the House of the Undying, mostly because in the book, it came off sort of SUDDEN MAGICKS WHAT IS GOING ON OH NO HERE COME JORAH AND BLOODRIDERS TO HELP ME MAKE IT STOP and in the show, it was more HERE IS A LOT OF TEMPTATION, OKAY, BUT I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO EVEN IF IT HURTS, AND GUESS WHAT?  HERE I AM COMMANDING MY DRAGONS AND SAVING MYSELF.”  Also, it’s not like everyone else doesn’t “run around screaming about” one or two things, either.  So.

5. Halcyon by Ellie Goulding
As I alluded to last Monday and will discuss more tomorrow, this album is my jam.  I like that it’s a little darker than Lights (though don’t get me wrong, I love Lights too) and I feel a little more personally connected to a lot of the songs.  Also, I love that Ellie Goulding actually gets played on the “normal” radio sometimes (not enough to make my people grumble, like they do about Adele [which sucks, because she's still really talented, but], but enough) because it means that I know a song on the radio.  (“Only You” came on at a bar the other night; the friends I was with had been singing along to all of the Katy Perry, One Direction, and other insanity that played while I sat on top of the pool table and wrinkled my nose in confusion, but once there was Ellie, I could sit there whisper-singing to myself and smiling because finally I knew what was going on.)  This album is good for driving, for introspection; a lot of the tracks are good for exercising; it’s super morbid in places, even in the chipper-sounding songs (because really, “Anything Can Happen” sounds super-happy but isn’t, and I love that).  Also, she’s British.  This is a failing of mine forever.

4. The Avengers
Were there things this movie could have done even better?  Of course.  Perfection doesn’t exist, and once I heard that Joss had wanted to write in Janet Van Dyne to be played by Morena Baccarin, a hollow space of longing opened up in my heart (both because there should always be more lady superheroes and because there should always be more Morena Baccarin).  But did this movie do a lot of things really, really right?  Oh, yes.  The dynamics between the characters, the platonicness of every relationship (and I was thinking about this; it’s not rare to have a bunch of platonic dude relationships, but if there’s a woman, especially if there’s only one main woman, she’s almost always tied to one of the guys, but that is not the case here, thank goodness), the characterizations, the dialogue (of all of the characters, I actually think Nick Fury [Samuel L. Jackson] has the Whedoniest lines), the Whedonverse in-jokes (actors, references, anything in between) – it’s just overall warm fuzzies.

3. Synthetica by Metric
While Halcyon and A Minor Bird were sort of slow-burn favorites for me (there were tracks I loved intensely from the get-go, but the whole of the albums took a few listens to fall as deeply in love with), Synthetica was sort of instant.  I’ve been into Metric since junior year of high school, when one of the other editors on my school newspaper, who was graduating that year, gave me a whole stack of music to continue her Good Music During Newspaper Layout Parties legacy; I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you to her, because we haven’t actually seen each other… probably since then, actually, but I would very much want to.  Metric is a beautiful group, and Synthetica, while not perfect because that isn’t real, is almost a perfect album.

2. The Cabin in the Woods
For so many reasons.  I’ve refrained from writing too too much Cabin meta, but this is mostly because I’ve read some really intriguing pieces of it by other authors.  (I tend to talk more about things I hear/see fewer people talking about, I think.)  I really do love this movie, though.  I love it for all of its meta, I love it for its simultaneous genre critique and genre overhaul; I haven’t seen a lot of the allegedly big famous horror franchises, but I have been known to enjoy a terrible straight-to-video horror film or ten, so I’m comfortably aware of the conventions, enough to enjoy seeing them ripped to shreds.  I love it for its social critique: as some of the meta I’ve seen has said, the pigeonholing of characters is uniquely American.  The athlete/scholar/fool/whore/virgin thing is a different version of the ever-referenced Breakfast Club: characters have to be reduced to one thing by others in order to make them understandable to said others.  Clearly, there’s much more to them, but that would be too complicated.  Men are defined by what they do (sports, academia, humor) but women are defined by who they do (or don’t do).  What this movie does, though, is both acknowledge that this is the way that we (and in this case, “we” ends up being a global evil corporation based in ancient rituals and monsters, which is oddly apt) often view things and acknowledge that viewing things in such a way can only lead to danger.  Reducing people to one dimension and then sacrificing them so that we may continue to go on our merry only leads to badness.

1. True Blood season 5
I’m linking here to my talking about the season premiere, then my talking about the season finale, then just my True Blood tag, given the exceptional amounts of discussion that goes on within it.  (Aside from day topic tags, the only tags I have that are more populated than the True Blood tag are the Buffy tag and the Dollhouse tag.  I’m sure this is mostly season 5′s fault.)  I was going back and forth about whether I should put Cabin or this at number one on this list, but I realized that honestly, it had to be this.  It couldn’t not be.  I have several friends who watch True Blood, and the reactions to season 5 have been varied; “I liked it,” one said, “I just didn’t understand all of it.”  And that’s totally valid.  It’s very different from the books by this point, but I’m, as I have mentioned 1000 times, more than comfortable with that.  There are bunches of reasons that this is at number one, almost all of which I talk about way too often: Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths), obviously, by herself and also plus Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and plus Salome (Valentina Cervi), the joy of Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Tara (Rutina Wesley) like I mentioned on Tuesday.  Pam and Tara as individual characters, Eric and Salome as individual characters, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) as an individual character, Luna (Janina Gavankar) and Sam (Sam Trammell) by themselves and together, the utter adorable that is Emma (Chloe Noelle), the awesome that was dearly departed Molly (Tina Majorino), the twist of fate that is evil Bill (Stephen Moyer), the fact that Sookie (Anna Paquin) got to develop outside of the context of any romantic entanglements at all, the joy that is assertive Alcide (Joe Manganiello), the fun evil of Russell (Denis O’Hare) and his cuteness with Steve (Michael McMillan), the sassiness and wonder that is Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis).  The fact that the book is fun, but the show is just getting dark and going into serious things like hate crimes and religious fanaticism, but cloaking it in this seemingly absurd world of supernatural whatever.  The fact that here is this show that people routinely brush off, as I’ve said, as being SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, but it is actually dealing with these more serious topics.  The fact that yes, sure, horrible things happen to female characters sometimes, but horrible things also happen to male characters; power on this show is divided fairly evenly between female characters and male characters; Lilith may be evil, but it’s fascinating that vampire God is a woman; when characters try to coddle women, they get called out on it (like with Sam and Luna); femininity is not regarded as an inherent weakness, but not every character “does” their femaleness in the same way: this is actually, at least in my read, a pretty lady-positive show.  The fact that this show is open to and seems to encourage non-vanilla/heterosexual sexualities and, provided that they are consensual and not rooted in evil, treats them just the same; the fact that this show is intensely bisexuality-positive.  The fact that sure, there’s SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, it’s about vampires and shifters and werewolves and fairies and goodness knows what else, but the whole of it is actually very well-written and the characters are realistic.  (Maybe sometimes a little too: having just been down South, I can [re-]vouch for the fact that folks like the townspeople extras in True Blood do definitely exist, particularly though not solely in that geographical region.)  Clearly, I could go on about this for ages.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: well, all of that happened.

That’s the best way I can think of to sum up the True Blood season finale, honestly.

I started watching all of this with my heart in my throat, because I wanted only one thing.  But I got it.  I think.  And I also got at least three other things I didn’t know I wanted necessarily but yeah, I totally wanted.  So.  And, y’know, SPOILERS holy goodness so many spoilers.  (And… yeah, I don’t even apologize for half of this post being on one subject, because I am eyehearting and have been and sorry, it happens.)

• The only thing I wanted and I got: Nora (Lucy Griffiths) to actually make it out alive.  I mean, probably.  I have said it multiple times before and I will say it again: I do not care that she was evil for a little while and crazy for a little while, a character does not have to be a saint to be interesting to me and honestly she is my favorite kind of not a saint.  (I feel like clarifying mostly because I was skipping around the Nora Gainesborough tag on tumblr looking for gifs, and I didn’t do a lot of reading because I’ve mostly learned my lesson from other tags [mostly the Daenerys Targaryen tag] but still.  I allow people to have their opinions, I respect that they do.  But when people are just gif-reacting and/or bitching at my babies, I skip over it.  And when people have to pit two characters against each other to prove who’s better, I skip over it.  Opinions are allowed, I just don’t want to make myself cranky by reading them too much.)  I mean, yes.  Evil and crazy are bad things.  But, well, my crazy British vampire problem.  And my aforementioned thing of sometimes getting attached to characters that are not strictly protagonist material.  Also, we haven’t gotten a lot of it, but you know what?  I like that Nora is snarky as hell sometimes.  I like that there was much banter and that she had to be physically restrained from going after Sookie (Anna Paquin) but then promised all grudgingly and I like that she got to drop lines like “you smell like something I’ve dreamed of.”  She really is Eric’s (Alexander Skarsgard) bratty little sister in some ways (and I sort of like that Nora has an attitude about the rest of Eric’s family to an extent, because it’s not enough attitude to be a problem but it feels reasonable), except for they’re vampire related so I don’t feel weird shipping the hell out of it.  (I mean, I have said before I’m good with Eric/Sookie, but Eric/Nora tugs at my screwed up heartstrings.  Which probably accounts for why I’ve been drawing them all week.)  I want all the flashbacks next season with her, because I am fully comfortable making up stories about her, but I would rather know proper ones so I don’t have to retcon my own headcanon.
• One thing I didn’t know that I wanted but I got: one little throwaway snark line that proves that in addition to having the previously crazy thing and the cute nose/eyes/face thing going and the delightfully morally gray thing and the British thing all going for her, my Nora is also at least a little bit of a vampire techie goddess.  “Do you honestly think you understand the system I helped design better than I do?”  I mean, this could be taken a lot of ways, but the way I take it is this: yeah, Nora hasn’t gotten out a whole lot, ’cause of being with the Authority.  But she also knows how to do a lot of stuff because of that.  She’s apparently always been a political genius, but she’s learned things she needs to know as per her job, and why can’t that include computerized security systems and stuff?  I mean, there are/were vampires like dearly departed Molly (Tina Majorino) to run techie stuff, but at least some of the chancellors would have to be involved too, and Nora strikes me as the kind of girl who gets involved not just in a supervisory capacity.  And there she is messing with the system and looking up at Eric like “don’t even” and yep.  Until told otherwise, I will fully institute the headcanon of my Nora the vampire techie goddess, because, well.
• A second thing I didn’t know I wanted as much as I ended up wanting but I got: Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten).  I mean, they’ve sort of thrown hints all season, so it wasn’t a surprise, but I hadn’t consciously been thinking “oh I need this to happen.”  But really, interracial lesbian vampire couples.  That is just such a beautiful phrase.  Their dynamic has evolved logically and reasonably, and despite the circumstances of the turning, I’ve, as mentioned, loved to watch Pam start to actually give a damn about Tara.  Pam never gives a damn about anyone (except for Eric) but, suck though she may at expressing it, it’s totally easy to see she’s been growing to like Tara.  Tara is sarcastic all over Pam all the time, but I think that’s a good thing for Pam: it works, because Pam is more comfortable with sarcasm than with feelings, but then there was the rescuing (god, I love vampire Tara) and the kissing and it was so passionate and legit.  And I’m really, really happy about this being now a thing.
• A third thing I didn’t know I wanted but I got: big bad Bill (Stephen Moyer).  I am honestly shocked it took me until this episode to start consciously thinking Angelus thoughts about this season’s Bill, but it did, and I did, and whoops he’s transcended that even.  Rising from the blood all naked and gross and evil evil.  I kind of love it, actually.  Book!Bill is basically irrelevant by this point, but they’re not going to write him off the show, and since book plots have been thrown out the window, well, this is a viable alternative indeed and  I think this is going to make for an excellent and insane next year.
• Also: aw, Jess (Deborah Ann Woll) all wibbly.  What the hell, craycray haunted Jason (Ryan Kwanten).  Fun while you lasted, craycray Russell (Denis O’Hare).  What in the world is going on, Sam (Sam Trammell) and Luna (Janina Gavankar).  Your assertive declarations of intent made me sort of into you for the first time, Alcide (Joe Manganiello).  As always, I eagerly await next year.

–your fangirl heroine.

Monster Monday :: I guess today I’m musing about werewolves.

This is not for any particular reason (I mean, I’ve been watching a few episodes of season 2-3 Buffy randomly lately, but that isn’t it).  I’m sure there are plenty of books and films and whatever that are about werewolves exclusively or only, but I realized today that I can only think of one.  Blood and Chocolate.  It’s based on a book that I haven’t read, and I don’t remember the movie too clearly, but I do remember that it just sort of made my friends and I giggle.

Why is this?  I actually don’t have an answer to the question, it’s not like I’m asking why rhetorically as a lead or something. I mean, werewolves aren’t necessarily the sexiest of supernatural creatures.  But werewolf mythologies seem a lot of times to be tacked on to what was already a vampire mythology, so I’ll just do my big 3 of analysis, because really, I need to talk about how creepy Stephenie Meyer’s werewolves are.  Actually True Blood werewolves are occasionally creepy too, but a lot of it (not all of it) is more the individual I guess.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

• Oz (Seth Green) is really the only werewolf we ever know, and that’s not till season two.  I’d think that Sunnydale would have to be home to some sort of wolfpack, being as it is home to basically everything else supernatural.  And there had to be at least one wolf in town in order to have bitten Oz’s cousin who then bit him.  But maybe that was a traveling wolf just wandering through town biting babies?
• DINGOES ATE MY BABY.   That is all.
• Since Oz is the only werewolf we know, and Veruca (Paige Moss) really the only other werewolf we see (there are apparently a couple on Angel, which is my summer project but I’m still just barely in season two, what have I been doing with my life), we get a pretty complete lone wolf mentality.  There aren’t really packs hanging around that we see; the Buffy wiki entry on werewolves does mention packs, and they are mentioned in passing on the show, but we don’t see them, really.
• Sometimes Buffy werewolves look adorable and silly, like people in yeti suits; sometimes they look like people in more serious yeti suits.
• As per the events of 4×06, “Wild at Heart,” and the surrounding, we get a pretty clear sense of Oz’s and the others’ moral stance on werewolfism (?) and what goes with it.  Oz has the others restrain him at the full moon until he goes off to learn to control it and change at will, Veruca thinks that’s dumb and wolfs out when it happens, regardless.
• Buffy werewolves are fascinating to me because everyone but the Initiative seems to see them as a shade of gray.  The Scoobies make exceptions because Angel has a soul, and Spike eventually has a chip and then a soul, but other than that, they aren’t really asking examining the life choices of individual vampires.  “The Scooby Gang and the Angel Investigations team argue that werewolves can’t be held accountable for their actions in lupine form. They do make an exception to this belief when it comes to werewolves that, knowing of their condition, do not seek any method of restraint, regarding these individuals as they would regard common vampires and demons, or at least a dangerous human,” says the Buffy wiki.  Yes, there aren’t really vampires or demons or anything who do try to keep from the killing, except the souled guys, but they have a conditional policy about werewolves.  Which is interesting.

True Blood:

• We don’t get werewolves until season three (or book three) here.  At first, we mostly know Alcide (Joe Manganiello), then we meet Russell’s (Denis O’Hare) crazy V-addict wolves and craycray Debbie (Brit Morgan).
• And Alcide, until season four, also seems to be a lone wolf.
• These guys have the magic of modern computer generated imagery on their side, so they look like real wolves.
• Packs are first presented in the light of the crazy V-addicts, so we don’t have the best first impression.  There is definitely a ceremony to belonging to a pack, and that is in and of itself fascinating; the True Blood world has a lot a lot of ceremony in it, a lot of structure that always seems to want to be broken.
• But the packs don’t actually seem that great.  I mean, there’s the having a pack aspect, having folks who know your secret (since weres aren’t out yet at this point) and who you can wolf out with, and that’s theoretically good.  But abjuring is kind of weird, and packmasters are a strange thing.
• Oh, okay, we’ll talk about this creepy factor for a moment: Martha Bozeman (Dale Dickey) wolfing out at the sight of her son Marcus’s (Dan Buran) corpse and then leading the rest of the pack in the ritual nomming, because apparently it’s expected to nom your dead packmaster.  Ick.
• Also, werepanthers aren’t werewolves, but at least in the television series, creepy.  No good comes from incestuous cult-families of poorly educated supernaturals who think it’s okay to kidnap people for sex.  No.  Werepanthers, at least the Hotshot ones, I’m just going to call bad on.

Twilight:

• Wrong bad no.  Having werewolfism be a part of the Native American tribe could actually be cool, and I’d be interested in seeing someone do something with that who wasn’t being creepy and gross.  But these guys… wrong bad no.
• I am still laughing about the fact that these guys routinely ripped their shirts off.
• And still cringing about the handling of Leah (Julia Jones).  Quotes from the Twilight wiki: “Seeing their daughter phase rather than their son, Seth, her father suffers a fatal heart attack.”Whoa potentially gross.  “She and Jacob have a deep conversation one day whilst hunting, mentioning how being frozen in time has stopped her menstruation cycle and may have disabled her ability to get pregnant. Jacob also remembers her breakdown when she first became a wolf, thinking herself as a freak, a “girly wolf”. Leah also wonders if she maybe isn’t as feminine as she thought she was, and wonders how imprinting would be for her. It is in this discussion that Leah mentions how she can relate to Rosalie’s protection of Bella and the idea of never having a child from her own body was upsetting.”  I mean, if Leah really wants to be a mommy, she could adopt, couldn’t she?  But apparently not physically birthing one would just be too much.  And honestly, if you want to have kids, that’s your business, whatever.  I just still find it frustrating that basically every female character in Twilight who is remotely significant except for Alice has to be written as defined by motherhood roles or a lack thereof.  Also: Dear Leah Clearwater, you can be as feminine as you damn well please and still be a wolf, being a wolf who may not birth a child physically doesn’t make you a bad woman, there are many ways to be a woman.
• And it’s weird to me that Leah is the first lady wolf at all.
• Aaand imprinting.  It’s like an arranged marriage and a biological imperative formed by entitlement and just… creepiness all around.  And really, I am still making faces (as I am sure most people are) over the notion of imprinting on a fetus.  Again, the wiki says it all: “Unlike her imprinter, the imprintee can choose whether she’ll accept him as her ‘soulmate’ or not. It is however implied that a rejection is highly unlikely, since it is said that it would be very hard to resist the levels of “commitment, compatibility and adoration”. It has also been noted that the imprintee feels incomplete without the wolf nearby.  /  But if she does choose someone else over the shape-shifter, he will be in deep emotional pain, though he will still respect her choice.”  Well, at least there’s that respect, theoretically.
• These guys are technically shifters and not werewolves, but they’re… basically wolves.  They might as well be wolves, the rules are close enough.
• Yet again, the mythology just… no.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on Magic Mike

I honestly think that the sociological experience of this film was more interesting than the film itself.  I took my mother on a night in the middle of the week, because she has a Matthew McConaughey thing and she thought it would be funny.  We got to the theater and we saw multiple groups of giggling women approaching the counter for tickets: “Oh, we’re cliches,” I noted.

Honestly, I am all for the fact that movies can ~bring women together~ or something, but it weirds me out that the only movie I can think of that I have ever seen such a predominantly female crowd for (actually, I think the audience was only women) is a movie about male strippers where you sort of could tell they’d all gone to go “ooh, butts and stuff.”  There were female characters in the movie, yes, but none of them were that well-developed.  Actually, the male characters weren’t that well-developed either.

And there is probably nothing wrong with wanting to go see a movie because “ooh, butts and stuff.”  I guess that’s your prerogative.  I mean, I am physically incapable of that (though, you know, sometimes I watch movies at home because “ooh, Summer Glau and stuff” or something, but that’s both physical attraction and interest in watching good actors act and whatnot) but I can’t stop someone from processing that way.  I just would rather that the female community, like, bond over a movie for reasons other than “ooh, butts and stuff.”  Call me crazy.

There are plenty of movies where all women are there to do is titillate.  In that way, I guess it’s turnabout as fair play that people went to Magic Mike expecting that.  And hey, there were stripper scenes.  Channing Tatum danced.  Alex Pettyfer danced.  Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello and Adam Rodriguez and Kevin Nash danced.  Matthew McConaughey even danced.  But that… kind of wasn’t actually the point?

I think they intended to make a movie about the troubled nature of Magic Mike and Adam the Kid’s relationship to their profession of stripping.  They relatively succeeded in making us realize that they were conflicted.  Magic Mike wanted to start a business and do other things, Adam was still trying to figure out what the hell he was doing with his life.  It was kind of that Mad Men thing of the slightly older guy, like Don or Mike, is trying to make changes in his life while the younger guy, like Pete or Adam, is just trying to enjoy the place he’s in to mixed success.

But you see, I just… I didn’t care.  I couldn’t even be that interested for “ooh, butts and stuff” because I just don’t dig on really any of the guys in the movie.  Joe Manganiello comes closest, just because True Blood on principle, but wow, none of the characters were actually that interesting, and I have a hard time being interested in a thing that has boring characters unless it’s just so bad it’s ridiculous or something.  Which this wasn’t.  It was fine, it was just boring.

And I kind of hope that the next time that all women bond over a movie, it actually has interesting and well-drawn lady characters.  I mean, Cody Horn’s Brooke was clearly a decent person and occasionally made me crack a smile, but basically they just wrote her to be Look, A Responsible Person, and that’s not fair.  Olivia Munn’s Joanna could have been interesting, I mean, theoretically bisexual psychology student, cool, but basically they just wrote her to be Look, A Bitch, and that’s not fair.  I liked Riley Keough’s Nora’s hair, but they definitely just wrote her to be Look, A Bad Influence Who Is Clearly Alternative, and that’s not fair.

And you could Look, A Character Type with the guys, too.  Mike was Look, A Protagonist, Adam was Look, A Confused Youth, McConaughey’s Dallas was Look, A Sleazebag, the other strippers were Look, Male Strippers.  They weren’t even that individually defined.

I don’t know.  I just… I think I was expecting something else?  Or I was hoping for something else?  Character development, I cry out for the thousandth time, hoping that Hollywood will hear.

On the bright side, there was an adorable and tiny pig.  Who for some reason wandered in and out of the sex/drugs/artistic lighting montage, and I still don’t know why, but.  Adorable and tiny pig.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: one thing (temporarily) ends and another begins.

Aka, the Sunday I wished the Tonys weren’t because I wanted immediate Mad Men season finale and True Blood season premiere and the weekdays I made up for it.

Obviously I’m into a lot of television programs.  But of currently-running programs I think I am the most intensely into three right now: Game of Thrones and Mad Men and True Blood.  (As evidenced by massive collections of posting pertaining to them, often in sequence, and the immense ladyfeels I have about some of their characters.)  So it was sort of neat and tidy that Game of Thrones ended one week and the next week Mad Men wrapped up and True Blood its place. The tried and true HBO Sunday night pattern will not fail me.

So.  SPOILERS I GUESS.   Bullet-pointy as always.

Mad Men:

• After two weeks of everything happening quickly and all at once, the season finale actually felt sort of slow.  Not bad-slow, at least bad in terms of boring; it was just a different pace than the breakneck speed of angst and tragedy we’ve been subjected to recently.  It’s what aftermaths feel like though: the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the fact that this episode was finely scripted fallout and building tension.  Building to what?  Well, I guess in eighteen months or however long they make us wait this time we’ll find out.
• One of my people compared it to the series finale of The Sopranos: it’s fascinating, and lots is happening, but it’s all so relatively small compared to what’s gone down in the past that you just have to feel like it’s just paving the way for something horrendous.  It doesn’t matter that not a lot of horrendous actually goes down.  It’s the art of making you think it could.
• We’ve had a season now of Megan (Jessica Paré) as a main character, and I still can’t decide how I feel about her.  I like that she’s willing to call Don (Jon Hamm) on his bull.  I don’t necessarily like how he sometimes babies her.  I like that she’s ~going after her dreams~ in theory but it also makes me wary for future plot dramatics.  I don’t know if I have any defining feelings about her a a person.
• I still can’t decide how I feel about Don’s getting Megan the commercial.  On one hand, it was the right thing to do (although seriously, that was their Beauty and the Beast setup?  She looked like a German beer festival waitress in that costume) but on the other hand, it makes me very, very wary.  That look on Don’s face at the end, I think I know what that might mean and I don’t like it.  He’s been so good this season.
• I think it’s interesting that every time we’ve seen an adult female’s mother on the show this season, it’s served the function (at least for a little while) of questioning the daughter’s modernity.  Megan’s mother Marie (Julia Ormond) has shown up a couple of times now to be passive-aggressive and to wind up boinking Roger (John Slattery), but this time she also basically told Megan to give it up and let Don have her as a kept wife, essentially as arm candy or a trained housepet that cooks dinner.  Peggy’s mother Katherine (Myra Turley) really only showed up long enough to criticize Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) for deciding to cohabitate with her boyfriend Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) without marrying him.  And Joan’s mother Gail (Christine Estabrook) has been there to support her and to help take care of her child, but she still had plenty of things to say in the first few episodes that made Joan (Christina Hendricks) really cranky.  (“Greg’s not going to allow you to work.”  “Allow me?”)
• Oh and while we’re on the subject of Joan.  Let’s talk about Joan.  My darling should have some proper meta slated for sometime in the nearish future, so I’m not going to spend time going into the subject of what transpired two episodes ago right now.  (Except to say ow, my heart.)  I just want to buy her a drink and give her a hug and tell her it’s okay.  She shouldn’t feel like she’s expected to solve everyone’s problems, and she should know that she certainly shouldn’t feel like her only worth in problem-solving or in anything else is her ability to use womanly wiles.  She can use them like nobody’s business, but this way of thinking is legitimately not her fault.  This way of thinking is the bull that she’s surrounded by on a daily basis; the if only I mentality is understandable, it really is, but baby, it wouldn’t have solved the problem.  I also want to tell her that yes, the guys are basically jerks, and yes, she deserves better coworkers.
• Completely shallowly, though, I will (again) exclaim GLASSES CHAIIIIN. 
• You know who I want to hit the most lately?  Pete (Vincent Kartheiser).  I want to punch the smug little smirk off of his face and shake the weird entitlement/white knight hybrid mentality out of his skull.  He is not a good coworker.  He is not a good husband.  He is not a good self-actualized person.  He should really work on those things.  He owes it to himself as a person and he owes it to Trudy (Alison Brie) who I will irrationally defend forever.  I’m not saying he’s a bad person (though these last episodes haven’t exactly given a lot of evidence that he isn’t), but he needs to figure out his issues.  He needs to sort out why he behaves in such ways as he does and not do it.
• Also, this is the second Mad Men season finale that has had a sequence that made us stare at each other and go “wait, this must be a dream.”  We had that reaction regarding Don’s proposal to Megan, and we had that reaction to Pete’s weird avenging hero-that-fails scene on the train.  I’m still coming to terms with the whole business of Pete and Beth (Alexis Bledel) and her husband Howard (Jeff Clarke).  I still don’t know what to make of it.
• Basically, you know.  Feelings.

True Blood:

• WELL.  Unlike Mad Men, which picks up months and months and months later, True Blood picked up this season literally right after last season ended.  Actually backtracked to a couple of events that transpired in the finale.  Considering the cliff-hangery nature of said events, that made sense, but.
• I have fewer things to say about this, because I love True Blood a lot but it does not get me quite as feelingsy right off the bat; also premieres don’t get me as feelingsy as finales.  Probably because they’re introducing plots and ideas and things, not wrapping them up (for now).  But this is not from a lack of enjoyment.  I did enjoy it quite a lot.
• Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) is brilliant and I really really hope that she and Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) have a chance to make up amid all the AVL political messes and surprise-vampire-Tara (Rutina Wesley) (??) and many other things that are going to be going on.  She may be apologizing to Eric, but she is not apologizing for who she is.  She’s still good ol’ caustic Pam.  And I love her for it.
• Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is beautiful.  I don’t really care about her hanging around with drunk college kids, though I see the point it served, and when did she put green in her hair, and that was a fancy Rock Band setup.  (Makes sense, it being all in King Bill’s Grand Mansion and all.  Though I can’t imagine Bill ever playing Rock Band.)  Mostly I am just devoting a bullet point to Jess because of when she burst into Jason’s (Ryan Kwanten) and told off Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) and… whoops.  That sounded a hell of a lot like babygirl verbally declaring her intent all assertively.  (And while wearing a corset, which… yes, was there before, but.  But.)
• Well, I’m worried that Nora (Lucy Griffiths) is eventually doomed.  I don’t know when, it might not be for a while, and I hope this is one of my failure predictions.  I like her.  I am fully aware that this is completely irrational since she hasn’t been there for that long and my best reasons for liking her are that I like vampire family structure stuff, I like ladyvampires who are capable, I like that she was wearing leather wristlength gloves while she and Eric got, y’know, reacquainted and that she kept her bra on even though it’s True Blood where you can show all the boobies you want (and the gloves and the bra coordinated), and I like British people talking.  But.
• The synopsis on our television for the episode contained, after the descriptions of what everyone else was up to, the phrase “Alcide warns Sookie.”  Seriously, other than wolf politics what does Alcide (Joe Mangianello) do but warn Sookie (Anna Paquin)?
• Eric and Bill (Stephen Moyer) are buddies now, okay.  They couldn’t have thought they were getting out of this that easily though.  If it was going to succeed, it wouldn’t have happened until the second-to-last or last episode of the season.
• Also, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is a pro.
• This is officially nothing like the book.  And I do not care at all.

–your fangirl heroine.

Whedon Wednesday :: how do you symbolize reflective similarities without mirrors?

Why yes, I am talking about this season of True Blood again!  More specifically, things this season that reminded me of things on Buffy.  The two are completely separate entities, and I don’t think that True Blood has ever ripped Buffy off, but I’m that nerd that finds tiny moments that are fairly similar to tiny moments on Buffy (and Firefly, and Dollhouse) in just about everything.

Some of these got graphic’d and tumbl’d by me already, like this one:

Not only did both Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and Spike (James Marsters) undergo Significant Changes, these allowed both Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) to come to terms with having feelings for them, if only for a little while.  They had almost the same conversation with other men in their lives (Alcide [Joe Mangianello], who has maybe-feelings for Sookie, and Angel [David Boreanaz] who had serious feelings for Buffy; both are tall, dark and handsome men, too, as opposed to the tall badass blonde thing that Eric and Spike rock).  The Significant Changes made the men vulnerable and more willing to play for the side of good.

It’s interesting to note that the initial changes were both unwilling: Eric’s magical amnesia, Spike’s chip.  But Spike then went and took the change one step farther by earning a soul, proving that even without the chip he could love and want to do the right thing by Buffy.  Eric got fairy-blasted, had a memory, then… still wanted to love and do the right thing by Sookie.  It took Spike four seasons to undergo this arc.  It took Eric one season.  But it started in season four of both of their shows.

Also observed previously:

Other than the “redhead I sort of girlcrush on messing with their lover’s memory” thing there’s not much similarity.  Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) screwed with Hoyt (Jim Parrack) via glamouring, then broke up with him because she knew she needed something not their relationship.  Willow (Alyson Hannigan) screwed with Tara (Amber Benson) via magic, then Tara broke up with Willow ’cause magic is kind of like drugs.  Both times it led to bad.  Both times it led to a realization that getting the hell out needed to take place.  In the True Blood case, it was just another reason on Jess’s list, though, and in the Buffy case it was on Tara’s list.

And speaking of Tara…

Tara(s) always get shot, apparently.  The circumstances aren’t the same on the outside, but if you break it down to nouns, there are some similarities: someone who’s craycray (Debbie [Brit Morgan], who is the person that the term craycray was invented for, or Warren [Adam Busch) intends to shoot the cute blonde protagonist (Sookie or Buffy).  Instead or also, the bullet hits a Tara person (Rutina Wesley, Amber Benson).  Much sad is had, and the episode ends with a person close to them (either best-friendily, i.e. Sookie, or romantically, i.e. Willow) splattered with their blood and holding them in their arms on the floor while crying.  And there is bloody revenge (Sookie shooting Debbie, Willow flaying Warren).

And as discussed yesterday, there is this one.

Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Dru (Juliet Landau) are my girls.  And they’re both getting left (Dru with a more romantic angle to it, but still) for blonde twits (who aren’t really twits, but in their eyes) with silly names.  (Pam actually calls Sookie’s name out; Dru isn’t the one to acknowledge the goofiness of Buffy’s, but it comes up plenty of other times.)  And then I’m sad for them.

And for a Dollhouse bonus (I can’t graphicparallel doll!Eric ’cause it’s a behavior pattern more than any one thing, and anyway I’m sure I’ve talked about that enough):

Basically, that’s what Jason (Ryan Kwanten) wanted Jess to do to him.  Just go in and take those pesky memories out so he could live in bliss.  I think Jess did actually talk about wiping directly, though of course it was meant differently.  (Jason’s life is kind of a permanent semi-dollstate, come to think of it.  Somewhere between that and want, take, have.  But he means well, stupid as he is.)  But Jess was put off by the idea of using her glamouring powers like a machine again.  She’s learned by now that it doesn’t make anything better.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: and then True Blood’s season was over.

I feel like I ought to preface this by saying that, blasphemous though it may be, I… generally prefer True Blood in its television canon to Charlaine Harris’ novels.  I don’t dislike the novels, I appreciate them for what they are.  But I guess I’m just one of those crazy youths who likes their sex and blood every which way.

The fourth book in the series, Dead to the World, on which the fourth season is rather loosely based, is my favorite of the books.  This is largely due to the the prominence of doll!Eric and the rather distinct lack of Bill, who I find even more boring in book canon.  But, even though it makes me a terrible literary nerd, I am actually more than okay with the changes the show has made, in this season and in the ones prior.

The finale aired this weekend, and I can safely say that I haven’t talked so much and so loudly at a first-run (because yelling at movies I’ve already seen doesn’t count, though I do it) since I watched the end of Dollhouse.  Knowing a bit about me, you should be able to understand the weight of this declaration; not knowing a bit about me, just trust me when I say that meant I was talking a lot.  My most common exclamation during the episode was… well, it wasn’t particularly polite, but it sure was colorful; come to think of it, most of what I was saying was colorful.

Instead of subjecting the world to too much of a play-by-play ramble, I’ll do a highlights reel  (somewhat the finale episode, somewhat the whole season) in the form of my trusty bulletpoint list.

• Earlier in the season, I was decidedly Team Eric (Alexander Skarsgard).  Again, my weakness for doll!Eric is unhealthy.  Not that I don’t love sociopath Eric too, I do, and I was glad to have him back because he’s ruthless and that’s just good television.  I’ve never been Team Bill (Stephen Moyer) in any regard, but I will say that he definitely manned up this season.  Being the King made him learn how to make hard decisions, and when he finally admitted that sometimes people had to die for a greater cause, well.  Aw, baby Bill has grown up.
• But now, I’m on two teams, and one is shippy-ish, yes: Team Sookie (Anna Paquin) By Herself For A While.  She doesn’t need to go off on tirades about it, but right now, until she realizes which of them (if either of them) she wants to be with, it won’t hurt her to be alone.  She should not hook up with Alcide (Joe Mangianello) no matter how hard he begs.  He thinks that their hearts can’t be trusted and their heads are saying “this might make sense” so they should go for it.  But really, Sookie and Alcide need each other as constant friends, not as a romantic relationship that will probably eventually die out.  As friends, they can be there for each other.  They can be listening ears and supportive shoulders.  As romantic partners, they get that plus some sex for a while and then it’ll be over and they won’t have the listening or supporting either.  Unfortunately, Team Sookie By Herself For A While could easily turn into Team Quinn next season, and that boring-ass weretiger should just… stay away.  I get that she’s trying to do the stable thing.  But he’s her Riley (Marc Blucas), to use Buffy metaphors.  He’s dull.  The only part of their relationship that I remember in detail from the books is the fact that they went to see The Producers.  And that’s just because I tend to remember when people see Broadway shows in fiction.
• I’m also on Team Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten).  The relationship between Eric and Pam is fundamentally different from Spike (James Marsters) and Dru (Juliet Landau) on Buffy in a lot of ways – Eric is Pam’s maker and not the other way aroud, they aren’t consistently sexual with each other anymore – but it’s also the same in a lot of ways.  Eric and Spike have gone through similar life changes, with the being “different” all of a sudden and the loving a blonde not-quite-human with a silly name and the apparent rejection of their lady counterpart.  It got me sadder than anything else this episode to see Pam coping with the realization that Sookie was now more important than her in Eric’s life.  The realization that the hundred plus years she and Eric have spent together, the relationship they share bonded by blood and experience, pales in comparison to a little magical true love girl.  Pam and Dru have very little in common personality-wise, but they’re in the same position in a way, and that upsets me.  I suppose Team Pam could also be subtitled, like a great tumblr post I once saw, “Not my Pam you bitch!”  That or it could be lengthened to Team Pam Has Been Through So Much Crap, Why Can’t She Just Have A Happy Sociopathic Vampire Ending Without The Hugging And Learning And Changing?  My tendency to have affinities for the demented, unapologetic ones tends to mean I have an affinity for the ones getting screwed over by the other characters having Great Life Revelations and Changing Their Ways.
• Nelsan Ellis is just a damn fun performer.  He has such expressive eyes that everything he’s trying to get across can be clear in one look.  The choice to make Lafayette a medium was kind of an awesome one, not just for plot reasons but for dude can pull it off reasons.
• This season overall had a lot of fun inhabiting someone else’s body hijinks, and those are always amusing.
• I was happy with this season’s tendency to kill a crap ton of characters.  None of them were main main characters, but there was a lot of death.  And while death in real life is bad and upsetting, death on television shows that the writers have some guts.  For example, I wasn’t too sad to see Tommy (Marshall Allman) go; I never really cared about him one way or the other, and if he did have to go out, he did so in a way that was somewhat redemptive.  I was actually sadder about the flashback to Sophie-Anne’s (Evan Rachel Wood) true death, if for no other reason than Sophie-Anne amused me (fictional sociopaths often do).
• The business of Marnie (Fiona Shaw) passing was pretty epic.  I do love me some ghosts, even if all of the ones that weren’t Sookie’s gran (Lois Smith) or Antonia (Paola Turbay) just hung out in the background.  I tend to applaud every time Sookie uses her fairy powers, just because she should really have devoted some time to learning how but I understand why she hasn’t and it’s neat when she gets around to doing it anyway.
• Jesus (Kevin Alejandro) dying was sort of sad, though.  I sort of knew he had it coming, because I’ve learned to be skeptical when characters are allowed to be in a relationship uninterrupted and (witch drama aside) happily for too long and also he wasn’t in the book canon so he was fairer game.  I knew that poor Lafayette would blame himself, and he actually deserved the happy, so it was unfortunate.  But damned if it didn’t make me wibble (well, giggle then wibble) when he came back to visit a little and Lafayette was like “Don’t leave me” and Jesus smirked “Dude, I’m dead.  And you’re a medium.  I’ll always be with you.”  There is nothing more perfect than “Dude, I’m dead” to lighten the mood a little.
• I was actually surprised by Tara (Rutina Wesley) dying.  I mean, she’s got to be dead.  There is no way you’re coming back from getting the back of your head blown off.  When I saw “Debbie visits Sookie and Tara” or whatever in the synopsis on my TV, I knew it would be Debbie’s (Brit Morgan) time to go craycray, but I didn’t think Tara would be on the receiving end of it.  There are many times over the course of the series that Tara has narrowly escaped a gruesome supernatural death (and some of those times, she’s probably deserved it) but it was actually like Tommy’s death in a way.  At least she met her end in a slightly noble way, protecting Sookie.  And then Sookie got hella epic and avenged her friend messily, and that’s fun.
• Onto lighter subjects and skipping over anything involving the Bellefleurs because I don’t know that I have anything particularly intricate to say about those people, Jason (Ryan Kwanten) and Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll).  Jason is dumb as a box of rocks, but he’s not a terrible person, and I just keep hoping he’ll panther out even if it probably isn’t going to happen; his heart is in the right place when it’s not following his penis around, but that’s what makes his new relationship with Jessica so perfect.  Jess is a young woman.  She’s never been independent and single, between her strict upbringing and Hoyt (Jim Parrack), and she needs to give it a try.  But she can still have her fun with a decent person that seems to appreciate her, can’t she?  He doesn’t mind her going out and nomming on other people.  He’ll give her sex and a good time, and that’s really all that it needs to be for now.  They’re young and crazy, why not.  And from a completely shallow standpoint, I’m okay with the relationship because damn, Jess is sexy.  That sexy Little Red Riding Hood thing she had going, all corsety and gartery, was… whoa freaking hell.
• Russell (Denis O’Hare) is going to be back next season!  Probably more fairy stuff next season!  Flashbacks next season!  (HELL YES FLASHBACKS.  HELL YES ERIC & PAM FLASHBACKS.)
• I get sad when characters die, or when characters are basically betrayed by the people closest to them, or when characters see their dead grandma giving them advice from beyond.  But there’s still the detached writervoice in my head respecting these various choices and the nerve that some of them require.

–your fangirl heroine.