One for Sorrow

A discussion I was reading brought up the question: "Is having a character you can relate to/identify with/root for necessary to your enjoyment of a show?" in the context of some viewers saying that they no longer enjoyed Weeds because there were no longer any likable characters and they could no longer root for Nancy. Other people listed shows that they watched where they never felt like they identified with anyone--The Sopranos, for instance--and didn't want to, but still loved the show. One person said they felt it was a particularly American thing to base enjoyment of a show on the show fitting into their own moral beliefs. I'm not sure if that's true or not. It's probably more a sign of a particular personality than a nationality.

There are probably more shows on now than ever before with explicitly "bad" characters. One would think these shows required an audience who liked characters who didn’t share their morality, but they seem to also attract a large number of people who think the characters do share their morality until they do something really bad and the illusion is broken (and the writers may be accused of making the character rape the dog/cross the moral event horizon).

More concrete examples within. ( Probably spoilers inside for Seinfeld, Weeds, Dexter...Hopefully you don't have to follow the shows to follow the post. )

Short version: do you prefer characters you can stand behind as good, even if you have to overlook some of their behavior to think of them that way? Are there certain characters you've liked where this worked and other characters where it didn't work? And if so, why do you think?

Okay, so B&R #2 came out and I liked plenty in it, but I was trying to explain to somebody the one wrong note that constantly pulls me out of the story in this series. Last issue Alfred was randomly talking about how Damian had inherited his father's courage and desire to do right; this week Alfred explains that Damian came to Gotham because his brief moments of contact with Bruce showed him a better, nobler way to live one's life. ( This continues to bug me. )

Having just read a bunch of posts on warnings in fics that didn't actually cover my own feelings about them? I thought I would share them!

A lot of the discussion has centered around triggers, which I think is important, but even as someone who doesn't think of herself as really having any triggers, warnings are still important to me. ( Just as they are in non-fanfic )

I was reading a conversation that brought up that old standby "character flaws" that made me think...this is probably obvious but I'll put it out there anyway. In the conversation someone asked about a character's flaws said "The character's greatest flaw is X...but that's also the character's great strength." ( Bzzzt! Wrong answer! )

So today was the first issue of Grant Morrison'sBatman and Robin with Dick as Batman and Damian as Robin. It's only one issue so I can't judge the story yet so this isn’t about criticisms of this one issue. But this issue made me sad when I didn’t expect it to, so I was trying to figure out why.

I think it comes down to ( OMG, Bruce is Damian's father and that makes him a genetically superior Robin! )

I was reading an entry today about the Bechdel test, that famous test for stories where by you ask if the female characters ever talk to other females, and if so, do they talk about a man? jlh raises some really good points, though, about how this test really doesn't work when applied to romance, since romance is the plot of the story and everyone is usually talking about it, including the men. In an action movie we're sadly often likely to find men talking about their jobs, their cause and their mortality while having a romance on the side with a female character who doesn't exist outside the romance. But in a romantic comedy you're just as likely to find the male characters discussing romance as the female ones, and since the romance is the main plot it's not that disempowering to be talking about it. In some movies it's all they talk about--men as well as women.

Anyway, people started bringing up TV shows, especially, that do often effortlessly pass the test. Some people felt these shows unfortunately were types they didn't like, like Grey's Anatomy--I've never watched this show, but I assume they basically mean soapy. Others, though, pointed to shows like Bones that feature female characters talking about any number of topics with each other.

So I started thinking about having people recommend their favorite female friendships, or friendships they think were shown to be valid, in fictional shows, books or movies. Anyone want to pimp some of your favorites? ( I'll throw out three. )

Since it's all over and we know the (shocking? Not so much) conclusion, I thought people might want to discuss the whole story? Particularly this issue, which raised some, um, questions...

I didn't mean for it to be this long, but BftC seems to do this to me.

( Spoilers for BftC conclusion within )

Also, Superman/Batman has the two in a world where the Titans and the Justice League are merged and can I say Nightlantern (aka Hal Grayson) was disturbingly hot. He's Dick, only with a green bird/stripe and lantern and brown swishy hair. And I laughed at Batman telling him "The two people you remind me of... Where I'm from, I have a very different relationship with each of them. I just realized how much they have in common." Yeah, that really ought to give him food for thought there.

I figure a lot more people have seen Star Trek now (omg, wasn't it awesome???!) so I'm going to say something about it that includes some spoilers. Basically, just that one of the things I loved in this movie was the way it handled youth. ( Spoilers within )

So I just saw Enterprise. Here's a short review, no spoilers.

( No spoilers. La la la. )

A few days ago I twittered: "Sometimes I read a book I hate so much it's something special.”The Time Traveler's Wife" is one of these books." A couple of people who also hated the book asked for more detail and wow, this is more detail. This turned out to be a very long rant. Like, 2,800 words long. If anybody reading this liked the book, I don't think less of you or anything. But I am warning you that if you don't like reading people hate on things you liked, you might want to skip!

Oh, btw, I’m also on Dreamwidth now, but a glitch is making it impossible for me to post comments there yet, so I’m not cross-posting anything yet.

( Total spoilers for TTTW inside. )

Phew. And yet after all that I feel like I still didn’t communicate my hate.

So I've had these thoughts about the Bat-family girls and boys running around in my head for a while, but have been hesitant to write them down because they might just be a big ball of pop psychology and new age anthropology. But I'm going to go for it anyway. ( Two clubhouses, both alike in dignity… )

Like most everyone else, I loved the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle wowing the judges on Britain’s Got Talent. Here the show introduces somebody after a long day of nobody having talent and she looks like exactly what she is, somebody who’d more likely be working at the stationery store rather than standing on a Broadway stage. They do an intro playing up all the things she hasn’t succeeded at: no job, no husband, no boyfriend. She’s a little weird. She says she hasn’t had a singing career like Elaine Paige because she’s never “gotten the chance,” which is usually code for “because I am deluded about my abilities. If I had any talent I wouldn’t be 47 without ever having gotten near a stage.” And then, just as the judges and the audience are geared up for yet another embarrassment (and some of them are none too kind about showing it), she wows them. We’re all thrilled…and also guilty about the fact that somehow the first part of the story is as important as the triumph. ( Hmmmm…. )

( Had to do this quiz. )

I think I lost a week somewhere lj-wise. Don't know how that happened. I have had a week of new experiences, which is always good. I went to a Juilliard concert, which I didn't know they had. Then tried a new tea at Alice's Teacup--Monk's blend. Nice and strong.

Finally, last night I went to "My Name is a Blackbird," a one-woman improvised dance piece, which was awesome. Then went out with the one woman of the piece and others, which was cool. There was good bar food. Good by my standards, that is, which I always appreciate. I’m not sure if anybody got a chance to taste the tater tots I was shoveling them in so fast.

I've been eyeing Dreamwidth with interest and hoping to remember to friend people who are there if I ever get over there. But it has got me thinking about a lot of things I've been reading about all these new social sites. We had this meeting at work about Twitter where it was explained to us that Twitter is all about finding people with social credit, proved by their many followers etc. The whole thing completely confuses me, this whole subset of internet users that use Facebook status and Twitter as incredibly important chances to fail or succeed at being witty and cool.

It makes me feel like the internet has for so long been associated with geeks and the socially inept (whether that's true or not, that's the stereotype) and now we're seeing the results of years of desperate brainstorming to find a way to make it a place where "popular people" can reign supreme again. ( Cutting because it looks like I might have more to say about this after all. )

From jlh:

—Give me a marry/shag/cliff trio
—I'll post pics and my answer
—I'll give you a marry/shag/cliff trio
—Then you can do the same!

I hope I'll be able to work pictures, at least. I will give it a shot! I've never done one of these...

Supernatural last night last night had what I assume was a pretty important episode in terms of its mytharc and it got me thinking about torture and how it's being used on the show, compared to how it's used on 24.

I watch 24 with a sort of fascinated horror at the attitude it displays, and this season, imo, it's gotten all the louder about its views. ( Which are disturbing. Warning: tl;dr. )

I was having a conversation today that got me thinking about romantic stereotypes for women vs. men. To give the background, this was in response to an old Wonder Woman story. bluefall mentioned a habit DC writers had of threatening Wonder Woman's immortality, saying "I can't remember the last time Supes had to give up his heat vision in order to marry Lois or J'onn had to surrender his shapechanging as the price of living in the mortal world, but for some idiot reason Wondy writers just fucking love to rob Diana of her immortality. Fortunately it never sticks."

So this got into a conversation about that trope of the immortal having to give up powers to join in our world, usually by marrying a mortal. Along the way I said I could see why if one was writing a romance immortality would take on a particular importance because if you're in love, you wouldn't want to live beyond your loved one anyway--according to the laws of Grand Romance.

We both agreed that Wonder Woman seemed a particularly bad character to use to play out that trope. Of the big 3 DC heroes (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), Superman is the most traditionally romantic. Batman already runs on "dead loved one" angst so he wouldn't miss a beat by getting handed more of it. Where as, though I don't know Wonder Woman that much, she seemed the least likely to get that thrown off by the loss of that love. It actually just seemed like a sexist stereotype for writers to assume that romance would have a particular power over her character because she's a woman.

( And that made me think about those kinds of tropes. Tl;dr, hopefully not so all over the place it's unintelligible! )

What's that cliché? I think it's Chinese? "May you live in interesting times?" Reading posts about scans_daily's deletion as well as the many Racefail '09 posts made me think this is true. We're living in interesting times as we get this internet thing worked out, and interesting times are wearying!

( Thoughts about writers on the 'net, and the changes they bring... )

In response to a secret there's been a lot of discussion about Mai today on fandomsecrets,. The OP doesn't like Mai because they can't get over her…( I'll just cut here because there will be spoilers. )

Thanks to everybody who posted about the romantic pairing tropes that they like! Maybe it was that post that got me thinking about tropes in general while I was reading other things, but lately I've been thinking about another trope I just love--I guess it would be called a trope. Not a romantic one, this time. I call it the "Prince Hal moment" in my head, though that's really not a very accurate thing to call it. (  I call it that anyway. )

I was reading an interesting post today about shipping, and it included a line that got me thinking about shipping in a totally different direction. It was just a throwaway line saying that Harry/Draco shippers are into Merlin/Arthur now. I was a Harry/Draco shipper, of course, and I haven't watched Merlin yet so I've no idea if I would be into the ship. The point the poster was making was that if you have a shipping trope with which you're comfortable you will probably find it somewhere else--hence the H/D=M/A.

( Which just made me think about my shipping tropes. )

Anyone have any thoughts on what their favorite tropes might be? I love hearing about that!