When the shine wears off
Feb. 23rd, 2019 07:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI am rewatching The Flash season 1 and it is much less interesting now I am not interested in Reverse Flash.
I mean, I used to think there was a whole complex story going on there, and the more we see of him the more he's just a jerk who likes stabbing people, so, you know, that's... that's boring.
I wanted to know how changing his entire body changed him, but we're not getting that answer, or possibly the answer is it didn't. I wondered if he had any memories transferred, but that's basically a nope. I had questions about the whole be careful who you pretend to be, because he fit into Wells' life for fourteen years, and that seems like an interesting thing. I thought he might have motives, like, actual sense making ones, at some point. I thought there might be feelings and hints at depth going on, but on rewatch he's less interesting than he was in my head.
It's Earth X that broke things. There's no ambiguity left, he's just ... that.
And it doesn't even make sense, because you have to fit together a guy who declared he hated every minute at STAR labs with a guy who had absolute power and used it to be at STAR labs. And it's possible neither of them have memories of STAR labs anyways.
Obviously fanfic is a thing and I can wander off with the interesting person I made up and keep playing with him, but canon is feeling much more four color two dimensional this time around, and I am not into it.
Plus that interesting brain person shares too many parts with the Earth X guy and funnily enough that is offputting. Don't want to even slightly appear to like that guy. No.
So then I'm left trying to file the serial numbers off the time traveller story in my head, the one where everyone has a good reason and a protect/preserve plan.
Except the problem with that is it all comes down to what is even possible. Like, in the made up physics of the made up world. You have to decide who even can change things, what they can change, whether it even works. You make up laws of the universe that decide if one side can even win.
And most stories come down to : Time Travel, Don't Do It
which is a valid position, since we're sitting here without the ability to time travel, so we're really talking about, like, that first episode of DS9 where he's trying to explain linear time and they're pointing out he's stuck in that one moment? So time travel stories are about that one moment, and what we'd do to go back and do it different, but since we can't go back, they're going to suggest healthy alternatives, like actually coping with grief and moving on.
Which is why I'm interested in the story of the guy from the future, because we're in general agreement we can in fact change the future from here. For him it's a story about being stuck in the past, but for everyone around him it's a story with infinite possibilities. So what is it he's trying to avert? Why did he feel the need to intervene? We can pick such a stack of reasons right now, I mean it's easy to go post apocalyptic or cyberpunk or all sorts. The idea that you have to go back because there is no forwards, that's, like, a logical consequence of... so many warnings lately. So the time traveller is just like a physical warning?
And we'd want him to use the technology of the future to come up with easy answers and fix everything like whoosh, but he'd be here to point out there's a bunch of tech already, and we aren't using it.
What kind of interval is most interesting? Like, do we send someone back to when they were a young man, or when their parents were? Does it make it more interesting if there's that connection?
If it's a superhero story it's about the power of one man to make a difference. By punching. Obviously I like that enough to watch, like, many shows on this theme, but it's frustrating too?
How about the power of one woman to make a difference by team building and consensus making?
And the DCTV shows are sketching out an arc of history that goes from one guy having a secret prison and handing people over to Argus to a future where Argus runs the country or possibly world with secret prisons for pretty much everyone. Good arc, but, now fix it.
And if you set the laws of time travel in a Tragedy direction, you get a time traveller causing everything they wanted to avert, but that is so boring. I mean, yeah, play with cause and effect, but if all you do is set up the problem, I am bored, it is boring, that isn't very clever, there's just... problem everywhere. Fix it! Show how! Do things that work!
Genre conventions and logic seem to pull in opposite directions.
But people watch the genre conventions?
So presumably think they're interesting enough.
I like the idea of a story about tragedy time traveller from the future who is stuck in the story of Death and the Man With the Very Fast Horse, where the more he tries to get away from his fate the faster he goes towards it... but that's setting up the problem. That isn't the ending.
If the ending is he turns out to be a very bad man and deserved it all after all then I'm just bored and annoyed.
So I'm contemplating how to make a Good Bits Version of the time travel epics in my head, but, it depends so much on how you set up the physics, it's basically a big old cheat. Which is frustrating, really. Yet that thing where you're writing all the characters at once and decide everything they can and cannot do and the success thereof is, you know, also the exact same kind of cheat. So. *shrugs*
So my rewatch is frustrating and I should probably write.
I mean, I used to think there was a whole complex story going on there, and the more we see of him the more he's just a jerk who likes stabbing people, so, you know, that's... that's boring.
I wanted to know how changing his entire body changed him, but we're not getting that answer, or possibly the answer is it didn't. I wondered if he had any memories transferred, but that's basically a nope. I had questions about the whole be careful who you pretend to be, because he fit into Wells' life for fourteen years, and that seems like an interesting thing. I thought he might have motives, like, actual sense making ones, at some point. I thought there might be feelings and hints at depth going on, but on rewatch he's less interesting than he was in my head.
It's Earth X that broke things. There's no ambiguity left, he's just ... that.
And it doesn't even make sense, because you have to fit together a guy who declared he hated every minute at STAR labs with a guy who had absolute power and used it to be at STAR labs. And it's possible neither of them have memories of STAR labs anyways.
Obviously fanfic is a thing and I can wander off with the interesting person I made up and keep playing with him, but canon is feeling much more four color two dimensional this time around, and I am not into it.
Plus that interesting brain person shares too many parts with the Earth X guy and funnily enough that is offputting. Don't want to even slightly appear to like that guy. No.
So then I'm left trying to file the serial numbers off the time traveller story in my head, the one where everyone has a good reason and a protect/preserve plan.
Except the problem with that is it all comes down to what is even possible. Like, in the made up physics of the made up world. You have to decide who even can change things, what they can change, whether it even works. You make up laws of the universe that decide if one side can even win.
And most stories come down to : Time Travel, Don't Do It
which is a valid position, since we're sitting here without the ability to time travel, so we're really talking about, like, that first episode of DS9 where he's trying to explain linear time and they're pointing out he's stuck in that one moment? So time travel stories are about that one moment, and what we'd do to go back and do it different, but since we can't go back, they're going to suggest healthy alternatives, like actually coping with grief and moving on.
Which is why I'm interested in the story of the guy from the future, because we're in general agreement we can in fact change the future from here. For him it's a story about being stuck in the past, but for everyone around him it's a story with infinite possibilities. So what is it he's trying to avert? Why did he feel the need to intervene? We can pick such a stack of reasons right now, I mean it's easy to go post apocalyptic or cyberpunk or all sorts. The idea that you have to go back because there is no forwards, that's, like, a logical consequence of... so many warnings lately. So the time traveller is just like a physical warning?
And we'd want him to use the technology of the future to come up with easy answers and fix everything like whoosh, but he'd be here to point out there's a bunch of tech already, and we aren't using it.
What kind of interval is most interesting? Like, do we send someone back to when they were a young man, or when their parents were? Does it make it more interesting if there's that connection?
If it's a superhero story it's about the power of one man to make a difference. By punching. Obviously I like that enough to watch, like, many shows on this theme, but it's frustrating too?
How about the power of one woman to make a difference by team building and consensus making?
And the DCTV shows are sketching out an arc of history that goes from one guy having a secret prison and handing people over to Argus to a future where Argus runs the country or possibly world with secret prisons for pretty much everyone. Good arc, but, now fix it.
And if you set the laws of time travel in a Tragedy direction, you get a time traveller causing everything they wanted to avert, but that is so boring. I mean, yeah, play with cause and effect, but if all you do is set up the problem, I am bored, it is boring, that isn't very clever, there's just... problem everywhere. Fix it! Show how! Do things that work!
Genre conventions and logic seem to pull in opposite directions.
But people watch the genre conventions?
So presumably think they're interesting enough.
I like the idea of a story about tragedy time traveller from the future who is stuck in the story of Death and the Man With the Very Fast Horse, where the more he tries to get away from his fate the faster he goes towards it... but that's setting up the problem. That isn't the ending.
If the ending is he turns out to be a very bad man and deserved it all after all then I'm just bored and annoyed.
So I'm contemplating how to make a Good Bits Version of the time travel epics in my head, but, it depends so much on how you set up the physics, it's basically a big old cheat. Which is frustrating, really. Yet that thing where you're writing all the characters at once and decide everything they can and cannot do and the success thereof is, you know, also the exact same kind of cheat. So. *shrugs*
So my rewatch is frustrating and I should probably write.