beccaelizabeth | Entries tagged with arrow

The arrowverse is really freaking casual about
imposing the death of personality
on basically everyone who looks familiar.

It isn't 'waking people up' or 'restoring their memory'.
Earth Prime people are exactly as real and valid as Earth 1, Earth 38, any other Earth.
Installing memories of earth 1 on earth prime is murder to the person who grew up there and owns that body.

It's like installing Harry or HR in Nash, which oh, hey, they also did. But it's also like installing Eobard, which the show at least noticed was a bad thing. None of those alternate universe people own that body! And those 'memories' are just made up stuff, compared to the universe as it actually stands.

It's like when Angel erased Connor. They've got Mia of earth prime right there, but they don't like who she chooses to be, so they just... overwrite her.

The characters are just going around casually murdering people in a way that doesn't leave a body.

The writers on the other hand are just working at cross purposes between shows and episodes. Multiple seasons of Flash demonstrating that different universes are different people? Oh oops, new story, secretly what they have in common is all that matters now!

But over on Legends there's whole arcs about the difference between Zari and Zari, or Ava and Ava and Ava, and Behrad almost getting his timeline changed is a major personal emergency, because who we are matters and we are not interchangeable. They never try and 'fix' Zari by 'restoring' memories of Zari! Nor should they, it would be awful.

So when all the other shows do so casually and repeatedly?

It's really freaking creepy

and does not engage with the world they have set up at ALL.

It's a major part of why I can't be having with a lot of what went on post crisis.

They wrecked their toys and tried to keep them too, and wanted us to care but only in the right way for the right length of time.

It ends up being really cruel and making decisions about who matters that I can't be having with at all.

I really hate 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' (Arrowverse)
because they lose
everything everywhere is all gone the end antimatter annihilated
and we're meant to just
like
roll with that
and go watch another chapter.

And I realise in fanfic we read infinite variations on these guys and do indeed roll with it, thinking of them as fundamentally the same characters, but those stories expect us to therefore care about all of them, not to therefore not care about all the dead ones.

Like, here is this medium that is thus far the world's most powerful empathy engine, getting us to care, a lot, about all these made up people,
and then they kill them all
but we're not supposed to care about that.

... I am watching the last season of Arrow, so rewatching Crisis, and Earth 1 just died, after all the other Earths, and I am just going to feel some feelings about that.

And possibly get a snack.

Having finished season 1 of Arrow and not much liking what happened to, oh, one or two characters, I of course am turning over plot bunnies and deciding what to keep and what to change. Because fandom is where we can save them, even if it involves filing the serial numbers off sometimes.

So one of the first changes is, swap Laurel's dad for Laurel's mom. Alex Kingston as the seen everything cop? Yes, please.

And it plays completely differently to have protective mom with Opinions on who her daughter dates than it does to have another dad doing that.

Today though I'm thinking, do I want to keep Tommy/Laurel? I mean, that's mainly to set up the love triangle and I kind of hated that.

But Tommy/Dinah?

Colin Donnell and Alex Kingston. I could see that working.

Plus ( Read more... )

I also don't know who'd want to read it all jumbles like this. I'd just kind of like to watch it.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2631099.html

I just finished watching the first season of Arrow.

... I sure know how to pick favourite characters. *sigh*

( Read more... )

So... Arrow was mostly fun to watch and didn't be major ugly. A little annoying in who got to be active/passive and the moral alignment and fate of emotional or violent people of particular genders, but, not hugely evil. And it made me care about some characters.

It just made me care about some characters I'm not so much going to see more of later.

It got rid of stuff I thought was interesting and annoyed me with stuff it thought was interesting.

And the island stuff is deeply and epically boring and half the stupid show.

I am not sold on watching the next season.

But I am glad I watched this season.

It gives me interesting characters to rescue and keep and send swimming in rivers.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2630175.html

Casting is weird. There's so many people now I know from going to conventions, stuff filmed in certain locations is just one long 'hey it's that guy!' And then I'm distracted from whatever the story is meant to be, and people are significant in weird lack of proportion to the plot. Add to that the people I associate strongly with a particular role and/or have followed around the country repeatedly trying to get an autograph and it's getting hard to watch the fictions without bouncing through all kinds of irrelevant associations.

In ep 16 I had to stop and LOL though. ( Read more... ) So there was plot stuff happening, but, I may need a second or third go at it to only see the characters.

In 'what have they done to them?' news, I'm still not loving some of the choices they've hung on particular character names, but now not only because of the DC associations. ( Read more... )

I'm back to being kind of cranky about this. But cranky about it being exactly what it said on the tin.

Also, I've been in a bad mood all day, so it's possible I'm just cranky full stop.

... I keep talking myself out of having an opinion. Like I start out really cranky about something and then rant about it until I think I've gone ridiculous and then I just shrug and figure it's a TV show and feel stupid for caring. Boo.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2629767.html

At the end of disc three.

I wrote a really long post ranting on what they keep doing to DCU characters.

But then I hid it because either I get over it and watch or I decide it's a dealbreaker and don't watch.

... I'm veering towards don't watch right now.

But I pretty much like the plots and the characters that are new enough to me.

I continue to be epic bored by the island but I worked out that's because I am, as ever, epic bored by Oliver, and I'm used to being bored by the guy who thinks the show is about him. Except in Doctor Who. So, okay, I'll continue to watch those bits fast.

I'm just annoyed that they keep the names and strip everything important about the characters. Especially when those important things include ethnicity and class.

It also bugs me the way they juggle generations. It only ever detracts from the stories, so why do that? Why compress everyone to be in the same narrow band of ages? Boring much?

I want to go write my version. Not, currently, more than I want to put the next disc in, but that has as much to do with procrastinating on scary paperwork as anything else.

... I'm kind of sulking. :eyeroll:

... yeah, at this rate I'm going back to watching Marvel and liking it.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2629421.html

I dreamed a Sentinel/Guide AU of Arrow. Tommy Merlyn was a Guide, and he'd volunteered to meet me off the plane as part of his new and improved Responsible Human impression.

... oh hell, I just looked up how to spell his name right and saw a great big spoiler I did not want to see. Especially since I'd just decided he's most interesting. Great.

ANYway...

Tommy Merlyn as a Guide, unbonded in his late 20s, helping a fragile Sentinel out as part of his being an actual person plan. ( Read more... )

But I'm pretty sure this is the kind of thing that is too specific to file the serial numbers off without a ton of work, and too OC focused to be much use as a fanfic. Or at least much read as a fanfic.

:-/

Fun to dream though.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2629004.html

I think I <3 it.
It's actually trying for moral complexity and calling Oliver out every time he's actually being several kinds of wrong! ... and, okay, the 'yaay I can kill again' episode was sort of offputting, but mostly it's calling into question the whole vigilante thing and getting stuck in to exactly when and why he might possibly be needed, and the ways he's actually screwing things up and making them harder, instead of just being all 'now he's a vigilante! They Fight Crime!'

It's all about families and revenge and being so absolutely sure you're right you are willing to kill and die for it. Lots of different angles on that. Including a 'you're a dumbass' angle.

And the women are turning out interesting. Moira has a story that goes beyond a one word relationship title, Thea... tells people off a lot, Felicity is a little awesome (though I feel I've seen her on a lot of other shows before), Laurel follows through on her principles and does it with several different kinds of strength, and then there's ( Read more... )

I am epic bored with stuff on the island. Epic. I care not. I can think of a few things I might like to know from then, but nothing at the moment I want to find out in the form of another stupid hair flashback. And I'm a Highlander fan. Stupid hair flashbacks are a perfectly valid storytelling tool. But you have to use them to tell a part of the story that you can't tell another way. This one seems to be using it as a sort of emoticon? Like, he's stoic guy now, so if he's having a feelings they have to have a flashback to tell you what feelings. But I'm still bored.

I also miss the costumes. I know superhero costumes are difficult to do, and what we've seen works as the kind of very dramatic street clothes translation, but... shiny? Where shiny?

The costumes are for mythmaking, for building symbol sets around. I miss them when they go all ordinary.

On the other hand I approve of Oliver's aversion to shirts. I'm plenty shallow enough to think that brightens the scene up nicely. Also, all the training sequences, yaays.
(again reminding me of Highlander)
(I guess my tastes remain consistent)

I like TV box sets and not having to wait a week for the next one, but I also miss thinking things over for a week between stories. I've watched a bunch of things lately that just didn't make enough of a splash to leave me wondering for a week. I'd quite like to watch Arrow with some waiting built in. But as far as I can find I'd need more channels of TV.

I'm keeping my comics comparisons under control, but it is bothering me a bit that everything is an origin story. I mean, when I started reading comics, it was decades into the story, and it never bothered me. But once it's on TV it's all beginnings all the time, and you don't get the multi generational perspective any more. But taken on its own terms, I think I'm liking this version.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2628754.html

Am watching first disc of Arrow. It gets better. There is more of the stuff I wanted and explicit calling out of the stuff I didn't want.

You know how seldom that happens? Very seldom!

Also at one point there were three black men in one room, all recurring characters with lots of lines, all of them as far as I can tell good guys. This is unusual. This is very unusual.

Still there could stand to be more and more interesting women. But Laurel continues interesting.

Oliver continues to be a dick and uses everyone who ever cares about him. But the story knows that sucks and keeps reminding him. I have actual hope for improvement.

Also, I want to see what happens next and know what happened before.

:-)