beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
Today: two more loads of laundry, and a couple of discs of Legends of Tomorrow.

I have caught up to the season with John Constantine. He was fun in the season with Mallus but now he's setting up the next season problem he is way more of a bastard. Goes all spiky when he's scared and self loathing, and guess how much of the time that is. He is so fascinating to watch. ... which, given how much of the time so far he was being tortured shirtless, is a very specific statement...

But I have seen Beebo save the world, so today is a very good day.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
This title is *deeply* weird about reproduction.
Elementals, seals, and shelled eggs?
John's life is far weirder...

... I interrupted that thought with wondering if this story is why they thought of making Zari dragon girl...

ANYway

I am not convinced the ending was as cool as the art for it, but that was a solid story arc.

Also the chatty papers in the back that I read some of made some statements about John as he was planned :
that he has no power of his own, just knows a guy who does,
and that all his ghosts are symptoms, not actual hauntings at all.

Constantine 2014 made some very different choices there, like JLDark before it.

I like Constantine best when he is a guy dealing with both mental illness and an awareness there are problems there are dangers a lot of people don't want to acknowledge are real. It's relatable. He is going through hell and it is sometimes not his biggest problem. See also the bit on and then off the train.

The story from the annual about the old king and Ravenscar was odd but did push the interpretation back to dark on all that girl power stuff.

... also, still weird about reproduction.

The issue of Sandman landed very oddly in the middle of all that, and not only because the art put him back in his old clothes. More like it's an odd moment to have his nightmares resolved by some big spooky Power. It's a story arc about fear, and he's getting his fears held back by Morpheus? Odd. Not a particularly good journey for John. Doesn't give us much about Morpheus. Very messy though.

Sometimes the crossovers make things more themey and satisfying, sometimes I'm not so sure.
They do beat heck out of the JLDark crossover noise situation.

ANYway, I shall probably come back to this later, if I can resist unwrapping the next volume
but since I already let myself get distracted from ever eating lunch because comics was right there
I shall leave that a few days and attend to basic maintenance a bit...
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I woke up still pondering Hellblazer but not in a nightmare way, more cultural studies theory stuff.

I still feel that Legends of Tomorrow visits other time zones to play in them, tell the audience how much every other year sucks, and then go home. There's a tension where 'sometimes we screw things up for the better' so in a local way an individual might have their life on a better track, but systemically they remain trapped in all the usual. Hellblazer is specifically rooted in the usual, and the escapes people indulge in are to different mindsets, not different conditions. And that's usually the source of their next problem.

The adaptations keep changing the meanings both by keeping things the same and by stripping the specificity of the context. Timeline drift changes things. Because it is difficult to retell the same story when the world moves on.
Read more... )


I am going to go get lunch and then read more Hellblazer.

Going back to Legends in between issues would be a mood lifter but it's an i creasingly weird contrast.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I have been reading horror comics all day. I need to remember to stop and do something else more often or it all just gets grimy to think on. Very strong stuff in these stories, skillfully done.

A lot of this first omnibus is Swamp Thing, covering stories I'd seen summarised elsewhere, and now I have read it, it is all so much darker and nastier than the summaries had conveyed to me. Read more... )

As far as I can tell from skimming the contents page the Swamp Thing stuff is over now, so, onwards to Hellblazer, and Newcastle.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I read three more issues of Hellblazer, including
Waiting for the Man (scarier and makes more sense on paper, the TV version made the girls older and lost the logic)
the one with the yuppie soul traders
and the one where the ghosts come back from 'nam to treat their home town the way they treated the 'enemy'

The more demony it is the less scary it is. Read more... )


One other funny thing said so far: John explicitly says "I'm not a masochist"
along with saying "all that messing about with rotten corpses and pain stuff is just to impress the marks".

... aside from directly contradicting Justice League Dark, that first bit is news to a *lot* of people.

Actually it is interesting that New 52 put on a lot of the old school set dressing that Hellblazer clearly and deliberately discarded. It's like they're making the iconic version, trenchcoat edition, not... John.

And in that particular instance it's difficult to see how that's meant to make him more mass market.


Still, good stuff to read so far.

Hellblazer

Apr. 27th, 2026 05:27 pm
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I started reading the Hellblazer omnibus, Delano 1, so starting at the beginning.
(I used to have a very tatty Hellblazer 2 I acquired when it was wrapped in the cover for Hellblazer 1. Gave it to my brother to sell many years ago. Wouldn't bet on it being readable by now anyways.)

I can tell already this is going to be a different reading experience to Justice League Dark. I've read the equivalent of two issues and I am going to pause and ponder.

Also it isn't just comics as an artform I'm fed up of, the art and layout in these serrve the story in enriching ways I can spend time thinking about. None of that endless empty motion I got annoyed with, new horrors crammed in every panel. As they should be given the genre.

The story is Hunger & A Feast of Friends, and the TV show covered these in one episode. Read more... )

The compare contrast with the TV is interesting but the comics are already good.


Going to think on them more.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
The thing with Nick Necro is most of the issues have him be a bit boring about John stealing Zatanna
but then that one issue
has him torturing John by putting cigarettes out on his chest Read more... )

He is so messed up and that one issue changes the meaning on ALL of it.


Lovely stuff
that might make me buy more comics
if I just ignore how little I liked, oh, about 3/4 of the other stuff I read.



I want to keep this particular messed up dynamic and run into another canon with it.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I have finished reading 1600 pages of Justice League Dark omnibus
and it is possible all the bits I really *like*
are in New 52 Constantine #12.

There's other bits that are good, but for a book that makes a big deal of John and Zatanna's grand tragic doomed love, they barely spend any time on page together, they're just motivated by losing each other a lot.

Nick Necro remains a shiny bit of twisted interesting in a magic soulmates story
that I want to take away from this New 52 nonsense and run away with to keep.

I read 1600 pages, at least 300 of them were annoying rubbish, quite a lot of the rest was fine until you expect it to pay anything off and instead it drops everything to do another story, and all of it is annoying because New 52.

I can only give it 3.5 stars as a whole, but, I am glad to have read all of it, even if the end result is knowing which characters I'd like to see story about.

... this omnibus gives me very little story about anyone, it's so full of Doing Things instead.
It's nice when the art gets an excuse to go all trippy and cosmic and remind you there's no FX budget limit here, but, it keeps on being frustrating storytelling to me.

Like I was liking it when the story built up to John covered in blood having taken the knowledge of all magic into his head declaring he would take over the world
but then the story zigged sideways and just plonked a new ending in out of nowhere
and I still want to see where actual John would go with that, or what Zatanna would have to say about any world he'd build.


And a perpetually frustrating bit is the suspicion it could make more sense if even more individual comics were all lined up for reading with this lot, but 1600 pages bringing together Justice League Dark, some select Constantine, and I don't know how many crossover Events comics, is already rather a lot.


... I am a bit tempted to go buy more Constantine though. I'm sure it would be frustrating too but there would be interesting bits.


I am still unconvinced this particular version of John Constantine should share the name though.

I'm taking Nick Necro and running back to the pool of Good Bits instead.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
Justice League Dark omnibus improved:
By page 1229ish we get an issue of Constantine where Nick and John kiss and Nick refers to John as 'Blood brother or lover' in the context of Read more... ) This after spending a while putting cigarettes out on John as part of a cunning plan to power up his magic.

I thought for the first thousand pages that fanfic was making way more of that up.

This is delightful and messy and I want to read all of it and then start again with a better idea of what to skip.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I think I'm up to page 1200 in this Justice League Dark omnibus
and the religion stuff is... a lot, but interesting enough.

I am glad to be reading though
because Nick Necro is back
and it is deliciously fucked up shippy again.
Read more... )
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I am above page 750 in the Justice League Dark omnibus I am reading
and very few of them in this quarter were worth my time.

I don't think it's just me being out of practice reading comics, it really is meaning mash.
They spend about two frames on any given strand of story and then try to make of it a tapestry.

There's no emotion here, just endless motion.
Hollowed out parts that could be characters if you took them to doll repair shops.

I don't even know if it would make more sense with a different selection of issues.
I don't think making sense is something it is particularly devoted to.

And the general feeling of intro outro being all it will ever do continues.
I know they were rewriting their world but it keeps reframing everything and then not giving us anything to put in the new picture.

There isn't a lot of John Constantine or Zatanna in this even if you pick relevant bits out
and I am starting to understand why the fanfic I read only seems to refer to like a half dozen issues
because those ones had a bit of story and some feeling attached.



I am a grumpy person today.


Also, trying to read this ridiculously heavy thing keeps squashing me to the point of feeling sick.

I do not however think that is the primary reason I'm getting bored and annoyed here.




It was however potentially funny earlier on in this reading, when John went somewhere he can neither lie nor shut up. They said the most shallow and obvious things that way, but it's a fun idea.

Also they used John's nightmares to make him obviously extremely informed and scheming, which is interesting.

And it gave him a little explainer box when he went to steal someone else's magic, which actually undermines the amount of writing they've put in to making him seem dodgy, but his motivation for the day was, magic nearly ate him so he doesn't want to leave other people to be messed around by it. Kind of works but every time they flatten him out they leave bits behind. Magic nearly ate him yet he keeps reaching for more magic, can't leave that out.

Zatanna demonstrated she was a hero who would save the innocent rather than attack the guilty, then became miss not appearing in this book.

So, bit boring.


Maybe it'll get over the stupid crossover stuff soon and have a story again?



ETA at 8pm: It did indeed get back to actual story. Turns out the bit I got entirely bored of was three hundred pages of 'Trinity War'. Now it's back to being actually Justice League Dark and Constantine issues it has a finite number of characters. Still mostly John though. Or this universe of John anyway. I kind of like the bit where he held an artefact that makes people evil and he was mostly just depressed since he's seen it all before. I like this bit with the Nightmare Nurse curing him. I pretty much dislike how what is named as a team book is so emphatic about him being the main character. And I keep on having to stop and be annoyed that the evil he's confronting is all this DCU multiverse stuff with the magic macguffins and big costumed whatsits instead of actual grounded at least a smidge political stuff. But then there was one issue where it kind of attempted to link it back to that? Domestic violence and homelessness actually got into the story, instead of just Darkseid and a house made of nightmares.

Basically there's bits that make the animated stories make a lot more sense, and bits where it is telling solid story, and bits that I want to harvest for useable parts.

But they're playing a very different game than the other media or versions of John and it's reminding me of all the reasons I don't read many comics.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
Having had a nice day's sleep I woke up thinking that Legends of Tomorrow, characters departing from January 2016, encodes in its treatment of Gideon a specific set of assumptions about AI. Ones that do not quite hold in 2025.

Basically the characters treat Gideon like a voice interface, in early seasons, not an independent person with opinions.
And then they treat what Gideon says as Fact, especially if it has pictures.

Which is interesting because Rip Hunter is *clearly* manipulating them by showing them the pictures and only once they're having feelings telling them that's a simulation.
Simulation is another word for guess, even if Gideon does put a percentage next to it.

If you start now? You'd get a set of people who still believe Gideon because look, pictures and a percent from a computer, true facts. But you'd get other people who are aware that deepfake graphics do not make your report more reliable, and who would call the AI out for hallucinating.

The show does interrogate its own starting position but by making Gideon unquestionably an independent person and then making it a right mess that people did not treat her that way. Making it just as weird that Rip reprogrammed Gideon as that the Time Masters reprogrammed Mick. And that's always a good set of questions, are we treating this person as a thing.

Plus there's the gigo problem or the deliberately being lied to encoded in what the Time Masters fed their computer to get Rip hopping.

But asking questions about error rates and reliability were not the first thought of anyone in this story, and that's super weird, coming from a context where I've seen reports that the LLM currently being called AI have an error rate where between 80% and *all* the answers in that study had errors. No I don't have a source to cite, it was social media screenshots, so obviously I shouldn't believe it. I could google for it. Wonder what google says about reliability of AI... well it's not letting me copy paste the answer, that's interesting, but it says Not Fully Reliable and links to three items with the most recent being May 2025... and one having answers from 2023, how is that any use this year? Google reckons the majority of answers are accurate, where it links to things that say 31% of answers were errors. But then I rephrased and asked for a percent, "what percent of AI answers are correct" and it said AI answers were incorrect between 60% and 94% of the time. It is talking about studies without linking them. The links it does go to are news summaries not studies, and they're from March 2025. Oh, here's a study I probably saw because BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/new-ebu-research-ai-assistants-news-content , news summarised by GenAI wrong 45% of the time across all AI, some AI as bad as 76% wrong. So a few minutes with the google AI get me two contradictory poorly sourced answers, where the sources have different numbers than the AI summary, which is what usually happens when I read the google AI bit. And my memory is also poorly sourced! And skimming the links proffered tends to show a lot of podcasts and video content which is hard to check and... ugh. (This is me demonstrating very sloppy research on my part and how AI isn't helping. I feel embarrassed now. I am in fact capable of poking several pages of links, it's just the show always takes the first AI answer, and lo, it is messy.)

I do not trust AI because no matter how precisely defined the question is about stuff I already know, ie Pathfinder first edition, I always get an answer that is muddled with irrelevant sources and some degree of just plain wrong, ie about DnD 5e and using fandom wiki about computer games instead. Yes the terms are very similar but I have yet to be able to narrow its attention down to just Archive of Nethys or Paizo sources *and that used to be easy*. It used to be quicker to google search than to search on AoN or PFSRD or the paizo boards. Now it is an error prone mess that keeps trying to send you to DnDBeyond even though that is a completely different game. ... different edition branched off the same source yes I can see where the confusion is coming from but the confusion is *new* and *annoying*.

So: Legends Gideon. No one spends time questioning her sources or her error rate or how deepfakes are actually helping this situation or how many *other* scenarios for a future she finds equally plausible right now. And that stuff is absolutely essential. It's the core of how Rip gets led around by his training. And it's not just Legends where it matters, there's a whole thread of the Flash that goes back to the historical record and how it (mis)represents him, the reliability of sources and how history was written by his wife, without her admitting the connection. ... this will turn into my Eobard Thawne Has A Point Actually speech, and I don't think I watched the last season of Flash yet so I'll leave be. But really. Computer 'intelligence' and the authoritative misrepresentation of mediated reality: A Thread.

Pretty important in the real world as well.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
Today I watched
City of Demons
and House of Mystery.

These are the first things I've watched that are not Doctor Who in... a while.
Checking the tags for films movies television here says the latest not Doctor Who thing was October 2023.
... possibly I need to vary my visual diet some. (though obviously you can vary your DW diet a lot just by watching slightly different DW.)

I read about these two animated movies when I looked up what Matt Ryan has been doing, because the voices. They're very different sorts of thing. Different ratings, and City of Demons is movie length where House of Mystery is a short.

Actually House of Mystery is four shorts but I see why they don't mention the others in the title because they are. Bad.

City of Demons is very anatomical and messy. Heaps of red brown goo everywhere. Lumpy bits.
It's actually a bit boring when that's the focus because that's not where the horror lives, that's just, like, paint.
There does manage to be quite a bit of horror too though, and a new to me take on The Newcastle Incident that is... considerably dark. Read more... )

It's a movie that seems to think the main threat of demons is they like making people into ketchup.

Could therefore be better.

But it had enough good bits and certainly delivered the ketchup.



House of Mystery got a bit repetitive fast but I did quite like the ending.
I did not like the art. It did a weird thing where it went back and forth between drawing John like he was in City of Demons and drawing him all pointy chinned and the wrong colors? It was distracting.
The actual plot Read more... )

It adds up to an okay story but I do feel I have overpaid for Mystery and got my money's worth for City.



Only now I want to disassemble them for parts and do them properly in a more Legends compatible way, which is the problem with multiple canons, the good bits version is ... very distributed.




ETA: Having gone on wiki and read a bunch of plot summaries for animated stuff
House of Mystery now makes more specific sense
it is bridging two particular Justice League Dark movies
and I have no desire to actually watch that Justice League Dark stuff
because it reads like a super epic crossover
like everyone has a minute for their bit of the story
and you need to know all about them already before you can keep up
but these Dark people are reboots away from anything I've read.

Also it read like Constantine destroys+reboots the multiverse there?

Which is a lot.



The more I read the more I think it is a mistake to make him Iconic in a sliding timeline, he gets stuck at the Fuck Around phase of his life when rather a lot of the point happened in Find Out.

It's like they think the grimdark is power, not tragedy.

So there's more I could be watching but at the moment I do not think I shall.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I said at the beginning of watching this season that they'd kind of lost me and I didn't connect with the characters any more so I was watching it on fast forward.

By the end I hadn't hit fast foward for probably two whole discs.
So when it started being very social justice campaigny it started to hold my attention again,
and by the end I was fully on board and I liked all these people again.

I liked how it ended. Not subtle, but, empowerment for all, very excellent ending.

... TV needs to stop using that particular clip of Vivaldi even in the backgrounds of things though. Used to be the hold music for the DWP, hasn't got the right connotations at all any more for whole swathes of British people.

Good how everyone was there for the victory lap though and plenty of happy stuff all round.



I liked the season and I should give the first half another chance some day.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
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.
beccaelizabeth: Knight with sword out, defiant; word balloon says NO. (Sword)
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.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
Thinking about the utter destruction of the multiverse
as you do
it occured to me that someone who could write that and expect readers to roll with it fundamentally doesn't think of a character as a single continuous person.

Post Crisis they can still write stories about their characters. As archetypes. Read more... )
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I was thinking about Legends of Tomorrow and the Arrowverse...

... okay, first I was thinking about teaching at Sunnydale High, and then about iambic pentameter, amd then about how Shakespeare endures because his characters are just so human

and that Legends of Tomorrow episode where he started writing about superheroes? That would be like, retro, like old school King Arthur stuff, all those sagas about some super warrior with a super power. Those had been around. Shakespeare wrote about people shaped people. Imitable violence. And one reason the royal stories endure is when your family argues it can feel like the end of the world, like it can bring down kingdoms and end everything, even if family mostly tends to involve less stabbing and poison and so on. So instead of portraying nobles as fundamentally different than thee and I, the stories we keep hold of are just, like, what if they're just us? Us but with all the power. Fucked up families that can start wars.

So if he was writing about superheroes, the powers part might grab the attention, but I reckon he'd write more about how they're people sized people. You know? Like sure they can shake the world, but they're us.

And I was thinking how Legends of Tomorrow, by being completely gonzo and able to have anything happen, has *very* people shaped people. Read more... )

So that's my thoughts for the day.
... I have a college trained urge to go looking for sources and making sure I know what I'm talking about, but it is like half one in the morning, I probably do not know what I'm talking about.


But these are the kind of thoughts I'm having lately. Wandering ones, cause it's not like we need to get anywhere.


Maybe I should go watch some episodes or something...

Club JLI

Dec. 9th, 2020 11:02 pm
beccaelizabeth: Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, cartoon style, bored, using one of those bats with the ball attached. (Blue Beetle)
I think I remembered Kooey Kooey Kooey as being funnier. Read more... )

The omnibus is still good to read though :-)
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
and I got lost in the white house on my first day.

... most realistic part.

Read more... )


So that, only lightly smoothed out, was a pretty good plotty dream.

Me as the President who gets saved by Booster Gold.

I can't remember where when I indicated that I too might have done a bit of time travelling, but that was fun too. President Me, swapped in for a much more annoying large tall president, ready for four years of getting things done.

... now I'm pondering which one I looked like. Someone from the DCU? Arrowverse? If I have to choose for aesthetics it'd be evil Bruce Boxleitner. Which would make me (*googles*) President Phil Baker? Oh that would work. President Baker, new and improved.

Baker never got actually elected though, on account of being evil.

Being the not evil replacement is way likelier to win an election.



ANYway, that was a fun dream.
beccaelizabeth: Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, cartoon style, bored, using one of those bats with the ball attached. (Blue Beetle)
I woke up with a plot bunny for Arrowverse Booster and Beetle.
Because Arrowverse has a whole show about fixing historical anachronisms, and... huh, just realised it would be interesting to have a second traveller turn up with a very different map, not just random anachronisms showing up in the media but a whole time travel map that says this is all Wrong. And post crisis there's way more reasons to.

ANYway, I more or less dreamed the real Ted Kord is trapped on an island
so you get imagery very much like Ollie trapped on Lian Yu
but the castaway running around is plus size Ted Kord

and then when Booster arrives to save him
we find out Ted has all the snacks and luxuries and cutting edge tech and netflix access he could desire
it's just nobody believed his messages, because look, Ted Kord at a fundraiser right here, isn't he a joker, all these trapped in a robot factory easter eggs!

... real Ted is of course trapped in a robot factory
and Evil Ted is out there running his company
for his uncle.
Read more... )
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
I watched an animated Wonder Woman from I think 2009? In a two disc set. On the other disc were two episodes of Justice League Unlimited.
I want to watch more of JLU, even though it was not entirely satisfying.
I did not like the movie Wonder Woman.
Even the live action movie that upset me had good points this one did not.
Wonder Woman as I know her makes friends with women and helps and is helped by them.
In this animated movie she just mocks and insults them, except for one child, who she teaches to stab.
I feel this doesn't capture any of the good points of Wonder Woman as are specific to her.
She fights real good, but so does anyone in the genre. There's supposed to be more to her than anger?
And she slaps Steve Trevor in the face a lot! And then lets him kiss her? And I can't see what his merits are supposed to be on this one. Sure he fights real good to protect her, but the problem is meant to be Ares stirring up men to fight, so unless they're making a more subtle point about attack vs defence than I really got out of it, he's just a rude man who gets away with it because he's good at his job. He tries to get Diana drunk? He's a pig and calls himself a pig? Why that man out of billions??

I like the movie much better when it has this to improve upon.
And I didn't like how she was here for men there at all.



Sometimes I wonder if I made up the good bits of the comics in my head.

If I did I should write them down, because they were very good.

*sigh*



It's also frustrating when the supervillain team up is better at team than the league, but I imagine other episodes improve on that.

Diana having to learn from Dove to be less aggressive, or at least with his help learning it, that was not my favourite bit either.

But I did like better that they had to stop fighting to defeat the god of war. That one moment in JL Unlimited made more sense than the whole moviemit was packqged with.

*double sigh*




I should stop complaining about story and write some if I think I know what is good.


... aaaaaany day now...
beccaelizabeth: Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, cartoon style, bored, using one of those bats with the ball attached. (Blue Beetle)
So I said while writing about the Omnibus that the JLI in my head is the good bits version. So I thought I'd write a bit about what that version is? Only, not meaning the 'edited highlights' version that was the source of it, just meaning, the bits that interest me about these characters, if I'm going to write about them now.

And writing about them now I'd be drawing on their whole history since then, but filtering it for stories as still need told.

The basic Justice League setup where they work within a formal framework of checks and balances, and draw steady pay and benefits for it, I like and would like to keep. No secret government offices engaged in coverups, just places any random walk in all over the world can visit if they're having the kind of problems only a superhero can help with.

The team in my head is

Beetle & Booster
Fire & Ice
Guy Gardner
Big Barda & Scott Free
J'onn J'onnz

And in all cases it's the personalities and relationships I find interesting, not the power sets.

Read more... )


So I just spent many, many words and about an hour writing only about Beetle and Booster. And there's so much more good stuff in having the whole team.

I mean if I was writing them now they'd end up Beetle/Booster, Fire/Ice with a whole Guy complication, Scott/Barda with Scott being a notably slight man and Barda being a very tall muscular woman. I'm not saying she's trans, but there are certain models of women we don't see so many of on TV. So it would be fun if they're trans, like, both of them, rewriting their own definitions, but it would also be fun if they're cis and just Like That.
But if they're trans, and the shapeshifter is genderfluid, then pretty much the whole team is LGBT?

Except Guy, but there's stories we can use for that. Read more... )



Wow that's an hour and a half of typing, I've covered five characters, and there's still more to go.



Scott and Barda are easy though, what I like about their relationship is summed up in a single image, where Barda is carrying Scott upstairs to bed, carrying him slung over her shoulder up the stairs in their little house in the suburbs. Read more... )



So that leaves J'onn, and I like the Supergirl version of him, but he's very different in the League. Read more... )


So that's pretty much two hours I've been typing and my fingers hurt.


And the League in my head are not as detailed as I thought. I pretty much can go on about Beetle and Booster and then... their friends, the Justice League. Eh, I could talk about Guy too. ... people with their own titles are easier to know than people in a team book? who knew?


But I like how I can tell a lot of stories with how they fit together, even if the only story I can think of for Fire and Ice is that they really like and support each other. I mean, how often do you even see that? Let alone with two women?


So this is what I like about the team in my head, a bunch of sets of partners that can fit together to be a team.

... the actual comics kind of didn't do that.

... the actual comics spent a lot of time on pranks and people being annoyed at each other.

Like, some of that, but mixed in with saving the world, and actually liking each other.




And I can't be having with comics time no more, it tells like two or three episodes a year, it's so sloooooow. They'd get through so much more story at TV speeds. I want to do that.


And also engage with the different attitudes to superheroics and authority that you definitely have in that team. Like, this incarnation work for the UN and within a legal framework, but you've got Guy who wants to ignore it, Booster who leaves it for more money, Fire who kind of infiltrates it? And Scott and Barda who came from a dictatorship and don't want to go back to one. That should all be interesting.


I want to think up meaty stories and then play with these people.


That would be interesting.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
That was a mess.

That was a caricature of Snart. Read more... )



So after that season I'm a bit borderline on if I like the show. I like Mick, and how much meaty emotional story he's been getting. But I don't like what happened to his partner, or how they mess us around with all the signs and signifiers of a love relationship, the ring, the saying love you, and then just hand us that as an ending. They retcon his whole relationship to be something we're meant to cheer him walking away from. I don't see why they want to do that. The end of last season gave us a problem of Mick being sad, but making like he shouldn't have been is not a solution I'm willing to swallow.

Still, Mick says Leonard becomes a better man. He still believes in them. After all that.

Feels.




There's potential plot bunny in how they left him. Read more... )



The first season had a pretty good plot made of closed time loop.

... although logically the Hawks could never have killed Savage in their own past without making themselves not be born, but, they didn't, so not noticing that was on Rip and part of the cunning predestination plan.


But the whole first season was about breaking away from predestination and building better lives.

Second season is about keeping everything the same while team evil tries to save their families and their own lives.

Why were we meant to change sides on that issue?

So I am not sold on this show.




And the entire ethics of it depend on laws of time that just don't stay still to figure out.


But they do find new and interesting ways to break them, so hey, that could be interesting.


:eyeroll: *sigh*




I am looking forwards to the fanfic far more than to the next season.
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
That was not Leonard Snart. The 'good boy' stuff sucked and seemed ooc compared to all else we've seen, but it wasn't the most fundamental part. Captain Cold is, in this episode, scared of going up against a speedster.

What do the writers think he does for a living?

Read more... )




Last but by no means least
if the new plan is to go time travel to before the Spear was broken
what exactly was the point of chasing around after broken pieces all season?


All they'd need to do is get the Spear from slightly before it was broken, use it for whatever, and put it back where Rip was going to find it, and time wouldn't even notice you'd been there.

If the Spear doesn't have some special power to write protect its own history then the entire season plot is a bust.



OTOH I can see the Spear still being indestructible, just all its component atoms are either streaming in the atmosphere or hanging in the middle of a super hot reactor.

... but Mick's gun reaches absolute hot, so should have been able to do the exact same thing to it.

... I hate it when comics can't keep track of their own made up physics.





Didn't like the episode, don't see how it told us much interesting about the characters, mind controlled into humiliating situations isn't exactly revealing, Snart was so far out of character and Mick either didn't wish for anything or
only wished for Leonard.


... :(

... okay, that's pretty sad.



And then he couldn't kill him even after he'd seen him kill.
But that goes both ways, Len tied himself to serving Eobard just to keep Mick alive, and he didn't ice him or even threaten him back after stopping Amaya.

Even ooc they're a tragedy.

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