beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

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.

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... )

I think I remembered Kooey Kooey Kooey as being funnier. ( Read more... )

The omnibus is still good to read though :-)

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... )

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.

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.

That was ridiculous.
And not in a way I personally can roll with and find funny.
Humans doing those jobs do not work like that, so the whole thing is just... no.

The Heywood strands of the story are obviously emotionally affecting, but any noble sacrifice that could be fixed with a basic safety precaution like seatbelt or safety line is on I can't feel the way the writers meant me to.

Also, whoever wrote this understands physics even less than comic books usually do. Including comic book physics.

( Read more... )




Episode was made of interesting parts that just didn't grab me.

... I like Legends of Tomorrow, but I'm thinking I increasingly like it as a lego kit.

... not least because I know which parts I'm not going to like at all...

So
( Read more... )


I think I liked all the episodes Camelot parts if I don't think about them too hard.

And I love the bits with Mick.

Grand name for these bickering bastards.

I kind of like how petty and easily divided they are. But Merlyn and Dark fighting just reminded me of Captains Harkness and Hart, and it therefore lacked a certain something in comparison.

( Read more... )



The story is not doing what I wanted it to and the rules aren't as clear as I want them to be
and I purely don't understand why the crew makes a distinction between altered and unaltered and calls it fake and real.

I mean none of them have ever lived in an unaltered timeline. Do they not get that?


So it's all emotionally unsatisfying because they have a reaction I can't grok.



But the dead looking speedster is scary cool.

I'm kind of glad I saw so many spoilers and knew not to get my hopes up
because that was kind of a gut punch
what we wanted, in a way we'd never want.

Which is the temptation time travel dangles over all of them.

( Read more... )

Mick, Sara, and Nate all had their own strands of this episode.
... I'm paying most attention to Mick, kind of 'of course' about Sara, and not enthralled about Nate.

Also I ate the rest of my birthday cake while watching and wow is that a lot of chocolate goo.
A Lot.
I maybe might have been distracted with chocolate crumb and dawning suspicion I shouldn't have has the last few bites.

This episode divides weirdly between things that are plausibly in character but I'm annoyed at the characters for them, and things that I'm annoyed at the writers for... though I guess those are plausibly in character too.

Both sets are about how people treat Mick.

( Read more... )


There's a lot of threads and layers going on in here, and mostly I like it and want to see how it plays through.

I'm just annoyed at the Legends because if they're so anti Mick why are they keeping him around to risk himself? If they don't like him, why work with him? Do or do not, dudes. Be a team.



The whole Mick misses hanging out with criminals who appreciate him thread is getting well established.

I think I liked it.

( Read more... )


So that was watchable with feels and team stuff

... the atomwave Ray/Mick people got a lot to work with early on, too.

... anything not coldwave Len/Mick makes me sad, but, I can see it.



Onwards to more episodes...