And sundry...
Aug. 26th, 2014 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmoore 1. If anything of fannish (or non-fannish, but not covered by major news outlets) happened over the last few days, I probably missed it. Friday and Saturday were spent travelling with spotty internet because of my nephew's birthday party, then I managed to get impressively (but briefly) sick on Sunday. Yesterday I felt better and went to work and was ok, then pretty much completely crashed after. I managed to play a bit of Flight Rising and read some One Piece (almost finished with Water Seven) but that's the closest to productive media consumption/interneting that I've gotten in the last few days.
2. Speaking of Flight Rising, someone made a loot tracker. You have to enter it manually, but it doesn't really add much time, and it's fun to see. (Or depressing, like when you do something like train 6 exalt fodder in the Kelp Beds and go 64 rounds and get 3 lesser battle items, 8 festival currency, and almost 200 "other stuff," which translates as "food and autosell junk.")
3. The main reason I'm posting, though is to comment on some shows I've been watching the last few weeks, but probably won't get around to giving proper writeups. Starting with rewatching The Pretender, which I loved as a teen, and which holds up pretty well. Though, wow, I forgot how they did women's makeup in 90s TV. (I mean, not that there aren't crimes committed in that department these days, but that's some seriously caked on stuff, there.) Andrea Parker remains amazing in all things and Michael Weiss is really good at playing a character who's both a naive child in an adult body, and a jaded escape prisoner atoning for unknowingly causing who-knows-how-many-deaths though a lifetime of being exploited. Jared's simultaneous long distance courting/trolling of Miss Parker is as great as I remember, too.
4. I binged through all 6 seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I had some misgivings about it, but really got into it once they started branching out beyond Anakin and/or Obi-Wan and having more stuff about Ahsoka, Padme (especially the Ahsoka/Padme adventure episodes) and the clones. I was also exceptionally fond of Asajj Ventress, depsite disliking how the portrayal of the witches played into all the negative stereotypes ever. Within the narrative, I think they generally did a good job with the portrayal of gender roles and treatment of women (aside from one HUGE beef in season 5....I mean, there were other things that made me frowny, but that was the big one) but on a metanarrative level, I never quite got past the fact that the first season, at least, seems to deliberately minimize Padme's role to keep attention away from ALL THE BAD SOON TO COME and prevent potential audience squick by having too many romantic scenes with Anakin, who was the early main focus. It did get batter about that, though. One thing that particularly thrilled me was when a woman chose ruling a planet over True Love and it was portrayed as completely her choice and not a Sacrifice or something that made her cold. I haven't read much expanded universe stuff, and what I did was years ago. Do Ahsoka or Satine appear in any other media?
5. Another, which is a horror anime from a few years ago. I can't really think of a way to explain it without getting really spoilery, but it's a "cursed class" series, which is pretty common to Japanese horror, but I thought it was really well done, despite a slow start. It's also by P.A. Works and has their normal designs/scenery, which are always great (IMO). Except it's also an increasingly bloody and violent series which I...am not used to with their series.
2. Speaking of Flight Rising, someone made a loot tracker. You have to enter it manually, but it doesn't really add much time, and it's fun to see. (Or depressing, like when you do something like train 6 exalt fodder in the Kelp Beds and go 64 rounds and get 3 lesser battle items, 8 festival currency, and almost 200 "other stuff," which translates as "food and autosell junk.")
3. The main reason I'm posting, though is to comment on some shows I've been watching the last few weeks, but probably won't get around to giving proper writeups. Starting with rewatching The Pretender, which I loved as a teen, and which holds up pretty well. Though, wow, I forgot how they did women's makeup in 90s TV. (I mean, not that there aren't crimes committed in that department these days, but that's some seriously caked on stuff, there.) Andrea Parker remains amazing in all things and Michael Weiss is really good at playing a character who's both a naive child in an adult body, and a jaded escape prisoner atoning for unknowingly causing who-knows-how-many-deaths though a lifetime of being exploited. Jared's simultaneous long distance courting/trolling of Miss Parker is as great as I remember, too.
4. I binged through all 6 seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I had some misgivings about it, but really got into it once they started branching out beyond Anakin and/or Obi-Wan and having more stuff about Ahsoka, Padme (especially the Ahsoka/Padme adventure episodes) and the clones. I was also exceptionally fond of Asajj Ventress, depsite disliking how the portrayal of the witches played into all the negative stereotypes ever. Within the narrative, I think they generally did a good job with the portrayal of gender roles and treatment of women (aside from one HUGE beef in season 5....I mean, there were other things that made me frowny, but that was the big one) but on a metanarrative level, I never quite got past the fact that the first season, at least, seems to deliberately minimize Padme's role to keep attention away from ALL THE BAD SOON TO COME and prevent potential audience squick by having too many romantic scenes with Anakin, who was the early main focus. It did get batter about that, though. One thing that particularly thrilled me was when a woman chose ruling a planet over True Love and it was portrayed as completely her choice and not a Sacrifice or something that made her cold. I haven't read much expanded universe stuff, and what I did was years ago. Do Ahsoka or Satine appear in any other media?
5. Another, which is a horror anime from a few years ago. I can't really think of a way to explain it without getting really spoilery, but it's a "cursed class" series, which is pretty common to Japanese horror, but I thought it was really well done, despite a slow start. It's also by P.A. Works and has their normal designs/scenery, which are always great (IMO). Except it's also an increasingly bloody and violent series which I...am not used to with their series.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 02:12 pm (UTC)They're rebooting the series in novel form now. The last I knew only one volume was out. I tried to read it and was put off by the level of sex and violence in the first couple of chapters. I also didn't want to go back to where the characters were at the beginning of the series-- I like the way Miss Parker developed over the course of four seasons. Still, I will probably try the novel again, once I get it back from the person I loaned it to.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-04 06:12 pm (UTC)The sex and violence reminded me, in a weird way, of the MST3K movie-- After years of doing a TV show where they couldn't use certain types of jokes, the MST3K guys went a little overboard with the scatalogical humor just because they could, and it stopped being funny well before they stopped making the jokes.