potentiality_26 | Entries tagged with rant

What fandom that got a series finale was the LEAST appropriate/least satisfying. Bonus: How would you have fixed it?

Okay, so, there are a lot of bad finales out there (and bad sequels, and bad last books) and between Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones there's also been a lot written about what makes an ending bad. So I feel like I should have a more elevated answer than the one I'm going to give. But I looked back over every finale I've ever hated, and the one I found myself still most angry about was Warehouse 13.

So. Warehouse 13.

( Read more... )

Also, shout-out to Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Not the finale of the franchise, but the finale for me.

I feel like I've made a post griping about this before, but it really bugs me when you have to update a computer program you use, and the update has these like... minor aesthetic changes that actually make the program less intuitive and harder to work with. I swear both word and itunes were much easier to use five to ten years ago than they are now. Switching around where the buttons are isn't always (or even usually) an improvement, especially when people have been using the program regularly for years.

I really am going to do a positive fandom related post pretty soon, but right now the election is horrifying and my computer is turning against me in new and unexpected ways, so... I just don't have it in me at the moment.

( Feel free to give it a miss... )

As per usual I have no idea what to say now.

I really don't want to just make a string of posts ranting about people on AO3, but hey, it's my journal and it makes me feel better so I'm gonna do it anyway. I am putting it under a cut, though, because I'm oversensitive and talking myself into a corner and seriously no one should read this.

( Comment issues. Again. )

*sigh*

I just don't know.

It bothers me so much when people bookmark a fic on AO3 and say negative things about it (or even just say how they liked these parts of it but not those). I mean I keep telling myself not to look at the bookmarks on my fics because I know I’m gonna see something that upsets me, but that means that I also have to miss out on the nice things other people wrote.

Making a negative bookmark, to me, is almost worse than leaving a negative comment because that way the writer can see those remarks, but they can't do anything about them either.

And if you can’t bring yourself to bookmark something without caveats, without also saying what you didn’t like about it, maybe you don’t really need to bookmark that thing.

Trying to figure out how to reply to a rude comment is the worst.

I keep telling myself to take the high road and find a way to be gracious because I get how they might have thought they were being helpful, but the thing is that I've been getting more and more pissed off about people complaining about fanfiction that isn't perfect and I just want to let it out at someone, and since this person is such a big fan of unsolicited advice, maybe they deserve it.

I still haven't decided what to reply (I'm leaning toward biting my tongue and not saying anything despite my mood since "If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all" is what I think they should adopt), but I have Opinions and I need to share them.

( Read more... )

Ah well. Now I have to decide what to actually say.

So I was one of those people whose email provider decided to summarily block all emails from LJ this week. I guess the problem has been at least semi-fixed since I can leave and reply to comments again now, but I'm still kind of pissed off about it.

Like why did Microsoft think it was such an A+ idea to just start deleting messages from a website without taking two seconds to check if it was a site their user base might want to still get messages from? And it would have been one thing if it had changed the settings so the messages went straight to the junk mail folder (at least then we would have had some say in whether we even saw the messages or not) but no. They just never arrived.

*growls*

Anyway, I wanted to get another email address that I would have to check regularly like I wanted a hole in the head, so I just kept hoping LJ would get it fixed, and lo they did something right. The whole situation still aggratvates me, though.

Okay, so, I've liked the last few episodes of my shows, but haven't had a lot to say recently, but I've had some thoughts perculating for a while about the main ones, so here we go:

( Agents of SHIELD )

( The Blacklist )

( Sleepy Hollow )

I've been watching Forever and Castle too, but I don't have a whole lot to say about either of them.

It's so sad when you've been waiting for a fic you love to be updated for what feels like most of your life at this point, and then it gets updated! And the update is nice and long!! And you can't read it right now because you've got a busy night ahead.

*sigh*

I walked in around the middle (ish) and stayed until I lost patience, which wasn't very long, but I did see enough to notice that the Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (or whatever it's technically called) had scene snippets for each of them, and the Supporting Actress in a Drama Series just had images of their faces.

That's cool. I like that. That doesn't make me angry or anything, why would it?

I mean, the Emmys ostensibly lost their power to hurt me the moment Tatiana Maslany was not nominated again, but seriously- what the hell?

Anyway, I know it's sometimes considered unseemly to whine about all the writing one is doing, and I apologize, but seriously. My brain decided that it wanted to do a) all five of the stories I want to write for my H/C bingo line at the same time, instead of one by one and b) also some other random unrelated business that I keep trying and failing to put on the back burner.

Also, as a semi-unrelated note: I miss the days when I was fond of Sherlock but in no way compelled to write fic for it. My mind was quieter back then. Not particularly quiet, I'll admit- but quieter.

I never liked it, I want to say that at the outset. I mean, what's the point of making a historical series from the point of view of the women if you're only going to underscore how ultimately powerless they are? Even the "magical" subplot was annoying because it was so obviously a ploy to make the series' passive heroine look slightly less passive, but that too ultimately failed. If the closest she comes to taking charge of her life is basically wishing someone dead, that is not power. The way this series was advertised, I honestly can't tell if the writers legitimately thought it was feminist and empowering, or if they were just lying, and I'm not sure which is worse.

So anyway, given that I never liked it, I probably have no right to be as annoyed as I am about how completely off the goddamn rails it went in the last episode.

( But seriously )

See, all of this happened a long time ago. We know who married who, who had which kid, who died in what battlefield and who didn't, but we don't know the meaning behind a lot of it. What I like about historical fiction (when I like it) is when the writers take what we do know and make an interesting backstory, weaving the facts together to create a reading I haven't thought of before. This was a poor one, and it handwaved plenty of what we do know to serve itself, which to my mind defeats the purpose.

At the end of the day, I'm sticking to Shakespeare, guys. They're equally fictional, but Shakespeare was just better at it.

And I just saw "Upgrades" again. It has a lot of funny moments, but to me it's always really going to be the episode with the bit where Sam is trapped on the other side of a forcefield and Jack won't leave her, which is later used as proof of their great love.

Here's the thing about that:

( If you ship Jack/Sam I wish you joy of it, and I'm not trying to bash your ship, but this plotline really gets my goat, so it might read that way )

Do you guys ever have one of those days where you have insomnia like woah, so you give up on sleep and crack open the computer- and then instead of anything helpful you write 4K of angsty smut for a pairing you don't even like, and you're thinking, "Nice going, brain. None of this was on the agenda. None of it." Especially when you go back over it and you think it's maybe even sort of good, in an I don't think this would happen but if it did it would be like this sort of way, and it just rolled out of your fingers like you were taking dictation while all this while you've been struggling with that one scene from that one fic for your OTP for weeks and now this story- THIS story- got roughed out in maybe three hours and you look up to the writing gods and say, "Seriously?"

Or is that just me? Today. Just me today.

To rail against the whole Beckett going to Washington plotline.

Now, obviously I haven’t seen any of S6 and I’ve avoided spoilers so I have no idea where they’re going with it, but what I saw in S5 really pissed me off.

To be clear, I have no problem with the idea of Beckett wanting more than to be a cop. She wants to be a secret agent or whatever we’re calling these people, more power to her. I don’t even mind the whole moving to Washington idea. If I actually believed for a second that they were going to change the landscape of the show dramatically and either send Beckett and Castle to Washington or send just Beckett to Washington and show Castle negotiating a long-distance relationship and also working with a new detective, I would sort of love it. I like shows that aren’t afraid to break the status quo. Of the major regulars on Stargate: SG-1, only two had their spots as regulars in all ten seasons. On Angel, they sent the characters in S5 to work for the firm that was a major bad villain in all the previous ones. Change is good if it’s done right.

To repeat, Beckett being ambitious is not a problem for me. She is a smart, tough, capable woman and if she wanted to be President all of a sudden, that would be fine with me. The problem is that ‘all of a sudden’ is exactly what this is. Wanting more than to be a cop has never been part of Beckett’s character. I mean, if this was S5 of Sleepy Hollow (I don’t know if there will be, but I’m sure you see what I mean) and Abbie Mills had gotten a job offer in Washington and told Crane to go get someone else to annoy, I would be a 100% with it. Abbie was introduced as a character who wanted more. She was on her way to Quantico and out of Sleepy Hollow when this whole thing started and she decided to put what she actually wanted on hold to save the world and all.

But we’ve been told over and over that what Beckett cares about is speaking for the little guy. She wants to stand up for the victim and the people who cared about them. She wants to get justice and find the truth no matter how powerful the forces standing against her. The dude working for the attorney general, on the other hand, didn’t appear to do any of that. He seemed like just another government lackey out for blood who didn’t really care who got hurt along the way- and he didn’t seem to care much about the truth either. I mean, think about it- the killer turned out to be a angry teenager. If Castle had been right and this was a government conspiracy, do we actually believe for a second that that guy wouldn’t have been the first to step in and cover it up? Not only was it my impression that this was the read the writers wanted me as a viewer to take on this guy, I thought that was Beckett’s impression as well- and suddenly this is her big dream job?

So, my take away message from all this? It’s a plot-device and nothing more. I mean, the whole last few episodes of the season were stupid little scenarios meant to show Beckett and Castle that they don’t appreciate their relationship enough. She’s standing on a bomb and they don’t appreciate their relationship enough. Ioan Gruffudd’s still got it even though we had our doubts after The Fantastic Four and they don’t appreciate their relationship enough. She could go to Washington if he doesn’t do something and THEY DON’T APPRECIATE THEIR RELATIONSHIP ENOUGH!!!

Really, Castle? Really? This show has so many great characters that I thought they might- you know- want to be true to them once in a while.

(Also, while I’m pissed off, can I just say WTF is going on with this IT girl? I know that Los Angeles would fall into the sea if there was ever an unattractive woman in show business, and I know that there are pretty nerds in this world, but couldn’t they at least slap a pair of eyeglasses on her or something and pretend like they were trying? I could be hanging out with the wrong kind of nerds- and if so please do tell me where the other kind live so that I may go and marvel at their hotness from afar because God knows I’m not sexy enough to be in their number- but it’s my impression that they either aren’t very good looking, or they are but they spent so many of their formative years being told that they weren’t that they sort of stopped trying, and if Esposito was making bedroom eyes at them would be more likely to wince and avert their eyes than smirk.)

I'd like to outline my major grievance against Once Upon a Time.

The whole point of the show (call it a theme, if you like) is that in the fairytale world, everyone lived happily ever after; then the curse sent them to the real world, where life began to suck.

Here's the thing: other than Snow White and Prince Charming, absolutely no one got a happy ending. This undermines the whole point of the show. And it makes it so much less interesting. There's a scene in one Ruby/Little Red Hood centric-episode where Henry comments that she just doesn't remember how cool she is. It's this idea that gives OUAT so much potential: that these people had lives, they had had trials and tribulations, they fought and they got their happy ending- and then their memories and lives were stolen from them. The David/Mary Margaret merry-go-round in S1 was not my favorite part, but it was still interesting because they went through so much to be together and BAM! Gone, just like that. It's much sadder, much darker, to have things like that happen then to have bad things happen in fairy tale land and the real world, as with Rumpelstiltskin and Belle. All that says is "You still don't get to be with your True Love. But, you get short skirts and indoor plumbing." They're practically better off, in most cases.

Also, for the first three episodes (maybe four, it's been a while) the flashbacks seemed to be going backwards: Snow White and Prince Charming get married and the Evil Queen enacts the curse. Evil Queen gets a hold of the curse. Etc. Am I the only one who wanted it to keep going that way? Instead, the flashbacks just started jumping around and getting a concrete timeline together became the headache of my life.

What do I love? I love steampunk and I love westerns. What do I find when I go into the Barnes and Noble these days? Lots of steampunk novels, a lot of them westerns.

I should be really happy, but I'm sort of not. So few of the books look actively interesting, and the ones that do, that I buy, aren't that great.

( My woes... )