...and a pirate's life for ME...
Jul. 21st, 2006 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaHehehe, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lizardspots drew hardcore!H/D so I'm all happy and inspired, and I'm probably gonna use it for a scene 'cause I can't resist. HEEE. Harry's all 'I KEEEL YOU MALFOY... AFTER I FUCK YOU OF COURSE' and Draco's all '....WELL?? ARE YOU JUST GONNA STAND THERE ALL DAY OR CAN YOU PUT YOUR COCK WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS?' :D :D :D Oh nostalgia.
I wonder if people would take my characterization/fanfic meta-whining stuff differently if I actually gave step-by-step examples the way people do with canon meta (like, went and referenced well-known fics specifically, quoted lines, challenged with specific canon/earth-logic/common-sense bits, basically did that public con-crit thing everyone hates or whatever... though that was never my point, I'd only even consider it if I wanted to prove something and even the idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth because the truth is, I can't spend much time in H/D fandom without wanting to prove something... I think it's sort of like my speculations about what would happen to religious people if they KNEW God never existed. *sigh*) It's not like it'd help anyone to MST3K some popular fanfics just so I could put my mouth where my rant is, right? It's like, either I hurt people's feelings and/or start some wank or I just seem to be way too general and hating on people's buzz rather than debunking Teh Crazeh Fanon, and I don't even want to do -that- (since when am I a rationalist debunker critical person??), I just like to talk.... Ehhh, it's like, not worth it, man... I'd much rather talk about something -other- than OOCness, like how in the Highlander fic I'm reading, she seems to write het sex okay but the slash bits are atrocious, lame & flowery, and yet I keep reading. -.-
No one would probably even get this example, but I love being able to say anything about this fic 'cause I have no clue about the people or fandom involved. *sigh* I don't have any great anger here, I just find it interesting why it works and doesn't. It sort of reminds me of how Lynn Flewelling wrote her gay bits woodenly, like she can't really imagine two guys liking each other even if she's compelled to write about it. In this case, there's so much telling-not-showing and overthinking everything to the point where the emotions appear to take place in some sort of meta space where nothing's really real because they're so over-described in lofty terms. She's good with action and has some gritty het stuff in the fic, though. Ahh, some people are meant to write gen, I think, and should realize their true calling.
It sort of draws me in 'cause it's such a plotty fic and has an interesting Methos with a history, and he and Duncan snark okay if the writer stops meta-ing about what it means for two seconds. God, I'm seriously getting such a rush saying all this publically :P I think sometimes things fail in interesting ways, and this is one of those times; the fic really tries to be all epic and detailed, and it only falls down trying to be immediate or emotionally relevant, 'cause it's always having that superego-focused remove. I think that's really my issue-- some of the het seemed to involve the Id, but the Duncan/Methos bits were all superego, which is just weird. (Also, I have to say, it's a lot rarer to find a well-written longfic in a fandom that's not HP where the main character is just... the total opposite of his canon self and that self's beliefs/habits/etc. Maybe 'cause the adult characters in TV shows just have more natural body-language & expression so they just feel more well-rounded?? This doesn't apply to most QAF fics I've read, though...)
~~
So I saw Pirates of the Caribbean, which is the real point of this entry, btw.
I dunno if I was disappointed, but I was rather confused. It seemed a lot more... a sequel-type movie, with so much action, maybe you were supposed not to notice all the ways it stuttered along and the exposition just kept growing more and more confusing, and the characterization more and more muddled. Elizabeth kept saying Jack was a 'good man', but in the end I'm not sure of anything except she sees fit to say so. There really wasn't a lot of follow-through emotionally, and bits seemed disconnected from each other.
A lot of times the dialogue-- even for Jack, but especially the bad-guy dudes-- seemed stilted, and the delivery was just laughably wooden, like that blackmailing guy-- he couldn't deliver a line if you PAID him, I'm convinced of this. Some of the best acting was probably Commodore Norrington, Gibbs and Jack... though sometimes he was on the level of the voodoo woman, honestly. The Jack/Elizabeth bits seemed a lot less natural and more staged than last time, and the relationships between the characters seemed stuttery or underdeveloped-- like, a lot of declarations & statements were made but I was constantly confused about Jack and Elizabeth and even Will, who seemed to like Jack one minute and completely distrust him and wish him dead at the next convenient moment; and Elizabeth made noises about trusting Jack, and their dynamic was somewhat interesting but Jack seems a lot more 'easy' than he was last movie and she seems a lot more of a tease, someone who doesn't have a true emotional connection if she's so brazen and heedless of what she flaunts him with. If Will was supposed to seem more honorable than Jack, he should've shown it by something other than an obsession with his pirate father, I feel.
So many different plot-lines and motivations and scenes, the uniting thread seemed non-existent (to the point where I had to -infer- Jack's motivation for obsessing with Davy Jones' heart if it wasn't a treasure-- like, he just wanted it for leverage, right? but how in the fuck was it supposed to save Elizabeth? oh wait, that was a lie); so it wasn't a complete chapter, let alone a complete story-arc like the first movie was. I mean, the voodoo woman was a -complete- deux ex machina, it's embarrassing, and ending it by beginning another installment was just lame. I'm not sure how I feel about Elizabeth's easy Slytherin-like tactics, but Jack's pluckiness remained cute, it's true. I mean, he was -cute- but not as charming as he was last time 'cause he seemed a lot more opaque to me as a character-- like, I couldn't get an emotional hook into him the way I did in that first scene in the first movie when he was about to hang. It's like they were trying to make him both roguish/careless and sympathetic, and fell flat on both ends. Though the part where he was falling on a stick with the watermelons and that whole island-god thing was hilarious and awesome.
...And yeah, for some reason I like Norrington now. Instead of a stick-in-the-mud, I hate to say, but he seemed the only really emotionally realistic/sympathetic character in the movie, and I'm -not- generally that harsh. It was just -really- disjointed and he was the only one I always found clear, honorable and truly -himself- without parodying himself. There are a lot of bits of story in this movie. If only they cut out like, the third that was unnecessary and added actual human interaction/motivation, they would've had a great movie on their hands. As it is... I enjoyed the watermelons and the UST, I guess.
~~
In more predictable news, I'm now determined to watch the MI5 teen movie, Stormbreaker. Man, I don't care if it sucks, it has a cute boy who's all doing sekrit-cool-powers stuff. Ahh, I could watch any dreck for the sake of that sort of thing.
lizardspots drew hardcore!H/D so I'm all happy and inspired, and I'm probably gonna use it for a scene 'cause I can't resist. HEEE. Harry's all 'I KEEEL YOU MALFOY... AFTER I FUCK YOU OF COURSE' and Draco's all '....WELL?? ARE YOU JUST GONNA STAND THERE ALL DAY OR CAN YOU PUT YOUR COCK WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS?' :D :D :D Oh nostalgia.I wonder if people would take my characterization/fanfic meta-whining stuff differently if I actually gave step-by-step examples the way people do with canon meta (like, went and referenced well-known fics specifically, quoted lines, challenged with specific canon/earth-logic/common-sense bits, basically did that public con-crit thing everyone hates or whatever... though that was never my point, I'd only even consider it if I wanted to prove something and even the idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth because the truth is, I can't spend much time in H/D fandom without wanting to prove something... I think it's sort of like my speculations about what would happen to religious people if they KNEW God never existed. *sigh*) It's not like it'd help anyone to MST3K some popular fanfics just so I could put my mouth where my rant is, right? It's like, either I hurt people's feelings and/or start some wank or I just seem to be way too general and hating on people's buzz rather than debunking Teh Crazeh Fanon, and I don't even want to do -that- (since when am I a rationalist debunker critical person??), I just like to talk.... Ehhh, it's like, not worth it, man... I'd much rather talk about something -other- than OOCness, like how in the Highlander fic I'm reading, she seems to write het sex okay but the slash bits are atrocious, lame & flowery, and yet I keep reading. -.-
No one would probably even get this example, but I love being able to say anything about this fic 'cause I have no clue about the people or fandom involved. *sigh* I don't have any great anger here, I just find it interesting why it works and doesn't. It sort of reminds me of how Lynn Flewelling wrote her gay bits woodenly, like she can't really imagine two guys liking each other even if she's compelled to write about it. In this case, there's so much telling-not-showing and overthinking everything to the point where the emotions appear to take place in some sort of meta space where nothing's really real because they're so over-described in lofty terms. She's good with action and has some gritty het stuff in the fic, though. Ahh, some people are meant to write gen, I think, and should realize their true calling.
It sort of draws me in 'cause it's such a plotty fic and has an interesting Methos with a history, and he and Duncan snark okay if the writer stops meta-ing about what it means for two seconds. God, I'm seriously getting such a rush saying all this publically :P I think sometimes things fail in interesting ways, and this is one of those times; the fic really tries to be all epic and detailed, and it only falls down trying to be immediate or emotionally relevant, 'cause it's always having that superego-focused remove. I think that's really my issue-- some of the het seemed to involve the Id, but the Duncan/Methos bits were all superego, which is just weird. (Also, I have to say, it's a lot rarer to find a well-written longfic in a fandom that's not HP where the main character is just... the total opposite of his canon self and that self's beliefs/habits/etc. Maybe 'cause the adult characters in TV shows just have more natural body-language & expression so they just feel more well-rounded?? This doesn't apply to most QAF fics I've read, though...)
~~
So I saw Pirates of the Caribbean, which is the real point of this entry, btw.
I dunno if I was disappointed, but I was rather confused. It seemed a lot more... a sequel-type movie, with so much action, maybe you were supposed not to notice all the ways it stuttered along and the exposition just kept growing more and more confusing, and the characterization more and more muddled. Elizabeth kept saying Jack was a 'good man', but in the end I'm not sure of anything except she sees fit to say so. There really wasn't a lot of follow-through emotionally, and bits seemed disconnected from each other.
A lot of times the dialogue-- even for Jack, but especially the bad-guy dudes-- seemed stilted, and the delivery was just laughably wooden, like that blackmailing guy-- he couldn't deliver a line if you PAID him, I'm convinced of this. Some of the best acting was probably Commodore Norrington, Gibbs and Jack... though sometimes he was on the level of the voodoo woman, honestly. The Jack/Elizabeth bits seemed a lot less natural and more staged than last time, and the relationships between the characters seemed stuttery or underdeveloped-- like, a lot of declarations & statements were made but I was constantly confused about Jack and Elizabeth and even Will, who seemed to like Jack one minute and completely distrust him and wish him dead at the next convenient moment; and Elizabeth made noises about trusting Jack, and their dynamic was somewhat interesting but Jack seems a lot more 'easy' than he was last movie and she seems a lot more of a tease, someone who doesn't have a true emotional connection if she's so brazen and heedless of what she flaunts him with. If Will was supposed to seem more honorable than Jack, he should've shown it by something other than an obsession with his pirate father, I feel.
So many different plot-lines and motivations and scenes, the uniting thread seemed non-existent (to the point where I had to -infer- Jack's motivation for obsessing with Davy Jones' heart if it wasn't a treasure-- like, he just wanted it for leverage, right? but how in the fuck was it supposed to save Elizabeth? oh wait, that was a lie); so it wasn't a complete chapter, let alone a complete story-arc like the first movie was. I mean, the voodoo woman was a -complete- deux ex machina, it's embarrassing, and ending it by beginning another installment was just lame. I'm not sure how I feel about Elizabeth's easy Slytherin-like tactics, but Jack's pluckiness remained cute, it's true. I mean, he was -cute- but not as charming as he was last time 'cause he seemed a lot more opaque to me as a character-- like, I couldn't get an emotional hook into him the way I did in that first scene in the first movie when he was about to hang. It's like they were trying to make him both roguish/careless and sympathetic, and fell flat on both ends. Though the part where he was falling on a stick with the watermelons and that whole island-god thing was hilarious and awesome.
...And yeah, for some reason I like Norrington now. Instead of a stick-in-the-mud, I hate to say, but he seemed the only really emotionally realistic/sympathetic character in the movie, and I'm -not- generally that harsh. It was just -really- disjointed and he was the only one I always found clear, honorable and truly -himself- without parodying himself. There are a lot of bits of story in this movie. If only they cut out like, the third that was unnecessary and added actual human interaction/motivation, they would've had a great movie on their hands. As it is... I enjoyed the watermelons and the UST, I guess.
~~
In more predictable news, I'm now determined to watch the MI5 teen movie, Stormbreaker. Man, I don't care if it sucks, it has a cute boy who's all doing sekrit-cool-powers stuff. Ahh, I could watch any dreck for the sake of that sort of thing.
