2021-02-16 02:11 am

Doctor Who - 4bx03 - Waters of Mars

schmirius: calling up @sky (simm!master)
structure of waters of mars: landing, exploration period, whatever

middle turning point is adelaide telling her story about being touched by the stars (seeing the dalek but then it left without harming her) *as they figure out there's a malevolent alien in the water*

ten bites his tongue and stares in increasing horror at the disaster unfolding around him, feeling increasing emotional pressure as he forces himself to do nothing; meanwhile, adelaide capably directs her team through the proper procedures in this emergency (more or less. she's not written as 100% a great leader.)

adelaide catches on to his foreknowledge; ten tells adelaide about her legacy and that she has to die

listening to crew dying one by one finally breaks the doctor

he turns back and now HE is all manic energy to fix this, adelaide watching silently as he does what she judges to be something terrible, according to what he himself has said

she initiates base self-destruct anyway trying to override his wishes

he magics the tardis to them and rescues them

she initiates self self-destruct trying to correct history by shooting herself after the exchange
A: is there nothing you can't do?
Dr: not anymore.

(i've never been clear how this would actually fix anything, emotional-impact-on-adelaide's-progeny wise, but whatever. the important thing is: dark, DARK shit, that the only act of free will against the terrible demigod Ten is suicide)


THEN the episode concludes in the most criminal way --

ten is shocked at the gunshot

but instead of reacting in anger that she defied him he immediately asks if he's gone too far

some fucking phantom ood shows up to be like 'ooo this action is foretelling your death' which like, whatever

THIS RIGHT HERE would've been incredible: unrepentant lord of all time ten, and then end of time is about how you have to defeat the doctor

and it's the story where you kill him off
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2019-10-28 02:10 pm

[~4hr] 'christmas carol' noodling around

schmirius: jim moriarty is so excited (8D)
FIRST UP, arbitrarily chosen from the stories that seem like they're shorter/have more structure built into them already: deconstruct 'a christmas carol'

dickens has:

(1) marley's ghost
(2) the first of the three spirits
(3) the second of the three spirits
(4) the last of the spirits
(5) the end of it

( notes notes )
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2018-09-11 10:55 pm

(no subject)

schmirius: tardis floating in space (no handlebars)
which is to SAY, I’m watching series 7B of Doctor Who for the first time, since I got really fed up with the last two Amy series and quit before Clara could really air back in 2013, and I’m very much enjoying it.

like, the game I’m playing is that the frame story of Clara being the impossible girl doesn’t exist, right, so picture just starting out at the episode of the wi-fi being evil and imagine that Eleven is so out of it, companion-wise, that he picks up a nice random Londoner (Clara) and then proceeds to lose his entire shit looking into her past present and future because he can’t figure out why he likes her so much. like he’s really Muldering imagining that there has to be some sort of reason, ok, a REASON, like a TIME-SPACE EVENT, he’s breaking all sorts of boundaries and everything he does that’s stalking is not, as the narrative frames it, Mystery Solving, but in fact just straight-up twelfth-dimensional stalking because he’s a fucking headcase who forgot how to just be friends with someone after so many years of all this newwho Bad Wolf/First Face I Ever Saw business

that’s a delightful season. please watch 7B sometime with this in mind, that is a GREAT season
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2018-08-26 06:18 pm

(no subject)

schmirius: (Default)
SCULLY, to MULDER: Mushrooms taste good on hamburgers, but they don’t raise the dead.
  • Current Music: episode otherwise pretty badly crafted lol
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2018-08-04 10:33 pm

saw Moana

schmirius: jim moriarty is so excited (8D)
it was not good. like, I don't know, I didn't even get to "oh wow representation" because I was really stalled out on "who the hell let this weak-ass script with no identifiable hero's journey out, and with Disney's name stamped on it no less"

I am positive this movie is important to a lot of people for a lot of reasons and I can respect that and also think that it was garbage.

( Read more... )
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2017-06-24 11:14 pm

(no subject)

2017-01-16 02:58 am

sherlock 4x03, again

schmirius: jim moriarty is so excited (8D)

why am I trying to make sense of an episode of Sherlock five years after they aired the real last episode

  • I cannot fucking BELIEVE* [*yes I can] that the show did an entire episode about a Mad Holmes Sibling and failed to address that Sherlock and Mycroft are actually also mentally ill

    like, oh my god, you are so fond of telling us Sherlock is a ~sociopath~ and here you finally have ~~genetic evidence~~ to back it up, and you’re going to spend 0% of the time rehashing your theme “but he’s a bit not good too innee?  INNEE?”

    to say nothing of Mycroft’s hilarious OoC squeamishness throughout.  like... this guy regularly sends people to black-ops torture prisons and starts wars when it’s beneficial to him; why is he squeamish about one-on-one murder, again?  sure, it’s “legwork,” but that’s a different kind of objection than “no I cannot do this thing!!1 ;___;”  And while we’re at it, why is he on team Sherlock’n’John at all? isn’t the whole point of his character antagonism toward Sherlock in the name of The Greater Good/controlling his brother’s every action?  why wasn’t he a terrifying [RUTHLESS, LOW-EMPATHY] villain rather than a victim in this plot to divide the Holmes family up so they could all stay exactly under his thumb where he wanted them?

    [because Mycroft s1+2 was an antagonist who could hardly talk to Sherlock even as Sherlock was self-destructing, but s3+4 suddenly he’s enabling Sherlock’s fake death and shown at home and showing up to social functions and having love interests]
     
  • WHO made the writing decision for Sherlock to have forgotten that he had a sister? jesus christ, were we trying for a hip, low-key, “safe”/“you’re the victim of it!” mental illness here with THE REPRESSION?  because it kind of feels like we were.

    isn’t the unilateral institutionalization and perpetual solitary confinement of a sibling enough to, say, drive a wedge between a bohemian freelancer and a Machiavellian bureaucrat, leading to roiling antagonism as adults?  isn’t that the kind of event that would inspire an unwell young man to devote his life to helping the underdog in impossible situations of great power imbalance, even though he’s low on empathy and patience for day-to-day life in general?

    ???? it solves all your backstory problems for you and just requires Mycroft be exactly as unsympathetic as he was in earlier eps?
     
  • I will be reblogging Jim Moriarty gifs all week but jesus was he an unnecessary villain and plot component

    especially when you weren’t actually going to talk about I’m you/you’re me reflections of mental illness that define relationships

  • oh Euros.  I love you, because there are no fucking women characters on this show, and you moreover were the one who basically succeeded at agency.

    there were nursery rhymes and child murder but at least they gave you pants instead of a white nightgown.

    Mycroft’s intro of her and sketch of what made her the most dangerous madman since ever was maybe the funniest thing of the whole ep. “she self-harmed because she wanted to look at her inner anatomy” is a trope I’ve seen applied to Sherlock in no less than 4,532 fics.  canon Sherlock is painfully analytic and demonstrably self-destructive and we’re pretending like he didn’t do shit like this til roughly the month he met John?  l m a o, what a scary mad lady
     
  • Euros (I’m going to go with -os not -us because she... said it’s Greek) had a fascinating, incredible power that we FUCKING IGNORED after one second of it being useful to the plot

    which was that she can persuade people to do pretty much anything, just make suggestions so powerful they become brainworms, compulsions that must be acted on.  This to me suggests her talents are
    — analysis of people’s motivations and interests so rapid it’s basically intuition
    — clever, clever wordsmithing; an incredible command of language
    — being exactly as harmless-seeming as she needs to – but no more – to get people to consider her seriously (looking the innocent flower but being the serpent under’t)

    but lol, her interests are clearly playing Saw, kidnapping people and stringing them up, and making Molly Hooper cry
     
  • I’m annoyed that she got locked up for setting fires as a child.  Mycroft intimated like one episode ago it was because his secret sibling was a threat to national security.

    like, was he consulting with her (“she successfully predicted the date of two terrorist attacks by being on twitter for an hour”).  why would she be interested in consulting for him and giving him the right answers.
     
  • her accent was even less rhotic than Sherlock and Mycroft’s lol

    pity we got none of her shamming at being other people like even Mycroft got a chance to this episode.
     
  • I’m just going to... reblog a bunch of gifs of Andrew Scott, who they couldn’t leave out of this.  I’m tired.  did Jim come visit Euros in supermax and then Mycroft threw him in torturejail at the end of the visit and then that was TRF?  what am I supposed to believe about where this fab cartoonish Jim fits into the timeline?

    I’m tired, lol.
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2017-01-15 04:00 pm

why the fuck would you call an episode 'the final problem' after having done reichenbach

schmirius: jim moriarty is so excited (8D)
4:00 HAHAH OK HERE IT COMES /syncs up livestream

( sherlock liveblog )
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2015-08-19 08:01 pm

a quick review of race in the x-files

schmirius: (Default)
Sarah:
i'm now on "hell money" which is chinese "ghosts" with lucy liu and any other chinese-american actor

Gray:
oooooh
that's a fun one

Sarah:
it's shockingly not racist
or like, not very

Gray:
xfiles does have racial oversights but overall it's pretty good about that stuff

Sarah:
no
the one with fucking... i'm guessing they were supposed to be romani
"the calusari" – that sucked

Gray:
I remember the title, not the episode tho
you are right i cannot make such a blanket statement after mostly watching when I was 15

Sarah:
that whole piece of crap with a navaho community dropping everything to lick mulder's holy ass for three or four eps for the s2 climax/s3 opener
that sucked

Gray:
oh they definitely abuse the shit out of american native people
every trope in the book

Sarah:
"the list," which is a black guy on death row – terrible
along other axes, i completely skipped "oubliette" which is just titillating "hey a serial killer locked a blonde teenager in a basement"
"the walk" about a quadruple amputee army vet sending his spirit out to kill people – shitty
made up for moderately by the charm of the throw-away wheelchair user/robotic voice haver scientist in "war of the coprophages" being nothing more than a Zany Local they got mixed up with, no zanier than the huge-tit mclady scientist mulder was thirsty for
i didn't pay enough attention to "nisei"/"731" to comment on how they portrayed japanese-americans in internment camps, whether those guys got full storylines or (likely) got swallowed up in the bloated gov't conspiracy throughline
this ep "hell money" though, with baby lucy liu
does a pretty good job about making the story *about* the people in the community, though i have nooo idea whether sfo chinatown really was as super-first-gen-immigrant as they're portraying
the ABC detective who's their liason is messed up in it and has dynamics with all the 1st gen interviewees based on his american-born chineseness
haven't gotten to the climax but if he's involved, i think they pulled him in fairly, as a character, rather than "oh that chinese man"

Gray:
surprisingly good movie for asian american actors I saw recently
was big trouble in little china
really a surprising film in many ways, but most importantly because it showcases pretty much all mainstream American talent of asian descent from that period in time
yeah the main character is a white dude but clearly the people who produced the film love asian american stars

Sarah:
james hong the ringleader in this x-files ep was also in that movie
honestly baseline for me, i appreciate that scully and mulder aren't just granted instant access to the community and answers to their questions. that's like huge

Gray:
oh yeah, standards for my appreciation are extreeeeely low
like, the horrible orientalist version of the new sherlock
what the fuck it's 2015
you can't just be like "all chinesey" is an aesthetic
and yet
and yet
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2015-05-24 11:24 am

mad max and Feelings That Stay With You

schmirius: (Default)
[11:24am]
Sarah:
went to mass last night
I have concluded that, at best, mass just makes me tense and angry
so that was a best
we're going to eat more barbeque today and then go shopping
basically a regular dallas vacation

Stephen:
:D!
Yay for Dallas family

[2:39pm]
Sarah:
yes I ate about four beefs.
[2:48pm]
sometimes there are times when it's just kind of sad and concerned and preoccupied for me but like... in a way that reads "yearning" but not really FOR anything, just where the ambient emotion is caught up in fragments of something I've seen lately or a dream I've had
I say this instead of saying "I have some feelings today" though both are accurate

Stephen:
The former was very beautiful, for words

Sarah:
I'm glad it made sense
I've been caught up just thinking about – or really more accurately feeling mad max when I'm not thinking of anything else the last few days
like the emotion memory just being the dominant emotional backdrop for whatever else is going on

Stephen:
We saw it!!
It was so good!

Sarah:
OKAY RIGHT?

Stephen:
Yeah!

Sarah:
I would have to rewatch Pan's labyrinth to be sure but I'm fairly certain it's the most intense thing I've ever seen

Stephen:
Apparently Jenny saw a review on slate that didn't like it (probably the only one) because the plot was too simple and the back stories weren't developed and that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard

Sarah:
lolol

Stephen:
The color schemes!
The music!
The pacing!

Sarah:
oh my god the music

Stephen:
The use of negative space!
The light!

Sarah:
the camera work and the practical effects
"the back stories weren't developed" you literally only don't understand these characters if you've never seen an action movie before

Stephen:
Also, they're all completely developed!!

Sarah:
the 100% correct lack of dialogue

Stephen:
Like, the one evil guy has gout because he is gluttony
The one has bullets because he is wrath

Sarah:
and imperialism!
for both I guess
but largely gluttony

Stephen:
And then the main baddy is how old white men think they are immortal

Sarah:
and how they can use all the resources and starve everyone like

Stephen:
Everyone else is their property
And then the redeemed war boy is so good!
And obviously Charlize Theron
And Max was pretty fine
Esp the part where he threw his hand to his face to not get killed

Sarah:
the redeemed warboy was a+ still a fanatic and believer in his ideology and I appreciated that
which part?

Stephen:
He gets shot with an arrow
But his ghost daughter made him compulsively throw his hand in front of his face
So it just goes through his hand instead of his forehead

Sarah:
hahahhaha christ
missed that, amid the fastcut ptsd camerawork

Stephen:
Yeah
And the sped up scenes

Sarah:
oh what was the beginning? I was a few minutes late and came in on him with the gag just trying to fling himself off things rather than stay in hell mesa
which btw, amazing

Stephen:
The beginning was a car chase that he lost

Sarah:
lolll

Stephen:
And the introduction of ghost daughter

Sarah:
how introduced? different than later?

Stephen:
And exposition "there was a nuclear event"
Less quick cuts

Sarah:
lol literally who cares, but ok, An Event
hm

Stephen:
Yeah
Just vague as hell :)

Sarah:
I enjoyed the version I saw where they literally didn't even bother explaining that to me and took for granted that I understood I had come to a genre movie

Stephen:
:)

Sarah:
I learned
that when I'm upset or not even upset, just like Extememly, a thing my body does these days is dry heaves??

Stephen:
:/

Sarah:
honestly my body is so incredible, it puts up with so much, it *should* freak out during a good movie if it wants to
when bursting into tears Just Isn't Enough it's always got something else up its sleeve

Stephen:
Good job body

Sarah:
anyway so loss, intimate suffering, intensity and the need to react proportionately intensely, maybe redemption or at least being able to stop to breathe
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2013-04-28 11:13 pm

(no subject)

schmirius: (Default)
I thought about eating another egg and another piece of toast but then I opened the fridge and there was a plate of cupcakes right next to the egg carton. Haha, protein, take that.


Re-reading Hound of the Baskervilles for the mostly-the-S-family book club and I have to keep stopping reading to catch my breath. so to speak. what in the hell is a better metaphor for this clutch of AHHH THIS IS TOO COOL AHHHH feelings, idk.

I HAVE READ THIS BOOK BEFORE

RECENTLY

IT IS STILL VERY EXCITING


(wow "catch one's breath" is a weird idiom "hey breath come back nooo *chase chase chase*")
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2012-11-24 12:04 am

"young at heart" and other feel-good tomfoolery

schmirius: (landscape)
"zomg did they do that on purpose" social programming of the day: cable channel showing nothing but 50s sitcoms (Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver, etc) running almost nothing but go-back-to-school commercials structured entirely on class advancement. I hope they did that on purpose.

Besides two hours of 50s sitcoms, also watched Young At Heart with Grandma today (1954, Doris Day and Frank Sinatra). When it was over Grandma said "That was a really good movie," and I said, in as genuine a tone as I can ever muster, "It really was," which Middlest overheard from the kitchen, and later asked with raised eyebrow "Did you really like the movie?"

It was weird! It was a romantic comedy about which sisters would marry which musician bachelors (and a plumber, and a somebody else) which had this bizzare Frank Sinatra character right in the middle of it who was genuinely depressive and kind of paranoid and just way outside of what I'd expect the loveable kind-of-artistic misfit to be reformed by the good-hearted society girl to be like. Like: there are three or four party scenes where the sisters and family and the other suitors are carrying on and character-Frank is just standing at the periphery, maybe behind the piano, watching all of it happen. Just the whole scene! The sister who ends up marrying him notices, but nobody else does, and he's just allowed to be weird and exist quietly and sadly in their happy sphere, unable to really be part of it.

Eventually he switches to pressed slacks and a couple of other Normal markers -- but the end of the movie features a suicide attempt, the first Christmas after he+wife see the wife's other former competitor suitor for the first time and Frank convinces himself she still likes him better. Holy crap! If it weren't for the part where the wife's sobbing at his hospital bedside apparently reverses the last two cinematic hours of character development and somehow gives him the strength to make it through surgery, I'd say a fifties movie just came dangerously close to accurately depicting a genuinely unhappy person's not-entirely-unhappy life. And without falling into "artists are mad," either, since musician Frank's suitor foil was his musician friend who charmed everybody and everyone and lived happily and stably with a fixed income and, like, meal schedule.

Movie choice serendipity!

Middlest, as I was decrying 50s sitcoms' unbelievably upbeat positive and normalizing disposition after Grandma had finished hers and before Mom had started on hers, was like "HMMM LIKE IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE HUH" which I am well known to like and she to hate and I almost said "don't be silly there's a suicide on Christmas what could I not like" but I, uh, softened it at the last minute, since Mom was in the room, and she worries way easier than Middlest. I changed the wording to "existential despair" and maybe threw in "as a plot starter," or something.

And that's tv for the day.
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2012-10-25 07:33 am

supernatural - 8x04 - bitten

schmirius: sam, worried; hallucifer, riveted (spn)
11:29 AM Gray: so this is...how am I even saying this
11:30 AM Gray: they phoned in the Blair Witch Project?
11:30 AM Sarah: ... yep
11:30 AM Gray: lawd
11:30 AM Sarah: i can only assume they had no money and/or j2 weren't available
11:31 AM Gray: maybe it means there's a rly cool episode later
11:31 AM Sarah: hahaha.
11:32 AM Sarah: blair teen wolf project.
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2012-10-23 12:55 am

supernatural - 8x03 - heartache

schmirius: (landscape)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Sarah"
To: "Gray"
Cc: "Molly"

Subject: sex-crime dean of the week


this week's episode: the whitest mayan ever has been regularly making blood sacrifices to one of his gods for a thousand years to ensure longevity and continuing athletic prowess. then he gets tired of it, kills himself, and donates his organs. shockingly, all 8 organ recipients feel compelled to continue ripping people's hearts out with their bare hands. (which... is that pan-mesoamerica? heart sacrifice/venerating athletes all sounded textbook *aztec* to me. never mind that the athletics in question were also religiously significant, not nfl football.)

ALL OF WHICH culminates in a scene in a seedy strip club where two enormous, burly men appear from out of the shadows, knock sam cold, and pin a flailing dean prone to the catwalk so the stripper who got the heart transplant can straddle him, rip through his shirt, and croon about how good it's gonna be when she plunges her hand into dean's chest and how good she is at doing it right. only sam's dazed, sloppy intervention at the last possible second saves dean from his fate.

so that's what i did this morning, thanks to molly telling me about how you can torrent things on your phone.

you're welcome for the update xoxo

----------

From: "Molly"
To: "Sarah"

Thanks for the lovely imagery, Sarah.

----------

SUPERNATURAL: We watch so you don't have to! You never intended to! But maybe you enjoy listening to maniacs doing color commentary on trainwrecks??

(I like the part where Molly went ahead and thanked me for my service to humanity after I'd bestowed you're welcomes to humanity's presumed gratitude. :)
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