#every character i draw gets the Three Quarter Turn treatment

[piratechnics]

i speedran the colours so i could post while it was still viago vednesday

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Day 11: Breath

Fandom: Downton Abbey

Pairing: General

Characters: Doctor Clarkson, Thomas Barrow (technically)

Warnings: Season six, episode eight. Apparently this prompt calls for either super trite sop or philosophical, brooding angst. I went with option B. Loudly. Also, it was written over the span of the past two days when I wasn’t feeling my best and, therefore, probably waxes a bit pretentious and needs some going over. Con crit welcome.

The world was reduced to the needle, moving in and out of abused skin, drawing nowhere near enough blood, and the barely-there sound of breathing. Doctor Clarkson stitched as quickly as he could, as neat and precise as any valet or Lady’s maid repairing a torn coat sleeve. He tried not to look up and see the too pale face lying on the pillows. Time was the most valuable commodity he had right now, and he dare not waste it.

He’d been surprised when Anna’s call had come, of course. No one ever truly sees these things coming. He was at a loss to know how Miss Baxter had caught on. Yes, he had been surprised, but not shocked, as the rest of the household. Instead the surprise had spiraled into a sickening sense of inevitability. It was the same feeling as when he realized a cancer had spread to a patient’s vital organs or that even the most modern of treatments wasn’t working. The feeling that no matter what he did, no matter how he fought, he was fighting against something too big for him to defeat.

He finished the first wrist and stood, crossing around to the other side of the bed, pausing only to listen and assure himself that there was still a fight to be fought here. Thankfully Thomas had always been a fighter, even if that had proven more of a problem for those around him than not.  But it was undoubtedly as much a part of why he persisted in drawing air despite his own, willful attempt at self destruction as Miss Baxter’s timely intervention. He untied the neat knot she had made in the strip of ripped fabric and tried not to let the fear that Thomas would change his mind, that his fighting spirit would give up and work against him, completely choke him.

He wasn’t good to anyone if he stopped breathing himself.

Setting aside the makeshift bandage, he started in with the needle again. He wondered, trying to distract himself just enough to stay calm, if Miss Baxter had any medical experience. Even if she hadn’t been a nurse proper, there were plenty of women who had volunteered at the hospitals and convalescence homes. At any rate, she seemed to know exactly how to tie a bandage. He wished he’d had more time to speak with her, in the past. She wouldn’t be able to volunteer at the hospital, of course, not with her career, but it would have been nice to know there was someone here who could help in an emergency. It had been that way when Lord Grantham’s ulcer had burst. Calling on Thomas for help had been second nature. He’d not for a moment thought that without a war going on the younger man would hesitate to follow orders or would have forgotten the necessary training. Without him, who knew? Perhaps Lord Grantham would have been another life lost.

He realized he was clenching his jaw and forced it to relax. He concentrated on his own breathing, in and out, two stitches per breath. Medical training or not, Miss Baxter had gotten there in time and done what needed doing. Once stitched up, the only worry would be the possibility of infection, and he told himself that wasn’t likely. Not here. Not in Downton Abbey. Here there was no trench mud to work its way into the wounds, no sweat to wash contaminates into them. He didn’t need to worry about gangrene taking hold, not with such able care takers as resided in the Abby’s walls.  And even if, for some reason, Thomas’s own bed should become unusable, there was no shortage here. There would be no need to kick someone out in order to keep the injured man from lying out under a canvas tent, with insufficient shelter from the elements and pests.

It wasn’t the war.

And he tried not to think about the war. He tried not to think about that lieutenant that Thomas had liked so much. He didn’t think there had been anything in it, really, at least not from the other side, but looking back on it he should have known that sending the young soldier away would break Thomas’s heart. He should have expected a fight.  And of course, he hadn’t gone, not the way he was supposed to. In the end the doctor wondered, if he’d been able to act differently, if he’d had the luxury of letting the lieutenant stay or reason things out with Thomas rather than simply exerting his authority as an army Major who couldn’t, under any circumstances, let his underlings question him and his judgment, if things would somehow be different now. If the lieutenant would have lived, if he’d have kept contact. If that touch stone would have meant he wasn’t sitting here with his needle.

It didn’t really matter, though, did it? It didn’t matter because he hadn’t had that luxury. Instead he’d had more injured than he had beds, had not enough medicine at any given time, had notices flooding in from his superiors to expect more and make room for them. He’d had nurses and orderlies with family who, had word gotten around that he’d made allowances for Thomas and Lady Sybil, would have press ganged him into filling every bed with their injured loved ones until they lost more men to infection and pneumonia than they saved.

He had tried, in his way, to make up for it, promoting Thomas to acting sergeant without even a pretense of a fight when Lady Grantham asked, but it was a feeble effort at best. The war had been too big for him to defeat.

He was about three quarters of the way through when he noticed something small and dark along the edge of the wound. The fear of infection flared brightly in his mind and was ruthlessly squelched. It was too soon for anything to have set in, he told himself. The cut simply wanted a bit of cleaning, that was all. Probing gently at the little black line revealed it to be a thread from the bandage, stuck in the congealing blood and easily lifted out. He pressed on, repeating his assurances to himself and adding the reminder that Thomas had survived a light infection the summer before, so it would take something quite serious to kill him now. He firmly ignored the fact that in the younger man’s current, weakened state, even an abscessing side would be difficult to recover from. There was no one to administer tainted placebos and false promises, not here. Here there was, once again, Miss Baxter, steadily becoming the greatest,  reassuring light in the darkness. The woman who had brought Thomas to him when fear would have kept him away, now matter how clearly ill he was.

The fact that she’d had to bring him, that fear had that great a hold, left Doctor Clarkson with that same, inevitable despairing feeling. Yes, he’d been able to treat the infection, but he hadn’t been able to get anywhere near the source of the problem, had he? He could offer as many pretty words of advice as he liked, but it wouldn’t cleanse the infection of an intolerant society. Perhaps if he’d been less aware of Miss Baxter’s presence, or more confident in her caring, he could have done more. Perhaps if he’d assured Thomas more thoroughly that he, himself, didn’t care about such things, that he wanted the younger man to be whole and healthy despite it all, that would have fixed something. But he’d been wary of giving wrong impressions or offending delicate sensibilities. The world was too big for him to defeat.

With a sense of relief he stitched the last stitch, tied off the thread and cut it, and re-bandaged Thomas’s wrists. Mechanically he gathered his tools, washed them in the basin of water Mrs. Hughes had thoughtfully provided, and tucked them away in his bag where they belonged.  There was nothing to keep him there. And yet he stood, for several minutes, simply watching Thomas lie there, unmoving, listening to him breathe. Finally he reached out, smoothed backed a few strands of hair that had been mussed in all of the fuss which he was quite certain Thomas would have hated if he were awake, and turned to leave. He wasn’t quite certain where he was going. Downstairs, first, to let Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes know that all should be well. Then? The hospital was the obvious answer. There would be other patients, other fights to win or lose. There was paperwork for the merger that, despite his surrender, he was still uneasy about. The afternoon had not left his mind any more at ease with the thought that, despite promises, he might one day not be able to personally watch over the people he cared about, but rather have to send them to York, to someone he’d never met. He didn’t want to face that, not yet. He could go to the pub, but he wasn’t hungry. A year ago he might have called on Mrs. Crawley, invited her to tea or some such, divided his burden with her, but he wasn’t yet comfortable taking that liberty with Lady Merton. The wedding had not ended the friendship, but it had changed it.

The last option was to go home to his empty house, maybe make himself some tea, and try to read or fill the time some other way that didn’t leave space for brooding. He rejected that option out of hand. Loneliness was too big for him to defeat.

[thesydneyfeminists]

The Crimes of JK Rowling

CW: racism, homophobia, mentions of abuse and drugs.

The cool thing about growing up and expanding your world view is that you eventually see your childhood heroes for what they are. Flawed humans (and maybe, just plain assholes). First Joss Whedon and now JK Rowling. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.

I loved the Harry Potter series (the original seven books, I refuse to accept any of the latest garbage she’s put out/had her name attached to – within the HP universe) and I still count Prisoner of Azkaban as one of my favourite books, but even fondness and nostalgia can’t shield JK Rowling from some of the problems with the world she has created, the way she explains/defends it, and her quarter assed (not even half) and damaging attempts to rectify that now in 2018.

Note: Simply for length reasons, these are all related to the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts franchises.

Crime One: Racism

It’s no great secret that there are very few characters of colour in the Harry Potter universe. Apparently, while it’s plausible that there’s a whole (not so) secret world of magic, it’s just too unbelievable for there to be many witches or wizards of colour. Before you come at me with “but Vee, mudbloods and Voldemort only wanting pureblood wizards is a metaphor for racism!” you can stop that right now. Because you know what’s also a great metaphor for racism? Actual racism. How about how people of colour are literally discriminated against every single day. They get passed over for jobs, they’re spat at in the streets, they’re being killed by police. Metaphors for racism? Not good enough.

I’m in the camp that think white writers shouldn’t write their main character as anything other than white, for a whole host of reasons, but if I had to summarize it, I think stories of colour should be told by authors of colour, we should be opening the doors for more authors of colour, we should listen to their voices, their stories, their experiences. I think white authors can’t know the exact nuances of what it’s like to be a person of colour, how the world treats us, the experience of living in diaspora, the disconnect between first gen, second gen and third gen family members, and so much more. It’s something that sure, you can read about it, you can do your research, but you’ll never quite understand it unless you’ve lived it. All of that being said, I do believe that white authors can include characters of colour in a meaningful way, that is, not for decoration, not as a handy plot device to move your story along, and not as a harmful, disgusting stereotype. But let’s stop for a second and count the number of background characters of colour that have been more or less confirmed (note that Hermione could easily be coded black, the only hint we get is in PoA, she’s described as “very brown”, but it’s not until the older Hermione was cast with a black actress in The Cursed Child did JK pop up and say “of course she could be black!”). So, we have Lee Jordan (maybe unfairly assumed, as he’s only described as having dreadlocks but he was cast with a POC), Dean Thomas (who was very good at drawing – also maybe unfairly listed, was cast with a POC), Parvati and Padma Patil (possibly unfairly listed, described as having long black hair, and cast with POC), Cho Chang (quickly, can I point out that a character of Asian descent being sorted into Ravenclaw the “smart house” plays into so many racist stereotypes that I can barely breathe), Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zambini. And then, well, there’s Nagini.

Tweet reads: “The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day.”

 About a week ago, the trailer for Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald was dropped to mixed reactions. The trailer revealed a snippet that reveals that Voldemort’s pet snake was once a shapeshifting woman, cursed to become trapped in a snake’s body. An Asian shapeshifting woman. Reduced to becoming (a white supremacist but metaphorically) a white man’s pet. Cool. Naturally, there was some backlash about this turn of events, and so JK tried to tweet out the reasoning and explanation (while also saying she’d been keeping this racist secret for 20 years) that obviously Nagini had to be an Asian woman because it was based on a creature from Indonesian mythology, and that Indonesia comprised a “few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi”. Cool, JK, but the actress cast is Korean, and you saying all of this kind of reinforces the idea that all Asian ethnicities are interchangeable. Let’s not even get into a white woman explaining Indonesian mythology or ethnicity, or the fact that it’s also an Indian mythology, the Naga. I don’t want to split hairs here, there are other examples of mythology that are similar but have key differences across other cultures (the kitsune/kumiho/huli jing fox spirit, for one). So it’s possible she only read up on the Indonesian myth and took her inspiration from there. But the way she “explained” the debacle sits uneasily with me. She brushes over any concerns that come from people of colour – valid concerns and questions, and instead chooses to ignore the real issue, which is that by playing into the harmful stereotype that Asian women are subservient, and that all of the different Asian ethnicities are interchangeable, she does more harm than good for inclusivity and that she is doing it for show. She doesn’t give a shit if her work includes characters of colour, and if it does, she doesn’t give a shit that they’re shitty stereotypes, 2D characters that are nothing more than the colour of their skin, just there to boost the POC count in her works.

Thinly veiled racism? Guilty.

Crime Two: Poor Handling of LGBT+ Issues/People

Back in 2007, speaking to a crowd of fans at an event at Carnegie Hall, JK Rowling revealed that she “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” to wild applause. Finally, a canon character was more or less confirmed as LGBT+ (sorry to the Dracarry shippers, that still just lives in our hearts). Great, right? Except, why did she wait until the book series was completed to come out with this revelation? Why didn’t she include it in the books? Sure, you might say “well, Vee, it’s a kids book, you’re expecting far too much” except it’s not a “kids book”, it’s always very clearly been in the young adult category (certainly after the third book, at least) and readership has always been split between adults and younger people. The series came out when I was a teenager, finishing when I was 21, and I definitely would have appreciated some LGBT+ representation in a book that meant so much to so many people. I’m not saying she needed to include a sex scene in there (she could’ve faded to black, like Stephenie Meyer did in Breaking Dawn) but to go back and retcon that Dumbledore was gay and that she’d always thought that, for it to ring true, she needed to leave us hints in the original series. She “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” but “didn’t feel the need to spell it out”. Maybe she didn’t see the point of it, maybe she didn’t want to spoil her “big reveal” (note that some fans had always suspected that Dumbledore had been in love with Grindelwald), but by not mentioning it until after the fact? It comes off as lazy, or as wanting to appeal to the LGBT+ community, by trying to earn an ally card by doing very little at all.

Tweet reads: “I was asked whether Lupin’s treatment by others could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions. I agreed that it could. 2/4”  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Then there’s the Lupin issue. Supposedly, at some point in 1999, JK was asked whether or not Lupin’s “condition could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions” and she said it could. Basically, lycanthropy is meant to be a metaphor for HIV/AIDS in the HP universe. In Short Stories From Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies (released 2016, mind you), JK writes “Lupin’s condition of lycanthropy was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS. All kinds of superstitions seem to surround blood-borne conditions, probably due to taboos surrounding blood itself. The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes”. Maybe she had the best intentions in mind when she came up with that idea, and true enough, blood and blood purity does matter to an extent in the wizarding world, but something about it feels hollow and gross. I’d like to note here that we only meet three werewolves in the series (Lupin, Greyback and an unnamed man who was bitten) and none of them were female. Take that how you will, but a few fans came to the conclusion that her “metaphor for HIV/AIDS” also includes the harmful stereotype that gay men were going out and maliciously infecting over men with HIV.

Retconning the source material to make herself seem LGBT+ inclusive but handling it terribly? Guilty.

Crime Three: White Feminism

Maybe this crime really explains the others. It explains her support of the decision to cast Johnny Depp in the Fantastic Beasts film series. Yep, Johnny Depp, you know, the guy who physically abused (then-wife) Amber Heard. Sure, he’d been cast before we knew about that. He’d appeared, for five whole minutes in the end of the first Fantastic Beasts film, so he’d already signed on. Surely, he couldn’t be fired when his contract was signed. Except, we’ve seen examples of men accused of abuse being let go from their jobs (not often, but it happens sometimes). Kevin Spacey, for one. So, why couldn’t Grindelwald be recast? Especially after a five minute cameo at the end of a movie? JK Rowling released a statement where she acknowledges that around the time of filming the first movie in the new franchise, stories involving Depp’s abuse of Heard started to appear in the press, and “based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.” Comfortable and genuinely happy to have a known abuser affiliated with your work, based on our understanding of the circumstances, the circumstances being that Depp physically abused Amber Heard, who provided photo and video evidence. Even Daniel Radcliffe has spoken out about the decision to let Depp remain on cast, given the decision to fire a lesser known actor (Jamie Waylett) from HP: Deathly Hallows pt 2 after his arrest for growing 10 marijuana plants (he was later arrested for a more serious crime, but that was well after his firing from Harry Potter). DanRad mentioned how he was, of course, thankful for the opportunities provided to him from being cast as Harry Potter, but that “I suppose the thing I was struck by was, we did have a guy who was reprimanded for weed on the (original Potter) film, essentially, so obviously what Johnny has been accused of is much greater than that.”

Tweet reads: “Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. 1/14” J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Of course, supporting the casting of an abusive man doesn’t make her a white feminist, nor does tweeting about unfollowing a man for calling Theresa May a whore. What does, in my honest opinion, is her handling of any criticism she receives, and the bullshit way in which she tries to earn her ally card, but only when it suits her. If all of this mattered so much, she would’ve included it the first time around. Retconning her source material in an effort to appear more diverse isn’t true diversity. It’s literally a made up world, she could’ve made it more diverse from the start. She needed to explicitly state things, because marginalised groups need to see representation. Good, strong, representation. Not weak and harmful versions. By being properly inclusive in her material, as a middle class white woman, she could’ve set an example of how things should be. If she’d spoken to any marginalised group, heard their stories, about their lives, gained an insight in how to write about them, her POC, LGBTQIA+, lower class, etc audiences would’ve come away with the message that she cared and wanted them included in her stories. In her world.

The bottom line is, JK Rowling does not care enough to follow through, and well, when you’ve made as much money as she has, why should she? She bangs on about how truly diverse the wizarding world was and gives examples to back it up, but she does so way too late, and without any real proof, just her word. Sure, she created this universe, maybe she did believe Dumbledore was gay, or Hermione could be black, but she needed to say it back then, not ten years later when people are critical of the cis-het white world she’d created. She rants about men immediately calling women names when they disagree with them, prides herself on blocking and unfollowing these men, but when called out about supporting the casting of a known abuser? She suddenly no longer cares about supporting another woman. One who was arguably, treated a little worse than just name calling. Her idea of feminism is clouded by her life experience, which would be fine if she took the time to listen to the people around her, from different backgrounds, and try to understand why they feel what she says and does is offensive, clumsy, and lazy. But when her opinion and her views challenged, she comes out swinging, blocking people, throwing around statements like “Dumbledore is gay!” or “Hermione is black!” as a clumsy attempt to appease the very people she does not give a shit about. The solution is laughably simple, all she would have to do is just listen to marginalised voices. Hear their stories and educate herself. And if she truly wanted to be a true intersectional feminist, she would do it. Understanding her privilege would cost her nothing. In fact, it would garner her more respect, something she’s lost a lot of in the last few years.

Just say you don’t care, JK, it’s more honest. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

By: Vee H 

 Sources:

Twitter

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/09/08/jk-rowling-reveals-remus-lupins-werewolf-condition-metaphor-for-hiv/

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/grindelwald-casting/

https://ew.com/movies/2018/01/12/daniel-radcliffe-johnny-depp-fantastic-beasts/

[impalaanddemons]

Good Girl - Part 7

Summary: Werewolf!Reader Story. Readers a young doctor and uses her skills to keep her condition hidden, until she transfers to the Enterprise and tries to deceive a certain grumpy Doctor

Bones x Reader

Wordcount: 2130

A/N: Another long one. I rewrote the last part two or three times, bc I wanted to get McCoys Character right. There is some medical BS in there I suppose, but I tried to be as accurate as possible. (I had a beautiful couple of hours reading about mauling incidents). So pls bear with me :)

This could be AOS and TOS

Warnings:  Language, slight Body Horror, Blood, Injury

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6

„Doctor M’Benga, what’s our status?“ - it was the special power of anyone who worked on call, not just werewolves, to get ready, dressed and cleaned of any bodily fluids within about 10 minutes if necessary. That’s how you stormed into the sickbays operation room A - the blue shirt slightly disarranged, hair still damp from a very short shower. You slid into the scrubs on auto pilot to get a look at the scenery.

„Ensign Bancroft was found 15 minutes ago. Mauling incident. Don’t ask me how. GCS 10. Lacerations on the face and his arms. Heavy blood loss due to injury at brachial artery, ligated now.“ Holy lord. You stared at the young mans face - or what was left of it. It was not the first time you saw these kind of injuries, but it was the first time that you … were the reason. Fear shot through you. They would incarcerate you for this, if they ever found out. Guilt crept upon you. Sneaked it’s tiny hands around your chest and squeezed it. God. You needed to concentrate, needed to work, now. Be professional. If you lost your cool now, you’d never forgive yourself. You’d never work as a doctor again. You pushed the thought away, leaving only place for professionalism and the now stretching itself out before you. „Chapel, irrigate those wounds on his face with anti-bacterial solution 23“ - „Let’s patch him up“, M’Benga asserted grimly.

Where there was a surgery going, McCoy was usually nearby. There were jokes going around the medic team that he had persuaded Scotty to patch his Communicator and his PADD so that whenever there was an emergency surgery, he’d be commd, no matter if he were on call, duty, or otherwise. He was not satisfied with reports alone, he had to be there. This time you seemed to have dodged the bullet, at least as nightshift slowly descended into Alpha. No Bones. Yet. You patched that poor boy up the best you could. This was the most delicate, best suture you had ever delivered. Guilt seemed to propel your abilities to new heights, you thought bitterly to yourself. M’Benga and you had already discussed that that boy would’ve to stay for some time under the dermal regenerator. He’d also get preventive medication against everything you thought feasible in the situation. You were pretty sure to not carry any deadly diseases, but neither could you tell anyone what you knew, nor were you entirely sure how anything wolf in you reacted with a human. There had never been an accident. Talking of… Still in your scrubs you watched Ensign Bancroft being carried out to his biobed in a private bedroom. Would he … change? You knew of no precedent. Were you now Patient zero to a werewolf epidemic? That would be… disastrous. No cure to that, being what you were. Not as far as your knowledge went, at last. You pulled off your bloody gloves and threw them in the sanitizer, following that you left the OR. Ah. Doctor McCoy. A smile crossed your weary face but he didn’t notice. Of course not - he probably fumed about not knowing about the surgery sooner and was extracting every bit of information from M’Benga he could. Luckily you had left a minute after him, or Bones would quiz you just as relentless as anyone else here. No special treatment for the person he happened to share his bed with. „Are you well…?“ Chapels blue eyes grazed your face. „Just a bit tired“, you smirked and shrugged. Shrugging hurt. You had almost forgotten about your own injury and tried to not pull a face at that. „Got the thing for you“ Chapel grinned and lifted a mug with steaming hot coffee. You would swear by your ancestors that the stuff replicated in medbay was at least 50% stronger then what you got anywhere else on the ship. Sometimes a coffee addict from Engineering sneaked in to replicate himself a mug. That’s how good the stuff was. „You’re an angel. I’d not know what we’d do without you.“ you shot her a big honest smile. „You better be awake, it’s gonna be a long Alpha for you today until M’Benga comes back from his beauty sleep.“ Christine paused and watched the two Doctors, standing next to you. „Assuming Doctor McCoy will ever let him leave.“

You usually covered Beta as second to M’Benga, but occasionally took over nightshift or assisted the big man himself on Alpha. Since Alpha was the busiest time on the Enterprise you’d usually be too busy to chat with McCoy. Not that you did not chat - you chatted with nurses and patients alike, but you and him were usually occupied with your own work, apart from five minutes for yet another coffee. That was all that kept you awake right now, anyway, as you’d technically not slept at all. There was a Security officer with a broken rib you’d tended to as Alpha drew to a close. He was a hearty fellow, joking during the whole procedure (which meant prescribing him something for the pain and making sure he’d restrict himself for the next weeks). He was a good flirt and seemed happy to test his skills at you. You didn’t mind but the disgruntled look Bones shot him near the end was about the funniest thing you’d seen in a while. „Thank you, dear Doctor“ the man grinned, running a hand of his through military styled short blonde hair. „Just be careful, it needs to heal. If you can’t rest, I’ll confine you to the sickbay.“ you said and closed his file on your PADD. Still grinning he clapped you on the shoulder, which made you draw a sharp breath. „I’m sorry, Doctor. Everything okay, Doctor?“ he asked, clearly shocked. „Yeah“, you grimaced at him and forced your eyes back into a smile. „Sport incident. Just be on your way.“ lazily waving your hand and forcing that smile a bit more, he nodded - not one hundred percent convinced - and left. You turned around, wanting to check Bancrofts biobed once more, only to see McCoy watching you with narrowed eyes. He’d seen.

„Shirt off.“ Unless your ability to interpret human sound hadn’t left you miraculously last night, that was no question. You were at Bones quarters - he had finished reading the reports on Bancroft so far, you had taken to the chance and eaten as much as humanly possible to add some substance to the amount of coffee you’d already had that day. „I’m …“ you began but he clicked with his tongue, expression stern. „I’m either doing this here, as your partner that happens to be a Doctor - an excellent one at that - or we’re going straight to medbay.“ A moment of silence stretched between the two of you. „Shirt. Off.“ he reiterated and from the tone of his voice, how gravelly it was, how close to a growl, you knew he was serious. Begrudgingly you grabbed your shirt and pulled it over your head, leaving your skin exposed to the cooler air. The bruise was still covering your shoulder - all dark blue and red and violet, expressing the colors of the rainbow. The barely healed gash was still there, of course. Red, thin skin stretching over your muscles. His face was unmoving as if carved from solid rock. He stepped closer to you. „Turn around.“ You did, turning your back to him and staring at the opposite wall. Feet shuffled, he moved closer, slowly letting out a previously held breath. Then his soft fingers touched the skin on your back - carefully, a lot deeper down then you had expected. Maybe you should’ve checked how far down this injury went. „Turn to me again“, said the Doctor and his voice was barely a whisper. Turning to face him again you slowly examined his face. His beautiful eyes had the cold glimmer of a distant star in them. There was no hot rage, but something else below that silent surface of his. The cold fury of clashing emotions. You could feel it raging, could see how it turned him upside down. His fingers traveled the gash. „Lift your arm.“ he said and you lifted your arm. It hurt and your face stiffened. „Hurts? Can you move it backwards for me?“ you did as he told you and followed through with a few other motions until he told you to lower the arm again. „How did this happen, Y/N?“ now his eyes searched your face. „It .. was an accident. In the gym.“ He snorted at that, something grim tracing the lines around his eyes and mouth now. „Let me rephrase that, darlin’.“ there was something dangerous in his voice and you felt it was not directed at you. „Who did that?“ You shuffled uncomfortable at the question. How could you tell. What would you tell him. You didn’t know. Hi Len, I was a wolf at that time and somehow don’t remember? Yeah. Good luck with that, girl. „I … cannot tell you, Len. I am so sorry. Please believe me.“ you hated the way your voice sounded like it was begging. Gritting his teeth he backed up and left you for a second to grab his medical tricorder. „Fine“ he decided then: „The moment you remember, you tell me.“ that was no question either. You had never seen him so … possessive? Or was defensive the right word? „Now sit down for a moment, I’ll check you through.“ You opened your mouth to disagree at that but quickly closed it again when you saw his face. Concerned. That was the word you were looking for. He was concerned. And professional. He would not have acted any different, were it anyone else on this ship. This was his crew and he felt responsible for the health of everyone. Being his significant other only gave him more edge in this matter. He stood in front of you, putting the tricorder to your face - given any other situation you’d have enjoyed the view and him, ordering you around in his bedroom. Now you waited for the whirring of the tricorder to stop. „You’re readings are off, Y/N“ the tone of his voice dropped once more and now his eyes searched yours again. He pressed his left middle and index finger at your carotid. His lips moved the tiniest bit while counting, focused. „Way off.“ - „It was a very long and exciting day.“ you offered as a heartfelt, but poor excuse. It had been a long day and you got a feeling that those that followed would only become longer. „We’ll check this regularly now. I don’t want to see you at work tomorrow, you’ll need bed rest. I don’t know how you got this gash on your shoulder, but this will be checked regularly too.“ „Doctors orders?“ you smirked as you tried to ease the tension. „Are you teasing me for being concerned for your well being?“ he shot back but the tension did ease somewhat. Those lines around his eyes softened as he watched you now, the gruffness of his face smoothed as a smile tugged at his lips. You smiled back, still looking up at him, and carefully leaned your forehead on the fabric of his blue shirt. You felt his fingers touching your neck, wandering through the tiny hairs on your neck. How his heart beat faster then usually. „I promise you, Len“ you mumbled and lifted your face now to watch him „I’ll tell you, okay? It was an accident, don’t be worried.“ It was true. You would. Somehow. He nodded reluctantly. It was obvious that he wasn’t content. And he would put you in a biobed next thing in the morning. He didn’t need to tell you, you knew. If your shoulder hadn’t been so mobile, the gash not healed as good as it was, he’d have probably scooted you off to medbay in an instant. You got up from the bed and stretched yourself to brush a kiss on his lips. You wanted this to work out. With him. „There’s no dodging me any more, young lady.“ said the Doctor. You pouted a bit, at which he nabbed at your lower lip with his teeth. „No amount of pouting and batting your eyes at me will change my decision. Or keep me from performing your exams myself anymore.“ his whisper had a raw quality to it. „You come to me, when you are wounded. I …“ he stopped and drew closer, pulling you into his arms, very careful not to put pressure on your shoulder. A strange sensation spread in your chest, warm and fuzzy. „Yes, Sir.“ you said mockingly. „Good girl“ he pressed his lips on yours and brushed a strain of hair out of your face.

READ ON

TAG LIST. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK :)

@webhoard @rayleyanns @elenawrit @star-trekkin-across-theuniverse @to-pick-ourselves-up-7 @fridgebiscuit @newhappiness430 @theleonardmccoy @ha-tep @daughterofthebrowncoats @frostingsfics @imaginativefanatic @pan-da-sexual-oreo @engineeringtrashcan

[seriouscuttervoice]

Redamancy

Fandom: Mystic Messenger

Pairing: Jumin Han/V

Content Warnings: Past abuse, past torture, blood.

Notes: This was written for @juminvweek for the Day 2 prompt, “Reunited”. I feel a need to say this is hurt/comfort and not angst and that it has a happy ending haha. It takes place after Jaehee’s route, which ends with V surrendering himself to Mint Eye.

Links: FFN | AO3

Ragged. Pale. The same clothes he wore the last time Jumin saw him two years ago falling apart at the seams, stained with blood and other substances Jumin doesn’t want to attempt to identify. Long slashes across the fabric leave the imagination a little too much room to interpret what happened—what has been happening. V is so thin his skin is translucent, his hair so long and dirty it reaches past his shoulders and likely would’ve been longer if not left neglected. The blue of the ends has faded to white and makes every unclean speck plainly visible, contrasting sharply against the natural black locks sprouting from his roots that account for almost three quarters of his hair’s length. The dungeon air is too foul to inhale and Jumin finds himself holding his breath. He wonders if the cultists even bothered with washing his friend the entire time he’s been here, Jumin’s skin standing up when he realizes he can’t even imagine what suffering V has endured these last two years while he, Assistant Kim, and Luciel were trying to track him down.

The guards who had been here less than a few hours ago warned Jumin that his friend’s condition would be unpleasant, and cautioned him that V had refused to speak to them, but despite all of Jumin’s meticulous planning his mind never wandered far enough as to actually imagine this moment. Even in the dingy lighting V glows behind the bars, and Jumin swallows down the sour taste that fills his mouth as he crosses the wet floors to V’s cell—the only occupied cell in this part of the underground. His own guards already unlocked it, but Jumin ordered them before they came down here not to remove V by force. There’s no bed in the cell, and despite all of V’s weakness he stands, using the back left corner of the cell to support his fragile body atop legs that seem on the verge of collapse.

Jumin finds himself at a loss for what to say, everything seeming to move so slowly yet happening all at once, and when he finally reaches V’s cell door and grips a cold, damp bar he’s unable to keep holding his breath and foul odours fill his lungs. He coughs, brings his left hand to his mouth to suppress his spluttering.

V shifts, and Jumin’s gaze flits to his face—sallow, closed eyes underscored with bruised purple rings, cheekbones that were hardly visible before so sharp they look as though they might cut through his skin. When the coughing dissipates, Jumin wipes his lip with his knuckle then holds the door with both fists, cringing at the loud creak it emits as he steps back to pull it open. V’s lips move, and then he coughs too, a dry, weak cough that shouldn’t shake his frame the way it does, and Jumin’s stomach turns, unsure of what to do, unsure of what to think. He waits until V is done, and wishes he’d had the foresight to think of something to say when this moment finally came instead of spending the last two years worrying it wouldn’t come at all. What if he couldn’t convince V to leave? How can he even still ask himself that question seeing V in this condition?

“Jumin.”

The voice is cracked, brittle, so quiet and small if Jumin were anyone else he might not have heard it but he isn’t anyone else and the reality of the situation crashes over him, carried in the short syllables of his name. He freezes, fingers still clinging tightly to the open door, voice intact but unable to speak.

V plants a hand against the wall and straightens his legs slightly to pull himself higher. His head turns toward Jumin, and he opens his eyes.

Jumin can’t breathe.

The scarring he remembers is much worse, V’s pupils and irises almost completely overcast as though a drop of milk was squeezed into water and left to spread. There’s no chance that the damage is only a result of V’s first injury worsening, his eyes must have been butchered again.

“I’d know that cough anywhere.”

V’s words fade in and out, there and then not, unevenly lilted instead of smooth and melodic the way Jumin remembers it, but it still sounds the same, the brassy quality, the tone that still manages to be teasing in a dungeon cell.

“Y—you recognized me by my cough?” Jumin stammers, and wonders if perhaps he should be the one locked up for not being able to come up with anything better to say as his first words to V after two years of work and worry. V apparently finds it amusing, but his body can’t handle the short laughter he attempts and he starts coughing again. Jumin has no idea what one is supposed to do when someone else is coughing, but the sound propels him to step forward into the cell, and by the time he’s inside the coughs have subsided once more.

“You really came,” V murmurs. They stand across from each other now and for a moment the smells and dampness disappear, Jumin's chest constricting with the difference in his friend's state now from the last time they were together. None of this would have happened if Jumin were more convincing back then, if he could’ve made V believe at the time that it were possible for Jumin to help him without getting hurt.

“Of course I did,” Jumin responds, wondering if there was ever any doubt. “I told you I would.”

“Of course…” his friend echoes softly. “Well, that’s just like you. I’ve never known you to break a promise.”

Jumin’s eyes find his shoes (and on their way notice that V’s not wearing any), feels his muscles tighten when the first thought to cross his mind is that he hopes that much is true for V too, though at this point with Jumin’s people dealing with Rika’s cult just upstairs he imagines most of the important secrets are already out.

V seems to have the same thought, shifting so he’s leaning on his shoulder and resting his temple against the wall. “What’s going to happen to her?”

“You still ask after her?” It’s a question with an obvious answer and V doesn’t respond, eyes fluttering shut, and after a long silence Jumin draws a deep breath. “I don’t know. That depends on the courts.”

V presses his lips together but gives Jumin a short nod, and Jumin has enough sense to think before saying any of the dozens of responses that come to mind when V sighs a moment later.

“She…” he starts, and Jumin glances up at him. “She was supposed to stop involving innocent people after I, um…”

“She didn’t.” Jumin feels that the words are harsh but their necessity presses him to speak them anyway, regretting it when V flinches.

“I know,” V says, and Jumin knows V is about to apologize and wants to cut him off but it’s too late, and perhaps it’s better to allow V to ask for the forgiveness he doesn’t need to ask for than to deprive him of it. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” V seems to be slowly slipping, readjusting himself every few seconds to remain on his feet. “… You look tired. Have you stayed standing this whole time?”

V smiles, an inappropriate response in Jumin’s opinion but who is he to decide so. “That’d be… impressive. I’ve stood whenever I can. My legs are kind of useless these days, though.”

“You look terrible,” Jumin can’t help himself, traces of incredulity stressing some syllables more than others, and it occurs to him he might need to carry V out of here and he wonders why he didn’t think of the possibility of that sooner, gritting his teeth as the pity he felt moments ago for his friend turns to anger for the woman upstairs. Useless legs… there’s a possibility V might never recover.

Somehow, though, it’s no surprise to Jumin that V has insisted on standing whenever possible, even propped helplessly against the wall like this. V is many delicate things— faint-hearted, timid, passive in many circumstances so as to upset the least amount of people. But V has a strength of character that Jumin has seen in few others, like a flower with the roots of a tree, a core that can’t be shaken, and Jumin could see it in him from the very moment he met him. Can still see it now in all of V’s brittleness.

“I don’t want to imagine it.” His friend’s face is blemished, much worse than it was when they were in high school together, likely from the buildup of dirt. His torn jeans and shirt reveal red flesh beneath them too. V must have several skin infections, and Jumin winces at the thought. “They… wouldn’t let me shower, or anything. Or bring me a change of clothes.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Jumin’s had two years of evidence collection to conclude that Rika isn’t the person he thought she was, but even knowing all that he wouldn’t have imagined her to be so cruel. Considering how many times he’s had that exact thought throughout this process though perhaps he should start expecting the unexpected.

V is quiet and Jumin wonders if he’s chosen his words wrong, made V mistake his declaration of disgust as being for V’s state and not for the treatment he’s endured.

“I didn’t forget, you know,” V speaks, and Jumin’s eyebrows draw downward in confusion.

“Forget what?”

“What you told me, before I left,” V smiles, his face pointed toward Jumin with his eyes closed and Jumin’s certain that even without sight V still knows exactly where he is. Jumin’s face doesn’t change and when a beat passes in silence V elaborates, “That your heart is always with me.”

“Oh,” Jumin says, remembering. Yes, the advice MC had given him during their chat in his office after the RFA party—the same conversation where she told him she would not be his assistant. It was the only meeting they had about V after the party, and indeed, the first and last one-on-one meeting they had at all. As he suspected, her advice didn’t work in convincing V to stay, and it was worse because Jumin could only say it to him through the phone instead of in person. It worked when MC did it for Assistant Kang—Jaehee— though, so he’d hoped that perhaps…

He stops himself. There’s no point in thinking about it anymore, not when V is right here in front of him.

“The word choice was unlike you,” V states, and Jumin rolls his eyes because he can tell V already knows.

“The word choice was MC’s idea.”

V hums. “Still. I could tell by your voice that you were sincere.”

Jumin’s throat tightens.

“It… meant a lot to me,” his friend admits. “More than you could ever imagine.”

Jumin takes a deep breath, pinches the bridge of his nose. “I knew she’d be a good person to ask for advice.”

V shakes his head against the wall. “It wasn’t just the words. It was that…” V trails off, and Jumin waits for him to recollect his thoughts. He thinks he can hear dripping but that’s no surprise in the dampness. “It was knowing I failed. To make you stop caring about me.”

Jumin’s eyes widen.

“I—I wanted you to be safe, of course,” V hurries to clarify. “And I hated to think of you worrying over me when I didn’t want you to, but.” He pauses. “But to think that… that even after everything, you still wanted me for a friend.“

“Wanted?” Jumin repeats, takes a step forward to V for the first time since entering the cell.

“Wanted,” V confirms, enunciating the word with a certainty that steals Jumin’s breath. “Because you love me.”

Jumin’s head spins, and for a moment he almost manages to convince himself it’s because of the dungeon odours, but he knows better than that.

“Because I love you,” he repeats slowly.

“Yes.”

Silence fills the room like wine poured into a glass. This shouldn’t be new, the words reverberating in Jumin’s mind like a rubber band stretched taut, a warmth spreading through him with every vibration. You love me. So Jihyun understands, then, so Jumin’s efforts have been recognized, so at last his actions have spoken loudly enough to make that truth spill from his friend’s lips without Jumin having to say it.

“I… always sort of knew,” Jihyun confesses.

“And then you didn’t,” Jumin answers.

Jihyun dips his head and his hair falls, more scraggly strands hanging over his face than even before. “It kept me alive.”

Jumin steps forward, then again, the smells becoming so intense he can feel nausea rising in his throat, stopping just before Jihyun is close enough to touch.

“You love me too,” Jumin says, and with the way Jihyun leans closer to the wall to press his forehead and nose to it Jumin knows. All the times in the last two years—and a bit more, if he’s honest—that he asked himself where the proof was of their friendship, of the connection they once had before V closed himself off, even knowing in the end it was all for his and the RFA’s protection—here it is before him, in the form of V himself, alive and standing in spite of all the suffering for something that he loved enough to live for.

He takes another step toward Jihyun, reaches out, then hesitates, thinking of his friend’s condition. “... Can I touch you?” He’ll likely have to eventually, so they can leave this place.

Jihyun inclines his head in a nod so slight it’s barely noticeable, and Jumin gently takes one of his friend’s hands in his. It’s calloused and scarred, the skin greyish from filth and split from dryness. Juxtaposed in Jumin’s manicured one, it could be a still from a film sequence. Jihyun’s hand quivers, muscles tightening, and Jumin softly brushes against his friend’s knuckles with his thumb.

“You’re safe now,” Jumin promises, sliding his other hand carefully under Jihyun’s cheek to cushion it against the wall. Jihyun’s lip twitches. “You’re safe with me, and you always will be. I swear, Jihyun, you will never have to be alone again.”

Jihyun slowly turns, rolling so his upper back is against the wall, and Jumin’s hand cradles his head. Jihyun’s body trembles, but his voice doesn’t waver.

“I swear, Jumin,” Jihyun replies quietly. “Neither will you.”

[twh-news]

Welcome to Skull Island: on set with Tom Hiddleston and the biggest King Kong ever | The Guardian

The director and cast of Kong: Skull Island, including Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson, discuss filming opposite an 85ft ape – while using as little green screen as possible.

“Apologies for the shirtlessness,” says Tom Hiddleston. “I didn’t want to show off.” The world’s most impeccably spoken Marvel baddie is looking awfully embarrassed. I’ve caught him emerging topless from his trailer, late at night, with female company. The makeup artist has been in with him, carefully pawing at his torso. Hiddleston is shooting a movie in Hawaii and, as it is, his skin doesn’t look sufficiently sun damaged. Muddier stuff is slathered on, and our star is good to go.

This dramatic tan is part of the latest, and perhaps most adventurous, step in Hiddleston’s ascent to the A-list: the lead role in a grand new reboot of the King Kong franchise. It is why we are both standing in mud in the middle of the night on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The question arises, though: do we really need another movie about King Kong? Ever since the romantic giant ape landed in New York in 1933 with a giant crush on Fay Wray, he has cropped up in at least another six films, most recently Peter Jackson’s handsome 2005 remake. In the latest reincarnation, Kong: Skull Island, he is getting the origins treatment – his story beginning again, ready to be continued in future films. Reassuringly, any reservations one might have about such a project seem to be shared by the film’s producers, who chuck around words such as “fresh” and “current” as casually as Kong juggles biplanes.

“I went in and pitched a movie I would want to see and my friends would want to see,” says the director, Jordan Vogt-Roberts. “I honestly thought they were going to laugh me out of the room. Then they responded really well and we started building that story.”

One can understand this initial concern. The 33-year-old has just one full-length credit to his name: the low-key coming-of-age indie The Kings of Summer. The only thing that film has in common with this one is that trees feature. Vogt-Roberts also looks every inch the indie director – gold medallions, heavy hipster beard – not a guy you would automatically trust with a reported $190m (£152m) budget. But maybe it is because of his indie credentials that the vibe on set seems so relaxed. There is an army-like camaraderie between the actors playing soldiers and those playing non-military folk.

So what is the movie that Vogt-Roberts and his pals would want to watch? Well, it’s set in 1972: the Vietnam war is almost over and the Landsat programme is dawning. For the first time, satellite imagery is able to capture the Earth as a whole and shine a light on previously unknown areas. A voyage to discover what really lies on a mysterious island is launched with a ragtag crew, all with conflicting missions.

“In the early 70s,” says Vogt-Roberts, “the world was in chaos, and I love the idea of using that as an access point for the characters, taking people who are in the middle of sexual revolutions and racial riots and losing wars for the first time and political scandals – people who are watching the world crumble around them – and sending them to an island untouched by man. There’s a sense of catharsis to that.”

But don’t be fooled by the film’s vintage feel. The producers are keen to position this as a contemporary adventure. Recruiting Hiddleston, hot off award-winning TV show The Night Manager, is indicative, and he is surrounded by an eclectic and self-consciously contemporary ensemble. There is 2016’s best actress Oscar-winner Brie Larson, franchise addict Samuel L Jackson, character actor John C Reilly, Straight Outta Compton breakouts Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell, plus John Goodman, fresh from his terrifying turn in 10 Cloverfield Lane.

“It’s a pretty big family to be travelling around the world with,” Larson says, mid-midnight snack. We are in an open air tent and she is ploughing through salad, surprisingly energetic and awake. She has just done the umpteenth take of one especially draining scene; there are many more to come. “Usually, I’d be done by now,” she says with a grin. “Most films I’ve done are 20-, 30-day shoots. So I keep thinking this is the end and we’re not even a quarter of the way in.”

To create a place of unique otherworldliness that could conceivably exist on Earth, three locations – Australia, Vietnam and Hawaii – are being amalgamated. There is an emphasis on bricks–and-mortar sets rather than a CGI overload, which is reserved for the big man himself (a Kong record height of roughly 85ft/26 metres) and a host of nasty creatures with whom he shares his ecosystem. “Jordan always insisted that we should be in real places,” Hiddleston says. “There should be as little soundstage or green-screen work as possible. He was location-scouting for nine or 10 months.”

Despite the hour, he is animated and enthusiastic as he talks to me between takes. This scene involves the characters arguing over whether Kong is friend or foe. It is intense, but what is initially thrilling to watch from the wings becomes notably less exciting the 30th time round. While Hiddleston and Larson remain upbeat (she does an improvised workout with a prop gun whenever the camera stops rolling), Jackson is starting to feel the strain. “How many times have we done this?” he asks. No one seems to know.

When it comes to my chat with him, I’m gathered with a handful of other journalists and his weariness seeps through.

“Why do you think this King Kong is different from the other King Kongs that we’ve seen,” asks one journalist. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it,” replies Jackson.

“When we spoke to the director and the other actors, they compared your character to Captain Ahab. Is that something that inspired you too,” asks another. “No,” says Jackson.

Still, at least Jackson made it to Hawaii this time. In 1992, he was due to head here to film his doomed role in Jurassic Park when a hurricane destroyed the set before his scenes were shot. His work on Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur thriller was consequently based in LA. His biggest challenge for both projects, he reports, remains the invisible co-stars.

“The first lesson I got on green screen was from George Lucas years ago: the more you do, the more we have to draw,” he says. Do the practical sets help? “No, because you still have to ask the same questions. How big is it? Where is it? How fast is it moving? Sometimes they don’t have the answer to that.”

At least his Avengers co-star is living and breathing, right? “Tom’s got his fans,” he says with a smile. “A lot of girls. It’s good to work with people you know and trust. I guess he’ll be going back into the Marvel universe and put that green suit on again. Hopefully, I’ll be back with my eye patch and we’ll be together again.”

The love is mutual: Hiddleston waxes on about how Jackson is “a consummate professional … just a very fine actor”. But that, surprisingly, is about it when it comes to romance in the film. Despite Kong’s penchant for women, in this version, he is all business, no pleasure.

“This is not a traditional Beauty and the Beast story,” says Vogt-Roberts. “I personally don’t want to see a damsel-in-distress story and I don’t think the rest of the world really wants to see that any more.”

This was a deal-breaker for Larson, too, who added tenacity to a victim narrative in Room and will next be squaring off with a warehouse full of gun-toting blokes in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire. “We’re in a really interesting time when we’re interested in seeing something different,” she says. “I’ve seen women who have found their way to continue to be feminine but still exert a sense of force and a sense of strength, and that’s important to me.”

Kong: Skull Island, then, is dodging some familiar tropes. But it is also part of a very modern trend: not just a kickstart to one dusty franchise, but a way of breathing life into a shared universe, a world also inhabited by another giant of the screen: Godzilla. The breadcrumbs have already been dropped online, and there are easter eggs in the film to reward the hardcore monster fans. But, on set, everyone is tight-lipped about the upcoming face-off, scheduled for 2020.

“I don’t know much about it,” Hiddleston says. “We’ve got to finish this one. I obviously know it’s a plan and that’s what Legendary [the company in charge of both properties] wants to do. It’s exciting and something that hasn’t been done in a long time. If it’s done in the right way, then it could be cool.”

Godzilla 2, with its rather leading title, King of the Monsters, is next, with Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things attached. Might a Kong sequel be on the way, too? Vogt-Roberts shrugs off talk with a lightness befitting his roots, rather than his reality: “That’s a little bit above my pay grade.”

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Epic Dollhouse Review of Doom: Why I Am Calling It Quits

by Dan H

Monday, 22 June 2009

Dan on Dollhouse, The Sopranos, and Slow Builds~

Previously on Ferretbrain: I started watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and was doing an episode-by-episode review.

I kind of stalled on it, because I've come to the realisation that part of what the show is trying to do is to make you, the viewer complicit in the activities of the Dollhouse, trying to draw a comparison between you watching the show and the clients hiring the Dolls. Just as the Dollhouse caters to their needs, so this show caters to your needs. Do you see.

Eight episodes in I decided I was no longer going to be complicit in anything. I can take being bored. I can take being annoyed. I can take having Joss Whedon masturbate in my face. What I can't take is being bored and annoyed and having Joss Whedon masturbate in my face all at the same time.

Just to be clear. I did not stop watching Dollhouse because the dolls are all rape victims. I did not stop watching Dollhouse because I was uncomfortable with a television series where human traffickers are sympathetic viewpoint characters. I did not stop watching Dollhouse because its damning insights into the human condition were outside my comfort zone. I stopped watching Dollhouse because it was preachy, inconsistent, condescending, self-aggrandising, clunkily written, boring, exposition-heavy, mcguffin-driven, shit with the intellectual sophistication of a sixteen year old's GCSE essay about how we should totally abolish money, because that would make everybody equal.

So here are my final thoughts:

A Very Specific Level of Evil

One of the “memes” I'm trying to spread around the internet is

A Very Specific Level of Tired

. For those who don't want to read the link, the salient exchange (from a hypothetical D&D game) is this:

“No, you have just enough energy to climb this hill, but not enough energy to go on or look for someplace else to camp.” “That is a very specific level of tired.”

I like to use the phrase “very specific level of [blah]” to describe any situation in a work of fiction where a character or institution is supposed to be sufficiently [blah] to do what the plot demands, but not quite [blah] enough to do all the things that a [blah] person would do that might wreck the plot. Voldemort is a classic example of this. He's evil enough to kill helpless babies if they get in the way of his plans (or at least, fail to kill helpless babies) he's evil enough that he routinely uses torture and violence to get what he wants, but somehow he is not evil enough to – say – round up all of Harry Potter's friends and start killing them until Potter shows himself.

The Dollhouse (the institution rather than the show) has a similar problem. The Dollhouse is evil, it takes people and scrubs their brains and programs them to do things for rich people.

But it's a very specific level of evil. It takes the time and energy to provide its Dolls with comfortable living conditions, even though doing this pretty clearly makes them harder to control. It seems to vet its assignments extremely thoroughly, so that the Dolls only get sent out to do things which are basically okay. It gives the Dolls names – admittedly names based on military callsigns, but they're clearly designed to function like English Proper Names, not codes. They seem to encourage their handlers to form an emotional bond with their actives and if the handler abuses the relationship, that handler is actually killed.

It's the most naïve representation of human trafficking I can possibly imagine.

Now the counter-argument to this is that the Dollhouse is only superficially nice, and that in fact they are just as evil as you would expect from an institution which (as we discover in episode seven) is run by an evil biotech company that does experiments on babies.

There are two problems with that argument. The first is that the “good” parts of the Dollhouse are most assuredly not superficial. They do in fact take genuine care of their actives, they do in fact try to make them as happy and comfortable as possible. They do in fact use them to help people (sometimes, apparently, for free).

The second problem with this argument is that evil institutions do not look superficially attractive because they do not need to. There were no Callisthenics classes in Auschwitz. Josef Mengele didn't have cutesy conversations with his Jewish prisoners before pouring bleach in their eyes. Guantanamo Bay isn't full of happy, smiling Muslims with slightly vacant grins on their faces. The Dollhouse's veneer of respectability is not for the benefit of the staff (who shouldn't care) or the clients (who shouldn't care, and who never see inside the building anyway) but for the benefit of the audience.

It's another incarnation of what the girls at

Boils and Blinding Torment

used to call “the Misdirection Fairy”. Joss Whedon is chronic for having characters in his shows behave in ways which only make sense if you assume they are consciously performing for an audience. Classic examples of this in Buffy include Jonathan deciding to commit suicide by shooting himself with a sniper rifle in a bell tower (almost as if he was deliberately trying to fool the viewing audience into thinking he was about to embark on a killing spree) and several bits in season seven where Buffy persists in acting confused and frightened, even though everything is going exactly according to her plan. The Dollhouse keeps acting “nice” but there's no earthly reason for it to do so.

To put it another way: Joss Whedon fails at Atrocity 101.

If we are to accept that using Dollhouse technology on people is a genuinely atrocious act, then we have to assume that it works the same way all atrocities work. You start by dehumanizing the victim. Giving the Dolls names, making them comfortable, letting them socialise and caring if they get raped are all totally incompatible with wiping their minds and handing them over to the highest bidder. There's a reason that lab rats aren't given names (or, for that matter, toys). The Dollhouse treats the Dolls like people, and they shouldn't. Not if they're supposed to be genuine human traffickers.

There's a bit in Episode Eight (the last episode I saw, and the last I will ever subject myself to) where de Witt explicitly says that the Dolls should be thought of as pets. This is supposed to be chilling, I think. It's supposed to highlight how dehumanizing the Dollhouse really is. But it doesn't work.

Anybody who has ever worked in a laboratory should know that you absolutely, under no circumstances, treat your test subjects as pets. Pets are, in fact, treated as people. They are cared for and protected, they are given names and they are individualised – humanised, in fact. De Witt consistently singles Echo out for special treatment. One cannot treat a person in this fashion and then commit atrocities against them.

Show, Don't Tell, Dickhead

We spend a lot of time in The Dollhouse having people present the cases either for it (it “gives people what they need” and “helps people”) or against it (it is “slavery” and “human trafficking”). We do not ever see the Dollhouse behave in a manner that fits either of these descriptions, or at least not consistently.

In Episode Eight we finally discover that Sierra was wiped against her will (unlike all the other Dolls, who were volunteers) specifically because she turned a millionaire down for sex. De Witt later explains at the end of the episode (in which the Dollhouse arranges for its three primary Dolls to achieve “closure” or something – I was too bored and pissed off to care by this point) that she “needed to confront the man who took her power away.” Now hang on. You can't talk, sympathetically, about how horribly Sierra was mistreated by this guy when you run the organisation that made it possible. Not because it's hypocritical, but because you shouldn't care. The whole sequence seems to be designed to make you realise how awful the Dollhouse is, because of what it did to Sierra, while at the same time making you think that de Witt is an okay person, because she sympathises. It's not subtle, it's not complex, it's just fucking stupid.

A comparison that I've been wanting to make for a while now is with The Sopranos.

Tony Soprano is very seldom called a criminal. People very seldom tell him that what he does is wrong. He seldom justifies his actions, because he seldom needs to. But he does things that are demonstrably, obviously horrific, and we see them in harsh, unflinching detail, and we see the consequences that his choices have on ordinary people. We don't need trembly emotive speeches where people say “the Mafia is bad!” because we already know. We don't need Tony to say “we help people” because it would be completely stupid.

And we certainly aren't asked to question our own complicity in the work of the Cosa Nostra.

Dollhouse is two shows. There's the show Joss Whedon wanted to make, which exists entirely in the exposition, and is all about Big Serious Issues, and the show that Fox wanted to commission, which is an adventure show about a hot girl who wears a series of different outfits. What we are left with is a show about a girl who has crazy kung fu adventures which keeps stopping every five minutes to explain how it's really about human trafficking and free will and shit.

The Slow Build Fallacy

I once met somebody who said that the thing they hated the most about Buffy the Vampire Slayerwas the fact that they kept watching it, and not liking it, and everybody they talked to kept saying “yeah, well that season wasn't so great, but the next season is really good”. They gave up after season three, possibly because nobody could quite bring themselves to say that about Season Four.

People keep saying the same thing about Dollhouse “sure, the first three quarters of the season sucks, but then you see where it's all been going and it's awesome”.

This is bullshit.

Good TV is good TV from the start. No ifs. No buts. No exceptions. A series should not have to waste my time for upwards of eight hours before it starts displaying whatever dubious merits it is supposed to possess.

To put it another way, if you like a television program, and it shows consistent improvement in ambition, complexity of storytelling, and of course acting, you are going to see that as a show which gets better every season. If, like Buffy, there is also a marked change in style every season, you will also mark every season as the point where it really gets into its stride. I know that I've been guilty of identifying pretty much every season of Buffy as “where it starts to get really good” when talking to more sceptical members of my social circle.

Basically this is an elaborate piece of self-deception we engage in, convincing ourselves that our appreciation for a show is based on a slowly developing understanding of its many subtle advantages, when actually we just think it's a cool idea.

If you don't like Buffy Season 1, you will not like Buffy, period. The reason for this is simple: if you don't like Buffy Season 1 it's probably because something fundamental about the show doesn't work for you. Maybe it's the cutesy dialogue. Maybe it's Sarah Michelle Gellar. Maybe it's the whole idea of a cute blonde chick fighting monsters when she transparently doesn't have enough meat on her to open a stubborn jar of pickles. It doesn't matter how complex the arcs get, or how well they handle

the subject of bereavement

or

the nature of forgiveness

the whole thing is framed in cutesy dialogue and a blonde girl kicking vampires in the face and either you buy that shit or you don't. I personally bought it big time and Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of my favourite television shows ever.

I just don't buy Dollhouse. I don't buy the premise, I don't buy the boring, stilted, not-at-all-cutesy and therefore not-at-all witty and therefore not-at-all interesting dialogue. I think the show is heavy handed. I think the show is boring.

Nothing can change in the last four episodes of Season One or the first four episodes of Season Two to change this fact. My issues with Dollhouse are with the root and the core of the show, with the ideas behind it, the way the characters are presented, the way the dialogue is written. No penultimate-episode revelation will change that. Nothing the show can be building towards can change what the show is built on.

Which, from where I'm standing, is Joss Whedon's penis.Themes:

Damage Report

,

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Whedonverse

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Arthur B

at 12:47 on 2009-06-22

Eight episodes in I decided I was no longer going to be complicit in anything. I can take being bored. I can take being annoyed. I can take having Joss Whedon masturbate in my face. What I can't take is being bored and annoyed and having Joss Whedon masturbate in my face all at the same time.

So what you're saying is that you're fine with Joss jerking off in your face, but you draw the line at him asking you to give him a hand? :P

Seriously though, awesome article. I think a lack of, for want of a better word, psychological realism can absolutely kill any hope shows like

Dollhouse

have of being appreciated on the sort of level Whedon clearly wants

Dollhouse

to be appreciated on. This isn't always true, but I think it's often true, especially if the show hinges on the internal psychological states of the characters, and having your show hinge on a mind control process means the mental states of the characters is

the

most important element of the story.

The Prisoner

did this sort of thing

right

. Even though most interrogation processes are vastly grimier than what Number Six went through in the Village, you still had the impression that people were behaving in the way you would expect them to behave in a paranoid schizophrenic Welsh village where Number Six never knows who's working for Number Two and Number Two isn't sure how much Number Six really knows. What's more, what goes on in the Village is an atrocity with a thin veneer of pleasantness which is

actually

a thin veneer. The various Number Twos and their lackeys were perfectly pleasant most of the time, but behind their kind words there was always a snare, and they never hesitated to knock people on the head and drag them in for a lobotomy if they felt the need.

I think part of the reason that the last episode is so controversial is that it abandons psychological realism for tripped-out 60s allegory, and whilst there's nothing wrong with allegory it does tend to involve unrealistic behaviour on the part of characters for the sake of making a point. I do wonder whether

Dollhouse

would work better approached as social allegory as opposed to a psychologically realistic study of rape and/or slavery, but I suspect not since it certainly sounds as though it were written as the latter, not the former.

permalink

-

go to top

Andy G

at 13:57 on 2009-06-22Blackadder comes to mind as a counterexample to what you say about slow builds ... though I guess you could make the case that that is a slightly unusual case since so much was changed after season 1.

permalink

-

go to top

Andy G

at 14:09 on 2009-06-22

And we certainly aren't asked to question our own complicity in the work of the Cosa Nostra.

I agree that the show isn't making some sort of didactic point, but surely it is very much about the uneasy relationship between mainstream American society and the violence that it either hypocritically condemns while supporting, or simply turns a blind eye to? Especially with the outsider liberal figures like Meadow or Dr Melfi.

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 15:46 on 2009-06-22

I agree that the show isn't making some sort of didactic point, but surely it is very much about the uneasy relationship between mainstream American society and the violence that it either hypocritically condemns while supporting, or simply turns a blind eye to?

True, but there's a difference between making a point about society in general, and making a point about you, the viewer.

The Sopranos doesn't ask you to view the act of watching the Sopranos as making you complicit in the work of the Mafia, if you see what I mean.

permalink

-

go to top

http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 17:58 on 2009-06-22

Blackadder comes to mind as a counterexample to what you say about slow builds ... though I guess you could make the case that that is a slightly unusual case since so much was changed after season 1.

I'd say with Blackadder it's really the same all the way through. There are major changes b/w season 1 and the later seasons, but the basic idea is the same. I think the biggest tweak is in exactly how Blackadder fits with the world and the other characters. But a lot of the basic ideas are the same. The final episode isn't so much fantastic because it shows you where the show is going; it just applies the same formula to a part of history where it's most powerful imo.

The Sopranos doesn't ask you to view the act of watching the Sopranos as making you complicit in the work of the Mafia, if you see what I mean.

I agree. I just started finally watching

The Wire,

and interestingly, in the commentary for the pilot the creator talks about how the first chapter shouldn't be as good as the series is going to get--he's going for a slow build. But at the same time the first chapter clearly lays out what the series is about. And there too it's about society, but not in an accusatory way. Characters don't explicitly justify or condemn everything about themselves and others.

Also maybe another thing that also applies to the Sopranos and doesn't seem to apply to Dollhouse is that there's little need for characters to justify themselves because the world in which they live makes what they do understandable. We can see why being born a Soprano might encourage you to be Tony or AJ or Meadow, or how someone like Carmela would wind up this kind of wife. Likewise how the characters in The Wire become criminals or cops.

But is there any explanation why these people created and work at the Dollhouse--any human reasons with which a reader can identify? This is partly where the proble of all those nice guys working at the Dollhouse come from. We can see where a nice guy on the Sopranos or the Wire could get pushed to stay in a life that goes against their nature (and so probably slowly kills them) but when I read your descriptions of these characters I still wind up asking why they don't work somewhere else.

permalink

-

go to top

http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 17:59 on 2009-06-22Sorry about that strange comment--I didn't realize the whole thing was copied in italics!

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 18:18 on 2009-06-22Haven't finished reading the article yet but I thought I'd mention before I forget: the link to

Boils and Blinding Torment

doesn't work. It looks like it has the same problem I got when I was putting up my last article, namely the process of pasting into the Ferretbrain article editor and saving has somehow added "&8221" to the beginning and end of the URL.

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 19:04 on 2009-06-22Have now finished reading and very much agree, not specifically in relation to

Dollhouse

because I haven't seen any of it but in relation to your general thinking about how fiction should work and how it goes wrong.

Funnily enough the section on the 'slow-build' made me think of exactly the same bit of commentary on the first episode of

The Wire

that Sister Magpie mentioned. David Simon says several times in that audio commentary (and not without sounding just a little smug and patronizing about it, I'm sorry to say) that the series was very demanding of its audience in following a single complete story at a relatively slow pace across 13 episodes rather than the more usual thing of playing out a long over-all plot over the course of a series of somewhat self-contained one-hour-long stories. But you can get away with that if each episode, whether self-contained or not, is in itself enjoyable (which in the case of

The Wire

it certainly is). You can't use it as an excuse for boring your audience out of its collective skull for twelve weeks on the promise of something exciting happening in week 13.

I'm also put in mind of what Neil Gaiman has often said about

The Kindly Ones

, which is that it was the only sequence in the

Sandman

series that he allowed himself to write not as a series of 24-page monthly episodes but more or less as a single 312-page comic, knowing that the pacing and plotting would not really work very well when it was published in 24-page chunks and would only properly make sense in a trade paperback collection. The point here is that Gaiman knows enough about good writing that he clearly feels rather sheepish about doing this.

permalink

-

go to top

http://skull-bearer.livejournal.com/

at 19:24 on 2009-06-22

osef Mengele didn't have cutesy conversations with his Jewish prisoners before pouring bleach in their eyes.

Sorry to disagree, but that's exactly what he did. But that's a case of reality being more screwed up than fiction, and that guy was an utter nutcase.

Sorry, carry on.

permalink

-

go to top

Rami

at 20:52 on 2009-06-22

process of pasting into the Ferretbrain article editor and saving has somehow added "&8221" to the beginning and end

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that -- it's the magic of Microsoft Word.

permalink

-

go to top

https://me.yahoo.com/a/ck5gg.gRlPbLG2WYCqrJ5k2.qjxalTVt0AHQ#14479

at 23:37 on 2009-06-22Dan Hemmens is a man after my own heart.

Okay, enough sucking up.

You make a good point, though about not liking Buffy because something doesn't 'click' with you about it, but I'll go one step further and say Whedon's propensity for not really understanding the underlying psychology of a given situation precedes Dollhouse by a country mile.

I was first totally turned off to the Whedon way of thinking during the "Graduation Day" episode of Buffy when I was insulted a total of three times.

The first was when Buffy was given an umbrella and the title of "Class Protector". First of all, are you kidding? If all the kids in high school knew about the growing vampire population, don't you think there would be a massive exodus of people from the town, not to mention a mass ostracizing of Buffy (in the same way people would avoid Fairuza Balk's character in The Craft)?

Most normal teenagers back away from things that are dangerous, even if there's an overall 'good' associated. Why? Because lots of people believe that if you lie with dogs, you get fleas. Hang out with Buffy, you're taking your life in your hands. Better to turn a blind eye to it also, if you know what's good for you.

The second was that the Scooby gang let same said high schoolers in on the plot to take down the mayor. Are you kidding? Are you seriously telling me that the same group of kids isn't going to stay home that day because they might just end up dead?

And third, and the most final and grating of insults, was that upon reflection of the day's events, Oz says, ponderously, "We survived high school."

I get the fact that Buffy was supposed to have been a metaphor, but seriously? The metaphor works best when you're not being beaten over the head with the fact that it's a metaphor.

Golly!

So, I'm not particularly surprised that Whedon has this odd base in non-reality that quite a few people seem to think is clever. (What can I say, I'm a sucker for sci-fi, even if I hate the creator, and yes, I have daggers for Whedon the same way Dan has for JK Rowling - who I also have daggers for.)

So, I made it a point to watch Dollhouse. Hey, if Adam Sandler can have "The Wedding Singer" in him, surely Whedon could have something interesting (and good!) to say at some point, right?

But only three episodes, two of which after the mythical "game-changer" episode. The first was the pilot. Oddly, I didn't see much difference in between the former and the latter, no matter what the fans say (I think the fans have convinced themselves that they're seeing something that isn't really there...I just thought everything I've seen was unilaterally bad in all the same ways).

What constantly annoys me about Whedon's work is often a complete lack of understanding of how people actually work. And this is the point that Dan makes very well above. There's Dollhouse, which tries to give everyone, no matter how 'evil' a supposedly sympathetic edge, and then there's The Sopranos, where the writing goes so far as to make you understand why the characters do what they do, instead of relying on plot contrivances to masticate pathos out of them.

I certainly wouldn't have, for instance, pegged Topher for 'lonely', and if I did, I would think he'd be sneaking dolls more often than just for his birthday (he being a 'genius' and all). Reminds me of that episode of Firefly where Jayne 'betrays' the crew and Mal threatens to throw him off the ship, or into a turbine or something. The rest of the episodes (of either) don't seem to have a thread that bears out these particular plot contrivances; they merely exist to demonstrate what Whedon wants us to see in the characters.

And Adelle, being Miss Lonelyhearts? Why can't she just be ruthless? Or is it not empowering for women to have blind ambition and nothing else? Or is that too cliche for Whedon? (I'll save my rant on why what Whedon writes isn't feminism for some other time because I'm sure I'm just rambling now.)

But yeah, I totally agree that there's just no "there" there with Dollhouse. It's insulting pseudo-intellectual garbage.

permalink

-

go to top

Dafydd at 00:37 on 2009-06-24

"Dollhouse" is indeed boring, but as for Whedon wanking in our faces?

You need a Klein bottle to turn Whedon through 180 degrees.

http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Whedon's head is stuffed so far up his arse, that he will need to be rotated at right angles to reality before it is anatomically possible for him to wank in our faces.

permalink

-

go to top

Robinson L

at 05:15 on 2009-06-26So, being annoyed, bored, and having Joss Whedon's rather malformed and immature "messages" and "insights" shoved down your throat all at the same time is too much for you? Reasonable. Dunno if I'll ever watch another episode. It ain't going to get any better.

If you don't like

Buffy

Season 1, you will not like

Buffy

, period.

Gonna play Hack's Advocate for a second here and point out the "Growing the Beard" phenomenon. I suppose the counterargument is that people who like, e.g.

The Next Generation

even before it gets good, and people who hate it when its bad will still hate it when it gets good.

the intellectual sophistication of a sixteen year old's GCSE essay

I seriously doubt that. My sister was sixteen last year, and I know she could right more sophisticated stuff that

this

back then.

One of the “memes” I'm trying to spread around the internet is A Very Specific Level of Tired.

Oh yeah. Good one. (

Love

that comic.)

Jonathan deciding to commit suicide by shooting himself with a sniper rifle in a bell tower

I saw this episode long before I began critically engaging with my entertainment media, and even then I knew this sequence was bunk.

True, but there's a difference between making a point about society in general, and making a point about

you, the viewer.

Actually, I've always thought one of the things which could've made

Firefly

much better would've been if Whedon had made his feminist message about how ordinary, well-meaning nonsexist (in their own minds) people (by implication

you, the viewer

) are complicit in systemic sexism, rather than scapegoating it all on the Misogynist-of-the-Week.

Josef Mengele didn't have cutesy conversations with his Jewish prisoners before pouring bleach in their eyes. Sorry to disagree, but that's exactly what he did. But that's a case of reality being more screwed up than fiction, and that guy was an utter nutcase.

On a somewhat-less-evil (though perhaps only because of opportunity) scale, Bull Connor apparently had a quite friendly and pleasant conversation with a couple of Freedom Riders on his way to dumping them in

very

hostile territory in the middle of the night. Some people, apparently, really

are

that sick. (Or that desperately in need of a real human relationship and that screwed-up about how to go about it. Don't mind me, rosy-tinted ocular sensors filtered by a rose-tinted brain.)

"We survived high school."

Again, watched the episode before I got my critical thinking in gear. At the time, I just thought it was a good joke. (

That's

what you consider the bigger accomplishment?)

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 19:59 on 2009-06-26Keeping the ever-riveting technical side-discussion alive:

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that -- it's the magic of Microsoft Word.

Surprisingly I got it even with Mac TextEdit. But I'm not complaining - it's no trouble to fix as long as one remembers to check for it, and the only reason I mentioned it was to alert people to the need to check.

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 20:01 on 2009-06-26Actually, having said that, I started writing in Pages rather than TextEdit, so composing

ab initio

in a plain-text programme might well solve it.

permalink

-

go to top

Rami

at 00:33 on 2009-06-27

Surprisingly I got it even with Mac TextEdit.

Word is the most common offender but pretty much any rich-text program will screw up HTML. Starting out plain-text will fix this for sure :-)

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 02:09 on 2009-06-27

Word is the most common offender but pretty much any rich-text program will screw up HTML. Starting out plain-text will fix this for sure :-)

Wise words for sure. Should there in fact be a note in the article writer's guide - or, indeed on the main article-editing page - strongly suggesting that people use plain text editors such as notepad to compose their articles for best results?

permalink

-

go to top

http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 15:55 on 2009-06-29

On a somewhat-less-evil (though perhaps only because of opportunity) scale, Bull Connor apparently had a quite friendly and pleasant conversation with a couple of Freedom Riders on his way to dumping them in very hostile territory in the middle of the night. Some people, apparently, really are that sick.

Definitely. Though I think when people show them in fiction that comes through. Like, there'd be a difference in deciding *why* Mengele has these creepy cute conversations that make him even more evil before he hurts a person. What Dan's talking about seems to be more people being portrayed as genuinely normal and well-meaning and nobody seeing any disconnect between that and human trafficking.

Maybe an even better example would be something like slavery where you had a slave owner who was sentimental with some of his slaves, but that just makes the rancidness of the relationship all the more clear. They're not really being nice the way they would be nice to a real person. It seems like Dollhouse thinks you can genuinely have it both ways where the human trafficking genuinely doesn't inform other interactions.

permalink

-

go to top

Robinson L

at 03:30 on 2009-06-30*slaps forehead* You know, I think I'd meant to say something like that and then forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me, Sister Magpie.

While I was pedantically pointing out a minor argumentative error that somebody else had already pointed out like the arrogant little prick that I am, I agree with the general point that the Dollhouse staff do not behave at all realistically for a human trafficking organization. In all these cases the victims are being dehumanized--that's just about a tautology for someone who's a slave or in a concentration camp or even a second class citizen: they are viewed as less than human. Their masters/overseers may still have affection for them, but not the affection you'd have for a fellow human being--an equal.

Despite continually mind-raping their subjects and stifling their free will to almost nothing, the Dollhouse executives still show a distinct tendency to treat their "actives" as human equals, or near-equals.

permalink

-

go to top

http://tabaquis.livejournal.com/

at 03:58 on 2009-06-30

There's a reason that lab rats aren't given names (or, for that matter, toys).

Loved your review as always, but just to nitpick: http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/enrich/rodents.htm

Lots of lab rats are in fact given toys, because it stimulates their health and reactions in a positive way so that you get more out of your experiment with them.

Just sayin'! ;)

permalink

-

go to top

http://wemblee.livejournal.com/

at 06:30 on 2009-07-06

Good TV is good TV from the start. No ifs. No buts. No exceptions.

I... what? Star Trek: The Next Generation isn't a good show? Because I thought it was... starting with season 3, because anything before that is a

wasteland of unimaginable suck

. And Deep Space Nine? That was an even better show... except for pretty much the entire first season, which was horrible. And Farscape, which didn't find its way until the end. And Torchwood had a terrible beginning, but found itself in its second season. And Moonlighting's pilot is slow and awful. And pretty much no sitcom, ever, has had a pilot that was as good as the episodes that came later. And and and.

permalink

-

go to top

Robinson L

at 08:06 on 2009-07-10Mm, yes wemblee, although I think what Dan

meant

was that people who enjoy a bad programme will enjoy it even more, but people who don't enjoy a bad programme probably won't like it even when it gets good. I suppose he could be right.

I can enjoy Next Generation and Deep Space Nine even before they got good, and Torchwood, too (although I'll have to see the second season to believe it gets any better), so I'm open to them being good. Maybe people who dislike them do so for reasons more to do with taste than quality.

Although if that is the argument, I agree that particular passage was unfortunate.

permalink

-

go to top

http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 19:31 on 2009-07-10I thought it was also more like saying that if you don't like the basic idea of a show, that basic idea getting better isn't going to do it for you. Iow, there was always some good fundamentals there, it just took a while for them to be used in the best way. Somebody turned off by those fundamentals isn't going to suddenly like the show when they get used better.

Blackadder I think is a good example since there's such a marked change between S1 and S2-4. I much prefer 2-4. The characters significantly shift their dynamics. But there's still stuff in S1 that I like that sound like the Blackadder of 2-4.

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 22:47 on 2009-07-10

I... what? Star Trek: The Next Generation isn't a good show?

Sister Magpie pretty much sums this up. All the things that are good about Star Trek TNG are things that are part of the show from its inception. All the things that are bad about Star Trek TNG are things that are part of the show from its inception.

Everything that's good about DS9 is in it from the beginning. Everything that's good about TNG is in it from the beginning. You might have thought that the first three seasons of TNG sucked, but you obviously weren't turned off by the premise of the show, you didn't think the idea of flying around in space seeking out strange new worlds was stupid, because if you did you wouldn't have liked series four onwards either.

TV series don't get better they just get better executed.

permalink

-

go to top

Niall

at 23:55 on 2009-07-11

Everything that's good about DS9 is in it from the beginning.

I think I would be prepared to make the case that (a) the Dominion, (b) the Defiant, and (c) Worf are substantial parts of what made DS9 good, and they were grafts onto the original concept, not a part of it.

I would also be prepared to make the case that Torchwood is a counter-example here. Children of Earth is good in large part because it discards or transforms most of what was characteristic about the first two seasons.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 00:33 on 2009-07-12

I think I would be prepared to make the case that (a) the Dominion, (b) the Defiant, and (c) Worf are substantial parts of what made DS9 good, and they were grafts onto the original concept, not a part of it.

But would the Dominion, the Defiant, and Worf be enough to make you enjoy the show if you couldn't stand the Bajor/Cardassian conflict, Sisko's accidental messiahism, Odo and Quark's frequent run-ins and all the other elements which were important to the show from the start?

Arguably, each of the things you mention is simply something that enhances a pre-existing element of DS9. The Dominion is an added complication to the "interstellar politics" dimension of the show. Worf is an addition to the "ensemble cast with complex interrelationships" element. The Defiant is a plot device for moving subsets of said ensemble cast to off-station locations. They embellish the show, but they don't actually change the premise of it: it's still a show in which an ensemble cast with complex interrelationships have to deal with tricky questions of interstellar politics.

I would also be prepared to make the case that Torchwood is a counter-example here. Children of Earth is good in large part because it discards or transforms most of what was characteristic about the first two seasons.

And I'm sure that there's a number of people out there who actually liked the first two seasons and are completely livid about

Children of Earth

, although they may well be in the minority. Major changes to the very premise of the show are an

enormous

gamble, and the BBC is arguably one of the few broadcasters who are really in a position to attempt such a roll of the dice, and even

then

they may still not have considered it if

Torchwood

wasn't a significant part of their grand plans for the

Dr Who

franchise. I suspect 9 out of 10 broadcasters out there would rather scrap a series and commission a new one with a new premise rather than alter an old series to fit a new premise.

It remains to be seen whether Whedon will, in fact, do anything similar with

Dollhouse

, but it would be stupid of Dan to keep watching merely in the

hope

that Whedon will undertake such a drastic retooling.

permalink

-

go to top

http://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/

at 04:08 on 2009-07-12Um - just chiming in as a Niner, to say that shows certainly can develop. But much of what I absolutely loved about DS9 was there from the first season. And that included the Dominion. Yes, they were introduced in the first season! (at least, I'm pretty sure they were - or very early in the second).

permalink

-

go to top

Niall

at 09:01 on 2009-07-12Mary, you're right; I'd remembered "Rules of Acquisition" as being late-S2, not mid. Nor am I saying, actually, that DS9 wasn't good until S3; I have a substantial amount of affection for S1 and S2. But the *perception* exists that DS9 didn't get good until S3, with the appearance of the elements I mentioned. And while Arthur is in a sense correct that the grafts are more organic than I allowed in making my point, I dispute that it's still the same show: it changes complexion radically, from a show about building peace to a show about fighting war. It's as radical as the change in Torchwood, just done more gradually.

Arthur:

And I'm sure that there's a number of people out there who actually liked the first two seasons and are completely livid about Children of Earth

Yes, there are. The arrogant, superior part of me finds them hilarious. But if you're going to make "some people like the early version" your counter-argument, well, that could apply to any TV show. I'm sure plenty of people were pissed off when the Dominion showed up, too (probably pissed off for reasons not a million miles away from those behind my dislike of the recent Trek film, come to think of it: a betrayal of the Trek vision). That said, as it happens I think Children of Earth would have been better as an original production -- the ending is hampered by the need to fit into an ongoing continuity.

but it would be stupid of Dan to keep watching merely in the hope that Whedon will undertake such a drastic retooling.

Indeed, and I wasn't suggesting he should. I was disputing his general argument. Angel is yet another example: later seasons bear very little resemblance to the format they started out with (indeed, you may remember how vocal fans of the initial help-the-helpless-of-the-week concept were when the show moved away from it). But there are plenty of fans who joined the show at S2, or S4, or S5, who don't like seasons earlier than those points because of the ways in which they are different from the version of the show that they like.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 15:54 on 2009-07-12

And while Arthur is in a sense correct that the grafts are more organic than I allowed in making my point, I dispute that it's still the same show: it changes complexion radically, from a show about building peace to a show about fighting war.

There I think we just have to disagree - the threat of war was

always

present in DS9, it's just that we were led to expect trouble to break out between Cardassia and Bajor. (If war wasn't

potentially

about to break out at any moment, the whole "building peace" thing would have fallen flat after all.) The fact that the war turned out to be against the Dominion instead was a misdirection, but not one without precedent in the sort of story being told. (In fact, it's a lot like the similar misdirection in

Babylon 5

, where at the beginning we're all expecting shit to kick off between the Centauri and the Narn and the Vorlons to remain steadfastly neutral.

Speaking of B5, in fact, you could equally argue that the early seasons of that are about building peace rather than fighting a war, but the war was still planned from the very beginning.

permalink

-

go to top

http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 21:03 on 2009-07-12

Angel is yet another example: later seasons bear very little resemblance to the format they started out with (indeed, you may remember how vocal fans of the initial help-the-helpless-of-the-week concept were when the show moved away from it). But there are plenty of fans who joined the show at S2, or S4, or S5, who don't like seasons earlier than those points because of the ways in which they are different from the version of the show that they like.

Supernatural in S4 became a war vs. heaven and hell with the main characters in the middle story. There are fans who don't like this direction and wish they'd go back to MOTW. Others have gotten more interested tihs season.

However, I would never say this is a fundamental change of show. It's still imo a disagreement over the most enjoyable way to deal with the same characters and general idea. I liked the original premise of 2 brothers running around fighting demons. I'm more grabbed by what's going on now. But what's going on now is still dependent on the exact same brother relationship that was always at the center of the show, the family drama played out with supernatural beings is still the central idea. If I'd hated that premise the shift to angels and the apocolypse would not change that. The Wincesters are still the same family. If I like them now I can't help but also like them in S1 (and that would be true even if I hadn't cared for them as much back when S1 was first-run). I'm still expected to care about these characters and what's important to these characters is still their family.

The move from MOTW to a mytharc is pretty common since The X-Files, actually. Many mytharcs basically are MOTWs where it's personal played out over many episodes instead of just one.

permalink

-

go to top

Robinson L

at 18:36 on 2009-07-14

TV series don't get better they just get better executed.

All right Dan,

now

I see what you're saying, but I think you're treading on some tricky linguistic ground, here.

Sure, it might be more accurate to say that tv shows don't get better, it's the

quality

of the shows which gets better. Just as it would be more accurate to say that the Earth revolves so that the sun is more/less in view, rather than "the sun is rising/setting." But who the hell talks like that? It's not even that good a comparison, anyway, because just saying "the earth revolves" doesn't mislead 99% percent of readers, whereas saying "good TV is good TV from the start, no exceptions" can be

very

misleading, as we've just seen ...

permalink

-

go to top

Viorica

at 03:43 on 2009-07-27

The Wincesters

*sniggers*

There are people who were pissed off by

Children of Earth

, but not really because of any change in tone. They're raging because a very popular character/pairing was killed off, and this fandom has some truly deranged 'shippers. However, this is a good example of a series that fundamentally changed when the tone shifted. Torchwood's first two seasons are about a secret alien-fighting organisation that's only slightly less campy than

Xena

, where no one really has to make serious decisions beyond "Who would I rather sleep with?", and death can be reversed with a magical robotic arm.

Children of Earth

is about an alien-fighting organisation that's extremely serious and dark, where agonising choices have to be made, and death can't just be undone. Same premise, very different show.

permalink

-

go to top

http://matthew.wilson.myopenid.com/

at 14:40 on 2009-08-02Buffy had a plan in season 7?