In Which Your Heroine is a Crotchety Old Fandom Lady

[netgirl_y2k]

-Tumblr always makes me feel like an old fandom lady, never more so than when it took my dash about forty-eight hours to go from doing cartwheels about Agent Carter's renewal, to panicking about the change of setting for S2 and the possibility of Haley Atwell being the only returning cast member. I don't know-- well, nobody knows. It could be brilliant, if they're doing a time skip then we're into early fifties Hollywood which is pretty cool. It could well be that I was right the first time, in my failure to have much time for the MCU, and Agent Carter S1 was just a brief, glorious aberration. Either way, I don't have it in me to worry.

Plus, I came to Agent Carter via Merlin (which crashed and burned into a toxic mess of misogyny, bitterness, and resentment), Doctor Who (which at the very least teaches us not to fear change), and the endless, endless bloody sniping in ASOIAF/Game of that's your adaption choice? So I think I have earned my slightly condescending Oh, you sweet summer children moment.

-Speaking of Game of Thrones, my overwhelming reaction to S5 continues to be: I understand why you made these adaptation choices, I don't necessarily agree with you with you about all of them, and I think in a few cases your execution leaves a lot to be desired. But my ambivalence is mostly drowned out by my gratitude that you're moving the story along before I was forced to perform a one woman reenactment of the Get On With It! crowd scene from Holy Grail.

And from episode five we learned that Jorah Mormont is that character in the zombie movie who gets bitten and then doesn't tell anyone. It seems like they're giving him Connington's plot from the books, which suggest that Young Griff is definitely out. Yay and hallelujah! I am choosing to take this as confirmation that he was as much of a pointless red herring as I always suspected him to be. Of course, I also took the omission of the Greyjoys to mean the same thing.

It occurs to me that's it's probably easier to be chilled about the show's choices when a lot of the stuff they're changing or ignoring is the stuff that bores and annoys you anyway.

Shireen Baratheon is a cutie patootie, and should be queen, or at the very least minister for eduction. Oh, show, don't think I don't recognise when you're buffing a character up for the slaughter. It will never fail to impress me how the show, and Stephen Dillane of course, managed to interest me in Stannis, a book character so uninteresting to me that I genuinely kept forgetting that he hadn't died yet.

I know people have reservations about Sansa's stuff, and rightly so, but Brienne's faithful waiting, and the whole 'light a candle in your window if you need me and I'll come at once' thing hit narrative kinks I didn't know I had.

My new OTP is Dany/Making better life choices.

- I have signed up for remix, and I think other people should too. There's no qualifying fandoms this year, which I like, because I always thought they skewed towards old, slashy fandoms and locked people into offering fandoms they were otherwise pretty much done with. But I'll be interested to see how matching shakes out, and if it actually changes what people are writing that much.

See, this is what happens when you grow old in fandom, you start noticing changes in fandom trends, which is a highly specific and difficult to explain hobby.

Comments

[endeni]

/It seems like they're giving him Connington's plot from the books/ - *faceplam* That's whose arc originally was! I was waking my brains trying and failing to remember. Thank you! *g*
/which suggest that Young Griff is definitely out/ - Which also makes the no Arianne make more sense. *nods*
OMG, minister!Shireen, I love it! *g*
/Brienne's faithful waiting, and the whole 'light a candle in your window if you need me and I'll come at once' thing hit narrative kinks/ - Me too! I want Brienne to save Sansa from that situation so bad!
/My new OTP is Dany/Making better life choices./ - A worthy OPT, I say! :) Love how they played that scene with what's-is-name Hizdahr zo Loraq and how in control she was. Also, what about Selmy's death? Did they kill him because they didn't need him around any more now that the Greyjoy's seige is out of the picture? Is Jorah going to take his place? (If he doesn't die first.) Or did Selmy die just to emphasize the deepness of the shit Dany is in? (And to do Cal from Orphan Black Daario Naharis something more to do?)

[netgirl_y2k]

My guess would be that book Barristan is about to die in the siege of Meereen; and the show's not doing the siege as it would be a huge set piece that they can't afford, and because they don't have 80% of the players. It also renders Quentyn surplus to requirements, which explains his absence. So Selmy's death gets moved up and used to isolate Dany.

Yeah, I still think marrying Hizdahr and reopening the fighting pits is a bad decision, but I appreciate that it is framed as Dany's decision and not something she did because she was backed into a corner.

[endeni]

/It also renders Quentyn surplus to requirements/ - Oh, of course, Quentyn too. Definitely. *nods*
/but I appreciate that it is framed as Dany's decision and not something she did because she was backed into a corner./ - Yes, exactly. *nods*

[fitz_y]

My new OTP is Dany/Making better life choices. YES.

"Buffing a character up for slaughter" – it's so transparent, isn't it? Walking Dead is the KING of this.

Also hi lady hi – totally unrelated! Do you want to come visit us in Berlin this summer, we miss you!! <3

[netgirl_y2k]

Hi! Hi! You know, I would love that. I had such a tremendous time with you guys last time. Let me know what sort of dates you'd be thinking of, because I wouldn't want to be underfoot when you're busy.

(this, by the way, is round one of est. fifteen rounds of very British are you sure :-) )

[fitz_y]

Can I go ahead and say fifteen YES, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! to your "are you sure"s? Okay, good, that's done. ;-) Because it would be awesome if you came to visit us again. Hil's very excited about the prospect, too.

Let's see, so early June might be good. Hilary's got German class in the mornings, and I'll be working 9-5 BUT with enough advance notice, I can totally take some days off of my dayjob to hang out and cavort around the city together and drink beer. Kelly, i.e. my other fabulous beta and member of our lovely skype writing group we used to have, will be visiting as of the 18th and probably staying for at least a week. So before the 18th would be good. (I'd say we should ALL converge on Berlin together, but the truth is we only have one spare mattress.)

Early July's probably another fine time, as Hilary has the first two weeks off (again I can took off easily with some notice). But the only thing is that at some point in July I am going to the States, but we don't know WHEN yet. (My parents are flying me over for my grandmother's funeral. They are waiting for the date from Arlington Cemetary, which is where nearly all US Veterans and their wives are buried, so it takes them a while to hand out dates...) So once we know that I can tell you more about July. What do you think, does any of that sound enticing to you? I promise we won't let you get heat stroke again and, if it gets too hot, will just take you to a nice cool bar with cold beer and fans or go see some movies in air conditioning.

Have I said the word "beer" enough? <3 <3 <3

[netgirl_y2k]

As luck would have it the first two weeks of June are my annual leave from work (I would not come for two weeks, obvs). I could probably make July work, but I would have to sweet talk people into covering my shifts and end up running a deficit in the economy of favours.

If you can swing time off that would be awesome as I adored hanging out with you, and if you can't I am a very low maintenance house guest; I amuse myself, and there are huge swathes of Berlin I haven't seen yet, plus I am easily diverted by beer.

If early June suits I shall start looking at flights and puppy sitters.

Tell Hilary I said hi! Oh, and my condolences about your grandmother...

[fitz_y]

Dude, that is not luck that's FATE telling you to return to Berlin in June. ;-) Let's plan for June, w00t! I realized, too, that I have a work thing in Hamburg over the weekend of the 12th to the 14th (which I somehow had forgotten about!) and a full day conference on the 2nd. So with those exceptions, just tell me when you're coming and I'll take some time off work. YAY YAY YAY!!!!

Yeah, my grandma had been deteriorating a lot over the last year, and she passed super quickly and painlessly. But yeah, I keep seeing things like postcards and thinking I should send them to her, and then realizing of course, I can't. It's also weird to have the last one of that generation gone. Makes me feel a bit more alone. I mean, OTOH, it's kinda amazing that three of my grandparents lived until I was 33. (They've all passed away in the past few years.) Anyway, I learned things like how to make a mean pierogi from my grandmother, so that's pretty awesome. ;-)

Can't wait to see you, hon! ♥