The Rabbit Hole

It translated this: Echo DeMille, un facteur ordinaire, découvre qu'il a un surprenant pouvoir, cela fait de lui une cible into this...

"Echo DeMille, an ordinary factor, discovers qu' it has one surprising to be able, that made of him a target."

My French is made of fail now that it's eight years out of use and one language intervening, and I could still have done that better. I just couldn't get "une cible." From context, I was thinking it was "a problem," except that "cela fait de lui" is "has made (of) him." It could be "has made trouble for him," but the grammar wasn't there. Well, now I know. It's "target."

But, yeah, I didn't assume the translator would be able to compensate for the not-French English bastardization that is "un surprenant pouvoir."

Oh, and all this has to do with Heroes for those few of you who, after last season, are still interested. I haven't bothered to look and see if it's up on the normal site yet, but some French site has the first webisode that's bridging seasons two and three.

I still don't know quite what to make of webisodes. My last experience with them was for the season two-three bridge of Battlestar Galactica. Those were painfully extraneous. They didn't add anything we couldn't infer from actions taken/words spoken in the season premiere, and they only spent time on characters that weren't really long for the series. It's interesting to learn more about the characters, but these were deleted scenes that should have just come out with the season DVDs, not something that truly tantalized for a new season.

With the Heroes webisode, it seems to want to set up a separate story from the show (sorta like the direct-to-DVD release of the adventures of the techie guys in the background of Get Smart, which I kinda loved for its adorableness). Which is really the better way to go, I think. Bringing the main characters into the side plots that won't (most likely, and shouldn't) be addressed in the main series is just a chore. Because there's no way I'm going to pay attention to Johnny Come Lately to Superpowers when, say, Nathan Petrelli is there to gawk at. (To say nothing of Sylar.)

The only problem with this approach is that if it's not necessary to understanding the series and it doesn't have some creepy conspiracy/mystery angle (a la the web stuff for LOST), not watching it doesn't have any consequences for someone who watches the show. There's a good chance, then, that people just won't. (I plan on reviewing this series for Pink Raygun, so I'm keeping track. Hopefully, they won't all require me to experiment with the remnants of my French.)

I can't believe that on a show where one of the stars has the weirdest duck-tail haircut, the thing that bothers me most is not knowing where on Earth he got a cast from. So, Supernatural fans, how did Sam get a cast, and why, after several months, does he still have one? (Warning: I'm only halfway through season two, so references to events later probably won't make sense to me.)

I feel pretty good about catching up on TV, but I'm still so far behind it's ridiculous. I mean, LOST is over and I've not seen half the episodes (or more). Ditto Torchwood. Sooooo far behind on Doctor Who that I'm at risk for spoiling whenever I turn on BSG on Fridays because the American broadcast is ahead of me. SHAMEFUL.

And all of those are going to continue to be neglected as I should have not one but two discs of Tales from the Crypt coming to me from Netflix today. Damn EC Comics reprints being so expensive! I shall have to watch the wonderfully gruesome horror on the tele-vision-machine!

Explain to me what is fandom to other, normal people. I have this idea that I am insane. It's probably a correct appraisal of my behavior, but all the same, I'd like to know that I'm not alone.

[Poll #1192336]

I just needed to poll. I realize I'm currently fascinated and frustrated by fandoms for two works that really are problematic to be fannish about aside from just enjoying the canon product. One is Battlestar Galactica; the other is Iron Man. The former is hard to enjoy the fan off-shoots because NOTHING is as good as the show. Reading the scripts from the show isn't as good as the show because the show flies less on the words and plot than it does on the acting that makes it happen. The latter is problematic because, gosh darn it, it's pretty near perfect and there's hardly a thing to add or subtract from it, dramatically. (Which makes me very scared for the sequel prospects, but we'll see.)

This is really annoying, in case I haven't made that clear. Stupid fandoms. They're eating my life and giving almost nothing back. And, on top of that, I have trouble mustering interest in anything else. I have friggin' Doctor Who--AND IT'S GOOD!--that I'm not watching because I'm moping around waiting for next Friday (and the inevitable DVD release of Iron Man since I am too po' to go back to the theater again). I thought maybe I'd decompressed after a couple of days with no BSG on the horizon. Nope. I'm back to refreshing TWoP every hour in hopes of a recap update. GAAAAhHHHHH.

How do other people get un-obsessed with fandom? HELP ME!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO moonlightalice!

I'd razz her for being another year older but she's half a decade younger (AT LEAST) than most of us including myself, so, yeah. Happy Birthday! Where would we be without your sweetly sarcastic commentary on everything? Nowhere, that's where! Treat yourself well, and when next I see you, there will be hugs and entertainment to amuse the birthday girl, m'kay?



Due to general hangings out with friends both last night and today, I've no time to watch BSG until late, late tonight, tomorrow at the earliest. I've promised to watch with feiran and darkling1, which is really more fun anyway, so I'm going to do that and it will then depend on us three coordinating schedules.

I think this means I need to just stay off the internets because even looking at cut-tags on entries that talk about last night make me want to either watch or just spoil myself and see what people thought. I'm going to opt with staying off the internets. Ciao, people.

Clip from "Guess What's Coming to Dinner," Friday's Battlestar Galactica episode. Clip is here, spoilers, yo!

Yay for that particular character getting to do something at the 1 second mark! Yay for getting back to those characters in that place where the clip takes place. I mean, I liked spending time with the characters in that other place, but it's time to check in with these guys, too. (Obviously, I am trying to make my thoughts clear without spoiling.) Sucks to be the people who were in that other place last episode if this one character can't make everyone listen to him/her!

Oh, and upon rewatching "Faith" with darkling1, feiran had this great comment:

( ACK SPOILERS )

She likened Anders unto Peter from Office Space. So wrong it's totally right. And more than a little hot. Yeeoooooww!

ETA: MUST USE CUT-TAGS ON SPOILERS DAMN IT.

I was gonna wait to post until I had something coherent about the latest episode of BSG to write, but I don't and I've still got the itch to post. Withdrawal will do that for you.

Let's see, what to say has been going on? Not a whole helluva lot. I got about four Smallville reviews done up for Pink Raygun, only one of which has gone up, two are in, three are written, and the fourth is in notes. I went a little ga-ga with the second one, so I'm sure the editor is just still slogging through my many tiered levels of insanity there. Luckily for her, the show had this one incandescently good episode and then went back to sucking hard. If I have to watch another "Jimmy Olsen is goofy" or "Clark's ego gets another sloppy blow job" episode, I'm going to scream.

And still review it. Sigh.

The shirt for the best candidate we can hope for in the next election. ::nods importantly::

More on BSG later when I rewatch the episode with 100% less snark.

Know what rhymes with snark, though? IRON MAN.

Worth the wait, methinks, and a kindly, geekly thank you to the folks who trekked out to see it with me. It's impossibly great that all the fabulous lines from the trailers were not even half the good ones. To my mind, it was created, start to finish, with a cynicism in all but the comic-y aspects. As in the world view was pessimistically realistic, but as soon as the question of flying, shooting robot suits came up, allllllll was good. The science wasn't laughably centered upon the way it was in Fantastic Four; they focused more on the process of refinement. So even if making a person-sized and -shaped fighter jet (with bluetooth!) is ridiculous, they took enough baby steps that it worked out all good.

And you gotta give it up to Robert Downey, Jr. Holy hell, welcome to inappropriate attraction land, population me, feiran, and viridian! (Don't deny it, viridian, I saw your LJ.) Yeah, well, short of killing a few people, I doubt there's much more Tony Stark could have been or done to be hotter. I can't explain the attraction except for the fact that there's something very funny and refreshing about a superhero who is vain as a peacock. (It worked for Johnny Storm!)

I think Robert Downey, Jr. really did well underplaying the big reversal in Stark's mindset while still making it clear that, while his personality wasn't completely reformed, his goals in life were. That's not an easy balance, but he did it supremely well--shifting Stark's macrovision and not his micro. There's a lot of absurdity to his position, but somehow he brought all the contradictory aspects into flesh. Amazingly, the fact that an engineering nerd like Tony Stark should never be as rich or as popular as he seemingly is--the nerd fantasy in other words--never seems impossible. It helps that, yes, Robert Downey, Jr. is attractive and funny and those are definite pluses when it comes to willing suspension of disbelief, but he did also sell the scientist and the inner child.

And then there's the ending ( spoiler )

And the post-credits thing made Trinity look like her icon for this post. Because, seriously, whoa ( spoiler! )

Um, anyone willing to come see The Incredible Hulk? I have discount tickets that drop the price to like $1.50 in Manhattan at a Regal theater. (Free outside of the island.) I know viridian tentatively agreed so long as she was plied with alcohol so as to avoid a repeat performance of our trip to see The Hulk. Anyone else? I promise the same ply-age.

Gakked from deltagrl:

1. My username is _____ because ____.

My username is trinityvixen because I first got onto the intertubes in the 1990s and two things were big for me back then: The Matrix and Garbage. Because The Matrix was hella popular, I had to modify Trinity somehow. At the same, I was working on a photo collage in my studio art class (in high school OMG SO LONG AGO) where I found a bunch of kick-ass sexy images and, being lazy, just gave it a title of a Garbage song off their debut album. I am so classy, I cut out ransom-note letters along the bottom to spell out "Supervixen." And voila, I had my username when I combined that with my leather-fetish lesbian crush #2. (#1 is Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns.) It's lasted me past my AIM days into LJ because I can't be arsed to come up with a new one. I've had it for so long I even think of me in terms of being Trinity (short for trinityvixen) or TV a lot.

2. My name is _____ because _____.

My name is "Cult of Olmos," because if I had to worship a scary Latin God, I would worship Edward James Olmos. I think the exact phrase came from a TWoP review of Battlestar Galactica. I switched to it after seeing a clip of fourth season EJO that nearly made me wee myself in terror. Also, I find it funny that there happens to be a cult on the show right now, and yeah, I lead the counter-cult of people who'd prefer to frak Daddy Adama, all right?

3. My journal is titled ____ because ____.

My journal is titled "The Rabbit Hole" because at the time I got an LJ, I was--SURPRISE--still obsessed with The Matrix. I could pretend it was because I'd read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that year, but we all know that has nothing to do with it. I really should change it because I don't really care any more. In fact, if you check, I haven't so much as wistfully remembered my Matrix obsession in years.

4. My friends page is called ____ because ____.

My friends page is called "Spaniards of Mass Destruction" because it was some funny, topical humor from America: the Book--the calendar! about some war or another with the Spanish. At this point, it's just funny to say.

5. My default userpic is ____ because ____.

My default userpic is a Simpsons-ized Fourth Doctor because it is awesome. Tom Baker is my favorite of all the Doctors. He's what I wish Ten could be--still crazy, less manic. Also, this was a guy you could definitely buy was an alien with his goofy appearance. He fits so well as a little animated character. They need to have Tom Baker up on that show.

What's the point of caving and going ahead and watching BSG mid-day like the rest of the crazy fangirls if I can't do it!? STUPID MACS, DIE!

It's the "Chuck Norris" of outer space: Saul Tigh!

My absolute favorite: Saul Tigh is Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Joker, and the Thief.

(This isn't bad either: Saul Tigh has a moral compass - it points due CRAZY.)