So I came to the Marvel Movie Universe as a total novice. When I have a question, my local expert is my oath-sister, Jan. I was surprised by how much I've enjoyed all the movies and Agents of Shield.

So we're watching Agent Carter last week when Dottie took down Mr. Mink, and I exclaimed, "Whoa -- she has to be from the Black Widow school!" And Jan beamed with pride...

Downside: not everyone does it right. Oh well.

(In other news, welcome back, Teresa.)

I bet this joy-in-story, call it continuity porn I suppose, is part of why humans keep reinventing and retelling and working with existing stories -- why transformative works, fanfic, etc, even EXIST.

It's not everyone's kink, and that's ok, but it is a legitimate thing to enjoy out of a story.

I think SKZB was talking about the other side of this last week, also. Knowing more about the world than you put on paper lets you reveal those bits when they are useful, without contradicting yourself.

The other side of the coin is when you think the show is on the same page as you, and it turns out they're not. (E.g.: gur nyvra pvgl jnfa'g ba gur zbba nsgre nyy.) It's a shock of disappointment which can taint the show disproportionately, if it hits you on a mental fault line.

(Or, if it hits you differently, can lead to the unplanned production of fanfic.)

The waitress is a brunette and is named Sarah.

It's one of the great strengths of franchises: eventually, they can shout out to themselves. DS9 going back to the "Mirror, Mirror" universe, what Trek now just calls the Mirror Universe, for example. It got old, and dumb, in later seasons, but the first time, it was a surprise and a delight. And then the brilliant "Trials and Tribble-ations," also DS9, that built on the original "Trouble." It's a way of paying off a fan's investment, I think.

And what the MCU has been doing so well is keeping enough to engage the sense of wonder, but picking and choosing what to keep (from what it has available, of course, given licensing deals) so that it isn't bogged down in continuity snarls. It's a fresh reset of the universe, looking at everything through a new lens.

@8 and 9: The waitress is Angie, and yes, a brunette. The "ballerina"/Red Room agent (in light of the preview for next week I think it's fair to say Teresa's on the money) is Dottie.

(Note also that the Age of Ultron preview has brief scenes of young children in a ballet class...)

I've been enjoying this in layers:

• The thrill of recognition of a comics element that isn't made explicit.
• The appreciation when they balance hints for the comics fans with making the story self-contained for the new viewers (when they do it well, which is often).
• The guessing game when I notice something they're going to have to change from the comics due to issues with rights or with the MCU timeline.
• The discoveries from doing deep dives on the web (and on Marvel Comics Unlimited) after I recognize something I don't know thoroughly.

I watched last week's episode last night. My reactions could be summed up as "Wow! Wow! Wow!"

The bit with the agent trying to empathize with the rummy, as a fellow veteran dealing with civilian life and blowing it. The show could have depicted all the guys as misogynistic cartoonish types that Carter has to cover for, but they do have some competencies and dedication. Makes them both more interesting and more of a problem.

The scene with Dottie and Mr. Mink. The *angle* they shot it from, so you could see it was filmed in a real place with a wooden floor.

And the total surprise when Dottie admires his evil little machine pistol and then takes out that evil fuck.

Man. The 70s and 80s had based-on-comic-book shows, but they were mostly sloppy. Or worse, spoofish, because the scriptwriters couldn't imagine comics as anything other that something to be mocked.

Continuing something I mentioned on the Open Thread: Now we have screenwriters who teethed on comics, games, and written SF. They're turning out shows that not only respect the material, but that are *good television.*

Certainly! Humans have a deep drive to make the world make sense, part of which is learning what's going on and how things work. And it's easy for us to sublimate that into a fictional world.

I've been enjoying Agent Carter because, among other reasons, for once we have a leading lady who is fit, gorgeous, and actually has some meat on her bones. A physique a mere mortal woman could reasonably aspire to. (Modulo hours of physical training....)

With regard to AoS, I was particularly pleased to make the connections when they revealed Skye's real name is 'Daisy'. "Ah," I said to Avedon, "that means she's Daisy Johnson aka Quake ans will soon be manifesting earthquake causing abilities, and that her father is Calvin Zabo aka Mr Hyde." I don't know if they'll ever call him that, but he did say his name was 'Cal' so it's him alright.

Oh, and Uatu is currently dead. He was murdered, and his eyes removed.

Me, I love the continuity porn. Even though Kevin Feige has given us Thanos without Adam Warlock and a right-handed Infinity Gauntlet, Thor without Balder, etc. etc., the MCU makes my comic-book-raised heart go "squee!"

But the fact that the Loki fangirls have no idea who Thanos is drives me nuts, i.e., to write continuity porn fanfiction. The flip side of all the joy of recognition is the annoyance of realizing how many viewers of the movies just don't get it.

Secret Wars and Crisis featured these wonderful splash panels containing dozens of characters. I vividly remember not knowing who most of these amazing people were, and the hunger I had to find out. The reference comics told me. I compared and learned, absorbed, became part of it. Piece by piece connected, forming an immense composite picture. It was like a person wandering in the
desert, coming upon a vast temple, a temple decorated with monolithic statues and covered with elaborate glyphs. I compared the glyphs, connected them with the statues, realized I was in the presence of a System of Things vast
and old.

And really, this is an intimate part of Western Civilization. This is the urge that propelled
each successive wave of Renaissance, from the Carolingian through to Petrarch. This is what moved translators across the seas to Spain and Byzantium, in search of the grand design, the ultimate jigsaw puzzle.

(The first superhero comic I loved was All-Star Squadron, which was a proper springboard for everything I have described above. Much gratitude to Roy Thomas, who always kept up the banner of the Golden Age, and never faltered in his quest to remind comics they had a history)

I don't know if my kids could possibly have the same experience with mainstream comics now. There
have been so many reboots and retcons, the reference comics would have so many caveats and alternates, that I think that rather than finding themselves in the presence of something ancient and silent, it would seem as delicate & disposable as tissues. But the video versions-those are still together.
They haven't been redone to death. So I think there is some of that blessed sense
of construction & connection.

Obviously Zola's databanks are corrupted, or he was loaded with the wrong data in the first place. This is the problem with trying to keep a sentient being on tape drive. (When that room was revealed, my first thought was "Hey look, it's about the computing power of my laptop!")

(p.s. my iPad remembers me here...even from twitter, and I have a integral keyboard for it which seems to not drive me batty).

Serge, #3: And now it turns out that they're both going to visit both hospitals. Class will out!

Stefan, #15: I think the mockery ones can all be traced back to the Adam West Batman.

Of course, as I've described it, it's also one of the best time sinks we have access to.

http://feralstreep.tumblr.com/post/108424713658/theladyscribe-singelisilverslippers

I was reading the post and nodding along and agreeing, that yes I do some of this too. And only belatedly registering that hey, Teresa posted this! Hurrah!

Sandy B. @#22 -- I am also interested in finding some different names for this stuff, especially because they are different. For instance, "competence porn" (a phrase popularized by John Rogers when discussing his heist show Leverage) is a shorthand for portraying characters who do things they are good at, because viewers/readers deeply desire to see those depictions and get visceral pleasure from it. I know I get a certain kind of joy when experiencing connections in art to other or larger works, but it isn't filling the same kind of need for me that portrayals of competence do. When I notice a continuity-type connection, I feel a joy of mastery. These feel like different enough reactions that I want different terms.

On the subject of the new Marvel telly product: I've never been much of a comics reader (beyond Scrooge McDuck and Little Lulu, before I dedicated myself to words without pictures), but I do love me some historical-setting intrigue. The period look of Agent Carter isn't quite up to UK standards of fubsy-funky, but it's not bad for American TV, which often tends to make the past look way too much like the present in mildly-retro clothes and unconvincing hairdos.

Then Danny pauses the TV and says "What?" and I have to launch into one of those explanations which is all "that was a--um, reference to...no, that's wrong, it's--it was--in Guardians? I think?" And he shakes his head in disappointment and unpauses the TV.

(My feeling about porn-porn is that it isn't famous for giving you a feeling of connection and satisfaction. I still don't have a good alternative phrase, though.)

* Did I ever tell the story on here of going to the Czech Republic and seeing posters for the new book by J.K. Rowlingova? Well, now I have.

As for what direction it is going in--I'm really looking forward to the next episode, because I'm enjoying the continuity hints as much as anyone! The show would work without them, I think, but they do add a level of delight . . .

You've got it -- SSR (modeled on the OSS) becomes S.H.I.E.L.D. and I think that Peggy's boss is a member of Hydra.

Serge Broom @52, are you aware of the Planetary/Batman crossover “Night on Earth”, which has the Planetary characters encountering six different versions of Batman?

You think the SSR is more like the FBI? I was getting the impression it was more like the OSS/CIA, but that might be because I keep thinking of it as the forerunner to SHIELD. Anyway, it doesn't really change my original point much: there were African American agents in the early FBI, but presumably few because none graduated from the FBI Academy (founded in 1935) until 1962. The SSR ought to be able to do better than that from the get-go!

I like playing the continuity game as well, and used to geek out about it with early Marvel comics. I'm glad to see how much of that early stuff keeps showing up in Agents of SHIELD and the movies. Haven't been watching Carter.

My impression is that the "foo porn" construct gets naturally generated for content which caters to the appetite associated with some strong drive. (Sometimes more than one.) Thus "porn porn" to the sexual drive, "food porn" to gustatory interests, "killporn"¹ to aggression and perhaps threat-awareness. The various sorts of "shopping porn" (tools, homes, cars, and so on) most obviously cater to acquistive interests, but I'd say that drive for "topic mastery" that we've been discussing also has a role there.

¹ The first example of the form I ever encountered (I believe in a John Brunner story), and it was as a single word.

And it's not just little things, either; the very sub title Winter Soldier for the second Captain America movie was a big flag for one major movie revelation for comics fans that non-comics fans would miss (Not the same one that caused issues for those watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Winter Soldier in potentially the wrong order).

Who gets more fun watching, the people anticipating the revelation or the people gobsmacked by it... well, it depends. I've felt both at different times, there are some stories I am eternally grateful to have walked into unspoilered, and others where I've taken great joy in putting sly references together or seeing how something I predicted actually falls out on screen.

Just for a moment here, I'd like to compare-and-contrast what's going on here with the Star Trek reboot. This comes in two major points:

1) The two Marvel shows are clearly being written by people who are some level of comics geeks. The Trek reboots are being written (and directed) by people who are not Star Trek fans. Seriously, they're not. There was an interview with the writers and director in the extra material on the first movie DVD, in which it was mentioned that none of them knew what "NCC" meant in the Enterprise ID, and when someone asked them about it they had to make shit up. How many Star Trek fans would not know that it stands for "Naval Construction Contract"? And even if you didn't know, it's a 5-second Google to look it up.

2) In an e-mail conversation, a friend pointed out to me that the first New!Trek movie was treated like a superhero origin story -- not just that we get some background about the main characters, but that the entire movie is origin story -- and that the only genre which regularly does that* is superhero movies. But Star Trek never has been a superhero story, and shoehorning it into that format loses a significant part of what made the TV shows popular.

Not wanting to hijack the discussion here, but Stefan's comment made me think about this.

* And does it over and over and OVER again, as in the cases of Spider-Man and Batman.

Madeleine Robins @70, those choices might have had something to do with ease of clearing rights. Snow White is a Disney film, owned by Marvel’s corporate parent. Wikipedia says the “Dover Boys” cartoon has fallen into the public domain.

If the setting of the show has been whitewashed so far, why should we assume that future episodes won't continue the practice? And even if future episodes get less ridiculous about race, that's still no excuse to remove 99,99999% of the people of color from the show's setting in the episodes that aired so far.

The makers of the show chose to set it in a time of even greater racial discrimination than the present, and they chose to deal with that issue by removing the people of color from the historical setting. The way the show almost entirely denies the existence of people of color isn't just something that happens, it's a deliberate choice on the part of the people making the show.

Also Arrow FINALLY had a boxing glove arrow.

What *does* it mean when someone has lost their hat?

In other words, mine was a purely personal and individual response, and one with an expiration date of sorts. I suppose it's at least partly because I watched how some reviewers responded to the way the show treated sexism ("It's over the top! Too obvious! Yeah, we get it things were bad--but with a side implication of not-that-bad!"). What started out as almost slapstick turned into a punch in the gut--again, for me--by episode 3, and then again by ep 4. So I'm willing to wait a bit to see if English Peggy is going to trip over the US colorline any time soon . . . but just a bit. (I admit, I'd be happier about reserving judgement if any of the show's creative people had responded to this particular criticism in a positive fashion--as in "we have plans, we'll get there"--but I don't think they have. Or did I miss something?)

Spoiler for the latest episode:
.
.
.
I hope the show doesn't do that thing where a woman "proves" herself to some sexist asshole and suddenly all is fine on that front. That sends a rather insidious message, in my opinion.

I don't remember which, which makes it easier to avoid spoilering; it was somewhere between 6 and 10, I just watched all of those in a binge.

Oh good, another reason to avoid the reboots.

Bryan Cranston as the new villain!

Because everyone knows what made Star Trek great was having big name stars as villains!

Like Jacque, I'm avoiding the reboots. (Unless I can treat them as some kind of AU, which is much easier with fanfic.)

I suspect that what made Star Trek great is the timeliness of it - a show about space during the Space Race was bound to be topical - and the good writing in the episodes with good writing in them. They did have some big-name stars, I think. I could be wrong, but wasn't DeForrest Kelly a relatively big name? Bryan Cranston isn't just a big-name actor, he's a really good actor, and I reckon that's good news for the next film. Which I'm excited about.

*Sexism not necessarily fixed, which is one reason I was very disappointed in the second one. Cheesiness... possibly not fixed, but certainly updated.
**At Loncon this summer, another fan of the original show had a good long rant after I said I liked Reboot, which included a comment - that I'm reasonably sure was aimed at me, given that my first favourite Trek character was Riker because "he has a beard so he looks like Daddy!"- about people too young to have taste. I wanted very much afterwards to go to her and ask what age a sense of taste kicks in, and how old she was when she first watched Star Trek.

It is amazing.

Benedict Cumberbatch is the cat's pajamas.

It's the notion that you have to have a villain that I'm bugged about.

Considering the time period, FBI agent Jimmy Woo should be knocking about, fighting a certain sinister oriental menace and making eyes at said menace's niece...

The Marvel movies mostly have been good at avoiding that, even if the heroes are too cozy with the military-industrial establishment for my liking. But than that's the case in the comics too at the moment.

That, I am totally on board with.

Em @93 That, I am totally on board with.

Soooo.... you want a Star Trekian version of "Twister" or "Armageddon" or "The Day After Tomorrow" or "Cloverfield" or "Gravity" or some other disasters films/stories? I have a fondness for disaster movies so I'm on board with this. However, making a gripping movie with a low cheese/audience snark factor without a live villain is hard. Mother Nature (or the Universe, in this case) doesn't really care about the protagonist. No live villain, no upping the stakes. No maneuver/counter maneuver. No best laid plans going awry. No car chases. (Running away in a car/truck/random motorvehicle does not count as a chase in my opinion. That's simply lack of proper planning and situational awareness.)

"To Build A Fire" by Jack London is the first thing that comes to mind when people talk about villainless stories. It's also the first story I ever remember reading that had no villain. It had a huge impact on me. To do something similar with Star Trek would have to borrow heavily from the plot from "Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. Both are very effective. Both are short stories. Both run counter to the Star Trek cannon rules.

In other words, the crew of the Enterprise may not need a specific Evil Archenemy just for the sake of lots and lots of action.

The thing that bugs me most is the shift in moral center. On classic Trek, Kirk was the kind of hero who would go out of his way to offer friendship to a defeated enemy. In the movie, that very attitude is mocked, used as the setup line for a cheap joke and stupid explosion ending.

Then there’s the fact that the movie plotlines just make no sense. Star Trek Into Darkness reveals that the Federation is reacting to the possibility of war with the Klingons by building bigger and tougher starships— and establishes early in the movie that they have super-transporters that can beam someone from Earth straight to the Klingon homeworld, making starships irrelevant.

Star Trek as I understand it is an exploration story -- that's a lot like To Build A Fire (and the rest of the Jack London canon) is. The Enterprise, on its own in an environment that's hostile to the life forms aboard it, boldly going and occasionally freezing to death.

The most reliable antagonist as far as I can tell is the holodeck. You'd think they'd have made that thing more reliable at some point. Though, (she says, in a desperate effort to relate this back to the thread topic) at least the running "the holodeck is malfunctioning again, why is it even possible to disengage the safety protocols?!" gag provides continuity.

Hint: Whales.

* * *

$.02: The Trek reboot movies were flashy, loud, generally agreeable mindless adventure movies that happened to have the Star Trek characters and settings (sort of) in them. Kind of like those theatrical Doctor Who movies that have no connection with (and different actors from) the Doctor Who TV series. None of the idealism of the original remains. Science and technology are bent to fit the flashy, loud story.

Maybe the new director will create less bombastic entries than Abrams.

Well. Anyway. I think the Marvel/Disney folks have found a way to make movies that are both smart and exciting and have interesting characters. I watched Guardians of the Galaxy when my father was dying (sad but expected), or had recently kicked the bucket (a relief), and I must say the mere sight of that "frames of comics flickering past" logo sequence just immediately took me someplace else. It has become a signal that I'm getting a few hours of escapist stuff I trust and adore.

Agents of SHIELD (eventually) and Agent Carter (right out of the gate, and getting better every episode) give me the same feeling.

I wish there was a Star Trek reboot that took a shot at proving that wrong. Exploration. Strange new worlds, new life, new civilizations, and etcetera. Star Trek (at least the TV shows and movies) hasn't been about that for a very long time.

Later seasons, not so much.

It seems clear (to me, and who knows what that's worth) that some early draft of the script had Admiral Peter Weller as the villain, setting up the honorable Khan under duress to drum up his pet war. That is a pretty classic Trek storyline, after all -- the limited military viewpoint versus the greater good, and a "villain is us" theme.

And they kept *most* of that; except they couldn't resist the idea of Khan crashing a starship into a city and getting punched out by Kirk. Which makes a ham sandwich of the entire point.

That's about half-and-half if you count the conspiracies separately from the individual villains. But perhaps more to the point, even when there were villains, the movies never became superhero movies; the goal was never just to defeat the villain, it was to keep the underlying goals of the Star Trek universe alive.

Victoria, #95: Some of the best ClassicTrek episodes weren't about "Kirk in danger" -- they were about "Kirk has a decision to make".

Think, for example, about "The City on the Edge of Forever" -- Kirk has to make a choice between the woman he loves and the entire future. That's plenty of upping the stakes for me! But there's no villain.

Think about "The Devil in the Dark". That sure looks like a villain -- something is killing all those miners. But as we find out more about it, guess what? It's a mother! The miners are killing her children, and she's fighting back in the only way she can.

Moving up to NextGen, think about "The Measure of a Man". Is Data human? Does he have the rights of a flesh-and-blood crew member, or is he property that can be requisitioned and disassembled at will? Lots of suspense, angst (Riker has to make the case against Data, and he has to do so to the best of his ability), and upping stakes. But no villain.

Think about The Voyage Home. The Federation is in danger of being destroyed because an alien society thinks we've exterminated another intelligent species. In point of fact, we have, and the Enterprise has to go back in time and rescue some specimens. You might think of that as having a villain, but I don't; that's two societies with different priorities having to find a way to make peace with each other, and an old mistake being fixed.

These stories, I suspect, are the sort of things that Abrams considers "too intellectual". He seems to want to remake Star Trek on about the fourth-grade level. Lots of things that go bang, and all the conflicts are very clear-cut black and white -- no nuances, no ethical issues. He wants superhero stories, but Star Trek has never been about superheroes.

I can accept, I expect snarling arrogant villains in superhero movies. They need good villains, personalized evil, and over-the-top threats. Seeing a sneering putz like Loki getting rag-dolled by the Hulk . . . oh, what a joy!

I expect more from a Star Trek story. I expect some idealism, a touch of "cowboy" because that's a tradition, and fair mindedness.

That said--okay, we get a couple of POCs on the SSR and Commandos side. But it's not mentioned, not acknowledged, so evidently we are just going to pretend that 1940s-style racism does not exist. Yeah, no. If they were going to go that road, they probably should have done it from episode one, and the streets of NYC still ought to be a lot more diverse.

So it goes. I'm still enjoying the show, but from now on in I'm watching a fantasy, more or less. I suppose that isn't inappropriate, but it could have been a richer fantasy. Ah, well. The Red Room girl, the last scene with Dottie--both were chilling, and flawlessly executed, as well as being shout-outs to both movie and comics continuity.

Remember how TV Guide used to have those brief episode summaries in its listings? (Maybe still does?) A friend of mine told me that there was a period where, week after week, the listing for Star Trek said either “The Enterprise is in trouble, and only Captain Kirk can save it!” or “The Enterprise finds an idyllic planet, but Captain Kirk suspect all is not as it seems!”

Josh and I recently watched all of the original Sailor Moon anime series and movies, and we loved that stuff from season one didn't suddenly get forgotten in season two (for the most part). We'll be starting the new anime series soon, I hope.

Disney had a, shall we say, attitude towards Russia for a specific reason: I can't remember if it was during his HUAC testimony (short, biased version: Yes there are Communists in Hollywood, they struck against my studio, and here are the names) but he said that they sent one print of Snow White to Russia and it took them seven years to return it without payment, covered in scratches and splices. I assume that somebody knew their history.

And the use of Dover Boys makes me suspect it even more. Chuck Jones was the director, and an interviewer once did a fair amount of research before talking to him, including looking over the available info from when he worked at Disney. He asked "Why did your past jobs include lumberjack? I haven't seen that anywhere else?" Jones said "Oh, that was internal Disney code for communist."

Em: wasn't DeForest Kelly a relatively big name?

At least one of the obituaries when he died said he'd officially retired just before being cast in the series.

Not me, not completely, as I said. I'm still finding the show fun, the acting terrific, and Carter's situation relatively compelling. But I'm not part of the group that's being erased (or half-erased maybe, after ep 5).

So, still weak, but even more possible as a deliberate strategy to keep the focus on Peggy's problems, then.

Why is there a waitress in an automat?

It's not just African Americans we're missing, but where are the Puerto Ricans? NYC had/has a thriving Chinatown, but we've seen only one Asian agent, and no Asians on the streets?

And didn't the UN set up shop in NYC about this time, adding even more nationalities to the area?

I find out the most interesting things because I've been reading Making Light . . .

So now I just say "Comic Book Nerdgasm" and she waves it off.

Does anyone know where they filmed this? If it was in the USA, a casting call would have brought them extras in all shapes, colors and sizes. (And they'd have had geeks crawling out of the walls for the chance to do so...)

One is the way they're dealing with 1940s sexism: make it a theme. They're already doing one "icky old-fashioned attitudes" theme, and probably don't want to have to work in another, so this one's out.

Two is to have realistic diversity in actors, including extras, but not mention the racism. This would be good for purposes of representation, but not particularly historical. Given how they handled the Howling Commandos in the Cap movie, I think it would have been the best choice--note that there's no instance where Colonel Phillips looks at Steve and says, "Son, it isn't even legal for two of these men to serve with you!" (Which is too bad, because it would have been a great moment for Steve to shut that crap down real quick.)

Three is the way they're doing it, which is to ignore both the historical racism and the historical diversity. It's less than ideal, especially given that the lead is white. At least we had Agent Li--though didn't the Red Room girl shoot him?

Someone who knows more about this than I do: I'm positive it would have been ahistorical for a non-white woman to be living at Peggy's hotel, but how ahistorical?

I don't know if it matters, really, since (as you point out) the show seems to be going for a very selective form of historical accuracy--but it is another kind of an Easter Egg, I suppose!

More likely, of course, is that the writers and/or producers couldn't be bothered to think about such things.

One of the corresponding frustrations with seeing your favourite superhero up on the screen is when they botch the continuity, when the movie or tv people think they know better than the comics and something doesn't pan out.

Reminds me of how I feel, if we substitute "science" for "superhero" and "scientists" for "comics."

One of the corresponding frustrations with seeing your favourite superhero up on the screen is when they botch the continuity, when the movie or tv people think they know better than the comics and something doesn't pan out.

I have seen it in other places,

"Where Eagles Dare", book and film, has the General with the D-Day secrets flying to Crete for a meeting with the Russians. Crete was not liberated until the final German surrender in 1945.

They could as easily have said "Cairo" in the script and in the book, but nobody either remembered or bothered to check.

Mad Scientist: These will be my best androids yet. The power source is Kryptonite, walkaway-stable and well-shielded. Their muscle tissue is holographically-generated Kryptonian.

Supervillain: Ah, the old imperfect duplicate system, eh?

MS: I have upgraded it. I call it near-perfect duplication.

SV: And the duplicate brain? Have you upgraded that while you're at it?

MS: Oh, no, holographic brain replication is still decades from being adequate. I'm using strictly Coluan technology for that. A sixth-level effector!

SV: The Coluans managed to achieve twelfth-level.

MS: Yes, and look where it got them.

Well, it was fun to write, anyway.

Gibson's Hamlet and Branagh's Henry V worked for me, but I've never been able to deal with much else.

Pieces started fitting together when I ran across Ada Palmer's The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare’s Histories in the Age of Netflix. Then, last night, I stumbled across PBS's Shakespeare Uncovered (Did you say David Tennant? Oh yeah!) (One of my chronology touchstones is QEI in "The Day of the Doctor." Also because I got to see Shakespeare In Love in the company of John Barnes, who at the time was teaching theatre, and was able to decode all the inside jokes and point out the easter eggs. Dame Judi's Elizabeth was particularly delicious.)

Apparently I was finally in the right frame of mind, because I think I finally "got" the whole "To be" speach. Since I was doing artwork while I was watching, I just binged on through most of SU episodes. What was really nice was having the stories told (with clips of various performances of the highlights) in modern English, plus the literary and psychological analysis (and discussions by the various actors of their interpretations of the roles), plus context of England of the time that these were written. Having them hosted by familiar faces added some squee.

I specifically looked for King Lear, because I remember the episode of Just Shoot Me where David Spade's Dennis Finch gets sucked into going to it with Laura San Giacomo's Maya Gallo (with the episode's plot being a parody of the play). Despite being dragged essentially kicking and screaming to this performance, Finch is a total wreck (surreptitiously, of course) by the end of the play. The Lear quote, "Howl! Howl! Howl!" stuck in my mind, for some reason. So with this ep of SU, I was finally able to fill in the rest of the play.

Damn. I begin to see why people make such a big deal about Shakespeare. (Previously it had mostly seemed like people make a big deal of Shakespeare because Shakespeare was canonically defined as a big deal. You know: in an "eat your broccoli and exercise is good for you" kind of way.)

Christopher Plummer, who hosts this ep, points out that Lear was a very risky production, produced as it was at the very beginning of James VI and I's reign, and [various political and dramatic innovations the specifics of which I forget, except that it could have been construed by the new king as, um, pointful. "Oh!" sez I to myself. I'd previously worked out that James succeeded Elizabeth I.

And the reason I had James tacked on my mental bulletin board (aside from his proximity to QEI) was because I've had Gunpowder, Treason & Plot on my to-watch list ever since I got hooked on Robert Carlyle.

So, I get to SU's Richard II with Derek Jacobi, and I squint, because I don't recall hearing about RII. RIII, now; I remember seeing Olivier's film, and then hearing about them stumbling across his (R's, not O's) skeleton in the Leicester parking lot, compliments of the Secrets of the Dead's episode—and that he's referenced in discussions of the, uh, Henriad? do they call it?

So, off to Google, which incidentally displays a portrait of Henry IV, which I immediately recognize from Jeremy Irons's SU ep about Henry IV & V. And then I remember Irons talking about IV's ambivalence about having come to power having deposed his predecessor—Oh! That's who that is...! Clickety clickety click, as the pieces fall into place.

So...yeah. Continuity rush...!

At one time I had all Mercutio's speeches by heart. And bits and pieces pop up from the memory hole at varied times even today.

Shakespeare writes some of the meatiest parts an actor could ever hope to play. Funny, but I always wanted the male roles...

(And what does it say about my mental state in high school, that I understood Hamlet's "To be..." soliloquy the first time I read it?)

::googles images:: But yeah; I could totally see getting hooked by Mercutio.

* I have this problem with poetry and song lyrics, too. It's like some sort of weird organic language deficit.

Literally most of the main young characters are facially similar enough (especially the way they were shot) that I could not distinguish who was meant to be speaking at any given point. I think I used to be a little faceblind and have gained coping strategies since or something.

I also had that problem with the Beatrice-and-Benedick's-friends couple in the Emma Thompson/Kenneth Branagh Much Ado About Nothing: both of them were dark-haired, with pale round faces that were mostly agonized or schmoopy.

I hated Robert Sean Leonard for decades because I saw that and Dead Poet Society and he appeared to have two facial expressions (sulky and pained). It put me off House for years, because every time I tried to watch it my history of thoughts about the actor interfered with me actually seeing what was on th escreen.

United States v. Barnes, 617 F. Supp. 2d 143 (D.D.C. 2015)

Being the court transcript and selected outside-media mentions of James Buchanan Barnes being put on trial after the events of Captain America II: Winter Soldier. For all the murders he committed while brainwashed.

It's really well written, makes callbacks to things (from the movie continuity, not the comics) that echo when you read them, AND really gets how social media around a media-circus controversial event plays out.

I've seen him played male often enough to reconcile that he's supposed to be. But regardless of gender, Mercutio remains my favourite character from that play.

I never had serious theatrical aspirations and when I tried out for school plays I did it expecting to get tiny minor roles just for the fun (Roughly the same reason I did some set painting and backstage stuff). But if I did, I would SO have wanted that role.