Meandering Musings

I09 Posts its 100 favorite Tweets about Last Sunday's Game of Thrones

A sampling:

Hello everyone just arriving at the Game of Thrones despair meeting. We've been waiting for you...

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Folks watching #gameofthrones who didn't read the books: remember when your really nerdy friend was super sad 13 years ago? This is why.

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Always hire union minstrels.#GameOfThrones

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My mom is watching game of thrones and has been yelling no at the tv for 5 minutes

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Game of Thrones can go fuck itself 20 times in the face with a fork.

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I see they finally revealed that Darth Vader is Luke's father on Game of Thrones...

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If something AWFUL...I mean WRETCHED..doesn't happen to a Lannister next week (NOT Tyrion!) I'm done.

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Why doesn't George R.R. Martin use twitter? Because he killed all 140 characters. #gameofthrones

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I LOVE THIS SHOW AND I LOVE THE BOOKS BUT I HATE THEM TOO AND I WANT TO BURN THEM AND PUKE ON THEIR ASHES. #GameOfThrones

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Game of Thrones just collected every mic on the planet and dropped them. Good god.

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I'm now emotionally eating thanks to #gameofthrones . Thanks for the lovehandles, George R.R. Martin.

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Game of Thrones should be renamed "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck"


And found on Winteriscoming.net...

I had to laugh at this question in this weeks' TVGuide "Ask Matt."  It's like this girl didn't realize that HER shipper bias was obvious.  Look, like the vampire you like, but these "my vampires are better than your vampires" things inevitably  boil down to -- y'know, they're BOTH killers!  Sheesh!  Did you miss where Stefan was decapitating co-eds?  And yes, Damon is a serial killer.  Guess what?  Neither is a white knight.  You're watching a vampire show! (And a vampire show that kills red shirts faster than Star Trek).  

The soap box you're standing on is an illusion.

(I personally think Elena should choose "three-way" because... well, why not?  It's not like there are moral boundaries on the show to begin with, so just do it already).

Anyway, the qutestion that was posed that amused me:

Question: With Glee's move to Thursdays, I'm worried it's going to take away from The Vampire Diaries' already small audience. Do you think Glee could case TVD to tank? If it does, do you think The CW will be smart enough to move it rather than cancel it? I watch both shows but would definitely pick TVD if I could only save one from a burning building. :)

And if you feel like answering a plot-driven question, what do you think the odds are of Elena ending the series with Damon? I worry that the writers will do that to appease the 12-year-old Delena "shippers" who tweet their faces off every week, but think that would be the dumbest thing ever, considering Damon is still a loose cannon who tries to control Elena ("for her own good"), despite his sporadic heroic moments. Did the writers not watch Season 1? I'd say Stefan "consumed" Elena at one point as well. It's called infatuation — and sooner or later it wears off like new car smell. And unlike Stefan, who shares Elena's love for literature, journaling, etc. when her life is not in grave danger, Damon seems to have zero in common with Elena aside from being hot. Several people have become vampires on this show, and none of them had their personalities drastically altered — even Stefan and Damon seem to be themselves in flashbacks from long ago. So for Elena to suddenly (or not-so-suddenly) go for Damon after wanting Stefan for three seasons straight would just seem like an incredibly cheap (and pretty icky when you recall who has slept with whom) plot device to me. — Jennifer

And she's being entirely logical and objective about it. *snerk*

This is what comes from Joss consistently coloring with the same three or four crayons.

This is what comes from Joss consistently coloring with the same three or four crayons.

Haven't seen it yet, but the commercials look good.  Plus, Deadwood! Anyway, TV Guide's review of Justified   Sounds good as the commercials looked:

Raylan Givens, the hero of FX’s terrific new series Justified, is a disarming character in every sense of the word.

As played with laconic charm and drawling irony by Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood), Raylan’s a bona fide hero (a rare breed on FX), a deputy U.S. marshal—“Like in Gunsmoke?” someone asks, to which he answers, “More like The Fugitive.” Quiet and courtly yet simmering with murderous rage for the lowlifes he encounters, Raylan has a smart and sexy dark humor that goes down bourbon smooth. But get on his or the law’s wrong side, and the soft-spoken modern cowboy becomes a quick-drawing deadly weapon.

“I don’t pull my weapon unless I’m going to shoot to kill,” he says. And unless, in his mind, it’s Justified—a clever name for a fantastically entertaining instant classic. Like its leading man (a literary creation of the renowned Elmore Leonard), Justified is cool. It is hot. And it is great. (The show premieres Tuesday at 10/9c.)

The set-up in Tuesday’s excellent pilot episode, written by Graham Yost (The Pacific, Boomtown), sends Raylan against his will back to his old Kentucky home turf, in exile for his seemingly trigger-happy loose cannon ways. Reconnecting to his roots unearths quite a bit of personal baggage: some of it sexy-funny, a lot of it scary-deadly, the latter most particularly taking the form of a childhood buddy (played by The Shield’s electrifying Walton Goggins) gone bad. White supremacist, rocket-launcher-wielding bad.

Knowing your enemy can make the job even tougher. But if anyone can get ’er done, it’s Raylan, whose sly swagger is more than justified.

This is the best new series, network or cable, of the midseason. An immediately addictive brew of action, suspense and wry humor, the show is grounded in Olyphant’s low-key but high-impact star-making performance, the work of a confident and cunning leading man who’s always good company. Edgy and adult, yet considerably less dark (as in gloomy) and twisted than many of FX’s breakout shows, Justified could be the network’s most broadly accessible entertainment yet. Having seen three of the first four episodes, I am hooked on this must-see series.

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Also, Roush's partial review of last week's (excellent) LOST:

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Oh and TVGuide has its article up on the KISH firing along with 200+ comments in response (and to bring everyone up to date, Tikka Sumter/Layla has now also been bumped to recurring status. So there you go. No more gays or African Americans left in Llanview. But, hey, they still have their rich asshole convicted three-time rapist, double-murderer, and child abuser as a romantic lead!)

Old ship wars never die, they just repeat themselves. Endlessly. And in entirely new reiterations (which isn't as much of an oxymoron as you'd think!)

Who knows why we ship certain fictional couples. It has a lot to do with what entertains us, what intrigues us, what we think is hot, what we think could be interesting, what... Actually there are a lot of possible whats. It doesn't really matter what fic kink is the root of our attraction. Everyone is allowed theirs.

Not everyone feels the same way about these things. That's life... and love. It's only when people start to be judgmental about it that ship wars break out. Now, I admit there have been some fics that make me scratch my head and wonder "what the freaking hell?" And there have even been a few fics that make me want to reach for brain bleach to erase the memory of them (one particularly -- epically -- bizarre Supernatural fic I ran into once falls into that category.) But, you know, since they weren't my thing, I didn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time complaining about them or complaining about the way others spent their free time writing fic about stuff that doesn't happen to interest me. It only needed to interest them to be sufficient reason for the creation of fanfic.

There have been/are some fairly popular ships in many fandoms that I don't 'get.' I remember back in my X-Files fandom days, Krycek/Mulder was a hugely popular ship that I just. did. not. understand (beyond the obvious that Nic Lea and David Duchovny were incredibly, freaking hot. I was perplexed not dead). But I would always return to the sticking point of "Krycek murdered Mulder's father!" Same thing would happen to me when Krycek/Scully fic would pop up. I would wonder, 'but, wait, he murdered Scully's sister...') Still, you know, in all my not feeling the ships, I don't think I ever once wrote a screed saying I was viscerally horrified when Krycek/Mulder smut or Krycek/Scully smut popped up on Gossamer or Ephemeral. I would've thought that it would be pointless, silly, and possibly offensive to some authors if I posited that fans had no businesss writing or at least were morally questionable for writing such fics or how bothered I was to see it show up on general fandom comms! Mainly I didn't write such things because I didn't feel that way. My feelings were more easily categorized as a puzzled head tilt and a 'huh' before moving on to the Scully/Mulder MSR that I was watching the list for. (And I had a serious issues with the now departed fic comm mod (Not Ephemeral or Gossamer) that up and forbade Doggett fic -- not just Doggett/Scully fic but any mention of Doggett at all...because she felt it somehow in some inexplicable way threatened her ship. I thought the attitude was absurd and quit the comm over that display of 'how dare people ship stuff that I don't ship!' entitlement.) People's interests vary. Not everyone likes what I like or vice versa. No one need explain themselves to me.

Why can't it be that simple?

There have been/are canon and fanon ships in a number of fandoms that don't do a damn thing for me. There's a huge shipping faction in True Blood that falls into that category. I understand why some people ship it, but I just... don't. Just today I ran across a post in a Being Human comm of "Why aren't there more Mitchell/Annie fics?" which took me by surprise, not because anything was wrong with it but just because it never crossed my mind to ship Mitchell/Annie in the first place. I have friends that ship couples that I just shake my head, puzzled over what the attraction could be, because it doesn't interest me. Heck, in one (relatively popular) canon/fanon pairing in a non-BtVS fandom, I cannot manage to like the characters individually, making it doubly difficult to understand why there are people who ship them together. But, you know what? It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with either of us. It's just a matter of preference. Not everyone likes the same thing.

Where fic is concerned there are a near endless list of things that can be done with any ship. There are good, thought provoking, and engaging fics that can be constructed out of just about any pairing if the writer is talented and interested enough. And sometimes the writer's preference and the reader's preference hits that sweet spot of perfect agreement. When that happens, whee!!!

But proclaiming "thou shalt not write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) because I don't like it" or that "You are only permitted to write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) under a the conditions I specify and consider to be acceptable" is sadly common and completely ridiculous. Fanfic is made for fans to enjoy. If you aren't a fan of the ship, move the heck along. The fic isn't meant for you. Proclaiming that someone else can't/shouldn't write whatever ship they like because it doesn't float your boat? Out of line.

Now, someone point me to some "how could you write that?!" OTPp penguin fic! Hee! >:)

Old ship wars never die, they just repeat themselves. Endlessly. And in entirely new reiterations (which isn't as much of an oxymoron as you'd think!)

Who knows why we ship certain fictional couples. It has a lot to do with what entertains us, what intrigues us, what we think is hot, what we think could be interesting, what... Actually there are a lot of possible whats. It doesn't really matter what fic kink is the root of our attraction. Everyone is allowed theirs.

Not everyone feels the same way about these things. That's life... and love. It's only when people start to be judgmental about it that ship wars break out. Now, I admit there have been some fics that make me scratch my head and wonder "what the freaking hell?" And there have even been a few fics that make me want to reach for brain bleach to erase the memory of them (one particularly -- epically -- bizarre Supernatural fic I ran into once falls into that category.) But, you know, since they weren't my thing, I didn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time complaining about them or complaining about the way others spent their free time writing fic about stuff that doesn't happen to interest me. It only needed to interest them to be sufficient reason for the creation of fanfic.

There have been/are some fairly popular ships in many fandoms that I don't 'get.' I remember back in my X-Files fandom days, Krycek/Mulder was a hugely popular ship that I just. did. not. understand (beyond the obvious that Nic Lea and David Duchovny were incredibly, freaking hot. I was perplexed not dead). But I would always return to the sticking point of "Krycek murdered Mulder's father!" Same thing would happen to me when Krycek/Scully fic would pop up. I would wonder, 'but, wait, he murdered Scully's sister...') Still, you know, in all my not feeling the ships, I don't think I ever once wrote a screed saying I was viscerally horrified when Krycek/Mulder smut or Krycek/Scully smut popped up on Gossamer or Ephemeral. I would've thought that it would be pointless, silly, and possibly offensive to some authors if I posited that fans had no businesss writing or at least were morally questionable for writing such fics or how bothered I was to see it show up on general fandom comms! Mainly I didn't write such things because I didn't feel that way. My feelings were more easily categorized as a puzzled head tilt and a 'huh' before moving on to the Scully/Mulder MSR that I was watching the list for. (And I had a serious issues with the now departed fic comm mod (Not Ephemeral or Gossamer) that up and forbade Doggett fic -- not just Doggett/Scully fic but any mention of Doggett at all...because she felt it somehow in some inexplicable way threatened her ship. I thought the attitude was absurd and quit the comm over that display of 'how dare people ship stuff that I don't ship!' entitlement.) People's interests vary. Not everyone likes what I like or vice versa. No one need explain themselves to me.

Why can't it be that simple?

There have been/are canon and fanon ships in a number of fandoms that don't do a damn thing for me. There's a huge shipping faction in True Blood that falls into that category. I understand why some people ship it, but I just... don't. Just today I ran across a post in a Being Human comm of "Why aren't there more Mitchell/Annie fics?" which took me by surprise, not because anything was wrong with it but just because it never crossed my mind to ship Mitchell/Annie in the first place. I have friends that ship couples that I just shake my head, puzzled over what the attraction could be, because it doesn't interest me. Heck, in one (relatively popular) canon/fanon pairing in a non-BtVS fandom, I cannot manage to like the characters individually, making it doubly difficult to understand why there are people who ship them together. But, you know what? It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with either of us. It's just a matter of preference. Not everyone likes the same thing.

Where fic is concerned there are a near endless list of things that can be done with any ship. There are good, thought provoking, and engaging fics that can be constructed out of just about any pairing if the writer is talented and interested enough. And sometimes the writer's preference and the reader's preference hits that sweet spot of perfect agreement. When that happens, whee!!!

But proclaiming "thou shalt not write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) because I don't like it" or that "You are only permitted to write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) under a the conditions I specify and consider to be acceptable" is sadly common and completely ridiculous. Fanfic is made for fans to enjoy. If you aren't a fan of the ship, move the heck along. The fic isn't meant for you. Proclaiming that someone else can't/shouldn't write whatever ship they like because it doesn't float your boat? Out of line.

Now, someone point me to some "how could you write that?!" OTPp penguin fic! Hee! >:)

I hope like hell that the author of this piece of wank is just a troll because, otherwise, I'm astounded.

It's a troll.  Surely, it's a troll.  It's got to be... right?

Anyway, this was a piece of choice wank at Fandom_Wank:  An Anime character is the anti-Christ

Again... wha-huh? 

I hope like hell that the author of this piece of wank is just a troll because, otherwise, I'm astounded.

It's a troll.  Surely, it's a troll.  It's got to be... right?

Anyway, this was a piece of choice wank at Fandom_Wank:  An Anime character is the anti-Christ

Again... wha-huh? 

First, according to TWOP, Spike destroyed BtVS and Angel. Then, Spuffy destroyed television. And now Buffy killed UPN and the WB. Who knew that two characters and one fandom could be so damn powerful.