Eliyes

I confess, I don't understand why people write "high school AU" stories for Tim Drake and Steph Brown. They actually went to high shcool together, guys. You don't have to call it an AU if it's set then. If it's a no capes AU set in high school, call it a "no capes AU". Seriously.

Dating in high school is not AU for them. They actually did that.

How old do these people think they are?

what

WHAT

Got the Captain America one-shot about the original Agent 13 and hated it. Peggy is awesome, but the people who put this together decided that instead of her just being flat out awesome like she was, they had to make Cap into an asshole and her all mad at him in order to build her up. This pissed me off because Cap's not an asshole -- he is especially not an uncontrollably violent and hormonal, unmindful jerk like in this book -- and also Peggy does not need building up, she was already totally awesome on her own!

Fans of Cap and Mademoiselle 13, I don't recommend this book.

THIS is doing EVERYTHING WRONG.

WHEN I AM CROSSING THE ROAD ON THE FUCKING CROSSWALK AND THE FUCKING CROSSWALK LIGHTS ARE FLASHING -- WHICH EVEN I COULD SEE FROM HALFWAY UP THE BRIDGE, LOOKING DOWN THE LENGTH OF A PACKED FUCKING BUS -- YOU MIGHT WANNA SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, DOUCHEBAG. SCREECHING YOUR FUCKING BRAKES AND TRYING TO FISHTAIL INTO THE NEXT LANE WHEN THERE ISN'T EVEN ANY FUCKING ICE ON THE ROAD JUST SHOWS THAT YOU'RE GONNA HAVE THAT LITTLE RED TOY SPORTS CAR WRAPPED AROUND A POLE PRETTY FUCKING SOON UNLESS YOU START TO PAY SOME FUCKING ATTENTION.

*hyperventilates*

Fuck a bunch of this shit! I am spending the fucking money to cab to and from the grocery store rather than risk becoming street pizza.

So, this week we had a sudden inexplicable infestation of houseflies. Well, not totally inexplicable; personally, I blame having to have the outer door open for the painters to get at the sill.

Anyway, today I bought a flyswatter on my way home.

Normally, with a flyswatter, the approved technique is to wait until your victim has landed and then smash them.

I guess my childhood summers of playing badminton crept up from my subconscious, since what I did was stand at the kitchen entrance and spike the little bastards into the far wall, where they conveniently dropped next to the garbage.

Between me and the cats, we should have this taken care of soon.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of chatter about "persons of colour" in the media -- not that this is anything new, but I've encountered a fresh wave. I.e. there's not enough of them, they're handled mostly badly, and people seem to fuck up who's what on a regular basis. Now, this leads to AUs where entire shows are recast (but seriously, fandom, why take out the recurring awesome Asian scientist but keep the one-appearance blonde chick?), ruminations on characters being introduced as non-white versions of white characters (Jaime Reyes is a sweetie, but he's also a recent example -- at least he's not a douche like the new Firestorm!), and of course massive fail in portraying/colouring/casting these characters. In the comics world there are such classic examples as Jubilee (who is Chinese*) being portrayed as white (frequent) or black (occasional), and Monet (who is black) being coloured with the same skin tone as her midwest farmboy teammate, Jamie Maddrox.

But the example I present to you now is from DC.

( Does anyone working on -- or reading! -- the books even REMEMBER that this character is half-Cambodian? Judging by the art, obviously NOT. )

*Yes, yes, Chinese-American. My point is her ethnicity, not her citizenship.

I have a lot of trouble with watching this episode, so let me start by saying VACCINES DON'T WORK LIKE THAT. If you already have a disease, taking the vaccine won't cure you! Vaccines immunize you against getting the disease in the first place by causing your body to produce antibodies that effectively fight the disease in question ahead of time, typically by infecting you with a weaker strain. ARGH! And the bits of the research we get babbled at us clearly are involving a vaccine, which, hey, would totally save the kids but the landing party should have all died. Except possibly Spock. He just would have been quarantined on the planet forever.

THAT SAID, this particular episode has bugged me since I was a kid and too young to understand stuff like the above (although even then, I recall that I really felt the purple marks should have scabbed off instead of magically disappearing) -- this episode still really bothered me. And I don't mean just because OH NOES OUR HEROES MAY ALL DIE AND WILL GO KERAYZEE FIRST, oh no. It's not even the killer kids, aspect.

It was because of Jahn. I find him REALLY CREEPY. I have, in fact, had nightmares about him. *shudder*

And then there's his little friend. What an ugly kid! The big flappy ears, the enormous nostrils, the terrible, protuberant teeth --! And every close-up shot of him, his head is tipped back so his teeth are, like, in the center of the screen, and you can see up his nose to the backs of his eyeballs, no word of a lie --

Watching this as an adult gave me a little bit of a different perspective on the episode, though, I do admit. I was actually able to feel some sympathy for Miri herself (when I was a child, I hated her). I don't think I actually caught on to the time limit thing before, either, and I certainly missed the nuances of "we are slowly going crazy".

However, I remember quite well that I could see that Rand was jealous. I've seen people criticize the delivery of the line, "Captain, look at my legs," because they felt that the slight (and it is only slight) emphasis on "my" makes it sound weird. I disagree; just prior to that, she was freaking out with jealousy over Kirk being nice to Miri. Hell, she actually brought it up to Spock days before.

Of course, this was the last episode with Rand. At the post-filming cast party, Grace Lee Whitney -- the actress who played her -- was sexually assaulted by one of the studio executives, and then she was fired. A bunch of the subsequent scripts had to be re-written to exclude her character. Knowing that, it's difficult for me to disassociate it from the episode, which just makes it that much more uncomfortable to watch.

It's not actually a bad episode, though. Just really, personally creepy to me.