Nobody here ever escapes with no blood on their hands
I wanted to do a lot of things with this week that did not happen. Yesterday I stayed on the couch and coughed and lost the rest of my voice and drank infinite mugs of hot water with honey and watched TV. Autolycus snuggled himself into the blankets beside me and sometimes watched with me and sometimes dozed. I ate soup dumplings. It was an entirely unimproving thing to dedicate my afternoon and evening to, but it was probably good for me. I couldn't even leave the house. I wouldn't have left the house today if the library hadn't told me it had successfully interlibrary-loaned me something rare, but then it turned out the library was wrong. That was awkward. And very cold. I have done nothing but make dinner with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch since.
1. The problem with saying that Iron Fist (2017–18) reminds me of Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–08) is that it sounds as though the point of comparison is the magical martial arts when it's actually the character growth, especially the processes of failing better and finding family, which is sometimes people you're related to and sometimes hella not. The other thing it reminds me of, actually, is The Wolf Man (1941): the plot twists and even some of the first principles are from Mars, but the people are all real people and the emotional resonances are all in the right places and the results, for me, balance out on the side of idtastic and complexly touching. And then sometimes ninja fights just happen. The second season is better than the first, but I didn't feel I was overall gritting my teeth to get to the good stuff. (There are exceptions. Never depict a psychiatric hospital again, MCU, jeez.) I just wanted something to stare at while I fell over; I was impressed. I would watch a third season if it existed.
2. Miki Berenyi of Lush has a new band: Piroshka. The only available song right now seems to be "Everlastingly Yours," but I love the shoegaze guitar-gauze drift of lyrics like "I'm not afraid to reach down inside to something within me / That gives me the power to fight / To rip out his heart and shatter his bones with a smile."
3. I should remind everyone in the New York area that around this time next week I will be reading with Carrie Laben, Zin E. Rocklyn, Fiona Maeve Geist, and Farah Rose Smith at McNally Jackson Williamsburg. Come hear me! I should be capable of speech by then. If not, I'll do something exciting, like mime.
I still feel like I can't think. I'm going back to curling up on the couch, movie cat optional but preferred. Next month had better contain fewer colds.
spatch since.1. The problem with saying that Iron Fist (2017–18) reminds me of Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–08) is that it sounds as though the point of comparison is the magical martial arts when it's actually the character growth, especially the processes of failing better and finding family, which is sometimes people you're related to and sometimes hella not. The other thing it reminds me of, actually, is The Wolf Man (1941): the plot twists and even some of the first principles are from Mars, but the people are all real people and the emotional resonances are all in the right places and the results, for me, balance out on the side of idtastic and complexly touching. And then sometimes ninja fights just happen. The second season is better than the first, but I didn't feel I was overall gritting my teeth to get to the good stuff. (There are exceptions. Never depict a psychiatric hospital again, MCU, jeez.) I just wanted something to stare at while I fell over; I was impressed. I would watch a third season if it existed.
2. Miki Berenyi of Lush has a new band: Piroshka. The only available song right now seems to be "Everlastingly Yours," but I love the shoegaze guitar-gauze drift of lyrics like "I'm not afraid to reach down inside to something within me / That gives me the power to fight / To rip out his heart and shatter his bones with a smile."
3. I should remind everyone in the New York area that around this time next week I will be reading with Carrie Laben, Zin E. Rocklyn, Fiona Maeve Geist, and Farah Rose Smith at McNally Jackson Williamsburg. Come hear me! I should be capable of speech by then. If not, I'll do something exciting, like mime.
I still feel like I can't think. I'm going back to curling up on the couch, movie cat optional but preferred. Next month had better contain fewer colds.
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this. yes.
Autolycus is a good floof.
Hope you are less colds soon.
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It's important.
Hope you are less colds soon.
Thank you. Not so far today, but an excellent cat stayed with me all night while I coughed.
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As usual, I wish I had a TARDIS for your reading.
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It was a much better idea than trying to go anywhere.
As usual, I wish I had a TARDIS for your reading.
I wish I had one to lend you!
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A plan! I do hope you feel better soon. <3
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Thank you! I'm really working on it!
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Thank you! In this case the Somerville Public Library had accidentally interlibraried me a different item with the same title (and much less rare), but I've put the request in again and I'm hoping.
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I think that's an really interesting take on Iron Fist, and honestly a more charitable one than I was giving it at the time it came out. But it's clearly got a lot of points of comparison, when I start thinking about it, and it really does make sense!
I notice, now that I think about it, the same kind of character traits that made me feel protective and affectionate towards Aang made me really irritated towards Danny. Aang is a child - 12 when the series starts - and has been isolated and essentially orphaned in the middle of a world war. His ignorance and innocence feel real. His powers as the Avatar are his only method of influencing the conflict - as a partially trained airbender, he could eventually be a valuable soldier, but he's more likely to be come a Fire nation target and casualty before he grows up. He's a child, and watching him grow feels well grounded to me.
But Danny started out a billionaire and the scion of an international corporation, so the idea of having him focusing on his superpowers as how he's going to interact with the world made me feel a bit put out - when the story moved so fast into Danny trying to regain his corporation, I had a hard time seeing Danny as anything but a sheltered rich man who never had to leave childhood. Maybe if we had seen more of Danny in K'un-Lun and his training there, it would feel more grounded in his experiences....
Overall, I think I liked Danny much better after Defenders and Luke Cage gave him some grounding in how other superheroes would feel to have access to Danny's corporate resources. Maybe it would be worth giving IF a re-watch!
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Thank you! It occurred to me while trying to articulate the dynamics of the Meachum family, actually.
But Danny started out a billionaire and the scion of an international corporation, so the idea of having him focusing on his superpowers as how he's going to interact with the world made me feel a bit put out - when the story moved so fast into Danny trying to regain his corporation, I had a hard time seeing Danny as anything but a sheltered rich man who never had to leave childhood.
I can understand that. I did not feel that way about him for a couple of reasons, first I think because it's so clear that the fight over the corporation is about identity rather than money ("It's my name"—the same way that people fight bitterly over inheritances because of what they stand for, not because of what they're worth) and then because the ways in which Danny is revealed to be still figuring out a lot of emotional terrain felt less like privilege and more like trauma to me (he's an adult trying to pick up seamlessly on a life he last led as a child—that's a pipe dream in the healthiest of cases and he spent the intervening years learning to be someone else), but I agree that we see much less of his dispossessed in-between period than we hear about it. I wondered if the emotional buy-in failed, would the premise just spin off into poor-little-rich-whatever, and it sounds like the answer was yes.
Maybe if we had seen more of Danny in K'un-Lun and his training there, it would feel more grounded in his experiences....
I liked how much we didn't see of K'un-Lun, honestly; it was probably budgetary restrictions, but it felt like a restrained way of showing the effects of that time without flashbacks or infodump.
Overall, I think I liked Danny much better after Defenders and Luke Cage gave him some grounding in how other superheroes would feel to have access to Danny's corporate resources. Maybe it would be worth giving IF a re-watch!
I would obviously not try to dissuade you! I have not yet seen The Defenders: I just blitzed my way through Iron Fist and gathered the changes between seasons from context. Do we ever find out what happened with K'un-Lun following the first season cliffhanger, by the way, or is the answer really just "the period of alignment has passed, the gate has closed, wait fifteen years to try again"?
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Yuppp. Tho, to be fair, I was already beginning to feel somewhat iffy about the Netflix Marvel titles after Daredevil started to lean so very heavily on the Hand as 'Eeeevil Ninjas with Sekrit Asian Sooperpowers,' so there was definitely an element where I really needed Iron Fist, which has such a grounding in nostalgia for kung-fu movies (for good and for ill), to just sort of engage with that a bit more? and it kind of didn't. So I was already kind of miffed going into IF.
I liked how much we didn't see of K'un-Lun, honestly; it was probably budgetary restrictions, but it felt like a restrained way of showing the effects of that time without flashbacks or infodump.
Hm. I can respect a show that makes up Watsonian explanations for Doylist issues, but I felt like the show ended up dividing its attention and sense of identity for Danny - K'un-Lun was talked about so much as the source of so many of his formative experiences, that it began to feel kind of odd for him to be so focused on the Rand corporation when K'un-Lun and training there shapes so much of who he is. And the fact that show leaned into the confusion about Danny being a delusional nobody kind of didn't help establish his identity as a character being introduced for the first time. He felt kind of muddy as a character. I get that flashbacks can burden a series, but I just really wanted more.
And, to be petty, if you're going to tell me a character got his job title from punching a literal dragon, I would like to see a dragon, please.
As for Defenders, I think that might just be that they finally leaned into "Danny is a badass ninja, let's go fight some other badass ninjas" and that felt like a return to form for the character. The comics are so rooted in a particular kind of nostalgia for kung fu movies that it's hard to divorce the character from that, and he does work best when you're letting the genre do what it wants to do. Also, Luke Cage and him are really fun to watch together.
As far as I remember, the issue of the mountain of bodies on K'un-Lun's doorstep is basically dropped? I think they just left it as Brigadoon.
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It was the first Marvel TV show I watched, so I had fortunately not hit my quota of superpowered ninjas. (Do I want to watch Daredevil after Iron Fist or will I overdose?)
And the fact that show leaned into the confusion about Danny being a delusional nobody kind of didn't help establish his identity as a character being introduced for the first time.
See, I didn't feel the show committed to the ambiguity, I just thought it was a terrible episode (psychiatric hospitals neither look nor function that way outside of horror movies! Even institutional fluorescents are not that slithery ominous green!) and I ignored everything about it except for Colleen's scenes.
I get that flashbacks can burden a series, but I just really wanted more.
Legit. I had expected flashbacks and thought it was neat that we didn't have them, but I understand that mileage varies.
And, to be petty, if you're going to tell me a character got his job title from punching a literal dragon, I would like to see a dragon, please.
That is absolutely fair. I would have liked to see Shou-Lao. That has to have been the budget, but even so.
As far as I remember, the issue of the mountain of bodies on K'un-Lun's doorstep is basically dropped? I think they just left it as Brigadoon.
Davos at one point in the second season refers to himself as "the last son of K'un-Lun," which made me wonder if something terrible had been confirmed, but I can see it being bad enough for him that he's trapped on Earth and won't know one way or the other for another decade and a half.
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