adiva_calandia | (no subject)

Went driving with Dad in the RV. V. stressful. It's only gonna be worse with Mom in the car, too, unless I get better fast.

Got an echocardiogram, which went fine, so that at least is good, and then I went and got a blood draw, a failed attempt at a PPD, and a successful attempt at a PPD, and then we went and got coffee which is also good, and I didn't get any thank-you letters written today because I was busy being hormonal and stressed and poked at, and I'm still hormonal and stressed, but not being poked at anymore.

In other news: The play I'm stage managing this summer? Anouilh's Antigone. Which, yes, is the translation

buriedmybrother is from.

Adiva: I hope we get a good Antigone.
Adiva: I'll spend the whole time being like "She would totally get it on with girls, guys."
Adiva: "But she's with Haemon, Adiva."
Merc: ahahahahahaha
Adiva: "No! She's crazy! It would work!"
Adiva: ". . . just call the show, Adiva."
Merc: *dead*
Adiva: "Okay. :("

EEE I'm excited.

Dude, even present!Hiro looks pretty badass with that sword. ...But yeah, future!Hiro badasser.

Mmmmm, dystopic.

--Oh, shit, Matt, you didn't start working for Primatech, did you?

"There's only one person powerful enough to help us get through. Peter Petrelli." Because he's the most ridiculously twinked out person in the country.

Well, Vegas hasn't changed, anyway. --Peter's girlfriend?

*facepalm* Hi, Jessica. Peter's dating her? Does he have no taste? Unless he's dating Niki, not Jessica. But even so, man.

Eh, okay. Homeland Security. Still.

Furry!Mohinder!

"Their," Nathan?

*eyebrows* "What should be happening five years from now?" "Hm. I dunno." "Hey, what's that you're reading?" "Oh, Marvel's Civil War storyline."

D: Hiro!

Aw, Mr. Bennet. *hugs* He's a humanitarian.

"Is it any stranger than you being able to read minds?" ". . . Yeah. It is."

. . . She's calling herself Sandra. *wibbles*

Ando totally died, huh.

HI PETER!

I missed the gray at Matt's temples. Nice touch.

Yeah. Take parenting advice from Mr. Bennet. Nice.

NUUUUU. D:

Well, that is an effective way of getting rid of future!Hiro. If you kill past!Hiro, future!Hiro ought to cease to exist.

EEEP. CRAP CRAP CRAP. HI SYLAR.

*hugs Peter* . . . Mind, that means that Hiro has to stab him. But he can regenerate, so it . . . he . . . dammit, I'm confused.

*cracks up at Peter* Let's go Matrix on their asses.

GO MOHINDER. Sorry Haitian. :( I liked you.

MATT. You SUCK.

Nathan has contrails. That will never stop being funny. Er, I meant, Sylar!Nathan. Um?

OMG ALMOST DONE.

Finally, we're gonna see more of Molly!

. . . Oh man, Claire. *hugs hard*

"Bennet, Parkman & Sprague" sounds like a law firm.

And now Sylar's voiceovering. Eesh. Peer pressure.

*. . . intrigued* Sylar just became a lot more interesting.

*eyes Niki and Jessica* They could do something cool by the end of the season. That'd be nice.

*snerk* "I don't like Mr. Linderman. I dunno, he smells funny."

jkljfkdMohinderissohot. Okay I'm done.

omg Molly's adorable!

Yeah. You can't tell if that's Sylar or Peter in the comic -- just like you couldn't tell if the cheerleader in the painting was Jackie or Claire. Laaa.

Gabriel! You're back!

Stupid superhearing.

--Hn. Zachary Quinto's awfully pretty, too.

Hiro FTW!

"You're different from the other doctors." They suck. But you suck at phlebotomy.

*amused* Hello, Sylar's Mom.

Aw, wee!Sylar-inna-globe.

Micah totally knows what's going on. I'm sure of it.

Man, Candice, you suck.

. . . Oh my god he made a snowglobe for her. *wibbles like MAD* It's so . . . it's so -- sweet. --And so horribly, horribly creepy.

Yes, Mohinder, sweep all your materials off the desk. That always helps.

D'aww he WINKED at her!

*DEAD OF ADORABLE OMG*

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;/And now I'll do it. And so he goes to heaven;/And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:/A villain kills my father; and for that,/I, his sole son, do this same villain send/To heaven, and am I then revenged,/To take him in the purging of his soul,/When he is fit and season'd for his passage?

. . . I hate to type this, but. *hugs Sylar* *a lot*

Except what the hell? Did Hiro restart time or did Sylar? And why or how did either of them do so?

*DEAD OF FURTHER MOHINDER-MOLLY ADORABLE*

"The universe cannot be that lame."

I seriously love the fact that different people draw the future with different styles. It's a lovely detail.

. . . Ma Petrelli, don't be nuts. :(

Agh. *stares at Sylar and his . . . painting*

You mean besides that the city is gonna explode the day after tomorrow, Peter?

Don't you dare show don't you dare don't you YOU DID DAMMIT.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

genarti

HEE to the Antigone thing. Have fun! *bright*

And for Heroes, I am just gonna grin. A lot. *cheerful* (I love these reaction-recaps.)

Sylar has an issue or three, yes. *pats him* *from very, very far away*

From:

adiva_calandia

It was really cool to hear some justification from him! And to hear him be a decent person, of sorts. "They're innocent. Why would I kill them?"

But now he's just nuts. :(

From:

genarti

...Of sorts, yes.

Which is still something. I liked it, though I know others who didn't. And, while he clearly has some screws loose in any case, meeting that mother of his does explain a fair bit.

But yes. He is pretty well nuts. Juuuuust a bit.

(And everybody in FYG is so, so deeply messed up.)

From:

adiva_calandia

Well, I mean. Hearing how he justifies mass murder to himself -- and just knowing he feels the need to justify it to himself -- gives his character depth. Though I admit, it comes a little out of the blue.

Yyyyeah. The different parent-child relationships in this show are fascinating.

(Dude no kidding! But I can hardly blame them.)

From:

genarti

*nodnod* Yes. On all counts. And I like that he draws emotional distinctions, even if they are not so much sane ones.

Aren't they? God, I love this show for its family dynamics. So much. And for the variety of them. Parent-child especially, which is all over the damn place.

(Well, yes. There is that. Oh, post-apocalyptic dystopias. How wacky you are.)

From:

shati.livejournal.com

I like the idea of Sylar balking at blowing up New York! I just have several problems with the execution.

From:

genarti

I have a problem with YOUR execution!

...Uh, wait.

(No, I do agree on that; I'd have liked a little more detail. Except I like that he is not analytically monologuing about his exact motivations. But I will happily listen to you rant, and probably agree with several of the particulars.)

From:

shati.livejournal.com

I have a problem with Sylar's MOM's execution.

(It wasn't lack of detail that bothered me; I just flat-out don't find concern for the victims' "innocence" consistent with the guy who gleefully cat-and-moused Mrs. Bennet. I would have enjoyed the scene if it had played more as simple concern for the practicality -- he is blowing up a lot of useful brains, after all.

My concerns with the rest of the scenes fall more along the lines of: (1) it takes a long-ass time to contribute almost nothing to building to the finale, (2) up until that episode, I'd been okay with the gender balance of parents in the show; after the paralleling of Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Petrelli and shark teeth Candice, I'm not, (3) the way it woobifies Sylar bothers me. He is a serial killer who eats brains, and the episode got waves of "I want to hug Sylar" and "poor woobie Sylar" in reaction for a reason -- that reason being, it totally angled for them -- and that doesn't do anything for the story and is frustrating after my issues with other fandoms' treatment of woobified serial killers.

I read a fair amount of discussion of the episode after it aired, in an attempt to figure out exactly why I was so dissatisfied, and I think it was this comment that pinged my frustration best. The subplot does read as origin story to me, given its placement in the end run and the show's genre, and it doesn't have to read that way to you, but then what is the subplot doing there at all? And Sylar's mom as the reason he is the way he is -- not something that works for me, at all.

I like the creepiness of the scenes, but I have to turn off my meta brain to enjoy them entirely. (And then I can, because omg! So beautifully unsettling!) And I can see how it would work for the many people it does work for. I'm not trying to persuade you, just to explain my reaction.

HI ADIVA. Im in ur journal, respondin 2 ur friendz. AT GREAT LENGTH!)

From:

adiva_calandia

HI SHATI. Luckily I'm fascinated.

Word on point #1. I heard a lot of people complaining about how slow this show moved; since I've been bingeing on it, I generally don't notice until I look back at the ep. There are a number of these weird little detours that do a little for character development and nothing much for plotline -- the other one that sticks in my mind is George Takei's first entrance.

As for point #3 . . . well, the slash suddenly makes a lot more sense. And, to play Devil's Advocate, the sudden switches between annoyed and omnipotent and crying can be seen as adding to the overall "Sylar is fucking nuts" impression.

From:

shati.livejournal.com

Yeah, and it's strange, because by my standards, a lot is going on at any given moment. This has all happened in one season! Compare it to one season of BTVS or VM and it's like, wow. But that makes the slower-moving plotlines stand out, and at the same time more is happening, it's less focused than BtVS or VM, I think -- the subplots don't build as singularly to the season finale.

That is true, and dude, it totally makes it canon that Sylar really considers/considered Mohinder a friend. (Which makes me feel sorry for him in a way that doesn't bother me in difficult to pin-down-ways. Because the revelation is about who Sylar is, not what his mom is like, or something. *waves hands*)

From:

genarti

1) Well, yeah. But I don't care as much about that. (As demonstrated by my fondness for Niki et al, perhaps.) I am okay with it being a slow-moving sideline so long as I find it an interesting one.

2) ...Yeah. There is that. And it's a problem.

3) I care less about that, because to me that's more a fandom issue than a canon issue, and people will woobify serial killers in any fandom given the tiniest of chances. And, yes, that bugs me, but it doesn't bug me so far as the creators are concerned. Even if they are more in touch with fandom than most.

And I like the added depth to Sylar. (Or, rather, to Gabriel.) I like having a scene in which I abruptly feel sorry for the psychopathic cannibal bad guy, because otherwise it feels too much like HE'S EVIL BECAUSE HE IS, OKAY. EEEEVIL. EVIL AND CRAZY AND TOTALLY OUTSIDE SOCIETY. Do I think his mother is the whole reason he turned out as he did? No, of course not, because plenty of people have parents like that and do not turn out to be brain-eating manipulative serial killers. (To the best of my knowledge.) But she clearly has contributed to the instability of a guy who started out several steps left of normal, and that does work for me. And is something I'd felt was lacking in Sylar -- not family issues specifically (although given that it's Heroes, I am so not surprised they went that way with it), but a backstory and a more human connection between the Gabriel he was and the Sylar he became, and any kind of reason he became the way he did. Besides the inherent nutso factor; that's clearly there, but I was never satisfied with Chandra's research being the only emotional catalyst for the sudden switch-flipping change between Mild-Mannered Watchmaker With Secret Yearning For More and Brain-Eating Psychopath. I wanted someone he did care about, even more than his ambiguous fondness for Mohinder, even if it was a teddy bear or someone's memory or a vaguely creepy celebrity-crush-cum-imaginary friend. (And the fact that his mother rejected him when he went psycho, by the way, I loved. Even if I felt the apparently accidental killing was vaguely irritatingly over the top.) I would have been okay if we'd never gotten any, because a tv show has time limits (especially since Sylar was largely a mysterious figure offscreen for the first several episodes), but I was glad we did.

And, sure, a distressing number of fans make him a woobie. But some sectors of fandom make everyone a woobie, just about, if they're in more than one episode (and sometimes then) and I don't see how a show could be written to avoid that. Let alone written satisfyingly.

That said, I would have preferred it if this particular side trip had happened earlier in the series. It would have been backstory then that wasn't inserted into the building-to-climax part of the show to the same degree, and I think the moral quandaries would have been less jarring if they'd happened when his body count wasn't quite so high. And then we could have kept it in mind while nonetheless seeing him continue to kill people and remove their brains, which might mitigate the "awww, all he really wanted was a hug" factor somewhat.

From:

shati.livejournal.com

1) It's not the slowness that bothers me, it's the complete dead-end-ness of it. (Okay, the slowness bothers me too, because the plot should have been kicking into high gear then. But that's not my primary complaint.)

2) This is actually my main complaint with the episode: that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, re: the show and motherhood. The others I'd be more inclined to overlook if I enjoyed the episode more. But it doesn't require as much explanation, so I don't talk about it as much.

3) I don't know. I read manga wherein the protagonist's half-brother who wants to rip out his eyeballs and keep them in a jar gets a sympathy flashback wherein his father kills his pet lamb and he crawls inside it for the warmth, and it is totally awesome! But that's consistent with that manga's worldview general insanity levels and take on psychological realism. In Heroes -- I would actually prefer -- not "he's evil because he is," but a reason that doesn't shift responsibility onto somebody else (his mom) at the last minute and validate all the split personality Gabriel vs. Sylar fic. And obviously it's not that all the responsibility is his mother's, but -- why shift some at all? At that point?

I wanted someone he did care about

Well, like I said to Adiva, I liked the implication that he really did consider Mohinder a friend. That made me feel sorry for him in a way I'm totally okay with feeling sorry for him.

but I was never satisfied with Chandra's research being the only emotional catalyst for the sudden switch-flipping change between Mild-Mannered Watchmaker With Secret Yearning For More and Brain-Eating Psychopath

I was, because mild manners or not, I didn't have any trouble seeing Gabriel Gray in "Six Months Ago" as a potential Sylar. It made more sense to me before "The Hard Part" -- the snow globe scene, where he starts to smile crazily while they're spinning around and shifts into Sylar behavior that is distinct from Gabriel Gray not just in behavior but in sanity, seems a lot less "mentally unbalanced young man gets more power than is safe for him to have" and more "and then magic made his eyes turn black and Tara dumped him." And I can see wanting an explanation for that mental unbalance, but -- possibly the crux of the matter is that for me, the one we get in "The Hard Part" feels cliched and pastede on yay.

And for the record, I think the "I want to hug Sylar" reactions are entirely reasonable given the way the scene plays out. My problem is with the show woobifying him, not the fans.

The placement -- here I spoil the finale. I will say this part later, when you're on AIM or Adiva's finished the finale. But I like the placement, and two non-spoilery things: (1) if it had not happened just as the end run was beginning, it wouldn't feel so origin story-ish to me, and (2) I don't think the raised body count has had the effect you do. I think it is a lot easier to sympathize with Sylar by 1x21 than it was when all we knew of him was his voice and his shadowy face and his trail of corpses. I don't think there's any room before he's racked up an impressive and viscerally disturbing body count for flashbacks without wrecking the balance of mysterious and terrifying.