Between Kings, Generation Kill and the first couple of episodes of Sons of Anarchy, I think my type is rapidly diverging from dark, smoldering evil mastermind to blond, morally conflicted men with guns.


Swap Meat

My main issue with the episode was the much-decried plot loop introduced by the fact that Garry, while in Sam's body, could have given consent for Lucifer to possess it. Now, my thinking is this, and it's a little fanwank-y, but it bears out in my head.

In Sin City we found out that Lucifer is to demons as 'God' is to humans. Sacred, a higher being, but also very possibly a myth. We don't get the demons' side to the Supernatural story, but I would imagine that right now there's a hell of a lot of chaos within the ranks. The kind of demon a seventeen year old amateur could have summoned would most definitely not be the kind of demon to be an authority on the kind of ancient lore and ritual associated with things that were arcane and obscure even back in the halcyon days of Lucifer's pre-fall angeldom. My thinking is that the demon's grasp on the matter would be directly related to her own experience, which is all about the meat suits and crude possession. She's got the fact that consent is required, but doesn't have a hold on the fact that it's the other things, the Sam-and-Dean brother facet, Sam's rage that Lucifer needs, the ichor running through his veins and the soul to go with it.

Of course, I might be completely wrong, and this might develop into a new plot point, but it's always seemed to me to be about so much more than just Sam's meatsuit and a 'yes'.

The episode was slack. I enjoyed it, but it was slack in many ways, that loophole being one of them. I wish the case had revolved more around the family of the boys' old babysitter, indeed, I thought this might be a genuinely creepy house-case wherein the young girl had had an abortion and the ghost was deliberately and maliciously pursuing her in vengeance of an old lover's actions. I wish we got more and more tied into the apocalypse, not just in terms of information delivered (see: Dean being Hell's most wanted) but also in terms of the world degrading around them, growing smaller and smaller and ever more desperate in their microcosm, through which the apocalypse could be portrayed on the small budget.

Ah well, maybe next week?

As to Dean taking a while to notice that Sam was not Sam, I didn't have a huge amount of trouble with that. Sam's been spiralling down and cracking up for a long time, and Dean's just kind of consciously and openly acknowledged that to himself in the last episode. Sam being crazy, making rookie mistakes, not paying attention to the car gear, these things were balanced out by Garry pulling out the amazing piece of research, which to Dean is par for the course, by Garry covering his mistake by pulling Dean into an emotional, human moment, which for Garry was adolescent angst, but to Dean would have appeared like heavy, sad, old-Sam style angst. And Dean was catching on, every step of the way, and I could see it in his face and voice, Dean becoming ever more annoyed and mad at every little not!Sam thing he did. As an older sibling of a very smart, capable girl, I know I get pissed when she's operating at less-than-genius capacity. But she does, sometimes, and Dean could be forgiven for thinking Sam's just being another kind of crazy. Maybe in the Supernatural world, they shouldn't get that luxury, maybe they can't have that luxury. Maybe it's lazy writing.

And also, in Dean's head, Sam is also this ginormous dork underneath all the layers of ginormous angst and muscles.

Ugh. I feel like this post has been one long justification of what was probably my least favourite episode of the season, but I'm just trying to get the boys straight in my head. UGH. Creepy body-stealing rapist wannabe-murderer git Garry, and of everything, what pissed me off was the stupidity of him. If a character's fascinating enough, I can watch them, but failing to look forward, to talk to the brothers, to find out all the facets of the situation before condemning yourself to a course of devil-dealing is just MORONIC. Of everything, embarassment squicks, icky gender politics and sketchy plot development, it is watching stupid characters deal and fumble and screw up situations way above their paygrade that just gets to me.

Dammit! I just want my apocalypse now, you know?

-

Also, on another note, last week, post-ep, I posted a new fanmix, Built on Bones, and judging by the comment rate, it has been my least favorably received to date. What I find interesting is that this is the first mix I've posted that's been uploaded as a .zip file rather than individual songs, and that the .zip has been downloaded about 140 times, which is the most of any of my mixes, and yet has the least comments.

Which is not to say I mind; personally, this is a mix that I adore above all the others I've made, and every single song on it thrums in my soul, if you'll forgive a little purple phrase, and really, I'm hugely flattered that so many people have felt the urge to listen to the mix. I'm happy just in that.

This just makes me curious; usually I upload individual songs, this is the first .zip I've done. Was it that? Or maybe the fact that the mix was post-ep? Or that it wasn't 'themed' per se? Or that it was just an uninspiring mix and people were indifferent to it? Eh. Don't mind me, I sweat the small stuff.




BIG DAY OUT (Yes, it's really called that):

The Decemberists were absolutely gorgeous. It was a late afternoon set, on one of the smaller stages, and by god, if that wasn't the least skeezy mosh pit I've ever been in, I'll eat my hat. After the sweat and stink and creepy menfolk invading my body and headspace of the Kasabian mosh pit, this was just, in every imaginable way, a golden hour. The set was brilliant, and the band was in top form, friendly, folksy, charming, swearing left right and centre and mocking their own choice of songs about killing children. I'm not a huge Decemberists fan, in that I couldn't tell you their names for the life of me, or list the songs they played off the top of my head, but I think they are a brilliant band of musicians, and their songs are utterly divine and rank way up there with me.

Lily Allen was, in a single word, adora-fucking-ble.. All potty mouth, amazing glittering silver kaftan top and bra flashing, sit-down-and-have-a-fag lot of her. Great, fun stage presence. I feel that a lot of the time, female stars have a hard time doing good live shows without hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dancers, choreography, flashing lightshows and feather boas. Lily Allen, with herself and a backing band, had me having a great time just by being her damn self.

The Mars Volta are crazy people.

No really, that's it. Cra-hazy people.

Crazy fucking genius scary people. Their lead singer is like this monstrously brilliant love-child of Michael Hutchence and Robert Plant.

Powderfinger would have to be a highlight. I'm not sure how well known they are outside Australia, but they have these brilliant rock songs about everything from love to life slipping through your hands to sunsets. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to check them out.

Muse give great laser shows. I was right up the front of the mosh pit, which was just as psycho as you might expect a Muse mosh pit to be. The great thing about Muse songs is that it's all very vague and yet oh-so-empowering against these nameless, societal villains that the whole thing is practically a cult, and nowhere more so than in the middle of a mosh pit while the lasers are going full blast and images are bombarding you from giant silk screens falling from towers.

Muse, in other words, were awesome. Fucking brilliant show, and the best part for me was when the frontman of Jet (another brilliant Aussie band you should check out ASAP) ran out near the end and hugged them all, and was obviously great friends with them all by this stage, the last stop on the tour, and did what was possibly the most rockingest rendition of AC/DC's Back In Black I've ever heard in my life. After all the seriousness, seeing the Muse boys let lose and jump around like idiots was hilarious and awesome.

Dude plays a guitar on the back of his head. What's not to love?

Peaches, ah, Peaches, how do I love thee, let me count the ways. She walked on the hands of the crowd. That's like, if Jesus Christ really were a Superstar, they would say he walked over crowds like this, not water. Lady Gaga, for all I wish her to be my wife, wishes she was Peaches. Everyone in the warehouse was just having the time of their lives, and, when asked by her, happily removed their shirts, girls and boys alike. Giant dildos, leotards, laser-dicks, flashing crotch-lights and the hottest, prettiest girl guitarist I've ever seen in my life clad in leather corset, these are just a few of the Peaches things. AND Ladyhawke, whose show I'd missed, much to my chagrin, came out for a guitar riff. Fucking best show ever, man.

And then I ran through sprinklers and died.




So. I saw the great and powerful Sherlock Holmes:


A+, NEED TO WATCH AGAIN, ASAP.

I'm kind of in love with the fact that the love story of Sherlock and Watson is equally paralleled by the love story of RDJ and Jude Law by fandom, and, most rare of all, real goddamn life. Of everything, I just want to see the random text conversations those two have.

RDJ: I think I just ran over a pothole. Or possibly a duck. Am unsure. Send help!

JL: Can't. In acting class. And no, for the last time, you can't come. After urinal incident Prof. still sure that you're constantly high.

JL: STOP CHANGING YOUR FUCKING RINGTONE ON MY PHONE TO AC/DC.

RDJ: Now, Jude. We've talked about that tone.

RDJ: Jude?

RDJ: Juuuuuuuudesie?

RDJ: Huh. It was a duck.


More on topic, the film, was like one long plot? What plot? I wish they had gone for the more creepy thriller style murder, but the whole supernatural shenanigans were good fun nonetheless and gave that brilliant sequence of Sherlock working the black magic, fuelled no doubt, by more drugs than the rating could handle.

I just adore his offhand genius. Millenia of theological disparity? Solved! But, let us away to the murder first! Unlike most people who have read and loved the original Sherlock Holmes' story, I didn't hate the shakeup of the character, nor did I find it to jar with the characterisation in the book. I actually think it gelled quite beautifully, and found that it was Watson's character that underwent the most dramatic change from tag-along fanboy to something more intimately and closely tied to the dark heart of Sherlock Holmes and his work, and struggling with that position and the slippery slope to obsession that it is.

I loved Sherlock deliberately and with quiet, despairing determination try to seduce Watson back to the way they were, and I loved Watson watching him do it, and the fact that it was working despite himself. I loved both women, and Mary was, I thought, understated but very well done. She was an accentuation to the curve of the story, and her own person within it.

Rachel McAdams really is almost too exquisitely pretty for words. I think she added a beautiful edge as Irene Adler, though I wish that 'they've been flirting like this for hours' line had made it in. Irene is a great character, and I love the added touch of Sherlock keeping a portrait of her in his room, which I believe to be a shoutout to the story in which she first outwitted Sherlock.

I loved the set, and thought that London was constructed to perfection. The entire atmosphere of the film, from the streets and carriages, to the waistcoats, to the courtyard jails and dreary skies, to the buzzing insects in the jar, to the newpapers and the repetition of the picture of Sherlock with his hand covering his face, right down to Irene's dresses and RDJ's ridiculous hair and up again to the little mad scientist touches everywhere, everything was just too addictive for words.

In conclusion, HE LEFT THE OVEN ON TOO.