sideways | media round-up

Entry tags:

!media round-up

media round-up

• I did a swan dive (ha ha) into the collective Duckverse, mostly by accident. It started out with alternating between rewatching favourite Darkwing Duck episodes and watching bits of the old Mighty Ducks cartoon - the former for easy brainfood, the latter mostly for the sake of slapping my knee and cackling over the basic premise. I then realised the new DuckTales reboot had Darkwing Duck episodes, watched those and was extremely charmed, and from there spent a long weekend watching the better part of said DuckTales reboot. Wasn't as fond of the series as a whole, but it was still an enjoyable ride. And it had the CUTEST end credits.

• On recommendation from

killyhawk I've finally made it through The Owl House. I found the tone a bit wobbly, but it was still sweet and fun, and it's always a pleasure to see how far media has come in presenting a realistic range of lifestyles and experiences.

• The new Elvis movie was one of my plane picks. I feel like it was maybe weighted a little too heavily in Presley's favour, though I don't know enough about the man to say for sure, and it was definitely a little too long. Flashy and full of slammin' jams though, and I appreciated they went to a distinct effort to acknowledge the Black community's influence on his music style.

• Dog Day Afternoon was another plane movie. Cripes. Great acting. So many terrible choices.

• Holiday media with friends: made it through the effective first book of The Expanse TV series with

weirderwest (aka played it in the background while we discussed the series in general); a season and a bit of Gargoyles (Greg Weisman your Shakespeare obsession is showing); and co-played some of Control with

syntheid (TOGETHER, WE WERE... COMPETENT!!)

• Absolutely cannot seem to stick with a video game lately otherwise, and it's driving me a little crazy. I need to get my butt back to Spiritfarer at minimum.

• Kate Ashwin, author of the Widdershins comic, has confirmed the next chapter will be the last. I am very sad! Webcomic time means there is probably at least one last good year or two to be had with the gang, and I'll be keen to see whatever Ashwin does next, but still. Hard to face the final goodbye.

• Some recent earworm recs: Still Though We Should Dance for the peppy string chorus, Hold the Girl for the 80s ballad vocals, and Woman in Red for being an unexpectedly catchy answer to 'what is this character's singing voice like?'

• I've been binging House lately. Mixed feelings, shall we say.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

*perks* I love Darkwing Duck! Those were my favorite episodes of the DuckTales reboot too. I did like the DT17 series as a whole, though I felt like it lost cohesion a bit towards the end. I know the showrunners had hoped for four seasons and when they found out they were only getting three they had to change their plans, but it seemed like they handled that by cramming a lot of storylines into the last season and rushing through them instead of picking a few to focus on.

Anyway, you might already know this but a DWD reboot has been in the works for years and seems to be in some sort of development hell. I wish they would have given it to the DT17 team to do (which I think was the original idea, given that those episodes play like backdoor pilots) because I really enjoyed their take on the characters, but apparently Disney wants to do something else. It's just not clear exactly what that is or when/if it will happen.

Darkwing Duck is just a gem when it comes to old school slapstickery. Though it's the relationship between him and Gosalyn that makes it such a fond favourite :')

The end of DT17 definitely felt a bit rushed, though I still loved the big 'return of every single character' finale; it was ridiculous but a lot of fun. I otherwise sometimes found myself squinting a little when the fundamental messages of "family and adventure are most important!" got muddled - there were moments I'd rather have seen played straighter than they were to really sell it.

BUT overall it was really cute, and I LOVED how they tackled the question of adapting Darkwing into a (slightly) more grounded setting! I've heard of the reboot plans and was disappointed it wouldn't be continuing on from DT17 because it's the perfect set-up! Darkwing being an ascended fanboy means they can modernise the old meta-style humour, a former TV star as the arch nemesis is justification for classic supervillainry to run amok, and Gosalyn's search for her grandfather gives her a proactive arc and tonnes of found family pathos. I want THIS show ;_;

I knoooow, I want that show too. I really liked how they drew out the themes of duality in Darkwing's character, not just in being a masked hero, but also the thing the 90s series touched on a few times of his ego creating the potential for him to become something... well, dark. Between Time and Punishment and of course the Negaduck episodes they kept playing with this idea of Darkwing's shadow self, and I loved DT17's choice of making them two different characters and watching them diverge into a hero/villain dichotomy before our eyes. I was kind of bowled over by that and I wish we'd had a chance to see what else the writers might have had in mind because they were clearly thinking hard about these characters!

Yesss, it's so clever! And it would have been so interesting to see it played out just a little more seriously, especially if they likewise kept the hints of Launchpad being a key stabilising force for both Ducks. I liked the revamped relationship there too, it was sweet.

Yes! I was not always that thrilled with how Launchpad's character was used in DT17 because I felt like they made him too dumb, whereas (and maybe this is just my headcanon) in DWD I felt like there was something sly in the voice acting that made it play like he wasn't as dimwitted as he seemed and was actually just winding Darkwing up a lot of the time. So I was also pleased to see another side of him being brought out in those DT17 episodes and I think there was a lot of potential there.

Mmmm no fair, Launchpad constantly being the head empty comic relief rubbed me wrong too. Sure he's not the brightest bulb in the original, but... none of them are, that's the joke, and he had plenty of wry asides and moments of "gee DW, I never would have thought to do it that unreasonably convoluted way, I would have just done [something much more obvious and sensible]!"

In contrast, I loved that he was the one who reached Starling, and was the one who helped encourage understanding between DW and Gosalyn. Yes! That's Launchpad :)

Oh, gosh, House. I remember binging the first two seasons on DVD in the late Aughts, then slowly petering out during the third season. "Mixed feelings" sums it up pretty well, honestly.

Or, to put it slightly differently: I love the premise of "Modern Sherlock Holmes being an entertaining asshole and solving medical mysteries" but it became increasing uncomfortable to watch over time, and I honestly don't know how I would react rewatching it or the subsequent seasons I missed now.

I did find this hilariously funny and amazingly well-timed vid on Tumblr that made me laugh so hard I nearly choked. Good times.

LOL, that music video is exactly what made me dig my DVDs out after like fourteen years. It's very clever.

Fortunately I only own the first two seasons so it's probably a self-limiting activity regardless. The mysteries are fun, and Hugh Laurie absolutely owns the role (with pretty solid performances from everyone else as well). Alas, everyone's kind of an ass and no one seems to actually get on and the constant low-grade misogyny isn't endearing. And House/Cameron has to be one of the most chemistry-void ship teases I've had the displeasure of sitting through. She looks like his daughter T-T

OMG, it's such a good vid on so many levels! I am so jealous of the creator's skills!! Makes me wonder about what the hell happened in the later seasons, tbh....

I had a lot more tolerance for assholes back then, apparently--now I've seen enough of that in real life to make it way less entertaining in fiction. I had completely blocked out House/Cameron until you mentioned it--I think even when I was watching those scenes, I pretended it didn't exist, because Cameron's crush was so obviously a male writer fantasy, it didn't register to me as real and I was so embarrassed for her? (I remember thinking the monster truck rally was funny, though.)

I remember shipping Cameron/Chase and House/Cuddy at the time. (I didn't ship House/Wilson back then, but I'm here for it!) The opening theme absolutely slaps, and I loved the songs interspersed throughout. And "Three Stories" blew my mind--I think that was one of my first introductions to that kind of storytelling.

Also, Steve McQueen. :)

Yeah, I am... somewhat curious about the context for the axe-cane, I must say. Did I miss the zombie apocalypse season?

(Also, this AMV reminded me of another I'd seen set to the same song with an excellent - this Arcane music video absolutely nailed the beats.)

Hah, another friend was also reflecting that House was more tolerable before they had the lived experience of working with men who got away with far too much because they were 'geniuses'. It's certainly a stereotype that seems to have lost some of its gloss over the last decade - though to the show's credit it never pretends that working / being friends with someone like House won't ever be enormously damaging.

I don't think I ever vibed strongly with any given ships, though maybe I just haven't hit on the right fuel yet. The mutualism of House/Cuddy at least makes his obsession with her breasts less horrifying, lol >> But yeah... Cameron is just SO VERY obviously A Man Wrote This. Imagine if they'd just leaned further into the monster truck rally style Odd Friendship instead.

The medical mysteries are genuinely fun! It's what's keeping me going.

It seems to be a good time for "Rasputin" videos--that same week, I also reblogged the recent "Doctor Who" clip featuring this song, for similar reasons.

OMG a zombie apocalypse episode would have been so much fun!!! [It could have been a weird dream sequence/bottle episode thing!] Now I have to go to A03 to see if someone wrote it, lol.

I think it's the show's self-awareness that House is not a person to emulate is what made it watchable for me at the time. Otherwise, you just have a man relentlessly bullying people, and that's not comfortable to watch, no matter how clever they are about it.

BBC Sherlock is another show featuring the same "asshole genius" trope that I loved at the time, and now wonder if I would be as responsive to. It's not a coincidence that both are based on Sherlock Holmes (though the ACD version is not nearly as much of an asshole as his media successors), whom I also love and they both play with the "this is not appropriate behavior but boy is it fun to watch" tropes. Ironically, I watched the first episode of Elementary and couldn't get into it precisely because Sherlock wasn't enough of an asshole! I wonder if that means I would like it better now...

Imagine if they'd just leaned further into the monster truck rally style Odd Friendship instead.

Okay, I also want fic of this now, too. MONSTER TRUCKS MONSTER TRUCKS MONSTER TRUCKS. I'm surprised House didn't end up driving a monster truck by the end of the series, but I guess he was always more of a motorcycle guy.

I know a doctor who refuses to watch House because she gets frustrated by the medical inaccuracies and/or figures it out in the first scene and then is annoyed when it takes the rest of the episode to get there, but I love the medical plots so much. This is a weird comparison, I know, but it actually reminds me of Wishbone with how the medical mystery mirrors whatever interpersonal shit is going on with House and the team. In a very real sense, the medical stuff is just window dressing for what the show is really interested in, but it's fun and I enjoy immensely.

It's funny how AMVs sometimes seem to go through song clusters - I can only assume because someone watches one and gets a lightbulb moment for their own fandoms.

If the zombie apocalypse House AU isn't called Patient Zero, what are they even doing.

Yes, the awareness is key. There's still a fair amount of House stanning that sometimes seems unreasonable ("he saves people!" also seems to give a LOT of their families lifelong emotional trauma, just sayin') but people are allowed to pushback, and he has those moments of guilt and regret when his actions go truly wrong.

See, it's funny, because when I was reading the actual Sherlock Holmes stories I don't remember walking away with the impression he was an asshole. So it's funny it's become such an accepted staple.

LOL, your poor doctor friend. Are there any medical series she can stand?

If the zombie apocalypse House AU isn't called Patient Zero, what are they even doing.

IDK, Residency Evil is also pretty great. :)

I wish I could find the tumblr post written by someone with a longtime chronic illness about how frustrating it was to deal with doctors, and how they would put up with so much of House's shit in exchange for an actual diagnosis--it was extremely thought-provoking! There are a lot of problems with the medical system, and one thing I liked about House as a show was that it was in an excellent position to point that out, even if they didn't do as much with it as they could have.

But House is also frequently punished by the narrative for his poor choices, which is refreshing after watching so many TV shows letting the writer's pet character get away with everything while experiencing no negative consequences whatsoever.

So it's funny it's become such an accepted staple.

I think it's because the media adaptations are better known, and so people just sort of accept the fanon as canon. Sort of like how every adaptation of Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and Dracula (to name just three others off the top of my head) are WILDLY different from the source material.

Are there any medical series she can stand?

NOPE. It's so hilariously funny. I did convince her to put some photos of Scully from The X-Files doing an autopsy into a Powerpoint presentation, though.

Edited 2022-11-16 00:21 (UTC)

...Okay, touché, Residency Evil is pretty good XD

I think I saw that Tumblr post! And it does make a good point, and to House's slender credit he's well aware he's not a people person and usually operates through kinder proxies. But I did find it a little interesting that they argued House's attitude was preferable when he is in fact much akin to the kind of doctors in the real world who are guilty of overlooking things - assumes patients are lying as a default, dismisses their opinions and even their rights as people, is inclined to quickly brush them off in the 'humorous' clinic scenes even as they're telling him his diagnosis can't be right (and are sometimes correct!). The only difference is he LIKES a medical challenge so sticks with the curly cases. So while I get where they're coming from I don't think it would ever work in practice, lol.

Agree that the narrative generally skews away from being unbearably Writer's Pet though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

media round-up

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject