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petroniaSo before I forget:
1) First of all can I say the plot is dumb. XD; It's like one of those big-budget theatre-release anime movies, yanno? The ones where they have to come up with an entirely original story that follows upon the ending of the TV series which diverged from the manga plotline because that hasn't finished serializing and the big reveals haven't happened, so they do a time warp, fire up the Random Baddie generator and pile on the inclusive fanservice. It's Star Trek: Conqueror of Shamballa.
2) That being said, I find in a delayed reaction I am q. cut up about Vulcan going explodey. I mean they are going to make sequels in this 'verse surely? Vulcan had the best weather, the best aesthetics, and the best research institutes, and really, was making Spock more Jewish the way to go. Speaking of which, Old Spock was uncannily reminiscent of The Other Leonard i.e. Cohen. NO RLY. The way he talks! I've never tried to picture what it would be like to be trapped in a snowstorm with Leonard Cohen, but this movie's take is probably not far off.
3) Spock/Uhura: this felt really natural, tbh. If there had been no romance, and if this movie had arrived with no preexisting canon, fans would probably have come up with it themselves. Personally I don't see why one wouldn't, but I am also a multilingual INTP girl, wtf do I know rite. (Doesn't that actually describe Spock's mom, too?)
4) I'm surprised by how much I liked Kirk in this movie. Probably for his sheer energy? I'm struggling to explain this a bit, because it's not that I didn't like the original character (more from the novels than from film/TV), but there is something totally 1960s about coming up with a setting like the Federation/Starfleet/USS Enterprise then putting a heroic straight white Midwestern dude in charge cos that's obviously how it works, yanno? It's hard to divorce Kirk from that because he was created to be that,** whereas Spock can be torn between emotion and logic in 2009 just as well as he was in 1969 or whatever. They played it as well as they could, though. You've got the nepotism (a better explanation is political expediency), but really one's feeling is that this version of Kirk makes it because he's A MAJOR FREAK OF NATURE. I mean, I don't really buy that he has an inferiority complex vis a vis his dad (let alone that he was abused); people are explicitly kind of dicks to him about it, and he takes it up and all, but if that stuff was internalized he'd've been proving himself in Starfleet a lot sooner. What the kid reads to me like is emotionally neglected. Mom couldn't face him properly, maybe, stepfather or other relatives treated him like he was just there. So then there's the real dad, who's dead, but follow in his footsteps and maybe he'll be a bit closer. Which is why the closure on that is when Spock Prime tells him yes, in the other universe your dad did know you and love you and was proud of you. Not that you were a better spaceship captain or any such.
** Subdee and I talked about whether Kirk was a good leader, and I said he was, or has the clear potential to be: he's decisive, a great tactician, reads people well / recognizes talent / delegates easily, doesn't hold grudges in the face of fact, can command a room's attention, and has LOADS of physical energy. (The communication aspect will come, and anyway there was nothing in 1960s management theory that said transparent communication was the sign of a good leader.) The precise question to ask is not whether Kirk is a good leader, but whether he's a good follower, and the answer to that is easy. XD Basically you have a sort of reverse Peter Principle: if you have person A who is a good leader and a good follower, and person B who is a good leader but a terrible follower, the most efficient configuration for the organization (which does not necessarily automatically arise***) penalizes person A for having more skillz. Sorry, Spock! [/mba]
*** But you would be unsurprised at how often it arises when person A is a visible minority who doesn't want to rock the boat. Sorry again, Spock! I would almost write this, but make it really funny, Riz Khan jokes style. OSHI I TOTALLY NEVER BLOGGED RIZ KHAN'S JOKES.
Non-spoilers:
5) The fic for the reboot is also a reboot of the fic, so to speak. It was nagging at me, and then I realized: seme/uke. Which is just like class stratification (boy is this entry sociological), in that 1) Americans don't like to cede the concept recognition, 2) but that doesn't mean they don't have it, 3) it's arguably better not to talk about it too much, 4) but to talk about it usefully, you have to run the numbers. Do you know, I've never seen anyone do this kind of simple analysis on slashfic, by pairing or by fandom. XD; I will say that when I hit a KxS story the other day I noticed it, because I'd previously read ~25 that were SxK. Bias is always possible, but I'm going down the undifferentiated public del.icio.us tag stream, so there is some crowdsourced consensus there. This would not be nearly as funny if it were any pairing other than, well, K/S.
6) "Teardrops On My Phaser":
1) First of all can I say the plot is dumb. XD; It's like one of those big-budget theatre-release anime movies, yanno? The ones where they have to come up with an entirely original story that follows upon the ending of the TV series which diverged from the manga plotline because that hasn't finished serializing and the big reveals haven't happened, so they do a time warp, fire up the Random Baddie generator and pile on the inclusive fanservice. It's Star Trek: Conqueror of Shamballa.
2) That being said, I find in a delayed reaction I am q. cut up about Vulcan going explodey. I mean they are going to make sequels in this 'verse surely? Vulcan had the best weather, the best aesthetics, and the best research institutes, and really, was making Spock more Jewish the way to go. Speaking of which, Old Spock was uncannily reminiscent of The Other Leonard i.e. Cohen. NO RLY. The way he talks! I've never tried to picture what it would be like to be trapped in a snowstorm with Leonard Cohen, but this movie's take is probably not far off.
3) Spock/Uhura: this felt really natural, tbh. If there had been no romance, and if this movie had arrived with no preexisting canon, fans would probably have come up with it themselves. Personally I don't see why one wouldn't, but I am also a multilingual INTP girl, wtf do I know rite. (Doesn't that actually describe Spock's mom, too?)
4) I'm surprised by how much I liked Kirk in this movie. Probably for his sheer energy? I'm struggling to explain this a bit, because it's not that I didn't like the original character (more from the novels than from film/TV), but there is something totally 1960s about coming up with a setting like the Federation/Starfleet/USS Enterprise then putting a heroic straight white Midwestern dude in charge cos that's obviously how it works, yanno? It's hard to divorce Kirk from that because he was created to be that,** whereas Spock can be torn between emotion and logic in 2009 just as well as he was in 1969 or whatever. They played it as well as they could, though. You've got the nepotism (a better explanation is political expediency), but really one's feeling is that this version of Kirk makes it because he's A MAJOR FREAK OF NATURE. I mean, I don't really buy that he has an inferiority complex vis a vis his dad (let alone that he was abused); people are explicitly kind of dicks to him about it, and he takes it up and all, but if that stuff was internalized he'd've been proving himself in Starfleet a lot sooner. What the kid reads to me like is emotionally neglected. Mom couldn't face him properly, maybe, stepfather or other relatives treated him like he was just there. So then there's the real dad, who's dead, but follow in his footsteps and maybe he'll be a bit closer. Which is why the closure on that is when Spock Prime tells him yes, in the other universe your dad did know you and love you and was proud of you. Not that you were a better spaceship captain or any such.
** Subdee and I talked about whether Kirk was a good leader, and I said he was, or has the clear potential to be: he's decisive, a great tactician, reads people well / recognizes talent / delegates easily, doesn't hold grudges in the face of fact, can command a room's attention, and has LOADS of physical energy. (The communication aspect will come, and anyway there was nothing in 1960s management theory that said transparent communication was the sign of a good leader.) The precise question to ask is not whether Kirk is a good leader, but whether he's a good follower, and the answer to that is easy. XD Basically you have a sort of reverse Peter Principle: if you have person A who is a good leader and a good follower, and person B who is a good leader but a terrible follower, the most efficient configuration for the organization (which does not necessarily automatically arise***) penalizes person A for having more skillz. Sorry, Spock! [/mba]
*** But you would be unsurprised at how often it arises when person A is a visible minority who doesn't want to rock the boat. Sorry again, Spock! I would almost write this, but make it really funny, Riz Khan jokes style. OSHI I TOTALLY NEVER BLOGGED RIZ KHAN'S JOKES.
Non-spoilers:
5) The fic for the reboot is also a reboot of the fic, so to speak. It was nagging at me, and then I realized: seme/uke. Which is just like class stratification (boy is this entry sociological), in that 1) Americans don't like to cede the concept recognition, 2) but that doesn't mean they don't have it, 3) it's arguably better not to talk about it too much, 4) but to talk about it usefully, you have to run the numbers. Do you know, I've never seen anyone do this kind of simple analysis on slashfic, by pairing or by fandom. XD; I will say that when I hit a KxS story the other day I noticed it, because I'd previously read ~25 that were SxK. Bias is always possible, but I'm going down the undifferentiated public del.icio.us tag stream, so there is some crowdsourced consensus there. This would not be nearly as funny if it were any pairing other than, well, K/S.
6) "Teardrops On My Phaser":
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 10:36 am (UTC)Also if neuKirk was Damon Albarn, he and Spock would have been childhood friends. XD (I can't believe Blur slash makes Damon the uke, isn't Graham like the ultimate queen uke? What do the j-fanartists think?)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 10:39 am (UTC)...and better-looking. Can't forget that part, it's very important.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 06:52 pm (UTC)/more later gotta run
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 09:23 pm (UTC)/late to the party.
Sorry if I misread you, that just really seemed like what you were arguing. XD
Question: if the reverse Peter principle is the bad follower has to be the leader, what is the regular Peter principle? Being such a good follower that you BECOME the leader?
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 04:19 am (UTC)More on: there is at least one Kirk-and-Spock-were-childhood-friends AU out there, I read it a few days ago. XD; Good looks are definitely key. J-fanartists are split, although I'm never sure if they think they're doing Kyouya/Tamaki or something. Chinese fandom seems to think Graham is uke in theory and seme in practice. Prolly this is cos Damon was the visibly pining one? Waters muddled by the fact that the main Graham-uke proponent is an Oasis fan, idek. I am trying to decide whether the neuST skew is for the same reason or opposite reasons.
The regular Peter Principle is the Dilbertian "everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence". That assumes employees all come with better/more lower level skills/experience than higher level/managerial, is the thing, whereas someone like Kirk works better if parachuted in. It probably doesn't happen too often in reality.