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Other Stuff
May. 12th, 2010 12:40 pmMy head feels like it's full of cotton--this really has to be one of the single most debilitating periods I've had in a while, and I'm damned if I know why--so I've decided to not even try to jumpstart today's words right now, let alone do the research transcription I need in order to add the Tezcatlipoca vs. Tollan saga to my Rope of Thorns file. Instead, I thought I'd talk about something new(ish) and something old(ish): Seeing Iron Man 2, which I did over the weekend, and why I like Lord John Grey, aka "Why I can never quite dismiss Diana Gabaldon out of hand as some sort of raving bitch who writes nothing but torture-porn id-fic, thank you".
So: Overall, Iron Man 2 is a lot of fun, though it does leave a weird aftertaste. For example, it wasn't until yesterday--believe it or not; I'm slow that way, sometimes--that I realized the entire sequence with Pepper kissing Tony's helmet then throwing it out of the plane, and him saying: "You complete me!" before jumping after it had been removed from the actual movie, even though it's arguably the funniest part of the trailer. Later checking around tells me that Jon Favreau ended up removing roughly half an hour of similar footage, including a lot of stuff that could have built Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow's character up past the "weirdly threatening eye-candy" level she's stuck at right now. It's depressing to me that while I know Scarlett Johansson can act, she just doesn't seem to be doing all that much of it onscreen at this particular moment; maybe someone (Ryan Reynolds?) told her that she should make career hay while her ass stays tight enough to net her the tentpole parts.
But it's annoying, because Natasha's a potentially neat character--basically the Russian version of a Captain America-style super-soldier, run through a genderswitched James Bond honeytrap filter. In the comics, she's devious, ruthless, sanguine in that extremely Slavic way, a serial dater of supers, probably older by far than she looks, and absolutely unashamed to use every ability she has, including the one which involves making dudes' blood rush from their brains to their penises. ScarJo's version, OTOH, doesn't play enough with that dichotomy--it's like she doesn't want to seem to be enjoying herself too much, or she'll risk looking like a bitch/slut. Screw that, I say! (And go on ahead and screw Tony, too, if you want to; I mean, it's not like you'd really be taking advantage.)
Lord John, meanwhile...
The first thing you have to understand is that I began reading Gabaldon's books literally by accident--I was working as an all-night security guard at a George Brown campus which was on the verge of being shut down, with nothing to do between 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM but ride the desk, and I found a copy of Voyager (not Outlander) someone had left behind in an unlocked drawer. So Lord John was one of the first characters I really bonded with; he pops up in flashback, as the warden of the military prison Jamie Fraser ends up in after Culloden, during the time-period where Claire has returned to the 20th century. I liked him from the beginning, and that feeling only grew as I realized my normal slash-goggles were (for once) absolutely reading accurately here--Lord John was gay, was sadly attracted to Jamie, and--I only realized in hindsight--sort of constituted a retroactive apology to all non-sadistic, incestuous and/or otherwise incredibly screwed up gay guys for the various Outlander-and-after weirdnesses perpetrated by Black Jack Randall. When Lord John first makes a move on Jamie, Jamie rebuffs him violently, but he doesn't turn on him--instead, they eventually have a conversation where Jamie's all: "Ye canna fool me, I know ye wanna nail me hand to the table and screw me!" and Lord John's all: "But who would even do that?!?"
After which they become friends, and Lord John gets Jamie paroled and a job as a groom in a friend of the Grey family's stables, then arranges for him to escape after Jamie (typically) knocks up one of Lord John's female relatives (who later dies in childbirth--Lord John even agrees to look after Jamie's bastard son after people finally start going: "Gee, little Lord so-and-so hangs around with that Scottish groom so much, he's starting to look like him!"). And when Jamie offers him payment sex, he turns him down, because he's a nice guy, and he'd really rather prefer his relationships to be con rather than dub-con. And much later, when they're all in America together, he volunteers to marry Claire in order to keep her safe during a dicey period when neither of them know if Jamie's still alive or what, even though Lord John generally has very strong feelings about the dubious morality of marrying a lady when you're queer down to the bone. (Though he did in fact also marry little Lord so-and-so's sister, as part of the "look after Jamie's bastard" thing; she's obviously died since then. And he actually ends up having sex with Claire, too, IIRC...I should read that book again.)
In a lot of ways, I now understand, Lord John Grey is sort of like the anti-Chess: Similarly small, pretty and surprisingly tough, but educated, peaceable, reasonable and unfailingly polite. He's equally a man of action and a thinker, socially adept, slightly sad, but hardly tragic. He has serious moral structure, and although he recognizes the importance of going along to get along, is unwilling to compromise the things--or people--he cares deeply about.
Add to all this that he came into my life when there were very few male gay characters in any medium who weren't presented outright as perverts or jokes, and the fact that Gabladon A) kept him around and B) eventually started writing books starring Lord John, rather than leaving him to languish as Jamie Fraser's unrequited GBF...yeah, that all means a lot. I'm not likely to forget it, or her, just because of some B.S. difference of opinion.
So check out Lord John & the Private Matter and its sequels, at least, if you can't stand to be seen "supporting" her with Outlander and the rest. You're missing something.
So: Overall, Iron Man 2 is a lot of fun, though it does leave a weird aftertaste. For example, it wasn't until yesterday--believe it or not; I'm slow that way, sometimes--that I realized the entire sequence with Pepper kissing Tony's helmet then throwing it out of the plane, and him saying: "You complete me!" before jumping after it had been removed from the actual movie, even though it's arguably the funniest part of the trailer. Later checking around tells me that Jon Favreau ended up removing roughly half an hour of similar footage, including a lot of stuff that could have built Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow's character up past the "weirdly threatening eye-candy" level she's stuck at right now. It's depressing to me that while I know Scarlett Johansson can act, she just doesn't seem to be doing all that much of it onscreen at this particular moment; maybe someone (Ryan Reynolds?) told her that she should make career hay while her ass stays tight enough to net her the tentpole parts.
But it's annoying, because Natasha's a potentially neat character--basically the Russian version of a Captain America-style super-soldier, run through a genderswitched James Bond honeytrap filter. In the comics, she's devious, ruthless, sanguine in that extremely Slavic way, a serial dater of supers, probably older by far than she looks, and absolutely unashamed to use every ability she has, including the one which involves making dudes' blood rush from their brains to their penises. ScarJo's version, OTOH, doesn't play enough with that dichotomy--it's like she doesn't want to seem to be enjoying herself too much, or she'll risk looking like a bitch/slut. Screw that, I say! (And go on ahead and screw Tony, too, if you want to; I mean, it's not like you'd really be taking advantage.)
Lord John, meanwhile...
The first thing you have to understand is that I began reading Gabaldon's books literally by accident--I was working as an all-night security guard at a George Brown campus which was on the verge of being shut down, with nothing to do between 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM but ride the desk, and I found a copy of Voyager (not Outlander) someone had left behind in an unlocked drawer. So Lord John was one of the first characters I really bonded with; he pops up in flashback, as the warden of the military prison Jamie Fraser ends up in after Culloden, during the time-period where Claire has returned to the 20th century. I liked him from the beginning, and that feeling only grew as I realized my normal slash-goggles were (for once) absolutely reading accurately here--Lord John was gay, was sadly attracted to Jamie, and--I only realized in hindsight--sort of constituted a retroactive apology to all non-sadistic, incestuous and/or otherwise incredibly screwed up gay guys for the various Outlander-and-after weirdnesses perpetrated by Black Jack Randall. When Lord John first makes a move on Jamie, Jamie rebuffs him violently, but he doesn't turn on him--instead, they eventually have a conversation where Jamie's all: "Ye canna fool me, I know ye wanna nail me hand to the table and screw me!" and Lord John's all: "But who would even do that?!?"
After which they become friends, and Lord John gets Jamie paroled and a job as a groom in a friend of the Grey family's stables, then arranges for him to escape after Jamie (typically) knocks up one of Lord John's female relatives (who later dies in childbirth--Lord John even agrees to look after Jamie's bastard son after people finally start going: "Gee, little Lord so-and-so hangs around with that Scottish groom so much, he's starting to look like him!"). And when Jamie offers him payment sex, he turns him down, because he's a nice guy, and he'd really rather prefer his relationships to be con rather than dub-con. And much later, when they're all in America together, he volunteers to marry Claire in order to keep her safe during a dicey period when neither of them know if Jamie's still alive or what, even though Lord John generally has very strong feelings about the dubious morality of marrying a lady when you're queer down to the bone. (Though he did in fact also marry little Lord so-and-so's sister, as part of the "look after Jamie's bastard" thing; she's obviously died since then. And he actually ends up having sex with Claire, too, IIRC...I should read that book again.)
In a lot of ways, I now understand, Lord John Grey is sort of like the anti-Chess: Similarly small, pretty and surprisingly tough, but educated, peaceable, reasonable and unfailingly polite. He's equally a man of action and a thinker, socially adept, slightly sad, but hardly tragic. He has serious moral structure, and although he recognizes the importance of going along to get along, is unwilling to compromise the things--or people--he cares deeply about.
Add to all this that he came into my life when there were very few male gay characters in any medium who weren't presented outright as perverts or jokes, and the fact that Gabladon A) kept him around and B) eventually started writing books starring Lord John, rather than leaving him to languish as Jamie Fraser's unrequited GBF...yeah, that all means a lot. I'm not likely to forget it, or her, just because of some B.S. difference of opinion.
So check out Lord John & the Private Matter and its sequels, at least, if you can't stand to be seen "supporting" her with Outlander and the rest. You're missing something.
