Meme: Least Favorite Moments!

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Look at me, resurrecting a meme we did back in 2008 FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. And certainly none that aired last night, nope.

As canadianpopstar wrote:

Least favorite canon moments
Give us your top five, if you can come up with that many, moments that make you cringe in your fandom. Whether it's bad writing, or character massacre, or just some beautifully executed but OMG PAINFUL scenes, rant about your canon here! Everyone's got a story where they bitch out the producers of their favorites. Give us yours.

Please assume spoilers for all these fandoms, but as a courtesy to everyone else, don't discuss anything that had its finale like, last night or anything. :)

Comments

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

Did someone mention Spoiler?

. . . oh. Right. Carry on.

Two words: War Games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_War_Games).

This more than covers it, but to wit: plot-driven character assassination, scapegoating, women-in-refrigerators, and graphic torture with disturbing undertones. Oh, my infinite horrified rage. Not even the heartbreakingly wonderful Cassandra scene at Steph's funeral makes up for it.

Thank god this was retconned later.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

NO BATCAVE MEMORIAL CASE FOR YOU.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

This is actually really easy for me. While B:TAS was regularly amazing, that helps the crap episodes stand out more.

1. There's a Batman In My Basement: The Penguin has poisoned Batman, who ends up being rescued by a couple kids who hide him in their basement, leading to some Home Alone style slapstick. Eventually Batman feels better and has a poorly animated swordfight with Penguin, except Penguin's using his umbrella and Batman's using a screwdriver. Even as a kid I was calling BS on that.

2. Tyger, Tyger: Catwoman is turned into a literal cat-woman. It's horrible.

3. Holiday Knights: Not a bad episode by any means, but it's the debut of the redesigned Joker with black eyes and no colored lips, which is saddening.

4. Critters: The one time in all of the DCAU that Batman fighting animals isn't awesome. The Bat family fights mutant animals created by Farmer Brown, a kung fu redneck who should have been in a terrible episode of the Adam West series. Some credit is given for an awesomely creepy talking goat. A little more credit to the producers doing a commentary on this episode on the DVDs because they thought it would be fun to do one on a poorly received episode.

5. Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman: Create a new Batwoman for no good reason, set up a highly predictable mystery about who she is, have her be not nearly the strong female character you might have hoped, and make it the end of this era of Batman before Justice League starts up. Bleh. There's only one good thing about this movie: the "Chase Me" short at the end.

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to say "Most of Season 5," the sadly Phil Hartman-less season. Two exceptions to this: 1) Everything Johnny Johnson, 2) Dave's story arc where he's slowly going completely insane the whole season. Foley really did wonders with that.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to talk about what Quinn did last night, but let's just say it was bad enough that I have never been more grateful I ended up going pre-canon for her.

But from the previous episodes ...

1. Wanting Beth back. Look, I get it: Placing a child for adoption is a huge, huge thing. It's huge enough that I wasn't comfortable having it as an element of my Quinn's backstory because I was going to start playing her before the show gave me canon on her reaction. But, sweet mother of Zeus, anything I made up would have made more sense than what the show actually did, which was totally ignoring the baby for a year and then suddenly having Quinn desperate to get the kid back even though all of the reasons she wanted to place the baby for adoption -- like being too young and not having a stable relationship with the father -- are still in play. But apparently the baby is the only thing she'll ever do, since in this universe having had a kid out of wedlock permanently disqualifies Quinn from ever going to college or getting a job or anything. No matter other canon indicates she's relatively bright and ambitious: SHE IS A DIRTY GIRL NOW AND SHE MUST PAY.

... wow, that one is long.

2. Sam Evans Chord Overstreet is cute and has an appealingly funny name, but good lord his character was dumb and the writers had no ideas for him that weren't either ham-handed (he's randomly homeless!) or a Finn retread. Also, the way he pressured Quinn about his promise ring was Not Cool.

3. "It's a Man's Man's Man's Man's World. I have to assume the show was trying to be campy when it had very-pregnant Quinn sing this song backed by a group of also-pregnant dancers who were apparently trucked in for the day.

4. Lucy Caboosey Having Quinn have a backstory where she'd been unattractive and unpopular could have been an interesting idea, if a retconny one. But the show did it in a way that made no sense and then never mentioned it again. I think sometimes last season, the writers didn't actually read each other's scripts for continuity. Which leads me to...

5. I'm getting revenge on Glee -- oh, wait, never mind, I'll just cut my hair. There was setup late last season that Quinn was going to try to wreck things for Glee because Finn had dumped her again. She does a couple mildly bitchy things, cries, then gets a haircut and forgets all about it. I don't even know.

There could be SO MANY MORE if I wasn't limiting myself to Quinn stuff.

[solo_sword]

I am SO CURIOUS as to what happened on last night's show now.

Also, #3 made me facepalm so hard when I saw it on TV. It was such a great moment for "....Show, wtf."

[solo_sword]

1. The Dark Nest Trilogy- Don't get me wrong, I did this catchup, and I have a new respect for it because of working on said catchup. But the Killiks are creepy, and of course my girl is right in the middle of the creepy, complete with brain sharing and mating dances and forearm rubbing and shfifdhfshfosg.

*throat clicks*

2. The stupid love triangle (Legacy of the Force)- Zekk FINALLY gives up on getting Jaina, so of course that's when she decides maybe she actually likes him, right in time for her ex to come back and get all jealous. And then Jaina lets it be a distraction from the Jacen stuff, I think mainly because it was the only plot she had till book 8. (Will this be stuff that I force to make sense when I have to work with it? Yes, yes it will.)

3. Jacen and Jaina's last fight (Legacy of the Force)- Because I just recently went over it and it is absolutely brutal (Denning does not shy away from banging characters up, let's put it that way) and then when it's over I always at least get sniffly. You hurt me, canon.
3a. Whatever the hell happened to Jacen over the DNT and LOTF- WTF JACEN WTF.

4. Revelation (Legacy of the Force)- Keep in mind that Jaina is fairly badass at this point, and is actually going to gain a few levels in it after this book/series. So while going to Boba Fett for training so she can have tricks Jacen doesn't expect isn't a bad idea, it means that she gets to get her ass kicked by a 70-year-old and deal with insanely stupid family drama (LIKE SHE DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH OF HER OWN) and get inundated with Karen Traviss' Mandalorian fetish. (Will this be stuff that I force to make sense when I have to work with it? Yes, yes it will.)

5. The engagement breaking (Fate of the Jedi)- It's not so much that I hate that Jaina gave her engagement ring back after about 15 canon years and TEN YEARS IRL of going up and back with this ship. It's that it's resolved by the end of the next book and she and Jag get back together and that's that, and the character development there could have easily been done ANY OTHER WAY. It just ends up being pointless relationship drama just because. Even people violently opposed to J/J were like "JUST STOP. JUST MARRY THEM OFF SO I NEVER HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT JAINA'S LOVE LIFE AGAIN."

HONORABLE MENTION: Blood Oath getting canceled- This book didn't actually happen, so I can't give it a number, but this is where we were supposed to find out what happened to Zekk after LOTF and see Jag in his early days of Head of State and get all these answers to things hinted in the books like why Jag got all eyerolly about the Hapans (and maybe, JUST MAYBE, we'd get to see how Jaina was doing after LOTF). It sounded AWESOME... and then the author couldn't get the manuscript done in time and the book got canceled and now Zekk's just kind of there on the sidelines and I NEED ANSWERS.

[weetuskenraider]

But the Killiks are creepy, and of course my girl is right in the middle of the creepy, complete with brain sharing and mating dances and forearm rubbing and shfifdhfshfosg.

Can I just piggyback on this, with a side of oh my GOD someone please explain to me why the hell Tahiri, who's already gone through massive trauma from having one culture/personality/physical brain alteration forced on her, would willingly subject herself to the process again? Like, you'd think she would be the last person ever to agree to that, WTF.

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to have to go with "the entire season 4 spiritual quest arc" for this.

Not a bad idea, in principle -- it makes complete sense that Gabrielle, considering the person she was when she first started traveling with Xena, would end up so disillusioned and uncertain that she would have a complete crisis of faith, as it were.

In practice this turned out to be an entire season of Gabrielle wandering around in an a godawful unflattering mustard-yellow outfit (though I loved the haircut) and getting suckered by one cult-leader type charlatan after another. After making a dramatic speech and throwing her staff (you know, the one that was a present from her Amazon tribe and PASSED DOWN IN EPHINY'S FAMILY, because throwing heirlooms into rivers in different countries is an awesome idea) into the Ganges, and declaring she's going to be a pacifist from here on out.

And yet, refusing to stop traveling with Xena. Because swearing off all violence and traveling with a warrior who's always getting attacked: BEST IDEA EVER. This led to such laughable things as Gabrielle attempting to throw nets on bandits and then run, or blowing powder in their faces.

Mostly, though, it led to a lot of Gabrielle being high-horsey and superior at Xena about her newfound peaceloving ways, Xena feeling angsty and rejected and also OMGEMOTORTURED because of the vision she keeps having of Gabrielle dying on a cross in the snow, and just a whole season of random funny cracky moments and a lot of super excessive touchy-feely angst. I mean, really. Half the reason I watched that show was for the touchy-feely angst, but COME ON.

I can sort of forgive it for the season finale "Ides of March," though. (Yeah, those Ides of March.) Because the moment when Gabrielle snaps and goes apeshit on a courtyard full of Roman soldiers with a sword to defend a suddenly helpless-from-a-broken-back Xena is awesome. (Oh yeah, there's Callisto, whose own "dead, nope, not dead, oh, now I'm immortal, but WAIT THERE'S MORE" story arc this season is its own kind of special.) I think so, anyway. A lot of people hated it. But it's dramatic and it's painful and it hurts and it was an inevitable character growth moment and Renee O'Connor sold the hell out of that scene and now I want to watch it again.

[nookiepowered]

1. Really, Miss "My Existential Angst About Killing People Has Existential Angst?" You're gonna just randomly and cheerfully trail some hot dude through Home Depot because you want a snack, and Kenzi has to remind you that you don't eat where you shop?

2. Dear Dyson: the opposite of love isn't hate; it's apathy. You should not be so pissed at no longer feeling anything for someone. Emotions, they dun work that way.

3. And even if they did, stop being a douche and taking it out on the most innocent party in the whole mess. Though ironically that does support the whole not feeling anything for her anymore aspect. EXCEPT FOR SEE PREVIOUS ITEM.

4. Really, show? You're going to have the incredibly sex-positive succubus kink-shame the bad guy for... being a submissive in his private life? Hiring a professional domme? Really? Of all the things you could have had her call Vex, and all the times you could have had her do it, you had to go with "pervert" at a point when for once he's not mind-controlling or torturing somebody, he's just wearing leather and handcuffs?

5. I actually got nothing; for a very silly show, it's also relatively good with continuity and not finding ways to enrage me. Were I more of a Bo/Lauren shipper I'm sure I could find a couple thousand more items to add to the list, but I'm pretty BYO-subtext about this show, oddly. So far I ship just about everything.

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

*eyes your #5*

You can probably guess at how much of an earful I get to hear about that on a fairly regular basis.

[lockestheway]

So I'm going to have to do one with Peter and one with Ender here, because Peter's end of canon is the Shadow series, and Ender's end is the... well, the Ender Saga, and they are two entirely different beasts.

Now anyone who's ever talked to me about these books know I have a hate/love relationship with them: I love a lot of stuff that I really shouldn't/that is terribly insane/etc. AKA, I hate less canon than I should. But still, there are just a few things...

1. Ender's Shadow.

Okay, Peter's not really in this one, but it makes me cry, and not in the good way. OSC decided to make Bean his new golden boy protagonist, and apparently the way to do this was to spend the entire book tearing down Ender's accomplishments while establishing Bean as the Uber-Genius, who even manages to see all the manipulation going on in and out of Battle School despite not even having a working internet connection in there. Yeah. I never quite warmed up to Bean again, though that's partly also due to...

2. The chickification of half the cast.

Babies! Babies! Babies! EVERYBODY NEEDS TO HAVE BABIES EVERYBODY. In the middle of a series that's supposed to be sci-fi thriller Risk in book form, we are constantly anvilled with the idea that nothing is truly worthwhile unless you have kids. This leads especially to the chickification of both Petra and Bean, who spend most of the three books after Ender's Shadow trying to get pregnant, and then tracking down the eight other fertilized embryos that were stolen from them so they can have those babies too. While Petra can't be much older than sixteen or seventeen, and Bean's fourteen. Yeah.

3. This Kind Of Goes With The Above But It Deserves A Seperate Entry

Gay evil doctor who preaches to Bean about how all people gay or straight or asexual really just want to get married to someone of the opposite sex and pop out thousands of kiddies. If you can't manage it physically due to orientation? Just marry some single mother and raise her kids!

4. Alai getting stuck with the Idiot Ball

Because Ender's second is obviously stupid and hormone-driven enough to take avowed megalomaniac-with-pretentions-of-divinity Virlomi's word that she just wants to help his Caliphate become great. Gee, I wonder how he wound up alone and fleeing for his life?

5. Bean/Petra in general

I don't loathe the ship, but Petra/Dink was always my OTP, and Bean/Petra itself came suddenly out of nowhere while that ship - which had set-up in the preceding books - was tossed casually aside with barely a how-do-you-do and a note from Petra informing Dink that she wouldn't be able to have his kids because they'd be insufferable. Um, okay.

---

On the other hand, every single moment Peter spends in a scene is made of awesome. But that's another meme.

[its-theclimb.livejournal.com]

DROP EVERYTHING JUST MAKE BABIES.

[randomspanish.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, this was kind of hard to come up with...

1. Spencer's One-Episode Romance With his Former Babysitter

Seriously, there is nothing creepier than a grown man being treated like a young boy by his date. It was really, really weird.

2. The rap battle in iParty With Victorious

So painful. So, so painful. There is a ventriloquist dummy rapping, ladies and gentlemen. That's how painful.

3. iSell Penny Tees

On one hand, it's a funny episode. On the other, it's the funny episode where the iCarly gang open a sweatshop staffed by preteen children.

4. iMeet Fred

An entire episode dedicated to meeting/interacting with Fred from YouTube. If you don't know who he is, be grateful.

5. iHave a Lovesick Teacher

Otherwise known as the episode where a female teacher is so portrayed as so desperate for companionship that she tries to fail her entire class after her boyfriend breaks up with her, and it goes downhill from there.

[bigshoestofill.livejournal.com]

Other than the Reboot, (which if it doesn't bother you, then you don't know enough about it *shakes tiny fist at DC*) my main issue is that DC kinda started ignoring Young Justice (with small exceptions) as soon as they started up the new Teen Titans.

I totally get that they needed to grow up and that Slade shooting Bart in the knee will do that to a speedster, but those years were not only formative, but it ran for five years. Just because he became kid flash doesn't mean his years as Impulse didn't matter.

And then when Bart had arguably one of the most epic scenes in Infinite Crisis and took on Superboy Prime with help from Speedsters past, giving up his life... they went and used that as an excuse to age him again and make him the new Flash. Which would have been fine if it had lasted more than five issues when they killed him. Which made me cry.

Which again was made moot when they brought him and Conner back (as a kid again) using some cockamamie storyline involving the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st Century. Then he's a zombie shortly thereafter in Blackest night. And finally, they throw him into an interesting alternate future where he has to save everything without any help, which of course is meaningless because the universe rebooted at the end.

So what I'm saying is that everything after Young Justice was just DC making it so that any emotional connection I had to one of my favorite characters was meaningless. This is why my Bart is young and not tainted by too much continuity.

((Don't get me started on what they did to my *favorite* character. I *will* cry and hit things.))

[trigons_child]

OH GODS WHERE DO I BEGIN.

Off the top of my head, and I will probably edit or add to this comment as rage strikes me throughout the day:


1. Titans Hunt: so "the Wildebeest Society" started hunting down and capturing all the current and former members of the Titans, including Raven. They pretty much got everyone except Nightwing. He went searching (this went on for TWO AGONIZING YEARS) for them and when he finally found them, realized that the Wildebeest leader was a Titan himself, Jericho. He was possessed by -- get this -- the pissed off souls of Azarath. Apparently the whole sacrificing themselves to stop Trigon made them really cranky. They wanted to liiiiiiiiiiiiive and needed the bodies of the Titans to do it. Jericho's daddy Deathstroke killed him (poor Jericho and Raven are neck-in-neck for most abused Titan), and all the corrupted souls went into Raven. She demoned out, and her mother Arella channeled the power of Azarath and killed them both. OR DID SHE.


2. Kory and Dick's Wedding: A year and a half later, Raven shows up at the wedding of Starfire and Nightwing, wearing just little scraps of leather and leading a band of scull-faced minions and a mulletted future version of Nightwing (renamed "Deathwing"). Her soul, freed of its body when she died, went evil (for no good reason) and possessed a metahuman woman who looked remarkably like Raven (convenient!). So Raven kills the priest and lays one on Kory to knock her up with a "Seed of Trigon," which are apparently Raven's dead brothers and sisters that never survived beyond infancy. Except it's not really a Seed but Raven's pure soul. Which Kory carries around for the longest time while Raven bounces around demonizing more and more people. Then there's a fight and Kory lets loose with Raven's soul and evil!Raven is destroyed and good!Raven is just chilling as a golden spirit without a body, popping up on random occasions to cockblock Roy and Donna.

3. Her love life. All of it. The comics danced around Raven/Jericho, which I totally shipped and would've been so very sweet and happy, but it never happened. Instead (after accidentally making Dick fall in love with her and running off with Kory for a weekend), she hooks up with a jackass that all the Titans rightfully hate and gets pissed at them because she's being a dumb ass and insists he's a good soul, blah blah blah. But it turns out he's an evil robot that tries to pressure her into sex so he can eat her soul. She almost gives it up before Jericho (of course) rushes in save her. Then later she hooks up with Beast Boy which makes me want to punch things because it's just fanservice to people who watched the cartoon and it's icky because he won't take no for an answer and leave her alone and turns into animals to sneak into her room and watch her sleep. And this, apparently being written by a fan of Twilight, has Raven reacting with "Oh I don't mind, I like it." WHAT.

4. Raven's demon baby. Soooooooooooo apparently at some nebulous off-screen moment some undefined time ago, Raven went looking for her father (UM he's sorta dead and/or trapped in his own dimension (the writers keep changing their minds) without any power whatsoever so I'm not sure why she was looking). Also, she was pissed off. Because, you know, that's how Raven rolls. She passed through a dimension that heightened emotional connections or something and her rage made the animals of the world merge into one creepy demony thing ("the Wyld") that called her mom. REALLY. So Anakin Bass here came to the conclusion he needed to sacrifice Mommy to become invincible, so he kidnapped her and buried her up to her head in the ground and waited for an eclipse to sacrifice her. The Titans, of course, came charging to the rescue, but Raven had to be held back when they killed the Wyld because she was all OH NOES MAH BAYBEE. WHATEVER.

5. Whatever the fuck Scott Lobdell does to her if he brings her back in the DCnU. NO. Jackass.

(I'm not bitter.)

[brat_inslayage]

*eyes #3* So basically you're ignoring the last few pages of the last issue of pre-reboot Teen Titans. ME TOO. AUGH.

[endsthegame]

Meanwhile, Ender has a lot more of these, if simply because Peter shares spotlight duties with Bean and Petra in his books, whereas Ender's pretty much the main man of his.

... though warning for massive spoilers.

1. Ender in Exile

Trust OSC to revisit Ender's storyline again over a decade after the last book, and not only get crucial details wrong but actively write almost every character OOC. Then we've got such beauties as Ender's long and rambling proclamations of heterosexuality (THERE IS SOMETHING STIRRING IN HIS LOINS!) and the bizarre quasi-romance with Alessandra (which ends as she finally works up the courage to come to his room alone and kiss him. He kisses her back... then tells her to zip up, confronts her with her mommy issues, makes a bizarre sex joke, and then sends her on her way with a 'things will never be awkward between us!'.)

Mind, I like the psychology of what happened on Ganges - of recent plotty fame - and Ender pulling a brilliant fast one on the admiral who's trying to take over his colony, but the book is badly written, and every chapter has any number of '... is this really Ender/Valentine/whoever talking?' moments.

2. Ender/Novinha

I get this ship psychologically - I really do. Ender has chronic self-punishment disorder, even after decades (or thousands of years) of healing; Novinha punishes her lovers in order to keep them safe. Ender has craved a sense of family without even knowing it; Novinha comes with a broken family attached, full of kids who need a father figure. Ender feels lonely and misunderstood; Novinha has gone through some traumatic experiences too, so he feels drawn to her.

But romantically, it makes not a jot of sense to me, and Card trying to sell it as such boggles me. He underplays it in Speaker for the Dead - Ender basically falls in love with her off a picture of her as child, looking haunted. They have maybe three conversations, it's made clear to Ender that Novinha is not fond of Ender-the-Xenocide, seeing him as a similar creature who 'destroys everything he touches', and while Novinha comforting him at the end is moving, it's literally two lines of narrative with no dialogue. Another fan put it nicely when they said that Ender seems to be making the lonely-isolated-boy-mistake of confusing sympathy for romantic love.

And then Novinha gets increasingly more histrionic, blames Ender for things that aren't his fault, and fucks off to a nunnery.

3. Xenocide.

The only book in the Ender saga that I haven't reread. I read it once while I was in high school and was scared away from the series for years - it's that depressing, WTF-y, and horrifying. Novinha blaming Ender for her son's death, accusing him of being unable to love individual people, and leaving him for a monastery is one part of it. Then there's the riots, the fanatic racism against aliens, Valentine showing up to ramble how lovely it is that one of Ender's kids is saving himself for marriage, Ender getting his soul split across three bodies-- this book is a mess.

Though that last bit did give us alt!Peter, so it wasn't all bad... /bias

4. Ender's death.

To paraphrase apocalipped: he died of fucking boredom. Or rather, he chases Novinha to the monastery - 'If I'm not having sex with anyone, I might as well not be having sex with my wife', thank you for oversharing - where he vows never to leave the monastery again and cuts off contact with the outside world.

But this is Ender, who's never actually lost his ambition and who's still a wanderer at heart - and thanks for that bit of characterisation after years of pushing the 'he's happy now that he's married' agenda - and when he gets the chance to go live in another body and let this one and its memories die, he does.

After Novinha chews him out for staying with her only out of duty, and they both come to the realisation that since their kids are now adults and they're done raising them, they don't have anything left in common.

5. The epilogue to 'Children of the Mind'

OSC. I love alt!Peter. Don't marry him off. Or cut off the story right as it's finally getting interesting again. THE DESCOLADORES WOULD HAVE BEEN INTERESTING.

[furnaceface]

DEAD OF BOREDOM.

I CANNOT EVEN.

ALSDKJALDSJAJLKAWEAKHCAFAKJAF

[exactlyaverage.livejournal.com]

Honestly? There's not a lot about Eureka I can really nitpick about. It's a quirkly lighthearted show that doesn't take itself too seriously. You know exactly what to expect. But if I had to nitpick:

1. The Jack-Allison-Nathan love triangle. The show does everything it can to shove the Jack/Allison ship down your throat only to have her hook up with Nathan and then when he's out of the show she's pregnant with Nathan's child and yadda yadda yadda.

The funny thing is I think Jack had more romantic chemistry with Nathan and Tess than he does with Allison. But what do I know?

2. Jack. Solves. Every. Problem. It's now mostly played for laughs but in a town filled with super geniuses you'd think they'd be able to come up with a solution before Jack does. Especially since the problems are usually way too scientific in nature for Jack to understand. They guy can barely send texts on his phone!

3. In almost every single episode, a mistake leads to wacky which will then lead to the world destroying itself if they don't fix the problem. There's been a couple of exceptions but they rarely stray away from the formula.

4. Zoe is in trouble! Again! Seriously. The girl's gotten into more trouble than Dawn Summers on a Tuesday night.

And that's all I got really. I can't nitpick the massive retcon they did in Season 4 because it was actually done extremely well. And unlike other continuity problems they've stuck with the change and don't plan on ever going back. I love this show!

[chosehumanity]

Really, all I've got for Mitchell can be summarized as season bloody three.

Season 2 was all about him plunging back into darkness. I liked that - I even liked the bit where he murdered every passenger in a train near the end, when he'd finally snapped. The season ended on a heavy down note, too: Annie was gone, Mitchell had only barely been dragged back across the morality line, they had to move house.

So you'd expect season 3 to get a little lighter again, right?

But no, it got worse. With Mitchell's actor deciding to quit the show (damn you for stealing him, Peter Jackson. As if I needed more reasons to hate you) and refusing to take an easy out for his character, they had to write him into a definitive death.

So instead season 3 saw Mitchell backsliding into a haze of desperation and psychopathic tendencies, killing people, psychologically torturing an amnesiac Herrick... and then it got even worse.

I have the last episode sitting on my disk. I know exactly what happens in it. I'm still refusing to watch it.

Season 3 was the most depressing bit of television I've seen in years, and this is coming from a Battlestar Galactica fan. No. Just no.

(On the other hand, the mini Becoming Human was awesome. I'd actually rather just have a show starring the three kids from that series than see Being Human go on with only two-thirds of the cast, after the debacle that was S3.)

[life_inshadow]

Yeah, S3 was difficult. I also had a problem with the way Mitchell treats Annie, which -- maybe I just like Annie too much to want to see her romantically tortured, but it didn't even make sense.

I also liked the train scene better before I was doing some canon review and remembered Drusilla -- who looks a bit like Daisy and is written similarly -- did the same thing in Buffy. I know it's not the most creative idea of all time to start with, but.

[spring-lost.livejournal.com]

I don't even want to talk about it.

[its-theclimb.livejournal.com]

I am pinging in here in the opposite order than what I usually do because SOMEONE'S CANON IS DEEPLY MORE FLAWED THAN THE REST. Even if I have way more tolerance for this insane show than I should.

Aaaaand here we go.

1. So, fun fact: Miley and her BFF Lilly end up applying to "Standford University," which is their world's equivalent of (you guessed it!) Stanford. Now, I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but NEITHER (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vI4HeKRKtg) OF THEM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iE1Z-BzNzL0#t=70s) IS REALLY THAT BRIGHT. So Lilly gets in and Miley does not (and actually this came out in the middle of my own issues with "OH GOD, WHEN DO EARLY DECISION LETTERS COME BACK," so I am maybe a mite more sensitive to this absurdity than most because Stanford BROKE MY HEART), so what does Miley decide to do? She drives 200 miles to the school and asks why. She's told that it's because she has no extracurriculars, woe. Downside of being a secret pop star = no time for chess club! So she drives the 200 miles back home and then Lilly's all, "Why don't you say you're Hannah Montana's assistant?" Which Miley decides is a great idea! So she drives 200 miles back, and the lady (who is still in her office despite this being early evening at best) is all, "Well, we'll need to see some proof. Like working papers! Or tax sheets!" And Miley drives home just to change into her wig and stuff, stomps through her closet to get the clothes (Lilly's inquiry of "Why didn't you just use your emergency Hannah kit you keep in the car?" isn't very well-received by angry!Miley), and then goes BACK to the woman as Hannah to gush about how wonderful and perfect and charming her assistant is. And then the woman's all, "Oh, you know we can't really let her in for sure. We'll just reread her application with this in mind!" And Miley is TORN, and finally decides the best solution is to come out to the world as Hannah Montana. And then she gets in no problem. DISNEY, WHAT IS THE MESSAGE YOU ARE SENDING HERE?

2. The chickification of Lilly. She was all tomboy-ish and awesome in the first two seasons. Then she started dating Oliver and started using words like "Olliepop" and "sweetie-bear." Sads.

3. Jake Ryan. So for like ten minutes in season two or something, this total dick named Jake Ryan transfers to Miley's school, and he's famous for starring in the TV show Zombie High. He's a huge jerk to everyone (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRfIBGuKS8), but Miley's the only one who can't stand him, so what happens? They end up going out, of course. And somehow even though he steals water bottles from little girls and demands to cut the line everywhere and hangs up his own picture in his bathroom, SHE'S COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH HIM. WHAT. I keep saying she's not that bright...

4. The ending of the movie, which consists of Miley taking off the wig at a benefit concert for her entire town, Crowley Corners, saying she can't lie to them because they're her family. (Seriously. What.) And this paparazzi guy who's been stalking her for the whole time turns out to be there and takes out his phone to take a picture (really, just of a brunette on stage with a microphone -- it probably wouldn't have been very convincing), but everyone FLIPS OUT and agrees not to spill her secret (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Dv6yL2iIwg0#t=218s). I mean, honestly.

5. The alternate ending (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFG2iFcdOgI). I seriously cannot stress how awful it is. It consists of a five-year-old Miley Cyrus (yes, Cyrus, WHY) and her real mom (even though Brooke Shields plays her throughout the series) and dad being all "Oh, you're going to be a rock star one day." WHAT.

[furnaceface]

1. ... Everything I just did to Jono, actually. Jono's connection to Akkaba? Retcon. Retcon in a huge and horrible way, and I suspect the only reason they really did what they did to him was that people were pissed off that they left him on life support post M-Day and then benched him completely, or something.

2. It's a little thing, but can we please figure out how we spell Jono's name and actually keep it consistent? All through GenX, it was Jonothon. And then after that, it flip-flopped from Jonathan to Jonothan and all over the place and GUH.

3. I seriously cannot grok that Logan was the only X-Men who ever actually gave a crap enough to go looking for Jono once he vanished into the Weapon X program. Cannot. Jono might have stepped back to a less intensive position on the team by that point, but he was still one of them.

4. Any and all of that Church of Humanity plotline, but, because the little things always kill me the hardest, let's go with the fact that after killing Angelo, they couldn't be bothered to get his name right. Have some respect for the dead, here. It's Espinosa, not Torres.

5. And I could go reaching back a billion issues to crap on GenX, but going with more recent things- Wouldn't it be great if Marvel paid attention to WHO they depowered and killed off? Because Stacy X was both, but was still a minor plot point being all pheromone-powered hooker at Sugar Kane and Ultimate Nullifier in the debut issue of Vengeance.

All in all, I think Marvel writers could probably stand to maybe start looking at fan-kept resources before grabbing onto a character and making use of them. A little fact-checking can't hurt, but however Marvel is doing it, it ain't workin'.

[not-crucified.livejournal.com]

ESPINOSA. ESPINOSA. MY NAME IS ESPINOSA.

TORRES IS MY EX-GIRLFRIEND WHO STRIKES MYSTERIOUS DEALS WITH MISS FROST THAT CANON WILL NEVER TOUCH ON AGAIN, AND LIKES SHARP THINGS A BIT TOO MUCH FOR MY TASTES.

/RANT

[trickydemigod.livejournal.com]

1. The last few pages of The Last Olympian. Where Luke turns into a creeper 23 year old asking a 16 year old if she loves him and her being a twat to a dying guy in response. I have been raging about this moment for like 3 years now and I will not listen to reason about it. And it's getting cut out when I write that scene up for canon.

2. Actually I just really don't like Annabeth in The Last Olympian at all. So whiny. We'll just stick Percy/Annabeth under here too but I'm biased, obviously. And I think Percy's better with Luke Rachel tbqh.

3. The movie. Good god the movie. No mention of Kronos, no characters that become important later like Clarisse, they picked an awful actress for Annabeth and wrote her like she was some Clarisse/Thalia hybrid not to mention the fact that it seemed like she barely knew Luke at all when their relationship is pretty damn important in the last few books and there's about 100 other things that make me facepalm in that horrific film. And what's worse is that they're making another one. No me gusta.

4. Luke was some one dimensional bad guy until the last book or so (Percy didn't even know Luke's last name until the last book but that can be attributed to him being dense, I guess). I get it was written that way to surprise readers when you become sympathetic for him but it really made justifying canon when I was doing catch ups a bitch 'cause he's a real ass sometimes.

5. Sea of Monsters was just a mess all around. I like how Clarisse got to be the hero but the entire plot was iffy.

6. Also I don't feel like this would be complete without having a blanket one for every bit of Greek mythology Rick took liberties with 'cause...woof.

I'm sure there's more that annoyed me but I haven't read the books aside from Luke's parts since the last one came out.

[sexonyoursheets.livejournal.com]

THEY'RE MAKING ANOTHER ONE?

And I'm a Percy/Rachel shipper, too. I'm just an all-around Rachel fangirl, though. *hides journal*

[wwiii]

... X-Men: The Last Stand.

Except for a couple of the Warren parts.

[solo_sword]

I'm sorry, I think you're speaking of a movie that DOES NOT EXIST.

[life_inshadow]

1. Tara's gullible. Okay, I can maybe see how if you're told from birth that you're part demon, you don't want to think about it too much. Maybe. I can also accept that her mom was beaten down enough by her life that she never really questioned it either. But when you add in that Tara's fairly serious about witchcraft and has spent a big chunk of the last year working with demon hunters, it starts looking like sheer stupidity that, at the least, she never tried to figure out what kind of demon she was.

2. "Normal Again." I normally love the "is this real or is this a dream?" thing, but the decision to end this episode by suggesting Buffy was delusional was a puzzling one. And I don't just say this because it meant my corner of the fandom spent the next eight months hearing "clever" people ask if maybe the whole season was going to turn out to be a delusion, dun dun dun.

3. Spike tries to rape Buffy. This was the only part of "Seeing Red" I really hated, believe it or not. I get that they were trying to bring the relationship to the lowest possible point to explain why Spike did what he did next, but it just felt really disrespectful of both characters, and it really wasn't a cliff the show could bring Spike back from. I still wish they'd had him try to vamp her, which would have had the same effect and been less gratiutously traumalicious.

4. Magic is addictive. So they had to limit Willow's powers somehow so she didn't always do a spell and save the day -- she's not the title character, after all -- but this was such a dumbass way to do it. And the drug addiction parallels flat out did not work. This is why I still go into a rage over the continued producing career of Marti Noxon, btw.

5. Buffy in S7. blah blah blah everything was really hard on her, but to be honest I wanted to punch her in the face for being such a bossy jerk about it. Frequently.

[solo_sword]

Tbh I wanted to do this for dropped characters just so I could rant about Normal Again some more. Especially for what it did for Joyce's characterization and how it made her look horrible and stupid for her reaction in Becoming and UGH.

[halfman-lion.livejournal.com]

Actually, this is the one canon where I don't have a lot to rant about. The insane stuff is insane on purpose, and the canon knows Tywin Lannister is basically a horrible person, especially where Tyrion is concerned. (Though he's not Father of the Year to the kids he likes, either.)

The show was a little heavy on the gratuitous nudity and random sex scenes, but ... it's HBO. I have a hard time getting prudish about a network doing What It Does.

[need-no-moon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've got a rant for you if you'd like. *g*

[dollpocalypse]

1. Whiskey being a sleeper and shooting Bennett. It's not the trauma I have a problem with (because I am all for heaping trauma on Topher); it's just the general acceptance of her being a sleeper and NO ONE BEING BOTHERED BY IT for longer than two seconds. Except hysterical!Topher. But no one else.

2. HAY GUYS BOYD IS EVIL. Yeah, THE ONLY CONSISTENTLY ETHICAL DUDE AROUND is actually a complete nutjob. I can't even, you guys. I just can't.

3. Once Alpha -- you know, insane Alpha who murders people right and left and goes on torture sprees just for jokes -- takes on Paul's imprint, Echo's all WAIT I CAN'T KILL YOU, YOU HAVE MY ONE TRUE LOVE IN YOUR HEAD.

4. Echo/Paul in general. I never really felt it, tbh. He was just a liiiiittle too obsessed with her for me to be cool with it. And don't even get me started on how weird it was for her to take his imprint inside her brain at the end of it so they could be 2GETHER 4EVER!!!!111oneoneone

5. The lack of more Denisof. I DON'T CARE THAT HIS ARC MADE NO SENSE. GIVE ME ALL THE ALEXIS.

...YMMV on that one.

[showmetheproof.livejournal.com]

Agree on all, which is why I had to give up and quit watching. It was always an effort over the squick factor anyway, but once they messed with Whiskey I was outta there.

OH AND #2 BLOWS. I *liked* Boyd and they retconn him into evil? Joss, quit taking out your father issues on the people we like.

[annieadderall.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.

Yeah, my canon's awesome. One episode in three seasons that I didn't like? I'll take it.

[withasword.livejournal.com]

I don't have many complaints about this series. Except wishing that they'd get written faster, damn it.

1. Curran. Okay, he's all right sometimes? But the Twilight-esque parallels with him creepering around and watching Kate sleep and whatever else while 'courting' her... I prefer Kate's reaction of calling him a psychopath and a pervert and kicking the shit out of him for it, but that said SHE STILL GOES FOR HIM ANYWAY. That and the fact he wont let her so much as stand near another man. I get it, he's a shifter, they get possessive, but ugh.

2. Not a plot point, but: the author's use of 'His Fussiness'. It cycles between that and 'Fuzziness' and omg I wish she'd stick to one or the other. Preferably the other.

[dontvotemeout]

Should we kill this character that we've ruined to hell? Should we not? I KNOW, LET'S PUT IT TO A VOTE.

I'm also annoyed that Jason's reboot comic is so faily with Starfire, because I want to buy it to support him but I don't want to buy it to support DC and their idiocy.

Also? The red hair. >.<

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I had Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 on my pull list for weeks ahead of time, and then the early reviews and things started coming out. By the time I got to the comic shop that Wednesday night to pick up my books, I wanted to die of shame when they handed that one to me. *WEEPS*