Three Eyed Turtle

[nell65]

I have such conflicted reactions to this episode, and the one before it.

On the one hand - TET has awesome Paul/Madeline stuff going on.

On the other - both episodes have Greg Hillenger.

I like the first episode he is in in the (first? second? season - I've just watched them all, you'd think I could remember).

But this pair of eps? There is something about Greg and his interactions with all the other characters that triggers in me that horrible - cover my eyes because OMG (!!!111!!!!1) they are *all* going to embarrass themselves terribly over this!!!11!!!! - feeling.

There is something about the structure of the eps that is so heavy handed with it's telegraphing that "Greg=trouble" that the utter obliviousness of *everyone* else to this problem, even after Greg is deliberately guilty of murder of a sr. operative, just makes it almost impossible for me to enjoy anything else going on.

Or, seriously, for that matter - in the final scene in the hanger - when George suddenly rolls over and plays dead?

OMG - Paul!!! Wake the frak up!!!



Okay, this is a total DON rant.


I think this series of episodes in particular, though with plenty of other evidence from the very beginning through the very end, is what make me just seethe over the notion that Nikita will *obviously* fail immediately (as opposed too -- in time) at running Section because she isn't as good as Paul/Madeline. I mean, maybe she will, but Paul and Madeline fuck up all the dang time, and yes, they did eventually fail - after ten or eleven years. If they are the baseline - Nikita doesn't have to be any better than she is shown to be to be *just as good as they were.* Arrrgghhghgh! flail!~!!!!

Comments

[nell65.livejournal.com]

I have a sensitive 'embarrassment agony' reflex. There is a genre of sit com I can't bear to watch either, and I was probably every bit of 40 before I began to 'get' even on an intellectual level things like the three stooges or laurel and hardy. I'm better than I used to be -- but I was still watching all the Greg scenes in TET through my fingers. Well metaphorically! lol!

And, I have read your first story, you nut. *g* I liked it -- And I'm sure I've told you that before!

I hated 'insane' Maddy stories so it was/is always a pleasure to read TR stories because she isn't crazy Maddy. And there are a lot of bizarre Nikita runs section stories from DOMs - those are often (usually?) worse than the TR stories. And to be honest, how boring would a story showing that Nikita is competent be? Serious ZZzzzzsss. LOL!

Do you remember ever reading the one where crazy Nikita has Adam killed so that Michael will come back to Section and her? I think in some ways those all fold together in my head with the TR Nikita fails stories....

Of course - in the story I'm finishing and hope to post very soon, I totally hand wave her running section successfully. I wanted to write a story about her on the outside and what that might be like. So I assume she gets there. Long ago I'd thought to write a whole bit about how and why I thought she could -- but at this late date, that wasn't really the story that this story wanted to be.

Maybe I'll write that one as a stand alone someday....or not. It doesn't press on my head the way the others do.

I think there are a lot of complicated and not-so-complicated reasons I've never written TR -- I didn't like the caricatures of them in a lot of HR fic (although, in retrospect, some of the more over the top ones are kinda funny! Especially the Madeline is jealous of Nikita over Michael stories...), but I also so disagreed with TR in the show'verse that I was sure I could never do them justice in the way I would have wanted to. To some extent, I suppose, I still feel that way.

What Section *is* in the later seasons, and so when it falls to Nikita, is a huge creative stumbling block for me -- though, one of the stories I'd like to finish is about Quinn and as that story continues to tug in my head, things are a little bit more in focus for me. Not enough to finish the story yet --- but, I'm sort of trying to take the stories in the order that they came to me. Which means I have time! LOL!

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

Ah, embarrassment squick! I have that, too, but I think it's less sensitive than yours.

And, I have read your first story, you nut. *g* I liked it -- And I'm sure I've told you that before!

Really? I'm honestly surprised by that. I would have thought it would annoy DONs too much. Then again, I originally avoided posting it on the storyboards, too, because I was sure it would get a hostile reception, and then that turned out not to be the case, so what do I know? LOL.

Do you remember ever reading the one where crazy Nikita has Adam killed so that Michael will come back to Section and her?

I do remember that one, but I'm pretty sure that particular story was written with the very deliberate intent of being provocative and stirring up things in the fandom. So I judge that story by a totally different kind of standard. It achieved what it set out to do, and then some!

As for Madeline caricatures...the more over-the-top they are, the more I'm likely to be OK with them. They *are* funny! Just like the Bambi and Aldo characterizations are funny. I loved those stories, albeit maybe not for the reasons the authors intended. My very favorite Bambi scene -- which was a small part of an amazingly-lengthy and surreal dream sequence *within* a cracky AU -- involved her running STRAIGHT INTO THE SIDE OF A BARN

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

AT FULL SPEED, for no apparent reason other than her inherent Blondeness. It was so bizarre and ridiculous, I think I may have injured myself laughing. And there were plenty of bizarre things done to the other characters as well.

[Sorry for two posts -- I clearly got excited about the barn scene!]

[nell65.livejournal.com]

The Bambi and Aldo stories were/are great. *bg*

They always make me think of A Fish Called Wanda, which is a movie I also loved.

(Though, again, there is an element of some British humor that I just do. not. get. What's his name -- Mr. Bean? Yeah. mystifies me. And I actually do laugh at The Three Stooges now. *g*)

[nell65.livejournal.com]

I think I did know that (that it was intended to stir things up) about the Mad Nikita in the Perch story - the problem I had with boxing it off like that it is that it was really only on the outer edge of what DOMs already were saying *everywhere* about incompetent Nikita, so instead of seeming outlandish, it got read seriously, because it was really only a step or two removed from what so many thought/said/wrote already.

Besides - the mad woman in the attic is hardly a wild new invention.

But anyway - from this distance, that story doesn't stand out to me anymore as a vivid outlier, instead it symbolizes for me a general theme that is strongly present in lots of post-series fic, which is Nikita can't run the Section -- for whatever reason. Even your reason!

A lot of this makes sense for meta reasons, of course - DOMs and TRs hated that their favorite wasn't in the perch and wrote stories to get them back there, so Nikita is an obstacle to be eliminated, with a handwave or with a more elaborate maneuver. HRs (including me - I totally cop to this one!) wrote stories about their team outside, or inside. But the inside HR stories tended even so to fall back on the idea that it was *Michael* who should be really running Section with Nikita as his second.

So, I understand. But sometimes I need to rant anyway, especially coming off another fic reading binge.

And trends like that are weird. Because they don't, necessarily, produce bad stories. On an individual level.

I bought the Star Trek reboot movie before I left the states in March and, as a life-long Trekie, I have to say I utterly love it. And I went in totally skeptical.

So, as I'm playing around in AO3, I started poking around the 1,000 strong fic list for the film. And the trope of abused, crazy Jim Kirk is *really really popular.* Not in the hurt/comfort trope of Jim charges into danger and is hurt and Spock (or whomever) nurses him back to health, but in the Jim is a former teen prostitute/abused child and (especially bizarre in the Star Fleet setting) raging alcoholic of the binge variety from before he enlists right up through the 'present' of the story, and his resultant quasi-madness drives the plots, such as they are.

I have no idea if this picks up older trends in ST:TOS fic, I have read some but is it all from Shrift and Nestra's links and so that trope doesn't show up there particularly.

Some of the stories are pretty good, a few are really good in terms of capturing voice and character, even hot (as was, of course, their point!) Others aren't. But taken altogether they paint of a picture of a completely mentally unstable and self-destructive man who should be dead or in prison or a mental hospital, and not anywhere near a star ship, much less *on the bridge.* Now, each story has some compensating element to make it work that Jim Kirk can actually be in Star Fleet! but each compensation story is different, and the details blur, so what a reader comes away with is the dominant image of Mad Damaged Jim.

But writing a story about not-mad-not-damaged-Jim competently running his crew and his ship, without coming up with a 'plot of the week' -- is hard! (and coming up with a good plot-of-the-week is even harder.) And definitely not conducive to blogging-style 10,000 word PWP stories. I respect that. I do.

Still, it is interesting that the resulting fandom trope is Mad Damaged Jim.

So, all the dismissing Nikita to make room for preferred whomever does make sense. But each whomever and the particular justification blur and the overwhelming theme, when you swallow lots of fic all at once is 'incompetent Nikita, easily pushed aside.' Which is what makes me flaily. And not any one particular story, though some are worse than others, it is true. ;-)

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

I totally get how seeing that pattern over and over could really get irksome! It can be a good motivation for writing your own fic to counter it, though!

As for Mad Damaged Jim...I'm not especially a Star Trek fan, and I haven't seen the reboot, so when you mention this character trope, I immediately envision it being played by William Shatner in his over-the-top campy melodramatic style, and it's actually HILARIOUS to think about in that way. Setting that aside, though, that's a really common trope in House fandom, too. Super SUPER common. Mind you, canon provides a basis for some of it, but people go to unbelievable extremes in fic. It's an interesting socio-fannish pattern, isn't it?