Zeborah

I'm irritated at the whole "innocent man goes to prison and it's unjust but let's not actually examine the systemic issues with prison" trope, but I think I'm going to enjoy ( [Here be spoilers and speculation] )

I forgot to mention:



This is from Criminal Minds season 6, episode 14. (Possibly it's only funny in Prentiss's voice.) I was watching it for research for my fanfic: I wanted to know if Prentiss and [White Collar] Caffrey's paths could ever have crossed while he was swanning around Europe. I concluded it's possible that she got pointed out to him at some point as someone scary to stay the hell away from.

I don't know if I'll ever use either this conclusion or this icon, but both amuse me too much not to share.

Title: Lemmings in Love
Vidder: Zeborah
Fandom: Criminal Minds (seasons 1-5)
Music: Lemmings in Love by pornophonique (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA)
Licensed: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
Summary: Haley and Aaron Hotchner walk side by side. Even when they don't.

Trigger warnings: Lots of quick cutting. Some violence and blood.

Download link at my fanvid master post; YouTube embed follows (captions available)



( Lyrics )

( Notes )

First off, Amy Pond's eyes. I mean. I've come across someone who actually doesn't like that thing where her eyes steal the entire scene, so obviously going "OMG her eyes!" is not a universal trait, but nevertheless I think it's a fairly common one.

But today I was watching the first episode of Covert Affairs (thanks to discussion here) which may be my new post-"Oh Leverage no" love. This is mostly because, in the pilot episode two of the three main characters are women and the third is blind. (Sadly unsurprisingly he's played by a sighted actor.) And there's Tropes there, particularly around Our Heroine's motivations for joining the CIA, but mostly it's pretty awesome fun and maybe in episode 2 she'll have got over First Day on the Job syndrome and won't have to be saved by a man. Anyway, about halfway through the episode we get a good look at Our Heroine's boss's eyes and they are really startlingly green.

In retrospect, I always had a huge fascination with the constantly changing eye-colours of Due South's Fraser and ST: Voyager's Kes.

--Moving on, or rather back to casting, because Wikipedia notes that in episode 2 of Covert Affairs, we start to get Sendhil Ramamurthy as Jai Wilcox (replacing a rather whiter character). And I remember when I first went back to watch the pilot of Criminal Minds I noticed that JJ wasn't in it - she only appeared in episode 2. Which makes me wonder which is happening:

• are producers saying, "Okay, good pilot, now you can have your series but, um, maybe a tad diversity, huh?" or
• are directors/writers saying, "Whew, now we've got the conservatives to greenlight us we can slip in some non-WASPs"?

Given recent casting developments on Criminal Minds I'm kind of suspecting the latter.

Also I like the title because, haha, it's a pun, see? I'm easily amused by puns. But I hope they don't expect me to be surprised when it's revealed what Our Heroine's boss's husband is really up to because that's kind of obvious, narratively, and fun as the show is I don't expect any really subtle twists per se.

(ETA: One problem with the show is that the music's too loud and at times obscures what's actually being said. If I keep getting the feeling that I need closed captioning then... well I sure hope it gets closed captioning when it screens live.)

Today, season 5 episode 16. And the final scene struck me. (No serious spoilers.)

JJ, Prentiss and Garcia are tidying up after a case. And the awesome mother of one of the victims comes in and they talk briefly about the case and their job; and then JJ narrates the final voiceover quote by Emily Dickinson.

5 women in one scene, and the first time I watched it I saw nothing remarkable about it, because Criminal Minds has been awesome about having women just be people. Yes, the victims are mostly women, but they still have agency, whether they're being kept in a cage, a car boot, or a paralytic state. Women also take their turns as perpetrator, cop-of-the-week, key witness, key expert, strong friend-or-family, the-one-who-got-away, and the-one-who-stabbed-the-perp-before-Our-Heroes-could-get-there.

And Garcia is the tech genius. And Prentiss is a geeky polyglot who's ready any day to strap on the kevlar, shove her hair into a ponytail, and kick in a door -- or to let herself be beaten up to protect her male colleague. And JJ is quiet and sweet and can flutter her eyelashes with the best of them, twist the media (or Hotch) around her little finger -- or alternatively kill three attacking dogs with three shots in the dark while standing in the blood of their last victim.

Season 5 episode 16 - okay, here are spoilers after all - (skip) we find out that every time there's a missing child case, JJ has to deal with the mother of a boy taken 8 years ago, who thinks the cases are related. And then JJ realises that this time the cases are related. And when Morgan thinks maybe JJ's just being a mother (Morgan is always a doubter. Also did I mention JJ's a working mother? Her partner's the stay-at-home dad) Prentiss steps in to back her up, and they take the case. And the mother of the first victim has done a pile of research for them. And it turns out that the dominant unsub is a woman. And... you get the picture. Basically, without the women, there'd be no story. And this wasn't that unusual of a storyline.

So of course CBS wants to get rid of JJ and reduce Prentiss from regular character to some kind of guest appearance arrangement. The male characters can stay, they've got no problem with the male characters.

Someone's done a rejigged version of the opening credits which says it all:


There's a petition going around -- I signed it when it was about 170 signatures, and now it's about 32,000. There's Twitter and Facebook campaigns, and people phoning the CBS folk and sending "Missing" posters and lipsticks and all of that.

But, y'know? It's not like the CBS folk are trying to be sexist. It's just that all of Hollywood and all of society is sexist -- no matter how well-written Prentiss and JJ and Garcia have been, the male characters still got all the *really* meaty plots, and/because/so guess who the fans' favourite characters are? -- and if CBS thinks they can save money by collaborating with that then by golly they'll collaborate. So I don't know if I should bother hoping at all.

Usage Summary for your current monthly billing period which ends on 11 Oct 2009: You have used 3.61 GB which is 72% of your monthly traffic allocation. You have 1.39 GB left in your current monthly usage cycle.

(I've watched more Korean historical drama than I normally would in a month.)

Given:

1. A TV episode is approximately 385MB, call it 400MB to allow for overhead.
2. There are 2 more episodes in the Iljimae series I'm watching.
3. There are 2 more episodes of Criminal Minds before the 11th October.
4. Being able to talk about a TV programme with USans on the day it airs is infinitely more fun than coming to the conversation 3 months later.

Should I:

1. Watch Iljimae now and delay on at least one of the Criminal Minds episodes?
2. Watch Criminal Minds as it airs and delay on Iljimae?
3. Watch Iljimae and Criminal Minds and switch to text-only browsing for everything else for the rest of the month?
4. Pay some stupid amount to add another 5GB to my monthly allowance, of which I'll probably only end up using 100MB anyway?

(I'm leaning towards c. Though I really should be doing other stuff this weekend: I promised to write a pseudo-journal article for a library zine, and a linkdump for the Outer Alliance Blog, and I need to put together a presentation, and I'm trying to help add stuff to the Carl Brandon Wiki, and I've got my sister coming over to be writer-buddies, which time I'll probably use for my overdue taxes, and there's visiting parents, and running the projector at church, and shopping and laundry and window-cleaning, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing something. <thinks> Oh yeah, Daylight Saving is making away with the hour of 2am, and I did want to catch up on some sleep.

(But Iljimae! And Criminal Minds!)