Eegah

I've always felt vaguely insulted by Translation Convention, like they're playing directly to the lowest common denominator who refuse to read anything. Though at least they keep it consistent, rather than the weirdness of something like Lost where the Koreans speak Korean and the Iraqis speak English.

I'd love them to do a complete recreation of Elektra's death scene...except she wins and gets her revenge on Bullseye then and there. Just a straight "fuck you" to Frank Miller.

Just for fun I showed the trailer to my brother, who hasn't seen any of Arrow or Flash and doesn't know much about DC. His major comment: "So, is the guy in the suit just a complete Iron Man ripoff?"

Peggy: Are you going to be all right? Simmons: Yeah, it's just...I had a date.

Maybe Coulson can be like the old woman from the end of UHF, just randomly showing up to whack Ward in the nuts as he's being taken down. You know it would be great.

I feel kind of sorry for Brandon Routh, as from what I understand the original plan was for him to headline an Atom-centered spinoff, but then people reacted so badly to Sara's death that she was brought back as part of it, and it blew up from there into a full team show. I also seriously wonder if the plan all along was to build up to him being the actual Atom in this show, or they thought they could actually get away with making him an Iron Man knockoff until the audience reactions came in.

I'm very much assuming the resurrection will happen on Arrow, giving her an episode or two to reconnect with her family and Nyssa before starting her own story. After all, what's the point of pushing the show to mid-season unless the setup is taken care of in the first half?

My knowledge of the character (like pretty much everything DC except Batman and Superman) comes entirely from the DCAU, and I'm guessing this version is going to be very different (at the very least, she won't be selling out the planet to other hawk people any time soon). Though I'm definitely looking forward to getting an actual introduction for her, since it always bugged the crap out of me that Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter got proper origin stories on Justice League, while everyone acted like Hawkgirl had just been around the whole time. Also hoping her mace is included.

With the franchise becoming more overtly comic book-y with each installment, I'd like to see a fourth show take on the Martian Manhunter. Plus occasional cameos from the Endless (you know these writers would handle them better than whatever crap the movies are going to shove at us).

With Ray blowing himself up on the Arrow finale, I'm guessing that the Flash finale will also feature the deaths of Captain Cold and Heatwave. Then Legends of Tomorrow will open with Booster Gold plucking the three of them plus Sara out of the timestream at the moment before their deaths to become his team (with Cold and Heatwave going along because, as the Kingpin put it, "There is no profit to be made in the destruction of the planet. It is very bad for business.").

One random bit of speculation that's just come out of thinking maybe too hard about this stuff: what if the show introduces the Time Gem? The Soul Gem is probably going to be in the Dr. Strange film, but I'm not seeing any convenient place to put the one other remaining gem to be revealed before the Infinity War arrives. Of course, this would run into the same issues mentioned above with way more people watching the movies than the show, but everything coming out about these two films indicates they're going to be entirely for the die hard MCU fans Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back style, so why not go all out?

I'm pretty sensitive to queerbaiting myself, but at least in the show I don't really see it here. If you want to know what it really looks like, just check out the last five seasons of Supernatural, in which scenes between romantic couples are literally copied by or from scenes between Dean and Castiel word for word and shot for shot, and the producers still continue to insist there's nothing going on. Though I certainly think they could do a better job in this area, as I've long since given up hope that we'll ever hear from Mulan again after what was apparently a huge and brave step forward turned out to be something they had no interest in actually pursuing.

On Jimmy Kimmel, all the Avenger actors said they'd love to do the show.

From everything I've heard, you can mainly put the lack of further Ultron integration at Joss Whedon's door. He was a great choice for the first Avengers film, but it seems they should have cut ties then and there because he proceeded to treat Ultron entirely as his own project, seeing every request from Feige and the other Marvel people as a burden and openly stating he doesn't accept Agents of SHIELD as part of the MCU's continuity and Coulson is still dead to him. Basically, he's great with his own stuff but really doesn't play well with others, and I'm very glad the Infinity Gauntlet films have been handed to the Winter Soldier guys instead.

On Jimmy Kimmel the whole Avengers cast said they would love to do one of the TV shows if anyone would ask. Granted, it was hard to tell how serious they were being, but it gives me hope.

Basically, GoT just has so freaking many actors in it that odds are you'll find a ton of them working together elsewhere. Lewis was also the star of Life, a pretty great cop show that was sadly killed by the 2007 writer's strike.

It's also resulted in that huge reaction for a while whenever Death shows up, with him not having caught on yet that he appears in almost EVERY book. Same with the Librarian. I've also found myself since almost the beginning looking forward just as much to the blind reactions of Rachel2302 in the comments, which sometimes provide an interesting counterpoint (she still lists Mort as the worst book so far, even under Eric, because Mort himself was just that unappealing to her).

Anton Lesser plays Qyburn. Rather an odd experience going straight from GoT to this the past three weeks. Damien Lewis is perhaps best known as Major Richard Winters in HBO's Band of Brothers. I'm half-convinced the scene in episode 1 where he's informed that Normandy would be a good location for a military base in France was a reference to that.

With Stannis' line pointedly naming Tormund the new leader of the Wildlings, I'm now wondering if it was actually Tormund who switched places with Mance. He'd be far more inclined to do it willingly, and that anguished reaction from the supposed Tormund could easily be Mance watching someone be tortured in his place.

Deborah Ann Woll told IGN that the show is more or less making that stuff Karen's PAST in this version. The stilts were in the background of Potter's place, so he may well make an appearance.

And you have to love all the times in The Color of Magic where he points out how many people warned him that the series took a few books to get really good, and he doesn't see how it can get better. Bet he's really eating those words now.

For anyone looking to go outside the box on this, I would recommend The Tournament by Matthew Reilly, about a 13 year old Elizabeth and her tutor Roger Ascham attending a chess tournament where they encounter a murder mystery. It's quite unusual territory for Reilly, who specializes in utterly brainless (but very fun) action schlock, but he adapts quite well and I look forward to see if he does any more like it.

I imagine that Rosario Dawson's hefty paycheck played a role in how little Claire appeared, especially her showing up and leaving between episodes 9 and 10. Plus, since she's affiliated with Luke Cage in the comics rather than Daredevil, I'm reasonably sure that this was more of an extended early cameo for her.

The AV Club's reviews of the first season are complete, and this is the first time I've been seriously turned off by their work, and I really hope another reviewer takes over for season 2. From beginning to end, Oliver Sava comes off not as someone actually watching the show for itself, but searching high and low for the tiniest pieces of business that he can claim are evidence that the show's crew despise women so he can get attention by standing up for them. Reading his stuff, you'd seriously get the impression that the show is a never-ending parade of women getting slapped around, and in between occasional admissions of the awesomeness of Madame Gao, he pretty much refuses to ever acknowledge that Karen, Claire, Vanessa, and Elena are ever anything but helpless victims. And even when he gets away from that, the reviews are far more based on his preconceived notions of what the show should be than what it actually is. In the end he finally devolves into complete incoherency as he chastises killing off Leland before he became the Owl, before bringing up just a couple paragraphs later that his son will likely be taking that role.

Plus, Mystery Science Theater 3000 got one.