Dandesun

God, talk about everything that is vile about Carly in that first vid. Why can't she close her lips over her mouth? Why does she grimace at Sam the entire freaking time? What is wrong with her hair?! And the constant 'Josslyn could be missing' -- I vaguely remember reading about this on the boards at the time. Was she? Was Josslyn actually missing? Was Carly vindicated in her "I have a bad feeling, Jason fix it!" crap? I actually remember people at TWoP bitching about Carly justifying it all with her 'could be' and 'might' and 'maybe' -- augh. And was this during the Franco stuff? You know, the guy Carly is currently sleeping with and engaged to? Haaaaaate.

That's true. It was grossly out of character... which is another thing Ron excels at. I was actually looking forward to Carly finding out that Todd had stolen Jason's child and given it to his ex-wife. She should have rained fire down on him and declared an eternal war on him from that day on. Instead, she cried about him lying to her and told him that she would have gone to the mat for him with Jason. Um. What?! It was as out of character for Carly to even attempt to put Todd above Jason on her hierarchy after knowing him about five months as it was for Blair Cramer to have a single thing to do with Tomas Delgado after finding out he was the one who delivered Todd to Irene's nasty clutches for eight years. Which is to say... unbelievably, mind-blisteringly out of character. And it's something that Ron does way too often... especially to the female characters. It's on par with Anna's behavior about Robin. It flat out doesn't fit or make sense. And it's things like that, that make me worry significantly about the fallout of AJ's murder and Jason's return and the Halloween Horror Show... because Ron has a serious, serious problem not inserting the characters into his plots and having the behave as they should.

So? So she didn't get one thing? She destroys lives left, right and center but because she didn't get Jason to love her... who cares? Is that supposed to humanize her somehow because all I've ever seen it do is make her more entitled, more depraved and more desperate to destroy anything good Jason might find in his life because he didn't find it with her. And despite not getting Jason to fuck her out of love, she sure hasn't been deprived of him in any other facet of her life. Just because he doesn't have sex with her doesn't mean she's somehow this fallible, understandable creature. She's still a freaking monster... she still will happily destroy his life if it means she gets to remain the major part of it. And since she barely batted an eye when he did get rolled off the docks why should I give a shit that she never bagged him for real? She was too busy jumping on the guy who gave Jason's baby away followed by the serial killer who tormented and tortured Jason for over a year. Wah, poor Carly-izzums. No. She didn't get the man she wanted and she should never get him. She's horrible. (So is he but getting him would make her happy so it must never happen.) I hope he cuts her out completely... because that is a story that actually makes sense at this point in time.

I guess that's the real question in regards to nuJason then. Will Ron fulfill Carly's dream at last? Will the new Jason finally return Carly's love? And if so... what then? What happens if Carly gets what she's actively yearned for for twenty years? We all know she'd fuck it up almost immediately but, really, if she's been holding onto this dream in her heart of hearts for so long and finally gets it. Then what? And I can't really get over the concept of Carly being rewarded with Jason after she's been fucking the guy who tortured him and his wife for so long before he got rolled off the docks. And the thing is, I find the Carly/Jason friendship to be rather lazy when it comes down to it... because I don't think it's a real, honest friendship. It's Carly wanting Jason and doing everything in her power to be The Most Important Person to him (usually riding Michael's coattails for that honor) while she doesn't do a damn thing for him in return. She takes and takes and takes and takes and takes because that's all she can get from him. And he lets her until he gets fed up which results in him rolling his eyes for a day or maybe even yelling at her so she can put on her pouty face. He should destroy her for her involvement with Franco. Full on, scorched earth destroy because whatever arguments one can make about Franco having a tumor (bullshit) -- Carly didn't and everything she's done with Franco has been willing on her part... I fear that the Horror Wedding Fallout is going to result in Poor Widdle Carly... she got tricked by Franco and he wrecked her life! She's suffered enough! No. She never will.

I think I read something somewhere that Carly was going to start having scenes with him and have her own 'connection' -- it's possible that it came at me in a nightmare, though. Why the Carly/Jason "friendship" has to be so damned sacrosanct is beyond me. If t'were I, that's one relationship I would completely alter with nuJason's return. If he just shows up again after all the shit that's gone down and goes right back to cleaning up Sonny and Carly's messes and lives to be at their beck and call, and just instantly 'understands' everything they've done... what's the point? Carly being with Franco at all should be an insurmountable problem between Jakson and Carly. Hell, look at the way Jason treated Sam when they believed she had been raped by Franco... Carly being with that assjack willingly should be the absolute final limit for Jakson... tumor or no tumor.

Guza always struck me as soap opera's answer to Karl Lagerfeld. And by that I mean... the seriously low rent not nearly as fashionable or clever version. But it's probably more true that he was trying to be Jason. And failing.

They should have her sing 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' -- at least that might have some actual bite to it. Why not? Maybe they can have Jerry kidnap Robin from the kidnapping that kidnapped her from her previous, in progress, kidnapping.

In all honesty, I think that breaking down the logistics of it all suggest that Ron's "big picture" is even more fucked up than previously thought.

I'm not even kidding... I went to a Writers Plot Idea Generator and have been clicking the plot button several times. Up to 20 times and not once did the generator come up with a baby story or a kidnapping story. It comes up with stuff like "A manipulative shop owner searches for an evil teacher." and things like "A sexy government clerk clashes with a beautiful cook. The story is brought to a close by an earthquake." I mean, the point is that it's random. But still, said randomizer hasn't come up with one plot surrounding baby hijinks or kidnappings within kidnappings.

A Skottie Young Carol Danvers at that! So few people even know who she is... which is a travesty!! She needs her own damn movie! And with AJ he did the whole back from the dead thing and THEN killed him off again! I mean... WTF?! But yes, that's a lot of people he brought back from the dead. And I'm guessing FauxLuke will be yet another one if they ever get around to deciding who he is. I mean, there's a reason he's earned the name ReRon. There's never been a plot point he hasn't taken absolute delight in using over and over and over again... kidnappings, back from the dead... I mean for God's sake, Helena basically kidnapped Robin from her own kidnapping! (He did the same thing to Starr on OLTL) and when it gets to that point you have officially gone to that well too many times. Dude, go find a random encounter table at any RPG site and come up with new plot points by rolling some virtual dice. It's not that hard!

It remains a complete and utter mystery how Ron completely decimated AJ's return. I kept seeing bullshit about how he wanted his story to be Todd Manning as Carly's new Jason (but one she could actually fuck, whee!) and Todd was supposed to be Carly's hero against AJ or some such fuckery... and while information at the site that came from is -- let's be kind and call it -- hit or miss, it wouldn't surprise me if that was Ron's brilliant idea because, God knows, that once Todd was ripped away from him (I will forever thank the Dark Abyssal Soap Lords for that one and virtually sacrifice virtual black goats in their name for that particular blessing) that's when AJ's whole storyline began to flounder. And then he brought RoHo back as Franco (mind blisteringly stupid move, period) and it all became about white-washing the ever loving crap out of Franco (unsuccessfully) and then the various hijinks involved to make that character even attempt to stick... which is when AJ's story floundered further. I mean, he's got an actual Quartermaine, not a made up one like Franco and Kiki were for all of three months, and he can't manage to come up with anything? AJ, the perennial underdog screw up of the Quartermaine clan... AJ who had actual relationships with people on the show, the endless push/pull relationship with his brother Jason (who was gone at the time and what better time to bring AJ back and re-establish him into the firmament?), the loads and loads of angsty crap between him and Carly and a chance to establish a relationship with his son, Michael. And Ron throws that all away because he can't use an interloper from another show who hadn't even been there for a year?! And that's what I mean about his inability to adapt. Todd gets taken away... it's call get over it and write for who is there and who damn well matters to the show! I mean, you can see how well he handles this shit with Robin! I can only assume that the reason he's still got a job is because no one else wants the gig.

Two methods that don't really work in the long run. Guza just got ridiculous and his never-ending love affair with the Borg was just... mind-boggling. Let's be honest, Guza sucked at balance, too. Ron had a gift for the Big Moments for a while but, like I said, his followup is shit. And the leadup wasn't all that great either. That whole storyline on OLTL where Dani's boyfriend is blackmailed into porn with some girl that his brother used to date was so long and drawn out and awful and didn't make any sense... (like, why not hire actors who want to do porn? Seriously? Rick was played as pure comic relief so this wasn't a story about the dangers of getting sucked into the Adult Entertainment industry... it was just... stupid.) It culminated in the Vickerman premier which was, admittedly, funny and had a lot of threads coming together... Rama's fake pregnancy, Markko being the director of a film while his mentor had been demoted to cater waiter at the event, the whole stupid porn story coming out and, of course, Todd finally revealing himself to his family. The results? Well, the Rama story was a C-story anyway so it got wrapped up fairly well. The porn thing seemed to be an issue between Dani and her boyfriend for a week. Maybe. She forgave him for that so ridiculously fast that I couldn't believe it. And the Todd reveal... which was beautiful on so many different levels... well, when Ron doesn't like something, he does his best to ignore it. Starr, Viki and Tea all paraded through the jail to confront Todd and demand who he really was and berate him or be freaked out or just whatever... but the one true love of his life? The one he laid a scorching kiss on at the reveal and dared her to forget him? They didn't interact again for three weeks -- hell, she barely got to react at all. And he carried on with that until the end of the show... always interrupting their scenes to insert Tea into it... and then to insert Tomas into it... and shoving a useless triangle into the proceedings because triangles are all Ron cares about. Ugh. You have this big amazing Umbrella Moment that soaps are known for and then he completely squanders the major plots of it. It takes a special kind of incompetence to blow that sort of thing. And he continues to do that sort of shit on GH as well. It's something he's clearly not ever going to change.

Yes, she is capable of so much more. She can do gravitas and hit all the notes necessary. It's happened frequently over the years but Ron wants to put her in a very specific box: Wacky Lady of A Certain Age. (Yeah, the Roxy Balsom comparison is very spot on. Sadly.) See, I remember in the 90s when Kevin and Lucy were a couple... that's not what their stories were solely about. Lucy would get roped into stuff with Luke and Joe Scully and the Big Caribbean Adventure. Luke got shot and Lucy took care of him and even though they had a sort of bond after that, nothing happened, nothing came close to happening because Lucy loved Kevin and Luke loved Laura. Laura was always somewhat bemused about Lucy (and Bobbie really hated that Luke and Lucy were friends all of a sudden... which also made a great deal of sense given how they all intertwined) but never really saw her as a threat; Kevin really didn't like Luke because he usually wound up getting Lucy involved in rather dangerous situations (this before Ryan returned.) And it all made sense and worked and didn't devolve into needless triangles for no reason. I mean, soaps need those good, solid couples that you can count on to make up for the the chaos that comes with other pairings. It's all about balance. And that's what it really comes down to. Ron doesn't write a balanced show. At all.

I'll grant that he gave Alexis an actual romance and also brought back Lucas. As far as bringing back Anna and Duke and Lucy and Kevin... to what purpose? Duke is seen once every three months or so and Ron is so clearly over anything Anna/Duke that he barely bothers to recognize they're even together. He had the whole storyline where Duke was actually Faison and it was fun, cheesy camp but the second that was revealed... he was bored. And Lucy... what in the fuck has he been doing there? She's a vampire slayer, no she's not... she was actually fucking nuts for ten years, finally reunites with Kevin and then starts screwing around on him because, as usual, Ron cannot seem to fathom a pairing where one of them is off-screen. She's some strange new age person who now presides over weddings?! What? I mean, Lucy back in the 90s was all about what the Universe was telling her but it's so obvious that they can't spring for a day player priest more often than not so they have Lucy presiding over the not wedding of Patrick and Sabrina? For that matter, why is Lucy the go to for granting approval on sucky characters? First she's Sabrina's biggest cheerleader and now she's Franco's? I don't even understand how that works... especially given her own history with lunatics (Ryan Chamberlain comes immediately to mind.) It's not that a triangle wouldn't work... it's that it's Ron's go to for everything. First it was Lucy, her insanity and Kevin, then it was Scott-Lucy-Kevin, now it's Bobbie-Scott-Lucy. If they ever get Jon Lindstrom back for a stint what's it going to be then? And more to the point, they shift from Lucy wanting nothing more than to be with Kevin, heartbroken that he's always working and choosing that over their marriage, heartbroken again when he finally catches her with Scott and tells her he's done and now she's immediately demanding that Scott choose her because... why? They're in love, I guess? There's no actual heart in any of this! If this is the best he can do... he's not doing the characters any favors at all. And sadly, at this point, it's totally the best he can do. Guy never met a triangle he wouldn't try to shove down the viewers throat and then he goes on to do a quadrangle and says in an interview 'They can't all be triangles!' Oh, fuck you Ron. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

Maybe it did but he's been in this business for about twenty years now and if he can't bounce back from a situation that was shaky from jump like the PP situation, if he didn't have some kind of contingency plan in mind then that's on him. Also not being able to get this actor or that actor shouldn't derail complete storylines. And that certainly doesn't explain the bullshit surrounded the likes of SK's AJ or Robert Scorpio or Original!Lulu where he just flat out wouldn't write for them. The idea that, somehow, AJ's story was based solely on Todd Manning's existence in Port Charles is ludicrous. There was plenty to work with there give that AJ had long history with GH and various characters that were on screen at the time. JMB wanted to leave but was told they had great story for her so she agreed to stick around... and still had nothing to do. The only time Ron decided to actually write for her was when she decided to leave again and he had to come up with an exit story. And Robert? They fuck around with him, he gets a contract somewhere else and then Ron starts whining about how he had this amazing story planned and now he had to change it all. Too many of his pairings are afterthoughts. Too many of his characters are that way, too. His attention span is ridiculous and he is always, always dazzled by a new toy... which he often quickly grows tired of and then throws away for months at a time. He's got problems, the whole genre has problems, but he doesn't strike me as being particularly good at the big picture. He wants his Big Moments but there's not enough good lead up to it and there's rarely any good fallout from it, either.

What's to know? One word I could never use to describe either one of them is 'complex.'

The X-Men nerd in me (which takes up a lot of space, let me tell you) kind of got a kick out of the fact that Evan Peters, who played the mutant Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past, is now playing a 'freak' with hands like Nightcrawler. (And let me tell you, anyone who wrote Nightcrawler fanfic that had any kind of sexual situation in it knew what to do with those hands.) What's more, Kurt (Nightcrawler) grew up in a circus... just one of those things that tickles me. (Sidenote: Kurt's just the best ever.)

The whole orgy business is fuzzy to me. I think the premise is that the candy striper is a bad girl who is not at all impressed with the backwater town she lives in and thinks she's much tougher than she is. She gets sucked into Elsa's weirdness and the idea of stepping outside the bounds of same backwater town and goes willingly to the Cabinet of Curios but finds herself in way over her head. I mean, the way she was yelling at Elsa about going back to her home and her church was what tipped me off to 'someone bit off way more than she could chew and is now hugely ashamed of her actions.' But the drugs really make it all hazy especially for us in this day and age where consent continues to be such a significant issue. She looked all drug addled on the film (by the way, that film seemed to be on a loop. It looked to me to be a lot of the same shots over and over... especially the lingering ones on her face) and her "I liked it" response to watching it made me go 'Of course you liked it! You were riddled with opium!' (Come on, look at all the trouble opium caused in Tombstone!) I guess if they're having her say that she liked it, we're meant to take that at face value... in that she did enjoy the orgy but is horrified by her own depravity which kind of goes hand in hand with that whole vibe of all the rot that exists underneath this 'wholesome' surface that I feel is a major theme. Perhaps it's a juxtaposition of Jimmy being the lone 'freak' amid the housewives at the Tupperware Party; the candy striper was the lone 'normal' in the orgy but everyone was participating. Just as the housewives are likely not to admit what they were doing among 'wholesome company' despite their willingness; the candy striper has her own mixed emotions. I don't know, I think I see what they're going for... but maybe it's meant to be a bit harrowingly ambiguous... being a horror story and all.

Alas no. He backed up Theresa's statement pretty much but took the blame onto himself saying he was out of control. Theresa looked utterly confused and The Smug was wiped off both Kristen and Daniel's faces. However, Kristen went back to see John and basically told him she knew what he did, said that he analyzed the situation and went with the lesser of two evils which she sort of respected but also said that he's putting his son in danger with Theresa. John wasn't bovverd. And then Kristen walks out and is all 'You made the wrong choice' to nothing in particular the way soap characters do.

I honestly can't remember if I ever root for The Smug in any capacity. If it's warranted, it shouldn't come off as smug so much as righteous or justified. But, damn, Kristen and Daniel just constantly smugging at Theresa made me root so hard against them. He gets to be right. And everyone see that he's right. It's one of those things, I guess.

I'm not a horror aficionado. It's not a genre I like because I am a huge huge weenie when it comes to scary things. Even marginally scary things freak me out. Yet there's a bit of a siren call to it because I love psychological thrillers and murder mysteries. AHS was a show I was never interested in mainly because I have enough trouble sleeping sometimes... why add to it? (Yet I'm totally going to watch Constantine so... whatever. I'm a mixed bag.) I suppose it's that time of year anyway... and it was on so I decided 'Why not?' I think there are interesting aspects going on... the concept of the Freak Show coupled with the rot that hid behind 1950's 'decency' but, let's be honest, there aren't any good guys here. Three different people murdered someone in the opening episode and I would imagine that it's likely to get worse. Plus there is the Stupid Person Horror Trope personified in the girl on the picnic. How on earth do you see Twisty the Clown shambling towards you and just stand there? I mean, she was obviously feeling that disquieting sensation upon his approach but a freaky ass clown with a nightmarish face and his dingy, filthy clothes... there is nothing about his presence that isn't unsettling. But, no, just stand there and accept his flowers and think your boyfriend hired him. Her waking up to Twisty stabbing said boyfriend over and over and over again... yeah, I found that deeply unsettling... along with the Murder Montage where he just quietly melts out from the shadows. Then of course there's the drugged up gang rape. Again, it's the rot beneath the surface of the pristine 1950's facade and I get that but, here, there's rot and then there's more rot and then there's festering rot. Aren't you supposed to be pulling for someone to survive in a horror situation? This set up seems to be all about hoping that Jupiter winds up ablaze from top to bottom. But then Lange started to sing... Now, I know she was channeling Marlene Dietrich but my head automatically went right towards Lilli Von Schtupp from Blazing Saddles. Hey, Lilli was a parody of Dietrich, too, but for some reason I just wanted Elsa to start singing 'I'm Tired.' Still, the music started and I immediately went 'That is not music from or pre-dating the 50s. That is post psychedelia music.' And then I went 'Holy fuck, it's Bowie!!' And everything was wonderful. Seriously, Lange as Dietrich doing Bowie's 'Life on Mars' in a circus tent was EVERYTHING. But I still don't see myself lasting too long with this show. Especially after seeing that Ma Petit preview because that was hugely upsetting. Even more so than that terrifying clown.

In all my years of watching and not watching GH... the word 'prudent' never could be used to describe Sonny. So, yeah, I can totally buy that he continues to antagonize Franco. Sonny has always and will always believe he's untouchable. He may whine a bit about the possibility of losing Michael for about five minutes 'if' the truth about him killing AJ ever comes out... but he's probably just as certain that he'd be able to repair the relationship with Michael. Hard to deny... it's not like Sonny hasn't been able to forge relationship with anyone he's ever wanted to. (Still bitter about Dante giving that wee orange shit the time of day.) As for groveling... the mind boggles. Could such a thing ever happen? Would any writer have the balls to actually write Sonny having to grovel for... anything?! Sonny probably never even went trick or treating... "BEG?! SONNY CORINTHOS NEVER BEGS!! Not for tricks! Not for treats! Not for NOTHING!" But if it WERE to happen, I envision it taking so long as he stammers and stutters his way through that Franco would get equal parts bored and irritated and just kill him. I may be projecting.

And it's not just the fact that he's a SERIAL KILLER... it's that he actively terrorized her and her family and her bestest friend in the entire world ever! The things he did weren't something he did to someone else so that she has some vague awareness of it. She was INVOLVED. It was done to her daughter, her son, her friend, her cousin, her... which makes it all that much worse. And as far as the "Hell No" portion goes... so many differences. You can never tell me that Franco and Carly were genuine enough to invest in as a legitimate love story in the first place. I don't buy it. Not at all. And Carly has been screwing around on Franco. Blair wasn't. Blair and Todd got set up by their enemies (which... whatever, Max and Skye had legit grievances but there was no way I was ever going to root for them over Todd and Blair anyway) whereas Carly's a moron who is absolutely guilty of fucking around behind her fiance's back and deciding to go through with this marriage because he knows too much... of things she happily and willingly included him on. The Todd/Blair Hell No wedding was a "NOOOOO! You idiots! You love each other!" moment. This is going to be a "YESSSSS! ALL OF YOU CAN SUCK IT FOREVER!! NONE OF YOU WIN SO ALL OF US WIN! WHEEEE!" situation. I'm inclined to think that Michael's entire apartment absolutely REEKS of sex now. Maybe that's why Franco kept weirdly sniffing all over Carly. Which is even grosser.

To this day, I'm not fully able to explain WHY I bought Silent Hill 2. I played maybe five minutes tops of that game and it scared me enough that... yeah... Just that opening walk to the town... where nothing actually happens to you but you keep hearing things and you've got nothing on you and all of this. By the time I made it to the town proper with it's fog enshrouded streets and, most importantly, that smeared trail of blood in the middle of the road... I just wanted to turn around and go back. I think I made it to the first encounter with a creepy ass thing and turned it the hell off. On the upside, when my friends came to visit, they played so it got some further use. I really did prefer the likes of Shivers to Phantasmagoria. In Shivers, you do rather stupidly agree to spend the night in a 'haunted' museum on a dare from your friends. I can't excuse that as thinking along the lines of 'Yeah, urban legend stuff. It's not really haunted.' Whereas in Phantasmagoria... I'm sorry, when someone has made that much of an effort to hide something away and keep it closed... don't open it, you stupid stupid bag of meat! Phantasmagoria was all "Let's watch visions of this insane magician brutally murder his various wives! And then get raped by our husband who has been possessed by the thing we set free from that awful box thingy!" Yes, the character gets raped by her possessed husband (to be fair, they were very upfront about it when the game came out and gave the player the option to skip the scene) and there is no happy ending for this game save for your character surviving. I would say it was a very ambitious game that pushed a lot of boundaries as to what computer gaming could be but it certainly wasn't my cup of tea. I found Shivers to be more interesting because even though you find out that the mansion is, in fact, haunted... you aren't the one who caused it but you are the one who can fix it. It was all done in first person view and the feeling was very tense as you were figuring out where the pieces were to trap the spirits that were attacking you and sucking out your life force. Plus, the museum itself along with the soundtrack... the two places I hated the most were the elevator because you get in and it's this light elevator music and you think you're safe (you are, actually) but then this heavy, doom-filled chord sounds that just rips any thought of safety from you... and the Man's Inhumanity to Man room because... that subject in and of itself is pretty awful and the exhibits they had showed that very well. Still, I was actively participating in fixing what was wrong as opposed to dealing with shit I had purposely set loose. My absolute favorite series is Gabriel Knight, though. I love the atmosphere of each one, the storylines, the mixture of logic and supernatural, the relationships between the characters. The first one, I think, is just outstanding the way the story unfolds... not just what's going on in New Orleans but the thread that gets pulled opening up into a much much wider spectrum. And the more you discover the more dangerous it gets. I love it whole heartedly.

A lot of dogs do that. My Dad was always of the opinion that Irish Setters were the dumbest dogs. They're beautiful and friendly and like to romp about... but stupid. Border Collies they are not. By the by, no one in Salem is smart enough to be compared to a Border Collie.