the Dalaverse

Okay, so this cough is not going away. I just almost choked to death laughing at "The Office." Jenna Fischer owns that episode. And then I cried a little watching the end of CoBP on USA. That seems to be their new favorite movie.

A tangent, inspired by the 84000th viewing of the last twenty minutes of CoBP: It has occurred to me, in general but particularly while watching "Rome," that I have something of an Old Testament sensibility, and there's not much I like better than a good revenge story. It doesn't necessarily have to be violent as so much of the action in that show is, but if the punishment fits the crime...Also, as much as I understood other people's negative reactions to Harry using Unforgivable Curses in DH - not just personally but in times of the story JKR was telling all along - I, um, loved it.

I blame this predilection fully and completely upon early exposure to "The Princess Bride." I mean, there will never be a scene in cinema to rival "I want my father back, you son of a bitch," but I find Jack's shooting of Barbossa deeply satisfying every time I watch it. That satisfaction is actually very slightly tainted by his return later in the series (much as I love Geoffrey Rush!), but then I'm pacified by the dramatic take-down of Beckett in AWE. I saw "300" recently, on the lookout for misogynism, and I was very uncomfortable at the rape scene. But then - she kills him, brutally, repeating his own line (winning the debate at the same time), and I was then made uncomfortable by how much I cheered.

::shakes head:: I'm bloodyminded. Things like "Rome" and "The Boondock Saints" and that new Jodie Foster movie that looks so awesome are sort of not good for me. Of course it's not like I can't tell the difference between fiction and reality; obviously vigilantism is bad and people are fallible and turn the other cheek and an eye for an eye turns everybody blind and all that, but - in the types of stories I like best, debts are paid.

Given this, it's actually kind of funny that I love "Star Wars" so much, with its message of anger=Dark Side, but it skipped my childhood after all - I didn't see it until I was twelve. And even though Luke's refusal to fight the Emperor does nothing for me, the Emperor does end up dead, and it's Vader who does it, so that's still pretty satisfying. Sometimes it doesn't matter that the wronged party is the one who does the avenging, as Jack and Inigo (and Jack/Will/Elizabeth) do, as long as it gets done. Not-quite-instant-but-still-present-life karma, if you will.

That's my random musing for the night.