Richard Book is Innocent (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oxfordtweed) wrote2012-01-13 09:34 pm
oxfordtweed) wrote2012-01-13 09:34 pm
Entry tags:
Several Topics of Minimal Consequence
I was sent to the mall today to fetch a backpack and some motorcycle goggles. This is not important, but merely the vehicle through which I realised several things today.
The first is that Hot Topic has got into Doctor Who. FINALLY. This made me oddly happy, because it now means I can get dorky t-shirts in person and don't have to worry about shipping charges. The one I got today has given me an idea for a blanket I may eventually want to make. We'll see.
The big thing that I realised is why you can't find any Iron Man gear out there. I tried six different shops all either specialising in nerdy things or which slightly cater to them, and the only place I found something even tangentially related to Iron Man was again Hot Topic. And what I found was a t-shirt that was sort of all-inclusive of Iron Man. And then, looking at all of the various shirts and hats and belt buckles and everything else that places like Hot Topic and Journeys sell, it hit me. Iron Man does not have a logo or an emblem that is definitively Iron Man. Cap and Superman have their shields, Batman has the bat, the Flash has the lightning bolt, Green Lantern has the ring. Spiderman, well, he's got the spider and the incidental association of a white/silver web on a red background. All your organisations have emblems: Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Justice League. Even Thor can be recognised by an outline of Mjolnir. I could go on, but I'm getting bored.
Anyway, what does Iron Man have? Well, he's got the arc reactor, which is paradoxically overly-detailed and still looks like nothing. Or, you've got his face. Which I don't really fancy face t-shirts. They bug me. You can also occasionally find shirts with Robert Downey Jr, but see the aversion to t-shirts with faces on.
The official reason you can't find this stuff is that he hasn't been in cinemas for a while. But when was the Flash in cinema? It's been a while for the Green Lantern as well, and let's face it. Superman and Batman can be out of cinema for a decade, and you'll still find their stuff. Iron Man's not marketable because he doesn't have a simple logo, and it drives me mental. I want an Iron Man t-shirt, damnit. D:
Mildly unrelated, but still amazingly nerdy, I finished reading Jekyll and Hyde today. I think it was with Cat the other day that I was talking about this, and the adaptation decay of this story was brought up. Which, the more I've been thinking about it, the more that's been bugging me. Near as I can tell, Hyde just spent most of his time out getting off with rentboys. Yes, he did do two pretty horrible things, but the first one he almost immediately compensated the family, and when he murdered the MP (after Jekyll had kept him locked inside for however many months, only to ensure that when he did go free, it was like a wild animal from a cage), Hyde's ever action turned to self-preservation. And yet, he's always painted as this serial slasher rapist god knows what.
Which really wasn't what the story was about at all. At the core of it, it's about how man needs the duality of character to survive. A person needs balance, or else who knows what might happen? I guess somewhere in the human psyche is the need to latch onto the truly awful in any situation and ignore the rest of it.
I did quite enjoy the series Moffat did, I must say. All the meta and the surprise!Gatiss cameo made the show quite brilliant, even if it did succumb to the same adaptation decay as all the rest.
The first is that Hot Topic has got into Doctor Who. FINALLY. This made me oddly happy, because it now means I can get dorky t-shirts in person and don't have to worry about shipping charges. The one I got today has given me an idea for a blanket I may eventually want to make. We'll see.
The big thing that I realised is why you can't find any Iron Man gear out there. I tried six different shops all either specialising in nerdy things or which slightly cater to them, and the only place I found something even tangentially related to Iron Man was again Hot Topic. And what I found was a t-shirt that was sort of all-inclusive of Iron Man. And then, looking at all of the various shirts and hats and belt buckles and everything else that places like Hot Topic and Journeys sell, it hit me. Iron Man does not have a logo or an emblem that is definitively Iron Man. Cap and Superman have their shields, Batman has the bat, the Flash has the lightning bolt, Green Lantern has the ring. Spiderman, well, he's got the spider and the incidental association of a white/silver web on a red background. All your organisations have emblems: Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Justice League. Even Thor can be recognised by an outline of Mjolnir. I could go on, but I'm getting bored.
Anyway, what does Iron Man have? Well, he's got the arc reactor, which is paradoxically overly-detailed and still looks like nothing. Or, you've got his face. Which I don't really fancy face t-shirts. They bug me. You can also occasionally find shirts with Robert Downey Jr, but see the aversion to t-shirts with faces on.
The official reason you can't find this stuff is that he hasn't been in cinemas for a while. But when was the Flash in cinema? It's been a while for the Green Lantern as well, and let's face it. Superman and Batman can be out of cinema for a decade, and you'll still find their stuff. Iron Man's not marketable because he doesn't have a simple logo, and it drives me mental. I want an Iron Man t-shirt, damnit. D:
Mildly unrelated, but still amazingly nerdy, I finished reading Jekyll and Hyde today. I think it was with Cat the other day that I was talking about this, and the adaptation decay of this story was brought up. Which, the more I've been thinking about it, the more that's been bugging me. Near as I can tell, Hyde just spent most of his time out getting off with rentboys. Yes, he did do two pretty horrible things, but the first one he almost immediately compensated the family, and when he murdered the MP (after Jekyll had kept him locked inside for however many months, only to ensure that when he did go free, it was like a wild animal from a cage), Hyde's ever action turned to self-preservation. And yet, he's always painted as this serial slasher rapist god knows what.
Which really wasn't what the story was about at all. At the core of it, it's about how man needs the duality of character to survive. A person needs balance, or else who knows what might happen? I guess somewhere in the human psyche is the need to latch onto the truly awful in any situation and ignore the rest of it.
I did quite enjoy the series Moffat did, I must say. All the meta and the surprise!Gatiss cameo made the show quite brilliant, even if it did succumb to the same adaptation decay as all the rest.
no subject
I don't know why but I find this adorable. XD
no subject
I am totally excited they have DW shirts now, though! I will have to have a look next time I'm at the mall. God, I love that DW is finally a big enough deal that finding merchandise for it in brick-and-mortar stores is easy even up here in Maine, which is usually a cultural decade behind the rest of the universe. It makes me so happy.
no subject
Hurrah for good literature though! ♥
The other minimally-consequential topic of interest: I didn't know Hot Topic carried Doctor Who memorabilia. Mayhaps my sister would be intrigued.
no subject
Also, I watched the first episode of the new Sherlock the other night. I profess to hate the show because I really am not a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, but I laughed until I cried and then I cried until I laughed!
I have two Doctor Who t-shirts from Teefury and I love them :D
no subject
I need to reread Jekyll & Hyde - it's been awhile. I agree with you, however.
no subject
The story was written at a time when murder was highly profitable, which meant that basically, Stevenson ripped off a couple of actual murders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Muller and less directly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_adams). And then a year later, when the Ripper murders kicked off, there was this sort of panic about anonymous killers. This one actor like, codified it, by transforming into Hyde without make-up, he'd like, hunch and change his expression and his voice to someone almost entirely different. So the story that Stevenson wrote kind of fed off this (Conan Doyle did similar things in Sherlock Holmes, and Charles Dickens was kind of terrible like that too).
So fast forward a century or so, you don't have the same cultural stuff to refer to. Fanny Adams is naval slang for 'nothing', some other guy called Muller has become a dentist and killed some dudes. So you find something else to sort of balance on, which is where we get to see Moffat's obsession with love conquering all, but in the darkest way. It's something we can understand.
I'm not saying that we should embrace the Moff's world-view, just pointing out why it happens. It amuses me. I don't think Stevenson (and was I the only one who thought Gatiss looked a bit like Percy in Blackadder?) ever intended it to go this far.
Um. Does that make sense?
no subject
Also, there were Iron Man shot glasses. Which is a little awkward if you know much about Iron Man.