matrixrefugee | Entries tagged with v for vendetta

Don't ask me what possessed me to do it, but as I was picking up a few last minute candles at the Hallowe'en stuff store in Burlington, I got a "V for Vendetta" mask. I half expected to get carded for it, since there's been some problems out in Groton with teenaged kids pranking each other with the mask and sneaking through people's yards while wearing it. Seems like an early Hallowe'en prank which went too far:

http://www.nashobapublishing.com/groton_news/ci_13560309

Current Music: "Knives and Bullets (and Cannons, too)" -- "V for Vendetta" soundtrack

No less than one of my favorite parts in the whole movie:

What V for Vendetta Quote are you?

Valerie: I know there's no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care. I am me. My name is Valerie. I don't think I'll live much longer, and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography that I will ever write and God, I'm writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985. I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottle Brook and she used to tell me that God was in the rain. I passed my 11 Plus and went to girls' grammar. It was at school that I met my first girlfriend. Her name was Sarah. It was her wrists. They were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sarah did. I didn't. In 2002, I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn't have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn't look at me. He told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I'd only told them the truth. Was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life and in 2015 I starred in my first film, The Salt Flats. It was the most important role of my life. Not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again. We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew Scarlet Carsons for me in our window box and our place always smelt of roses. Those were the best years of my life. **********************************If you live in fear it only brings more fear. If you remember the good things they can't take anything more important.
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Remember, remember
The Fifth of November
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot...

Current Music: "Knives and Guns... and Cannons" -- "V for Vendetta" soundtrack (natch!)

First Friday at St. Joes: Mass and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and going to confession ( :: Winces:: )), also lit a candle for the soul of the Maestro, and with the added bonus of hunting for the new fantasy anthology "Many Bloody Returns", featuring a shiny new Dresden Files short story amongst other stories dealing with vampires and birthdays. Haven't read it just yet, but that's just what I plan to do once I finish posting this, checking my messages, and going over the new posts on the MxO forums (my gleefully nasty caddish-vampire-playing buddy Vanil is running another story arc that's a real humdinger and I've been hanging on every post he's making; another friend, LinksLife, has been playfully teasing me about a surprise at the end of it). I went to the little Barnes & Noble downtown, but as per usual, they didn't have it in yet, and their sci fi/fantasy section is starting to look like the Nothing from Michael Ende's "The Never-Ending Story" hit it. So I made the sojourn to the little Borders/WaldenBooks in the Burlington Mall: sure enough, there it was on a little display right in the front of the store.

Also got the first shiny-new novel-tie-in to "Supernatural", entitled "Nevermore" and featuring an Edgar Allen Poe-inspired serial killer; when I first heard about this one, I knew it was right up my alley. This just might tide me over till the new season starts in October.

And there's a nifty Hallowe'en spooky-stuff store that just got set up in one of the empty store-fronts in the Mall: they hadn't officially opened yet, but I did plenty of window shopping. Some of the stuff looked a bit too wierd for me (No rubber torture victims with rubber rats gnawing on their extremities for me, PLEASE!) but I very nearly had a geek-gasm when I spotted a replica of the mask from "V for Vendetta", which I just might get and wear on Guy Fawkes Day, if it's reasonably priced.

...Which is why I'm not sure which icon to use for this entry. Dresden Files? Supernatural? V for Vendetta? The decisions a geek-gurl has to make. :: laughs::

Which would be the movie novellization of "V for Vendetta", which like the soundtrack, I can't find *ANYWHERE* around here, so I had to order it (gently used and at half-price) off Amazon.com. I've started reading it, and I'm enjoying it as much as I did the movie.

Don't tell me that it's coincidence that it happened to arrive on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday. Which is also the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre, which some pundits like to accuse the Wachowski Brothers of inciting, since the two messed-up kids who committed that terrible deed happened to wear black trenchcoats like the main characters in a Certain Trilogy. Excuse me, but didn't the first movie happen to come out maybe a week before the massacre? It sounded like those kids were wearing black trenchcoats before the movie came out. Putting the cart before the horse much?

Which gets me off onto the subject of people making judgements about you based on what you wear, like the teachers who scrutinized me because I was wearing a black trenchcoat while I was waiting for a bus in front of a school in Lowell, or the nuts who thought I was Muslim just because I was wearing a black scarf wound around my head at work to keep the draft from the doors off my head and neck when it was cold. People can think what they want to about me, but if they start treating me differently because of this, that's when I get a little disgruntled. I just want to be treated with the kind of respect and deference that every being deserves....

Back on topic: I had to run some errands today, and that included nipping into the drug store nearby. They happened to have a recent issue of "Starlog" magazine on the newsstand, so I picked that up and flipped through it, to find an article on "V for Vendetta", specifically an interview with Natalie Portman. This gets interesting: since V's mystique and persona are inspired by Guy Fawkes, he of the Gunpowder Plot in the 1600s, the Wachowskis had Ms. Portman and Hugo Weaving both read Antonia Frazer's "Faith and Treason", an excellent and empathetic treatment of the Gunpowder Plot and what incited Guy Fawkes and his compatriots to make the attempt that they did. What's even more strange is that my mother has a copy of that book, which I happened to pick up and start reading just a few days ago.

Funny fannish thought: Reloaded and Revs featured swarms of Agent Smith clones. "V for Vendetta" features a flash mob of people wearing V's hat, mask, and cloak. There's something significant here, but I can't think of what it is for the life of me...

Current Music: "Bullets and Knives (and Cannons)" -- "V for Vendetta" OST

I just went over to the Vertigo Comics section on ff.n.

There's a crapfic.

*THAT* kind of crapfic. A Mary Sue-fic. Thankfully, it's not an "Evey Hammond? Evey Hammond who?" kind of fic, but it's the other variety of Mary Sue-fic that I was dreading, as in "V lives!" crapfic.

What has me boggling is that it's in the Vertigo section. You wouldn't think that the fankiddies would go near that section, that they'd even be aware of it. And the author has clearly not gone anywhere *NEAR* the graphic novel (or if they did, they reacted to it with "EW!!!1111 BORINGZ!!!!!11111 TAHTZ 2 DARKZ00RZ!!1111")

I'll spork at it GAFF-style, since GAFF is completely lummoxed-up lately.

v's new life by sailorx161
[V for Vendetta Movie based]when v is given a 2nd chance.

Even the author's name set off alarm bells (apologies to "Sailor Moon" fans: I know you aren't *all* squee-gurlz) And does the author know what that little key that says "Shift" on it does?

Disclaimer:i don't own any of the characters in this fanfiction at all!and don't review if you don't like it at all. Saying for your to turn back now because this maybe not what your looking for in a story since I have poor writing skills.

Lame disclaimer? Check.

November 5, 12:00 midnight on the grounds of the Parliament memorial building a stage was set up. A girl sitting on a chair in the limelight talking about a men named V that freed London of the old government.

“It's me !”She jumped on to the chair.

Yes Siren the world's famous rock diva that song anything to hip-hip to country with all her heart and soul in it. She was having a memorial concert to the great V that was said to die in the train that took down Parliament. His face then showed up on the screen with a 'your our hero' by siren singing from the speakers.

That's the first few paragraphs, which were enough to make my stomach churn.

Oh, and here's the bit where V saves the Mary Sue. Does it sound familiar to those of you who read the graphic novel or saw the movie?

“Well love!What a girl like you doing in a place like this?”Well built men came from shadows.

“Going home.”She reached into her pockets.

“It's red curfew.”He waved his badge at her.

“I know just heading to the drugstore for cough medicine for my son.” She pulled her right hand out her pocket.

“Well now what brave mom.” Another man came from beside her.

“Please get out of my way my son really needs that cough medicine.” She smile backing slowly away from them.

“Sorry but before you could help him you can help us.” Well built men walked further to her.

“Please no!” She had backed into 2 more men.

“Maybe have fun with me for a short time miss!” The other men side of her unzipped his pants.

she was surrounded by horny men who wanted to rape her for stranger reason she was trying to find out. The men wee grabbing at her like she was apiece of meat Saying she lied to them and needing to be punished for it. They knew who she was really from the memorial concert she had put on V's name.

I'll leave the rest for you to see for yourself: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2860474/1/

Oh, here's a realy good fic that more than compensates for the nastiness: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2859815/1/ Based on this summary:

In the crowd before Parliament that night is one man who knows the identity of V. Based on movieverse ending.

I was afraid it might be a crapfic and I read it to see if it was. It wasn't crappy at all.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: "1812 Overture" and me gnashing my teeth

Seems like you can't have a great movie come out without the fankiddies wreaking fanfiction havoc with the plot and characters, and I *KNEW* as soon as Hugo Weaving was cast as V, that the badfic would begin. So far, we haven't seen any "V-Rescues-Mary-Sue" (or as we're calling it "Evey Hammond? Evey Hammond who?"), but the V/Evey romance-fics are creeping in. Nothing too sugary just yet, but that will come. I've yet to see the subtext nightmare-fic that is haunting my mind, said pairing would be Prothero/V or V/Prothero; personally, I think there's something a little ::Makes limp-wristed gesture, but not in a nasty way:: about graphic novel!Prothero, despite all his locker-room blather to his buddies, but movie!Prothero seems more straight to me. Just my observation. (I'm also not keen on how they handled what happens to movie!Prothero: the fate of graphic novel!Prothero is infinitely scarier, but I suppose the Wachowskis et al didn't want to leave the audience too unsettled... Why then was a "Schindler's List"-esque bit with a mass grave able to slip past the bastard-child of censorship known as "Marketability", but having a man reduced to a feeble-minded, catatonic lump is verboten?)

All right, the gloves are coming off:

I don't want to see V/anyone smutfic. I just don't. We know it's gonna happen; as another Hugo Weaving character would put it, "It is inevitable". I just don't want to see the summaries all over ff.n with "V/::insert name:: smut" or some variation thereon. ( Spoilers within. Click at your own risk ) And for that matter, there's something sacreligous about seeing what might lie behind V's mask. I like how Allan Moore and David Lloyd handled the bits in the graphic novel where V *does* remove his mask: showing us the flesh behind the mask would somehow damage V's mystique.

( Cut for spoiler-heavy Movie-ending vs. Graphic novel-ending discussion )

Current Mood: rantish
Current Music: "Remember, Remember"

****1/2 out of *****

Just back from seeing "V for Vendetta", and I have to admit, I may need to see it again, since the pace was way faster than the book. The Wachowskis and company changed quite a bit of the details, to make it more relevant to our times (I have to admit, the book was a leetle dated), but the basic plot and the spirit are still intact. What I got out of it:

Violent anarchy and totalitarianism are basically the flip sides of the same disordered coin.

I do have a few minor carps: in some ways, the film is a bit more Michael Moore than Allan Moore (neither of whom I can tolerate as human beings, but I admit to being less annoyed with the latter), which is a little aggravating, but I'm not going to pull a hissy fit over it. And I can't help thinking that in some ways V's fangs and claws got the edge taken off them, but it doesn't spoil it for me. Thankfully, Hugo Weaving managed to blend a little extra human-ness into V's personality without dumbing the character down too much. My only concern is that the fanbrats will latch onto it and run with it. I've already seen one fanfic that kinda fluffy-fies the movie ending, but not horribly so. ::Has the throwing knives ready under her cloak, to hurl at any worse ones that show up::

There were a few teenagers that showed up at the showing I went to, and they sat right in back of me, but they appeared to be college students. Thankfully no squeeing over Hugo; they were suprisingly well-behaved: One girl was even explaining the whole thing with Guy Fawkes, to the others who hadn't a clue about him or the Gunpowder Plot.

One thing I *will* admit to is noticing the "Matrix" similarities, but these were thankfully minor (and only a "Matrix" geek like me would think of them). The climatic fight scene might earn the nickname "knife-time", since it utiliized the "bullet-time" effect, only translated for V's throwing knives. And I couldn't help thinking that John Hurt's Adam Suttler (Adam Susan, in the graphic novel) reminded me of a wierd three-way combination of the Architect, Adolf Hitler and Nikolai Lenin; if they'd just had a scene with Suttler sitting in a room full of monitors, the way Adam Susan often appears in the book, the comparsion would have been eerie. Maybe it was just the art designers, but the Shadow Gallery looked oddly like what you might expect a back hallway in the Merovingian's Chateau to look like.

And am I the only one who noticed that the Party emblem is a (somewhat Frank Lloyd Wrightian) Cross de Lorraine, or who realizes that this emblem is associated with the Prieurie de Sion, the secret society supposedly attempting to restore the Merovingian dynasty in France (and of extending that regime to embrace all of Europe)?

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "1812 Overture" (stuck in my head)