Justified rewatch

[gwyn]

Way back when I had my surgery, I was talking with killabeez about Justified, and we were considering a rewatch and posting about it thing. But of course, for the past couple years, I've basically kept forgetting to post about it and see if any others would be interested in doing a rewatch with us. I was thinking of doing it the way killa did for the Highlander rewatch: doing a couple episodes at a time, and then starting a discussion post in my DW that people could comment on. Or if people would rather have a dedicated community that they could subscribe/watch, we could do that--I'd love some input on that if you're interested.

All 6 seasons of Justified are available with Amazon Prime in the States, and are also available on DVD, so I imagine they're at libraries. I don't know about countries outside the US, but it was successful enough that I imagine there must be some options out there (and if you know of some, let me know!). I think there were 13 episodes per season, so it shouldn't be a super long rewatch if we do two episodes per week, although I could certainly base that on majority input. I definitely don't have a ton of followers, so if you think someone you know might be interested, pass this post info along!

I am struggling with my intoabar fic, for sure, but it's also hampered by the fact that I've had some pretty egregious work coming in from my music magazine, more egregious than normal. I've told this story to a couple people, but I initially left out the funniest part so I'm going to tell it again, you can't stop me.

So, this magazine I work for is pretty cool, but a lot of work, and unfortunately most of the articles are written by nonwriters--subject matter experts, musicians, fans, gearheads with archaic knowledge. In every issue, I'll get a bunch of articles where the writer clearly never paid any attention in school and has no idea how to/if you should punctuate, how to spell, how to organize thoughts. Starting their articles is clearly beyond them--sometimes I have to really struggle to find whatever point they're trying to make and tease it out in the piece so readers will have some understanding of why they should read it.

I was working on this one article that was actually somewhat decently written, but the author never explained who people were beyond the guy the piece was about, a bass player who was in the King Cole Trio back in the days before Nat "King" Cole went solo (so, late '30s and '40s). And all these people keep popping up in the story, although I have no idea who they are and their presence in the subject's history isn't explained, and we get to a line about George Barnes, and I laugh. I have to go fact-check this, like everything, because I know that George Barnes is canonically in comics the father of one James Buchanan Barnes, but I have no idea who he is in this context. But I keep laughing and working on the article, and then like a paragraph later, there's a mention of a guy named Bucky and how amazingly he could bend notes and whatever.

To myself, I actually blurt out, "Who the hell is Bucky?" because as usual, the name suddenly pops up but there's no mention of who he is. Other than, you know, George Barnes's son in my fandom. Once I finished the article, I sent it to the publisher and asked who Bucky was (turns out that was the nickname of one of the other guys the article seemed to be about) and could they please add some sort of identification for readers who'll be unfamiliar with his work, but I couldn't even make jokes about Marvel because they are completely focused on music geekery and just really don't know anything about my corner of fandom trivia. It was so hard.

(It's also one of those things about being in a historical fandom that makes me seethe, because so few people ever bother to learn anything about the time period they're writing in and things like names or speech patterns, etc. I see this over and over in Cap fanfic, that they're convinced Bucky is a stupid and unusual nickname, and that he's ashamed of it or has "outgrown" it, often as a way to justify using James or something the fan finds more palatable. But Bucky has long been a common nickname, and there are still people with that name--right now there's a couple well known athletes with it, and even a woman editor at a magazine I used to get. It's not all that rare, particularly back then, it's not embarrassing for them, obviously, since they use it, and it's not just a kids' name, ffs. I'm losing so much tooth enamel over the stupidity in this fandom, I swear.)

Comments

[kore]

OMFG wait, is that referring to Bucky Pizzarelli? Because IIRC my dad actually met him when he was working at the Tonight Show (Bucky Pizzarelli not my dad), and I remember thinking the name sounded like a ballplayer more than a musician, LOL. He played with Benny Goodman who my dad was OBSESSED with, since he played the clarinet in the military in WWII. ("Not that you could hear me in the Squadron O band," he said.) My dad mentioned him when I got OBSESSED with Django Reinhardt right before my freshman year in college (a friend of mine dubbed her dad's collection of 45s he brought back from European business trips for her onto those awful Fuji tape cassettes, some of which I still have in a box.)

[muccamukk]

You might be the target audience for Gwyn's magazine.

[kore]

LOL except I would not have been able to contain myself re "BUCKY AND GEORGE BARNES?? THAT'S JUST LIKE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS IN THE MOVIES"

[kore]

More seriously, maybe they think "Bucky" is like a kid's name and that he would grow out of it, supposedly. Altho it frosts me because IIRC NOBODY but Nat calls him "James" in the comics, and in the movies he says "My name is Bucky" as an act of reclamation! It's clearly how he thinks of himself, and how he went down in history too. I'm always reminded of a friend of mine who was named Alexandra and was Alex to her friends and Sandy to her family. Nobody called her Alexandra except salespeople. Maybe being known by that nickname comes off as UNMANLY to fandom or something. I mean nobody ever kicks up a fuss about "Steve" instead of "Steven."

[ratcreature]

Yes, the thing with Bucky's nickname is a pet peeve for me too.

I recently stopped reading an otherwise really good fic because a character talked about "DNA" in the forties even though at that point nobody called the thing inside the cell nucleus that, even though it was discovered. It wasn't that the conversation and plot couldn't have happened, but not with that acronym. Another time I was thrown out by a character talking anachronistically about "animatronics" even though Disney coined that word for in the early 60s and nobody would have called earlier similar things that word... It's maddening.

[musesfool]

Yeah, I mean, I *like* that Natasha's the only one who calls him James in the comics so I've used that in Bucky/Nat fic, but it's like these people never heard of Bucky Dent! or Buck Showalter. Or Buck Compton. Or Buck Owens...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I suspect that much of fandom under a certain age aren't aware of just how few given names commonly were in use 'back in the day'. The Howling Commandos though really should get that across, given that three men all were James, though Jim and Monty disguise that a little.

Duncan Frobisher (due South) may be a bit ridiculous but it's not because he goes by Buck.

Aw, we've got Steve and Bucky who are old enough to have been at the first WorldCon, why wouldn't one go check out the lingo? Not sure how quickly 'robot' slipped the bonds of the play and into the pulps, serials and comics

[mackiemesser]

There's a guy in my organization whose name is Robert and he goes by "Butch." Like, officially in his email address and everything.

I also get a bit annoyed by the "Bucky" skeptics who think it's such a stretch to get that nickname. Coz, not only was it a common nickname, but there are variant pronunciations of Buchanan that are more like "Boo-cannon" or "Buh-cannon," depending on what part of which British island you're from.

[hafital]

sign me up for the Justified rewatch! Definitely not more than 2 episodes.

[gwyn]

Ha, yes, it was Bucky Pizzarelli! That's amazing, sort of like a six degrees thing, that I can draw a line from me to you to your dad to Bucky. The article itself was about Oscar Moore and he didn't really explain why Bucky. Edit: Never mind, Bucky was John's dad, I guess--see that is a great example of why they need to fucking explain who people are, I didn't even remember that right.

[gwyn]

Did you know Sandy before she passed away? I'm not sure if she ever had fandoms with you or not, but her real name was Alexandra, and everyone called her Sandy, and we thought it was hilarious when we found out that our friend in the group, Alex(andra), had changed her name to that legally and we already had one who didn't go by it.

I remember there was a tie-in comic to the First Avenger, and Dum Dum kept calling Bucky "Jimmy" and he'd get annoyed and tell him his name was Bucky. It's just this...weird snobbery about names people seem to have these days, especially with anything they're not familiar with or that seems old fashioned. It's stupid and infuriating to me.

[gwyn]

Yeah, that's pretty much my life with fanfic. I can't read about 99 percent of it, which makes fandoming difficult.

[gwyn]

Or Bucky Walters! I wrote a whole stupid baseball fic because that was the name of the Reds' pitcher in the first televised baseball game. There are tons of famous people with the nickname Bucky! And they don't "outgrow" it or act embarrassed.

[gwyn]

You're more generous to these people than I am. :-D

[gwyn]

I've had fun with it, but I never make it about him "outgrowing" it or being embarrassed about it or thinking it's immature. Because if his middle name is Buchanan, it makes even more sense, like you say. And he insists in multiple types of media that that's his name.

Butch was a super common nickname when I was growing up, and I knew three of them over the years. And they never changed their nicknames or stopped using them. Butch Guise is one of my favorite comics artists, I love the way he draws Steve especially.

[gwyn]

Cool! You're the only person who's responded so it might just be you, me, and Killa. \o/

[ratcreature]

I'm not super picky, it's not like I'm a period expert, and I don't expect deep authenticity, which past a certain point actually would make the fiction less accessible, because I would need a ton of footnotes or googling to get all the natural references to culture, contemporary events, brands etc. that characters would naturally make.

I still remember having to constantly google stupid US details when I first started reading fanfic, because I had no idea what kind of retail chain or sweets some name or other referred to, and fic kept doing thing like describing a character went to "Lowe's" instead of just saying "hardware store" and it went in and on in every paragraph. I don't enjoy the period equivalent of that either.

So I think a certain vagueness with detail and handwaving is totally okay with historical fiction, but it still needs some broad awareness of things like which science, technology and entertainment and such was around or not.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Chesty Puller.

There just were a raft of nicknames men used to bear. It sure beats having to figure out how many generations are on the right side of the ground. Buster is another one that used to run alongside the Skips and Chips.

[mackiemesser]

Sometimes I get the feeling that people kinda confuse nicknames with, like, screen names or platform equivalent. They don't realize how those kinds of nicknames were, essentially, permanent. I mean, does anyone even know what Bing Crosby's actual name was without looking it up? (And if one of the most famous people in the world spent his life being called "Bing," how is "Bucky" more weird?)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Given the poor state of historical instruction and that fandom includes people born this century, I'm willing to allow for it.

However I take my apostrophes and homophones seriously. I also balk at blonde when there are only men being referred to.

Since my canon divergence AU includes Janet Van Dyne, she calls Bucky James while most of the team is using Barnes. Steve's gotten the custody of using "Bucky."

Things are probably more complicated now that the wider public knows Nomad is Bucky Barnes.

[sperrywink]

When were you thinking of starting your Justified rewatch? I can maybe attempt it in a week or two despite not watching much tv these days and I have watched a few episodes back in the day, so am intrigued to continue.