shadowkat

I can never decide if there is much point to doing cross posts from DW to LJ, because no one appears to be on DW most of the time and I get comments once in a blue moon. What do you think?

Bad week. Really bad week. Started out bad on Sunday and just dove downhill...you know it's going to be bad when a) Monday morning first thing you see upon entering your building is a sign that the bathrooms do not work any where in the building, b)it rains all week long, including that day, with only one day of sunshine. So really glad over. But brain is mush. I didn't sleep last night. And I feel like warmed over crap on a stick - yes, delightful image, I know, but there it is. Also..today was the day people kept asking me questions I hadn't a clue how to answer.

So..I found my mind retreating to comforting things.

And was thinking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer for some reason or other. I blame my infrequent skims of Mark Watches blog and my flist for this one. Well that and two recent posts on the topic of fandom, not the show.

1. Regarding fandom? The Mark Watches fandom is ironic. They have serious issues with S1-2 Xander and are obsessed with something called "slut-shaming" - yeah, I know it's new to me too..I never really heard this term until this year. These kids and their funky slang. I find this ironic (not the slut-shaming, the Xander-criticism), because...in 2002-2009...it was usually Spike was the misogynist/chauvinistic pig and Xander was the nice boyfriend everyone wanted to have for their very own. NOW? People are highly critical of Xander. And in S1-2 no less. I can't wait until they get to the latter seasons. (I honestly have no idea how they are going to relate to Spike in S4-7..) The men in this show aren't exactly nice, people, it is after-all a horror show.

Which brings me to ...

2. It has been written at length elsewhere, most notably by coffeeandink, that Whedon's Buffy was a critique of the slasher horror film genre that was incredibly popular between 1970-2002. It's sort of fallen out of favor of late, replaced briefly with torture porn, then Japanese psychological horror, and now...video camera psychological horror. But from the 1970s until roughly the beginning of the 21st Century, this was still a popular genre. And it always began with a blond, petite girl getting killed by the slasher. She'd usually just had sex with her boyfriend. The boyfriend was either killed, or he is the killer, or he finds her and gets killed.
And it's gory. Kevin Williamson's Scream flick - did a very good job of itemizing the rules -

( cut for length - Buffy, Slut shaming and the Slasher Horror Film Trope )

1) Been having a difficult and somewhat depressing week.

Work and personal issues that I can't quite go into. Anyhow...anyone have any good jokes?

I went to the newstand guy in our lobby and bought three candy bars. Decided it was a three candy bar day. Butterfinger, 3 Musketeers, and Hershey with Almonds - not the greatest, but gluten-free and did the job.

2) After much thought on the topic, probably more than it deserves, I've decided that Mark Watches/Reads is a great way for people new to a tv or book fandom to get their feet wet without getting spoiled. Sure, the man doesn't have an analytical bone in his body and his reviews are hardly "academic" but seriously, does it matter? He's writing about himself, his life, and how he views the show or book, how he is relating to it, and allowing others to respond and say some of the same things. And making some money off of it in the process. Not really all that different than
someone blogging about cooking or buttons or cats and doing the same thing. Although a lot more interesting to me, I personally find cooking and button and craft blogs (which my sisinlaw has been known to do) deathly boring. Nor is it all that different than an academic blog or academic journal or teaching a course on Buffy for that matter. I guess you could say more value is provided via the academic journal or course - but is it really? Buffy was mostly about emotions. And all of this is subjective in any event. At any rate - confession? Yes, I read Mark Watches Buffy, and probably will continue - mainly out of an odd sense of curiousity...will he or his commentators react to the show in the same manner I did or differently? I find how people react to media and books interesting - obviously, or I wouldn't be here discussing these things.

3) Reading Master and The Margritta, but very slowly...it's not a really a page-turner, it's sort of philosophical satire. Has an interesting take on Jesus and Pontias Pilot - sort of reminds me of The Story of Jeusus according to his best friend Biff. (I can't remember the title - but it was by Christopher Moore). Except this is a whole a lot darker, and a lot more complicated. Bulgrave is a better writer than Moore - but he also has a lot more to say...and didn't have as easy a life.
Probably unfair to compare the two. It just reminded me of it, is all.

4) Five Positive Things?

*A bus didn't hit me on the way to or from work, although they certainly tried
* It was sunny and not too cold, so lovely walk around the park - plus a big lovely park to walk around in that is within easy walking distance to the office (which is not as easy to find in a big dirty city as one would think)
* Chocolate and the ability to afford it
* My ipod music playlist and the ability to distract myself by telling stories with the playlist. (Yes, I create stories to music. And have been known to create playlists for stories.)
* A new Justified episode recorded and waiting for my watching pleasure.

Feeling maudlin tonight in part due to that walk down nostalgia lane...wondering what in the heck did I accomplish? On respondent stated somewhat aptly that my relationship with Buffy and the Buffy fandom is in some respects similar to the Buffy/Angel relationship - it has that air of first love affair to it, sad but true. Anyhow...don't mind me. It's that time of week, month, phase of the moon - where no decisions should be made. And the loneliness creeps into the skin with little kid feet. Winter is like that. Gray and gloomy. The streets slick with muck. The sky a hazy gray white, washed of color or shine. Trees naked and bare. And everyone dressed in black jackets. Almost as if someone leeched the color from the world or the shine, and left behind nothing but dank browns, whites, blacks and grays.

Watched Merlin, Lost Girl, and Once Upon a Time - of the three Once was by far the most interesting. None were satisfying. All had that soap opera element...of no resolution or frustration. Once is however continuing to follow the pattern it set in the beginning. If things are going well in the fairy tale world, they aren't in the real one. If well in the real one, not in the fairy tale one. The two stories can't be happy at the same time. It's gotten to the point that I find myself rooting for the fairy tale story to end badly.

Lost Girl was better than I expected. Although co-worker was correct, it is a bit predictable. What's interesting is the lead protagonist is bi-sexual. Her side-kick however is not.
Two women, and a hot guy Fae cop who can help them if they require it. Reminds me a little bit of Xenia actually, has a similar dynamic. The acting is a little stiff, the dialogue silly in places,
and it's rough around the edges, but still entertaining. Comes from Canada. Not as good as Being Erica, but better than Blood Ties. And it is only the pilot.

Merlin has jumped from episodic of the week to full-fledged serial. Kudos. And I'm going to miss ASH. Not Uther. Just ASH. I love Anthony Stewart Head. Hee, Merlin shares two things in common with Buffy - I started watching it because a)it had ASH in it, and b) it was a fantasy and I'm a sucker for fantasy shows, no matter how bad they are. Merlin is actually one of the better written ones, believe it or not.

( spoilers for Once, Lost Girl, and Merlin.... )

Haven't accomplished much today. My Saturdays seem to be days of lazy resting after the non-stop hubbub of the work week - this week found me running to and from trains and meetings. Slept until 9, and lay-about. Now it's almost 6. But rainy and snowy and cold...so not like I could do much of anything anyhow. Will do it all on Sunday.

Did watch Vamp Diaries and The Secret Circle.

Circle has me intrigued again. I'm more interested in what's going on with the parents, and what happened in their back-story, then what's happening with the kids. ( vague spoilers )

Vamp Diaries was equally fun.

( Vamp Diaries )

Via Kidbro (who is one of the many reasons I support the Strike against SOPA/PIPA, he does a lot of internet work and runs his own small internet marketing business - must defend the BRO! Even if he's oblivious) and the Momster - a few cool apps:

NPR
BBC World News
PBS - which includes Sherlock S2 and all the Dowtown Abbey episodes - yay!

( personal )

Need to fix dinner and not post on the internet. But I like blogging, particularly after drinking a vodka/pomagrant/cranbery and tonic water cocktail. Oh by the way, I've hear that pure organic cherry juice, red or black, is a miracle cure for arthritis. So try it and let me know if it works. It has to be pure though - no oceanspray or concentrate.

This is about "Plots" that do not work for me. I know. Look away, look away. First up is The dreaded Pregnancy/Baby Plot. I hate this plot, people, with a vengeance. It only works in family dramas...or reality based dramas such as Grey's Anatomy and Parenthood. In Sci-Fi/Fantasy it often becomes really silly and cliche. Also, ahem, somewhat chauvinistic and sexist at times, due to the fact that most of the sci-fi/fantasy genre is written by white male assholes who don't realize that they are white male assholes. It would be easier if they got this. But nooo.

Just finished watching Fringe's take on the dreaded baby plot and yes, it fell into all the predictable cliche traps. Farscape, Buffy the TV Series (Nikkie/Robin Wood), Fringe, Angel, X-Files...sigh. All about the male nightmare of not being able to protect the child, the child losing its Mommy, or the child being used to destroy the world. And oh...the baby is always a boy. Why is that? Why can't it be a girl? I mean seriously, why is it always a frigging boy!

I've decided these male writers have serious Daddy and Mommy issues, either that or they've been reading Freud.

I hate this plot arc. I hate it in fanfic. The writer has to work overtime to convince me that the baby fic works. To date? The ONLY fanfic writer that has convinced me that having a baby works is rarhihah (whose lj name I can't spell). She convinced me.

What did Rah or Barb Cummings do that others haven't? She discussed the normality of it. She doesn't romanticize. The kids are well kids. The pregnancy advances the characters. It's not there as a plot-twist. We don't get the kids being kidnapped. The mother isn't tortured prior to having them. They aren't necessarily boys! The sex of the kids doesn't necessarily matter. The mother gets pregnant with consensual sex - yes, I know, shocking. She's not drunk. She's not jumping time lines or universes. She just doesn't realize that the vampire got a little human and was able to impregnate her. (I liked that.)

See my problem with this plot arc is the sturm and drang of it. It's so predictable.
( the dreaded baby storyline and pregancy storyline...please skip if you love this stuff, I'm bound to piss off someone. But slightly tipsy, tough work day, and so don't care. Most likely will care tomorrow and delete, delete, delete. Also skip if you think Whedon isn't a soap opera writer. )

1)The song was so-so, but this is a weirdly cool video, five people playing a guitar together:



Oh, I'm bored with my music again - so if you have referrals???

2.) Been reading The Master and the Margritta while doing laundry today and it has captured my interest, mainly by taking something I understood one way and flipping it. I love it when someone takes something I've always looked at from one perspective and shows a completely new and different point of view. Also satire, subtle satire...a rarity. I've discovered that outside of maybe South Park, that I'm not a fan of Sketch Comedy. Portlandia bored me. I need more story. Just the joke for the joke's sake seldom works - particularly, as in the case of Portlandia, I can see the punchline coming a mile away, or worse, the punch line annoys me. If something offends, there's nothing you can do about it. It's just not enjoyable. The trick is tolerating the fact that other people aren't offended by it - so, ahem, it has a right to exist and thrive, even if you wish it would die, die, die...a nasty death. Democracy as the Popster keeps pointing out to me is a somewhat dirty business. [That said, I still wish I could hold my own private bonfire and burn the books of ...but that would be WRONG and against everything I believe. So I won't do it. Emotion and belief don't always go hand in hand.]

3. Once Upon a Time

I have quibbles. The Evil Queen is too bwwahahha comic book style evil for the show's own good. While Rumplestilskin is a three-dimensional, incredibly fascinating villain (actually he may not be a villain, I can't tell.), Regina is at the moment, somewhat one-dimensional over-the-top and somewhat idiotic villain in the same mode as a cartoon.

That said, they are clearly juxtaposing her character against Emma Swan. Emma who is a character that has justified reason to not only hate Regina but seek vengeance against her, considering Regina destroyed her life. Vengeance creates...well Vengeance. Although Emma appears to be a counter-point to Regina. She's not seeking vengeance against anyone. And as a result, is inadvertently breaking Regina's spells. My problem is, part of me, is sort of wishing she would just shoot the damn evil queen and be done with it. Seriously, you have a gun. Kill the witch. Preferably after we find out how she got to be that way...assuming she wasn't always the self-centered heartless witch that ever there was. At this point Elphaba is looking a lot more interesting - possibly because I read Gregory MacGuire's Wicked.

The Hansel and Gretal tale which is the focus point, has never been a favorite of mine. But it is in keeping with the themes of the series. Lost children. Negligent parents. Abandonment.

( spoilers )

1. Been in a irritable mood of late...although irritable may not be the right word. Words..finding the correct, precise word. And even then..you are never quite certain if the meaning you've attached to this particular word is shared by someone else. Dictionaries while helpful can be useless. I'm actually fairly good at figuring out the meaning of a word - due in part to my dyslexia. People with dyslexia process language differently. We determine the meaning through context. We listen with our whole bodies not just our ears. Watch the face, the hands, the body. The vocal inflection. And within paragraphs or sentences..focus on the surrounding words and how they interact with each other. Not sure why I'm irritable...could be many reasons, but there it is. Am hoping it like all things is temporary. Most likely caused by pent-up frustration.

2. Church...

F: Wait, he practices Hannukkah and he goes to your church and he's Jewish?
Me: Well yes, he practices Hanukkah, like I do Christmas.
F: But the Unitarian Church practices Christmas.
Me: It practices Hannukkah too (along with Passover... and a few neo-pagan celebrations, and we have a Ramadan dinner)
F: Unitarianism is a weird religion.


Today, the sermon gave me a bit of chill up the spine...and brought tears. I didn't think it would.
And we applauded, which we don't generally do. It was a story...about a pilgrimmage to the Underground Railroad, from Ripley, Ohio to Augusta, Kentucky. Stumbling into a park, the minister, who is a bit of a poet, told of how they followed the railroad to a piece of cursed earth, a bright and sunny day turned forbodeing with sudden storm clouds, and up upon the hill in still sunny Ohio stood the house of the abolitionist, Rankin, , and a museum associated with him. They'd traveled across the river from the abolitionist's house to this park in Augusta, Kentucky. And here stood...the slave jail. With a dungeon. And compact cages. It stunk of despair, and pain. The minister asked the woman at the tourist information center, who had fliers about the Underground Railroad if she had any information on this jail. But she did not and sternly stated she knew nothing about it. Nearby there was a pool, tennis courts, playground.. and she, the minister, wondered how this could be? How could people play tennis near this old slave jail? She wandered back across the River to Rippling, Ohio and asked the same questions about the jail at the abolitionist museum. But the woman running the museum and Q&A, the historian there, said she knew nothing about this jail. This jail that sat on the Underground Railroad. Was part of the new historic tour - which all these fliers had been printed up on. The minister asked again. And the woman, sternly, responded, no, I don't have any information on the jail, I've lived in Ripley all my life and I've only been across the bridge to Augusta, Kentucky - three times. It struck the Minister as odd...was their friction or competition between these historians? Did the two town's not like each other? And why no additional information on this slave jail, outside of the fact that it was indeed a slave jail?
And the minister said...it occurred to her that she was on a pilgrimmage of sorts into the past,
with the present pressing upon it. A pilgrimmage mixed with tourism, fliers, and buttons, and t-shirts bought and sold about the Underground Railroad. And she thought...the slave jail needed to be remembered as well, not overlooked. For if we do not reflect on what has gone in the past,
than we cannot fix it in the present and future. We have to look back, reflect on what was done, what happened because of it, see the pain for all it is worth, if only to ensure we learn from it, and do not do it again.

This moved me. The image of this horrible jail, half-forgotten, in the middle of a park. With little information regarding it. And then, I read a description of the novel Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer - where the South's defense of slaver is blamed upon a Cabal of Vampires. The vampire a metaphor for the evil that allowed such a thing to exist. A thing that still exists in areas of our world.

Too much sharing happened at church..but it was necessary I think. I've been pondering this..but the problem with interaction with others - is it all occurs on a superficial level. ( Read more... )

3. Been reading interesting posts on my flist about an essay on Sherlock Holmes, which I can't really read since it contains spoilers for S2 of the series. And that doesn't air here until February. But what I've managed to grab from the essay is this small bit of wisdom. Labeling writers or works as feminist or non-feminist, particularly fictional stories...is a bit problematic. Since most stories, if they are well told, do not fit into such neatly defined categories. And even if the story does come across as feminist or the characters do, and can be defended as such - this does not mean the writer is. Any more than it means the writer isn't feminist or is a misogynist, if the story and characters are perceived to be, shall we say, in that derogatory light. People aren't that black and white unfortunately. In all honesty? I really can't tell you whether Joss Whedon is a feminist or not. Or even Stephen Moffat for that matter. I don't know. I can speculate. But not with any clarity. Any more than I can tell you if TS Eliot was or for that matter Keats, CS Lewis, Byron, or any number of people. As for their stories? They can be perceived in multiple ways. For me, now, as an adult, the Chronicles of Narnia seem to be incredibly sexist, but as a child of 10, I adored them and did not see that at all. Who knows which version of me was right. And does it matter? I know why I don't like Whedon's work post Buffy the tv series, and post Angel that much...but explaining why...well, not sure it matters, but it's complicated. And I've found I don't have the words. Half of you understand. Half of you don't. It feels a bit like politics or religion actually.

4. The Good Wife was quite good tonight. A puzzle box, layers within layers. Once Upon a Time was too, although...not as good. But it's late and I didn't plan on staying up til 12 writing this. So going to bed am I.

Aw..nobody responded to my movie trailer post. (pouts) Not that I really expected anyone too. But...one squee over the Spiderman Trailer would have been fun. Apparently I'm the only one who thinks the Avengers trailer is lame?

Work has put me in a pissy mood. For lack of a better term. I am tempted to hibernate tomorrow and not deal with people. I had a headache by the end of the day...from email. Sigh. Project Managers and Engineers. Sigh. Actually - the men at work drove me nuts. Patronizing bastards. Who were completely clueless. One guy insisted on talking to another guy, and refused to listen to me, because I was female. I told him I was managing the project and had only pulled the other guy in for a bit of help. He was "assisting" me NOT the other way around. I know, shocking, but there it is.

After much thought and analysis, I've decided that Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Television series, in spite of Whedon or because of him (on the fence) was feminist. ( Read more... )

Sorry I keep editing this. I think one of the things I love most about lj and the internet social mediums...particularly the fanboards, is you can't always tell who is male or female, black or white, rich or poor, old or young, queer or straight...these things fall away. What we see is the essence of the individual, not the constructs or short-hand categories that we use to define one another. Race, gender, class, all of these things...fall away. You can fall in love with a person, not what they look like, not their physical essence. We live in such a material world, so physical, the internet..often strips that physical materiality away...and we are left with each others words and our perceptions of them. I love that. I can be male on the internet (people on a fanboard actually thought I was for a bit) and I can be black, I can be
short, I can be young, I can be ancient. I can be whatever I want. Rich, poor. It's freeing. Until people find out...and then that's lost.