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May. 31st, 2016 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatToday, the air is clean and fresh and smells like summer. Feeling grateful for this. Whatever was in the air last week and making me quite ill is now gone. Worse allergic reaction in a long while. And I was not alone.
Flirted with Neil Gaiman's collection of personal essays, entitled From the Cheap Seats. I may end up buying this on the Kindle, although the book is rather pretty, with antique rough edged paper.
I actually prefer Gaiman's non-fiction writing to some of his fictional writing. I've read a lot of him over the years, I find his prose style rather poetic and comforting. He's a kind man and it comes through in his writing. Right now, I find myself drifting towards kind.
My own writing is flowing in fits and starts. It feels jagged at the moment. Uneven. As if I'm attempting to pluck food from my teeth with a toothpick. I will write a sentence, but the proper word or words escape me. They float on the tip of my tongue...just out of reach, but when I attempt to grasp hold of them and wrangle them upon the page...they flutter off. Gone completely.
Finished watching the last four episodes of S3 of The 100 last night. I think it's S3. There's only been two seasons so far, right? I haven't skipped over one? Say what you will about The 100 it is definitely binge-worthy television. Serial dramas tend to be, particularly thrillers.
Procedurals, not so much.
Realized something while watching it this year, and watching the online fandom out of the corner of my eye or peripherally. It is much more enjoyable to watch a television series offline or away from fandom than with fandom or at the same time as the fandom. I know, you'd think it would be the opposite. But, here's the thing? Fandom has a tendency to cloud your thinking or influence it in regards to the television series. Particularly if the fandom is shipping and heavily shipping relationships and characters that you aren't shipping or could not care less about. For example? If I'd paid attention to the fandom? I'd have given up on the show, which would have been a colossal shame since the last six to ten episodes were highly entertaining and in some respects just short of brilliant. Taking a break from the series, letting the episodes ramp up and watching them in two separate binges, away from the fandom, was the smartest thing I did in regards to my overall enjoyment and appreciation of the show.
For two reasons:
1. No spoilers. Fandom has a tendency to spoil you. And if you watch weekly not as a binge, you have a tendency to spoil yourself out of either eagerness or worry. Or at least I do. Can't really speak for anyone else. When I binge, I don't spoil myself. Why would I?
2. I am alone with my own opinion until it is completed. No one else's opinion exists to taint it.
Which is a nifty thing. I don't find myself looking at the series through another's eyes, or their resentments, frustrations, hopes and dreams. Just my own.
The problem with online fandom, be it here, there or anywhere...is it can taint how you view a show.
No matter how hard you resist. [No disrespect to fandom, but you guys can be a bit dogmatic in regards to your opinions at times -- as if there is no other possibility or how dare another opinion exist?] For example? I actually loved how they wrote the Lexa/Clark relationship, but if I let the fandom influence me with their righteous outrage over Lexa's death, I may not have. [The online fandom was outraged over how they dealt with this, while I loved it to pieces and thought it worked splendidly. If I engaged with the online fandom -- they'd have tarred and feathered me verbally speaking. So..I wisely stayed away.]
The thing I enjoy the most about the series is how they flip characters around on you. No black or white or clear cut characters on this series. No good guys and bad guys. Everyone does horrible things and often for the right reasons.
One of the last four episodes gave us a bit of the back story on Pike, a character who does horrific things, and it was chillingly ironic on so many levels. I found myself liking and understanding him, actually. He starts out as this nice guy, who is a teacher, but desperation brings out the worst in him. As it does for many of the characters. None of these characters stay the same. They all evolve and appear to learn from what has happened before, for good or ill.
I'm still rather impressed by the series, even if it had a few unevenly written episodes towards the beginning. Of course, I'm not really shipping any of the characters. Yeah, I admit I spent the last several episodes thinking: Please don't kill that character, oh good, you didn't. Or can you just kill that character off instead? But if they had killed off a character I enjoyed, I'd have stuck with it. Of course it probably helps that I'm wickedly good at figuring out story threads, so I more or less knew who would die and who would have to survive. It's hard to surprise me. For example?
Neither of the major character deaths that occurred this season surprised me. Nor bothered me all that much, since I was to a degree ambivalent about both characters and their romances with the leads.
I thought the writers did a nice twist on the AI -- at first it reminded me a great deal of BSG and The Matrix, but it turned out to be quite different and rather interesting. While it definitely felt familar in some respects, it was different in others. Also somewhat chilling. About a scientist who tried to save the world and only ended up destroying it with her creation...who long after the world has been destroyed, is still trying to save it, but doing such a bad job of it, that the protagonist has to finally pull the plug. Of course, then the protagonist has to figure out another way to save the world.
There's a great exchange at the end of the season.
Bellamy: Well, we saved the world.
Clark: No, we really didn't. But we'll discuss that later.
Another wonderful exchange:
Octavia: You won't save us?
Luna: You don't want someone to save you, you want someone to fight with you.
Octavia: It's all I know.
Flirted with Neil Gaiman's collection of personal essays, entitled From the Cheap Seats. I may end up buying this on the Kindle, although the book is rather pretty, with antique rough edged paper.
I actually prefer Gaiman's non-fiction writing to some of his fictional writing. I've read a lot of him over the years, I find his prose style rather poetic and comforting. He's a kind man and it comes through in his writing. Right now, I find myself drifting towards kind.
My own writing is flowing in fits and starts. It feels jagged at the moment. Uneven. As if I'm attempting to pluck food from my teeth with a toothpick. I will write a sentence, but the proper word or words escape me. They float on the tip of my tongue...just out of reach, but when I attempt to grasp hold of them and wrangle them upon the page...they flutter off. Gone completely.
Finished watching the last four episodes of S3 of The 100 last night. I think it's S3. There's only been two seasons so far, right? I haven't skipped over one? Say what you will about The 100 it is definitely binge-worthy television. Serial dramas tend to be, particularly thrillers.
Procedurals, not so much.
Realized something while watching it this year, and watching the online fandom out of the corner of my eye or peripherally. It is much more enjoyable to watch a television series offline or away from fandom than with fandom or at the same time as the fandom. I know, you'd think it would be the opposite. But, here's the thing? Fandom has a tendency to cloud your thinking or influence it in regards to the television series. Particularly if the fandom is shipping and heavily shipping relationships and characters that you aren't shipping or could not care less about. For example? If I'd paid attention to the fandom? I'd have given up on the show, which would have been a colossal shame since the last six to ten episodes were highly entertaining and in some respects just short of brilliant. Taking a break from the series, letting the episodes ramp up and watching them in two separate binges, away from the fandom, was the smartest thing I did in regards to my overall enjoyment and appreciation of the show.
For two reasons:
1. No spoilers. Fandom has a tendency to spoil you. And if you watch weekly not as a binge, you have a tendency to spoil yourself out of either eagerness or worry. Or at least I do. Can't really speak for anyone else. When I binge, I don't spoil myself. Why would I?
2. I am alone with my own opinion until it is completed. No one else's opinion exists to taint it.
Which is a nifty thing. I don't find myself looking at the series through another's eyes, or their resentments, frustrations, hopes and dreams. Just my own.
The problem with online fandom, be it here, there or anywhere...is it can taint how you view a show.
No matter how hard you resist. [No disrespect to fandom, but you guys can be a bit dogmatic in regards to your opinions at times -- as if there is no other possibility or how dare another opinion exist?] For example? I actually loved how they wrote the Lexa/Clark relationship, but if I let the fandom influence me with their righteous outrage over Lexa's death, I may not have. [The online fandom was outraged over how they dealt with this, while I loved it to pieces and thought it worked splendidly. If I engaged with the online fandom -- they'd have tarred and feathered me verbally speaking. So..I wisely stayed away.]
The thing I enjoy the most about the series is how they flip characters around on you. No black or white or clear cut characters on this series. No good guys and bad guys. Everyone does horrible things and often for the right reasons.
One of the last four episodes gave us a bit of the back story on Pike, a character who does horrific things, and it was chillingly ironic on so many levels. I found myself liking and understanding him, actually. He starts out as this nice guy, who is a teacher, but desperation brings out the worst in him. As it does for many of the characters. None of these characters stay the same. They all evolve and appear to learn from what has happened before, for good or ill.
I'm still rather impressed by the series, even if it had a few unevenly written episodes towards the beginning. Of course, I'm not really shipping any of the characters. Yeah, I admit I spent the last several episodes thinking: Please don't kill that character, oh good, you didn't. Or can you just kill that character off instead? But if they had killed off a character I enjoyed, I'd have stuck with it. Of course it probably helps that I'm wickedly good at figuring out story threads, so I more or less knew who would die and who would have to survive. It's hard to surprise me. For example?
Neither of the major character deaths that occurred this season surprised me. Nor bothered me all that much, since I was to a degree ambivalent about both characters and their romances with the leads.
I thought the writers did a nice twist on the AI -- at first it reminded me a great deal of BSG and The Matrix, but it turned out to be quite different and rather interesting. While it definitely felt familar in some respects, it was different in others. Also somewhat chilling. About a scientist who tried to save the world and only ended up destroying it with her creation...who long after the world has been destroyed, is still trying to save it, but doing such a bad job of it, that the protagonist has to finally pull the plug. Of course, then the protagonist has to figure out another way to save the world.
There's a great exchange at the end of the season.
Bellamy: Well, we saved the world.
Clark: No, we really didn't. But we'll discuss that later.
Another wonderful exchange:
Octavia: You won't save us?
Luna: You don't want someone to save you, you want someone to fight with you.
Octavia: It's all I know.
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no subject
Date: 2016-06-01 07:42 am (UTC)I not only loved the visual, but particularly the wonderful phrase God-Man recites to Einstein, "They just don't get that omnipotence only goes so far."
And what conjures up this icon for me in this instance is recalling Clarke trying in the season finale-- as Clarke nearly always does, to get an enemy to see reason, or be reasonable, to compromise hopefully for the benefit of all concerned-- and finds out it's not going to happen for a very interesting reason.
Clarke: "ALIE, please-- let the people choose freely, give them back their pain, restore their memories. If you do, I won't pull the kill switch!" (Which would delete the ALIE code)
ALIE looks at Clarke, disturbed, baffled.
Becca: She can't, Clarke. It's not in her programming. She still thinks she's saving humanity. She doesn't understand anything else."
Yep. Omnipotence only goes so far.
This exchange is a lovely example of this show at its most brilliant. ALIE is portrayed as a villain through nearly all of the season, but she isn't, really. As Becca, her creator, states, she simply doesn't get it why the humans she's desperately trying to save hate her so much. After all, she'd offering them what for all practical purposes is heaven, and a real one, a place free of pain, where everyone is always happy and content, and even if your body dies back on earth, you live on as an AI in a Matrix-like virtual structure.
Now, given what has happened to date, pretty much anyone else but Clarke would be, "Hey, sorry there, data-bitch... you're history!" But Clarke now understands ALIE, and her motivations, and tries to allow her to stay "alive". Blood must not have blood, even if your foe literally doesn't have any, just electrons and silicon switches.
As in last season's end game, Clarke makes the tough call only when it's apparent that there is simply no other choice, but at the same time has an epiphany-- humans overcome pain, and they have to, both in order to survive and remain reasonably sane. Heaven isn't an answer when you are denied free will to gain it.
Yes, there were a few rough spots this season, and while it wasn't as stunning overall as season 2 on an absolute scale, I still think it was pretty damn good for having to cram an awful lot of story into just 16 episodes. I'm very much looking forward to Season 4.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-04 01:45 am (UTC)I don't think of Alie as omnipotent or a god construct, but more of representation of the ego or the mind. She's a computer after all - which means she has no body, no spirit, no soul, and no connection to others or the source of either herself or us all. I think she's Becca's ego or false construct of her creator's mind. Built to resolve problems, to remove pain, and figure out solutions. But because she can't feel true joy or love, or feel connected to anything, all she sees is pain and fear. When she looks at humanity, she wants to end it -- remove all of it, because it's just pain. Or better yet, place the minds of the humans inside a safe bubble. Note it is just the human minds she puts there, not their spirits, they aren't connected to one another, they feel no pain, and do not remember love or joy per say. They are just wandering about as mental constructs or ego. False selves.
She doesn't understand Clark's question because her goal is to remove pain. Why would you want pain? And she is afraid of pain, afraid of death. Ali is just afraid.
Becca - the flame, is all spirit, when Clarke takes the flame inside her, she is taking the spirits of those who came before. And that's why she feels love and connection to Lexa and to the others in Alie world. It's not just ego.
She has compassion and is able to make a decision from a place of empathy and compassion. Alie just sees the problems, and no hope is possible. You have to hide, remove yourself, to be safe. While Clarke sees possibilities and hope.
Clarke unlike Alie feels connected to those around her, but not mentally, physically, spiritually. She is relying on her gut, her intuition, not her mind solely. Clarke is her mind, her mind is a tool. While Alie is all mind, all ego.
I think the 100 did a very good job of showing the problem of giving into the false self or ego. (See Trump as the current example of ego personified). If we give into the fear that our mind generates, we fall into Alie's trap, of wanting to surgically remove the problem without compassion. Clarke in contrast, much like Becca, uses her mind as a tool but does not let it or her ego rule her.
At least that's what I got out of it.
I agree with the rest of what you said above. While there were a few rough spots here and there, although really what television series doesn't have them? I can't think of a single one. It was quite good considering the constraints. Curious to see where they take it next. And pleased it's on The CW, has a better chance of surviving.