shadowkat | Around, around we go, where we stop nobody knows

Started with five phone calls to the temp/staffing companies, including the one I met with last week which neglected to provide me with a contact name. That tale is a nightmare for another day. Applied to eight jobs - three of which involved fighting corporate web sites to get my application accepted. Bertlesmain's site is just plain evil. Several companies I've applied to before for different positions. No word on jobs from anyone.

In other news, mother is coming to stay with me next week - apparently my neice is sick, she's been crying non-stop since she was born apparently, with just about an hour or two breaks between crying jags. They think she may be allergic to her mother's breast milk, but aren't sure. So KidBro asked Mom to come up and help. She's staying with me at night, since kidbro has no room for her to sleep. Incovenient time for me - since I'm a basket case and with Mom here? No late night writing, internet - etc, but what can you do? Around and around we go, where we stop nobody knows.

What got me through the day was reading my friend Schrodiner'scat book, which she asked me to look at. Wonderful read - I really identify with the main character and it gave me something to look forward to in between hunts. I even stopped reading Butcher's Grave Peril, to read it. Butcher is good. But Schrodiner'scat's novel either fits my mood better or I just find her characters and story more engrossing.

Fanboards for some reason are resurrecting the infamous and highly annoying/aggravating Robin Wood debates, painful topic for me. Very painful. The latest was a thread on Wood/Holtz that caused much blood pressure spikeage. Bit like having salt water poured on a raw wound again. Had to restrain myself from posting a *really* nasty response. But it did get me thinking about how most if not all of the analysis on these shows is purely subjective and says more about us than the shows. (Yes, this is how I deal with things that make me crazy, I analyze the behavior - strange, but true.)

I often wonder how I'll view S7 of BTVS ten years from now after not watching any episodes. Will I like it more or less? I know why I wasn't overly fond of S7 and wrote a detailed explanation of the reasons which you can find, if you are so inclined at www.geocities.com/shadowbtvs.
I also know and freely admit that I was obsessed with the show that year and desperately wanted to see certain storylines on air, anticipated them, and when I got other storylines instead was incredibly disappointed. I despised the character of Robin Wood for instance - oh lord, I don't think I've ever hated a character on a TV show or in a book as much as him, Prof. Umbridge in Harry Potter is a close second. I literally had to leave the room or flip off the TV during Storyteller because of a couple of scenes between Wood and Buffy.

Why? It goes back to how something on screen touches something in your life or reminds you of something or pushes an emotional button - the closer it hits that button the more enraptured or disgusted you become. In a recent post on a certain fanboard, someone admitted after a lengthy analysis of why Holtz is worse than Wood, and Wood is actually a nice guy, that Holtz reminded him of his brother. Another recent post on a fanboard, which analyzed all the characters according to Myers Briggs determinators, admitted somewhat sheepishly that he overidentifies with Angel, and sees his wife as Buffy, and ex-wife, who hasn't spoken to in years, as Spike. For me:Robin Wood's mannerisms in S7 BTVS from Lessons onwards, his attitude towards Buffy, how he treated her and Spike - was too close to the behavoir and mannerisms of someone who put me through a traumatic ordeal in Aug 2001- November 2002, an ordeal that resulted in my current situation. Wood's mannerisms and smugness reminded me of someone who hurt me. (The person Wood reminded me of, oddly enough was a White, Heavyset, and looks like the Guy in the Brit comedy The Office or Dilbert's Boss. So DB Woodside did not in any way resemble the individual physically - it was his mannerisms on BTVS that did, his behavior, how he treated others. He did not bug me in this way on 24, I actually enjoyed his performance on that series. Just as the character Wood.)

So when Wood came onscreen - I felt this overpowering rage, I wanted him destroyed. I'm only telling you this to give you an example of how someone can react to what is on screen in an emotional way. I know there are people out there who felt that way about Spike or Buffy or Giles or Xander. It's when art elicits an emotional response, often one the writers may not intend. I seriously doubt ME meant for me to despise Robin Wood or see him as a smug, sociopathic, misogynist who used people for his own ends. And only helped save the world, so he could get in a slayer's pants and look cool. That was what I saw onscreen, but not what the writers necessarily wanted me to see. This clearly was a projection - I realize that, but I still see it. I still feel it.

It's ironic in a way - because the artist wants to elicit an emotional response. But what happens when it is a negative one? Have you ever read a book you wanted to throw across the room? (I have - American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and House of Sand and Fog by Andre DuBois). It's not something a writer can control of course. And in some instances, in Easton Ellis' especially, that is the reaction they intend. There's a french film called Irreversible that has a 15 minute graphic rape scene that caused people to leave the theater sobbing. It was highly controversial film. The director intended that reaction, he wanted to know whether he could elicit a emotional response from people if they didn't know the character - the film is shot in reverse, so you get the rape scene before you meet the character or find out her name - it is like watching two strangers. The director was playing with how we deal with violence - is it an emotional response to the character's ordeal or to the violence itself? So he deliberately created graphic sequences to elicit an emotional response.

The question becomes, at least in analysis, how much of our criticism is based on emotion and how much on intellect? Can the two even begin to be separated? Should they? When we decide we like or dislike something - can we always pinpoint the reasons? Schroder'scat asked me to read her novel this weekend, she feels she may have a pacing problem. I'm reading it and trying to determin what it is that doesn't quite work. I'm loving her novel. But within the first 50 pages it seems slow or off somehow. What I'm trying to figure out, just as I tried with my own review of S7 BTVS, is what is pure emotional response or subjective, and what is objective? Objective she can fix. Subjective? Hey, she has no control over that. That's like making a lemon sweet because people don't like the sour tast. You don't change the lemon. You just find something else. So I guess, we do need to find a way to separate subjective and objective - because otherwise we'll be attempting to turn lemons into oranges.

So, whenever I read a post on a fanboard - I check to see if the poster is talking about him or herself or about the show.
How close have they blurred the lines? Because it the post is purely subjective, an emotional response, there's is nothing you can say or do to change the person's mind. They aren't thinking with their head - they are thinking with their heart and heads are far easier to convince than hearts, hearts move to another rhythm entirely.