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British Costume Dramas among other things..
1, Eh, fandom has decided that "META" matters and is doing a March Meta Matters Challenge for everyone to post meta to Archive of Our Own as the destination site.
So I'm going to attempt it. The only problem is hunting down all my meta. All of it should have been transferred from the LJ journal to the Dreamwidth journal. The only stuff that didn't transfer well was videos and pictures. So meta that contained those...sigh. DW is not great for photos and videos. Finding it in my journal, however, is another matter entirely. I'm a horrible indexer. Organizational skills are not my forte. And never have been. My mind doesn't quite think in a linear fashion -- or in a categorical one.
Anyhow advertising the above to others on flist who happen to write meta. I prefer meta to fanfic actually -- I read and wrote more of it. Mainly because meta allows for discussion and debate, also cool subtangents, while fanfic not so much. People just want praise for fanfic, they don't really want you to analyze it. And my default mode - is to analyze things. Asking me not - sort of goes against my nature and makes me cranky and irritable. If I love something - I will analyze it to death, no matter what it is.
2. Downton Abbey Movie -- not for anyone who has not watched, followed, or seen an episode of the television series Downton Abbey. Personally, I'm surprised they distributed this to movie theaters. Be a bit like distributing the final episode of Game of Thrones to movie theaters. If you aren't familiar with the series and by familiar, I mean seen all the episodes and can remember them -- you'll be hopelessly lost. I was somewhat lost, because I'm hardly a fan, and can't remember the series as well as I thought. Took me a while to figure out how the sister became a Marchioness and who Bertie and Mosby were. Also Daisy's relationship with the footman, and how that came about. (I liked the plumber better).
What works in it -- are Mr. Barrows, and the Dowager Countess, her friend Mrs. Crawley, and her sister -- their subplots work and are for the most part the focus of the story. Mary and everyone else has little to do. Also there's a rather silly fight between the Royals servants and Downton's that struck me as somewhat unrealistic and at times cringe inducing. What never quite worked for me with Downton was the downstairs bit.
Anyhow, it was okay. But I don't understand why they felt the need to make it. It can't have done that well.
3. Howards End was better than expected. I suspect it may be closer to EM Foreseter's novel? Not certain. It does have a bit more of a feminist slant than the movie of the same name, which I can't remember that clearly -- except that the movie started with the protagonist inheriting Howards End, while the series starts with her friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which leads to her inheritance of Howard's End much to the shock and dismay of Mrs. Wilcox's family -- apparently - Mrs. Wilcox owned Howard's End not her husband.
The casting is actually rather good. I didn't recognize anyone in the male end of the cast, but the female end has the actress who was Angela Carter (Captain America), Julie Ormond, and Tracy Ulmond.
4. The Crown S3 - yes, I've been in a mood for British Costume Dramas lately.
Not quite as entertaining as the first two seasons -- in part because the 1960s-1970s in Britain aren't that entertaining. The acting is stellar of course as is the writing -- and it is set up in an interesting manner - as a series of character vignettes. The focus shifts from each member of the Royal Family. And in this season we do get more on Prince Phillip and his arc is in some respects more relatable than it had been in the prior seasons. That's actually one of the high points of the series -- the look into Phillip, portrayed with surprisingly layered nuance by Tobias Menzies. Phillip has a crisis of faith, and struggles to find it.
Two of the most moving episodes of the series were focused on Phillip -- his mother, who'd become a nun, and the establishment of a priestly retreat on the palace grounds, which took place during the lunar landing. The other two stellar episodes focused on the Queen, herself. Less so were the episodes that focused on Mountbatten, Charles, and Margaret. I felt rather sorry for Charles and Margaret throughout, and kept wanting to smack Mountbatten over the head. My favorite character was Princess Ann, who demonstrated the same toughness of character that is seen in her mother. Charles unfortunately takes after his uncle Edward and Princess Margaret ...and keeps wanting to fight against the status quo.
It's an interesting study on what it means to be a Queen of a country that is a democracy and you can never rule nor show a desire to. Also, Margaret's arc is telling in accepting and understanding what that means and why it is important.
Speaking for myself, it's very hard as an American to understand the European view of aristocracy and the desire for a King and Queen. Why would you spend so much money to maintain that? Why not do away with it entirely? And the Crown kind of answers those questions, yet at the same time appears to underline them. The British are hard for Americans to understand -- they are in some respects where we came from, we have based our system of governance, laws, and regulations in part on the British system. We certainly derived our language in no small part from theirs. And much of our culture is taken from Great Britain. Of the nationalities around the world, popular US culture for good or ill is perhpas closest to British. Or so it seems. In fact, our impeachment procedure and policy is directly taken from British Parliment. Many of us are direct descendants of British immigrants.
But in some respects we couldn't be further apart. Most Americans don't understand British elections or Parilment, and most definitely they do not understand the Royal Family and what it means. Oh sure, we get it on a romantic/fairy tale scale, but not in the real sense of the word. Our ancestors or the founders of our country, the United States of America, after all fought a war with the British to be free of all of that. (Actually they just wanted to be free of the taxes. If the Brits had stopped taxing them so harshly, there probably wouldn't have been a war, it's always over money for some reason. Freedom comes second to financial independence. To understand the US, you have to understand that 85% of the people who came here -- came to escape taxation and/or for economic reasons.)
So the Crown is interesting in that respect. How accurate it is? I've no clue. It appears to be very accurate -- but a lot of it is behind closed doors and it delves deep into the psychology and private life of the Royals -- and I don't think you can ever know what another person is thinking or feeling. The best you can do is speculate. That said, it appears more factual than most, and fairer than most renderings.
The British press much like the American and Australian press is nasty. I honestly think journalists have a lot to answer for. Half of what we are currently going through -- we can lay at their feet.
So I'm going to attempt it. The only problem is hunting down all my meta. All of it should have been transferred from the LJ journal to the Dreamwidth journal. The only stuff that didn't transfer well was videos and pictures. So meta that contained those...sigh. DW is not great for photos and videos. Finding it in my journal, however, is another matter entirely. I'm a horrible indexer. Organizational skills are not my forte. And never have been. My mind doesn't quite think in a linear fashion -- or in a categorical one.
Anyhow advertising the above to others on flist who happen to write meta. I prefer meta to fanfic actually -- I read and wrote more of it. Mainly because meta allows for discussion and debate, also cool subtangents, while fanfic not so much. People just want praise for fanfic, they don't really want you to analyze it. And my default mode - is to analyze things. Asking me not - sort of goes against my nature and makes me cranky and irritable. If I love something - I will analyze it to death, no matter what it is.
2. Downton Abbey Movie -- not for anyone who has not watched, followed, or seen an episode of the television series Downton Abbey. Personally, I'm surprised they distributed this to movie theaters. Be a bit like distributing the final episode of Game of Thrones to movie theaters. If you aren't familiar with the series and by familiar, I mean seen all the episodes and can remember them -- you'll be hopelessly lost. I was somewhat lost, because I'm hardly a fan, and can't remember the series as well as I thought. Took me a while to figure out how the sister became a Marchioness and who Bertie and Mosby were. Also Daisy's relationship with the footman, and how that came about. (I liked the plumber better).
What works in it -- are Mr. Barrows, and the Dowager Countess, her friend Mrs. Crawley, and her sister -- their subplots work and are for the most part the focus of the story. Mary and everyone else has little to do. Also there's a rather silly fight between the Royals servants and Downton's that struck me as somewhat unrealistic and at times cringe inducing. What never quite worked for me with Downton was the downstairs bit.
Anyhow, it was okay. But I don't understand why they felt the need to make it. It can't have done that well.
3. Howards End was better than expected. I suspect it may be closer to EM Foreseter's novel? Not certain. It does have a bit more of a feminist slant than the movie of the same name, which I can't remember that clearly -- except that the movie started with the protagonist inheriting Howards End, while the series starts with her friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which leads to her inheritance of Howard's End much to the shock and dismay of Mrs. Wilcox's family -- apparently - Mrs. Wilcox owned Howard's End not her husband.
The casting is actually rather good. I didn't recognize anyone in the male end of the cast, but the female end has the actress who was Angela Carter (Captain America), Julie Ormond, and Tracy Ulmond.
4. The Crown S3 - yes, I've been in a mood for British Costume Dramas lately.
Not quite as entertaining as the first two seasons -- in part because the 1960s-1970s in Britain aren't that entertaining. The acting is stellar of course as is the writing -- and it is set up in an interesting manner - as a series of character vignettes. The focus shifts from each member of the Royal Family. And in this season we do get more on Prince Phillip and his arc is in some respects more relatable than it had been in the prior seasons. That's actually one of the high points of the series -- the look into Phillip, portrayed with surprisingly layered nuance by Tobias Menzies. Phillip has a crisis of faith, and struggles to find it.
Two of the most moving episodes of the series were focused on Phillip -- his mother, who'd become a nun, and the establishment of a priestly retreat on the palace grounds, which took place during the lunar landing. The other two stellar episodes focused on the Queen, herself. Less so were the episodes that focused on Mountbatten, Charles, and Margaret. I felt rather sorry for Charles and Margaret throughout, and kept wanting to smack Mountbatten over the head. My favorite character was Princess Ann, who demonstrated the same toughness of character that is seen in her mother. Charles unfortunately takes after his uncle Edward and Princess Margaret ...and keeps wanting to fight against the status quo.
It's an interesting study on what it means to be a Queen of a country that is a democracy and you can never rule nor show a desire to. Also, Margaret's arc is telling in accepting and understanding what that means and why it is important.
Speaking for myself, it's very hard as an American to understand the European view of aristocracy and the desire for a King and Queen. Why would you spend so much money to maintain that? Why not do away with it entirely? And the Crown kind of answers those questions, yet at the same time appears to underline them. The British are hard for Americans to understand -- they are in some respects where we came from, we have based our system of governance, laws, and regulations in part on the British system. We certainly derived our language in no small part from theirs. And much of our culture is taken from Great Britain. Of the nationalities around the world, popular US culture for good or ill is perhpas closest to British. Or so it seems. In fact, our impeachment procedure and policy is directly taken from British Parliment. Many of us are direct descendants of British immigrants.
But in some respects we couldn't be further apart. Most Americans don't understand British elections or Parilment, and most definitely they do not understand the Royal Family and what it means. Oh sure, we get it on a romantic/fairy tale scale, but not in the real sense of the word. Our ancestors or the founders of our country, the United States of America, after all fought a war with the British to be free of all of that. (Actually they just wanted to be free of the taxes. If the Brits had stopped taxing them so harshly, there probably wouldn't have been a war, it's always over money for some reason. Freedom comes second to financial independence. To understand the US, you have to understand that 85% of the people who came here -- came to escape taxation and/or for economic reasons.)
So the Crown is interesting in that respect. How accurate it is? I've no clue. It appears to be very accurate -- but a lot of it is behind closed doors and it delves deep into the psychology and private life of the Royals -- and I don't think you can ever know what another person is thinking or feeling. The best you can do is speculate. That said, it appears more factual than most, and fairer than most renderings.
The British press much like the American and Australian press is nasty. I honestly think journalists have a lot to answer for. Half of what we are currently going through -- we can lay at their feet.
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The press, including, I am sad to say, the NYT, did a terrible job of covering the 2016 election, and I have to say, they're not off to a great start with 2020.
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I prefer the NYT to most, partly because I live in NY and of the NY papers it is by far the least biased and most reliable. Also, having lived in other places -- the Kansas City Star was not reliable and the less said about the Hilton Head and Savannah papers, the better.
I also prefer the NYT to the Washington Post and Boston Globe, which tend to be rather biased and inciendiary at times.
It's worth noting, I suppose, that I work for a VERY public agency that is in the papers all the time, and in the news all the time. And 98% of the time they all get it wrong. Also the politicians who run said agency tend to react and formulate policy based on what is in the newspapers. A news report on abuses of overtime at my workplace/agency (which were greatly exaggerated and taken out of context by the newspapers), has resulted in various policies being enforced that have in turn negatively impacted my commute and lifestyle. I NEVER got overtime, and have NEVER been paid overtime. But now, I'm getting up fifteen minutes earlier (5:45 am) to ensure that I can clock in before or at 8 am. When before, if I was occasionally walking in at 8:05 or 8:10 it was no big deal. And I could leave fifteen or five minutes early for a doctor's appointment.
I'd like to kill the journalist. Or make him do the same thing. The asshole probably works from home and has no understanding of the workplace he wrote about.
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I haven't yet seen the Downton Abbey movie yet but I did wonder how much they'd set up for new viewers. Sounds like they figured they didn't need to. I see it's on Amazon now so maybe I can see it tonight if it's on Prime.
Speaking of costume dramas, I haven't started on Howard's End yet because we're going through Sanditon. But I expect it will be next on the list.
Two of the most moving episodes of the series were focused on Phillip -- his mother, who'd become a nun, and the establishment of a priestly retreat on the palace grounds, which took place during the lunar landing. The other two stellar episodes focused on the Queen, herself. Less so were the episodes that focused on Mountbatten, Charles, and Margaret. I felt rather sorry for Charles and Margaret throughout, and kept wanting to smack Mountbatten over the head. My favorite character was Princess Ann, who demonstrated the same toughness of character that is seen in her mother. Charles unfortunately takes after his uncle Edward and Princess Margaret ...and keeps wanting to fight against the status quo.
Agree with all that, though to me the real standout was Aberfan, in large part because, like S1's killer smog episode, it was something I hadn't heard of before, which is remarkable given what a tragedy it was.
That said it was going to be a grim episode to start anyone out on, so when I tried to get my friend interested in the series over the holiday I began with Margaretology. I figured the U.S. angle and the relative lightness of it (the scene with Wilson relating to Elizabeth what had occurred was pretty funny) might be a better hook. Must have worked! We binged the whole season together and she went back to start on S1.
Half of what we are currently going through -- we can lay at their feet.
Agreed.
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I should post to FB, there's three people on FB that wrote scholary meta. I might post to the Whedon Studies FB Group. That's the big time meta writers.
Oh, I forgot the names of the episodes -- the Aberfan episode is one of the two of the episodes that focused on the Queen, that I was referring to. There's two -- that one and another one -- that really gave me insight into her character.
I was less fond of the episodes that focused on Prince Charles for some reason. It was a somewhat grim season, outside of Magretology.
I don't highly recommend The Downton Abbey movie -- was somewhat disappointed. It focused heavily on the servants, and not as much on the people above stairs. Although, I was relieved that most of the attention was on Mr. Barnes, Violet (aka the Dowager played by Maggie Smith), and
Mr. Barrows.
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That's what I've been discovering. I put in one thing that I wasn't certain about -- an meta/episode review of two Stephen Moffat Doctor Who episodes -- and people were thrilled with that. So...I'm going through the journal from the back forward, then I might do another run through at the end. All my meta is in the journal, for the most part. If it's not -- it's lost. A lot of people lost stuff in the abyss of LJ. I had imported everything from LJ to DW ages ago, so it's not a problem. I also imported stuff from the Geo Cities website and various boards ages ago. I don't know how much the fandom cares any longer about the Buffy stuff though...which is 70% of my meta.
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Well, I'm getting kudos for the 25 essays I've posted to date. Sigh. This is going to take me forever though -- when I say I wrote a boatload of meta....it may well be two boats. And importing is time consuming, due to editing and formatting. (I didn't format well for a lot of them in my own journal not Ao3's fault. Mine.) This is a really cool site though. Much better posting platform than any of the previous ones I've been on. Did boost the signal to others who wrote a boat load. The All Things Philosophical Board about BTVS and ATS -- was basically a board for meta writers or folks who liked to analyze television shows to death.
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More hits than kudos to be honest. Although I've gotten more than expected, so apparently the Buffy fandom is still alive and kicking? (So is the Lost fandom for that matter). And they like weird ones. But people always do. It's why I don't really care one way or another if people like what I write any longer.
I've got too many though. Posted over 35 to date, and I'm only on July 2009 of my Journal, and most of them were written between 2002-2003. I may give up soon.
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I should mention that 98% of the stuff I posted was previously published on various fansites, long gone, and on the voy fanboards -- where likes took the form of posted responses. Most of it didn't originate on Livejournal or DW, but on say the old voy forums. I'll never get the number of kudos I got on voy -- or the discussion. That's long gone. The fandom has also changed completely. Sort of glad, I entered the fandom in 2002 and was posting on voy....if I were doing it now, I probably wouldn't have written that much. 98% of the fun was discussing the posts with folks to death.
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I boosted the signal to Whedon Studies Group on FB -- and they boosted it. Some of the big time fan meta writers are on that site. (The academics who wrote mainly meta and never fanfic. And boatloads of it. Although a good portion of it was lost in the abyss of LJ and other sites long gone.) But a lot of them may be able to find it again, if so inclined. I imported all mine to DW -- it's just a matter of finding it on DW.
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