(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. Finished reading Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

This reads a bit like a YA coming of age fantasy/horror romance. I gave it three stars for the world-building, setting, folk lore, and mythology., all of which I kind of wanted a lot more of than I actually got.

The novel concerns a teenage girl who is asked to become a Ghost Bride. A Ghost Bride is a tradition for the Chinese Territories and not Mainland China, where the family of a dead male relative may request an impoverished or down on her luck girl to become the ghost bride of a recently deceased son. It's mainly ceremonial and their needs are taken care of -- in actuality. In the book, it takes on another eerie connotation all together.

In 1800s Malaysia, Li Lian has to fight off the advances of the recently deceased Lim Tian Ching who is haunting her dreams. She goes to extreme lengths to do so - and ends up a partial ghost, able to leave her body and wander about the after-life. Much like other novels of this sort -- the writer imagines the after-life as a bit of pale copy of own world. (For once I'd like to see another approach. But alas, no.) Or basically they live like they did in the alive world, but with all the color drained from it. In some respects the book's world-building reminded me of the anime film Spirited Away, except I liked Spirited Away a bit better.

The romance, such as it is, is between Li Lian and Er Lang...a minor official of the other realm or minor deity, who also happens to be a loong or water dragon. He's interesting, but we don't get much of him unfortunately. Instead we get a lot of Li Lian whining and navel gazing and worrying and fretting, to the point that I wanted to smack her upside the head. Also what he or anyone else sees in her, I don't know, she's does dumb things. This novel has been adapted into a television serial for Netflix -- which takes a different tact according to the trailer -- in the series, Li Lian journeys to the spirit world to help find a murderer and assist in vengeance to save her father's life. This is not the case in the book - the father is never in danger and is a rather weak man who isn't featured. But I can see why they did that -- otherwise it would be a boring series. Not much happens in the book, Li Lian wanders about and has confrontations with various ghosts, gets herself in trouble, gets saved by Er Lang at various junctures...

It's mostly descriptive and told in a rambling first person narrative style. It bored me. I kept skimming and thinking, okay, okay, I get that she's feeling guilty, can we move on please? Or yes, I understand she's worried about seeing her mother but do we really need to spend fifty pages on this?

The problem with Kindle's is you can't skip ahead and see if the book gets better as it goes. You're sort of stuck going one page at a time. Makes me miss paperbacks and hardcover.



2. End of a difficult and highly frustrating week, beset with computer issues.Among them? My system kept crashing. My word documents failed to save. One document that I'd spent the equivalent of three hours working on - got lost, but I had smartly printed it off. So I scanned it. Exported a word doc from the PDF file. Then copied and pasted onto the doc that failed to save the changes. Then re-saved in Word.

Then my email kept crashing. Then it wouldn't load due to a file accessibility error.

This was going on for three days, off and on. I called IT twice. Rebooted the stupid thing five times. And it's hard to reboot -- it has to find a signal and it doesn't always find one.

Confused? Yeah, so am I. It's this new little Wyse box developed by Dell -- where you don't have a hard-drive. Instead you have a little box that links you to the cloud or in this case network server. So the box, when its working, talks to the server that houses all your data and updates/saves it nightly. If the data server is down -- you have nothing. If they decided to switch data servers and didn't manage to migrate all the information over -- you may have nothing. The new little box doesn't read CD's, and barely reads flashdrives. It crashes half the time.

By the end of Thursday, after expending hours trying to get the stupid computer to save my documents and work, I decided that if I ever found the dumb engineer who designed the thing, I'd shove it up their rear-end.

Cubical Mate: Don't shoot the messenger.
Me: What? Who should I shoot?
Cubical Mate: The guy who made the decision to install all those boxes which most likely weren't designed to service a big organization with over 70,000 employees.
Me: Well, Dell sold it to us. And some nitwit designed it. The messenger is the IT guy who installed it.

So, shove it up the rear-end of the marketing guy? I'm okay with that.

Also, kept fighting with people. One environmental consultant in particular who I'd like to consign to paper-cut hell. I felt by the end of the week that all I'd been doing is pushing a very heavy rock up a hill and not getting very far, also it had a pesky habit of rolling back towards me every five minutes.

And still no period. Dang it. The last one was three weeks before Christmas. This probably means menopause.

I'm glad it's Friday. Tomorrow I have an eye doctor appointment. My soap is back on air as it should be. And the flick PARASITE has finally arrived to On Demand.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

It's too late now, but I wouldn't have recommended any large concern buy a lot of equipment from Dell. Even their consumer stuff has a long history of not being reliable. I think they mostly have stayed in business because techy people would rather upgrade than get what they have that's wonky working again. For your problems you can probably thank the system that buys from the lowest bidder.

Since long before the Internet, computer heavy businesses have tried to convince non-computer heavy organizations and businesses to store all their data off-site for a fee. There is some sense in it, if the data isn't sensitive and you need good backup. Having no local backup (or local saves for godsake), unfortunately, is *idiotic* as you have discovered! Plenty of blame to go around for the system designer at Dell, the device builder, likely somewhere in China, who no doubt cut corners, the lying marketer and the clueless folks who approved the acquiring the system for your very own use.

[shadowkat]

Yep.

For my personal computer needs, I switched from Dell to MAC ages ago - mainly because MAC is more user friendly, doesn't crash as much, lasts longer, and doesn't get viruses.

Also, it's cheaper. And more gadgets work with it.

But, that said, MAC is crappy when it comes to Excel and spreadsheet work. Anything that is financial and database oriented, Mac is not the best. Hewlett Packard is expensive. Etc.

Hence the Dell. It's the government, they're cheap. They have to be. Taxpayers are cheap. "Oh, I'd rather spend $50-60,000 a year to see the Yankees or the Giants or for Lakers tickets...but on public transportation? Nah. That shouldn't cost me anything. I'm a selfish nitwit who wants to be entertained and only pay for a moment of great entertainment and whine that my train isn't cleaner and better."

Working as a public servant has taught me that people are annoyingly selfish. ;-)

[mefisto]

OT question for you. On the reddit Buffy board, someone asked if there is an actual citation -- meaning a quote from someone involved -- that it was Marti Noxon who supplied the plot for the bathroom scene in Seeing Red. I know that JM referred to a "woman writer" and Steven DeKnight said that Marti suggested the motivation for Spike in that scene. Do you know of anything more?

[shadowkat]

Yes, but, the difficulty is that the interviews and sources of them were often internet zines or the Succubus Club, both of which are long gone now. They disappeared about ten years ago. Keep in mind that most of this was discussed in 2002-2009, when the show was airing or just a few years post cancellation.

People have to understand that not everything on the internet lasts forever. A lot of this stuff was hosted on Yahoo News Groups - and that's kaput, along with GeoCities.

I'm saying that - to explain why you won't find the links I'm about to give you anywhere.

IGN Interview with Joss Whedon; Commentary to Hush, Joss Whedon, S4 BTVS DVD; James Marsters Shore Leave Q&A regarding Buffy/Spike relationship : "I am really serious. I don't think Joss went there, I think it was Marti. She has a dirty mind. How much heat was there last year? Whoa! That was Marti's year. As much as we talk about Joss, Marti is the Bomb! She is, like all the writers, using her personal life and she is incredibly brave about what she admits has happened to her. She has lived the life." http://www.slayernews.com/Actors/Marsters.php

DeKnight et al who wrote Seeing Red -- stated it was Marti's idea in the Succubus Club. Also on Bronze Beta at the time.

In numerous Q&A's of James Marsters between roughly 2002-2018, Marsters states it as a kind of way of letting the writers off the hook.

I know Marti never spoke of it directly, nor did Whedon. But everyone else did. LOL!

Good luck finding direct quotes and citations from people now -- most of the entertainment mags, etc, that talked about it are long gone now.

[mefisto]

I'm quite sure it's true -- everyone says it and nobody has ever denied it. But I was surprised that I didn't have an actual cite.

I summarized this and passed it along, so thanks.

[shadowkat]

You probably did - it's just that it's gone. I know they said it on the Bronze Beta after the episode aired. Also, I remember DeKnight, Espenson, and I think Fury discussing it on the Succubus Club after it aired. You could find it on ATPOBTVS - people transcribed the interview.

I can however tell you for a fact that neither Marti nor Whedon directly discussed or mentioned it at all. It was always Marsters, Deknight, Espenson, or someone else. Which is kind of interesting.

[mefisto]

Marti gets lots of undeserved grief for other episodes, so she probably doesn't want to add to that by talking about this one. I'm sure DeKnight is happy to let everyone know it was her idea after all the grief he got from that episode (and not just for that scene, but for Tara).

I checked Bronze Beta archives for May 2002, but they're all gone.

I may look on ATPO, but as you mentioned the other day, it's pretty hard to search.

[shadowkat]

I know Whedonesque (formerly Bronze Beta) had a thread with Whedon basically smacking down a poster for bashing Marti for the S6. He made it clear that he had the final say, and nothing happened without his go-ahead.

It's true -- I can totally see him having no issue with the sexual violence themes. He used the same themes in all his other series -- or tried to. They were going to do something far worse in both Firefly and Angel, but got smacked down by the network brass.

Yeah, she got a lot of grief -- but she also made a couple of bad decisions regarding interviews. You do not tell your audience/fanbase that you are doing a "bad boyfriend trope" to teach them the errors of their ways. They won't thank you for it, if anything they will rip you to pieces. (Which is exactly what they did.) People do not like to be told what to think, do, or like. Whedon and Fury made the same mistakes at various points on social media and in interviews. Now, smart professional television writers are learning to let their managers post to the internet for them.
You can get in a lot of trouble -- and it is really easy to misinterpret intent.

[mefisto]

I think they were all a lot more naïve back then. The idea of interaction with fans on the internet was very new, and they didn't have the background to realize just how brutal the comments could be. Or even how insulting, in the case of Amber. It's no wonder everybody's a lot more careful now.

I've always defended Marti from those accusations. She's not my favorite writer from the show, and I have issues with S6, but it's clear that she got blamed for stuff Whedon approved. Back then, a lot of fans didn't want to blame Joss, but these days it seems they're much more willing to.

[shadowkat]

That was sort of my take as well. I've seen Q&A's with Marsters in 2019, where he's more careful. They all are. Fury stays off of the internet now, as do most of the others -- they kind of learned the hard way.

And you're right -- the internet was this new shiny toy. "Oh, I can interact with my fans immediately after the show airs and see what they thought! Cool." (Not so much as it turns out. Because what people forget is for every fan that loved it, there's going to be those who hated it.) Also, studies have been done to show how toxic "kudos" and seeking likes can be on social media, and what dislikes do. It's not healthy to have one's ego praised too much.

I tended to stay away from these interactions with writers. They never go well. But I saw them. And they never did. Television writers and actors have fragile egos -- and the internet isn't kind to fragile egos.

Agree on Marti as well. People blamed her for stuff, but Whedon is a control freak and he was definitely checking everything. Everyone on Buffy knew Whedon planned to kill off Tara at some point. That was all Whedon.
And the BDSM and abusive sex was signed off on by Whedon. There were things in that season that Marti didn't think was a good idea and Whedon did. Also she was co-head-runner with David Fury. I kind of applauded Whedon when he went after the idiot on the Whedoneseque forum. (Honestly, bashing Marti on Whedonesque was stupid.) The individual got booted. Whedon however should never have posted or followed the site. Never follow your own fansite, particularly if it is named after you - no good can come of it.

[mefisto]

I take your attitude and approach when it comes to sports stars too. And I doubt I would like most politicians if I actually got to know them. Best keep all that at a distance.

[shadowkat]

I prefer to keep anyone who is famous at a safe distance.

All these people want to meet the presidential candidates. I don't. I have no interest in meeting any politician.

[mefisto]

I was able to search DeKnight's name at ATPo and found the interview I already had where he says that Marti was the one to supply Spike's motivation in the scene. But I couldn't find anything that said she suggested the whole idea or that it was based on her own life experience. But her role was common knowledge at that time and lots of posts mention it.

[shadowkat]

They sort of indirectly alluded to it, except for Marsters who felt the need to directly allude to it and in great detail. He'd made friends with the writers and crew apparently, and felt betrayed by the writers when they did Seeing Red. (From what I understand, from fans who had contacts on site at the time and people who knew him, someone very very close to him was brutally raped and as a result, he has deliberately turned down roles that contained it. He can't watch it on television or go to a movie with it or anything. And when he read the scene, which came as a complete surprise -- they get it about 24 hours before they shoot, if that -- he threatened to walk unless they changed it, and SMG had to talk him into coming back to do it. Doing the scene sent him spiraling. I think S6 gave the actor a bit of nervous breakdown and changed how he approached roles, television contracts, and acting. Keep in mind, he was a method actor, who stayed in character when he was on the set. For that scene, he deliberately chose not to - and jumped out of character between scenes. But he struggled with it. For Gellar, it was easier, since she's not method and doesn't stay in character when the camera isn't on her.

At any rate - suffice it to say he was pissed off enough at the writers, particularly Marti Noxon, to vent. And vent he did.

I can't say I completely blame him. I'd have been pissed off. And Marti? Well she was most likely having an affair with Whedon at the time.

[mefisto]

I've heard the story about JM and his background, and how he reacted to the scene. I had not heard about Marti and JW, though I don't doubt it at all. Where'd you hear that?

[shadowkat]

Can't remember -- it was around the time that Joss's wife posted that Joss had slept with writers and actresses on his television shows. And that he justified it by saying how hard it was to resist the advances of these aggressive and attractive women.

Then, Marti had written a scene or two in Girl's Guide to Divorce about the character sleeping with someone similar to Joss Whedon.

People connected the dots. We were speculating on what actresses and writers he slept with on Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. LOL!

[mefisto]

Oh, I freely joined in that speculation. I just hadn't heard Marti mentioned (maybe she was and I forgot). So many women, so little time. :)