What interests me in stories and writing...and what does not..

Thank you for answering my poll - currently it's tied between those who are ambivalent and those who have never read the comics or plan to. I have no idea why people feel that way. But it is fun to speculate. My guess is the characters as they are depicted in the comics, specifically the female lead (buffy) and the story the writers have chosen to tell no longer resonates with or speak to most people on an emotional level. That's a personal thing, totally pov and perspective - don't try arguing with people on that one. Won't work. Because you don't know why it doesn't resonate. It's more than likely what resonates for you is the very thing that is turning your friend off. This happens a lot with cultural stuff. For example - Bones. My friend from college and her hubby love Bones. I'd personally rather watch paint dry, be less annoying. Can't stand it. What worked for her, does not work for me. Meanwhile I adore the show House and she hates it. We can speculate all we want on why, but the truth of the matter is - it is what it is. Same deal with X-Files and Buffy, she wouldn't watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you paid her, and I was not a fan of the X-Files, although I did enjoy some of the stand-alone episodes, but mostly I found it too scary, too gross, and the whole alien conspiracy bit annoyed me. Alien conspiracy or aliens' invading or the US abusing aliens stories don't work for me - it's a sci-fi trope that I grew bored of ages ago. I know I'm in the minority on that - everybody online adores the X-files.

Speaking for myself in regards to the comics? ( Read more... )

As for writing and stories...read a few comments and an excellent post by flake_sake
about what works in a story and what doesn't, which got me to thinking about what works for me, and wondering well...what works for everyone else? I'm guessing it's different for all of us, because hello, we think differently. I remember way back in 2003 posting an essay on the APTO board about the episode Storyteller (Buffy S7) which everyone and their mother adored to pieces.
I hated it. It was entitled, why I hated Storyteller - and was really an examination of differences in taste and why we don't always like things in the same or for the same reasons or even, in most cases like the same things at all.

( very long ramble...and not edited. )

(no subject)

The down-side of posting from DW is I haven't loaded any user pics outside of the default yet. The up-side - none of those annoying Facebook/Twitter ticky boxes I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of (every time I answer a post at - I'm always worried I'll accidentally click on the wrong box). And none of those annoying adds. LJ has one too many pointless add-ons that I don't want.

It's 9/11 weather. Beautiful. Crisp. Clear cloudless blue sky out my windows. That is the only thing that remains the same regarding this particular date on the Calendar. Well that and the fact that I still live in the same flat (different landlords and tenants below) and in the same city. Even the day of the week is different this year. Two people this year asked me where I was during 9-11, what I was doing, and we exchanged stories. I realized while we were discussing it that I don't like to talk about it. Not really. And when you do, you feel like you are at a scene of an accident and everyone is yelling their own perception.

New Yorkers, or rather those of us who witnessed what happened live and in living color and not through sound-bites, news reels, radio, or tv, have never quite known what to do with it. For six months we were all without exception traumatized. A plane flew by, and we collectively would jump. A fire alarm would go off, and we'd jump. A siren? We'd jump. Subways felt like tombs. ( Read more... )

So Project Runway, Vampire Diaries and Nikita...(enuf angst, time to talk guilty pleasures)

TV slut returns, well sort of. Quiet day is mocking my desire to hibernate with its beauty. It'll probably rain tomorrow - when I have to go to church and check out flats. Stupid, uncooperative weather. Oh well, at least it's pretty for the block party outside - which I'm soo not in the mood for.

1. Project Runway - I clearly have different taste than the judges. ( spoilers of course )

2. Vampire Diaries - okay is it just me or do the female leads both villains and heroines in vampire gothic romances have the worst taste on the planet when it comes to men? ( spoilers for this week's episode, of course. )

3. Nikita - I should let you know before I do this review - that I've literally seen all the Nikita versions. There's about five of them to date, not including the two movies. Luc Besson's original French film - La Femme Nikita, and the American remake - with Bridget Fonda, which I can't remember the name of but was horrifically bad. See the original. As an aside, a friend asked Momster a while ago why they would make an American versions of the books - Girl with a Dragon Tatoo, when the Swedish films had gotten such high praise. Well, Americans like to remake popular foreign films, and make them their own. We do it constantly. Why not with Swedish films. Plus, hey, no subtitles, so people who hate to read their movies, can see an English non-dubbed version. Lazy, us? Nah. We've remade the Vanishing (really good Swedish film) Infernal Affairs (The Departed, the original film is better I'm told), Let the Right One in (Let Me In), amongst others. At least making one into a tv show is halfway innovative.
Well, not if you do it five times, but hey whose counting?
( run down of past Nikitas )

Now finally, the fifth version entitled simply Nikita. This version unlike all the others, takes place after the original film - La Femme Nikita ended.( review of tv series Nikita with very vague spoilers )

If you like action, don't mind violence, and enjoy gritty film - this may be for you. Plus tough yet highly attractive female heroine.