(no subject)

1. Am crashing and burning this weekend. I need a break from people, methinks.

Back is okay...but it bothers me when I walk or do stuff. Also...it feels as if someone hit me really hard in the center of it. Yes, I know, I need to see a Doctor stat...I just need to do some research at work - on my insurance page first, find a good ortho doc list and set up an appointment with primary to see if he can recommend anyone off the list. Also sent an email to sis-in-law to see who she uses.

2. Book Meme: Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most

I don't know. I relate to aspects of fictional and non-fictional characters, sort of similar to tv and movie characters. Also I can't really pick just one. And once again this feels like the memorable meme not the best meme - ie, the characters I remember relating to the most not necessarily the one's I did or have. It is worth noting that I often prefer books in which I can on some level or other relate to the characters - but that tends to be true for the "majority" of people I've run into. (Watch, someone will read this passage and feel the need to tell me that they don't like books where they relate to the characters and prefer not to relate to any characters. You ever wonder if there are people online who just enjoy arguing with folks? They'll play devil's advocate no matter what?)

Anyhow...characters that I can relate to the most in fictional novels, because I rarely read non-fiction for pleasure, have enough of that at work thank you very much. Also I find non-fiction to be highly unreliable.

* Brienne in A Song of Ice and Fire series. Also, oddly, Ayra, Tyrion, and to a lesser degree Jamie.
* Hazel Grace in Fault in Our Stars
* Rachel Morgan in The Hollows series
* Vicky Bliss in Elizabeth Peters' Vicky Bliss mysteries
* Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice
* Harry Dresden in The Dresden Files
* the main character in Color Purple, whose name I no longer remember
* the ship in The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey
* Helena in Midsummer Night's Dream

I suppose the pattern, if there is one, is tough/bright, snarky characters with marshmellow centers and a savior complex - who defy gender restrictions. Then again, maybe not.

( the rest of the days )

3. Day 28 - First TV show obsession

Didn't we already do this one? Oh right, that was first favorite tv series or childhood tv series. Although to be honest I don't really see much difference. And I've no idea how to evaluate the criteria on this one. I guess it depends on how one defines "obsession".

1.)Do you define it as a tv show you did not want to miss, saw a million times, was upset when you were forced to miss it (back then we did not have DVR's, VCR's, internet or anything like that - we were dependent on when the tv network chose to show it and we only had one tv.) And discussed with friends, assuming your friends watched it too?

or

2) Do you define obsession as a tv show that you wrote meta/fanfic on, went online about, watched a hundred times, bought the DVD's for, and taped, and relentlessly discussed ad nasuem?

But here's the thing prior to the 1990s? We didn't really have the internet, what we had was a pale imitation that only true computer nerds knew about. Prior to 1980s, no VCRS, and prior to the 21st Century no DVDs or DVR's that I'm aware of. So maybe this should be split into two questions? TV Obsession that predates gadgets and technology and TV obsession that comes shortly after gadgets and tech?

In which case? Number 1 would be: The Monkees. and Number 2 would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The difference? I actually have one of the Monkees autographs. I think that autograph may turn out in the long-run to be more valuable than the Buffy one's except for the fact that it is on a DVD case and barely visible, so maybe not. It's from Davy Jones, who is dead now.

( the rest of the days )

Book and TV Meme's continued

1. Raining and light snow flurries all day. Decided today that my difficulty with life is I have to live with spiders, also mosquitoes, cockroaches, and parrots, but mainly its the spiders. I know they have their uses. But would much rather live in a world without them. A world without spiders, roaches, mosquitoes and parrots...human or otherwise...hmmm.

Book Meme continues...and continues to feel impossible.

Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something

The Fault in Our Stars - you ever read something that just gave you a different perspective? Or epiphany of sorts? Made you see things from another point of view? Well it was like that and for more than one thing.

Hard to explain to people who haven't read the book. And I doubt this will happen for anyone else. Nor am I certain I can explain it to anyone who read it. Not sure I understand it myself...it was an ethereal thing not a tangible thing, not something one can put into words and explain. Not all things are. That's the trouble with life and why we require metaphors, even if they, more often than not get lost in translation.

Oh...another book that sort of did this is The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell.

And oddly...50 Shades of Grey - what it changed my mind about was how I view others taste. The next time you judge someone's taste harshly, consider for a moment the number of people who judge yours. And get over your nasty self. ;-) Seriously, we all have our guilty pleasures...

And...Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Celtic and Egyptian Mythology sort of destroyed my religious beliefs. Actually mythology in general did that.

( The rest of the days )

2. TV Meme Day 29 - Current TV show obsession

Once Upon a Time - although I think that should be obvious by now.

There are better written tv series on - but I rarely get obsessed with well-written/well-executed stories or tv series, mainly because they rarely focus on my story-kinks or what thrills me.

But... It's hard to explain to others why we love what we love - isn't it? I've almost given up.

OUAT has several things that hit me where I live:

* Fairy Tales and Oral narratives - this I studied obsessively in school, I minored in "epic, myth and folklore" or cultural anthropology and considered becoming a cultural anthropologist. As long as I can remember fairy tales have bewitched me. This show is subverting and changing many of them, it's also commenting on how Disney subverting many of the tales to begin with...Plus it's playing with the pop culture stories and myths of my childhood such as Peter Pan and Frankenstein...and Alice in Wonderland. Mashing them together in lovely cross-overs.
* Lots of psychological and philosophical metaphors and small details
* Female heroes in traditional male roles - Emma the lead is a bounty hunter/sheriff/bail bondsman.
* Parent/Child relationships, Family relationships, repetition of mistakes and learning from them. Particularly mother/daughter and mother/son. We rarely see these from a female perspective on tv. Too much emphasis on father/son. Although OUAT has that as well.
* Memory issues - or how memory affects personality and changes/alters personality. Who are we really? Are we our memories? I'm obsessed with how memory and the loss of it - affects people. That's why I watched Dollhouse, actually - my obsession with memory issues. Huge Story Kink.
* Flipping the gaze from male to female, flipping the gender roles and subverting them, fridging the male ingenue instead of the female one.
* I think OUAT handles some of the same themes and ideas that Joss Whedon attempted to play with in Dollhouse far more adeptly and in far more interesting manner and far less, cliche and male centric one. It's odd, but OUAT, which is far from perfect, seems to cover what intrigued me about Dollhouse, minus what squicked or turned me off of that series including the lead. These themes are the idea of how our fantasies often reflect who we are, what memory means, how taking someone's memory from them and implanting a new memory changes who they are, and what the reprecussions of doing that are and how they affect everyone concerned.
* I actually love the lead character - this is rare for me and a must for me to become obsessed with a tv series. Actually I like or love to hate most of the characters now. They are growing on me.
* The narrative structure is fascinating...it's that rare series that you can watch multiple times and pick up something new upon each rewatch (something new that won't make you want to hurl or run from the room).
* It's not overly violent or misanthropic, it also isn't horror...which is a delightful change of pace. I've become weary of horror or anti-hero stories.

There's so much in this series to play with, to wrap one's head around, and I find it compelling. And as time wears on...more and more people on my flist are becoming equally interested in it. I've seen four or five metas on OUAT this week alone. Plus some good fanfic. This is the only series outside of Farscape, Doctor Who, and Buffy/Angel that I can see myself reading fanfic or writing it for.

( the only day left )

Shipping Characters - from Spike to Darla to Emma to JR Ewing to Damon Salvatore

Back is better but I also took 500 mg of Naproxen, so there is that.

In an unrelated discussion on another topic, I got to thinking about character shipping. I call it character shipping as opposed to fangirling because fangirling is not a word and makes no sense to me.

Shipping characters is a bit like shipping relationships, celebrities, or anything else.
It's also similar to well how you perceive the word. People do not perceive things the same way. Heck, we don't perceive acting or writing the same. One person's favorite actor is another's least favorite. That's why Woody Allen refuses to vote or participate in any way in the Academy Awards or Oscars. He says it makes no sense. It's not like an actual race with objective criteria. This is all subjective and you can't even effectively compare the items in contention. Besides, the movies I made that I love and think are my best work - a lot of people hate - but I loved them because they challenged me the most.

I've shipped a lot of controversial characters - in regards to my flist and the people I know, who do not always share my views, even when they agree. For example? I love the character of Buffy, but I never shipped Buffy the way many people on my flist did and we do not agree on the character at all. Also I can't say I'm a fan of the actress who played her, I never really was, I liked the character often in spite of the actress. Another example? I am discovering that I love Emma Swan in OUAT, I know a lot of people who do not like this character and prefer Hook, Regina, and Rumplestilskin. I think they are surprised that I've fallen for Emma. It seems to go against my shipping pattern, it doesn't really.
I tend to go for tough female characters, who are tall, and snarky, with a level of skepticism and common sense. Buffy was actually an exception to that rule and I had an admittedly love/hate relationship with the character. The victimized little girl trope, equally, rarely works for me.

Then there is shipping characters...outside the proverbial box, or when your mind plays with the character because something about that character hits your story-kinks hard. ( Read more... )