(no subject)

Today, the air is clean and fresh and smells like summer. Feeling grateful for this. Whatever was in the air last week and making me quite ill is now gone. Worse allergic reaction in a long while. And I was not alone.

Flirted with Neil Gaiman's collection of personal essays, entitled From the Cheap Seats. I may end up buying this on the Kindle, although the book is rather pretty, with antique rough edged paper.
I actually prefer Gaiman's non-fiction writing to some of his fictional writing. I've read a lot of him over the years, I find his prose style rather poetic and comforting. He's a kind man and it comes through in his writing. Right now, I find myself drifting towards kind.

My own writing is flowing in fits and starts. It feels jagged at the moment. Uneven. As if I'm attempting to pluck food from my teeth with a toothpick. I will write a sentence, but the proper word or words escape me. They float on the tip of my tongue...just out of reach, but when I attempt to grasp hold of them and wrangle them upon the page...they flutter off. Gone completely.

Finished watching the last four episodes of S3 of The 100 last night. I think it's S3. There's only been two seasons so far, right? I haven't skipped over one? Say what you will about The 100 it is definitely binge-worthy television. Serial dramas tend to be, particularly thrillers.
Procedurals, not so much.

Realized something while watching it this year, and watching the online fandom out of the corner of my eye or peripherally. It is much more enjoyable to watch a television series offline or away from fandom than with fandom or at the same time as the fandom. I know, you'd think it would be the opposite. But, here's the thing? Fandom has a tendency to cloud your thinking or influence it in regards to the television series. Particularly if the fandom is shipping and heavily shipping relationships and characters that you aren't shipping or could not care less about. For example? If I'd paid attention to the fandom? I'd have given up on the show, which would have been a colossal shame since the last six to ten episodes were highly entertaining and in some respects just short of brilliant. Taking a break from the series, letting the episodes ramp up and watching them in two separate binges, away from the fandom, was the smartest thing I did in regards to my overall enjoyment and appreciation of the show.

For two reasons:

1. No spoilers. Fandom has a tendency to spoil you. And if you watch weekly not as a binge, you have a tendency to spoil yourself out of either eagerness or worry. Or at least I do. Can't really speak for anyone else. When I binge, I don't spoil myself. Why would I?

2. I am alone with my own opinion until it is completed. No one else's opinion exists to taint it.
Which is a nifty thing. I don't find myself looking at the series through another's eyes, or their resentments, frustrations, hopes and dreams. Just my own.

The problem with online fandom, be it here, there or anywhere...is it can taint how you view a show.
No matter how hard you resist. [No disrespect to fandom, but you guys can be a bit dogmatic in regards to your opinions at times -- as if there is no other possibility or how dare another opinion exist?] For example? I actually loved how they wrote the ( spoiler )

, but if I let the fandom influence me with their righteous outrage over ( spoiler )

, I may not have. [The online fandom was outraged over how they dealt with this, while I loved it to pieces and thought it worked splendidly. If I engaged with the online fandom -- they'd have tarred and feathered me verbally speaking. So..I wisely stayed away.]

The thing I enjoy the most about the series is how they flip characters around on you. No black or white or clear cut characters on this series. No good guys and bad guys. Everyone does horrible things and often for the right reasons.

One of the last four episodes gave us a bit of the back story on Pike, a character who does horrific things, and it was chillingly ironic on so many levels. I found myself liking and understanding him, actually. He starts out as this nice guy, who is a teacher, but desperation brings out the worst in him. As it does for many of the characters. None of these characters stay the same. They all evolve and appear to learn from what has happened before, for good or ill.

I'm still rather impressed by the series, even if it had a few unevenly written episodes towards the beginning. Of course, I'm not really shipping any of the characters. Yeah, I admit I spent the last several episodes thinking: Please don't kill that character, oh good, you didn't. Or can you just kill that character off instead? But if they had killed off a character I enjoyed, I'd have stuck with it. Of course it probably helps that I'm wickedly good at figuring out story threads, so I more or less knew who would die and who would have to survive. It's hard to surprise me. For example?
Neither of the major character deaths that occurred this season surprised me. Nor bothered me all that much, since I was to a degree ambivalent about both characters and their romances with the leads.

I thought the writers did a nice twist on the AI -- at first it reminded me a great deal of BSG and The Matrix, but it turned out to be quite different and rather interesting. While it definitely felt familar in some respects, it was different in others. Also somewhat chilling. About a scientist who tried to save the world and only ended up destroying it with her creation...who long after the world has been destroyed, is still trying to save it, but doing such a bad job of it, that the protagonist has to finally pull the plug. Of course, then the protagonist has to figure out another way to save the world.

There's a great exchange at the end of the season.

Bellamy: Well, we saved the world.
Clark: No, we really didn't. But we'll discuss that later.

Another wonderful exchange:

Octavia: You won't save us?
Luna: You don't want someone to save you, you want someone to fight with you.
Octavia: It's all I know.