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Oct. 22nd, 2023 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatHalf watching "Surreal Estate" - which I mainly watch for the characters, except Luke Roman was more interesting with the sight. It's kind of cheesy, similar to Wyonna Earp and other Syfy series. Also the wave in my television set is noticeable again - mainly because I had a week without the wave. I'll probably get myself a new one for Xmas. We'll see.
I feel for people, saw this article... I Live in My Car -
"Chrystal Audet tried to get comfortable in what she called her “bedroom” — the back seat of her eight-year-old Ford Fusion. To stretch her legs, she had to leave a passenger door ajar, but September nights are raw in the Pacific Northwest, with sheets of rain that cut to the bone. From her own “bedroom” in the front seat, her 26-year-old daughter Cierra Audet asked her to close it.
“We have to get out of this,” Ms. Audet said to herself as she pulled a comforter against the cold and struggled to fall asleep in a parking lot in Kirkland, Wash.
Ms. Audet, 49, earns over $72,000 a year as a social worker for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. But a combination of bad luck, bad debt and a bad credit score priced her out of her apartment in Bellevue, another suburb of Seattle, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. With an eviction looming, she put her furniture in storage this spring and began parking the sedan in a U-shaped parking lot outside a church in Kirkland.
The car, her biggest investment, became her home — the roof turned into a dining table, the trunk a closet. And a weathered stretch of blacktop provided by a Methodist church became her yard, her neighborhood and her safe place.
Around the country, real estate is being set aside for people like Ms. Audet in the form of parking lots. Dozens of such lots have opened in the last five years, with new ones being announced every few months, including as far east as Pennsylvania and North Carolina. They are sprinkled across the Midwest in Green Bay, Wis., and Duluth, Minn. And they dot the spine of the Pacific Northwest, providing a safe harbor for a growing cohort of working Americans who are wedged in the unforgiving middle. They earn too little to afford rent but too much to receive government assistance and have turned their cars into a form of affordable housing."
But for the grace of God, go I. There's little I can do of course. But my heart goes out to them.
**
One of the annoyances I've always had with online fandoms and fan discussions...is the idiots who like to berate people for loving fictional characters they find despicable. First off, it is a fictional character. Not real.
[Note - the pronoun "you" is utilized in the general or universal context and is not directed at any "individual" or "group" that may or may not be reading this or stumbles upon it. I'm just too lazy to use one or another pronoun.]
Example?
I got berated in the Buffy fandom for loving Spike and the Spike/Buffy relationship, which a lot of folks decided was despicable.
Fandom: He tried to rape Buffy.
Me: He's a vampire with no soul, engaged in an abusive BDSM relationship with a human slayer. Probably got confused. (Note a soul is conscience, having none - means no conscience per the text.)
Fandom: You are rape sympathizer!
ME: He's a fictional character and this a fictional relationship. Besides don't you think this is a tad hypocritical considering you loved Xander who did the same thing, and Angel who well is even worse?
Fandom: Xander was possessed by Hyena Demon and Angel was soulless at the time, and this was a man's crime.
Me: Angel murdered people and raped Dru, also got the curse raping a gypsey girl. Were you asleep during these episodes?
Fandom: No, he was a vampire.
Me: So is Spike. What's interesting is Spike was horrified by what he did and showed remorse. Angelus wanted to keep doing it, as did Xander, who was just mildly embarrassed.
Fandom: That's not true.
Me: See? This is why critical thinking needs to be taught in school. I could actually rationally discuss these stories with you. Instead of discussing it with people who have done radical misreads of the text.
I've decided over time that debating aka fighting with people over fictional characters on social media is a colossal waste of my time. It's no different than fighting over politics. However, if you want to know why we ended up with Trump? Critical thinking isn't taught in schools. (See above). I did however run into quite a few intelligent souls on one fanboard - ATPOBTVS board. Mostly academics. We had long discussions about Foucault, and the nuances between the characters behavior. The nitwits tended to get booted out of the discussion threads or ignored. My tolerance for them wasn't high.
Also, people should be allowed to love ambiguously evil fictional characters. Don't impose your own lofty moral standards on works of fiction or the characters someone else adores. That's going come back and bite you in the end. You probably love some character out there that is equally despicable. An interesting well rounded, realistic character, is usually capable of horrible and wonderful things at the same time. Also everyone sees different sides of a character. No one sees the character in the same way, and they relate to or are put off by different characteristics.
If you don't have that interaction with a character - then the writer hasn't done their job and the character falls flat.
And I've learned you cannot persuade someone to love or hate a fictional character based on your own interpretation or views of them. Or worse by putting them down or pitting them against your fave or a character you hate - you'll just alienate them, or make them hate your favorite character to spite you. This happens with political disagreements as well. People get very protective of their own point of view or their baby. Whataboutism never works - it just makes the person more protective. Putting someone on the defensive about this sort of thing or attacking them personally - is just going to make them despise you and your point of view, and dig in deeper.
No. The secret is to attack it rationally, logically. Negotiate. Find things you agree on, and slowly show them your perspective, without necessarily telling them you are right and they are wrong, just that you see it differently.
It's harder to do. Requires more patience. But in the long run - works far better.
Example?
Spike, Angel and Xander were all abusive in different ways. This was a metaphor of sorts for how people can abuse power and position, and how they handle their insecurity in relationships. Also how each dealt with their transactions shows different ways of tackling the same power imbalances, and the difficulties in those relationships. There's pros and cons to each, and the fact that the writers chose sexual violence in its various guises to examine these differences, and chose to have the female characters condemn and then forgive, once remorse was shown in various guises without demonizing the characters, so much as their actions - is worth further study.
See? The characters aren't pitted against each other. The emotion is taken out of the argument. It's no longer a competition. Everyone is given an equal stake in the discussion, and a part. No one is shamed or made to feel inferior.
You can still love each character - without condemning another's favorite.
And this way, you can be friendly.
This is of course harder to do in political situations. I mean, Trump is despicable. But you can state that to a degree there are flaws in all political candidates, and part of the problem is campaign donations. There most likely should be a cut off on donations - in that no one can donate more than $100, and no one can use more than $2000 of their own money to run. And media outlets should grant free air time to each candidate to air their political views, with the caveat that negative advertising is disallowed. This perhaps would help provide the voting public with a clearer view of the candidates, and remove the "Cult of Personality" aspect.
The problem with discussing anything on an emotional level - is that all you get is emotion. And that usually leads to insults. People tend to resort to name calling and insults when they don't get what they want. (I resort to snark and condescension when I don't, although I also do insults.) It doesn't get us what we want. It's counter-productive. Calling folks nitwits for condemning my love of a character just alienates them. Just as stating people who voted for Trump aren't worth saving. (I don't mean this of course, it's my anger and frustration talking. )
I'm discussing this right now - because it's popped up on various fanboards on social media - with other more obnoxious fandoms. Soap FB had a post in which a woman stated that anyone who didn't feel for a fictional character who did nasty things, after being in a coma for years and losing her daughter - clearly lacks empathy. And I thought - okay that's a dumb statement. The character is a fictional soap opera character. Who had unrealistically been placed in a coma, and unrealistically came out of it.
I'd say the poster lacked empathy for the real people on the board who disliked the character for various reasons. Or more likely? She was being emotional and not thinking clearly - and in the clear light of day would regret that post, but be unable to take it back. (This is the problem with social media - we post but we can't delete, or we can - but it's often too late since people have seen it already and reacted.)
People are allowed to dislike things we love and vice versa. We aren't going to love, like or hate the same things. It's actually a minor miracle when we do.
We're also allowed to be passionate about characters that others may find unlikable or despicable. Such as Hannibal in the show Hannibal, or Angelus, or Drusilla, or Loki, or Spike, or Magneto, or any number of fictionalized characters. It doesn't make people evil or rape sympathizers or anything like that. And the reverse is true as well, people are allowed to passionately dislike characters regardless of how nice or heroic they might be or how universally liked. Just because someone dislikes the characters in say Good Omens, doesn't make then anti-LGBTA. (I love them - not talking about myself). Or just because someone despised Willow and Tara - and preferred Oz and Willow - doesn't make them homophobic. Or just because they hate Willow or say hate Xander - there's nothing wrong with that. These are fictional characters. No one is hurt. They aren't hating the actors, but a fictional character - who doesn't work for them.
The problem arises when they hate the real people who play, write or create the characters, or the readers/viewers who like or hate them. That's where we get into trouble. I've noted this in myself. Too often I'll despise someone I don't know online - because they are attacking a television character or book character that I love. I don't know the person. I don't know their problems. Or their real name. I've never met them. They've never met me. In some cases we may give our real names - but we don't know each other. All we know about each other - is we're fans of the same show and vehemently disagree on the characters. And we're fighting because we're both afraid the other will get what they want in regards to the characters and storyline, and we won't. (Which neither of us have any control over - and regardless of how often we petitioned the writers, assuming we did or could - we still wouldn't necessarily get it. And if we did - it's not because we wanted it, but because the writers did, oblivious to our demands.)
Most character and storyline fights online are in regards to that. We think the writers are watching and we're both trying to get them to do what we want. Same with politics - we're trying to get people to vote the way we want them to. We're scared they won't. But the fight - doesn't tend to accomplish that, it usually accomplishes the opposite - apathy or turns folks off.
I honestly think the only way to get what you want is to be positive about it, and not fight. And be rational. If you want more of your fav - write positively about them. Ignore the character you hate, say nothing about them. Don't engage in debates. Don't acknowledge the character at all. Because the more attention you bring to the character, the more you will see it. Same with political candidates - if you hate a candidate - don't engage with it. Ignore it. Pretend they don't exist. Instead focus on the one you like, promote that candidate, and erase everything about the other from your feed. Block the other. Focus on the one you like. This is more productive, creates less animosity, and brings less attention to the one you despise.
I'm working hard on following this practice. Not writing reviews of things I hate. Not reading or focusing on them. Or watching or debating. Just focusing on what I love. Doing this - has brought my blood pressure down, made me less anxious. I sleep better. And I find I am less irritable.
It's not really the power of positive thinking or the law of attraction, so much as just expending energy on what I love instead of what annoys me or what I hate. I wonder what the world would look like if everyone else did this too?
I feel for people, saw this article... I Live in My Car -
"Chrystal Audet tried to get comfortable in what she called her “bedroom” — the back seat of her eight-year-old Ford Fusion. To stretch her legs, she had to leave a passenger door ajar, but September nights are raw in the Pacific Northwest, with sheets of rain that cut to the bone. From her own “bedroom” in the front seat, her 26-year-old daughter Cierra Audet asked her to close it.
“We have to get out of this,” Ms. Audet said to herself as she pulled a comforter against the cold and struggled to fall asleep in a parking lot in Kirkland, Wash.
Ms. Audet, 49, earns over $72,000 a year as a social worker for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. But a combination of bad luck, bad debt and a bad credit score priced her out of her apartment in Bellevue, another suburb of Seattle, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. With an eviction looming, she put her furniture in storage this spring and began parking the sedan in a U-shaped parking lot outside a church in Kirkland.
The car, her biggest investment, became her home — the roof turned into a dining table, the trunk a closet. And a weathered stretch of blacktop provided by a Methodist church became her yard, her neighborhood and her safe place.
Around the country, real estate is being set aside for people like Ms. Audet in the form of parking lots. Dozens of such lots have opened in the last five years, with new ones being announced every few months, including as far east as Pennsylvania and North Carolina. They are sprinkled across the Midwest in Green Bay, Wis., and Duluth, Minn. And they dot the spine of the Pacific Northwest, providing a safe harbor for a growing cohort of working Americans who are wedged in the unforgiving middle. They earn too little to afford rent but too much to receive government assistance and have turned their cars into a form of affordable housing."
But for the grace of God, go I. There's little I can do of course. But my heart goes out to them.
**
One of the annoyances I've always had with online fandoms and fan discussions...is the idiots who like to berate people for loving fictional characters they find despicable. First off, it is a fictional character. Not real.
[Note - the pronoun "you" is utilized in the general or universal context and is not directed at any "individual" or "group" that may or may not be reading this or stumbles upon it. I'm just too lazy to use one or another pronoun.]
Example?
I got berated in the Buffy fandom for loving Spike and the Spike/Buffy relationship, which a lot of folks decided was despicable.
Fandom: He tried to rape Buffy.
Me: He's a vampire with no soul, engaged in an abusive BDSM relationship with a human slayer. Probably got confused. (Note a soul is conscience, having none - means no conscience per the text.)
Fandom: You are rape sympathizer!
ME: He's a fictional character and this a fictional relationship. Besides don't you think this is a tad hypocritical considering you loved Xander who did the same thing, and Angel who well is even worse?
Fandom: Xander was possessed by Hyena Demon and Angel was soulless at the time, and this was a man's crime.
Me: Angel murdered people and raped Dru, also got the curse raping a gypsey girl. Were you asleep during these episodes?
Fandom: No, he was a vampire.
Me: So is Spike. What's interesting is Spike was horrified by what he did and showed remorse. Angelus wanted to keep doing it, as did Xander, who was just mildly embarrassed.
Fandom: That's not true.
Me: See? This is why critical thinking needs to be taught in school. I could actually rationally discuss these stories with you. Instead of discussing it with people who have done radical misreads of the text.
I've decided over time that debating aka fighting with people over fictional characters on social media is a colossal waste of my time. It's no different than fighting over politics. However, if you want to know why we ended up with Trump? Critical thinking isn't taught in schools. (See above). I did however run into quite a few intelligent souls on one fanboard - ATPOBTVS board. Mostly academics. We had long discussions about Foucault, and the nuances between the characters behavior. The nitwits tended to get booted out of the discussion threads or ignored. My tolerance for them wasn't high.
Also, people should be allowed to love ambiguously evil fictional characters. Don't impose your own lofty moral standards on works of fiction or the characters someone else adores. That's going come back and bite you in the end. You probably love some character out there that is equally despicable. An interesting well rounded, realistic character, is usually capable of horrible and wonderful things at the same time. Also everyone sees different sides of a character. No one sees the character in the same way, and they relate to or are put off by different characteristics.
If you don't have that interaction with a character - then the writer hasn't done their job and the character falls flat.
And I've learned you cannot persuade someone to love or hate a fictional character based on your own interpretation or views of them. Or worse by putting them down or pitting them against your fave or a character you hate - you'll just alienate them, or make them hate your favorite character to spite you. This happens with political disagreements as well. People get very protective of their own point of view or their baby. Whataboutism never works - it just makes the person more protective. Putting someone on the defensive about this sort of thing or attacking them personally - is just going to make them despise you and your point of view, and dig in deeper.
No. The secret is to attack it rationally, logically. Negotiate. Find things you agree on, and slowly show them your perspective, without necessarily telling them you are right and they are wrong, just that you see it differently.
It's harder to do. Requires more patience. But in the long run - works far better.
Example?
Spike, Angel and Xander were all abusive in different ways. This was a metaphor of sorts for how people can abuse power and position, and how they handle their insecurity in relationships. Also how each dealt with their transactions shows different ways of tackling the same power imbalances, and the difficulties in those relationships. There's pros and cons to each, and the fact that the writers chose sexual violence in its various guises to examine these differences, and chose to have the female characters condemn and then forgive, once remorse was shown in various guises without demonizing the characters, so much as their actions - is worth further study.
See? The characters aren't pitted against each other. The emotion is taken out of the argument. It's no longer a competition. Everyone is given an equal stake in the discussion, and a part. No one is shamed or made to feel inferior.
You can still love each character - without condemning another's favorite.
And this way, you can be friendly.
This is of course harder to do in political situations. I mean, Trump is despicable. But you can state that to a degree there are flaws in all political candidates, and part of the problem is campaign donations. There most likely should be a cut off on donations - in that no one can donate more than $100, and no one can use more than $2000 of their own money to run. And media outlets should grant free air time to each candidate to air their political views, with the caveat that negative advertising is disallowed. This perhaps would help provide the voting public with a clearer view of the candidates, and remove the "Cult of Personality" aspect.
The problem with discussing anything on an emotional level - is that all you get is emotion. And that usually leads to insults. People tend to resort to name calling and insults when they don't get what they want. (I resort to snark and condescension when I don't, although I also do insults.) It doesn't get us what we want. It's counter-productive. Calling folks nitwits for condemning my love of a character just alienates them. Just as stating people who voted for Trump aren't worth saving. (I don't mean this of course, it's my anger and frustration talking. )
I'm discussing this right now - because it's popped up on various fanboards on social media - with other more obnoxious fandoms. Soap FB had a post in which a woman stated that anyone who didn't feel for a fictional character who did nasty things, after being in a coma for years and losing her daughter - clearly lacks empathy. And I thought - okay that's a dumb statement. The character is a fictional soap opera character. Who had unrealistically been placed in a coma, and unrealistically came out of it.
I'd say the poster lacked empathy for the real people on the board who disliked the character for various reasons. Or more likely? She was being emotional and not thinking clearly - and in the clear light of day would regret that post, but be unable to take it back. (This is the problem with social media - we post but we can't delete, or we can - but it's often too late since people have seen it already and reacted.)
People are allowed to dislike things we love and vice versa. We aren't going to love, like or hate the same things. It's actually a minor miracle when we do.
We're also allowed to be passionate about characters that others may find unlikable or despicable. Such as Hannibal in the show Hannibal, or Angelus, or Drusilla, or Loki, or Spike, or Magneto, or any number of fictionalized characters. It doesn't make people evil or rape sympathizers or anything like that. And the reverse is true as well, people are allowed to passionately dislike characters regardless of how nice or heroic they might be or how universally liked. Just because someone dislikes the characters in say Good Omens, doesn't make then anti-LGBTA. (I love them - not talking about myself). Or just because someone despised Willow and Tara - and preferred Oz and Willow - doesn't make them homophobic. Or just because they hate Willow or say hate Xander - there's nothing wrong with that. These are fictional characters. No one is hurt. They aren't hating the actors, but a fictional character - who doesn't work for them.
The problem arises when they hate the real people who play, write or create the characters, or the readers/viewers who like or hate them. That's where we get into trouble. I've noted this in myself. Too often I'll despise someone I don't know online - because they are attacking a television character or book character that I love. I don't know the person. I don't know their problems. Or their real name. I've never met them. They've never met me. In some cases we may give our real names - but we don't know each other. All we know about each other - is we're fans of the same show and vehemently disagree on the characters. And we're fighting because we're both afraid the other will get what they want in regards to the characters and storyline, and we won't. (Which neither of us have any control over - and regardless of how often we petitioned the writers, assuming we did or could - we still wouldn't necessarily get it. And if we did - it's not because we wanted it, but because the writers did, oblivious to our demands.)
Most character and storyline fights online are in regards to that. We think the writers are watching and we're both trying to get them to do what we want. Same with politics - we're trying to get people to vote the way we want them to. We're scared they won't. But the fight - doesn't tend to accomplish that, it usually accomplishes the opposite - apathy or turns folks off.
I honestly think the only way to get what you want is to be positive about it, and not fight. And be rational. If you want more of your fav - write positively about them. Ignore the character you hate, say nothing about them. Don't engage in debates. Don't acknowledge the character at all. Because the more attention you bring to the character, the more you will see it. Same with political candidates - if you hate a candidate - don't engage with it. Ignore it. Pretend they don't exist. Instead focus on the one you like, promote that candidate, and erase everything about the other from your feed. Block the other. Focus on the one you like. This is more productive, creates less animosity, and brings less attention to the one you despise.
I'm working hard on following this practice. Not writing reviews of things I hate. Not reading or focusing on them. Or watching or debating. Just focusing on what I love. Doing this - has brought my blood pressure down, made me less anxious. I sleep better. And I find I am less irritable.
It's not really the power of positive thinking or the law of attraction, so much as just expending energy on what I love instead of what annoys me or what I hate. I wonder what the world would look like if everyone else did this too?