Fear, Buddhism, fandom...yes, I'm bored.
Dec. 6th, 2006 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSomewhat bored at the moment. Half-watching Daybreak in the background. This is a show I watch for the cast more than the plot, which defies logic even beyond my abilities to suspend to disbelief. It stars Ty Diggs (Rent) and Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Angel). Also there's zip else that is grabbing my interest.
Saw another fan meme making the rounds - my problem with it is well, there's really only two or three tv shows I ever got into enough to be be considered a fan. The rest? I watch but do not have an emotional investment in. (ie. I don't re-watch.) Personnally? I find the "fannish" aspects of fandom annoying. Take the people out of it? They are great. In it? Crazy. When I was in BTVS fandom, I discovered that if I didn't write anything about Spike, I was safe. If I focused on him, watch the flames. After a while it just got old and I gave up, because by the time both series ended, I have to admit Spike (and possibly Illyria) were the only characters who I felt the writers and actors hadn't really finished with and were still interested in playing with - there was more story there. I was curious to see how they'd be explored. Everyone else? I was satisfied by how their arcs were completed or rather knew everything I needed or wanted to know about them. Spike and Illyria? I was still curious about - and for me that's what intrigues me in a character. I could care less if the character is a morally upstanding individual - not going to date them for crying out loud, also hate to say this but morally upstanding characters tend to bore me in fiction and come across a little one dimensional and not real. I tend to like morally ambiguous ones - much more interesting from a writing stand-point. You can do more. Delve into those dicy emotional issues. This may explain why I like Apollo, Starbuck, Adama and Roslyn in BSG. And find the Chief more interesting than Helo in BSG. Again - not in love with them. Not shipping them. Just intrigued to see how they are explored. It's the characters other people tend to dislike that I often find the most interesting. And the ones they adore, that tend to bore me.
Am still reading "Lamb" which had a really good section on fear last night. In the story, Joshua and his pal Biff are in a Buddhist monastary. Joshua has found enlightment and become the bodhisattva (and for the first time I actually get what this means - the analysis on fanboards always confused me, probably didn't help that people kept posting that a 240 year old cursed vampire could be the bodhisattva or a valley girl slayer into clothes could be - yes, fan is a derivative of fanatic this we know) - anyhow here's what Moore states: when one reaches the place of Buddha-hood (which is when you realize you are a part of all things, not separate from anything, and do not require anything - literally anything, including a body for that matter, you are a part of all things) and realizes that there is no Buddha because everything is Buddha, when one reaches enlightenment, but makes a decision that he will not evolve to nirvana until all sentient beings have preceded him there, then he is a bodhisattva. A savior. A bodhisattva, by making this decision, grasps the only thing that can ever be grasped: compassion for the suffering of his fellow humans. Anyhow, as a reward, his teacher sends him off to shave a yak. (A yak is a huge wooly mamoth type of creature. And hates to be shaved. Also stomped on Biff and almost killed him when Biff tried to shave him. Biff survived because Joshua healed him. Biff offers to do it instead and is terrified of Joshua doing it.) Joshua shaves the yak without any problem. And Biff asks him how he did it.
I told her what I was doing, said Joshua. She stood perfectly still.
You just told her what you were going to do?
Yes
She wasn't afraid, so she didn't resis. All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.
That's not true. I knew what was coming - namely that you were going to get stomped by the yak and that I'm not nearly as good at healing as you are - and I was afraid.
Oh then, I'm wrong. Sorry. She must just not like you.
Yep. It's not just trying to see the future that causes fear, it's fear of what we believe the future will hold or repeating an experience that was nightmarish the first time around. The child fears fire - because the child has been burned by it. We fear what we believe will be the consequences. If we knew the fire would not burn us - or did not know it would - we would not fear it.
Saw another fan meme making the rounds - my problem with it is well, there's really only two or three tv shows I ever got into enough to be be considered a fan. The rest? I watch but do not have an emotional investment in. (ie. I don't re-watch.) Personnally? I find the "fannish" aspects of fandom annoying. Take the people out of it? They are great. In it? Crazy. When I was in BTVS fandom, I discovered that if I didn't write anything about Spike, I was safe. If I focused on him, watch the flames. After a while it just got old and I gave up, because by the time both series ended, I have to admit Spike (and possibly Illyria) were the only characters who I felt the writers and actors hadn't really finished with and were still interested in playing with - there was more story there. I was curious to see how they'd be explored. Everyone else? I was satisfied by how their arcs were completed or rather knew everything I needed or wanted to know about them. Spike and Illyria? I was still curious about - and for me that's what intrigues me in a character. I could care less if the character is a morally upstanding individual - not going to date them for crying out loud, also hate to say this but morally upstanding characters tend to bore me in fiction and come across a little one dimensional and not real. I tend to like morally ambiguous ones - much more interesting from a writing stand-point. You can do more. Delve into those dicy emotional issues. This may explain why I like Apollo, Starbuck, Adama and Roslyn in BSG. And find the Chief more interesting than Helo in BSG. Again - not in love with them. Not shipping them. Just intrigued to see how they are explored. It's the characters other people tend to dislike that I often find the most interesting. And the ones they adore, that tend to bore me.
Am still reading "Lamb" which had a really good section on fear last night. In the story, Joshua and his pal Biff are in a Buddhist monastary. Joshua has found enlightment and become the bodhisattva (and for the first time I actually get what this means - the analysis on fanboards always confused me, probably didn't help that people kept posting that a 240 year old cursed vampire could be the bodhisattva or a valley girl slayer into clothes could be - yes, fan is a derivative of fanatic this we know) - anyhow here's what Moore states: when one reaches the place of Buddha-hood (which is when you realize you are a part of all things, not separate from anything, and do not require anything - literally anything, including a body for that matter, you are a part of all things) and realizes that there is no Buddha because everything is Buddha, when one reaches enlightenment, but makes a decision that he will not evolve to nirvana until all sentient beings have preceded him there, then he is a bodhisattva. A savior. A bodhisattva, by making this decision, grasps the only thing that can ever be grasped: compassion for the suffering of his fellow humans. Anyhow, as a reward, his teacher sends him off to shave a yak. (A yak is a huge wooly mamoth type of creature. And hates to be shaved. Also stomped on Biff and almost killed him when Biff tried to shave him. Biff survived because Joshua healed him. Biff offers to do it instead and is terrified of Joshua doing it.) Joshua shaves the yak without any problem. And Biff asks him how he did it.
I told her what I was doing, said Joshua. She stood perfectly still.
You just told her what you were going to do?
Yes
She wasn't afraid, so she didn't resis. All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.
That's not true. I knew what was coming - namely that you were going to get stomped by the yak and that I'm not nearly as good at healing as you are - and I was afraid.
Oh then, I'm wrong. Sorry. She must just not like you.
Yep. It's not just trying to see the future that causes fear, it's fear of what we believe the future will hold or repeating an experience that was nightmarish the first time around. The child fears fire - because the child has been burned by it. We fear what we believe will be the consequences. If we knew the fire would not burn us - or did not know it would - we would not fear it.
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Date: 2006-12-07 05:28 pm (UTC)So when I think of myself as an out-of-step fan (because I like the later seasons, was interested in Riley and Dawn, disliked the Willow/Tara relationship) I'm not sure how out-of-step that really is.
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Date: 2006-12-07 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 08:53 pm (UTC)I landed on the boards in a round-about way. I'd never would have discovered them from the direct route - ie. what the sites were about, since I had moved past the whole B/A romeo/juliet thing in S4 and was never that obsessed with it and these sites to an extent were or were obsessed with Angel. And since both board runners made them public and took a more or less hands off approach, the boards got interesting discussions. That said, while posting on them, I was ALWAYS aware of the fact that people in charge weren't watching the show in the same way I was or interested in the same characters. And would support people, no matter how trollish, who supported what they liked. (Although, there were degrees - AngelX basically deleted anyone who caused a kerfuffle and if they kept doing it - got banned. She had to, she had over 800 people visiting on a daily basis and did not archive threads, so a kerfuffle would cause new posts to disappear fast before anyone could see them.) It was admittedly frustrating and is the reason that I drifted to other forums. One gets tired after a while of pointless character debates. The most eye-rolling where the moral superiority ones. Yes there were actually people online who thought Angel was the bodhisattva. One of the best arguments was between a snarky Tibetan Monk and a navy housewife regarding whether Angel or Spike was the bodhisattava. LOL!!!