Eight Things Before Bed......

[shadowkat]

[Should warn you, am a bit in a snarky mood tonight - combination of bad weather, seasonal depression, slight cough, and work stress. Feel free to skip all of the below, I'll try to cut-tag as much as possible to assist you in that endeavor. Also, occurred to me today, that I'm probably the most free to be myself on this blog - or am the least compartmentalized. Considering I do it under a name other than my own, which I assume you figured out...unless of course you think there's actually someone with the first and last name shadowkat wandering about out there, and there very well may be, for all I know. If so, my sympathies. And their parents deserve to be slapped upside the head for being idiots in the naming department. I really wonder what people are thinking when they name their kids. While "Mighty" is a great name for a dog, it can be a pain for a kid. Reminds me of that song by Johnny Cash called "A Boy Named Sue".]


1. Hunger Games and Buffy reboot links: Found this link on at least two separate posts on my flist today:

http://io9.com/5700871/we-need-more-vampire-slayers--just-not-more-buffy

The writer basically states everything I feel about the whole reboot Buffy thing and female heroines on tv. ie. Too many Rose Tyler's (sidekicks) and not nearly enough Buffy's or Wonder Women. In short, guys and gals - I want action hero who is female and the lead and not spending all her time waiting to be rescued by the hot guy. I want the female Harry Potter. May have to write it myself. Although apparently Hunger Games features a female character like that - according to the above link and this opinion piece: http://shelf-life.ew.com/2010/09/21/why-the-hunger-games-isnt-the-new-twilight/ (Note - you might want to avoid the comments, or not...they are actually inanely amusing to the extent that they make me wonder about people.) And the current tv series "Nikita" certainly has that sort of character. But I want a female character who is a hero and has not been physically tortured and turned into an assassin first - it's a thing. So far? Buffy's the only one I can think of that fits 85% of my criteria (if she was a bit taller, not hot, or blond, and not a cheerleader...). Again, may have to write this one myself. No one but me may read it, but that's okay. I tend to write for myself most of the time anyway. (Well except for the massive amounts of writing I do at work and what I write for church...)


2. Watched Glee tonight. Is it just my imagination or were there less musical numbers in the last few episodes? Glee works best when it has a lot of musical numbers and not all that much dramatic moments. Also, Rachel grates on my nerves. She's grated on my nerves from the beginning. Can they make her any more whiny and bossy? Apparently so. I agree with Quinn, every time she opens her mouth, I want to punch her. Except when she is with Kurt. When Rachel is with Kurt, I actually sort of like her - and well they tend to sing well together, so that also helps. Kurt brings out the best in Rachel. Finn and Rachel do not work for me. But Rachel and Kurt sound great together. (No, I don't want them together romantically - Kurt is gay, but a friendship...would work for me. Rachel needs a friend, she doesn't have any at the moment.) The only parts of this episode I enjoyed were the musical numbers - and there were only three (sung by the main cast - I'm not counting the two horrible numbers by the Hipsters and the Warberlers that bored me) - and except for the "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" Duet, they came at the end of the episode. Loved the Don't Cry for Me Argentina Duet, but then I'm a fan of Don't Cry for Me Argentina generally speaking. (Musical geek - big time.) Lea Michele has an amazing voice. As does Kurt. Their rendition of it was both touching and oddly satirical. Rachel - in her self-absorption and self-pity, and Kurt with his genuine desire to fit in and stand out at the same time. They are like mirrors of each other...both love Finn, both are disappointed by Finn, both want to be the Diva, both are obnoxious when they want to be the Diva...yet, Kurt is played far more sympathetically than Rachel is, which urks me a bit. Will give Glee credit for having the most diverse body-types for female characters, and most diverse roles for female actresses currently on television. American Television is insanely image oriented in regards to women roles, hiring mostly beautiful (or what our current society considers beautiful) and cookie-cutter actresses to play roles, while male roles tend to be fairly diversified. (Lost comes to mind and considering CBS is airing The Victoria Secret's Fashion Show tonight while The Good Wife is on hiatus, this really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Objectifying the female body for men to wank to ...has been a television mainstay since oh...the early days of TV. How else do you explain the Miss Universe pagent and The Victoria Fashion Show?). But Glee actually steps outside that box and hires a diverse group, and goes against the stereotype. I give it a lot of credit for that, and well, the great musical numbers (even if this week's episode was a tad week in that department - sorry, but the original "I Had the Time of My Life" in Dirty Dancing was a heck of a lot better. ) Also the satirical moments? Lacked subletly. The Hipster group was a bit obvious. As were the Warberlers. But Nip/Tuck had the same problem, subtlety isn't something that Ryan Murphy does well or most American TV writers for that matter.

3. In other news, I appear to have developed a bit of asthmatic chest cough. I'm hoping it will go away. It feels allergy related. But last year allergy related developed into bronchitis. So don't want to repeat. Will take a bit of the codeine cough syrup tonight to put a halt to it.

4. Haven't seen much posting on "wikileaks" (okay any posting outside of one person in Germany) - which has however been filling the newspapers. Momster found it amusing - because most of it is just gossip, stupid gossip at that. Also depicts how really bad our internet security currently is. Doesn't take much for someone to hack into our nation's top secret files.

5.Am thisclose to caving and getting HBO in the Spring, just so I can watch Game of Thrones. Which is silly because it will be on DVD eventually, like everything else.

6. TV? I've come to the conclusion that the best tv shows of the new season are in order:

* Terriers - a funny, noirish, character buddy drama, that reminds me of a Carl Hiassen or Elmore Leonard novel, mostly Carl Hianssen by way of Southern California. The characters are grungy and low-brow. Think the Cohen Brothers...Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski.

. Nikita - two women band together to take down a powerful covert rougue government agency run by a white guy who likes to control people.

. Raising Hope - working class family struggles to raise twenty-something son's new baby after the mother gets the death penalty for being a serial killer. A lot funnier than one might suspect.

. The Event - a really nice twist on the whole aliens amongst us theme - it's part 24, part Lost, and part 4400. Also takes the tactic that the aliens aren't invading us, so much as they are already here and trying to make this their new home. (There are bad guys on both sides.)Does take a while to get ramped up - so requires a little bit of patience. But it's quite good now. And has a great cast.

. No Ordinary Family - a family drama mixed with super-hero drama, which is struggling to find the right tone and balance. It's uneven and at times terribly cliche. But I'm hanging in there for now. Almost skipped this week, but there's a story-thread with Stephen Collins and his weirdly sympathetic killer henchmen that has me intrigued.

[*Have not watched The Walking Dead yet. Nor did I watch Luther or HBO's Boardwalk Empire. So can't comment on those. If I haven't mentioned your favorite new show - I either a)haven't seen it or b) find it unwatchable or boring. Take your pick. I try not to discuss things I dislike in my journal. Note - emphasis on "try", that doesn't mean I don't. I do. I just tend to regret it afterwards - for a whole slew of reasons. Discussing things I hate or dislike, I've discovered - the hard way, is real good way to piss people off who disagree with me and happen to love whatever it is I've decided to denounce. Doesn't matter what it is. Negative opinions often get me into trouble.]

7.Work has me strung out at the moment, yeah, I know, what's new? I've been whining about work all year. I should be grateful I got a job. Don't you hate it when folks whine about their job, particularly when you don't have one? I know I did. I don't hate my job. It's just stressing me and everyone else out at the moment...although, should look on the bright side, I'm not alone.

8. Haiti Forum article may actually get published in Church newsletter or something church related.
Interesting. I appear to be getting my journalistic social action essays/articles published. Tried with the Buffy stuff - but people weren't interested, so I gave up. And the novel - well, I'm working on getting that out, even bought two mags that have lengthy articles on how to write query letters and synopsises. Which I'm struggling with. It's not as easy as you might think to summarize a 390 page novel in ten pages and make it interesting. Particularly when it is your novel and you're sort of sick of it.

Comments

[rahirah]

You really, REALLY need to read Gunnerkrigg Court. It's doing everything that article is saying needs to be done re: female heroes.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Where is Gunnerkrigg Court? Book? Comic? Online?

[rahirah]

Webcomic, here: http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/index2.php

The art's a bit shaky at first, but it improves quickly (and he does some fantastic things with a restricted palette.) And unlike a lot of webcomics, it's updated three times a week without fail.

[rahirah]

There's also Girl Genius if you haven't tried that.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Katniss in The Hunger Games is very much a kick-ass heroine in the vein of a Buffy. It's a rather dystopian world that she lives in so life sort of kicks the crap out of her as well, but to make it through that trilogy she's an incredibly strong individual.

I did have to laugh about the Bella/Katniss comparison comment in the EW piece where someone thought that Bella/Katniss were the same because both became suicidal. Er... Bella became suicidal because she was left by her boyfriend. Katniss fell into a depression (if she were suicidal she would have died. No one was stopping her and frankly, the government would have encouraged it) because of a whole shitload of reasons, none of which was her fear of losing her boyfriend.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The comments to that post are rather absurd.

I haven't read either novel (okay I have scanned Twilight and read numerous summaries of the entire series by people on lj, but that's not exactly the same as reading it), and even I know they aren't really that comparable. One's a gothic-horror fantasy romance - think Anne Rice meets Harlequin, and the other is a science-fiction post apocalyptic adventure saga which reminds me a great deal of the magna comic book series and film Battle Royale (except a boy was the hero in that). Completely different genres. Only things they have in common are both YA, both popular, both have movies optioned, both have female leads, both are in a made-up world, and both have love triangles - which describes a lot of books (okay maybe not so many that are a)popular and b) have movie rights optioned.). Also a love triangle in a non-romance genre tends to play out quite differently than one in a romance genre (see Buffy (non-romance genre) vs. Vampire Diaries (romance genre)). [I think Hunger Games may reach a broader demographic than Twilight though - since it appeals to both men and women or boys and girls (I've seen men on planes reading Hunger Games, but none reading Twilight.) But it is also more violent...so it may lose the portion of the audience that isn't into violence?.]

Everytime I read comments threads like that one, I wonder: Why do people feel compelled to tell a poster who is raving about a book or movie or bit of music that they hate it and think the poster is an idiot for liking it? What do they hope to accomplish by doing this? And how do they expect the poster to react exactly? Tell them to bugger off? Argue with them? Delete them (tempting)? Or ignore (best move)? Mindboggling and rude.
Some people must like conflict so much...they've decided to go trolling for it on the internet. LOL!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

What I enjoyed about the love triangle in the trilogy is that it's there for a couple of metaphorical purposes (though its very clearly a secondary part of the story and at times way beside the point).

One purpose is that so much of it plays into the "real/not real" question that pops up within the trilogy. So much of the book series is about manipulation through propaganda and the voyeurism of reality tv and modern politics (bread and circuses for the masses), and the "love"/love(?) story is a reflection of that. The characters are playing roles for their audience (both within the book and for the books readers), to the point where the characters themselves become confused by what part of it is real, what part is their circumstances, and what part is just a role they're playing because they've been cast in them. This theme is reinforced in several aspects of the trilogy, so it plays into the whole.

I also thought that her love interests were created as reflections of different aspects of Katniss. Each represents a part of her that she needs in order to survive (the hunter/warrior/rebel and her humanity) So the guys represent something other than simply 'which boy will Katniss choose.'

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

The Hunger Games series is next on my to read (and by 'to read' I mean 'listen to as a book on tape during my commute') list after I finish my Harry Potter re-read (re-listen). That article could have turned me off if I didn't have the glowing recommendations of my f-list, because it was awfully kind to Twilight. Poor Bella she has to move to Forks and be the Outcast who everybody for some ungodly reason loves? Right.

Downloading Glee now, though I'm hoping it will be more than The Kurt Hummel Show that it's been most of this season. Where's my girl Mercedes at? When do we get a Tina and Mike-centric episode? Why are we delving so much into Ryan Murphy's id? I adore Kurt's relationship with his dad, but if other characters were as featured as Kurt seems to be, I wouldn't be complaining.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The audio book narrator for The Hunger Games isn't the greatest. I actually preferred the books to listening to her. (Though I sort of did both. I had extra credits on my Audible account so it didn't cost me anything to download the audio books).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Good to know. Will stick with the books. I've noticed that doing an audio book isn't that easy. Some narrators are great at it (see James Marsters), others not so much. The most interesting audio book was Philip Pullman's series which had a complete cast of characters reading it - although I never listened to it myself, just checked out the back and saw the list of names and who they were playing/reading.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The narrator isn't wholesale awful because I started with the audio book then moved to the books. She was good enough to bring me in, but I'm glad I swapped to reading by the time the really emotional parts came around (I knew that the book had me when I gasped when reading a scene. That's a pretty good sign that a book got to you.) The narrator (who I'm pretty sure was the female psychiatrist on Law and Order back in the day) just seems very detached, which works reasonably well at the start of the book because Katniss is not a warm and fuzzy character, but by the time the deeply emotional parts arrived, I was glad that I had swapped to reading. I particularly glad I was only reading the singing bits (There are a couple of points where Katniss sings, one of which pretty pivotal and emotional. I'm glad I didn't have to hear the narrator do it as I think it would have sapped the power of the scene, and it's one of the most powerful in the book. I really didn't need to listen to the narrator sing).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee. In more or less the same boat regarding Hunger Games. It's next in a long line of books I plan on reading...after I finish Storm of Swords (which is taking forever).

Downloading Glee now, though I'm hoping it will be more than The Kurt Hummel Show that it's been most of this season.

Unfortunately, not so much. The best moments are Kurt's - again.
I think the only episode this season that did not feature Kurt was The Rocky Horror Picture Show - which focused on Will Shuster.

Where's my girl Mercedes at? When do we get a Tina and Mike-centric episode? Why are we delving so much into Ryan Murphy's id? I adore Kurt's relationship with his dad, but if other characters were as featured as Kurt seems to be, I wouldn't be complaining.

Sigh. I agree. Quite a bit. My main issue with Glee this year is we've gotten a bit too much of the "poor" Kurt tale. And too little of the other supporting characters. Mercedes and Tina do get a song and dance number in this episode, as does Quinn and Sam (who does zip for me), and Britney and Mike (who get a dance number). But not much more than that.

Finn's character has almost disappeared. He's either an extension of Kurt of an extension of Rachel. I'm not sure the writers know what to do with the character or understand him.

The show was better last season - when it balanced out the characters a bit more and didn't all of sudden become the Kurt show. (I like Kurt, but I like some of the other characters a lot more.)

[elisi]

But I want a female character who is a hero and has not been physically tortured and turned into an assassin first - it's a thing. So far? Buffy's the only one I can think of that fits 85% of my criteria (if she was a bit taller, not hot, or blond, and not a cheerleader...).
Can I recommend The Sarah Jane Adventures? Yes it's a children's show, and the writing is... well, it's pretty decent for a children's show. Much like the less good episodes of Doctor Who. But it has a 50-something heroine who is smart, capable and deeply moral (no guns or weapons!) and who saves the world on a regular basis. Plus all the supporting characters are made of awesome. :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the Sarah Jane Adventures haven't been picked up by a US distributor yet. They were briefly by Syfy, but it didn't make great ratings, so dropped. (Probably didn't appeal to the male demographic that Syfy is targeting.)

I may rent them via netflix though, thanks for the Rec. Have to also check out rarihah's rec.