![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Favorite vampire character (tv, books, film, doesn't matter)?
Not as easy as it looks. But Spike. I could write a long essay as to why, but I think I've done that already. He's interesting and resonated for me on multiple levels. A contradiction in terms. Vulnerable, yet also razor sharp. Cruel, but Kind. Homicidal and Heroic. I like the jump back and forth, and the fact that he was always to a degree ambiguous. Also controversial. Plus, he didn't fit the vampire trope - he wasn't tall dark and mysterious...or the cursed man, a la Angel, Nick, Edward, Dracula, etc. More like Keifer Sutherland's Lost Boy, than Rutgur Hauer's nasty vamp in the original film version of Buffy. At times Wile E. Coyote, at others ...Alex from Clockwork Orange. The character continues to play with my mind.
There have been other vampires I've liked of course. The little girl in Let the Right One In, Lestate (until Anne Rice overwrote him), Eric, Angel, The Lost Boys, Darla, Dru, Damon, Rose, Anna, etc. It's a trope that unlike most of my RL friends during the years, I prefer to werewolves, zombies, et al. I think because of the romantic element - which provides a bit more depth. Odd, considering vampires are basically human spiders - and I'm terrified of spiders. So perhaps that's part of it, being intrigued by the very thing that terrifies? Or maybe the metaphor for repressed sexuality unleashed? Never been sure why the trope intrigues, but it does. Some day I'll probably burn out on it - which I'm guessing will be sooner than later, the market is just about beyond the saturation point.
2. Book that sticks in your memory like chewing gum sticks to the bottom of your shoe?
I vividly remember Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God - even though I only read both once. They haunted me. It's odd which books do and which don't. I think. For example Donna Tartt's The Secret History - haunts, while I've forgotten most of the other books that are similar to it such as A Dark Matter (which I read recently) or Walking the Moon. And of course the Chronicles of Lymond - I can replay most of the last book in my head. And there are several classics that stay rooted there - like The Great Gastby, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and well Ray Bradbury's The Veldt. Also Sherri Tepper's Grass - about the girl whose mind is erased as her sexuality is awakened on the back of an alien horse. But Russell's the Sparrow - I will never forget - about the dangers of innocently exploring and interfering with a culture you arrogantly think you can understand, but seriously do not. The Sparrow questions God, religion, morals, everything...and then some. And it leaves you with more. After reading the Sparrow - I was very glad that I chose not to become an anthropologist.
And of course, perhaps the best example of chewing gum sticking to one's shoe - may well be the books I could not finish and hated with a passion: American Psycho - has a scene in it that will not dislodge no matter what I do and no one has come close to outdoing on the squick level (and squick is the right word for that), Atonement - the book I threw against the wall because I despised the characters, or House of Sand and Fog in which I felt more or less the same (all three were book club picks...from oddly enough, the same book club.)
3. Who do you admire?
People who fail yet keep trying and eventually make it. Not huge accomplishments, they could be minor ones. But I admire the people who struggle and don't win, who fight to keep going. Christopher Reeve's struggle as paraplegic, Haiti's struggle to be a free democratic state, Michael J. Fox's struggle to live with Parkinson's disease, women who fight for freedom in the Middle East, the people in Egypt sleeping in the square fighting for their right to vote and have a better society - people who fight and continue to fight seemingly impossible battles, modern day Sisyphus pushing rocks up hills only to watch them roll back again and again. I admire people like that. They give me the strength to keep moving forward...if they can do it, so can I.
4. Favorite story trope that you find yourself going back to, again and again - it can be from a fairy tale, myth, legend, book, play, tv show...whatever.
The Snow Queen - it's a little known fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. Rarely done or mentioned. There has not been to my knowledge a Disney film done of it, although I did see two movies, one as a child which lingered in my memory.
The story is about two friends, a girl and a boy, who adore each other. They are best buds. And winter hits, and a mirror that is quite powerful breaks - one chard of this mirror lodges itself deep in the boy's eye - and turns his heart cold, frozen like ice. Off he goes with the Snow Queen.
And the girl, bereft with grief follows him, determined to save him, rescue him from the Queen's domain, not knowing why he's left. She has numerous adventures, and finally finds him...and through her love melts the ice and the shard falls out. It's simple enough. But the journey is 90% of it.
In some respects it reminds me of the Grecian tale of Cupid and Psyche, or CS Lewis rendering of it - Til We Have Faces. There's something about the psychology of this trope that fascinates and compels me. It's amongst the very few myths, legends, or fairy tales in which the girl has to find and rescue the boy - he's the damsel. He's Persphone or Eurdicye - carted off by the Queen of Death or the Underworld - while she's the hero who pursues him. And that may well be why I love it so.
5. Name one TV show or movie or book that you saw or read this year that you'd recommend to someone else?
Difficult since people's tastes vary so drastically and for reasons that we can never quite wrap our brains around. But if I had to pick one show or book or story or film that I felt passionately about this year or felt was worth looking at? It would be The Good Wife - which starts out as one thing and becomes something else. It looks like just another legal procedural on first glance and I admittedly almost brushed it off for that reason. Then it changed, it became something I haven't seen tv do before - an intricately layered study of gender and relationship and legal politics. In some respects going deeper than West Wing ever did. Depicting what it is like to work in a man's world and try to break that glass ceiling. It may well be the most feminist television series I've ever seen. With a breakout character in Kalinda - who is a bit like Stieg Larson's Lisbeth Salander.
It is amongst the few cultural things that have stuck with me this past year or I find myself looking forward to. It's at times hilariously funny, others ...incredibly sad and touching. Fun. And thought-provoking.
But admittedly not everyone's cup of coco or tea or coffee as it were.
Off to make dinner.Wasn't sure how to lj-cut this one, so not for the time being. Obviously changed my mind and found a way to lj-cut, it felt too embarrassingly long and ahem, soulful? to leave open. People are weird about the whole lj-cut bit on my flist - some do it for everything, some never do it no matter how long their stuff is, and others are a bit like me, somewhere in between.
Not as easy as it looks. But Spike. I could write a long essay as to why, but I think I've done that already. He's interesting and resonated for me on multiple levels. A contradiction in terms. Vulnerable, yet also razor sharp. Cruel, but Kind. Homicidal and Heroic. I like the jump back and forth, and the fact that he was always to a degree ambiguous. Also controversial. Plus, he didn't fit the vampire trope - he wasn't tall dark and mysterious...or the cursed man, a la Angel, Nick, Edward, Dracula, etc. More like Keifer Sutherland's Lost Boy, than Rutgur Hauer's nasty vamp in the original film version of Buffy. At times Wile E. Coyote, at others ...Alex from Clockwork Orange. The character continues to play with my mind.
There have been other vampires I've liked of course. The little girl in Let the Right One In, Lestate (until Anne Rice overwrote him), Eric, Angel, The Lost Boys, Darla, Dru, Damon, Rose, Anna, etc. It's a trope that unlike most of my RL friends during the years, I prefer to werewolves, zombies, et al. I think because of the romantic element - which provides a bit more depth. Odd, considering vampires are basically human spiders - and I'm terrified of spiders. So perhaps that's part of it, being intrigued by the very thing that terrifies? Or maybe the metaphor for repressed sexuality unleashed? Never been sure why the trope intrigues, but it does. Some day I'll probably burn out on it - which I'm guessing will be sooner than later, the market is just about beyond the saturation point.
2. Book that sticks in your memory like chewing gum sticks to the bottom of your shoe?
I vividly remember Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God - even though I only read both once. They haunted me. It's odd which books do and which don't. I think. For example Donna Tartt's The Secret History - haunts, while I've forgotten most of the other books that are similar to it such as A Dark Matter (which I read recently) or Walking the Moon. And of course the Chronicles of Lymond - I can replay most of the last book in my head. And there are several classics that stay rooted there - like The Great Gastby, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and well Ray Bradbury's The Veldt. Also Sherri Tepper's Grass - about the girl whose mind is erased as her sexuality is awakened on the back of an alien horse. But Russell's the Sparrow - I will never forget - about the dangers of innocently exploring and interfering with a culture you arrogantly think you can understand, but seriously do not. The Sparrow questions God, religion, morals, everything...and then some. And it leaves you with more. After reading the Sparrow - I was very glad that I chose not to become an anthropologist.
And of course, perhaps the best example of chewing gum sticking to one's shoe - may well be the books I could not finish and hated with a passion: American Psycho - has a scene in it that will not dislodge no matter what I do and no one has come close to outdoing on the squick level (and squick is the right word for that), Atonement - the book I threw against the wall because I despised the characters, or House of Sand and Fog in which I felt more or less the same (all three were book club picks...from oddly enough, the same book club.)
3. Who do you admire?
People who fail yet keep trying and eventually make it. Not huge accomplishments, they could be minor ones. But I admire the people who struggle and don't win, who fight to keep going. Christopher Reeve's struggle as paraplegic, Haiti's struggle to be a free democratic state, Michael J. Fox's struggle to live with Parkinson's disease, women who fight for freedom in the Middle East, the people in Egypt sleeping in the square fighting for their right to vote and have a better society - people who fight and continue to fight seemingly impossible battles, modern day Sisyphus pushing rocks up hills only to watch them roll back again and again. I admire people like that. They give me the strength to keep moving forward...if they can do it, so can I.
4. Favorite story trope that you find yourself going back to, again and again - it can be from a fairy tale, myth, legend, book, play, tv show...whatever.
The Snow Queen - it's a little known fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. Rarely done or mentioned. There has not been to my knowledge a Disney film done of it, although I did see two movies, one as a child which lingered in my memory.
The story is about two friends, a girl and a boy, who adore each other. They are best buds. And winter hits, and a mirror that is quite powerful breaks - one chard of this mirror lodges itself deep in the boy's eye - and turns his heart cold, frozen like ice. Off he goes with the Snow Queen.
And the girl, bereft with grief follows him, determined to save him, rescue him from the Queen's domain, not knowing why he's left. She has numerous adventures, and finally finds him...and through her love melts the ice and the shard falls out. It's simple enough. But the journey is 90% of it.
In some respects it reminds me of the Grecian tale of Cupid and Psyche, or CS Lewis rendering of it - Til We Have Faces. There's something about the psychology of this trope that fascinates and compels me. It's amongst the very few myths, legends, or fairy tales in which the girl has to find and rescue the boy - he's the damsel. He's Persphone or Eurdicye - carted off by the Queen of Death or the Underworld - while she's the hero who pursues him. And that may well be why I love it so.
5. Name one TV show or movie or book that you saw or read this year that you'd recommend to someone else?
Difficult since people's tastes vary so drastically and for reasons that we can never quite wrap our brains around. But if I had to pick one show or book or story or film that I felt passionately about this year or felt was worth looking at? It would be The Good Wife - which starts out as one thing and becomes something else. It looks like just another legal procedural on first glance and I admittedly almost brushed it off for that reason. Then it changed, it became something I haven't seen tv do before - an intricately layered study of gender and relationship and legal politics. In some respects going deeper than West Wing ever did. Depicting what it is like to work in a man's world and try to break that glass ceiling. It may well be the most feminist television series I've ever seen. With a breakout character in Kalinda - who is a bit like Stieg Larson's Lisbeth Salander.
It is amongst the few cultural things that have stuck with me this past year or I find myself looking forward to. It's at times hilariously funny, others ...incredibly sad and touching. Fun. And thought-provoking.
But admittedly not everyone's cup of coco or tea or coffee as it were.
Off to make dinner.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 12:24 am (UTC)I have purposefully not read American Psycho because I've heard the same thing from multiple people - that there are scenes that completely squicked them and they couldn't get out of their heads. And I don't even want to know what they are, so I've avoided it.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 08:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 05:44 pm (UTC)