De-hermiting

[bop_radar]

I once had someone on my f'list who wrote all their posts as numbered lists. I could say that this post was an ironic tribute to them, but actually it's also a convenient way to precis a great deal into a short space. :) This is all the stuff I could have posted about recently, but didn't.


1. I went hermit-y for a while. It's a thing. It happens periodically and unexpectedly and usually for no specific reason. Sorry. It's not personal. But I haven't read my f'list for days, so if important stuff has happened you should let me know.

2. BSG's 'Revelations' has NOT settled well with me. I'm fronting up about that now in case any of my BSG friends wonder why I'm not much interested in engaging about the show at the moment. I enjoyed the adrenalin rush of the episode in the immediate moment, but I have some major, probably insurmountable issues with the direction of the show and I've heard a couple of things recently that make me think that I (will soon) have had it with the whole show, forever. This is not an abandonment of the fandom or my friends in it: you guys rock! But yeah. Better to be honest.

3. On the advice of mskatej and radioreverie I have been mainlining 30 Rock and loving it. I have watched most episodes at least twice now! It is so very charming, and Liz Lemon is awesome. Even though I know everyone who likes the show relates to her because the show is constructed that way (and there's a Liz Lemon aspect to all of us), I feel like she is very much 'me'--in the workplace, at least. And especially me-how-I-was-last-year when I was in a temporary middle management position. Ah, middle management: how I do not miss you!

4. I read Stephanie Meyer's 'Twilight' and declare it to be the most insipid and disturbing Mary Sue I have ever read. I hear that the series only goes from bad to worse in the subsequent novels.

5. I have the 'blahs' about a lot of things these days: TV, books, movies, LJ, even vidding... I'm hoping that will shift soon, but I'm finding it means I don't know what to post about.

6. I've been browsing a lot of non-LJ blogs recently, semi-obsessively, and kind of want to share my finds, but does anyone care? What are your favourite blogs? Should I be reading them?

7. I'm in a post-'Paranoid Android' vidding slump, which is probably not unexpected. However, the good news is I submitted two vids for Vividcon: 'Southside' for bradcpu's Action panel, and 'Paranoid' for Nearly New. The Vividcon schedule is up, so I can stare enviously at all the sessions I'd go to if I was going.

8. I've started yoga again. I learnt that I should NEVER STOP IT AGAIN because the first week absolutely killed me. I was practically narcoleptic after two 6am starts, and my whole body ached. But I'm finding my way back into it.

9. Doctor Who's not bad at the moment, eh? I was surprised how much I enjoyed an episode that included the Torchwood gang: I thought that was impossible for me. I still have Issues with the show, but it gets points from me for entertainment value for the last couple of eps.

10. I am de-hermiting at a very foolish time. We're about to have (yet) another houseguest, so I may have intermittent net time. Ah well! So goes life.

So what's up with you guys?

Comments

[lunar47.livejournal.com]

hey there boppy. Welcome back from the cave. Tis okay, I think we all go through that at times.

3.) I need to see more 30 Rock. There was just SO much tv on thursday nights that this show got lost. I've seen maybe half of the series. My sister is hoarding season 1. I may just have to make the 300 mile trip to get that and my other dvds back. lol.

4.) OMG!! thank you so much for saying this. It's brave when everyone around you loves it. I know my friends will hate me but I was just not that into it. I enjoyed the first 350 pages or so and read them pretty quickly. I like reading young adult books cuz they're really quick reads. But I had to stop and it took me 6 months to read the rest. The whole ending continuously made me want to throw the book against the wall. I'm known to be a feminist at times and was just sick that Bella couldn't take care of her own damned self. All the vampires were constantly carrying her around. grr. And she couldn't be trusted to not get herself killed. I read the 2nd book and actually liked it better, relatively speaking. And I'll probably eventually read the 3rd one cuz even though I'm not terribly fond of the series I do enjoy talking to my friends :)

5.) blah blah blah. kind of feeling it myself though my lj would not be evidence of it.

7.) good luck on your vids. I enjoyed them a lot.

9.) I'm starting a Dr. Who marathon with my friend. I've already seen half of season 1 some of season 2 and the vast majority of season 3. We'll see how it goes.

anyways, glad you're back

[daybreak777.livejournal.com]

Boppy! Not much else to say but Hi! Everyone's a hermit once in a while. Glad you are taking care of yourself with yoga. Not much up with me, just in vid-watching and Gaeta-fic reading haze.

One vid in partcular made me like Revelations a lot better. Like I wanted to discuss the vid's interpretation of the episode more than the episode itself. Good for the vid, not so good for the ep, huh? Vid's here. (http://kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com/119273.html)

Oh, and I found this (http://www.vimeo.com/1211060) from More Joy Day yesterday. It's kind of cheery and touching, something about it warms my heart.

Hugs, dear and have fun with the houseguest!

[petitevanou.livejournal.com]

I am curious about the BSG things you've heard that you don't seem to like so much!

Non LJ blogs? sounds interesting, I think I read too much LJ and have closed myself off from other communities, by habit rather than by choice.

[redteekal.livejournal.com]

Glad to see you've resurfaced! With all the work that went into Paranoid Android I am not surprised you went hermit mode for a while.
Re #4 *winces* Oh dear.....you may want to defriend me when you find out that I love this series. *peeks through hands at you* I ran off and looked up "Mary Sue" for the first time when I read your comment here, and this is the definition I have for it
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mary+Sue
Please excuse the ignorance of not being aware what a Mary Sue is (I thought I had some idea but I didn't according to this definition). I am (unlike most of the Twilight fandom) quite nonpartisan when it comes to these books - and know that ppl will either love or hate them. But I am curious to know exactly what inspires the dislike hence the search for the Mary Sue definition. Can I ask is this what you meant?

[legendsinlove.livejournal.com]

Hermiting can be good.

4. I read Stephanie Meyer's 'Twilight' and declare it to be the most insipid and disturbing Mary Sue I have ever read. I hear that the series only goes from bad to worse in the subsequent novels.

Thank you! I am baffled by the huge popularity of these books. And slightly creeped out by the Twilight Moms. I really shouldn't judge though. My own tastes can be quite suspect at times.

[mskatej.livejournal.com]

OMG YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I am so over the moon that you love 30 Rock. Do you ship Liz/Jack out of interest? BECAUSE I HARDCORE SHIP THEM. The last episode? With the phone messages?!

[latteaddict.livejournal.com]

I'm just waving hello :)

#2 has me nervously intrigued. I've been skipping back and forth about BSG stuff too. I think at the moment I'm making a deliberate divide between fandom and show in my mind so I can at least enjoy fandom. Though I sorely miss that confident feeling when canon and I were heading down the same path :)

#10 have a great time with your house guest.

[tragicllyhip.livejournal.com]

I love 30-Rock too, along with the Office (which i really love), but I've only ever watched it on NBC's site or hulu.com the next day since there's too much else going on to catch it live.

And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Stephanie Meyers books are crap, i know they're for teens, but geez the main character becomes unbearable.

[allzugern.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I have been feeling very BLAH about LJ and IJ myself lately. I keep telling myself it's a pre-summer vacation slump, and I will come back in September all obsessive about reading and commenting and posting. I hope it goes that way, because feeling indifferent to LJ just SUCKS. I'm still reading lots of fic though, so I guess I'm not really out of the loop yet.

Would love to hear about good non-LJ blogs!

[fleegull.livejournal.com]

All I ever read about the Twilight books is that they are one big Mary Sue but isn't the lead guy a Mary Sue as well? A goodlooking vampire who is all righteous and "sparkly"? That screams Mary (or Marty) Sue to me.

A lot of the blogs I frequent are dancers' blogs. Swan Lake Samba Girl (http://www.tonyaplank.com/tonyaplank/swan_lake_samba_girl/) is by a former Assistant District Attorney turned full time writer who blogs about her forays into amateur dancing. She also reviews various performances. I find her to be both charming as well as shockingly naive for a woman who used to work with criminals in Brooklyn.

The Winger (http://thewinger.com/words/)The Winger: lots of dancers blog here from all over the world. They often post short videos of pieces that they are working on as well as rehearsal pictures. The woman who started the blog used to dance with the New York City Ballet but had to stop due to an injury that has not healed sufficiently well enough for her to resume ballet dancing full time.

Ranting Details (http://thewinger.com/words/): Matt Murphy. Poor guy, he used to dance with ABT but came down with a nasty case of Epstein Bar Syndrome and he had to also step down from professional dance. I'm looking forward to see how his path turns out now that he's pursuing writing as a career.

It's Me Julia (http://itsmejulia.com/): A non dance blog She'd love to be thought of as a Gen X Carrie Bradshaw but she has her own charms.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

I still haven't seen "Revelations" because they didn't put it up on the show's website. (That is completely made of fail!!!)

And I wanted to watch 30 Rock, but my local video place doesn't carry it. I am foiled in my fannish aspirations, foiled I say!

Glad to see you de-hermiting.

[bradcpu.livejournal.com]

Not much to say other than we missed you and I'm still wishing you were coming to VVC. :(

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

Nice to hear from you! Welcome back. :)

I'm sorry you're having post-Revelations angst. I understand, believe me.

I read "Twilight" and didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. Way too melodramatic for me. However, I completely understand why it makes teens and pre-teens batshit insane. I don't understand it as much with adults, although, the book actually has a lot in common with romance novels (it now occurs to me that this is almost a teen version of "Outlander" in terms of melodrama), so I guess I can understand the appeal in that respect.

I'm glad you submitted Southside to Vividcon as I still think it's one of the best vids I've ever seen.

I'm liking Doctor Who quite a bit at the moment, but that's mostly because I am a pathetic Doctor/Rose shipper. And I'm okay with that. *g*

[frolicndetour.livejournal.com]

3. Ack - I just had a choice between a free first season of The Office or 30 Rock, and I picked The Office. I'll have to get into 30 rock at some point, though.

4. The best thing I've heard about Twilight is that it's the one fandom where it's not wanky to say that a fanfic is better than the source, because it's probably true. You might enjoy this rant. (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_rant/114445.html)

6. Oh, definitely share. My blogs tend to be focused on American politics, and often stuff that I violently disagree with; I read them in the morning to get the old blood-pressure going. ;) So I'll spare you.

9. I've caught a few of the recent episodes on Skiffy and really enjoyed them. Before that it was always a little too kiddy for me, but now I'm getting swept up in all the excitement.

[grapefruitzzz.livejournal.com]

Hi! I haven't seen the new BSG series yet, but it seems I have much to look forward to :( Oh well.

30Rock is brilliant, despite being the sort of thing that sounds only average when you describe it to someone. I just had a marathon with two friends and one of them fell off the sofa every time someone said "Dr Spacheemen". Mind you, he was On Drugs at the time.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

The whole ending continuously made me want to throw the book against the wall. I'm known to be a feminist at times and was just sick that Bella couldn't take care of her own damned self.
Yes. It was the gender politics and the complete misogyny that really troubled me. I thought it was poorly written, but it was the character of Bella that troubled me the most. It was definitely not something that I could even pretend to like, and its wild popularity DOES bother me considering how disturbing I find the messages about female sexuality.

Thanks for the sympathy on the blahs. I think everyone goes through them, and sometimes I feel it's better to just admit it than pretend.

I'm up and down with Doctor Who. I watched it as a kid so I have a lot of issues with what Russell's doing to the universe, but I do admire him for some aspects of the new show. It's a bit hit and miss for me.

Good to hear from you!

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Ohh, kiki_miserychic is an amazing vidder, so if anyone could make Revs better, it would be her. And hey, I think it's got lots of great visual potential for vidders to 'reclaim'.

There was a More Joy day? Huh. Sounds like something I'm not quite ready for. ;)

[madame-meretrix.livejournal.com]

i'm feeling the malaise, too. and the hermityness. what's up with that, i wonder? i've tried jump starting my squee by going back and watching large chunks of SV, and i even rewatched BSG 1.1, but nope. nothing is helping.

i think i might make a recs post. those usually seem to help. like a swap meet of recs, where i ask for others to rec me stuff, too. sharing fan-made fun sometimes can do the trick.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

I'll send you a message, since I don't know how general knowledge and/or spoilery the BSG things are.

I find that about LJ too. *nods* It wasn't until I took a total break from it that I found myself exploring other communities and blogs and stuff, and then I kept wondering 'why don't I do this more?!' LJ is such a self-contained world: that is both good and bad.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

I won't defriend! Everyone has a right to like what they like, and I don't intend to talk about the Twilight series much at all since it really troubled/annoyed me, so I certainly won't be arguing with you about it!

I think 'Mary Sue' is a term that has several different meanings--which you can kind of tell from the extended definition on that site. The aspects of it that I think apply to Twilight are:
- idealised main character who we are told rather than shown is desirable (I can't fathom why so many of the high school guys chase after Bella--she sounds insipid and annoying and not even very pretty)
- heavy identification between author and main character, if only subconsciously so that the work becomes an extended wish-fulfilment fantasy. This can work for people if they too identify heavily with (in this case) Bella.
- the victim!Sue is definitely the way I'd see Bella--she was characterised as so helpless and yet that's meant to be cute/desirable? 'almost disabled' is not attractive to me!
- the entire universe revolving around the main character. This becomes more obvious as the series develops I gather.

That's not the only thing I dislike about the Twilight series though. My main complaint is with the gender politics--the incredibly cliched characterisation of male sexuality through Edward as predatory and barely controllable, and the characterisation of female sexuality in Bella as passive, helpless and overwhelming.

That's the short version. Does that help you understand why I didn't like it? I do see that it fulfils a lot of classic romance tropes--I've just never really been into those, so they weren't going to work for me.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Oh true--my own taste can be suspect at times too. But WOW Twilight was bad! I am kind of baffled by their popularity too. But then they seem like barely disguised Mills and Boon novels, with bonus pretty sparkly male vampires and really REALLY kickass covers. So I guess it's that? ;)

Though then I read some of the abysmal prose and start screaming around the room about how badly written it is (what was her editor DOING allowing the phrase 'framed in the doorway like a male model in an ad for raincoats' in the book?!) and I fail to understand again...

Mostly the gender politics disturb me and it bothers me that so many women apparently still respond to the all-powerful-male/all-helpless-female trope.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

No, I don't really ship them. Sorry! Jack is too much of a right-wing ass for me. I find him very funny and I really like him as a character on his own but I am really glad the show has avoided putting them together (yet). I think it plays well when they have separate relationships that they kind of compare each other too, and I like the recurring joke of 'not in a milion year you, Lemon' and I wouldn't mind Jack realising that he had the hots for her... but I wouldn't like to see Liz wind up with Jack.

I guess I ship them as friends with subtext?

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

at the moment I'm making a deliberate divide between fandom and show in my mind so I can at least enjoy fandom
Nice work! That's fully what I'm intending to do too. I think the show is over for me. I intend to wallow in AUs and clever fannish reclamation of the show from now on. *nods*

I could explain why it's over for me if you're really curious? But I'd prefer to do so by PM, since I'm not realy up for public debate about the show. (But you maybe don't really want to know because for those people still invested I don't want to be the one who pops the bubble, you know?)

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Yes and YES!

There are great books out there for teens: Bella didn't have to be that annoying!

[alissabobissa.livejournal.com]

Hey, Boppy!

1. I completely understand. Hermit is the way to go sometimes. :)

2. I haven't done a review or even watched 'Revelations' a second time for that very reason. I just don't know what to do with it, and I have no will to contemplate where the show can possibly go from there.

4. Ahh, Twilight. I agree with you about the Mary Sue aspect 100%. I just read all the books, and going in (and from the first page) I knew it was crap, but I got sucked in anyway, dammit. *shrugs* I think knowing that it's crap and that the female characterization would bother me from the get-go let me just not think and enjoy the story (I actually changed the wording or scenes in my head as I went). I dunno. I'm usually horribly snobbish about reading genre novels (with the exception of young adult stuff, which I enjoy with no shame, which may be my problem here), so though I rolled my eyes a lot, I liked it. And now I can mock it and have fun with it.

5. Same here. I have no incentive to write or do much of anything. It's depressing.

Anyhoo, hi again! Maybe we will break out of this funk soon? So say we all. :)