| Update Pt. 1 |
[Feb. 21st, 2008|09:43 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | alias, arrested development, brian/justin, buffy the vampire slayer, california, eli stone, house, house/wilson, jack/irina, lex luthor, meme, michael/jan, politics, project runway, queer as folk, rl, ryan/colin, stargate atlantis, strike, supernatural, the office, victor garber, vidding | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | productive | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | "Angel With An Attitude" by The Ditty Bops | ] |
I have a lot of stuff to catch up on so bear with me.
So I have made it back to Syracuse, NY but not before the Travel Curse struck again! I had my first late night flight a week and a half ago and it was awesome to have Dan in Real Life being the movie they played for us. I had a one stop flight so I landed in Philly where I had to go from the D gate to the F gate. I carry my heavy laptop bag and backpack and walk to get to the F gate when I see a metaphoric fork in the road so to speak saying one way to the ABCD gates and another sign to E and F and another with a warning about how if you go this way you have to rescreen. They mention a shuttle but I don't see a sign for it so I go towards the E and F gate. When I see a security guard I ask him where I can catch the shuttle to the F gate. Surprise! I missed it and I was told I couldn't go back and had to keep walking. And of course I had to rescreen at 7 am EST with a huge line and 50 minutes til my flight left it. I kept getting closer and closer and hoping I'd make it, pissed off because I never wanted to be in a situation where I would miss my flight (I always try to get there 2 hours early) and of course with 10 minutes to my flight leaves I get through airport security where they take five minutes taking out ALL my hard drives and cords and putting them through the baggage checker even when I told them I needed to hurry. And of course my gate was the farthest away so even though I ran I missed my flight. Thankfully another one left in two hours so it wasn't too bad a wait but then when I get back to Syracuse they lose my check in luggage. The good news is they returned it a day later but it was still extra frustration.
I'm back now and although it's cold, I'm all layered up and at the moment it's not too bad so I don't even need my winter coat :) I can deal with it for a few months. I am SO happy to see my cats again, I missed them so much and now I have many hugs and cuddle sessions to catch up on. Am currently looking for a job which I should hopefully get soon as I need some money. The bad news is TWO of my hard drives have stopped working, the ones with all my DVDs (thankfully I have some on my last remaining hard drive for my current vid projects), music (I have some on my laptop so I'm not totally screwed there) and TV shows. But I do have fast internet back so it doesn't take very long to download stuff. I had forgotten how nice it is to download an episode in 10 minutes or so :D I'm disappointed that a short trip to NYC I was going to do today didn't happen but thankfully NYC is only 5 hours or so away and hopefully I can visit soon! I really want to see Bryant Park and hopefully Tim Gunn if I can plan a trip right. I just miss the city even if LA will always own my heart.
I spent my time after my trip catching up on some shows, marathoning Lost and reorganizing my vid files and a few other things. Up til now, My Videos has been organized by having many folders named by fandom and I'd put a vid I downloaded into the fandom folder it belonged too. But to make it easier to open up a lot of vids all at once, I decided to rename ALL my vid files by adding the fandom to the beginning of the video even if it was just "Anime", "Movies" or "Multifandom". I also made a New Vids folder for the vids I download that I'm too lazy to rename and to make it easier to watch new vids I download. It took awhile and I had to reconstruct my vids playlist but it's been worth it has everything is much more organized and easier to get at and with my 40+ GB of vids, I need that. How does everyone else organize their vids? In order to catch up with my Flist I also made some filters to put every single member of my Flist on a smaller reading list to make it less overwhelming to reply to posts. So far that's worked pretty well although hopefully I won't need to use it too much.
The Writer's strike is over! YAY :D I find it wonderfully coincidental that I leave for CA when the strike began and left right when it ended. I am so happy to at least get a salvaged season with some news episodes of some of my favorite shows. Namely The Office in which we get 6 more episodes and possibly an hour finale! I'm am just SO EXCITED to see the next episode on April 10th which is supposed to be amazing and funny and intense and unique. So I'm really looking forward to that. Not so excited about them skipping ahead in time because I like to see how things progress and for vidding purposes. The good news is almost all my shows are renewed and I'm hoping desperately that Friday Night Lights will be renewed. I cannot wait til April! Should be awesome to have new TV on almost every night.
In hopefully what will be the last time I talk politics before November, a quick word. I am for (and will vote for) whatever Democrat wins the primary. I'd be okay with either of them although I prefer Obama but as long as Bush is gone and there is not another Republican in the White House then I'm happy. Should be fun to live with a super conservative and Ron Paul supporter politics people until November though (NOT). I will find refuge in my politics free zone or mostly liberal Flist happy place though.
Okay, meme time! ( 5 question and 5 OTP memes )
[written yesterday] Yay Project Runway tonight! I love Wednesday's because it's the start of new episodes with PR and Torchwood. And tonight is a reunion episode and I LOVE reunion episodes. The video montages are always awesome and there is lots more Tim Gunn and it's fun seeing all the contestants again. I don't think they can ever beat the S2 one though but here's hoping. I'm SURE we're going to see a Ricky crying video and a Christian one with all the time he says fierce or similar funny statements. And this time I can actually watch it live and not have to wait five days for the torrent!
( Spoilers up to the latest Project Runway episode (not the reunion) )
( Spoilers for Stargate Atlantis up to Midway )
Contrary to most of my Flist, I'm just not feeling the Supernatural love these days. I don't know if it's overexposure or S3 in general but I just can't get emotional about the boys and show anymore :( I cried at the S2 finale and now just nothing. And I'm not really intellectually interested anymore. I have really liked the last few episodes and Dean and Sam have been really cute so at least there's that. I'm glad everyone else is loving and investing in the show though.
So I'm watching Eli Stone primary for Victor Garber and thankfully it is pretty funny enough to keep me entertained. The biggest GLEE moment is definitely getting to see Victor sing. Here's a youtube clip of it. I love his voice. It's such a disconnect seeing him so NOT!Jack Bristow but his line at the scene reminds me strongly of him so at least there's that. But he SMILES! I will never get enough of that; it makes me smile in turn. The other thing about the show I love is Tom Amandes is in it! I loved him in Everwood and just seeing him onscreen makes me happy.
( Spoilers for Eli Stone up to 103 )
In more Victor Garber singing clips of LOVE, here's him singing and then singing and dancing in Anne with my favorite song from the musical. I pretty much die with glee everytime I see it. He's SO CUTE! It is a little too much for me to handle. Oh and him being gay only makes me love him even more. I sure do know how to pick them :)
Next post: DIY, more TV and Jack/Irina gushing (OMG I LOVE THEM SO MUCH). |
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| While today it is me, we all shall fall |
[May. 31st, 2007|02:34 am] |
So I'm back in NY with my family after my first year of college. I miss California a LOT. It's not just the weather as it's been beautiful here but that sense of freedom and adventure and newness. Not to mention there being nothing to do here reminding me how much I hate it. Sick of my family in a week as was to be expected. But I LOVE my cats and that helps. Also I got my laptop back to working :D I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I had that freedom of my own computer and being able to save everything, download and go on it as much as I want. I've been really bad with commenting lately and I apologize. I'll try to get better at that.
In regards to fandom, well I'll hopefully have a roundup of all the finales up soon. More importantly, I'm sure most of you have already heard all about the Livejournal Strikethrough 2007 debacle that's going on but if you haven't, check out the link here that'll give you a good summary and lots of links. In short, a group called Warriors For Innocence (and possibly others), in their quest to stop pedophiles and other evils threaten Six Apart/Livejournal to shut down journals which list things like incest, rape and whatnot in their interests and not only take down a few communities that needed to be taken down but suspend communities and users based on fictional interest, rpg characters and a Spanish community dicussing Lolita. WTH LJ. Of course it was for legal pressures and all about money as usual but the lack of discretion or warning for the difference between fictional and real is disturbing. No matter your involvement in fandom, remember this: Even more scary are PR comments made not to LJ's customers but the media:
"Our decision here was not based on pure legal issues," countered Six Apart's Berkowitz. "It was based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what's not. We have an awful broad range of discussions and topics and other things going on in LiveJournal, and we encourage other broad-ranging conversations on all sorts of topics. This was a specific case where we felt there was not a reason (for these journals to stay online)."
When someone starts trying to decide what is appropriate, I know there's a problem. It may not be a freedom of speech issue in terms of the law but I always thought of Livejournal as a place to freely express my thoughts and stories with many people who would do the same and this violates my trust in the site and service I paid for. That's part of where the moral outrage is coming from, I think, at least for me. I hope this blows over and LJ apologizes and makes amends by unsuspending fandom accounts not to mention real life support groups and the like although I'm not too hopeful at the moment. It feels to me that this is quickly turning into a Heroes plot with fandom being the exploding man if 6Apart/LJ doesn't do something to diffuse the situation. In the meantime, take off anything illegal from your interests (and no wincest is not illegal as the very definition is about two fictional characters), backup your journals with LJarchive or a similar serive, join ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif) fandom_counts to be counted a member of fandom (I've always wanted to see how many people were in fandom) and create a backup journal at GreatestJournal or a similar LJ like site. I'm anoel43 at GreatestJournal as anoel got taken before I could snatch it up (still anoel on Vox though). I hope there isn't a migration but I'm not exactly trusting LJ anymore.
In the end, fandom will survive. We will continue creating fanfic, fanart, fanvids, meta, episode reactions and lots of squee. We're do gen, het, slash, incest, chan, underage and every other boundary breaking thing no matter what the world tries to do. You can't stop the signal.
After all that, go check out the Picspam of Hotties that includes many, many pages of many of our favorite characters and actors being as hot as they possibly can. It definitely cheers me up. Here's my selection under the cut (warning for big pics):
( Mmmm goodness )
And with that I will go back to marathoning Scrubs S5 as I am completely, head over heels in love with the show. |
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| Depth |
[Jul. 22nd, 2004|03:55 am] |
What truly interests me in a story? In a character? Vid? Fanfic?
I think the major thing is depth. I can be tolerant with a lot of things but I want to know there's more than just the shallow (unless that's what I'm looking for and thats not usually what I'm truly invested in). I may be the only one seeing it but that's why its personal. I want to look at something and be amazed at how complex it really is. I might have only a vague notion of it but I know it runs deep. Inside I can see layers upon layers of tunnels, twists, mazes that never end and are all connected. The fun part is to try to capture those specific little pieces and then frame them all into the bigger picture.
It's like a cycle. First I feel that overwhelming feeling of knowing that this depth exists. Thats when I'm seeing the whole thing. Then I try to find this complexity and investigate all the small bits of it. Gradually they interconnect together and finally I'm back where I began, amazed at how it all fits together into one big whole. I've never quite deciphered it all but the best thing is that it doesn't need to be. That mystery is what makes it even better and more interesting.
For example, one of the characters I love the most, Lex is exactly like this for me. Anyone on a journey from good to bad must have to be pretty complex. And he completly is. Sure, I love the outside image he presents but I'm really drawn to him because I know there is so much there, under the surface. He has so many phases in his life, the scared little kid, the rebellious youth and now the ambitious buisness man. He blurs these transitions as he fights to stop the inevitable phase of evil villian. But through it all I can always find so much in him and its always interesting. He just makes me feel that there is always more to him, that his being is like a black hole, an infinite universe that I can never fully explore, but I want to try.
In vids I also want to have that. No matter what it is, if I feel there is more under the surface, I'll keep watching endlessly until I figure it out. A vid example of this is Superstar by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) heres_luck What got to me in this vid is how deeply it goes into Faith, into her psyche. I'm totally drawn in, I want to know more but I can never fully know. Which of course, always leads me back for more. The vid itself is extremely complex as well, it equally matches the character study and reinforces it. The technical mastery and artistic beauty is beautiful and there is always more to it. I keep watching the vid and finding all the little things that make it so good. But it always leads back to the overall effect it has.
Another vid that gets to me is Haunted by Seah and Margie, at Seah and Margie's Vids. I have no knowledge of the fandom and that made it a bit confusing but I was sucked in by how interesting it seemed. And then came the ultimate: Big Emotion. Helped by the song but the visuals and build up made it even more prominent. I truly felt how deep the emotion was and it sent me soaring, to a place I could go and explore and never get tired of it and there is always more there to discover. I want to feel deeply and that is exactly what i got, not shallow feeling, but the real, genuine thing. That's what pulls me into these worlds.
The same thing goes for fics. katallison amazes me with the depth of her Highlander fics (havent read the rest of the fics yet) and I can read her stories over and over again. For example, One for the Road I love because of all the little things put in the story. Nothing was random, or at least I have to believe that. Because in every detail, in every part, it expresses something that speaks to the larger meaning. For me, the interesting part that I love is trying to discover it all. Oh and for Big Emotion goodness, The Parting Glass gets to me in a way that few things have ever done to me. With this I identify so strongly that I know its touching all the emotional centers in me and it turns the tables on me, so that I am the subject. Now I can even see the complex inside of me. And that to me is what all these art forms are supposed to do, to reveal something new inside myself and give me a new understanding of myself and the world. That occurs especially in the fic, Strata which I loved the most for its theme and how deeply it resonated with me. And since this is quickly turning into a rec, I say, go off and read the fics now, here at Kat Allison's Fic.
Really, all I want is that depth. That's what I'm searching for and will continue to journey down those infinite paths. |
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