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So, last day of the 30 days of TV meme! Today is
Day 30 - Saddest character death
Hm. I had to think about this one for a while and I still haven't decided. I expect a lot of people would peg Joyce's death on Buffy as the one that would get me the most, because it came so close on the heels of my own mom's death. But I really didn't like The Body; I found it stagey and preachy and full of annoying and precious, twee actorly moments. I was a lot harder hit by the episode after The Body, which felt much more real and accurate and heartbreaking to me.
And I don't watch a lot of the shows that have big, Emmy-nom-targeted death scenes, so that affects choices, too. I would probably pick Wesley's death on Angel except that it just pisses me off too much. I have no objections to a good character death -- I actually like it when it's done well -- but once again, I felt like we were set up so baldly that it left a bad taste in my mouth (not that I didn't cry like a baby when it happened). And the... characters on The Wire who died were all sad, but in the scheme of things, you kind of had to expect them, so I don't know if they can qualify as saddest (well, okay, ( except for ). And then there is ( Deadwood's )
So that leaves...( I'm sure this would surprise people )
Day 30 - Saddest character death
Hm. I had to think about this one for a while and I still haven't decided. I expect a lot of people would peg Joyce's death on Buffy as the one that would get me the most, because it came so close on the heels of my own mom's death. But I really didn't like The Body; I found it stagey and preachy and full of annoying and precious, twee actorly moments. I was a lot harder hit by the episode after The Body, which felt much more real and accurate and heartbreaking to me.
And I don't watch a lot of the shows that have big, Emmy-nom-targeted death scenes, so that affects choices, too. I would probably pick Wesley's death on Angel except that it just pisses me off too much. I have no objections to a good character death -- I actually like it when it's done well -- but once again, I felt like we were set up so baldly that it left a bad taste in my mouth (not that I didn't cry like a baby when it happened). And the... characters on The Wire who died were all sad, but in the scheme of things, you kind of had to expect them, so I don't know if they can qualify as saddest (well, okay, ( except for ). And then there is ( Deadwood's )
So that leaves...( I'm sure this would surprise people )
Skinny Mean Bitch owns me
Jun. 14th, 2010 01:47 pmAck. Yesterday kind of got away from me. My yard is a complete overgrown jungle -- if I put a couple of cars up on blocks on my side lawn, it would just complete the picture, I think. When I have time, it's raining, and when I don't, it's nice enough to work outside. Yesterday was the first day with the right combo. And I won't get in to the craptacular stuff that's gone on this past week.
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Ah ha ha ha. Like I could pick one. Do I go with my ur-fandom, Pros, and pick Doyle? Do I go with Castillo from Miami Vice? Or my beloved Giles from Buffy, because ASH was the reason I tuned in to Buffy in the first place, and Giles was the glue that kept it all together? I know everyone probably thinks I'll pick Spike. But then there are my new loves, Raylan Givens and Michael Westen and and and.
No, I think I will go back a ways to the guy who kind of started me down this fannish path -- not Spock, though he was formative. But a soap character: Steve "Patch" Johnson from Days of Our Lives. I think most of the guys I've fallen for as characters have all had a little bit of Steve in them somewhere, even if it's not obvious (like, Giles and Steve could not be more different on the outside, but Giles shares that loyalty and devotional quality that I adored in Steve). He came on to Days as a short-lived villain, but when the producers saw what a great actor Steven Nichols was, and how the fans reacted to him, they made him a permanent character and even gave him a real name instead of that godawful handle "Patch" -- seriously, naming someone after their disability? Jesus.
He was just mesmerizing. Soaps had never had a character like him before, and in a lot of ways, that archetype, which you see on many shows, has never been done so well again. I started watching Days again a few years ago when I found out Steve and Kayla were coming back on it, but then the producers fucked it up and got rid of them last year without even a fare-thee-well, and so I no longer watch. Steve was just... he was cool, and tough, and unpredictable (something rare in soaps), and sexy as hell, that bad boy with a heart of gold underneath, especially for the love of his life, and I think in some ways I've been trying to find him again in just about every character I follow as a fan.
Day 15 - Favorite female character
If I were as talented as lithium doll, I'd make myself an elimination challenge, because this one I just don't even know how to decide on. Unlike about 70% of my fan friends in slash fandom, I love female characters. And so many of them are recent finds, so the only way I could narrow it down is by setting up categories and seeing how they fare in those categories.
But okay. I'm going to decide on... Debra Morgan from Dexter. I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE Deb. I mean, unholy love. She is someone I identify with so very much -- kind of a fuckup, but still smart enough and good enough to be competent; foulmouthed, but not aggressively and scarily so; loyal and generous but still needy and unself-confident; lonely and scared, but still brave and strong. I just... I get flaily hands when I try to talk about her.
Part of it is that she's so effing funny -- her foul language, the way she has no patience for stupid people, how happy she is when something works out for her. She also gives good drama -- she has those big anime eyes, and stuff that hurts her HURTS her, and when she loves, she does it with all-out gusto. From the beginning, when Dexter says that if he could love, Deb would be the one person he would love, I've adored that connection they have, and her relationship with Lundy was for me one of those perfect, exquisite, almost operatic, epic love stories that I couldn't have enjoyed more if they'd put sparkles and rainbows on it.
Skinny Mean Bitch, you are my girl, and always will be. Now if I could just figure out how to finish the vid I want to make for you...
Oh, ETA: I found this wonderful set of clips of Deb's foul mouth. I heart her so.
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Ah ha ha ha. Like I could pick one. Do I go with my ur-fandom, Pros, and pick Doyle? Do I go with Castillo from Miami Vice? Or my beloved Giles from Buffy, because ASH was the reason I tuned in to Buffy in the first place, and Giles was the glue that kept it all together? I know everyone probably thinks I'll pick Spike. But then there are my new loves, Raylan Givens and Michael Westen and and and.
No, I think I will go back a ways to the guy who kind of started me down this fannish path -- not Spock, though he was formative. But a soap character: Steve "Patch" Johnson from Days of Our Lives. I think most of the guys I've fallen for as characters have all had a little bit of Steve in them somewhere, even if it's not obvious (like, Giles and Steve could not be more different on the outside, but Giles shares that loyalty and devotional quality that I adored in Steve). He came on to Days as a short-lived villain, but when the producers saw what a great actor Steven Nichols was, and how the fans reacted to him, they made him a permanent character and even gave him a real name instead of that godawful handle "Patch" -- seriously, naming someone after their disability? Jesus.
He was just mesmerizing. Soaps had never had a character like him before, and in a lot of ways, that archetype, which you see on many shows, has never been done so well again. I started watching Days again a few years ago when I found out Steve and Kayla were coming back on it, but then the producers fucked it up and got rid of them last year without even a fare-thee-well, and so I no longer watch. Steve was just... he was cool, and tough, and unpredictable (something rare in soaps), and sexy as hell, that bad boy with a heart of gold underneath, especially for the love of his life, and I think in some ways I've been trying to find him again in just about every character I follow as a fan.
Day 15 - Favorite female character
If I were as talented as lithium doll, I'd make myself an elimination challenge, because this one I just don't even know how to decide on. Unlike about 70% of my fan friends in slash fandom, I love female characters. And so many of them are recent finds, so the only way I could narrow it down is by setting up categories and seeing how they fare in those categories.
But okay. I'm going to decide on... Debra Morgan from Dexter. I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE Deb. I mean, unholy love. She is someone I identify with so very much -- kind of a fuckup, but still smart enough and good enough to be competent; foulmouthed, but not aggressively and scarily so; loyal and generous but still needy and unself-confident; lonely and scared, but still brave and strong. I just... I get flaily hands when I try to talk about her.
Part of it is that she's so effing funny -- her foul language, the way she has no patience for stupid people, how happy she is when something works out for her. She also gives good drama -- she has those big anime eyes, and stuff that hurts her HURTS her, and when she loves, she does it with all-out gusto. From the beginning, when Dexter says that if he could love, Deb would be the one person he would love, I've adored that connection they have, and her relationship with Lundy was for me one of those perfect, exquisite, almost operatic, epic love stories that I couldn't have enjoyed more if they'd put sparkles and rainbows on it.
Skinny Mean Bitch, you are my girl, and always will be. Now if I could just figure out how to finish the vid I want to make for you...
Oh, ETA: I found this wonderful set of clips of Deb's foul mouth. I heart her so.
Deb would swear at me
Jul. 19th, 2008 10:56 pmOh, vidding how I hate and love you. You torture me with your ideas and your songs and your characters. You provide endless hours of torment and aching necks and arms and the feeling of utter hopeless failure. And yet, you keep my mind off things I don't want to and shouldn't think about. And when you are done, I feel so relieved and so bad at the same time. You are like mountain climbing -- miserable and cold and dangerous and fraught, but you have your peaks and valleys and the summit is an achievement.
I want to do this vid for Deb Morgan on Dexter. I'm stuck on a song that is very well-known, one of those rare songs that crosses musical lines and came out of nowhere to become a hit after being featured on a TV show so effectively. And I don't want to do this song even though it's been eating away at my brain since I first heard it a few years ago on the show and I love it and never ever get tired of hearing it. And it is beyond perfect for what I want to show about Deb. Why do I not want to do something that sounds so perfect? Because it's probably been vidded at least 13,487 times by 13 year old girls who make crappy YouTube type vids. A quick search, even, of YT confirms that there are at least half that many vids by crappy youthful vidders who wouldn't know a point of view or an edit point if it bit them in the ass. And two such kinds of vids for Dexter the character and show. Gah.
I have listened nonstop to everything I have and have bought tons of music online for the past few months, this idea burning in my head, trying to find something less used. I like other songs by the artist, but they don't have the tone I want and are more focused on other aspects that I don't want to focus on. I've found gajillions of wonderful songs, which I love and think they could work, but they don't work as well for me. None of them have the exact feeling I get from this overly familiar song.
I just... I don't know what to do. I've always enjoyed picking up stuff that is unexpected, that people think couldn't work for a show or a character, and blasting people's expectations to bits. I can't tell you how many people said something couldn't be vidded to me, only to recant when they saw the finished product. But this time, something unusual, rare, or unexpected is not working for me. Wonderful songs, but none of them have this feeling. I really don't know what to do. Force myself to make a song that doesn't quite speak to me in exactly the same way? I could still come up with something good, I'm sure, or at least not as bad as the crap on YT. But it wouldn't have that heart. OTOH, if I make it, a lot of people will just... recoil, or scorn it, or pass it by.
With vids, you lose people each step of the way -- first goes the fandom people, who wouldn't watch a vid unless they're in that fandom. Next comes the music genre -- "I won't listen to pop, country, boy bands, emo, metal, blah blah." Then the song, if they know it, and they don't want to hear it one more time because they hear it on the Muzak system at work every day or the guy in the truck plays that on the route 500 times an hour. And so on -- in the end, you lose a significant portion of viewers by whichever choices you make, so you have to take into consideration whether that bothers you.
I don't know if it does bother me to add that to the list or not -- maybe it's just that I don't want fellow vidders whom I respect to think I'm a loser for making such a blatant musical choice? Especially when I love finding obscure stuff for other vidders? I don't know. I just can't decide, but I want to start on the vid and the song will determine my clip choices.
Vidding, why so difficult?
I want to do this vid for Deb Morgan on Dexter. I'm stuck on a song that is very well-known, one of those rare songs that crosses musical lines and came out of nowhere to become a hit after being featured on a TV show so effectively. And I don't want to do this song even though it's been eating away at my brain since I first heard it a few years ago on the show and I love it and never ever get tired of hearing it. And it is beyond perfect for what I want to show about Deb. Why do I not want to do something that sounds so perfect? Because it's probably been vidded at least 13,487 times by 13 year old girls who make crappy YouTube type vids. A quick search, even, of YT confirms that there are at least half that many vids by crappy youthful vidders who wouldn't know a point of view or an edit point if it bit them in the ass. And two such kinds of vids for Dexter the character and show. Gah.
I have listened nonstop to everything I have and have bought tons of music online for the past few months, this idea burning in my head, trying to find something less used. I like other songs by the artist, but they don't have the tone I want and are more focused on other aspects that I don't want to focus on. I've found gajillions of wonderful songs, which I love and think they could work, but they don't work as well for me. None of them have the exact feeling I get from this overly familiar song.
I just... I don't know what to do. I've always enjoyed picking up stuff that is unexpected, that people think couldn't work for a show or a character, and blasting people's expectations to bits. I can't tell you how many people said something couldn't be vidded to me, only to recant when they saw the finished product. But this time, something unusual, rare, or unexpected is not working for me. Wonderful songs, but none of them have this feeling. I really don't know what to do. Force myself to make a song that doesn't quite speak to me in exactly the same way? I could still come up with something good, I'm sure, or at least not as bad as the crap on YT. But it wouldn't have that heart. OTOH, if I make it, a lot of people will just... recoil, or scorn it, or pass it by.
With vids, you lose people each step of the way -- first goes the fandom people, who wouldn't watch a vid unless they're in that fandom. Next comes the music genre -- "I won't listen to pop, country, boy bands, emo, metal, blah blah." Then the song, if they know it, and they don't want to hear it one more time because they hear it on the Muzak system at work every day or the guy in the truck plays that on the route 500 times an hour. And so on -- in the end, you lose a significant portion of viewers by whichever choices you make, so you have to take into consideration whether that bothers you.
I don't know if it does bother me to add that to the list or not -- maybe it's just that I don't want fellow vidders whom I respect to think I'm a loser for making such a blatant musical choice? Especially when I love finding obscure stuff for other vidders? I don't know. I just can't decide, but I want to start on the vid and the song will determine my clip choices.
Vidding, why so difficult?
TeeVee Time
Oct. 15th, 2007 11:38 amI have had to accept, especially since I got the TiVo a number of years ago, that there's just no way I can watch as much of the new shows to test them out as I would like -- so I whittle down my list more and more each fall and attempt to pick what I think will a) be worth my time, or at least be semi-interesting, and b) last longer than 4 eps. I still haven't mastered the art of b) yet. And I still have too much TV on my TiVo, which, now that I'm watching a soap again and have an addiction to HGTV, has become quite unmanageable. This year, I've got about five new shows on the season pass list, and I still can't keep up, between my older series (Heroes, Numb3rs, The Unit -- what can I say? Hot men, bad TV, and so on) and the new stuff.
I adored Chuck, but couldn't watch it after the first episode, because they teasingly showed it on every network NBC owns for only the pilot, no other episodes, and NBC's player works so suckily on my Mac I haven't tried to watch them online. But at some point, I will catch up. Because Adam Baldwin in a Best Buy-type-store polo shirt? Won't ever not be funny.
Speaking of losers who are funny, ( Reaper )
( Life )
( Journeyman )
( Pushing Daisies )
( Moonlight )
( Bionic Woman )
And then there are the returning shows, though mostly what I could say about those is that there are fetching new hair styles on both the Unit and Numb3rs for a few people, and Don has standup hair again, thank god, though Charlie's facial hair scares me a bit. They are still silly and I like them, but I'd rather watch Reaper than the Unit, for however long that lasts. The big two, for me, though, are Heroes and Dexter. I haven't had the chance to watch more than the first two eps of second season Dexter so I'm behind in that respect, but...
( Dexter )
( Heroes )
( Prison Break )
I adored Chuck, but couldn't watch it after the first episode, because they teasingly showed it on every network NBC owns for only the pilot, no other episodes, and NBC's player works so suckily on my Mac I haven't tried to watch them online. But at some point, I will catch up. Because Adam Baldwin in a Best Buy-type-store polo shirt? Won't ever not be funny.
Speaking of losers who are funny, ( Reaper )
( Life )
( Journeyman )
( Pushing Daisies )
( Moonlight )
( Bionic Woman )
And then there are the returning shows, though mostly what I could say about those is that there are fetching new hair styles on both the Unit and Numb3rs for a few people, and Don has standup hair again, thank god, though Charlie's facial hair scares me a bit. They are still silly and I like them, but I'd rather watch Reaper than the Unit, for however long that lasts. The big two, for me, though, are Heroes and Dexter. I haven't had the chance to watch more than the first two eps of second season Dexter so I'm behind in that respect, but...
( Dexter )
( Heroes )
( Prison Break )
How's that for irony?
Mar. 5th, 2007 10:45 amIn which I actually talk about something besides my stupid personal life for a change.
A couple weeks ago, I watched Heroes with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mlyn, and griped a lot about how poorly they use dramatic irony on the show, particularly with regard to Mohinder, who is quite possibly one of the prettiest men on the planet but who is also, as they're writing it right now, the dumbest.
Dramatic irony is one of those things that, when used well, can engage an audience of readers, playgoers, movie-watchers, book-readers, etc. The problem is, it's often not done well, and it's especially poorly employed on weekly TV series, where it can frustrate the hell out of audiences when they're forced week after week to see things the other characters aren't getting.
I see a lot of misuse of the term in my job, where writers often think it means just really intense irony, but it does have a specific definition. Dramatic irony:
This is really just a fancy way of saying the audience knows what's going on, but the characters onstage (film, page, whatever) don't.
( Cut for Heroes spoilers up through recent eps, and Dexter S1 )
A couple weeks ago, I watched Heroes with
mlyn, and griped a lot about how poorly they use dramatic irony on the show, particularly with regard to Mohinder, who is quite possibly one of the prettiest men on the planet but who is also, as they're writing it right now, the dumbest.Dramatic irony is one of those things that, when used well, can engage an audience of readers, playgoers, movie-watchers, book-readers, etc. The problem is, it's often not done well, and it's especially poorly employed on weekly TV series, where it can frustrate the hell out of audiences when they're forced week after week to see things the other characters aren't getting.
I see a lot of misuse of the term in my job, where writers often think it means just really intense irony, but it does have a specific definition. Dramatic irony:
occurs when a character onstage is ignorant, but the audience watching knows his or her eventual fate, as in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.
This is really just a fancy way of saying the audience knows what's going on, but the characters onstage (film, page, whatever) don't.
( Cut for Heroes spoilers up through recent eps, and Dexter S1 )
