fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2008-09-19 06:51 am
some_stars) wrote2008-09-19 06:51 am
file: "to post.txt"
ways I am keeping myself entertained without the internet, or will have been by the time i actually get to post this:
1. playing all the text adventures i never got around to. anchorhead and lost pig are my favorites for entirely different reasons. (my approach to interactive fiction is to spend a few hours throwing myself at a game and wandering down every possible corridor and poking things--over the course of a few days, so i have time to think about puzzles--then, when it becomes more annoying than fun, i hunt down a walkthrough, skim it to check what i have to do to avoid an unwinnable state, and then read it intermittently, playing as far as i can until i get confused again. best of both worlds!)
2. watching vids over and over and over and over
3. rereading almost all of FAKE, since i've been craving it lately and not had the time/focus to indulge. GOD HOW I LOVE THAT SERIES. it's got all these awesome manga qualities yet almost none of the stuff that usually puts me off yaoi(shounen ai? boys love? i have no idea what you crazy kids are calling it these days). --i really should read some manga that isn't a romance at some point. but i just adore FAKE so much because plots! and imaginary New York! and cops! and two of my favorite female characters ever, and an awesome romantic antagonist, and kid sidekicks who are actually excellent and i love reading the stories that focus only on them, and very little of the creepy power-abusing hetero-modeled stuff. well, until the actual sex scene, which is in the last book and i basically ignore it and have rewritten it in my head to be un-creepy.
4. finishing season one of Xena! WHICH IS SO AWESOME OMG OMG OMG :D :D :D :D :D i have season two waiting for me if this goes on much longer. also some more futurama from netflix although i haven't watched any of that yet.
5. idly plotting out a semi-alternate torchwood season 2, diverging after the first four episodes. because i really really loved a lot of the new direction they set, and if i could bring back the stuff i loved from the first season and mix them together it would be BRILLIANT. the whole of season 2 feels like...i can kind of pick out where they had this list of goals, mostly (i would guess) in response to criticism of the first season. and most of them are good goals in the abstract! just kind of...awkwardly carried out. like, at a guess, i'd say the checklist looked osmething like
1. make team appear moderately competent
1a. or at least not actively destructive of everything around them
2. make characters more likeable, less sociopathic
3. make jack/ianto an actual ongoing relationship
4. have a season-long continuous arc
5. turn ianto into fanon!ianto (the good fanon, not the weepy kind)
6. DO something with tosh, for heaven's sake (well, i don't know if this was an actual goal, but they managed to achieve it more than last season, so go team!)
and i can totally cover all that with less facepalming and unconscious-yet-wildly-offensive heteronormativity (I KNOW, WTF) and usage of the reset button. or at least i could if i actually worked on this instead of just pondering it while trying to fall asleep. ALSO i would not retcon the awesome, awesome, awesome website extras from season one. because those seriously had some of the best writing on the whole show and they were always so brilliantly in character. oh, i just have all these thoughts--the show itself was like this perfectly fan-baity mix of YES YES THAT THAT YES moments and ".....wtf no." so uh, my narrative goals would be, hmm:
1. yes, competence is good! perhaps a bit more of this, even
2. make characters only fucked-up in *intentional* ways, and not quite so quick to punch/slap/stab/shoot each other
2a. but retain the awesomely horrifying stuff! they are all a bit psychotic in their own special ways.
2b. most especially, don't woobiefy owen.
2c. on which note, i would definitely not write out the single best actor (by lightyears) on the show. i adore eve myles and naoko mori, and there are a lot of things they do quite well and they have that indescribable flair that brings characters to life--but i'd trust burn gorman to pull off basically any story arc no matter how ill-considered, because dude can fucking ACT.
2d. and regarding ianto, i approve of the increase in snark and competence and decrease in tummy rats, but i would prefer if we could also *remember* that he's the kind of guy who keeps his robot girlfriend in the basement of his workplace and violently, thoroughly represses every trace of emotion until someone actually dies.
3. jack/ianto: pretty much inevitable after s1, despite my marked lack of fondness for it. i rather like how they went about this in canon, actually, except for how it apparently swallowed up all the rest of the queer, and jack was still in ~spiritual love~ with gwen.
3a. bring back the rest of the queer! and stop the creepy pattern where gay relationships are sexual and het relationships are about ~love~ in your ~soul~. and reversely-except-not-really, have jack's lolzy crazy sex anecdotes involve a woman or other not-human-male sometimes.
3b. at least one team orgy. COME ON, it's practically the show's mission statement.
3c. just not go there with tosh/owen. it turned out alright, but it's so tainted by the creepy vibe they had in s1. (although i did like the dreadful parallel between her comfort/willingness to pursue a relationship with tommy in 2x03 and undead!owen. like, her cheerful lack of self-awareness on that point was AWESOME, i just wish they'd focused on that and made it more about HER, really given her a story around it.)
4. YES OH YES the season-long arc! hell, it can even be about grey, i don't mind, just--make it actually season long rather than "first episode, middle episode, last episode--that makes it an arc, right?" and make the details less cliched with jack doing something besides angsting guiltily. although i did LOVE the bait-and-switch in 2x12-13 regarding captain space spike. that was quite well done on their parts.
5. i would bring out all the awesome stuff about tosh that came to the surface this season, but MORE, and deal explicitly with her massively damaged relationship issues, and be less glib about her origin story and the effect it should have on how her relationship with jack developed. and i would remember that she likes girls!
6. more victorian torchwood! they had enough of it so it was more than a glimpse, but not enough to really satisfy. i think i'd try and tie it in to the main arc, maybe set up something for next season.
but uh. as i said, i haven't actually worked on this except for extensive half-awake thoughts about 3b, so there you go.
also i appear to be making a house of leaves playlist. i have...a lot of creepy music! more than i thought. plus all the numbers stations stuff.
--okay! now i have watched more futurama! i continue to be distressingly hot for fry! SERIOUSLY GUYS, THIS WORRIES ME. and leela, but that's just good sense.
[end backdating]
SO THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO pretty much. and sleeping during the day and not eating nearly enough vegetables and therefore getting creepy mouth sores. breakfast today will be a fruit smoothie, i swear it. and i stayed up all tonight reading comics and i will probably call into work because of my bizarrely nonfunctional left shoulder. (that makes one good limb remaining, what with both feet out of commission due to arch weirdness.) i am such a total failboat about work. i like it fine when i'm there and doing stuff, i just hate the anxiety where i never know exactly what each day is going to be like and i might end up failing horribly at something and also how i'm in agonizing pain by the end of every shift. but i need money D:
1. playing all the text adventures i never got around to. anchorhead and lost pig are my favorites for entirely different reasons. (my approach to interactive fiction is to spend a few hours throwing myself at a game and wandering down every possible corridor and poking things--over the course of a few days, so i have time to think about puzzles--then, when it becomes more annoying than fun, i hunt down a walkthrough, skim it to check what i have to do to avoid an unwinnable state, and then read it intermittently, playing as far as i can until i get confused again. best of both worlds!)
2. watching vids over and over and over and over
3. rereading almost all of FAKE, since i've been craving it lately and not had the time/focus to indulge. GOD HOW I LOVE THAT SERIES. it's got all these awesome manga qualities yet almost none of the stuff that usually puts me off yaoi(shounen ai? boys love? i have no idea what you crazy kids are calling it these days). --i really should read some manga that isn't a romance at some point. but i just adore FAKE so much because plots! and imaginary New York! and cops! and two of my favorite female characters ever, and an awesome romantic antagonist, and kid sidekicks who are actually excellent and i love reading the stories that focus only on them, and very little of the creepy power-abusing hetero-modeled stuff. well, until the actual sex scene, which is in the last book and i basically ignore it and have rewritten it in my head to be un-creepy.
4. finishing season one of Xena! WHICH IS SO AWESOME OMG OMG OMG :D :D :D :D :D i have season two waiting for me if this goes on much longer. also some more futurama from netflix although i haven't watched any of that yet.
5. idly plotting out a semi-alternate torchwood season 2, diverging after the first four episodes. because i really really loved a lot of the new direction they set, and if i could bring back the stuff i loved from the first season and mix them together it would be BRILLIANT. the whole of season 2 feels like...i can kind of pick out where they had this list of goals, mostly (i would guess) in response to criticism of the first season. and most of them are good goals in the abstract! just kind of...awkwardly carried out. like, at a guess, i'd say the checklist looked osmething like
1. make team appear moderately competent
1a. or at least not actively destructive of everything around them
2. make characters more likeable, less sociopathic
3. make jack/ianto an actual ongoing relationship
4. have a season-long continuous arc
5. turn ianto into fanon!ianto (the good fanon, not the weepy kind)
6. DO something with tosh, for heaven's sake (well, i don't know if this was an actual goal, but they managed to achieve it more than last season, so go team!)
and i can totally cover all that with less facepalming and unconscious-yet-wildly-offensive heteronormativity (I KNOW, WTF) and usage of the reset button. or at least i could if i actually worked on this instead of just pondering it while trying to fall asleep. ALSO i would not retcon the awesome, awesome, awesome website extras from season one. because those seriously had some of the best writing on the whole show and they were always so brilliantly in character. oh, i just have all these thoughts--the show itself was like this perfectly fan-baity mix of YES YES THAT THAT YES moments and ".....wtf no." so uh, my narrative goals would be, hmm:
1. yes, competence is good! perhaps a bit more of this, even
2. make characters only fucked-up in *intentional* ways, and not quite so quick to punch/slap/stab/shoot each other
2a. but retain the awesomely horrifying stuff! they are all a bit psychotic in their own special ways.
2b. most especially, don't woobiefy owen.
2c. on which note, i would definitely not write out the single best actor (by lightyears) on the show. i adore eve myles and naoko mori, and there are a lot of things they do quite well and they have that indescribable flair that brings characters to life--but i'd trust burn gorman to pull off basically any story arc no matter how ill-considered, because dude can fucking ACT.
2d. and regarding ianto, i approve of the increase in snark and competence and decrease in tummy rats, but i would prefer if we could also *remember* that he's the kind of guy who keeps his robot girlfriend in the basement of his workplace and violently, thoroughly represses every trace of emotion until someone actually dies.
3. jack/ianto: pretty much inevitable after s1, despite my marked lack of fondness for it. i rather like how they went about this in canon, actually, except for how it apparently swallowed up all the rest of the queer, and jack was still in ~spiritual love~ with gwen.
3a. bring back the rest of the queer! and stop the creepy pattern where gay relationships are sexual and het relationships are about ~love~ in your ~soul~. and reversely-except-not-really, have jack's lolzy crazy sex anecdotes involve a woman or other not-human-male sometimes.
3b. at least one team orgy. COME ON, it's practically the show's mission statement.
3c. just not go there with tosh/owen. it turned out alright, but it's so tainted by the creepy vibe they had in s1. (although i did like the dreadful parallel between her comfort/willingness to pursue a relationship with tommy in 2x03 and undead!owen. like, her cheerful lack of self-awareness on that point was AWESOME, i just wish they'd focused on that and made it more about HER, really given her a story around it.)
4. YES OH YES the season-long arc! hell, it can even be about grey, i don't mind, just--make it actually season long rather than "first episode, middle episode, last episode--that makes it an arc, right?" and make the details less cliched with jack doing something besides angsting guiltily. although i did LOVE the bait-and-switch in 2x12-13 regarding captain space spike. that was quite well done on their parts.
5. i would bring out all the awesome stuff about tosh that came to the surface this season, but MORE, and deal explicitly with her massively damaged relationship issues, and be less glib about her origin story and the effect it should have on how her relationship with jack developed. and i would remember that she likes girls!
6. more victorian torchwood! they had enough of it so it was more than a glimpse, but not enough to really satisfy. i think i'd try and tie it in to the main arc, maybe set up something for next season.
but uh. as i said, i haven't actually worked on this except for extensive half-awake thoughts about 3b, so there you go.
also i appear to be making a house of leaves playlist. i have...a lot of creepy music! more than i thought. plus all the numbers stations stuff.
--okay! now i have watched more futurama! i continue to be distressingly hot for fry! SERIOUSLY GUYS, THIS WORRIES ME. and leela, but that's just good sense.
[end backdating]
SO THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO pretty much. and sleeping during the day and not eating nearly enough vegetables and therefore getting creepy mouth sores. breakfast today will be a fruit smoothie, i swear it. and i stayed up all tonight reading comics and i will probably call into work because of my bizarrely nonfunctional left shoulder. (that makes one good limb remaining, what with both feet out of commission due to arch weirdness.) i am such a total failboat about work. i like it fine when i'm there and doing stuff, i just hate the anxiety where i never know exactly what each day is going to be like and i might end up failing horribly at something and also how i'm in agonizing pain by the end of every shift. but i need money D: