timepiececlock

All the folks I first journeyed to Livejournal with (you wonderful, gorgeous, Buffy-fic-writing ladies) and all the folks I've met since who I share past fandoms with and don't even realize it: the_royal_anna has written a splendid meta essay about the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Buffy/Spike relationship with all its messy, layered dynamics.

I adored her essay, and it made me want to read B/S fanfic, which I haven't read in ages. Some of the comments go into fantastic detail too: little essays of their own, celebrating the pairing and the shipdom that OTPed it like a juggernaut spanning the entire internet fandom. The end of the show left people with lots of conflicting opinions, with debate and discussion about what level of love is required to make a relationship canon, as if on screen sex and love--any kind of love, all kinds of love, including romantic love but never limited to it--weren't the very definition of a canon relationship. Beginning to end, in all its misery and all its glory. With the weighted words, the emotional support, the flaming linked fingers and one hero's heart shining light into darkness while another climbed up to a new world.

SEE? Even reading about it makes me want to babble again. I need to get out my DVDs and rewatch them. Good night!

Super Spoilers for, like, a ton of fandoms: (Doctor Who, Farscape, Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, How I Met Your Mother, etc.)

( Top Ten TV Kisses )

How is it that no matter what fandom I join, I can always find a couple people to help turn any conversation into a "Once More With Feeling" sing-off in caps and italics?

Fuck what people say. This movie rocked.

It's a very, very strong execution of an exceedingly simple premise: unknown giant thing attacks a city, and regular people run around for an hour and a half with a camcorder recording their own survival flight.

It feels real. It feels more bare-boned and realistic than pretty much any monster/disaster movie you'll ever see.

This is a disaster movie as much as a monster movie, and while its certainly got its creep factor, it's actually not a horror movie. And while the comparisons to Blair Witch are inevitable, that movie felt a lot more like a horror movie than Cloverfield ever did.

This movie was tense. Intense. There was so much energy and movement and insanity that you could never build up the kind of subtle, ever-deepening fear that a classic horror film evokes. This was far more about disaster. Disaster, sudden violence, and grief. Terrible things happen, one after another, but the characters' reactions feel real and plausible and normal. These people aren't going to save the day. They're barely trying to save themselves. They can't figure out how to beat whatever's attacking the city because the entire event is so far beyond their comprehension that the effort to just keep moving is all they have.

In the movie Signs, the family figures out the alien's weakness is water, and they defeat the ones attacking their homestead. The characters in Cloverfield don't even have time to discover that much. They just run. Run and hide and run and die. If you ever wondered what those little extras in Armageddon, or Godzilla, or Independence Day were feeling... this movie is a look into the little guy's POV. The one who gets knocked off a building, or stomped on, or eaten, or bounced on a titanic propeller, and who never gets to have a last name. They may not be brilliant and they may not make all the right decisions, but they do their best to last the night.

This movie is about them, and about us, because most of the people watching would fare no better---would be lucky to last even as long as these characters do. The characters have a video and record much of their cross-city flight, and there's a moment where one of the main characters takes the camera, looks into it to make some kind of declaration or testimony, and ultimately he can't say anything. He doesn't need to, because it's written on his face.

I liked it. I thought it was worth seeing on the big screen, especially since a matinée in Salt Lake only costs 5 dollars. I recommend you see it, though it is quite jerky. Even so, though, the jerkiness here (rolling camera, dropped camera, swinging camera) felt less disorienting than the action sequences in films like The Borne Ultimatum or Transformers. Even when the view went haywire I could still visually track events, which is more than I can say for certain scenes in those two movies. As for gore... there was some, but considerably less than a lot of other monster movies. It was used sparingly and only when appropriate, for maximum effect.


And at the end of the movie, in the credits, I saw that it was written by Drew Goddard.

ULTIMATE DREW GODDARD!

How did I not know this going in? That's crazy! I'm Ultimate Drew minion #290, according to his first official fansite! Click on that link and scroll down, seriously, my name is right THERE.

I blinked and pointed at the screen and said to my cousin, "Oh my god! It's written by Drew Goddard! Ultimate Drew Goddard! He wrote some of the best episodes of the last seasons of Buffy!"

My cousin just kinda shrugged me off with "yeah that's him" but I didn't care, because I find this information delightful. Good for him. He's writing movies and he wrote a pretty decent one.

I have a new Buffy buddy!

My mom.

Yes, it is a historic moment. Tonight I suggested we watch "Hush" because I have to watch my friend's season 4 DVDs before I move away. My mom watched "Hush" with me, and then it seemed to work out well because she stayed up to watch the prior episode, "Something Blue", as well. As we were turning the tv off I, very shyly for my usual assertive self, asked "If I watch another episode tomorrow... will you watch it with me?"

She said "Sure," and I said "Great!"
Then she asked, "Is it better with someone else?"
"Yes!"

Other snippets of the evening's dialogue, as my mother had watched the end of season 7 with me when it aired, but none of the other seasons...

"Willow just got dumped by her boyfriend. He skipped town on her."
"I thought she was a lesbian?"
"Well, that girl you just saw in the other episode, which takes place after this one, is her first girlfriend."


"Recognize that guy? He was on Heroes."


"Blah blah Spike chip in his head blah blah Giles' bathroom blah blah commandos."
"I thought he was always in love with her and helping her fight?"
"Oh, no! That was in later seasons. In season two he was a villain, then he only showed up once in season 3, then in season 4, which we're watching, he comes back to Sunnydale to get a magic ring which will make him invincible in daylight, then Buffy steals the ring when she fights him, and he gets captured by the military guys and they put the chip in his head. For the rest of the season he's half-villain, half-ally, and mostly annoys them. Or helps them for money. Then in season 5 he starts to realize that the reason he's still in Sunnydale and the reason he keeps coming back is because he has a crush on Buffy."
**ShakaMom has a glazed stare**
"He helps her out in season 5, and he also builds a sex-bot."
"A what?"
"A sex bot. It doesn't go over well with Buffy."
"Is that what jumps off the crane?"
"No, Buffy jumps off the crane, but they do reprogram the bot to help them in the fight. And then Buffy dies and is ressurrected in season 6, and thats when their relationship starts, in season 6 and 7."
**ShakaMom getting that look in her eye like she wants to run away**


Still, she did promise to watch more with me. Now I'm thinking I might have to buy season 5 (which I thought about anyway) because jumping from season 4 to season 6 is starting with the worst season, skipping the best season, and then going right into the sexcapades angst season. It'd be a shame.

Anyway.... YAY NEW BUFFY BUDDY. Plus I have all these DVDs I've never really watched consecutively. It's much more motivating to watch with a newbie.

Afterthought: It's pretty ironic watching Something Blue knowing that in the future Buffy and Spike have a major romantic story arc. Every scrap of dialogue seems portent-y, particularly with regard to Buffy's comments about her bad boy fixation.

Further thought: I'm not telling her there's a fifth season of Angel and James Marsters is in it. SHE NEVER NEEDS TO KNOW.

I was skimming the article "Boys' Comics vs Girls' Comics in Japan" on www.sleepisfortheweak.org, one of my favorite anime/manga review websites. While skimming the article, It made me think of both Twelve Kingdoms and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (my first anime), for different reasons.

The article says this on teams/friendship in Shounen manga:

"He almost never goes at anything solo--he may be at the top in the end, but he'll never get there without his best friend/group of friends helping him, and he'd never turn his back on a single one of them (not even on the jerk or the hothead or the coward, because every group has at least one). ... ...but bonds outside of the main two or three people are usually less solid, and a shoujo lead is perfectly able to live her own life with her man and leave her friends to their own devices (or, frankly, out of the story)."

My first thought was for Sailor Moon, the series that was my first exposure to anime and to this day is my initially defining idea of shoujo (though this is probably a poor example, as SM is a superhero story more than what I now define as a shoujo story.) But when I think aobut it, SM actually differs quite a bit from other shoujo I've since read: the team and friendship is all-important to the story of SM. Although SM has a very prominent love story, the show is, in essence, about friendship and teamwork. In some ways it's oddly like Buffy-- the love life of the heroine and her brooding beau may go up or down, but at the end of the day she has her scooby gang and her wise mentor to make everything alright. SM is so into the idea of friendship and teamwork to fight the good fight that it's practically a Care Bears episode at times. Side note: Being fairly femnist-minded, I think I'm weirdly lucky that, for all its many flaws, my first anime was a superhero story where the girl is the hero and her boyfriend is a perpetual sidekick/villain... well, except for the first season where he's a dark rescuer with mysterious loyalties... oh fuck, I shoudl really sit down one day and list the ways Buffy was like Sailor Moon.

The primary focus on friendship/teamwork doesn't make SM any less shoujo (there's a lot of other ways the series defines shoujo cliche, especially in the little things), but it makes me curious to realize that, when I think back on it, I actually can't remember many other shoujo series I've read where teamwork/friendship is a big deal. It's certainly not a big deal in Fushigi Yuugi (teamwork that is, as friendship *is* a big deal but only because the best friend is the antagonist of the series), the only other shoujo series I can think of at the moment that I've seen from start to finish (Princess Tutu doesn't count because that series is its own genre of themes and styles.) Is Paradise Kiss a shoujo series? For some reason I want to label it something else.

The article says this on goals in Shoujo manga:

Shoujo is usually less about the goal and more about the "getting there," so, while a shounen manga may have a very desirable ambition and a very specific route the characters must follow to succeed, shoujo titles usually stay away from that formula and focus more on the varying things that happen to the lead throughout her life.

That made me think of The Twelve Kingdoms, where lack of focus is never a problem for the heroine's plotline, and the story is all about the adventure. This was then followed by the thought "You know, 12K has a lot of the elements of a shonen series." Why? Because it's a cool adventure story about action and fighting and war and battles and politics. Its main character just happens to be female instead of male. And I don't mean she embodies traditionally "masculine" traits, because she doesn't-- she just happens to be set on an adventure where she learns to kick ass and take names and save the kingdom from destruction.

I'd love to have more series like that. I can name the few that I've watched that are like that on one hand: (12K, SM, Read Or Die OVA, Princess Tutu)

I'd love to see more anime or manga where you can have battles and adventure and drama... and the hero is female. I want more Buffy's and more Beatrix Kiddo's in my anime, please.

If this thread amused the heck out of me, you can imagine the fit of giggles I collapsed into over the comments in this thread, with almost a complete new version of "I've Got A Theory."


Dear Joss Whedon: Thank you thank you, thank you so much for creating shows where dancing demon and puppet vampire jokes never, ever get old.

Housemate on the phone w/ her mom: What, so it's like a musical? *sings loudly* "I am a vampire, I suck people's BLOOOOOOOD!"

Me, singing in my head: "And I'm in love with the SLAAAAAYER!"

Read a very interesting analysis/critique of gender roles and social/culture trends (as seen from a comparative literary standpoint) of the Star Wars films, with a focus on the prequel trilogy.

Mostly it left me in agreement: "Yeah, the Jedi are physically the most badass and fantastic warriors(glowy swords!), but I never really bought the whole 'emotion=danger' bit either."

Why? ( Long babbling discussion of science fiction genre approaches to the question of emotion and morality, stuff like that. References to Star Wars (obviously), Star Trek, Ender's Game, Serenity, Farscape, Naruto, Doctor Who, various others, and martial arts. )


Okay, I kind of lost track there so I'm going to stop now. I think I've babbled enough. I just wanted to comment on this aspect of Star Wars that I've never really liked. I've never liked religious-based celibacy as being celebrated as the mental/emotional ideal.

I didn't even go into the gender stuff like I had planned to. Oh well, I'll summarize: I hated Padme's storyline in general, especially in the third film. Eowyn of Rohan wouldn't have let herself become the vessel for an evil man's seed and then died for no apparent reason. Heck, Leia wouldn't even have let herself become that. But yeah I was going to stop and stuff. So this is me stopping.

Last night while trying to fall asleep I made a list in my head of my "most OTP OTPs"... i.e. the pairings I'm most emotionally invested in, and the ones I think are "even more meant for each other than your normal OTP." Televison and anime/manga. In order of true-est.

P.S.: I typed for two hours to write this stuff. It's like a mega-essay. So please, comment! Squee with me or disagree, I don't care. :) Let me know what you think. What your most-OTP OTPs are.

( Anime (big spoilers for Princess Tutu, Escaflowne, Fruits Basket, and Gundam Wing, mild spoilers for Sailor Moon, and Ranma 1/2 )


( Television (spoilers for Buffy, Farscape, The X Files )


What did you learn from this meme?

That just as often as Shaka's ships have happy endings, the other half of them ends in tragedy or bittersweet departure. I guess I come from the Casablanca / Gone With The Wind school of romance.


*CURSE THE BEE! THE DAMN BEE!