We meet again!
# So, I house-sat for the last week and somehow couldn't access the Internet at all. No signal or anything. On the bright side, I got to hang with a truly adorable black lab who I kinda miss now. And it was kind of nice just to spend time in a quiet house reading before and after work, without worrying about e-mail or anything.
That said, I've missed LJ-world. It's good to be back.
# I did have the chance to watch their NetFlix, which they have hooked up to their TV via a Wii, probably using magic. Saw Labyrinth for the first time and it was delightfully cracky; yay for muppet monsters! Also for the first time, Driving Miss Daisy, which left me with a lot to think about, not only about race but Jewish approaches to assimilation....
# I also found a new side-fandom: Merlin. I watched all 13 eps of the first season and am eager to see the following two, probably when they get posted on Hulu. The naturalness of the characters' interplay grabbed me first, as well as the set design and costumes. Much of the writing is rather thoughtful--not all of it, but enough to more than hold my interest. Although it's set in a medieval-ish period, it clearly does not intend to be historically accurate, a lack of pretension I respect. Besides, who cares about anachronisms when everyone is so damn pretty? Seriously. OMG.
Morgana might be my favorite character. She's motivated by an inner sense of justice instead of by her feelings for the male leads. (Speaking of, 13 episodes in, and only a bit of flirting and light innuendo between most of the young characters without any apparent "intended true pairing" to be seen. Thank you, BBC!) Morgana also has a lot of anger, which I like to see in women characters because it's so often considered unfeminine or the mark of a villainess, and damnit, I like women with strong feelings! At the same time, her wrath is balanced by compassion and intelligence.
Anthony Head as Uther knocks my socks off. He certainly doesn't carry the show--the others are good actors too--but he adds so much to it. His approach to Uther gives him a complexity that the script, in anyone else's hands, might not allow. He's a tyrant, a demanding father, a cruel king who hates magic so much that he will even execute children who practice it. He's also blind to all the magical shenanigans taking place under his nose every episode. So you would expect him to be played evil and stupid. Yet he's got his own backstory informing his motivations, and a fierce intelligence, and loves Arthur very much. He has relationships with the people around him, and good relationships with women, and believes he has the kingdom's best interests at heart--which he often does. At one point, when it looked like he might really be killed off, I got quite worried for the sake of the show. And then they resolved it more than satisfactorily, and all was well.
Arthur and Merlin are indeed slashable. They're so adorable with each other. Morgana/Gwenevere is also gonna be high on my reading list once I catch up on the show and dip into the fandom. *squees* I really wasn't expecting the show to be that good at all, despite what SGA fandom has to say on the matter, but I'm so pleasantly surprised!
# In other news, sketching isn't going too well. I'm demoralized and need a lot of work to get better, so today I'm off to the library to find a drawing book and maybe, for models, some photography books. That might kick-start the creativity some more.
While I'm here, I wanted to say this. To anyone out there who has ever taken the time to educate others about oppression and the experiences and needs of oppressed or otherwise under-privileged or Othered people: Thank you. Thank you so much. Maybe it's a weird thing to say out of nowhere, but it's heartfelt. You deserve a million thank-yous.
That said, I've missed LJ-world. It's good to be back.
# I did have the chance to watch their NetFlix, which they have hooked up to their TV via a Wii, probably using magic. Saw Labyrinth for the first time and it was delightfully cracky; yay for muppet monsters! Also for the first time, Driving Miss Daisy, which left me with a lot to think about, not only about race but Jewish approaches to assimilation....
# I also found a new side-fandom: Merlin. I watched all 13 eps of the first season and am eager to see the following two, probably when they get posted on Hulu. The naturalness of the characters' interplay grabbed me first, as well as the set design and costumes. Much of the writing is rather thoughtful--not all of it, but enough to more than hold my interest. Although it's set in a medieval-ish period, it clearly does not intend to be historically accurate, a lack of pretension I respect. Besides, who cares about anachronisms when everyone is so damn pretty? Seriously. OMG.
Morgana might be my favorite character. She's motivated by an inner sense of justice instead of by her feelings for the male leads. (Speaking of, 13 episodes in, and only a bit of flirting and light innuendo between most of the young characters without any apparent "intended true pairing" to be seen. Thank you, BBC!) Morgana also has a lot of anger, which I like to see in women characters because it's so often considered unfeminine or the mark of a villainess, and damnit, I like women with strong feelings! At the same time, her wrath is balanced by compassion and intelligence.
Anthony Head as Uther knocks my socks off. He certainly doesn't carry the show--the others are good actors too--but he adds so much to it. His approach to Uther gives him a complexity that the script, in anyone else's hands, might not allow. He's a tyrant, a demanding father, a cruel king who hates magic so much that he will even execute children who practice it. He's also blind to all the magical shenanigans taking place under his nose every episode. So you would expect him to be played evil and stupid. Yet he's got his own backstory informing his motivations, and a fierce intelligence, and loves Arthur very much. He has relationships with the people around him, and good relationships with women, and believes he has the kingdom's best interests at heart--which he often does. At one point, when it looked like he might really be killed off, I got quite worried for the sake of the show. And then they resolved it more than satisfactorily, and all was well.
Arthur and Merlin are indeed slashable. They're so adorable with each other. Morgana/Gwenevere is also gonna be high on my reading list once I catch up on the show and dip into the fandom. *squees* I really wasn't expecting the show to be that good at all, despite what SGA fandom has to say on the matter, but I'm so pleasantly surprised!
# In other news, sketching isn't going too well. I'm demoralized and need a lot of work to get better, so today I'm off to the library to find a drawing book and maybe, for models, some photography books. That might kick-start the creativity some more.
While I'm here, I wanted to say this. To anyone out there who has ever taken the time to educate others about oppression and the experiences and needs of oppressed or otherwise under-privileged or Othered people: Thank you. Thank you so much. Maybe it's a weird thing to say out of nowhere, but it's heartfelt. You deserve a million thank-yous.