catching up
Sadly, I spent December in a funk for no reason and didn't finish the December meme! So, here's some belated babble.
What movie that originally starred mostly males, would you like to see remade with a female cast? And who would you cast in those roles? via shadowc44
Ghostbusters. Seriously, I am so ridiculously excited for that movie, it's a little embarrassing. I think it is going to be the genderswitch re-visioning we all deserve. But I didn't know I wanted it until it was announced. So my wishful-thinking answer to this question is... Casablanca. Imagine that spectrum of characters all played by actresses given permission to be idiosyncratic, strange, passionate about more than simply love and moral goodness--imagine Claudette Colbert playing Ugarte and being just as sniveling and underhanded as Peter Lorre. Or Greta Garbo replacing Claude Rains and Dorothy Dandridge as Sam. Maybe Marlene Dietrich as Rick and Anna May Wong as Victor Lazlo. If Ingrid Bergman stayed on, it would be the timeless classic lesbian war romance that, wow, I really really wish we could all have.
wendy asked about my favorite thing I ever created.
Weirdly, things I did as a teen come to mind. This Gundam Wing humor piece I wrote to make my sister and brother laugh--and we still giggle madly about the gags in it today, at their slightest mention, 17 years later. Also, some chalk pastel portraits and landscapes I did for an intensive art course around that time. And a paper I wrote on Great Expectations. My teacher's comment on it was, "You have created new knowledge." That was a wild concept to 18-year-old me, and so incredibly inspiring. I've done things I like since, but I think I wrote and drew with a sort of fearlessness back then that I find hard to do these days. I think I'd like to spend 2016 working back down toward that aspect of my younger self.
wendy gave another prompt: make a wish.
Okay, I closed my eyes and made a wish, but I think I better keep it under wraps, since that's how wishes work.
tsuki_no_bara asked: when you were ten, what did you want to be when you grew up? how close are you to that, now that you're (theoretically :D ) a grown-up?
Emphasis on "theoretically." :D Tbh, when I was ten (and every other age), I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Even today, I have no clue. Granted, I just got laid off and am in a reevaluation process to figure out what my next step should be, so it makes sense I'd be a little confused atm. But even when things were stable, the best I could answer that question was thusly: I want to be useful to other people and highly valued. It's not that it doesn't matter exactly what field or industry I'm in--there are a lot that just wouldn't work for me. But I find myself interested in things I am doing, even if I didn't expect to be. Like, I developed a keen interest in the ins and outs of traffic safety when I drove school bus. Genuine interest in the rules of the road. It was insane, and I'm still interested, which is even more insane. Since running that nonprofit, I get a thrill from creating budget spreadsheets. Would NOT have seen that coming before I had to do them all the time. The result is that I seem not to have a calling. More like, I have an often-expanding (but seldom deepening) set of interests and skillsets paired with an intense need for a really positive work environment.
wendy asked, How do you take our coffee?
The answer is any way I can get it. Coffee is life.
shadowc44 asked two more questions. First, : Book vs. Movie - which do you usually prefer, and why?
Good question! I think it depends. I haven't found one version to be consistently better than the other. The Fellowship of the Ring was way, way better as a movie than a book, although I'm aware that's controversial and I'm not trying to start anything! Pretty sure the Hobbit was a better book than a set of movies (although I couldn't get past the first few pages of the book or beyond the first movie, so it's not like I know anything there). The Big Sleep was a classic book AND a classic movie. The Scarlet Letter is an amazing novel, but they made such a bad movie of it way back. I'm a fan of so many reboots, and the whole idea of re-envisioning a story is so basic to what we do in fandom, that I think it's fair to say I'm down with the attempt to turn a book into a movie, though no promises to enjoy the result. That said, sometimes I'm so close to a book that I avoid seeing the movie version. Bridge to Terebithia is one, because it just really touched me as a child and I'm okay with missing out on other people's renderings of it. I've kind of avoided productions of King Lear for the same reason.
And second: Cats, and yours in particular.
I love me some cats. My dad can't stand them, so we never had one growing up. Then when I began living by myself I was indifferent and thought it would be too much work anyway, so I probably would never have gotten one. But then a couple of my old college friends decided to make aliyah. For some reason, they couldn't take the cat on their flight--I think it needed one more round of shots before it could go. So I volunteered to hold on to the cat and get it to the vet and then give it to one of their friends, who was planning a trip to Israel at just the right time and had agreed to get the cat to them. Of course, the friend being from Portland, he flaked. :P So now I have a cat. She seems to have gotten used to me. And I'm pretty sure I'll always have a cat from now on.
What movie that originally starred mostly males, would you like to see remade with a female cast? And who would you cast in those roles? via shadowc44
Ghostbusters. Seriously, I am so ridiculously excited for that movie, it's a little embarrassing. I think it is going to be the genderswitch re-visioning we all deserve. But I didn't know I wanted it until it was announced. So my wishful-thinking answer to this question is... Casablanca. Imagine that spectrum of characters all played by actresses given permission to be idiosyncratic, strange, passionate about more than simply love and moral goodness--imagine Claudette Colbert playing Ugarte and being just as sniveling and underhanded as Peter Lorre. Or Greta Garbo replacing Claude Rains and Dorothy Dandridge as Sam. Maybe Marlene Dietrich as Rick and Anna May Wong as Victor Lazlo. If Ingrid Bergman stayed on, it would be the timeless classic lesbian war romance that, wow, I really really wish we could all have.
wendy asked about my favorite thing I ever created.
Weirdly, things I did as a teen come to mind. This Gundam Wing humor piece I wrote to make my sister and brother laugh--and we still giggle madly about the gags in it today, at their slightest mention, 17 years later. Also, some chalk pastel portraits and landscapes I did for an intensive art course around that time. And a paper I wrote on Great Expectations. My teacher's comment on it was, "You have created new knowledge." That was a wild concept to 18-year-old me, and so incredibly inspiring. I've done things I like since, but I think I wrote and drew with a sort of fearlessness back then that I find hard to do these days. I think I'd like to spend 2016 working back down toward that aspect of my younger self.
wendy gave another prompt: make a wish.
Okay, I closed my eyes and made a wish, but I think I better keep it under wraps, since that's how wishes work.
tsuki_no_bara asked: when you were ten, what did you want to be when you grew up? how close are you to that, now that you're (theoretically :D ) a grown-up?
Emphasis on "theoretically." :D Tbh, when I was ten (and every other age), I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Even today, I have no clue. Granted, I just got laid off and am in a reevaluation process to figure out what my next step should be, so it makes sense I'd be a little confused atm. But even when things were stable, the best I could answer that question was thusly: I want to be useful to other people and highly valued. It's not that it doesn't matter exactly what field or industry I'm in--there are a lot that just wouldn't work for me. But I find myself interested in things I am doing, even if I didn't expect to be. Like, I developed a keen interest in the ins and outs of traffic safety when I drove school bus. Genuine interest in the rules of the road. It was insane, and I'm still interested, which is even more insane. Since running that nonprofit, I get a thrill from creating budget spreadsheets. Would NOT have seen that coming before I had to do them all the time. The result is that I seem not to have a calling. More like, I have an often-expanding (but seldom deepening) set of interests and skillsets paired with an intense need for a really positive work environment.
wendy asked, How do you take our coffee?
The answer is any way I can get it. Coffee is life.
shadowc44 asked two more questions. First, : Book vs. Movie - which do you usually prefer, and why?
Good question! I think it depends. I haven't found one version to be consistently better than the other. The Fellowship of the Ring was way, way better as a movie than a book, although I'm aware that's controversial and I'm not trying to start anything! Pretty sure the Hobbit was a better book than a set of movies (although I couldn't get past the first few pages of the book or beyond the first movie, so it's not like I know anything there). The Big Sleep was a classic book AND a classic movie. The Scarlet Letter is an amazing novel, but they made such a bad movie of it way back. I'm a fan of so many reboots, and the whole idea of re-envisioning a story is so basic to what we do in fandom, that I think it's fair to say I'm down with the attempt to turn a book into a movie, though no promises to enjoy the result. That said, sometimes I'm so close to a book that I avoid seeing the movie version. Bridge to Terebithia is one, because it just really touched me as a child and I'm okay with missing out on other people's renderings of it. I've kind of avoided productions of King Lear for the same reason.
And second: Cats, and yours in particular.
I love me some cats. My dad can't stand them, so we never had one growing up. Then when I began living by myself I was indifferent and thought it would be too much work anyway, so I probably would never have gotten one. But then a couple of my old college friends decided to make aliyah. For some reason, they couldn't take the cat on their flight--I think it needed one more round of shots before it could go. So I volunteered to hold on to the cat and get it to the vet and then give it to one of their friends, who was planning a trip to Israel at just the right time and had agreed to get the cat to them. Of course, the friend being from Portland, he flaked. :P So now I have a cat. She seems to have gotten used to me. And I'm pretty sure I'll always have a cat from now on.