Things are going on.
I am kind of depressed.
Not sure what it's all about, but I'm kind of grumpy and reclusive. Well, frankly I'm kind of grumpy and reclusive at best, but moreso. I am in a phase of taking stuff in more than putting stuff out, but I am trying to work on that.
Here is a bunch of stuff I have been putting in my brain lately. UM lots and lots of spoilers in there by the way. Glee, Doctor Who, Justified, other things.
1. MS Paint Adventures.
Oh my God this comic. It is based of those old adventure-type games, where you put in commands, and began as an actual forum game a guy was running. It kind of escalated. There are four storylines, two failed, one complete, one ongoing, and the current one hits basically all my buttons. Deliberately crappy art, running gags that turn on a dime to become ACTUALLY SRS BSNS and awesome, and huge, symmetric world-building with stuff left implied but able to be extrapolated. Also healthy lashings of noir-type stuff.
Homestuck is a comic about a game about a video game that people play in real life. The game starts with the end of the world and escalates from there.
The completed storyline, Problem Sleuth, is pretty amazing as well.
Pose as a team because shit just got real.
2. Books.
I checked out basically every book in the world the other day and am working through them. I am currently on THE VIRGINIAN, which is just about as epic as Sweeney said it would be. No slash goggles required; I am not sure how else I am supposed to even take the line "We shared confidences of both the soul and the body."
I mean. What.
It is a good look at that same old fascinating cowboy archetype. (For more on this see JUSTIFIED under TV below.)
Elmore Leonard--this is also related to me watching Justified. Maybe I should have started with TV. Anyway--I have four Leonard novels, and have finished one. It's really interesting; he's very character-centered, and everything flows out from there. I like crime novels.
I read a really interesting collection of short stories by Robin Black called "If I loved you I would tell you this." I don't think I've read anything that deals so well with the way people and expectations and things age and change. I also enjoyed a horror anthology, and House of Mirrors was... okay. I want to say better than okay because it does a lot of really intriguing and novel things with Ye Olde Haunted House but at the end of the day my reaction is... eh, okay.
I still have an Ambrose Bierce reader and To Run With The Horses to go, and I'm not finished with the Virginian.
3. TELEVISIIION
I am actually watching a lot of TV just lately--
How I Met Your Mother remains... adequate. It was off for a long while and Zoo or False was meh, so I am kind of cooled down from my mainlining high.
Glee is back! And incredible! Britney and Santana holding pinkies! Shue and Emma cooling off! (Although the cheating makeout was UNACCEPTABLE and tacked on and will probably be back to irritate me later on.) And I want to know what the hell is going on with Quinn, although I realize she will probably need a whole episode to herself. Where is she even living?
JUSTIFIED JUSTIFIED JUSTIFIED. This show is amazing because it's basically about a 21st Century American gunslinger. Like. Entirely. Obviously it's because they have the same root cultural DNA--Gunsmoke! Matt Dillon!--but God it's amazing. It deals really, really with class and place, I think, with criminals (and their families) who are always three dimensional and sympathetic. And often not entirely bright, but that's people.
It also does a good job leaving threads unfollowed or only implied. There is, for instance, a black enforcer character in one episode who spends a lot of time threatening people (with a kind of hilarious gardening schtick) but in the end gets killed by his partner without ever hurting anyone. A lot of made is how he is scary and from DETROIT. I think it's pretty clear that he was capitalizing on being BLACK and from DETROIT in rural Kentucky to make himself seem scary, but the show doesn't feel the need to make sure you get that.
It's funny, because Raylan, the main character, lives in a very black and white, good guys and bad guys world. He shoots a lot of bad guys. But at the same time he has to face that the bad guys are often bound up in circumstances, or even good people who have anchored themselves to someone who turned out to be not what they expected. I could talk a lot about it but I should probably just take it to IM, because no one else is watching it. D:
What people are watching--DOCTOR WHO! He's back! I skipped the specials, like some other people I know, because the end of the last season left a bad taste in my mouth. But I like the new Crispin Glover looking guy. The series opener was a good introduction, and I liked the Doctorvision and the facing down; the Beast Below was AMAZING up until the end, when they took a very ham-fisted approach to SPELLING OUT EXACTLY WHAT THE POINT WAS. The Dalek episode was kind of meh as an episode but I kind of like what it did from a plot standpoint, with one caveat--
I am glad (so, so glad) they weren't killed off, again, forever, again, just to be brought back later. The Daleks just need to be an ongoing concern, if they want to keep bringing them back. Except with no Time Lord civilization, how does the Doctor live with that? Shouldn't he be spending every waking moment chasing them?
Also Winston Churchill was the theme park version, completely self-aware of how he was WINSTON CHURCHILL. And he accepted the Doctor's pat rationalizations on why he couldn't help them way too easily. Hoping the next episode regains the momentum of the first two.
The end!
Not sure what it's all about, but I'm kind of grumpy and reclusive. Well, frankly I'm kind of grumpy and reclusive at best, but moreso. I am in a phase of taking stuff in more than putting stuff out, but I am trying to work on that.
Here is a bunch of stuff I have been putting in my brain lately. UM lots and lots of spoilers in there by the way. Glee, Doctor Who, Justified, other things.
1. MS Paint Adventures.
Oh my God this comic. It is based of those old adventure-type games, where you put in commands, and began as an actual forum game a guy was running. It kind of escalated. There are four storylines, two failed, one complete, one ongoing, and the current one hits basically all my buttons. Deliberately crappy art, running gags that turn on a dime to become ACTUALLY SRS BSNS and awesome, and huge, symmetric world-building with stuff left implied but able to be extrapolated. Also healthy lashings of noir-type stuff.
Homestuck is a comic about a game about a video game that people play in real life. The game starts with the end of the world and escalates from there.
The completed storyline, Problem Sleuth, is pretty amazing as well.
Pose as a team because shit just got real.
2. Books.
I checked out basically every book in the world the other day and am working through them. I am currently on THE VIRGINIAN, which is just about as epic as Sweeney said it would be. No slash goggles required; I am not sure how else I am supposed to even take the line "We shared confidences of both the soul and the body."
I mean. What.
It is a good look at that same old fascinating cowboy archetype. (For more on this see JUSTIFIED under TV below.)
Elmore Leonard--this is also related to me watching Justified. Maybe I should have started with TV. Anyway--I have four Leonard novels, and have finished one. It's really interesting; he's very character-centered, and everything flows out from there. I like crime novels.
I read a really interesting collection of short stories by Robin Black called "If I loved you I would tell you this." I don't think I've read anything that deals so well with the way people and expectations and things age and change. I also enjoyed a horror anthology, and House of Mirrors was... okay. I want to say better than okay because it does a lot of really intriguing and novel things with Ye Olde Haunted House but at the end of the day my reaction is... eh, okay.
I still have an Ambrose Bierce reader and To Run With The Horses to go, and I'm not finished with the Virginian.
3. TELEVISIIION
I am actually watching a lot of TV just lately--
How I Met Your Mother remains... adequate. It was off for a long while and Zoo or False was meh, so I am kind of cooled down from my mainlining high.
Glee is back! And incredible! Britney and Santana holding pinkies! Shue and Emma cooling off! (Although the cheating makeout was UNACCEPTABLE and tacked on and will probably be back to irritate me later on.) And I want to know what the hell is going on with Quinn, although I realize she will probably need a whole episode to herself. Where is she even living?
JUSTIFIED JUSTIFIED JUSTIFIED. This show is amazing because it's basically about a 21st Century American gunslinger. Like. Entirely. Obviously it's because they have the same root cultural DNA--Gunsmoke! Matt Dillon!--but God it's amazing. It deals really, really with class and place, I think, with criminals (and their families) who are always three dimensional and sympathetic. And often not entirely bright, but that's people.
It also does a good job leaving threads unfollowed or only implied. There is, for instance, a black enforcer character in one episode who spends a lot of time threatening people (with a kind of hilarious gardening schtick) but in the end gets killed by his partner without ever hurting anyone. A lot of made is how he is scary and from DETROIT. I think it's pretty clear that he was capitalizing on being BLACK and from DETROIT in rural Kentucky to make himself seem scary, but the show doesn't feel the need to make sure you get that.
It's funny, because Raylan, the main character, lives in a very black and white, good guys and bad guys world. He shoots a lot of bad guys. But at the same time he has to face that the bad guys are often bound up in circumstances, or even good people who have anchored themselves to someone who turned out to be not what they expected. I could talk a lot about it but I should probably just take it to IM, because no one else is watching it. D:
What people are watching--DOCTOR WHO! He's back! I skipped the specials, like some other people I know, because the end of the last season left a bad taste in my mouth. But I like the new Crispin Glover looking guy. The series opener was a good introduction, and I liked the Doctorvision and the facing down; the Beast Below was AMAZING up until the end, when they took a very ham-fisted approach to SPELLING OUT EXACTLY WHAT THE POINT WAS. The Dalek episode was kind of meh as an episode but I kind of like what it did from a plot standpoint, with one caveat--
I am glad (so, so glad) they weren't killed off, again, forever, again, just to be brought back later. The Daleks just need to be an ongoing concern, if they want to keep bringing them back. Except with no Time Lord civilization, how does the Doctor live with that? Shouldn't he be spending every waking moment chasing them?
Also Winston Churchill was the theme park version, completely self-aware of how he was WINSTON CHURCHILL. And he accepted the Doctor's pat rationalizations on why he couldn't help them way too easily. Hoping the next episode regains the momentum of the first two.
The end!