It was and is a blur...
So, the weekend. \o?
I finished reading The Bards Of Stone Plain. It had one of the slowest, most painful builds ever (unlikable main characters, and 140 pages of dull flailing before things snapped into place) followed by a cannot-put-it-down plot. McKillip's editor really should have weighed in there: 140 of 322 pages at snooze? Tighten things up, woman!
I finished my Real LJ Idol fic early, so I asked to be tagged for silverbullets. LJ Idol reading and Spring Break are coming, and who knew when I'd get another window to write? Stayed up WAY late, had a sleepless night of bizarre dreams (gym hockey, boat tours for drinking water, murder, replicating character "casts") and plowed through foggy-headed Sunday morning to finish just in time before the deadline and Christopher's first B-ball playoff game.
More dizziness and fog (and garage biking) between games, another playoff, and Christopher's team's going to the finals! \o/
Last night: more sleepless weirdness, miserable coldness, backache, and crazy dreams. Okay, NOW I recognize this gig: fever delirium. Yay.
I feel better than yesterday, though my left middle-ear is staticky, but my head's clearer and my heartbeat is more regular. And what set off the sleeplessness on Saturday? Watching the Justified, S1 finale on DVD, and going off on a slashy mental tangent about Raylan and Boyd. Plus, the show made me feel sorry for Boyd. Oh, the complexity of his arc-who saw that coming?
I didn't expect Raylan and Boyd's relationship to get so complicated. They were friends once, they parted sides of the law, things got ugly at the showdown in Ava's house, and then... Boyd had a religious epiphany? After that, he seemed to be half in love with Raylan and what Raylan represented in his life, but Raylan didn't trust that change for a minute and yet couldn't help his own natural politeness and the patterns of their distant past. Someone did a slashy vid at YouTube about the whole thing, stressing the "mixed signals" of their relationship that really caught that vibe perfectly.
By the end, Boyd is truly devastated by everything that happened, and he's practically begging for Raylan to console him. And the viewer (who has seen the truth of what Boyd tried to do in his mixed-up, misguided way and how it all went so wrong) can't help but feel devastated for him, even though we know all the bad things Boyd's done. The writing, it tortures us!
I do love that, midway through the season, we see that Raylan's offhand comment about Boyd's pattern being "stealing stuff and blowing shit up" turns out to be utterly true.
As for Raylan himself, those mixed signals with Boyd are echoed in Raylan's relationship with his own father. You know why Raylan left (and doesn't ever want to see his father again), and yet despite Raylan's volatile temper and tendency to shoot too quickly, he also can't seem to be as mean to his father as Arlo deserves. It's as if there's a reserve of nearly-extinguished love that still keeps him from being cruel, something more than just ingrained Southern manners. It shows there's a deeper complexity to Raylan than first indicated.
We've got S2 in the Netflix queue now, which rumors say will be a different setting/dynamic entirely. Still, more handsomeness from Olyphant to come, and probably a rich collection of character actors passing through.
All right. Feeling more stupid again by the minute, but I must try to get some work done now. Back to the grind...
I finished reading The Bards Of Stone Plain. It had one of the slowest, most painful builds ever (unlikable main characters, and 140 pages of dull flailing before things snapped into place) followed by a cannot-put-it-down plot. McKillip's editor really should have weighed in there: 140 of 322 pages at snooze? Tighten things up, woman!
I finished my Real LJ Idol fic early, so I asked to be tagged for silverbullets. LJ Idol reading and Spring Break are coming, and who knew when I'd get another window to write? Stayed up WAY late, had a sleepless night of bizarre dreams (gym hockey, boat tours for drinking water, murder, replicating character "casts") and plowed through foggy-headed Sunday morning to finish just in time before the deadline and Christopher's first B-ball playoff game.
More dizziness and fog (and garage biking) between games, another playoff, and Christopher's team's going to the finals! \o/
Last night: more sleepless weirdness, miserable coldness, backache, and crazy dreams. Okay, NOW I recognize this gig: fever delirium. Yay.
I feel better than yesterday, though my left middle-ear is staticky, but my head's clearer and my heartbeat is more regular. And what set off the sleeplessness on Saturday? Watching the Justified, S1 finale on DVD, and going off on a slashy mental tangent about Raylan and Boyd. Plus, the show made me feel sorry for Boyd. Oh, the complexity of his arc-who saw that coming?
I didn't expect Raylan and Boyd's relationship to get so complicated. They were friends once, they parted sides of the law, things got ugly at the showdown in Ava's house, and then... Boyd had a religious epiphany? After that, he seemed to be half in love with Raylan and what Raylan represented in his life, but Raylan didn't trust that change for a minute and yet couldn't help his own natural politeness and the patterns of their distant past. Someone did a slashy vid at YouTube about the whole thing, stressing the "mixed signals" of their relationship that really caught that vibe perfectly.
By the end, Boyd is truly devastated by everything that happened, and he's practically begging for Raylan to console him. And the viewer (who has seen the truth of what Boyd tried to do in his mixed-up, misguided way and how it all went so wrong) can't help but feel devastated for him, even though we know all the bad things Boyd's done. The writing, it tortures us!
I do love that, midway through the season, we see that Raylan's offhand comment about Boyd's pattern being "stealing stuff and blowing shit up" turns out to be utterly true.
As for Raylan himself, those mixed signals with Boyd are echoed in Raylan's relationship with his own father. You know why Raylan left (and doesn't ever want to see his father again), and yet despite Raylan's volatile temper and tendency to shoot too quickly, he also can't seem to be as mean to his father as Arlo deserves. It's as if there's a reserve of nearly-extinguished love that still keeps him from being cruel, something more than just ingrained Southern manners. It shows there's a deeper complexity to Raylan than first indicated.
We've got S2 in the Netflix queue now, which rumors say will be a different setting/dynamic entirely. Still, more handsomeness from Olyphant to come, and probably a rich collection of character actors passing through.
All right. Feeling more stupid again by the minute, but I must try to get some work done now. Back to the grind...