retro flashback weekend
Feh. It's not that I haven't wanted to post, it's just that every half-formed thought dies or gets overanalyzed tp the point of irrelevance before I get anywhere near the keyboard. And memes just make me feel cheap and high-schoolish when they're all I can manage to do. Feh, I say again.
On some other note --
This weekend (well, Sunday anyhow) turned out to be a visit to the imagination fodder of childhood. On a spur-of-the-moment visit to Best Buy Saturday I found something I've been waiting for since they first started churning out cartoon DVDs - Voltron:Defender of the Universe set 1 (Blue Lion box). Yeah, I know (now) that it's regurgitated Japanese anime; the story was choppy; the voice acting was crappy (some more than others). I don't care. Even hearing again the atrocious excuse for a Swedish accent they gave Sven, I remember how much I looked forward to this show. I still resent the princess for 'stealing' Sven's place. The morning commute was spent in part musing over the 5 episodes I've rewatched so far, filling in all the things the show skipped over, all the reasons behind the actions. Remembering why I had such a 'thing' for Sven, when he's gone in 5 eps. What can I say, I have a real thing for the reluctant hero, the guy who just does what needs doing, no matter how painful he knows it's going to be. Not that they're *smart* about it... (Yeah, I'll hold off the big evil witch all alone while you get help, no matter that she's capable of eating me for breakfast. And I'll do it by standing here and letting her cast spells without even *trying* to disrupt her... Meh.) And he's the tragic figure, too, shipped off to recover from a near fatal wound, only to be (as I recall) attacked and captured there. And the fertile dark-minded child was more than able to fill in the blanks of that scenario. The broken, human almost-hero. ::shrug:: When I couldn't find Battle of the Planets any more, this was my cartoon of choice. Did okay, for the time.
Later that night, Adrian stumbles over the Ion station and Battlestar Galactica (old school - I'm not a fan of the new one).
5 eps in a row, and we certainly didn't see all of any of them (the Simpsons was on, after all!) But Oh! did I not realize how well I knew these. Without even paying a lot of attention I realized that Ion (or someone) was editing the episodes - Apollo was supposed to draw Adama's attention to the fact that he was sending Serena (Apollo's squeeze-to-be) off to become a Viper pilot, and it never happened. There was some Boxey/Muffet stuff I 'm pretty sure too, but I can't say I missed it. I can't quote this stuff, but I know when it's off, I guess. Another place where, no matter the shortcomings of the base material, I took the stories to heart and ran with them. I know there were (are) a lot of people who thought Battlestar was the Christian bogarting of sci-fi, ripping off the Star Wars phenomenon - and ships - and getting all preachy with their Lost Tribes and starry prophesies. I always saw a great what-if story. What if the Egyptians and some of the other ancients really were the remnants of a previously advanced civilization? What if we took elements of all these ancient cultures, the iconography and imagery and words they created, and used them to extrapolate the people they might have come from so many galaxies and years away? It wasn't so much Christian reference as taking a creation myth and using it as your framework to create and build on. And, until Star Wars gets its own TV serial, Galactica can have the ships. Vipers were so frickin' COOL!! Actually, the Cylon ships were too. I just...I don't know. Again, Battlestar was just a wonderful thing to hang my dreamings on. Heroes of circumstance, rising to meet the crap-ass odds they're handed, no matter how futile it seemed, no matter that death and stupidity is one launch away. Well, and I had a crush on Starbuck, but... Face it, a *lot* of chicks dug both the lead actors (Mom had a thing for Richard Hatch, as I recall) and in my defense I was -- what, 8? That's gotta count for something. OR at least it may explain why I was screwed up from such an early age.
I dunno. It's not so much that i want to relive my childhood - it had its moments, but really... It's just that there *were* some good bits, and I like havign the opportunity to revisit them and see if things were better or worse than I recall, see if some of the same magic is there still, and maybe come to consciously realize things that I either took for granted or instinctively as a child, or simply never got at all.
It's also a chance to take those childhood happynesses and break them over my knee as I finally see just how g-awful they really were. Very little has fallen to that test, fortunately, although I always have been pretty decent at finding the good in others (although never so much in myself...). The grand apologist, go Me!!
On some other note --
This weekend (well, Sunday anyhow) turned out to be a visit to the imagination fodder of childhood. On a spur-of-the-moment visit to Best Buy Saturday I found something I've been waiting for since they first started churning out cartoon DVDs - Voltron:Defender of the Universe set 1 (Blue Lion box). Yeah, I know (now) that it's regurgitated Japanese anime; the story was choppy; the voice acting was crappy (some more than others). I don't care. Even hearing again the atrocious excuse for a Swedish accent they gave Sven, I remember how much I looked forward to this show. I still resent the princess for 'stealing' Sven's place. The morning commute was spent in part musing over the 5 episodes I've rewatched so far, filling in all the things the show skipped over, all the reasons behind the actions. Remembering why I had such a 'thing' for Sven, when he's gone in 5 eps. What can I say, I have a real thing for the reluctant hero, the guy who just does what needs doing, no matter how painful he knows it's going to be. Not that they're *smart* about it... (Yeah, I'll hold off the big evil witch all alone while you get help, no matter that she's capable of eating me for breakfast. And I'll do it by standing here and letting her cast spells without even *trying* to disrupt her... Meh.) And he's the tragic figure, too, shipped off to recover from a near fatal wound, only to be (as I recall) attacked and captured there. And the fertile dark-minded child was more than able to fill in the blanks of that scenario. The broken, human almost-hero. ::shrug:: When I couldn't find Battle of the Planets any more, this was my cartoon of choice. Did okay, for the time.
Later that night, Adrian stumbles over the Ion station and Battlestar Galactica (old school - I'm not a fan of the new one).
5 eps in a row, and we certainly didn't see all of any of them (the Simpsons was on, after all!) But Oh! did I not realize how well I knew these. Without even paying a lot of attention I realized that Ion (or someone) was editing the episodes - Apollo was supposed to draw Adama's attention to the fact that he was sending Serena (Apollo's squeeze-to-be) off to become a Viper pilot, and it never happened. There was some Boxey/Muffet stuff I 'm pretty sure too, but I can't say I missed it. I can't quote this stuff, but I know when it's off, I guess. Another place where, no matter the shortcomings of the base material, I took the stories to heart and ran with them. I know there were (are) a lot of people who thought Battlestar was the Christian bogarting of sci-fi, ripping off the Star Wars phenomenon - and ships - and getting all preachy with their Lost Tribes and starry prophesies. I always saw a great what-if story. What if the Egyptians and some of the other ancients really were the remnants of a previously advanced civilization? What if we took elements of all these ancient cultures, the iconography and imagery and words they created, and used them to extrapolate the people they might have come from so many galaxies and years away? It wasn't so much Christian reference as taking a creation myth and using it as your framework to create and build on. And, until Star Wars gets its own TV serial, Galactica can have the ships. Vipers were so frickin' COOL!! Actually, the Cylon ships were too. I just...I don't know. Again, Battlestar was just a wonderful thing to hang my dreamings on. Heroes of circumstance, rising to meet the crap-ass odds they're handed, no matter how futile it seemed, no matter that death and stupidity is one launch away. Well, and I had a crush on Starbuck, but... Face it, a *lot* of chicks dug both the lead actors (Mom had a thing for Richard Hatch, as I recall) and in my defense I was -- what, 8? That's gotta count for something. OR at least it may explain why I was screwed up from such an early age.
I dunno. It's not so much that i want to relive my childhood - it had its moments, but really... It's just that there *were* some good bits, and I like havign the opportunity to revisit them and see if things were better or worse than I recall, see if some of the same magic is there still, and maybe come to consciously realize things that I either took for granted or instinctively as a child, or simply never got at all.
It's also a chance to take those childhood happynesses and break them over my knee as I finally see just how g-awful they really were. Very little has fallen to that test, fortunately, although I always have been pretty decent at finding the good in others (although never so much in myself...). The grand apologist, go Me!!