on rewatching things
Presumably we all have ebbs and flows of fannish activity, yes? My recent burst of creativity that resulted in the Daniel/Janet AU, the couple of reunion drabbles, and the Adama/Roslin fic has definitely ebbed, sadly before I got any substantial work done on either of the fics I really wanted to write (Teal'c or Chiana). When I get into these moods, writing fic is completely beyond me, as is responding to meta (which makes me particularly annoyed at the moment, because I feel like I have things to say about surrealphantast's post about writing Sam, but my brain just really isn't there). Often I don't even want to read new fic (it depends on the fic and the writer, but more often I'll bookmark for later). Instead, I tend to get repetitive in these times: I reread old, familiar fic, and I rewatch things.
Now I'm not usually a big rewatcher. I seldom rewatch movies, and the only of my TV shows I've rewatched in their entirety are X-Files and Farscape, though I've rewatched lots of individual episodes of SG-1 and The West Wing, as well. I'm currently in the middle of a third Farscape rewatch, but for whatever reason (okay, fairly obvious reasons) I couldn't face "Infinite Possibilities" last night, so I decided to rewatch the BSG miniseries instead, since I'd sort of been meaning to do that. (Gotta love it when the apocalypse is easier to deal with than IP!)
I was pleasantly surprised by the BSG miniseries this time around! Admittedly, I only sort of liked it the first time. I was slow warming up to BSG: for the miniseries through near the end of season 1, I was interested enough to keep watching, but not particularly enthralled. And then the end of season 1-beginning of season 2 arc pulled me in until I was very intellectually and aesthetically compelled by the show, but I still didn't really fall for the characters until around "Home" or even "Pegasus"-"Resurrection Ship." So the general fandom trend where the adoration starts to flag around that point is interesting to me. I mean, I complained about season 3, too--justifiably--but still. At any rate, I've been curious to rewatch now that the love is already there. And I think it will make me enjoy season 1 more. I also think that Chief and Boomer are going to kill me dead even more so now that I know what happens.
But this reaction has got me thinking about rewatching in general, and particularly rewatching very early episodes when the characters are young and unknowning. With Farscape, I feel like ultimately, the gains are worth the heartbreak--though maybe only barely. X-Files is an entirely different story. For me now, rewatching season 1 of X-Files is this litany of figuratively (and sometimes literally) yelling at Baby Scully to get the hell away from this crazy man!!! Because I feel like ultimately, they lose so much more than they gain, and it's hard knowing that and then watching them so innocent, before they've gotten in irreparably deep. (An aside: it suddenly occurs to me that I'm really thinking in terms of Aeryn's and Scully's respective arcs here--but my can't-do-meta-right-now brain can't quite process what that means about how I watch these shows, except that obviously Aeryn and Scully are my respective favorite characters. But we all knew that.)
BSG feels more like X-Files in that it can only go downhill from the beginning, and anything gained is small comfort salvaged from unthinkable tragedy. But unlike Scully, who totally could have left relatively unscathed at any point up until "Ascension"/"One Breath", the BSG characters have no choice. There's this sense of inevitability about the whole thing that's a bit oppressive; though there's also the weird part where we don't actually know the end yet.
If I weren't in a fannish ebb, I might try for a conclusion here. But my brain is really operating on the level of "take in information/react to information" and the "think about and process information" resources just aren't there. So I don't have a point, but that's probably okay. :)
Now I'm not usually a big rewatcher. I seldom rewatch movies, and the only of my TV shows I've rewatched in their entirety are X-Files and Farscape, though I've rewatched lots of individual episodes of SG-1 and The West Wing, as well. I'm currently in the middle of a third Farscape rewatch, but for whatever reason (okay, fairly obvious reasons) I couldn't face "Infinite Possibilities" last night, so I decided to rewatch the BSG miniseries instead, since I'd sort of been meaning to do that. (Gotta love it when the apocalypse is easier to deal with than IP!)
I was pleasantly surprised by the BSG miniseries this time around! Admittedly, I only sort of liked it the first time. I was slow warming up to BSG: for the miniseries through near the end of season 1, I was interested enough to keep watching, but not particularly enthralled. And then the end of season 1-beginning of season 2 arc pulled me in until I was very intellectually and aesthetically compelled by the show, but I still didn't really fall for the characters until around "Home" or even "Pegasus"-"Resurrection Ship." So the general fandom trend where the adoration starts to flag around that point is interesting to me. I mean, I complained about season 3, too--justifiably--but still. At any rate, I've been curious to rewatch now that the love is already there. And I think it will make me enjoy season 1 more. I also think that Chief and Boomer are going to kill me dead even more so now that I know what happens.
But this reaction has got me thinking about rewatching in general, and particularly rewatching very early episodes when the characters are young and unknowning. With Farscape, I feel like ultimately, the gains are worth the heartbreak--though maybe only barely. X-Files is an entirely different story. For me now, rewatching season 1 of X-Files is this litany of figuratively (and sometimes literally) yelling at Baby Scully to get the hell away from this crazy man!!! Because I feel like ultimately, they lose so much more than they gain, and it's hard knowing that and then watching them so innocent, before they've gotten in irreparably deep. (An aside: it suddenly occurs to me that I'm really thinking in terms of Aeryn's and Scully's respective arcs here--but my can't-do-meta-right-now brain can't quite process what that means about how I watch these shows, except that obviously Aeryn and Scully are my respective favorite characters. But we all knew that.)
BSG feels more like X-Files in that it can only go downhill from the beginning, and anything gained is small comfort salvaged from unthinkable tragedy. But unlike Scully, who totally could have left relatively unscathed at any point up until "Ascension"/"One Breath", the BSG characters have no choice. There's this sense of inevitability about the whole thing that's a bit oppressive; though there's also the weird part where we don't actually know the end yet.
If I weren't in a fannish ebb, I might try for a conclusion here. But my brain is really operating on the level of "take in information/react to information" and the "think about and process information" resources just aren't there. So I don't have a point, but that's probably okay. :)