House finale, with Spuffy interruptions
Overall, I've really liked this season, with House actually trying to change, and discovering that changing yourself is really, really hard, and it may not come with immediate rewards. You know, if this had happened a couple of seasons ago, I might have been fine with it. But in the last few years, House has treated Cuddy like shit. This season he's made a real effort to clean up his act, and that's laudable and all... but over all, he still treats Cuddy pretty shabbily. He can make the big dramatic gesture, but day to day? Not so great. So to have her turn up at the last minute and announce that she really does wuv him and she's dumping her pretty awesome fiance so he doesn't have to DUN DUN DUN go back on drugs (yeah, she says that's his choice, but his choice would have been a lot more meaningful if it had come before she told him she loved him) is... disappointing. (Though I do think that structurally speaking, it's a really nice reprise of his hallucinatory scenes with her in the previous season's finale.)
I've never really understood why some people are anti-shippers, but House/Cuddy almost gets me there. And the thing is, this is a ship which I think had the potential to be awesome, if the writers hadn't made Cuddy House's long-suffering doormat for so long. Watching the last couple of seasons of House, the writers are obviously inviting us to sympathize with House and root for Cuddy to fall into his arms, while at the same time having House treat Cuddy like crap. And we're just supposed to forgive him everything because he's in pain. And it's like, yes, he is in pain, and that's awful. But he also causes a lot of pain, and that's never really addressed, because all his friends just keep coming back for more, because he's the super-special Doctor House. And yes, he has made an effort to change recently... but is that effort anywhere near enough?
It all makes me think about why I ship Spuffy, and why I've grown more and more disenchanted with the canon ship. You can choose for yourself which one of them corresponds to Spike and which to Buffy. A case could be made either way. I don't think myself that there is a perfect correspondence, since the House/Cuddy relationship is a lot more unbalanced in every respect than the Spike/Buffy one was, but fandom, I've learned, is all about mapping your ship obsessions onto every other show in the universe.
Bottom line is I'm not feeling the Spuffy love at the moment. Which is inconvenient given that Seasonal Spuffy started this weekend and I still have zilch. Normally I'm pretty good at keeping my version of the characters separate from the canon versions in my head, but there are times when it's harder than others, and this is one of those times. Anyway, if I don't come up with something for seasonal Spuffy, the terrorists win, or something like that. Take that, psyche!
In other news, I won runner up for best drabble at absenceoflight. Thanks, guys. That's not a site where I ever would have expected to be nominated, much less win anything.
I made an experiment of leaving Bo loose in the house while we were at work last week - it turns out he is crate trained, he just doesn't really like it that much, and I would like to have him inside during the day once it gets hot. All in all he's done very well, though he did decide that the cats' pill pockets were obviously a bag of dog treats we'd left on the counter just for him. I need to get some pictures of him and Silly - both of them were lying right next to each other on the bed this morning:
BO: I'm on the bed! IN THE SAME ROOM WITH THE PEOPLE! YAY!!!! :tongueloll:
SILHOUETTE: Stupid dog.
It's really funny - when Silly used to get out into the back yard, Sam would act like this was a strange cat he'd never seen before, and chase him all out, and Silly would run like hell. Bo just trots alongside him, obviously hoping Silly will stick around and play. Silly doesn't run, but just sort of speeds up in a "Dear God, please no one assume that I'm willingly associating with a dog" kind of way until he can slip through the fence into the front yard.
Also, I got a new computer. I hadn't intended to do so quite this soon, but last week I discovered that Silly had barfed one too many times on the keyboard of my older laptop, and it was kaput. (It's still usable with a plug-in keyboard and mouse, but...) And then Saturday we walked into Costco and lo and behold there was one of the three models I'd been debating over on their website. So I am now the proud and broke owner of this. The monitor is humungous! It just barely fits into the monitor cubby on my desk - I actually have to tilt it a little sideways.
Work is slightly less hectic. (Many thanks to rackham whose timely Access assistance contributed greatly to the drop in the hectic level.) I took today off and got a few errands run - new driver's license, dropped off my application for a copy of my birth certificate, made an appointment to apply for a passport, all in preparation for November. It's funny; my boss keeps assuring me that I'm doing a good job, but I still have a hard time internalizing that. He actually used the words 'phenomenal' and 'they all love you.' To which Self-Critical Paranoid Barb mutters, "You're just saying that to be nice!"