drive by post
1. Holy crap I've been working a lot in the last few weeks. And by that I mean working in addition to my full-time job. In the last 2 weeks in my spare time I've:
* pitched 2 articles to two different editors
* written a total of 3 articles, each for a different online venue
* written and submitted a thesis proposal + met with my advisor
As I spent the past 2 weekends working non-stop (why do you write like you're running out of time OK I'll show myself out), this weekend was, by design dedicated to absolute idleness. I mean 3 articles all for venues that are not my journal were... x____x I had to do research for each of them, I had to work with the editors and submit several drafts, and it's still not over!
Anyway, the weekend was just... lying in bed, reading fic, watching shows, eating food, listening to Hamilton. No obligations, no deadlines, no sense of "OK I'll rest for a bit and then I have to..."
I think it took 2 days of detox for me to merely realize how tired I was but. It was definitely necessary, and I don't regret the break one bit.
2. Of course, who knows when any of the above mentioned articles will be published. I mean they all will be, eventually, but it sucks that I can't really say anything until they're out and it's not up to me when that'll be.
Similarly, the thesis submission went great in that I submitted it and my adviser approved, but the next draft of that proposal is due at the end of the month and I... need to do a shit ton of work before then /o\ At least I genuinely do have the nicest thesis adviser on planet Earth, jfc. He was so adorable and encouraging! His research interests and mine don't align at all, and I had to twist myself into a pretzel to get him, but as long as I had to pick someone with vastly different interests, he's a pretty great guy to end up with.
In other news, periodic reminder that I have an ~official pro twitter~ at
berlin_marina, and I mainly use it to post cool links I come across and talk about my original writing projects.
2. Anyway, speaking of fic - I've been reading
emungere's Hannibal longfics over and over (and over) again. Each time I feel like I know the stories too well and need a break, go read some other (really highly recced, really excellent) author, and quickly feel like I need my emungere stuff back and go reread Ladders, Blackbird or Taken for Rubies yet again.
(There was a point when I was reading Consenting to Dream before bed, only managing a few chapters before falling asleep, so every night it was like: today Hannibal bought Will a scarf, today Hannibal bought Will some gloves, today Hannibal bought Will a hat... and I WASN'T EVEN COMPLAINING. Yes, give me just a short story of one character buying the other a scarf! This author is AMAZING.)
I haven't even branched out to her other fic, guys. Her longfics are just this... place of comfort and joy and wonderfulness and I want to keep rereading them forever.
3. Speaking of shows, I watched about 7 episodes of iZombie.
I am... puzzled how people kept up with this show and why. I mean it's not offensive to my senses or my intelligence, which means it's perfect as sort of background noise, but it's literally... I don't understand what about it is supposed to be interesting. Like, at all. Unless one is super into zombie tropes or mystery solving (I am into neither).
I keep trying to figure out why it's so blah, but haven't been able to put my finger on it yet. I enjoy all the side characters, I greatly enjoy Ravi even though ~actual cinnamon roll~ characters are really, really not my thing (never liked Willow, or Foggy from Daredevil or any of those types of characters) I'm really appreciating how they decided to take the handsome straight white guy character and give him the really gross, fucked up arc usually reserved for female characters in superhero shows (that's actually the one subversive element I have trouble reconciling with how blah the rest of this show is). I love that the only other white man character is the villain.
But I just... For the first few episodes I was like "am I... supposed to care about Liv's drama? Because 'Felicity' was more engaging than this and no one on that show was a zombie..." Like, when we meet her she already has a steady job, she's figured out her relationship stuff, she has a steady supply of brains, her family and friends all accept her into their lives like normal, there's no threat ever of her being exposed as a zombie so... WHAT IS THE ACTUAL CONFLICT. What the fuck am I supposed to care about? I don't care about episodic murder plots, so...
And then after about 4 episodes they remembered to start giving Liv character development except... the writing is just really bad, honestly. Really, really bad. Veronica Mars was a character with flaws - she had particular blind spots, she was prone to make bad decisions under particular circumstances, everything about her stemmed from things that had happened to her, from the people who raised her, etc. It all added up and made sense.
With Liv, they make her this insufferable hypocrite/idiot who's like "OH MY GOD ZOMBIES KILL PEOPLE FOR THEIR BRAINS" as if that's something totally out of left field, as if she isn't an extreme exception for having a job at a morgue, as if she couldn't predict that when a shady asshole drug dealer comes asking for her help to get brains and she refuses he'll probably turn to some shady shit to get what he wants. I mean, he might have started killing whether she helped him or not, but let's not pretend this is something she could walk away from with a clean conscience.
Then she decides to kill the villain after realizing his fucked up scheme of killing homeless kids, but has a Batman moment of ~oh no if I kill him I'm a killer too~ like, first of all, HE IS ALREADY DEAD, the moral dilemma doesn't really apply here, second of all if he's allowed to live literally more innocent people will die (unlike Batman, Liv doesn't even have the option of putting this guy in prison, there is literally NOTHING BUT DEATH that will stop him) and finally - I've seen The 100 do this plot on a bigger scale, with a female character, and do it much, much, much better. (The 100 has actually really spoiled me for shows like this.)
And FINALLY Liv decides to let her ex-boyfriend commit himself to a mental hospital ("for a few weeks, because it's all he can afford") because his life has been completely fucked up by zombies and he doesn't know zombies exist, and she decides to keep this from him in a plot that... only makes sense if we're trying to paint Liv as the same kind of asshole that male superheroes often are. Which would be fine? But the show keeps pretending Liv is not a massive selfish asshole and I really cannot buy that at all.
I would see all of this differently if I didn't have Veronica Mars in front of my eyes, I admit. Veronica was an asshole sometimes, she was insensitive, she made decisions on behalf of people, sometimes to their detriment, she kept secrets from the people who loved her the most, she took on more than she could chew. She made a lot of mistakes, some of them because she wasn't good at a particular kind of emotional interaction, and it made her read people and situations wrong. Sometimes she acted on social bias and had to pay for it. Sometimes she thought she could force people to feel or do something, and she was wrong.
But all of that made Veronica who she was. It was accounted for, it was part of her, it was consistent and logical. With Liv it's just... a bunch of traits thrown together out of nowhere. She's Sydney Bristow without the dead mom and weirdly intense dad, she's Veronica without any of the trauma, she's every bland, blank slate YA heroine (even though iZombie is not technically YA) who feels bad about murder because ~murder is bad~ and tries to have ~a normal life~ in spite of her powers and just... sigh. I'm going to keep watching this show because there's nothing else and it's not offensive to me (rare!) and I'm going to grumble my way through it unless SOMETHING improves.
comments on Dreamwidth
* pitched 2 articles to two different editors
* written a total of 3 articles, each for a different online venue
* written and submitted a thesis proposal + met with my advisor
As I spent the past 2 weekends working non-stop (why do you write like you're running out of time OK I'll show myself out), this weekend was, by design dedicated to absolute idleness. I mean 3 articles all for venues that are not my journal were... x____x I had to do research for each of them, I had to work with the editors and submit several drafts, and it's still not over!
Anyway, the weekend was just... lying in bed, reading fic, watching shows, eating food, listening to Hamilton. No obligations, no deadlines, no sense of "OK I'll rest for a bit and then I have to..."
I think it took 2 days of detox for me to merely realize how tired I was but. It was definitely necessary, and I don't regret the break one bit.
2. Of course, who knows when any of the above mentioned articles will be published. I mean they all will be, eventually, but it sucks that I can't really say anything until they're out and it's not up to me when that'll be.
Similarly, the thesis submission went great in that I submitted it and my adviser approved, but the next draft of that proposal is due at the end of the month and I... need to do a shit ton of work before then /o\ At least I genuinely do have the nicest thesis adviser on planet Earth, jfc. He was so adorable and encouraging! His research interests and mine don't align at all, and I had to twist myself into a pretzel to get him, but as long as I had to pick someone with vastly different interests, he's a pretty great guy to end up with.
In other news, periodic reminder that I have an ~official pro twitter~ at
berlin_marina, and I mainly use it to post cool links I come across and talk about my original writing projects.
2. Anyway, speaking of fic - I've been reading
emungere's Hannibal longfics over and over (and over) again. Each time I feel like I know the stories too well and need a break, go read some other (really highly recced, really excellent) author, and quickly feel like I need my emungere stuff back and go reread Ladders, Blackbird or Taken for Rubies yet again.
(There was a point when I was reading Consenting to Dream before bed, only managing a few chapters before falling asleep, so every night it was like: today Hannibal bought Will a scarf, today Hannibal bought Will some gloves, today Hannibal bought Will a hat... and I WASN'T EVEN COMPLAINING. Yes, give me just a short story of one character buying the other a scarf! This author is AMAZING.)
I haven't even branched out to her other fic, guys. Her longfics are just this... place of comfort and joy and wonderfulness and I want to keep rereading them forever.
3. Speaking of shows, I watched about 7 episodes of iZombie.
I am... puzzled how people kept up with this show and why. I mean it's not offensive to my senses or my intelligence, which means it's perfect as sort of background noise, but it's literally... I don't understand what about it is supposed to be interesting. Like, at all. Unless one is super into zombie tropes or mystery solving (I am into neither).
I keep trying to figure out why it's so blah, but haven't been able to put my finger on it yet. I enjoy all the side characters, I greatly enjoy Ravi even though ~actual cinnamon roll~ characters are really, really not my thing (never liked Willow, or Foggy from Daredevil or any of those types of characters) I'm really appreciating how they decided to take the handsome straight white guy character and give him the really gross, fucked up arc usually reserved for female characters in superhero shows (that's actually the one subversive element I have trouble reconciling with how blah the rest of this show is). I love that the only other white man character is the villain.
But I just... For the first few episodes I was like "am I... supposed to care about Liv's drama? Because 'Felicity' was more engaging than this and no one on that show was a zombie..." Like, when we meet her she already has a steady job, she's figured out her relationship stuff, she has a steady supply of brains, her family and friends all accept her into their lives like normal, there's no threat ever of her being exposed as a zombie so... WHAT IS THE ACTUAL CONFLICT. What the fuck am I supposed to care about? I don't care about episodic murder plots, so...
And then after about 4 episodes they remembered to start giving Liv character development except... the writing is just really bad, honestly. Really, really bad. Veronica Mars was a character with flaws - she had particular blind spots, she was prone to make bad decisions under particular circumstances, everything about her stemmed from things that had happened to her, from the people who raised her, etc. It all added up and made sense.
With Liv, they make her this insufferable hypocrite/idiot who's like "OH MY GOD ZOMBIES KILL PEOPLE FOR THEIR BRAINS" as if that's something totally out of left field, as if she isn't an extreme exception for having a job at a morgue, as if she couldn't predict that when a shady asshole drug dealer comes asking for her help to get brains and she refuses he'll probably turn to some shady shit to get what he wants. I mean, he might have started killing whether she helped him or not, but let's not pretend this is something she could walk away from with a clean conscience.
Then she decides to kill the villain after realizing his fucked up scheme of killing homeless kids, but has a Batman moment of ~oh no if I kill him I'm a killer too~ like, first of all, HE IS ALREADY DEAD, the moral dilemma doesn't really apply here, second of all if he's allowed to live literally more innocent people will die (unlike Batman, Liv doesn't even have the option of putting this guy in prison, there is literally NOTHING BUT DEATH that will stop him) and finally - I've seen The 100 do this plot on a bigger scale, with a female character, and do it much, much, much better. (The 100 has actually really spoiled me for shows like this.)
And FINALLY Liv decides to let her ex-boyfriend commit himself to a mental hospital ("for a few weeks, because it's all he can afford") because his life has been completely fucked up by zombies and he doesn't know zombies exist, and she decides to keep this from him in a plot that... only makes sense if we're trying to paint Liv as the same kind of asshole that male superheroes often are. Which would be fine? But the show keeps pretending Liv is not a massive selfish asshole and I really cannot buy that at all.
I would see all of this differently if I didn't have Veronica Mars in front of my eyes, I admit. Veronica was an asshole sometimes, she was insensitive, she made decisions on behalf of people, sometimes to their detriment, she kept secrets from the people who loved her the most, she took on more than she could chew. She made a lot of mistakes, some of them because she wasn't good at a particular kind of emotional interaction, and it made her read people and situations wrong. Sometimes she acted on social bias and had to pay for it. Sometimes she thought she could force people to feel or do something, and she was wrong.
But all of that made Veronica who she was. It was accounted for, it was part of her, it was consistent and logical. With Liv it's just... a bunch of traits thrown together out of nowhere. She's Sydney Bristow without the dead mom and weirdly intense dad, she's Veronica without any of the trauma, she's every bland, blank slate YA heroine (even though iZombie is not technically YA) who feels bad about murder because ~murder is bad~ and tries to have ~a normal life~ in spite of her powers and just... sigh. I'm going to keep watching this show because there's nothing else and it's not offensive to me (rare!) and I'm going to grumble my way through it unless SOMETHING improves.
comments on Dreamwidth