Five things for a Tuesday night
1) Happy Birthday, 
skieswideopen,
jendavis, and
par_avion! A very belated happy birthday to dlgood! Sorry, Dave, I totally missed it! *facepalm*
2) I have been mainlining Season 3 of due South. I actually own Seasons 1 and 2, bought on sale a couple of years ago, but instead of finishing all the RayV episodes first, I jumped right into RayK to see what all the fuss was about. It's a sweet, quirky show--not gripping, exactly, but I like the characters. And it's wonderful to go back through old archives and rec lists to discover stories and rediscover authors! Heck, I actually read a cesperanza fic the other day!
3) My harrypotterbang fic is not going to be completed by the deadline. It's a huge blow, because I worked my butt off on this one until Christmas holidays derailed my focus. I really thought this would be the one, the Big Bang. Well, maybe I can pick it up again eventually and finish it off, even if it's not for a Big Bang.
4) Dear Criminal Minds fandom: What is up with all the Reid-slash? He's young, geeky, and a genius, and therefore slashable? Don't get me wrong, I like Reid as a character just fine--I just don't see the sex appeal. What's wrong with some nice, plotty, team-centric gen fic?
(Actually, Reid also gets way more than his fair share of gen fic. Guys, I can't be the only person sick to death of fandom's focus on geek characters, can I?)
5) Somewhat related to #4: Five Things TV Writers Apparently Believe About Smart People, over on Cracked.com, which takes apart the whole "genius character" trend in television. Sorry, I don't remember who I ganked the link from.
But the whole point of pursuing a career in a profession made up of the smartest of the smart people is that you find the boring stuff exciting. That is, you enjoy the things things that are boring to other people -- the silent, steady crawl toward discovery, the long, painful untangling of a mystery, one thread at a time, over half of your life. You know, the parts that Hollywood sweeps under the rug for fear that you'd be bored out of your skull watching it.
There's nothing wrong with making genius sexy -- the scientists and teachers and analysts should be pop culture heroes. But Hollywood has done the opposite -- instead of giving us characters who are super smart yet likeable and heroic, they've given us the same old sexy rogue action heroes we've been watching since the old West days, then threw in the, "Oh, also he's a supergenius" thing as an aside, as if it's as minor as pointing out the guy can play the guitar.
I love competent characters, LOVE them, but the article makes a good point how the abilities of our heroic characters have been amped up to unbelievable levels and it's doesn't necessarily do our story-telling any favours. One of the reasons I love Duncan MacLeod so damn much, and one of the things I find most interesting and believable about Highlander--I mean, for a show that's about Immortals running around chopping off people's heads in a murderous Game--is that none of the characters are unrealistically talented.
Duncan is one of the best swordsmen in the world, but he got that way through constant, constant training and study and practice and fights to the death. And he applies this kind of dedication to more than just his sword skills: he learned to read at the age of 70, he learned the martial arts of many different cultures, he learned art appreciation, he learned to shoot a gun, to dance flamenco, to use a computer, to run a newspaper, to drive a car, to speak other languages. None of these skills were gained overnight, or in the course of six months. It took hard work and patience and, most importantly, time. That's the difference between Immortals and mortals: they have time to do all these things, to travel and read and constantly, constantly reinvent themselves.
Spencer Reid, Daniel Jackson, and others characters with multiple PhDs? I love them, I do, but with so many of these geniuses out there, I just stop being impressed and start longing for normal, hardworking, down-to-earth guys.
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comment(s)
skieswideopen,
jendavis, and
par_avion! A very belated happy birthday to dlgood! Sorry, Dave, I totally missed it! *facepalm*
2) I have been mainlining Season 3 of due South. I actually own Seasons 1 and 2, bought on sale a couple of years ago, but instead of finishing all the RayV episodes first, I jumped right into RayK to see what all the fuss was about. It's a sweet, quirky show--not gripping, exactly, but I like the characters. And it's wonderful to go back through old archives and rec lists to discover stories and rediscover authors! Heck, I actually read a cesperanza fic the other day!
3) My harrypotterbang fic is not going to be completed by the deadline. It's a huge blow, because I worked my butt off on this one until Christmas holidays derailed my focus. I really thought this would be the one, the Big Bang. Well, maybe I can pick it up again eventually and finish it off, even if it's not for a Big Bang.
4) Dear Criminal Minds fandom: What is up with all the Reid-slash? He's young, geeky, and a genius, and therefore slashable? Don't get me wrong, I like Reid as a character just fine--I just don't see the sex appeal. What's wrong with some nice, plotty, team-centric gen fic?
(Actually, Reid also gets way more than his fair share of gen fic. Guys, I can't be the only person sick to death of fandom's focus on geek characters, can I?)
5) Somewhat related to #4: Five Things TV Writers Apparently Believe About Smart People, over on Cracked.com, which takes apart the whole "genius character" trend in television. Sorry, I don't remember who I ganked the link from.
But the whole point of pursuing a career in a profession made up of the smartest of the smart people is that you find the boring stuff exciting. That is, you enjoy the things things that are boring to other people -- the silent, steady crawl toward discovery, the long, painful untangling of a mystery, one thread at a time, over half of your life. You know, the parts that Hollywood sweeps under the rug for fear that you'd be bored out of your skull watching it.
There's nothing wrong with making genius sexy -- the scientists and teachers and analysts should be pop culture heroes. But Hollywood has done the opposite -- instead of giving us characters who are super smart yet likeable and heroic, they've given us the same old sexy rogue action heroes we've been watching since the old West days, then threw in the, "Oh, also he's a supergenius" thing as an aside, as if it's as minor as pointing out the guy can play the guitar.
I love competent characters, LOVE them, but the article makes a good point how the abilities of our heroic characters have been amped up to unbelievable levels and it's doesn't necessarily do our story-telling any favours. One of the reasons I love Duncan MacLeod so damn much, and one of the things I find most interesting and believable about Highlander--I mean, for a show that's about Immortals running around chopping off people's heads in a murderous Game--is that none of the characters are unrealistically talented.
Duncan is one of the best swordsmen in the world, but he got that way through constant, constant training and study and practice and fights to the death. And he applies this kind of dedication to more than just his sword skills: he learned to read at the age of 70, he learned the martial arts of many different cultures, he learned art appreciation, he learned to shoot a gun, to dance flamenco, to use a computer, to run a newspaper, to drive a car, to speak other languages. None of these skills were gained overnight, or in the course of six months. It took hard work and patience and, most importantly, time. That's the difference between Immortals and mortals: they have time to do all these things, to travel and read and constantly, constantly reinvent themselves.
Spencer Reid, Daniel Jackson, and others characters with multiple PhDs? I love them, I do, but with so many of these geniuses out there, I just stop being impressed and start longing for normal, hardworking, down-to-earth guys.
I prefer comments on Dreamwidth |
comment(s)