I have a mindfuck kink too and been enjoying the show a lot. Can't say I'm hooked or crazy about it but I look forward to it every week. As for the characters, I don't necessarily like them but I find most of them interesting, even the really unlikeable ones, and that's enough for me. Anyway, it was nice to see a Dollhouse post on my flist. :) (There hardly have been any!)
About the mindfuck. The scenes that highlight the dolls' vulnerability and delusions really get me, and that's the draw for me, I think. Like safecracker!Sierra demanding her briefcase full of money, and DeWitt playing along. Or CDC!Victor outranking Dominic, and him playing along. Those scenes in particular... it is so sick. The chair exchange ("did I fall asleep? etc") would be too, I think, if they weren't so played.
I want to say, this is a COLOSSAL MINDFUCK. You are PLAYTHINGS. Your cockiness is laughable. Your understanding of reality is wrong and EVERYONE KNOWS IT BUT YOU.
That's it for me, that grotesque twisty thing right there.
I thought Nolan was somebody we were supposed to remember from one of her earlier assignments or something? I didn't get it. But according to this wiki, this was his first appearance. I guess the show just did a poor job introducing and explaining him.
Hee, everybody calls him Helo, and I'm all bewildered, WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, GUYS, HUH? I've never seen BSG but I understand it's a fantastic show.
From what we've been shown so far of November and Victor, and from the pattern they've set up with the other dolls, I agree with you about the grief and the PTSD. It seems that everybody's ability to consent has been either wrenched from them or eroded away.
"I'm missing the point of this show and with everyone being a blank slate (with the exception of Ballard, the handlers, the people in charge) I have no one to empathize with."
YES, exactly this. I want it to be better than it is, but I don't know if that's even possible, given the premise.
It's weird - I am still watching Dollhouse, even though I can't really say that I enjoy it or am really even find it very thought-provoking. There have been some interesting moments along the way, but somehow . . . I don't think I'm the viewer they're trying to talk to.
I seem to be watching it for the same reason I sometimes get hooked on fic about sexual slavery, even if I don't care for the writing. Which is the same reason I couldn't put down the Twilight books. Because wow, this thing is fucked. The characters don't have choices; their choices are jokes; the joke's on them, and they don't even know it.
The inappropriate starches were a highlight for me, though. ;)
It was...okay for the first five episodes. There were things there that interested me, but none of them were prominent in the episode, just throwaway, background information. From episode 6, the things that I do find interesting - issues of consent, free will, memory and identity - are foregrounded, and now I'm really enjoying it.
The thing that I'm finding really, really creepy right now is that Boyd and Dr Saunders seem to know that Sierra didn't volunteer (however unwillingly or how deeply in trauma, see Echo and November) and yet they have no interest in helping her. I can see how someone could gloss over the slavery of the sort-of-volunteer Dolls, but Sierra is a different matter, at least from the information we have now.
I mentioned to yourlibrarian that I found it so odd that the first few episodes were self-contained assignments. (Heh, I was going to say "monster of the week", but that's not right. "John of the week"?) She understood it to be a network decision, so viewers could tune in at any point and catch up. Meh.
That is creepy. And we're supposed to find them sympathetic characters. Or at least more so than the other staff.
...Like Dominic, who's a complete villain, and whose apology to Echo was a parody of itself (as he was incapable of making it at the time, and she was incapable of hearing it), and creepy in a different way.
And they've made Echo and whatshisname-the-virus-guy culpable for their own slavery, being criminals, and that's creepy in a different different way.
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I said verse twice. Verseverse.
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Yeah, it's one of the few shows I'm keeping up with as it airs. I'm more current with it than I am with, say, Lost, and I LOVE Lost!
A post that I liked, that you might or might not find interesting: miriam_heddy on Mellie and "Hollywood fat"
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Thanks for the link! It was interesting, both the post and the comments. :)
And - the idea that anyone would consider Mellie fat boggles my mind.
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I want to say, this is a COLOSSAL MINDFUCK. You are PLAYTHINGS. Your cockiness is laughable. Your understanding of reality is wrong and EVERYONE KNOWS IT BUT YOU.
That's it for me, that grotesque twisty thing right there.
/ramble XD
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Hee, everybody calls him Helo, and I'm all bewildered, WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, GUYS, HUH? I've never seen BSG but I understand it's a fantastic show.
From what we've been shown so far of November and Victor, and from the pattern they've set up with the other dolls, I agree with you about the grief and the PTSD. It seems that everybody's ability to consent has been either wrenched from them or eroded away.
"I'm missing the point of this show and with everyone being a blank slate (with the exception of Ballard, the handlers, the people in charge) I have no one to empathize with."
YES, exactly this. I want it to be better than it is, but I don't know if that's even possible, given the premise.
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I seem to be watching it for the same reason I sometimes get hooked on fic about sexual slavery, even if I don't care for the writing. Which is the same reason I couldn't put down the Twilight books. Because wow, this thing is fucked. The characters don't have choices; their choices are jokes; the joke's on them, and they don't even know it.
The inappropriate starches were a highlight for me, though. ;)
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The thing that I'm finding really, really creepy right now is that Boyd and Dr Saunders seem to know that Sierra didn't volunteer (however unwillingly or how deeply in trauma, see Echo and November) and yet they have no interest in helping her. I can see how someone could gloss over the slavery of the sort-of-volunteer Dolls, but Sierra is a different matter, at least from the information we have now.
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That is creepy. And we're supposed to find them sympathetic characters. Or at least more so than the other staff.
...Like Dominic, who's a complete villain, and whose apology to Echo was a parody of itself (as he was incapable of making it at the time, and she was incapable of hearing it), and creepy in a different way.
And they've made Echo and whatshisname-the-virus-guy culpable for their own slavery, being criminals, and that's creepy in a different different way.
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