entirely ruined her disposition with books

Hey, y'all! I hope you had a good Thanksgiving if you celebrate and a great weekend if you don't. I had amaaaaaazing food and lots of it, so I'm generally feeling pretty good. I also finished the very last episode of Friday Night Lights and cried like a baby, watched every aired episode of Happy Endings (which is fun! I like it!), and started The Walking Dead, which I have decided how I feel about yet, as much as I love post-apocalyptic stuff. Also I am slightly ahead on NaNo! So I will definitely be writing 50,000 words this year! Yay me!

And I'm thinking about what I'm thankful for, and I serendipitously ended up reading this article which is old but awesome and all about how Young People Today (Gens X and Y, apparently) are obsessed with Not Looking Stupid and so never want to Be Seen Caring Too Much, and you know what? I recognize that in a lot of people I know, especially my smarter real life friends. But reading it made me sad, thinking about what kind of a tiny life that must be, except then it made me think about the internet and all of y'all and I was reminded that there are a lot of people out there who Don't Care about Being Seen Caring Too Much and who just embrace being in love with things and being passionate and loving what they love and how I think that that's one of the more important things in life.

Which makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from John Green:

…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’

I'm thankful for fandom as a community. It can turn ugly, as we all know, but most of that ugliness comes from a place of Caring Too Much. And yes, we should all learn not to take things so seriously that shipping wars become the end of the world or we attack other people for liking a character we hate or vice-versa or whatever, yes learning those lessons is a good and necessary thing. But I think I'd rather flounder into a big mess because of Caring Too Much rather than just live my life so tepidly in a constant attempt not to be Mockable in any way. (BTW, there's a Happy Endings episode about that, and I loooooved it). I care, y'all. Those silly characters I reblog gifs of on my tumblr and write fic about? I love them so much that sometimes I feel like I'm going to just explode with the force of it. I really, really do. And I care about other things, too, like justice and kindness and basically just being a good person and trying to make life easier for other people if I can. And I don't care if that makes me Not Cool. I don't. I am a geek through-and-through, and you know what? I love that about myself, and I love that about y'all, and I love all of you for providing me with a place where I can just revel in that love whenever I want to. Fandom, to me, is a place where people love things and get excited about things and get upset about things and basically just scream at the universe that they are human and so they care. And how amazing is that?

Anyway, my apologies for being sappy, but y'all are awesome. ♥

So I’ve had some ~thoughts~ I’ve wanted to share, but I’ll go ahead and tell you that they aren’t unique—they’ve been verbalized many times before, and often by me. But I’ve been wanting for a long time to consolidate my thoughts on Reader Response Theory and fandom courtesy, and I might as well do it, right?

Caveat: this post contains spoilers through all of the episodes of Doctor Who that have been aired. DW isn’t the focus of this post, though, so if you want to skip over the paragraphs where I start talking about RTD and the Moff, you could probably do that and still get the gist of what’s going on here.


Let’s start with a quote:

And lastly, a note on how we engage with less than perfect source material. Unfortunately, there isn't that much out there that is perfect, or even close to it, and in the end we all pick and choose based on a combination of things we like and things we can put up with. We compartmentalise. Sometimes we enjoy elements of canon source even while we might simultaneously think there's a critical point to be made. Sometimes we deal with these issues enough in our offline life that we want to ignore it when we hit fandom. Sometimes it's because we deal with these issues so much in our offline life that we can't ignore it when it crops up in fandom. Sometimes we don't pick up it at all, or disagree when someone else argues that it's problematic. Sometimes we just don't want to engage that day, that month, or ever….

Mileage will vary a lot on everything I've covered. I hope it's clear from this post that I think that's totally okay, and sort of my point. Few things are perfect, and we love them anyway, and sometimes part of our loving them is critiquing them, and sometimes it isn't, and that's fine.

( cut for leeeeeeength )

I don't think I've talked about The Hour here yet, which is a TRAVESTY of the highest order, because this show is owning my soul right about now. I need to flail about it for a while and convince you to watch it, no?

I'm honestly in awe of the way that this show consistently gives me exactly what I want. It seems designed to make me a flaily mess of emotions. Everything about it is perfect and everything I want and just...there are no words for how much I'm loving it.

Anyway: new show, British, not airing here yet, but you should download it if you can because it is FLAWLESS. It's set, ostensibly, backstage at a new weekly BBC news show in 1956, and it's rich in historical detail and has fabulous, fabulous characters and the best acting and the best writing and the best production design and the best everything. It's a bit of a slow burn, in the best sense (BEST is the word to describe this show), so don't expect it to move super, super fast. But it builds the suspense this way, and I wouldn't change a thing.

( cut for the premise and character descriptions )


And now for the feelings portion of this post:

( cut for feeeeeelings! of the non-spoilery variety )



HERE BE SPOILERS, OKAY????

( cut for very, very flaily spoilers from all episodes aired )

Anyway: THIS SHOW IS THE BEST AT EVERYTHING AND I AM IN LOVE AND YOU SHOULD WATCH IT.

The. End.

Um, so I may actually be working on my HP rewrite-of-DH-epic? Let's not talk about it. And so basically all I have done the last week or so is eat sleep and breathe Harry Potter (except for a brief break today to watch The Hour which entirely won me over in one episode and OMG ROMOLA AND BEN. BENNNNNNNNNNNNN. Watch it). So I've accumulated a lot of thoughts and thought I might as well share. They are legion. I warn you.

( cut for leeeeeeeeeeength )

This is a movie pimp post.

Warning: This post contains gratuitous purple prose.

So my favorite movie is The Fall, by director/co-writer/visionary/freaking genius Tarsem Singh. The film was shot on 26 locations over 18 countries and took over 8 years to film, and Singh paid for the whole thing out-of-pocket because he believed in his vision so deeply.

The movie is the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen in my life. And that’s what people notice about it the first time they see it. It will make you want to travel. I seriously have to be careful about when I watch it because after I’m done I have such profound wanderlust that it makes me restless for a few days. It's a movie to restore your wonder in the world and its variety and beauty.

The plot, as far as it goes, is pretty simple. In a hospital in Los Angeles in the 1920s, a little girl named Alexandria (brilliantly played by Catinca Untaru) being treated for a broken arm wanders into another ward where she finds a bed-ridden man named Roy (played by Lee Pace, as if you needed another reason to watch this movie). They begin a tentative friendship, and Roy begins to tell Alexandria a story. He makes it up as he goes, and if you’re looking for a plot where everything has continuity and make sense, his story won’t be for you. Instead, it’s a story like most stories we make up for children—it rambles and sometimes contradicts itself and grows in the telling. It’s also ridiculous and fantastic and beautiful. Alexandria comes to visit Roy again and again and his story grows and so does their relationship. But Roy’s got a backstory of his own, as well as his own motives, and the movie takes turns you probably couldn’t have anticipated.

These images are, in my opinion, the key to understanding the movie.



When I was in college, the English department did movie nights, and I basically forced everyone to watch it (for the record, every single person loved it). Afterwards, I was talking to one of my professors, and he said, “I was a bit unclear on what he was trying to do with the film until I remembered the scene where the image of the horse outside came through the keyhole, and then I realized. This movie, honestly, isn’t at all about plot. It isn’t even really about characters. It’s a movie about movies. A story about stories.”

Exactly.

( cut for me waxing poetical in the most melodramatic of ways--but no spoilers )

Basically I have rediscovered my love of this show. And my kiiiiiids! MY KIIIIIDS! SO MUCH LOVE. And I have many, many thinky thoughts, though how original they are, I could not tell you. Probably I won’t say anything you didn’t already know or think or whatever, but I know that I, for one, really enjoy reading other people agreeing with me, so I’m posting. BEWARE HUGES BLOCKS OF TEXT.

( cut for ridiculous length )

Um, Ron’s been on my mind a lot lately. Because of my mad love for Rupert and how he pops up on my dashboard every five minutes and also because I’ve been reading loads of fic and watching DH1 over and over. And I’m basically exploding with love for the boy. I don’t even know. I have all these ~feelings~ about him and they aren’t organized or deep and there probably isn’t anything there other people haven’t seen and said a thousand times, but I thought I’d share them for ohwaluvusbab and redsilverchains and mollivanders, who love him, too. RON STAN FOR LIFE.

Also, this is all out of my head because the last time I read the books? Was when they came out. So it's possible I got some canon confused here? Just as a caveat.

( rambling at length )

I’m fixing to do that fandom-year-in-review meme, so I figured I might as well give you my ~thoughts~ on Misfits before I randomly include it on that meme and y’all are all like, “Wait, she watches Misfits?”

Actually, yes I do. I’m always about a week behind for some reason (I’m planning on watching the Christmas special tonight SO NO SPOILERS PLEASE), but yes I am watching it.

And it’s good. Very good. Well written, great characters, interesting premises, etc. I mean, I love the idea of these bunch of losers getting super powers and finding out they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Flat-out great premise for a show.

( spoilers for the first two seasons sans Xmas special )