Long Weekend
Jul. 5th, 2005 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowI've been a little out of touch - busy and lazy and the weird combination of both that lead to no work getting done, but much relaxation. Much much needed relaxation.
I've been mainlining Doctor Who thanks to the fabulous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
veritykindle and enjoying it thoroughly. However, Katya my darling, the DVD's with three episodes won't play the third episode so I'm missing eps 3, 6 and 9.
I, well, my crush on Christopher Eccleston and the Doctor has far surpassed normalcy. He's just so very... shameless, and heartbroken and delighted and crazy and manic. I am utterly in love. I am also highly amused that the credits are using the Farscape font and that the good doctor had clearly encountered John Crichton along the way because he was playing with the silver ball from BoD in Father's Day.
I've also finally caught up with the rest of the world in terms of popular entertainment, taking in Batman Begins, Howl's Moving Castle and War of the Worlds. I give them all a thumbs up.
I think I've talked about the musical version that my dad had, and the utter terror it evoked in me. It scared me so much that I couldn't be in the room when the record played, would have nightmares at the thought of the pictures in the libretto. And now I own that record, holding on to that sort of fear and the awe that I feel at the scope of that fear in the face of what was behind it.
So I went to the Chinese to see War of the World's by myself in an effort to exorcise some of those old fears. Unsurprisingly, the movie scared the hell out of me. The same things that frightened me as a child are hard wired in my brain, scared me still - the people being destroyed, just dissappearing into ash, the haunting sounds of the tripods, of the martians, the utter fear and hopelessness of the people at the mercy of these invaders, the red algae and the defeat, the fact that it was nothing we did to save ourselves, just the basic building blocks of life. I think Spielberg did a fabulous job creating menace, creating a scope of destruction and fear and helplessness while still layering in this very uneasy family. And while I think he may be losing his mind, Tom Cruise was very good. Thing that kills me, Dakota Fanning was even better. She's somehow managing to negotiate past the precocious child actor thing to portray real emotion, real child based emotion.
Batman was fabulous in an entirely different way, dark and sharp and scary, making me want to read Batman, to write about Bruce Wayne and this life he is trying to lead. I loved that the scenes of Batman doing his work, taking care of criminals was palpably frightening, that it felt like watching a hunt and even though I knew that the people being attacked were supposed to be the enemy, my hands clenched the seat beside me and I held my breath until it was finished.
***
And since I spent much of the weekend at the movies, a little mid Terra Firma drabble. I've a love/hate relationship with fics that show me aliens partaking in human life. If it's done well, I eat it up, and if it's done poorly, I still happily read and then grimace, so I'm forgiving myself the construct.
My Life in Pictures
The sound pushes you back into the seat, cold and loud and all encompassing, that low hum that wraps and warps and fills up the theater and it's so fucking familiar that you grip the armrest, praise George Lucas, offer up thanks that the sound still makes you think of Star Wars and starry eyes and starring in your own life. It sounds like the beginning of a universe, a world of infinite variety and jest. It doesn't ring out like reality, bangs and purrs instead like a beautiful, plastic future. A perfect sound.
The prowler sounds like a scratched LP in comparison, harsh and grainy and sputtering, firing up like a distillation burn, like a spiral of lashing pain and power, still a little thrilling after all these cycles. Moya sounds like a lover's gasp, a child's breath, a hitch and a gasp and a sigh of kind disapproval.
Aeryn doesn't flinch at the noise, at the way this giant theater fills up like a flooded pool, sonic waves soaking into the skin of the people surrounding you. Your mouth pulls down and you hate your own pettiness, hate that you wanted to see her wince.
You took her to the theater because she said she wanted to do something normal, demanded in that hard tight voice that you show her something normal, something human, something you've discussed a thousand times or more before carbon scoring and hetch drives and maddium steel became materials that fell more trippingly from the tongue than celluloid and picture tubes.
The morning was clean, full of cutting words and blue sky and dark hurt in grey eyes. You lost track of the other alien life forms, your rainbow coalition family, as you and Aeryn stood in front of the pool slinging stinging verbs at each other like barbs and pulse blasts and when you ran out of false ammo, you stood there with your hands clenched and looked to her to offer you a way out. You're good at getting in, but she's always been better at the getaway. You've always needed her to get out. You think somewhere in that hash of prose and prosidy, there was mention of your other, better, deader self and the false promises he'd made about this blue green world. Or that could have been the movie you see in your head on endless repeat, the John Crichton variety hour where you promise to take the love of your life home and you die a vicious, radioactive death instead.
"Show me something… normal." She said, throwing it at you like a dare, a wish, a taunt. "Your normal. You owe me that."
You won't say that you don't owe her anything. Some lies stay too long, stink like dead fish, linger.
The theater is cold, air conditioning cranked and your shoulder starts to ache halfway through the movie. You don't know if it's tension or old wounds or the woman sitting at your side, knee pressed restlessly against yours in the cramped aisle. She's wearing jeans and a small clipped smile that she's learned to put on in front of humans. They don't know what to do, stare anyway, don't smile back but there isn't any joy in Aeryn's eyes and you don't know if she cares anyway. You think she probably does. You know she'll never say it out loud.
The pictures flicker on the screen and you've got no idea what the A plot or the B plot or the frelling title even is, just see people up there larger than life, mouthing pithy, pretty phrases. You brought her here out of spite and she's stubborn enough to sit here in the dark with you, ride out your temper tantrum, ride out your fears, meet you head on in a crowded theater. A gun shot echoes on the screen and someone crumples to the ground under the fall of rain, the sound of water against pavement perfectly choreographed, orchestrated so that you feel the beat of the raindrops in the back of your head and the back of your throat, hear a scream of anguish, rhythmic and raw and timed to the precipitation, intercut with the sounds of traffic in the background.
That's not what dying sounds like, or rain, or the mix of weapons fire and rough weather. The theater smells like Freon and rancid canola oil, stale and a little dank, like sodden wool. It's turning your stomach and suddenly, all you want is sunshine and the warm smell of worn leather, the grease of a gun and the scent of Aeryn's hair and skin and anger.
You keep staring at the screen, but fumble to the side, finding the bones of her fingers, her rigid fists, gripping her hand.
"Let's get out of here." You don't look away from the screen, from the blue and whites racing to the scene, plowing through the rain.
"I want to know how it ends." But she doesn't pull her hand away. Someone hushes you both.
"Runs every couple of hours." You glance at her finally, see the glint of her skin in the ambient light, in the flickering of the projector. Her features are awash in mosaic, a watercolor of moving pictures. You have to look hard to see her under the reflection. "You could always come back."
"No," she says, voice full of intent. "I couldn't."
"You could stay," soft now, not sure what you're offering, if it's a threat or a gift.
"No. Not alone. Not here."
"I wouldn't…" you stop, the veracity choking your throat. "I wouldn't leave you here…alone."
Conversations weave together on the screen, foleys and creeks and the filtered noises of a constructed life.
"Good," she says. "Then let's go."
I've been mainlining Doctor Who thanks to the fabulous
veritykindle and enjoying it thoroughly. However, Katya my darling, the DVD's with three episodes won't play the third episode so I'm missing eps 3, 6 and 9.I, well, my crush on Christopher Eccleston and the Doctor has far surpassed normalcy. He's just so very... shameless, and heartbroken and delighted and crazy and manic. I am utterly in love. I am also highly amused that the credits are using the Farscape font and that the good doctor had clearly encountered John Crichton along the way because he was playing with the silver ball from BoD in Father's Day.
I've also finally caught up with the rest of the world in terms of popular entertainment, taking in Batman Begins, Howl's Moving Castle and War of the Worlds. I give them all a thumbs up.
I think I've talked about the musical version that my dad had, and the utter terror it evoked in me. It scared me so much that I couldn't be in the room when the record played, would have nightmares at the thought of the pictures in the libretto. And now I own that record, holding on to that sort of fear and the awe that I feel at the scope of that fear in the face of what was behind it.
So I went to the Chinese to see War of the World's by myself in an effort to exorcise some of those old fears. Unsurprisingly, the movie scared the hell out of me. The same things that frightened me as a child are hard wired in my brain, scared me still - the people being destroyed, just dissappearing into ash, the haunting sounds of the tripods, of the martians, the utter fear and hopelessness of the people at the mercy of these invaders, the red algae and the defeat, the fact that it was nothing we did to save ourselves, just the basic building blocks of life. I think Spielberg did a fabulous job creating menace, creating a scope of destruction and fear and helplessness while still layering in this very uneasy family. And while I think he may be losing his mind, Tom Cruise was very good. Thing that kills me, Dakota Fanning was even better. She's somehow managing to negotiate past the precocious child actor thing to portray real emotion, real child based emotion.
Batman was fabulous in an entirely different way, dark and sharp and scary, making me want to read Batman, to write about Bruce Wayne and this life he is trying to lead. I loved that the scenes of Batman doing his work, taking care of criminals was palpably frightening, that it felt like watching a hunt and even though I knew that the people being attacked were supposed to be the enemy, my hands clenched the seat beside me and I held my breath until it was finished.
***
And since I spent much of the weekend at the movies, a little mid Terra Firma drabble. I've a love/hate relationship with fics that show me aliens partaking in human life. If it's done well, I eat it up, and if it's done poorly, I still happily read and then grimace, so I'm forgiving myself the construct.
My Life in Pictures
The sound pushes you back into the seat, cold and loud and all encompassing, that low hum that wraps and warps and fills up the theater and it's so fucking familiar that you grip the armrest, praise George Lucas, offer up thanks that the sound still makes you think of Star Wars and starry eyes and starring in your own life. It sounds like the beginning of a universe, a world of infinite variety and jest. It doesn't ring out like reality, bangs and purrs instead like a beautiful, plastic future. A perfect sound.
The prowler sounds like a scratched LP in comparison, harsh and grainy and sputtering, firing up like a distillation burn, like a spiral of lashing pain and power, still a little thrilling after all these cycles. Moya sounds like a lover's gasp, a child's breath, a hitch and a gasp and a sigh of kind disapproval.
Aeryn doesn't flinch at the noise, at the way this giant theater fills up like a flooded pool, sonic waves soaking into the skin of the people surrounding you. Your mouth pulls down and you hate your own pettiness, hate that you wanted to see her wince.
You took her to the theater because she said she wanted to do something normal, demanded in that hard tight voice that you show her something normal, something human, something you've discussed a thousand times or more before carbon scoring and hetch drives and maddium steel became materials that fell more trippingly from the tongue than celluloid and picture tubes.
The morning was clean, full of cutting words and blue sky and dark hurt in grey eyes. You lost track of the other alien life forms, your rainbow coalition family, as you and Aeryn stood in front of the pool slinging stinging verbs at each other like barbs and pulse blasts and when you ran out of false ammo, you stood there with your hands clenched and looked to her to offer you a way out. You're good at getting in, but she's always been better at the getaway. You've always needed her to get out. You think somewhere in that hash of prose and prosidy, there was mention of your other, better, deader self and the false promises he'd made about this blue green world. Or that could have been the movie you see in your head on endless repeat, the John Crichton variety hour where you promise to take the love of your life home and you die a vicious, radioactive death instead.
"Show me something… normal." She said, throwing it at you like a dare, a wish, a taunt. "Your normal. You owe me that."
You won't say that you don't owe her anything. Some lies stay too long, stink like dead fish, linger.
The theater is cold, air conditioning cranked and your shoulder starts to ache halfway through the movie. You don't know if it's tension or old wounds or the woman sitting at your side, knee pressed restlessly against yours in the cramped aisle. She's wearing jeans and a small clipped smile that she's learned to put on in front of humans. They don't know what to do, stare anyway, don't smile back but there isn't any joy in Aeryn's eyes and you don't know if she cares anyway. You think she probably does. You know she'll never say it out loud.
The pictures flicker on the screen and you've got no idea what the A plot or the B plot or the frelling title even is, just see people up there larger than life, mouthing pithy, pretty phrases. You brought her here out of spite and she's stubborn enough to sit here in the dark with you, ride out your temper tantrum, ride out your fears, meet you head on in a crowded theater. A gun shot echoes on the screen and someone crumples to the ground under the fall of rain, the sound of water against pavement perfectly choreographed, orchestrated so that you feel the beat of the raindrops in the back of your head and the back of your throat, hear a scream of anguish, rhythmic and raw and timed to the precipitation, intercut with the sounds of traffic in the background.
That's not what dying sounds like, or rain, or the mix of weapons fire and rough weather. The theater smells like Freon and rancid canola oil, stale and a little dank, like sodden wool. It's turning your stomach and suddenly, all you want is sunshine and the warm smell of worn leather, the grease of a gun and the scent of Aeryn's hair and skin and anger.
You keep staring at the screen, but fumble to the side, finding the bones of her fingers, her rigid fists, gripping her hand.
"Let's get out of here." You don't look away from the screen, from the blue and whites racing to the scene, plowing through the rain.
"I want to know how it ends." But she doesn't pull her hand away. Someone hushes you both.
"Runs every couple of hours." You glance at her finally, see the glint of her skin in the ambient light, in the flickering of the projector. Her features are awash in mosaic, a watercolor of moving pictures. You have to look hard to see her under the reflection. "You could always come back."
"No," she says, voice full of intent. "I couldn't."
"You could stay," soft now, not sure what you're offering, if it's a threat or a gift.
"No. Not alone. Not here."
"I wouldn't…" you stop, the veracity choking your throat. "I wouldn't leave you here…alone."
Conversations weave together on the screen, foleys and creeks and the filtered noises of a constructed life.
"Good," she says. "Then let's go."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 09:14 am (UTC)And I *love* the drabble. Doing something so normal and mundane is so sad and tense with these two. Can't even go to the movies without angst.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:19 pm (UTC)And thank you:) I think there's probably room out there for some non-angsty Earth fic, but I sort of wanted this to have that hollow distancey feeling, and to see if I could describe the THX sound in words:)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 11:21 am (UTC)i love the first paragraph, and this especially: "offer up thanks that the sound still makes you think of Star Wars and starry eyes and starring in your own life."
and his perception of the way moya and a prowler sounds is exquisite.
this is poignant, and perfectly shows the nature of their connection: ""I wouldn't…" you stop, the veracity choking your throat. "I wouldn't leave you here…alone.""
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:17 pm (UTC)And hee - I have to admit the idea of the Doctor just popping up on Moya long enough to liberate that toy has a thoroughly delightful ring to it.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 12:40 pm (UTC)*tries to figure out how to get the episodes to you the fastest* I can't do anything right now, since I'm at work, but I'll send them out to you tomorrow, and hopefully they'll get to you in one or two days. Or I could try and send them to you through YIM, or something?
I'm really glad you are enjoying the episodes you do have, though. *hugs*
... You got the books too, right? :)
*hugs Terra Firma drabble to herself and saves for later, to read and reread when I can take a break*
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:15 pm (UTC)And no worries, I probably won't get to watch the eps until Friday, so sending them tomorrow would be lovely. I'd be eternally grateful:)
I think (and this is my particular, totally unbacked up theory) that either there isn't enough room for all three DVD's or that when it gets to the third, it's somehow done. Only because it's the third ep on each DVD. Strange, huh?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 03:21 pm (UTC)I tried to make you a new video DVD, like the others only with those three episodes, but for some reason, it didn't work. (I tried it twice, and the DVD was defective, both times. :( ) So I made a data DVD with those three episodes as avi files. It probably won't play on your DVD player, but your computer should be able to play them.
I can overnight this DVD to you today, if you still need it. Did
I'm really sorry again about the disks not working properly. :(
Also -- you probably shouldn't watch episodes 10-13 without first watching episodes 3,6 and 9 (and all the rest, of course, but you already have all the rest, so I figured that wouldn't be a problem...). One of the things I love about this show is its continuity.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 04:27 pm (UTC)I didn't e-mail Feldman because I got home so late and I don't know that I'll have time to get them. If you don't mind sending the DVD, that'd be great!
Thanks honey!
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 05:59 pm (UTC)*looks outside at all the rain and winces* I'm not sure you should expect to get it tomorrow, though... Unless they decide to use boats as their main method of transportation, they are going to have a hard time getting it out of Boston. *g*
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 06:27 pm (UTC)And this was the *sidewalk*, which is lifted at least 10 inches off the main road. When the bus had to pass through this same spot a few minutes later, it did a very good impression of what it might have looked like when Moses parted the Red Sea. *g* (Which made me *very* grateful that no buses passed me when I was walking there, since I was carrying three big bags of food that I had promised to bring to work and that I was trying desperately to keep dry, and I did *not* need a puddle-water shower, thank you very much.)
And as far as I can tell, this was after about an hour of rain at most. It has been raining just as hard pretty much all afternoon. I shudder to think what it will be like on the way back from work.
Maybe I *should* invest in a boat, after all. *g*
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 12:41 pm (UTC)I can get the missing eps to you, if you still haven't picked them up by tonight--if you could YIM me a reminder if you still need them? That way, when I get home after class & lab it'll be like a post-it on my computer 8 )
I've a love/hate relationship with fics that show me aliens partaking in human life. If it's done well, I eat it up, and if it's done poorly, I still happily read and then grimace, so I'm forgiving myself the construct.
That's exactly it, when the characterization and the consequences are done well it's like seeing them in a double-vision, skewed and yet exactly who they are *because* of the strange setting. They make earth strange (especially John, in a way, culture-shock coming like a last dirty punch to the head when he's already down) and earth somehow makes them more familiar to us, underscores how well-realized their world has become to us, seeing it clash and mesh with our own.
"Show me something… normal." She said, throwing it at you like a dare, a wish, a taunt. "Your normal. You owe me that."
What hurts so much about this thing between them on Earth is how very hard they're each trying to suss the other out despite all the distractions, how much they both need to *see* into the other's heart but are so careful not to project any of their own raw need that they end up seeing nothing at all, and yet it's so painfully obvious that anyone close to them can't help wincing (though the Crichtons and Caroline are fresh enough to the situation to keep trying to call them on it, a brick wall the Moyans are sick of beating their heads against).
"You could stay," soft now, not sure what you're offering, if it's a threat or a gift.
"No. Not alone. Not here."
"I wouldn't…" you stop, the veracity choking your throat. "I wouldn't leave you here…alone."
Conversations weave together on the screen, foleys and creeks and the filtered noises of a constructed life.
"Good," she says. "Then let's go."
That's really it, isn't it? This aches like a fever, their misunderstanding and pain a sickness that burns through the cold of the theatre. Well-done.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:13 pm (UTC)They make earth strange (especially John, in a way, culture-shock coming like a last dirty punch to the head when he's already down) and earth somehow makes them more familiar to us, underscores how well-realized their world has become to us, seeing it clash and mesh with our own. Exactly. It's the double vision, and the way that even to us Earth seems both so familiar and so foreign.
And yeah, that need is so palpable and so hard to watch, both of them trying to find away to hide it and contain it and keep it and it seeps through with no real solution.
Hugs you back. Thank you dear.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 03:13 pm (UTC)Heh, glad you like BB. Ell and Lady J dragged me to WotWs on Thursday night--Steven Spielberg makes things blow up pretty but that movie was emptier than a doughnut at the centre. The scene with the train though... that kind of haunts me. I was more interested in how WotWs is the first instance of using the iconography of 9/11 in pop culture--not the event itself but the images.
Like the story. Teach me how to use those words?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:05 pm (UTC)I also found WotW to be haunting, for many of the same reasons. The iconography and imagery was so incredibly powerful, and it resonates, these deep fears brought to light.
Aw, thanks baby! (Won't comment on the obvious, that you've got all those words and more, that you've got this immense talent that we just need to figure out how to wrangle). Now (smacks you upside the head), where's my zip ties?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:26 pm (UTC)DUDE! She does this to me too! :D
but i luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuv yooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuu
no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 05:35 pm (UTC)I blame this time warp zone for the disappearance of the zipties.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-05 11:12 pm (UTC)oh, John.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 12:25 am (UTC)And thank you:)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 12:35 am (UTC)Ah. He's already seen/experienced it and knows the truth of it, the movie is a pale fiction with non of the viscerality of the real thing.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 12:36 am (UTC)non=none
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 06:35 pm (UTC)