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itsallovernowI had a lovely, low key weekend complete with fabulous people, not quite enough sleep, and martinis.
This American Life did an episode on work this week, which was funny and insightful as always and featured the fabulous John Hodgeman (the PC, among other things, from the Mac/PC commercials). But it also began with a segment on astronauts, and how cool that concept is as a job, and how a lot of it is meetings and bureacracy and how they have to fill out travel vouchers as government employees and so when they go into space, they have to write "Government Air" on their vouchers, which I find so much funnier than I probably should. And the irony that some of the astronauts have not yet been to space, and may not go to space in their careers, and that their solution, in the words of one of the astronauts was to "watch a lot of sci fi. We watch a lot of Battlestar Galactica and Farscape."
Loves on poor grounded astronauts with a sense of humor and government req forms, and how cool and weird would it be to be watch television and say, legitimately, "Oh, space travel is nothing like that." And be right. And also, to say, "It's not rocket science!" when it is, and still crack up like big giant spacefaring dorks:)
I am also still taking prompts for the Reunion Drabble Challenge Ficathon until tonight when I'll have time to compile the fabulous prompts and post the challenge officially. Time's awasting folks. Send me your prompts!
At first, this was me being rambly and self-involved, with no thoughts on media whatsoever, but the further I go, the more I think it turns into a reflection on what kinks for me in media. (Sadly, the rambly and self-involved remains).
I've been thinking a lot about my status as a single woman lately, and not just in the "I want a partner. I want a dog. I want a baby." kind of way because while all of those things are true, they're not the only aspect of being a single woman that I consider on a day to day basis. The other issues are, but not limited to, "If I don't come home, If I'm hit by a car, If I'm trapped in an elevator, or kidnapped by aliens, no one will know." I mean, eventually my work will notice my absence, and depending on the day, M. might figure out I'm gone, and the cats will notice that the warm lump on the couch is missing, but you know, not right away. Nothing will happen right away. So you've got issues of wondering where one's place in the universe is. And wondering how one touches other people in the universal place, etc. How one's (meaning my) ties are identified.
Because while I know I'm tied to and connected to other people, my biggest status right now is still daughter. Because I'm not wife, or partner or mother or sister. I'm still mostly daughter, accountable only to parents who live 1000 miles away, and myself.
And when I look at how much change I need, I realize that in part, I don't facilitate that change because I'm the only one accountable for it and to it. If I don't change, I'm the only one effected. Put other people into the mix, put the obligations of love and duty in there, and change is a different thing entirely. One changes out of need and necessity, one changes to be better for someone else (not exclusively, but it's a mad crazy impulse that's easier to follow).
If I were obligated to other people, if my actions and efforts, successes and failures, had more of an impact on others, I'd be better at change. That's not an excuse, but it's a hell of a gut-clenching realization.
And when I look at the media that I love, the stories I love, I realize why a "romance" or a connection is at the heart of most of them. Because it's people changing in reaction to their new status as connected to that person (and that's both for better and worse, I will say), but suddenly there's this whole complicated, complex, intense question of who you are in relation to that person and it's a whole new thing to explore. Are you better? Worse? Simply different? How much should change depend on that status of lover, friend, parent, partner? How much is an excuse, how much is too much?
This sounds convoluted, I know, but I'm trying to parse this, and it's coming out muddled. And obviously, it's not simply another person that drives these questions, that changes concepts of status and obligation (and I know that duty, following through on duty in spite of personal desire is such a kink, and it's easy to see why I've so liked the last two seasons of SG-1 despite its flaws because I see Cameron Mitchell as someone who's following through on duty, and probably if I'd been less indifferent to RDA, I might have liked the earlier seasons more as well. I like the dichotomy of having three people who are used to this overwhelming duty of saving the world, who've realized how difficult having a life of obligation to other people is in the face of that and have instead come to define themselves and their choices in terms of this duty. And then into that you throw Mitchell - who's wildly enthusiastic and just not quite prepared and is just a total poster boy for saving the world without any of the knowledge and skill that comes with 8 years of teamwork, but he tries, oh he tries. And then you match that with Vala, who is all self-interest, who's basically happy for the universe to do whatever it does as long as she thrives, and somehow discovers her own place in that - who becomes wife, mother without option, who becomes responsible - and it's when she takes ownership that her own life and duty changes. I like Mitchell and Vala as the frame for the others, I like all these different puzzle pieces of identity and responsability).
I just finished re-reading "The King of Attolia", and I liked it better the second time because what I finally understood was the way the love and identity shapes us. We choose different things in the obligations of love, we want different things because we're not wanting just for ourselves, but for the other person.
Hell, it's why I still love Farscape as much as I do, why Rome pinged for me so intrinsically. It's about duty when it's hard, it's about defining yourself as obligated to something greater, something bigger than just yourself.
Crichton, Aeryn, all of them, are constantly trapped between personal desires and the greater good, but they're also working so hard to figure out the difference between acting on their own desires and acting as someone obligated - through love, mostly, but also through the ties of history, of personal obligation. What will you do for those you love? When is it too much? Not enough? When does it not just fucking matter?
And Lucius Vorenus, all of these definitions he had of himself - father, husband, soldier, business owner, loyal to Mark Antony, friend to Titus Pullo, leader of the collegium. And the way that it all got stripped down, until his definitions became caricatures, then became just part of him. The way that, at the end, he's left with the good he's done, the bad he's done, and the ideals he's held himself to. And despite it, at the end, he dies with Pullo in his room, and his children no longer hating him. He dies with his most important definitions still intact.
And then for me, it spills back into the NIP, because what I've realized is that I have two main characters struggling for these definitions - one wants to create these bonds and ties, desperately needs a new set of ways to identify himself, needs to have other people to strive and thrive for, and his partner just can't anymore, has been identifying herself in terms of other people and other obligations and is just not capable of being that person to anyone in this moment.
Which is all very well and good, and makes me long for fewer character realizations and more frelling words on the page!
This American Life did an episode on work this week, which was funny and insightful as always and featured the fabulous John Hodgeman (the PC, among other things, from the Mac/PC commercials). But it also began with a segment on astronauts, and how cool that concept is as a job, and how a lot of it is meetings and bureacracy and how they have to fill out travel vouchers as government employees and so when they go into space, they have to write "Government Air" on their vouchers, which I find so much funnier than I probably should. And the irony that some of the astronauts have not yet been to space, and may not go to space in their careers, and that their solution, in the words of one of the astronauts was to "watch a lot of sci fi. We watch a lot of Battlestar Galactica and Farscape."
Loves on poor grounded astronauts with a sense of humor and government req forms, and how cool and weird would it be to be watch television and say, legitimately, "Oh, space travel is nothing like that." And be right. And also, to say, "It's not rocket science!" when it is, and still crack up like big giant spacefaring dorks:)
I am also still taking prompts for the Reunion Drabble Challenge Ficathon until tonight when I'll have time to compile the fabulous prompts and post the challenge officially. Time's awasting folks. Send me your prompts!
At first, this was me being rambly and self-involved, with no thoughts on media whatsoever, but the further I go, the more I think it turns into a reflection on what kinks for me in media. (Sadly, the rambly and self-involved remains).
I've been thinking a lot about my status as a single woman lately, and not just in the "I want a partner. I want a dog. I want a baby." kind of way because while all of those things are true, they're not the only aspect of being a single woman that I consider on a day to day basis. The other issues are, but not limited to, "If I don't come home, If I'm hit by a car, If I'm trapped in an elevator, or kidnapped by aliens, no one will know." I mean, eventually my work will notice my absence, and depending on the day, M. might figure out I'm gone, and the cats will notice that the warm lump on the couch is missing, but you know, not right away. Nothing will happen right away. So you've got issues of wondering where one's place in the universe is. And wondering how one touches other people in the universal place, etc. How one's (meaning my) ties are identified.
Because while I know I'm tied to and connected to other people, my biggest status right now is still daughter. Because I'm not wife, or partner or mother or sister. I'm still mostly daughter, accountable only to parents who live 1000 miles away, and myself.
And when I look at how much change I need, I realize that in part, I don't facilitate that change because I'm the only one accountable for it and to it. If I don't change, I'm the only one effected. Put other people into the mix, put the obligations of love and duty in there, and change is a different thing entirely. One changes out of need and necessity, one changes to be better for someone else (not exclusively, but it's a mad crazy impulse that's easier to follow).
If I were obligated to other people, if my actions and efforts, successes and failures, had more of an impact on others, I'd be better at change. That's not an excuse, but it's a hell of a gut-clenching realization.
And when I look at the media that I love, the stories I love, I realize why a "romance" or a connection is at the heart of most of them. Because it's people changing in reaction to their new status as connected to that person (and that's both for better and worse, I will say), but suddenly there's this whole complicated, complex, intense question of who you are in relation to that person and it's a whole new thing to explore. Are you better? Worse? Simply different? How much should change depend on that status of lover, friend, parent, partner? How much is an excuse, how much is too much?
This sounds convoluted, I know, but I'm trying to parse this, and it's coming out muddled. And obviously, it's not simply another person that drives these questions, that changes concepts of status and obligation (and I know that duty, following through on duty in spite of personal desire is such a kink, and it's easy to see why I've so liked the last two seasons of SG-1 despite its flaws because I see Cameron Mitchell as someone who's following through on duty, and probably if I'd been less indifferent to RDA, I might have liked the earlier seasons more as well. I like the dichotomy of having three people who are used to this overwhelming duty of saving the world, who've realized how difficult having a life of obligation to other people is in the face of that and have instead come to define themselves and their choices in terms of this duty. And then into that you throw Mitchell - who's wildly enthusiastic and just not quite prepared and is just a total poster boy for saving the world without any of the knowledge and skill that comes with 8 years of teamwork, but he tries, oh he tries. And then you match that with Vala, who is all self-interest, who's basically happy for the universe to do whatever it does as long as she thrives, and somehow discovers her own place in that - who becomes wife, mother without option, who becomes responsible - and it's when she takes ownership that her own life and duty changes. I like Mitchell and Vala as the frame for the others, I like all these different puzzle pieces of identity and responsability).
I just finished re-reading "The King of Attolia", and I liked it better the second time because what I finally understood was the way the love and identity shapes us. We choose different things in the obligations of love, we want different things because we're not wanting just for ourselves, but for the other person.
Hell, it's why I still love Farscape as much as I do, why Rome pinged for me so intrinsically. It's about duty when it's hard, it's about defining yourself as obligated to something greater, something bigger than just yourself.
Crichton, Aeryn, all of them, are constantly trapped between personal desires and the greater good, but they're also working so hard to figure out the difference between acting on their own desires and acting as someone obligated - through love, mostly, but also through the ties of history, of personal obligation. What will you do for those you love? When is it too much? Not enough? When does it not just fucking matter?
And Lucius Vorenus, all of these definitions he had of himself - father, husband, soldier, business owner, loyal to Mark Antony, friend to Titus Pullo, leader of the collegium. And the way that it all got stripped down, until his definitions became caricatures, then became just part of him. The way that, at the end, he's left with the good he's done, the bad he's done, and the ideals he's held himself to. And despite it, at the end, he dies with Pullo in his room, and his children no longer hating him. He dies with his most important definitions still intact.
And then for me, it spills back into the NIP, because what I've realized is that I have two main characters struggling for these definitions - one wants to create these bonds and ties, desperately needs a new set of ways to identify himself, needs to have other people to strive and thrive for, and his partner just can't anymore, has been identifying herself in terms of other people and other obligations and is just not capable of being that person to anyone in this moment.
Which is all very well and good, and makes me long for fewer character realizations and more frelling words on the page!
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:20 pm (UTC)You edited your punctuation to make it look like I'm on crack. That is Not. Fair. xp
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:22 pm (UTC)Hee - and dude, I know you're on crack:)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:24 pm (UTC)The problem, I believe, is that you sometimes believe that I don't leave out the article or pronoun on purpose.
While the spelling/typo disasters are never on purpose, the articles and diction almost always universally are:)
Loves you, and both of your nipples! Well, not actively, but in theory!
And dude, you're on leave, write me some reunion prompts!! You've got a slew of fandoms, help 'em out!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:43 pm (UTC)Reunion prompts?
Um, I have no idea what a reunion prompt is - but I'll go out on a limb by assuming that you mean reunions in fic, in which case, Rose/10th Doctor would be good. Especially good if written by someone who can write and is not an angst whore.
D'Argo/Cricthon (but not that way).
Captain Jack/Torchwood
Do these all have to be in the same fandoms?
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:50 pm (UTC)Hee - and like many things, I have no idea why it makes you nutty that I find articles largely irrelevant. Whole languages find articles largely irrelevant:)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 09:59 pm (UTC)It's not that I don't religiously check your journal, it's more like I've been ignoring the fanfic because I don't have the time to play right now.
Also - inner monologue, still Welsh.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 10:11 pm (UTC)Latin doesn't use articles, at least not frequently.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 10:21 pm (UTC)Also, an Internet quiz just told me that the Serenity character I'm most like is Simon Tam. I may sue.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-10 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-10 05:46 am (UTC)