life without a plot

# Real life. (Blah.)

I was planning to go for a walk today, but then I slept until 10-ish, breakfasted and wasted time on the internet, practiced Excel, had a bit of lunch, half-heartely thought about where I might go, couldn't decide, and ultimately decided that I needed a lazy stay-at-home day after last weekend's stress.

Also decided I'll do the ECDL certificate after all, since I've already done the Excel and Access classes and can learn the rest from books, and will probably do a HTML/CSS class in September, since I've always vaguely wanted to learn that from a scratch and be able to do more than just type a few basic codes... So there I was, feeling unusually active and hopeful, until I randomly browsed through job adds a couple of days ago and pretty much ended up thinking, why even bother, I can just kill myself now, because I'll never be qualified for, or do anything other than retail. Stupid, pessimistic, mood-swingy brain. But maybe it is right, after all?

What also irritates me is that I've done barely any reading at all recently, mostly because when I'm reading it's Lukianenko's NIght Watch series in Russian, and for obvious reasons that takes up a disproportionate amount of time. ( It's kind of fascinating, though. )


# Various media stuff:

* Saw Thor with G., and, just, gah. Either it's because I'm not familiar with the (comic book) source, or I'm simply getting too old for these kind of movies, but I found it almost insultingly bad. ( The worst thing was, it was actually my idea to see it, because I was a huge fan of Kenneth Branagh a longish while ago, and... )

* Stuck about two thirds into Smallville S6... ( Lj tells me it's been over three years since I watched S5, but in many ways it's as if I never left at all... )

One of these days I'm going to write something rambly about the whole identifying-with-characters issue. Because I honestly have no idea why I always fall for the characters I fall for, who, as a rule, have nothing whatsoever in common with me, at least as far as I can make out.

# Also watched RTD's Dark Season (1991) and Century Falls (1993). They're both a bit too children orientated for my taste, and the stories are nothing much (although they both do have their moments), but I enjoyed Dark Season especially. It's a bit DW-ish, and the characters are just thoroughly enjoyable. There's a young Kate Winslet as Reet, and the girl playing Marcy just radiates a certain Doctor-ness. Which is probably more due to RTD writing her, but I could so see her as a female Doctor. Actually, I'm going to pretend she's a Time Lord now. Miss Maitland, exasperated and torn between believing and not believing is also a rather lovely character.

( Wherever you are, whoever you are, there's always a strangeness in things. )

(The whole thing also dates like whoa, but that can't be helped with a story from the early 1990ies involving computers. In 1991 I think I actually still typed my proseminar papers on a type writer...)

Century Falls sort of gives the impression that it's trying to get somewhere more ambitious and dramatic, without quite succeeding (yet), but it also has its moments, all those old ladies, and generally speaking enough female characters to pass half a dozen Bechdel tests...

* Somehow, I'm still watching A Game of Thrones. I don't know... there's still stuff I'm not too happy with and I'm not even particularly interested in all the political scheming and violence, but the characters have definitely drawn me in, and even more than that I want to know more about the mythology of it all, the dragons, the Wall, the White Walkers, and the winter, which they keep hinting at. (Also, although that is nothing new, I'm really, really bad at recognising actors. I eventually, and perhaps not entirely coincidentally when he started talking about cannibalism, recognised the actor who played the guy from the cannibal village in Countycide, but I didn't recognise Aiden Gillen at all... Imdb tells me Sibel Kekilli is also in there, but who is Shae?

Oh dear. So I'm watching videos from Dragon Con on YouTube, and, quote, Michael Rosenbaum on the subject of the actors apparently not being told anything on Smallville:

'There's this giant through line, throughout seven years, for the show. And they go, okay so this is what's gonna happen. Lex will become bad. But right now he's not. Ookaay. So, I mean when I just killed this guy, did I mean to do it? Do I feel bad? - Ah, just, you're doing great, just keep doing it. Whatever you're doing, just keep doing that.'


This explains so, SO much.


And here I was trying and trying to make sense of that show and its characterisation for years before I stopped watching around S5ish, if I remember correctly. ::facepalm::



[ETA: Interesting, and IMO spot on comment from James Marsters about Lex's arc being the only element with genuine gravitas among the monsters and general fluffiness of SV.]

Since my life is emminently boring and unpostworthy at the moment I unearthed this from my documents folder.


Collected SV S4 ramblings, all in one handy, very much tl;dr post, and dear god, did it ever feel redundant writing this more than a year after the season has been talked and (presumably) bewhined (which I still think should be a word) to death everywhere else …


Also, my life would be so much easier and generally less pathetic if I could just shrug and say the writers are on crack/suck/hate me, like everyone else, instead of obsessively trying to make sense of everything and anything.

[Linked for personal reference: last year's S3 review]


( ::sigh:: assorted comments )


( ::more sigh:: Lex's arc )


And will I buy S5? Sadly, yes.

I still need to develop a better resistance to amazon's you save X% offers, but at least I don't entirely regret buying the Smallville dvds, especially S3. OTOH, sadly so little of this show stands the test of a second viewing; I browsed through S2 with the finger on the fast forward button, stopping only (or almost only) for Lex, because while both Lana and Clark are perhaps slightly less annoying than their German dubbed versions, once is still more than enough, as far as their scenes together are concerned. One thing is a constant, though, almost since I started watching SV. I've never seen another tv show that manages to powerfully intrigue and frustrate me so much at the same time.

( Wherein I ramble at long, long length, mostly about Lex, because it's Sunday, and raining, and apparently I have no life... )