brightly_lit | Entries tagged with relax it's only a movie

I had a rough night a couple of nights ago; it was really hard to get to sleep. For hours after we were done going through the box, I took comfort in the things I usually take comfort in, when I need it: fandom, pictures and articles about my favorite artists, etc., which led me to this excellent essay written by the lead singer of Fall Out Boy, and serves as a fantastic reminder of why success as an artist/writer/musician would SUUUUUUCK, so it's just fine that nobody reads my books. Well, I wish a few people, who would really enjoy and/or benefit from reading them would and would talk about it (that essay points that out, too, how easy it is to get hate when you share your work, and how hard it is to get any damn appreciation, even if you supposedly have lots of 'fans'--what is that?!), but fame? Fuuuuuck that.

As I read the essay and looked at other, related articles and interviews and pictures, I was reminded anew that we are all human. The people I most admire in the world get fat, have health problems, get hate, have low self-esteem, suffer from depression. It's okay. We're all the same. So thanks, all you famous people who shared your failures and downfalls and hardships as well as your successes. Thanks for not hiding your humanity, however hard that may have been. It makes it easier for the rest of us to be human, too.

Last night, I dreamt I was watching a so-latter-day-SPN-it-hasn't-aired-yet ep while

caranfindel was in the room doing her own thing. The ep was this meditation on addiction that seemed clearly a straight-up exploration of what the writer was thinking about that had nothing to do with SPN itself. I muttered some comment about how the writer couldn't be arsed to come up with anything that actually had anything to do with the show, and caranfindel piped up with a wholehearted agreement, which led to a rousing discussion between us on all things show-related, and which had other folks coming into the room to join into the chat. So basically, a physical representation of online SPN fandom!

I think I was actually thinking about Carver. Lately I've been realizing I think what I had the hardest time with about Carver's Supernatural is that he seemed to be trying to make it "more realistic," to bring reality into this ... story about two brothers who hunt monsters, which is ludicrous. For me, from the very beginning, at its best, the show rode this gloriously delicate line, which was a grittily realistic portrayal of an entirely metaphorical series of events designed to explore the deeper realities of human relationships and the human experience, like nesting dolls, multiple levels and dimensions utilized to get at something that is inherently complex and multi-dimensional. That's why I loved Show so much, because it was so layered. To treat it as reality all the way on down took away all the dimensions and made it flat ... and silly. Sooo silly, Carver. I'm lookin' at you. Yeah, that's right, I said it. ;-)

I'm liking Dabb's SPN far better than Carver's already, though Show is far from being what it was pre-Carver. I found the general stories of S12 fairly cohesive, I liked the characters they kept returning to, like Max and Alicia, Mary, and Claire (BOY was I tired of Crowley and Rowena drama, although Crowley in that last ep made me realize I'll miss him, at least a bit), I thought the themes were good. I'd love to see Max come back as one of S13's big bads (as some people have suggested might happen); I LOVE that actor, and his story is great, with much potential. Before this last season, it seemed like every storyline was a reprise of something SPN had already done, but the nephilim is also a good new idea ... well, at least, of ideas SPN has fully explored, since the antichrist was a similar idea with much potential that was introduced and abandoned. There's so much potential! Especially if he's a good guy at heart, or at least conflicted.

Otherwise, I'm incredibly excited about Summergen, as ever, although I haven't actually started on the fic yet because ... well, the whole theme I'm going to delve into with it kind of scares me; I've got to prepare and gird my loins before I dive in. What's going on with you all? How are your Summergen fics coming?

Ahh, yes. The perfect time has arrived to use my "relax it's only a movie" tag. I'll use it for all reality-based posts for a while, I imagine.

High school for me was very stressful. Very, incredibly, health-damagingly stressful. Not just high school, but home, activities, friends; every single aspect of my life--stressful and, frankly, terrifying.

Like many other high-schoolers, I collected buttons for a while, mostly to display on my purse. Some of them were for bands I loved and such, but as soon as I found the "relax, it's only a movie" button, I knew I had to buy it. It reminded me that life is an illusion ... or at least that it'll be over someday, and that helped get me through the toughest times.

So remember ....

Here is a video of Misha explaining why he was going to be late to Burcon. (He had to park his car and walk because he knew he wasn't going to be able to get there any other way!) This is a very cool video for many reasons--for me it's amazing to see 1) the number of protesters, and 2) all these people run up, give Misha a hug and a kind word and then run off again, and see how he responds.

s_c took a turn through our complex the other day and was called over to chat by a black guy ("People call me Q," he told her) and a white guy working on a car together. Q asked how she was doing; she said she was doing the best she could in light of the election. Both of the guys agreed it was terrible. Q asked her if she'd been downtown to see the protests. She said she hadn't. "I'm a person of color," Q told her, "but there are more people of your color there protesting!"

So maybe at least all this has accomplished that much: I've seen many people of color saying how deeply they're touched by how many white people are standing up for them. As a woman, too, to see how many people denounce the orange Voldemort (as a friend has dubbed him) based on his misogyny and racism ... our country really WAS divided, and is still, in one way, but in another, it's bringing people together. And I'm seeing way more people on opposite sides actually talking to each other--talking and listening. Maybe good can come of all this. Let's hope! Love to you all. <3

I really love to play video games. Some people consider them a waste of time; I consider them an interactive art form. Plus, I'm really into technology.

There's this super-fun tower defense game I've been playing lately called Defense Grid, in which you're fighting evil aliens with the help of your Jarvis-esque computer buddy, who used to be human and had his consciousness downloaded into a computer. You learn more of his tragic story as the game goes on (the voice acting is wonderful), and it really draws you in emotionally. But the game is also fucking hard, especially this last level I'm stuck on now. I'm caught between my tenacious refusal to stop trying and the feeling that it would be nice to succeed at something for once. (Here is the diagram I had to make to try to beat this f^&*ing level:)

But the expansion packs are even harder, and there's no more Jarvis story in them, which seriously kills it by about 50% for me. :-( I mean, I like a good tower defense game, a lot, but a story makes a big difference. And this also counts for my 100 Days of Happy Day #6!

Another good tower defense game is Toy Defense. Toy Defense is a war game based on technology of the early 20th century, in which you ... basically kill scores of enemy soldiers in WWI/WWII scenarios. Hence the prominence of "Toy" in the title, the careful placement of obviously plastic toy war-game items on a "game board," and spinning wind-up knobs on the enemies' backs, because otherwise, it would be an intensely disturbing game. It's challenging and fun and frustrating and kind of creepy, but empty-feeling in the end, because it has no story. Plants Vs. Zombies, Garden Defense, and Defense Grid are all tower defense games that have good stories to go along with them, which makes them immensely more fun. I recommend any of those games to any of you who like playing that kind of game.

In other news, my SPN-cover EW still hasn't arrived yet. :-(

Oh, Prince, you never aged a day. How could you have gone before me? RIP, my purple genius.

I put together a couple of little videos for you, each a bit over 3 minutes. I didn't take any video at the con proper, since I saw a million people with their phones out, filming every second of the thing, so I figured other people had that covered. (I actually only have an hour of recording time on my video camera, anyway.) So this is just

septembers_coda and me sightseeing in and near Vegas.

The first video picks up where the last one left off and shows a bit of our travel to Vegas and then some fun stuff we saw while there. Probably my very favorite part of travel was always the weird little things you see, so there's some of that in here, and the majority of it is a trip we took to a chocolate factory/cactus garden--where we saw the Oscar Mayer Weiner-mobile! Don't know why it happened to pull up there while we were having a car picnic before going into the cactus garden, but I got it on film!

MNY2BRN!!

The second video is of Vegas itself, some other random things we saw there, and the strip, for anyone who's interested. Maybe you've been and want to see what someone else noticed about it, or maybe you never plan to go but want to know where the con is held and what it looks like while you're there (I know I was quite interested in this before I went), but anyway, feel free to come along with us on our adventures:

I'll save the trip-home video for a little later. And now I'm going to try to catch up on alllll the posts I missed while we were gone! Hope you have fun watching. :-)

Soo ... after that auspicious beginning, it was actually a pretty sucktastic time. :-( More about that and hopefully more video for you after we're home and have put ourselves and our lives back together, but anyway ... miss you all, miss my regular life, can't wait to be back to our regularly scheduled programming. <3

I'm equal parts excited and nervous about the trip. We used to travel all the time, which was easy then (except financially, but hey, that's what credits cards were for, right?) because I didn't like my life and I always wanted to escape it. But I really like my life now. I've spent all my spare time for the past week or so writing and writing, because I know I won't have time or focus to do it on the trip. I'll miss it. I'll miss my Bucky paintings. I'll miss my routine. Man, I never thought I'd be the type to say that.

But that's the thing about going out and doing something you never do, that gets you out of your comfort zone: You don't want to go, but in the end you're so glad you did. Well, most of the time. I really hope it ends up that way this time. See you on the flip side!

The lead singer of that band I rave about is currently live-streaming playing nerdy games with a bunch of other nerds, which is so awesome and bewildering in a total wtf kind of way. How many times did I wish I could be a fly on the wall of a lazy Saturday of the rock stars I loved in my youth? And today's technology makes it totally possible ... only to discover their games are exactly like gaming with my nerdy friends only even less entertaining. Life is fucking awesome and bizarre.

The quality of SPN this season has been so back up to ~the quality of seasons 1-7 that I'm starting to get inspired to write fic again! I have two fics in mind at the moment, one a Walt and Roy, or possibly Steve, Reggie and Tim, and the other ... has already slipped my mind. Crap.

I love the Bunker, because stuff like last Wednesday's Random post keep going for days. <3 <3 my Bunker peeps!

I get to go to a party tonight! And possibly meet a bunch of new people. I'm excited, and nervous.

I hope your weekends are good, and happy almost-Valentine's Day to you!

We just got done watching The End of the Tour, the biopic starring Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg based on writer David Foster Wallace and writer/journalist David Lipsky's little roadtrip together on one of Wallace's book tours in the 1990s. I've wanted to see it since it came out, because I've been fascinated by the myth of Wallace since I first started reading about it (mostly in NYRB, in essays by people who knew him), and because I've been fascinated by Segel since Freaks and Geeks. Sure enough, it's an amazing movie, beautifully shot, written, directed, and acted, and sooo much richer and deeper than modern movies ever get. It was the first movie in a long time where I felt fuller after watching it than emptier.

But I tell you what, coming from the fandom perspective as I can't help but do now, there were no less than four moments in that movie where agonizingly lonely Wallace and guy-crush-for-Wallace-on-steroids Lipsky locked eyes and I was like, "Oh, they're gonna have sex now." THAT'S WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FANFIC. Which begs a question I can't stop wondering about, which is, why ISN'T there fanfic for movies like End of the Tour? I mean, Eisenberg and Segel are pretty hot, right? Hot, young, tortured, lonely guys--artists, no less--you know, alone on the road, no one will know .... But I have looked it up on AO3, and not ONE fanfic. Not one. I really don't get it.

Anyway, End of the Tour, good movie, made for fic, none exists ... you know what to do. ;-)