The Minutiae of Life as a Militant Squirrel

Sherman has been in the shop again all week. *sadface*

This means that I have been crashing on my mom's sofa, since I can walk to the bus stop from her house. *sigh*

I miss my car!

And I miss my house!

But! I made Mom watch my shows on Thursday night, and she actually liked Vampire Diaries! SPN just confused her, but that's understandable. It's kind of hard to follow if you're coming in cold.

Of course, it doesn't say much about Vampire Diaries that it is possible for a complete neophyte to understand it when plunked into an episode halfway through the season. But I never claimed that the show was particularly deep.

I've seen some people make the argument that Damon is a true psychopath, unable to determine the difference between right and wrong. I disagree with that assessment. Others argue the common definition of a sociopath-- that he knows the difference and just doesn't care. I don't think either of those definitions are entirely accurate.

I think Damon is equipped with a moral compass-- it just isn't the same one you or I or certainly Stefan might use. I've said before that he is almost entirely motivated by self-interest . . . but that extends to certain others he chooses. In last week's episode, he publically humiliates Alaric, but the action seems to be more about lashing out at Stefan. It certainly backfires on him when it upsets Elena. Later, when Alaric is so enraged that he finally decides to try and kill Damon, he has to attack him three times before Damon finally loses his patience and ends the struggle.

I think it's easy to see there that Damon doesn't actually want to kill Alaric. He doesn't see any point to it. Alaric hasn't personally caused Damon any grief--in fact, the opposite is certainly true, and Damon isn't above taking some petty vengeance in explaining himself--but again, it comes off more as impatient and frustrated than anything else. Hell, Damon isn't even hungry enough to want a snack. The attitude seems to be that Alaric has deeply inconvenienced Damon by insisting on dying in his living room, but, whatever. Damon has other things to worry about.

Damon seems to like playing mind games, but he mostly likes to play them with Stefan. In fact, as much as he is obsessed with his memory of Katherine, the great of love of Damon's life is actually his brother. His world actually revolves around Stefan-- whether tormenting him or using him in some fashion, or even the few occasions where he seems to exhibit honest warm feelings, however brief.

I think Damon is angry, yes, but also bored, and--though he won't admit--very lonely. He's had nothing but endless rage to keep him company for the last hundred-odd years, and although he's allowed some relationships to go a little deeper, they've still mostly been superficial. And I wonder how many of them went bad for him and reinforced the trust issues he already had?

Look at what happened when he went on a road trip to visit an old girlfriend; she betrayed him and tried to have him killed. So of course his moral compass dictated that he kill her--not just as reflexive retribution, but I think also as a pre-emptive strike against any further actions. That's something else I see in Damon-- he has a temper, we saw that when he attacked Bonnie in a rage after she destroyed the amulet while possessed by the spirit of her ancestor, Emily-- but he's often very cool and calculating in his actions. "An eye for an eye" isn't just a saying for him . . . it's a way of life, and it kind of has to be, because he probably has to assume that anyone who's tried to kill him once will try again.

No wonder he has trouble believing in people. I sympathize.

Okay, yes, in addition to being more than halfway in love with Damon, I identify with him quite a bit as well.

Hell, if I were an immortal vampire with the strength and speed to be able to do it, I'd probably rip out the heart of someone who broke mine, too.

You know, because bloody mayhem and gruesome violence just relieve stress so much more than posting in one's LJ ever could!

*grin*

The Vampire Diaries has totally sucked me in-- you'll pardon the pun, I'm sure.

The show starts at unlikely and blows straight through implausible, out the other side into ridiculous. Let's just begin with the idea that it's set in Virginia . . . and yet NO ONE SPEAKS WITH A SOUTHERN ACCENT.

Nope. Not a one.

I lived in freakin' DELAWARE for almost two years. Half the people I heard on a daily basis-- and I'm just talking about passing through in a supermarket or an Applebee's or a Wal-Mart-- had Confederate license plates and Southern accents. Virginia's even further south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you expect me to believe that EVERY SINGLE RESIDENT is totally Northern in speech?

And the general historical inaccuracies would make my head explode if I focused on them, so I'm just going to ignore them ( just like the writers do, it seems ).

Yeah. See that hook up there? No, the one on the thirty-fifth floor of the skyscraper next door. Yeah, that's your disbelief, suspended allllllllllllll the way up there.

Let's not even get into the question of thirty-something actors playing high-school students, shall we? Mmm. I thought not.

And speaking of high school . . . yeah, I REMEMBER that teenage angst, that sense that everything was the END OF THE WORLD, but JFC GTF OVER YOURSELF BITCH.

Which is doubtless what people my age have been saying to people of that age for hundreds of years, so hey! I have something in common with hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampires. Who knew?

Actually, the entire show is kinda like BtVS / Angel, Smallville, and Twilight all mashed up together, and I spend half my time watching it through my fingers and alternately chanting, "I'm too old for this show," and, "I can't believe I'm watching this crap!"

And then Ian Somerhalder's Damon sweeps on screen and blows me away, and I remember . . . yeah, THAT'S why I'm watching it.

My bulletproof kink has always been insane antiheroes.

I love a bad boy in any form, but give me a beautiful, brilliant nutcase with a purpose ( and usually displaying some kind of twisted emotion ), and I am GONE.

It's why I loved Sam in BUABS . . . Angel after he lost his soul . . . and now Damon, the malicious Machiavel with a diabolical plan.

I mean, come on-- what's not to love about a guy who has lines like these:

I promised you an eternity of misery, little brother. I'm just keeping my word.

And then you get Stefan going off and being all tortured and broody and squirrel-eating. I'm waiting for Damon to call him a little bitch and be done with it.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him "comic relief", but Damon always has the best lines, the sharpest delivery, that little zinger that puts one over on someone ( usually Stefan ) and makes me grin.

Like after he gets attacked and is on the phone telling Stefan about it-- and when will Civil-War-era vampires talking on cell phones ever stop being funny, I wonder-- and Damon is, of course, threatening to rip the culprit to pieces over the incident:

Stefan: Are you okay?

Damon: No, I'm not okay. I was ambushed, I was shot, and now I'm vengeful.

I like Damon being pretty much out for himself. He's kind of an asshole and he really doesn't care. There's a certain logic to his behavior . . . like when he confronts the mystery vampire about who turned him and this scene happens:

Logan: Whose side are you on?

Damon: I'm not on anybody's side. You pissed me off. I want you dead.

And he's very casual about it, very matter-of-fact--almost a quid-pro-quo kind of reaction. He obviously has feelings and emotions, but they're all very self-oriented.

Hot Topic put out "Team Stefan" and "Team Damon" t-shirts. I'm humiliated to admit that I actually-- however briefly!-- considered buying one.

Fortunately, it's a crappy picture, and since the thought of giving my money to Hot Topic makes my skin crawl on principle, I was saved from my own rabid fangirlishness.

Sigh.

I'm gonna go slash the brothers Salvatore for a while, now.

Yum.

DAMMIT!!!!

I promised Amanda that I would go with her to see Jared's movie if she would come with me to see Jensen's, but then she had to fly today and so we only had time for lunch. *pouts*

It was a medical flight, though, so kind of important. I think that bitching about missing my movie because SOMEONE NEEDED A NEW LIVER is probably some kind of express ticket to hell. But I was still horribly disappointed, because as you all know, I am all about the Ackles and I CANNOT BARELY WAIT to see him in all of his three-D, big-screen glory.

I hope he's the bad guy! That will just TOTALLY MAKE MY DAY.

On SPN 4:11 . . . I love my show, but I think that the dog death in the beginning of the ep really put me off. I had trouble getting invested in the plot afterwards, and even though Dean was very very pretty ( as usual, thank you very much ), I ended up feeling like the whole point of the episode was for Dean to have that heart-to-heart with Sam at the end.

And of course, as soon as he started talking, I said to the dog, "Haven't I read this fanfic already?" About ten times over, too?

Also, I never thought I'd say this, but there was not enough of Sam in the episode. Specifically, there was not enough interaction between the brothers. I get that they need to advance the season's plot arc, but I'm starting to really miss seeing the way the boys relate to each other. Even "Ghostfacers", despite being a throwaway episode in terms of plot advancement, still gave us a lot of Sam-n-Dean together. I'm feeling a distance between them that I didn't think would be a point that the writers would be trying to make.

I am curious, though, to find out if Dean believes himself to be innately evil, now, and if so . . . how will that relate to his perception of Sam's growing evil-ness?

Well . . . "evil" for a set definition of the term. So far, Dean's just taking Castiel's word for it. When is he going to really start questioning that? Dean's not stupid . . . is he just so lost in his own pain and memories, and so desperate for answers, that he just accepts the first person who comes along and tells him what to do? Does Daddy's good little soldier miss his father that much?

*ponders*

I really am looking forward to seeing what they do with the rest of the season!!!

Sounds like the name of a band!

Tonight is the Duran Duran concert, which I had hoped to attend, but with the house and all, I just don't want to spend the fifty bucks.

Yesterday, the radio station I listen to was giving away a big Duran Duran prize pack, which included stuff like front-row seats and meeting the band and whatever. But I am well past the age when I would have thought being sweated on by Simon LeBon was a good thing, and besides . . . Roger was always my favorite. I called up the station and was the right number caller, so I asked them if I could just have the tickets and they could give the other stuff to someone else, but they pretty much laughed in my face.

Oh, well, the woman who won instead was a true fan who said she'd been dreaming of this since 1982, so I was glad that she had the opportunity.

I am consoling myself by playing all my Duran Duran albums on repeat.

Also, it is surprisingly chilly in my office today . . . especially for the end of May.

**************

Hm. So, apparently there is a kerfluffle currently occurring in the world of SPN fandom . . . something about misogyny and racism?

I dunno. Has it occurred to anyone that the writers are actually pushing the boundaries of acceptable language in broadcast television, rather than trying to make a political statement? It wasn't that long ago that nobody could say "hell" during primetime, and the first time I heard Buffy curse was shocking. OOf course the TV shows currently airing aren't going to just stop with a few tame damns and hells and bitches.

Granted, I'm starting out from the POV of being a Deangirl. There, disclaimer over, in case the three people who read this journal haven't figured it out already. And maybe I relate to him a little too strongly, in that I feel like I see similar characteristics in myself.

Like Dean, I don't have a terribly long fuse: I do not suffer fools gladly, nor indeed at all, and unfortunately, the combination of a smart mouth and a short temper often means that I instinctively lob the most hurtful insults possible at a target. I'm not especially proud of myself for that, but it's true . . . if I'm infuriated at a female, I'll refer to her as a bitch or a slut, even if those insults HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MATTER AT HAND.

Why wouldn't Dean do the same? Especially since he would have learned to do so in the sort of all-male company of hunters and his ex-military father? When I was growing up, family picnics *regularly* included at least an hour of racist and sexist jokes: it was how my father and my grandfather and my mother's brothers bonded. It was how their sons learned to interact with their uncles . . . and attitudes learned that young are difficult ( though not impossible ) to overcome.

How much more deeply was Dean indoctrinated, inculcated as he was with the desire to please his father? Sure, I bet John would have knocked him upside the head on occasion, if Dean said something really outrageous in front of him, but the everyday use of profanity and blasphemy and the attitudes of the people with whom they *did* interact would have had a far more lasting effect than a swat across the mouth for use of politically incorrect terminology. And that's not even getting into John's own beliefs, and how deeply they would have affected his sons, no matter how much of an absentee father he might have been.

That said, I do think it would be appropriate for someone to call Dean on his words. My dad was quick to correct my brother when he tried out a few choice epithets! Bobby would be the obvious choice, but I haven't noticed that kind of language being used around anyone except Sam-- which might mean that the word choices are deliberate on the part of the writers, and maybe we should wait and see where they're going with all this.

Although I still think that the most likely scenario is simply that the writers were too busy trying to cram an entire season into sixteen episodes, and their shorthand for the dichotomy of an emotional, frightened Dean was to present what they might have thought was a more masculine, aggressive public face, exemplified by the increased use of derogatory insults to, let's face it, TWO CHARACTERS WHO WERE DESIGNED TO PISS OFF EVERYONE.

The current outcry against the so-called misogyny and racism present in the show seems to me to be far too close to the battle being waged by the religious right against the same-sex storyline on Another World. What's the difference? It's just characters that somebody, somewhere, doesn't like, doing things that particular viewer doesn't approve of.

See, this is why I don't do meta . . . I started out saying one thing, and wandered off on kind of a tangent. Oh, well, it's just my vague thoughts and feelings, not a debate or anything.

It will be interesting to see where this kerfluffle goes in the next few weeks.

He makes some good points . . . ones I hadn't considered, other than to get pissed off about the grand injustice of it all.

I also find it interesting that the human condition is such that the need to identify as part of a group -- any group -- takes paramount importance over just about anything else.

Because, when you think about it? Why does it really matter who you fuck, or who you want to fuck, or who you think about maybe fucking? Why is it so important that it has to define who you are, who you see yourself as a person?

I'm interested in hearing other points of view on the topic. My thoughts are a bit vague and formless . . . it would be nice to bounce some ideas around.

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I wrote this in a comment response to a post by thamiris here, about writing and some of the difficulties thereof associated. I really liked the way my thoughts crystallized, so I'm posting it here.

There is a richness, a rhythm and a beauty to language that we, I think, as female writers, are trained to avoid as an unsavory example of excess abandon. We are guided into a puritanical, recitative role of objective narration, discouraged from enjoying the lush sensuality of our own prose, instructed with the literary equivalent of, "Lie back and think of England."

Like orgasm, writing happens best and most successfully when we don't think, don't obsess, don't worry . . . when the words and the characters flow as they will, not as we might have them. When we *create* rather than *narrate*, bloom rather than sprout, explode in a great and glorious burst of the jism of creativity rather than doggedly pursuing the outlined destination . . . *that* is when we are happiest with our work and our words.

That said, I fear most the loss of that literary orgasm -- the departure of the muse or the circuit breaker that allows my creativity a direct channel to my keyboard, as if my fingers are no more than a physical conduit to the words that are pouring forth. "Jumping the Moon" is still the story I love best, the one of which I'd never change a letter, the one that says it all for me and then some. And I wrote it in two days, typing in such a rush that I did not even recognize sentences as something I'd written, as if my mind and my body were completely divorced from each other.

The fact that I've been blocked on all my other fic tells me that, like with sex, I've been trying too hard to make the story come, and not spending enough time just lettting it happen. With the invariable end result the same . . . throwing my hands in the air, literally or metaphorically, putting on my robe and wandering off to find myself some ice cream.

You know, for all the yammering going on about how awful SV fen are . . . I have yet to have a bad experience with any of them.

Everyone I've been lucky enough to interact with has been unfailingly pleasant, unbelievably helpful, and unswervingly kind.

I have yet to meet anyone who seems to be gratuitously cruel, outrageously mean, or slavishly nasty.

Then again, I'm not as closely involved in fandom as are many others. I don't participate in discussion lists ( having long ago wearied of flame wars ) and I'm pretty much just hanging out on LJ, going, "Ooh, pretty." Some fic from time to time, but nothing huge.

And speaking of fic, SV has the reputation, apparently, as the fandom that eats its young writers.

Nobody's tried to eat me. Maybe I should be disappointed?

When I've asked for responses, I've received them. When I've requested constructive criticism, I've gotten that. When I've looked for betas, people have jumped up to help out . . . and if I'm a little grouchy about their suggestions, it's only because I'm lazy and fixing the story means doing more work.

So in sum . . . I blow kisses in the direction of all the SV people I know.

Because it sounds like you probably need them. :)>

My god. This is the subject that won't go away.

It's like Chinese food. You eat it for hours, until you're ready to burst, and then you look at the carton and find out that you've only managed to lower the level of fried rice by, like, half an inch.

I'm only following the author wars in other people's live journals, so perhaps I'm lacking some depth of experience.

The concept of flaming is an interesting one. What, exactly, constitutes a flame?

I have been known to send feedback to authors that discussed how disturbing I found a story to be. I once sent a feedback that talked about how wonderful the story was, that it could actually make me hate the author a little bit for writing it.

I never heard anything back from that author, but perhaps she thought I was a nut case.

I might very well be, but the fact that she was able to inspire something like virulent hatred in me was the highest compliment I've ever paid to an author.

I didn't consider that message to be a flame. I certainly didn't mean it that way, and I would hope that the author did not take it that way. I like to think that the reason I never heard so much as a thank-you was just that the author in question doesn't do thanks for feedback.

Which puts this author in the rude category, but hey. World's full of them.

As a beginning author myself, maybe I'm more rabid than most about thanking people for taking the time to tell me *anything* about my story. The people who mentioned things that they *didn't* like still got notes from me, because I think it's polite.

Feedback is a gift. hackthis said it well, better probably than I could have. Go here and read what she has to say.

Sums it up quite nicely.

Knowing how oversensitive I can be (just ask my betas! ::: blowing kisses :::), I'm inclined to be more tolerant of diva-like behavior in an author. But that's no excuse for rudeness, which is all that a flamewar really is.

We're all adults here. Let's act like it.

And again . . . let me mention the concept of free will and the delete key