My year in TV

SHOWS I ENJOYED

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Great work and exciting stories this year, but it never quite makes me love it as much as I want to. It's one of the few shows I don't watch for the characters. Some great fight scenes this year.
Archer - Still got it. The elevator bottle episode! Just jackin' it.
Arrow - Season 3 didn't end well, but I still always enjoy this show. I love its world & tone more than I'll ever love the world of The Flash. Just a personality thing.
The Big Bang Theory - Expanding their core cast was the best thing they ever did. I love watching their hijinks & friendships.
Brooklyn 99 - So quick witted & funny. The Halloween episodes!
Elementary - It's never going to be more than a pleasant procedural, but they respect the characters and I enjoy Sherlock and Joan always.
The Flash - Fun popcorn show. I often roll my eyes at the craziness and the gleeful plot holes, but it hits the emotions really well.
Fresh Off the Boat - Jessica being Jessica.
Community - Enjoyed catching up with the real show.
Game of Thrones - Not the best year but still love to visit this world. And THAT battle left me breathless.
Grimm - In the groove. Great cast. Nice long game last season and good start to this one. And a beautifully lit show.
iZombie - Took me about 6 episodes to fall in love, then couldn't stop rewatching. They solved the Duncan problem with Major! Amazing.
Justified - Wonderful last season. Really nice bounce back from season 5, which I really didn't enjoy much. They went out perfectly.
Orange is the New Black - Not as great as 1 and 2, but still a wonderful show. Piper is the worst! And the show doesn't try to say she isn't!
Person of Interest - Also not its best season, but I freaking love this show. Amy Acker as Root! Sarah Shahi as Shaw! The Machine POV! Can't wait for it to come back.
Wet Hot American Summer - Fun ride. Watched it first, then the movie, & had a blast.

**HONORABLE MENTIONS

Gotham - Finally watched the season on Netflix this fall. I realize its issues but still find it entertaining. Sad for the women not getting much screen time, but whenever they do, I just want them to spin off into a new Birds of Prey with these actresses.
The Librarians - Took me a while to get into the tone, but now I do enjoy its silliness.
Supergirl - Not completely caught up and it's a little wholesome for my tastes, but the lead is great and I'm hoping for overall goodness.
Supernatural - Season 10 suprised me by coming together pretty well in the last half, and 1st half had the wonderful 200th episode. Everytime I think I'm out...

SHOWS I <3 much="" p="" so="">
Agent Carter - So fun! Carter & Jarvis could totally be the new British Avengers. Loved the setting, the story, the breezy girl power. More more more!
The Americans - Brilliant & subtle & beautiful spy/family drama. So sad it gets so little love when it's truly one of the best shows on TV, even given a huge amount of competition.
Better Call Saul - I didn't even realize how much I missed the Breaking Bad visual artists until I saw the pilot. And the show is a great character exploration. Wonderfully written and shot.
Bojack Horseman - Painfully true existential crises in a surreal looking world. OMG, Will Arnett is so good here.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Deeply flawed but realistic female character who sings! The episode where she and Greg go on a date is one of the best episodes of TV I watched this year.
Daredevil - That fight scene! Charlie Cox in those red lenses. Kingpin's backstory. Nelson vs. Murdock's painful breakup. Another great character named Wesley.
Hannibal - The fever dream is over but will never be forgotten. My favorite show. It did things no other show would, experimenting with story and visuals and sound. Just amazing. Farewell, murder husbands.
Jessica Jones - So damned good. Great creepy villain, noir heroine, nuanced exploration of consent and agency. Makes it look so easy we have to wonder why no one else ever did it. I cannot wait to see this character again. And Luke Cage.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - Just a great and funny weekly news show. When is it coming back?
Mr. Robot - What a great dose of paranoia and mystery. I enjoyed the lead-up more than the conclusion, but it was still a unique and wonderful thing. And its tone made me remember Rubicon, so points just for that.
Pretty Little Liars - An actual dollhouse! Metaphor made concrete. And dealing with the aftermath. The villain reveal delves into an issue that's not easy to tackle, and they do a pretty decent job of trying to reconstruct Hitchcock for a (hopefully) more enlightened age.
Sense8 - This show. I'm not even sure why I like it so much; it just wouldn't let me go. Loved the slow build, the characters, the genre mixing, the philosophy. And the plot was fine. There was just a visceral excitement every time the characters melded, a feeling of joy you don't often get from a TV show.
You're the Worst - I had a moment this season where I almost fell out. I went from respect at the issue they were tackling to disappointment that it was going to completely destroy what I loved about the show to realization that they were managing to meld them together, all in the course of three episodes. So glad it's coming back.

**HONORABLE MENTIONS

Fargo - Only down here because I haven't watched all season yet. But I know I'm gonna love it. The first season was right under Hannibal and The Americans for me last year.
The Man in the High Castle - Watched the first 3 episodes and loving it muchly. High hopes for a great season.

SHOWS I MOST WANT TO WATCH/CATCH UP WITH

The 100
Bates Motel
Deutschland 83
Halt and Catch Fire
Humans
Jane the Virgin
The Leftovers
Master of None
Orphan Black
Other Space
Penny Dreadful
Transparent
UnREAL

__________________________


I just bet I've missed something important. What have I missed?

Mary Sue Pentagon

Starbucks musings before my afternoon job.

I tell myself stories as I go to sleep. Or I used to anyway. My favorite for a long time was a pretty intense fan fic crossover.

I had Mary Sued myself into 5 different fictional worlds as the same character. There was a complicated magic/physics, crossing multiverses reason for it. It was awesome. The worlds were from Joss Whedon's Buffy/Angel TV shows and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, Diane Duane's Wizards and Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde books.

There was a backstory where I used to exist in each of these worlds according to the standard parallel universe idea of multiple yous in multiple worlds. In each world, I was a young magic user raised by my evil sorcerer type uncle. He was twisted but brilliant. He found a way to breach dimensions and collaborate with four of his other selves in the quest to combine their essences to create someone who could cross freely from one to the other, drawing on the magical power available to the inhabitants in them all. But he wasn't reckless, he didn't try it first on himself, but on me. He succeeded in combining 5 of me into one who could travel to all the places. Of course, my first act was to kill him in every one of them. Hey, it hurt. Plus your Mary Sue needs something dark in her past in order to redeem herself later.

So I had a tragic backstory and a lot of power. I aged slowly. I lived for periods of time in each of the worlds, having adventures that would sometimes intersect with known characters. Did a lot of bad things, mostly as a result of the insanity that came from suddenly being all of me, and gradually came to regret them and attempt that redemption. Tons of bedtime stories for myself.

The story eventually led to a problem cropping up in every 'verse I existed in that I had to investigate. Of course it turned out that my creation had formed an instability in these 5 worlds that could lead to their destruction if I didn't find a way to fix it. By reversing the original spell, destroying myself as I existed and probably not allowing for my survival.

That was the broad outline of the story. So one night maybe I wanted to hang out at the Magic Box in Sunnydale, inadvertently crashing one of Buffy's adventures. Or I could visit that time in England when I worked as a spy for Dumbledore when Voldemort was rising. Or I had to visit an oracle with Harry Dresden, telling me about my upcoming doom. I could occasionally help Angel Investigations, if I was in the mood, or fight monsters with Diana and Mark. And towards the end of the story, the cat wizards looking after Manhattan's world gate would sure come in handy with all this multi-dimensional stuff.

I had a few original characters, but mostly I thought about the various lairs I had across the 'verses, and how my magic worked differently in each according to their own rules, and visited various time periods of my character's existence according to my mood. I could work through emotional issues I was having at the time by getting all angry or injured or whatever in my head story. It was fun.

I never was able to spin that off into something more original. And I never attempted to make my character interesting to anyone but me. It was all in my head, no reason to worry about the Mary Sue-oscity of her.

Many people hearing about my habit of telling myself these stories -- which I've had for a while, this was merely the last, best version because it could incorporate so much -- might think that with my imagination, I could be a writer. Okay, I might think that, lack of originality excepted. I could still be a bad writer, right? But there's that disconnect between the daydreams and writing a real story. I've not found the impetus to transition the brain power put into the daydreaming into something more tangible. It's even impossible for me to write down the schlock in my head as a starting point for something else. It just won't go down on the screen or page. This is the most I've ever said about it.

It's just weird is all. Is it just a lack of discipline or is there just some toggle I can't check on? Does everybody feel like there's something they should by all rights be good at, yet can't seem to do it? I blame myself for being -- something negative. But sometimes I feel like I'm missing something really obvious. Screw the meaning of life, where's my epiphany for this?

Poetry?? Well, an unedited, inept version of such anyway...

Feelin' jittery and out of sorts.

Some days you can't ignore the things you normally ignore.

Yet there's no optimism in the recognition
that this could lead to something I need
if only I could find the path or do the math.

Instead just a sense of usual recompense,
this too shall pass without leaving a mark
and there's no "at last I'm out of the dark."

Just descent into the same, again and again.

Life gives us so many chances
if we can only see them.
But sight is meaningless without action.
Just continual, disappointing redactions
of the openings in the veil.
Ignore it and return to blindness
because it's steady and easy, really a kindness.

I can make a choice to jump between the curtains
where nothing is certain,
but I can't envision what's beyond
because it's not there yet.
Without faith in my ability to create,
I'm left with the need to obviate,
not to deviate.
Self-hate is too strong a word,
but it does get referred
to in the thoughts that I hold.
This inability to be bold is infuriating,
had I the passion to be so angry.
Instead left with a dull and vague despair,
hardly deserving of the name.

Ennui is so French and so literary
Angst is too throat curdlingly German
and contains an anger that makes me tired.
Anxiety is just a piece, not really the point.
So search eternally for the words
rather than the means, the usual,
while time continues passing and
stasis remains the rule.

Thinking somehow poetry can unlock
the crock that is nothing profound,
only the immature ramblings
of derivative lambling.
Somehow tortured rhymes can take the joke,
twist the yoke, invoke the Loki that can burst free
and transform the staid and passionless
into new life and not too scary madness.
As if.

We are limited by who we are,
not because genes are concrete,
but because our minds are replete
with fears of self deceit.

Perspective and Tigers and Choices, OMG what?

So it was not the condemned making the choice in The Lady, or the Tiger, it was his beloved. I had completely forgotten that. The choice is not what would you choose for yourself, but what do you think the barbarian princess chose for her lover: Brutal death or life in the arms of another.

I did not in any way remember this part. I really think I only remembered how much I hated not knowing the ending; I'm not sure I ever engaged in the actual question of what did she choose. I'm not sure I care. I came back to this from Life of Pi, where I (sadly true) delighted myself with the comparison of choosing stories with or without tigers. And they do parallel. But where the story is asking the reader to extrapolate what is most likely the course of action taken by the character as written, the movie (and its preceding novel) is asking the viewer to choose which they would prefer. Maybe the two could be the same, but I think there's a huge difference. I guess you could choose your ending to the short story based on what you think will follow and what you'd rather see if you could keep reading, but I think you're constrained by the parameters of the character making the choice. Who is not you.

Or maybe it's the chronology that makes it so different. In Lady, it's about what will happen to this man. In Pi, it's already happened to him and your decision of which story you prefer does not affect him in any large degree. In Pi, it's more about you. So of course I prefer that.

But in first making the connection, I thought it was about the man in the arena. (BTW, this is all tying into Spartacus as well, so my pop culture serendipities continue to multiply). I knew he didn't know what was behind each door. I thought the question was which would he prefer. I thought my answer at the time was probably the lady because duh, but now I might think that was too safe a choice. Following Pi logic, choose the tiger because that's a better story. But it's not his choice.

Reading Jacob's Bates Motel recaps. The latest referencing, as the show did, Blake's The Tyger. Seriously, it's all coming up tigers lately. When it's not the Other. Can the tiger be the Other? Should it? And let's not get into where the tiger stands in societal privilege, the other recurring theme I keep coming across recently. The tiger can stand for so many disparate things. Are pop culture Tigers always male?

Yeesh. In what furnace was my brain? Anyway, it's all a mess in my head, not knowing what connection I really want to make here.

"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." -- Sonmi-451, Cloud Atlas

Arena boy sure is bound to his princess, and we can imagine bother crime and kindness coming his way, even if we disagree with which is which. Because we never hear what choice he would make. We wonder if the barbarian princess would choose his death to avoid seeing him with another, but couldn't he conceivably make the same choice?

I guess I'm just thrown by how different the story is than what I thought I remembered. Also weird it was written in 1882, and the person taking control of fate is a woman, and the person without real agency is a man. Isn't that odd? Maybe we're supposed to fear the power of this woman, who is bound to make a choice based on her barbarian emotions. Another example of how women shouldn't be in charge of things.

Why can't I ever think straight, untangle the webs to a readable skein? Time to end this ramble.

"while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger."--Sylvia Plath

There was girl: a ramble of thoughts with no solution

Once upon a time there was a girl. She prided herself on not being like the other girls, not realizing that that was just internalizing the misogyny around her. It's a point of pride to not be girly? But you see the predicament. No one likes to be put in a box and told how she is, particularly when she doesn't feel it. It's actually easier to see the box that way, but you're still dealing with the definitions imposed by the people doing the sorting.

So this girl grew up knowing that there was a lot of bullshit in the world. Not only from the usual suspects of entrenched power, but also from those who one would think would know better, would be an ally. Why she always saw things in these extremes is a good question. The world, and people, are always more complicated than you first think.

First hurdle is to understand the problem, which is harder for some than others, but then comes dealing with it. This girl dealt with it by stepping away from the heart of it and trying to stay separate, trying to define herself apart from it while still trying to take what pride she could from the difference, even if it was a facade with a weak foundation. It's all working with what others give you, abstract symbols created by others.

But not too long ago the girl considered whether there was some freedom in the purposeful use of these symbols. So why was that necessarily bad? Maybe because these early usages were not purposeful, but part of a rejection, an act of running away. One escapes the box only by leaving it behind entirely. But that means some of the good things in the box become inaccessible, or at least hard to get to. And if you escape the box with nothing, how do you even get into the other boxes to pick and choose from their contents?

Why does the girl think in terms of cardboard boxes in a white room? That's beyond abstraction to absurd oversimplification.

Once upon a time there was a girl who learned early on to empathize with characters in books, to feel their story with them, but who found it so much harder to understand the real people around her. She wasn't emotionless, she didn't see real people as cardboard, she just didn't really think about them that much because she was concerned with other things. Is that true?

Once upon a time there was a girl who developed cynicism early. Was it because the outside world wasn't as neat and tidy as the world of fiction? Was it because she learned through fiction that everyone had an agenda or just that life wasn't fair? Was it something learned from her surroundings? Was she naturally inclined to that? Or is it another function of the distancing? Did she really feel removed from the first person from childhood, or can she just not remember now what it was like?

Once upon a time there was a girl who was tentative, lacking confidence in herself, in the rightness of her actions. She was a girl much loved, appreciated, who never had to question her worth in the eyes of the adults around her as she did her peers. Why should such a girl be so tentative? Was it something that happened or an outgrowth of her natural inclinations? Just like everyone else, the girl became good at some things. She had confidence in her abilities to do some things, but it never translated over to confidence in just being herself. This life-long identity crisis stemming from never feeling certain of an identity to begin with?

But that's too simple. Surely early on she felt like herself. This questioning is a function of adolescence. So maybe the lack of self-confidence came later, and she just doesn't remember it. How did it happen and why does it persist into early middle age?

She had never lived the unexamined life, but what they don't tell you about that idea is that said examination is not the solution to anything, it's just a step. And sometimes it's a misstep because you examine the wrong things or come up with the wrong solution to the perceived problem. Step one is to think it through, but step two gets dicey.

Her common theme seems to be lack of solidity (which is kind of funny for the extreme contrast with her very solid physical existence). Part of it is not knowing what she wants to do with her life, never having had a goal/plan/desire that felt close to all-encompassing. Part of it is the struggle with what is expected, what is assumed, even by those closest. Part of it is a desire to not become static, to always remain open to new things/ideas/possibilities. It's all of a piece assuredly, but how does that help her? Does this mix of traits necessitate this constant dance? Or is the dance a lie she tells herself?

Is it possible she clings to this idea of the lack of solidity as an excuse for her lack of -- not advancement, but -- success maybe? Progress? Maybe her insides really are like her outsides, slow moving, solid as a rock, slow to change, unlikely to let go, unmoved, placid.

This is what lack of commitment feels like, she would say to all the sitcom men who were ultimately amateurs at the process. You want to sleep around and not commit to a relationship? Big fucking deal. I can't even commit to being me. I can't commit to a life plan of any sort. I can't commit to an understanding of what I really want from life. I can't commit to the idea of committing. Go back to school, son.

Do I want a place to stand that doesn't move or do I want eternal change? Do I want to stand in a room and yell, "Hey, I'm here" to whoever will listen or do I want to continue creeping around the edges and seeing how many people I can fool into thinking I'm not even there? How much of all of this is rank cowardice? That's a question that haunts me. The thought that everything I do, everything I am is a reaction to fear of some kind is unacceptable. But maybe it's true. What the hell do I do with that?

Do I keep to myself because that's what I desire, because it's what I need to be happy, or because I'm scared to A, fail, or B, open myself up enough to another person to make a partnership work? I honestly don't know, and it's not like I haven't thought about it. How much of that decision is tied to my second wave ideas of men/women, to my existential feeling that no other person ever actually sees you as as much of a person as he/she is? How much of it is a decision or a choice?

I guess we all start wondering what we're missing at some point, what will be those big regrets at the end of everything, but -- it's all tied up into the idea of giving up and letting them win. Giving up what and letting who win? In attempting to stay back from the fray and define myself for myself, how much is still dependent on some nebulous they and how they view things? And how much of this right here is just posturing and not truth?

Once upon a time there was a girl who couldn't tell when she was lying to herself or when she was telling the truth. There was no nose changes, no helpful twitches or truth-containing dreams. It was all so nebulous. Maybe she knows herself and it's only lack of confidence or neurosis that leads her to question her own hard-won wisdom. It's so easy to discount it if it's coming only from her. Yet what do other people know anyway? They're right when they say bad things about her, wrong when they say good. What about her?

Once upon a time there was a girl who could rarely tell when she was happy, who didn't know the difference between contentment and complacency, who through physical detachment came to be even more emotionally detached. Once there was a girl who worried about being a Vulcan, while also taking pride in her intellectualism overriding her emotions, who never gave in as a point of pride. This girl would look at Hollywood girls as wimps. You ever notice how the smart girl always had to learn to be dumber? All in the name of not locking away her more emotional/passionate self? Aside from the self-serving -- seriously!? -- nature of it, all could agree that those nerds needed to let loose and maybe do stupid stuff -- more likely do stupid boys -- to be a well-rounded person. Never once could one remain as she was. And all would likely agree she was not well-rounded, even if some would argue the need to tie it all in to becoming more conventionally attractive and finding a boyfriend.

Hah! Once there was a girl who wondered if it was just her who was able to withstand hormonal drives while making choices. She felt it then, she did. She had a crush once that was so intense it took almost all of her brain over, yet she didn't give into it because the guy was so not a good choice. You never see that story. It's all about sometimes needing to make those kind of mistakes. The girl wonders sometimes if they have a point beyond the straight male agenda.

Once upon a time there was a girl who failed in one of the only arenas she had ever had pride of self in. The girl fell so hard, when she crawled back up, she was another person. She still doesn't know if this made her stronger or weaker, but maybe long-term, it was stronger. The girl can no longer remember what was so different, whether the fall just brought out things more clearly or whether it was a total shock. There's been almost a decade now to smooth over the bumps.

Once upon a time there was a girl who finally learned something new about being a teen girl -- from a gay man who got it more than she ever did, who seemed to understand what was going all under the surface of all those popular girls, mean girls, let's face it most all other girls that were never who she wanted to be. She started to really understand all that she had disdained. Even if she was really still mostly a Dan Humphrey about it all. She even felt some nostalgia for something she never experienced in the first place.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was proud of not being a man while at the same time gloried in all things that separated her from being a stereotypical woman. Her role models were intellectual men, or any men who at least seemed to accept women as persons. Later they became, and remain somewhat, middle aged women who fought/fight the power. Iconoclasts and eccentrics who didn't follow traditional womanly paths. And she became one of them. So there's that. She got what she wanted there. But she wonders if she focused on the whole picture or just parts of it. She suspects that one needs more integration after the initial separation or you're back to accepting the world of the boxes, the unacceptable.

Yet the girl knows that if only through indifference or insouciance, she has not been so iconoclastic or eccentric. At least, not on the surface. It goes back to perspective. Is being enough, or does one need to express externally? I wouldn't have had those role models if they had been as hidden as I am from the world

Once upon a time there was a girl who would pick and choose what to focus on and what to ignore based on what made her feel best about herself. She knew she was not so different from anyone else that way. She felt most of life was self-serving indulgence. Can one be cynical and proactive?

Once upon a time there was a girl who didn't know how to end a rambling essay. So she gave up and just did it, realizing that it would lack closure to make it coherent, just like fucking life.

useless blather

The spring started out with my voluntarily hanging at coffee shops for the sun and the cabin fever remedy. I'm so ready to be busier next term. Crossed fingers. Now I'm just avoiding roofers/traffic and biding time until the mail comes, hopefully with my check in it!

So comfortably ensconced in a westside Starbucks with a fake fire. Kind of comfy, but since daylight savings is still messing me up, feel like I'll fall asleep despite the caffeine. Thought maybe using the computer would be more conducive to staying awake than reading, though I really want to get going on the next Harry Dresden book.

Don't think I want to go into any of the stuff I've been talking about in my latest entries. Not feeling like I have anything new to add.

Really, I've got nothing. I should do some research on things to do spring break when I visit the folks. Usually it's an opportunity to just be able to chill and not worry about doing anything. But since winter term has been so uneventful, I'm over it already. I'll need something else.

There's computer work I can do of course, but I haven't been very likely to do it thus far. IDK. Don't want to think about all that either.

So yeah, this entry is pretty much worthless, even in context.

What to write about spy TV.

Only possible self-initiated writing assignment I can come up with for myself is related to spy tv, since that's what has been pulling my attention lately. I don't have any real desire to write, just a feeling that I should. At least it's something I can do that's not passively imbibing. But not sure of the angle. Came up with ideas of compare and contrast episodes of various spy shows with similar plot ideas. Not sure what would come of that.  Could lead to some chronology comparisons, which ties in with ideas on changing face of surveillance with new tech, and/or pre and post 9/11 stuff. But not sure where to go. Trying not to worry about it too much. It's just for me right now; doesn't have to rock the world. So that way I don't have to do a ton of research either. Want just some grounding in spy tv tropes that I can then apply to my focus, which is more personal to me.

Do I just want to know why Homeland, Person of Interest, and The Americans have been the latest shows I've really been excited about? Oh, maybe I should go ahead and recap Americans. It's 6 in, I could do it. Even though I have read/listened to some commentary on the eps already, plus have larger than one episode scope. Still, could be fun.

OMG Person of Interest. This show is just so good, and so few people in my sphere talk about it. It's a real shame. I don't know if it's the procedural backbone or just that it's another that was either advertised or anticipated to be trying to recapture Lost. It's so its own thing that that's not close to fair, but whatever. It's one of the only shows lately that I daydream up stories in order to insert myself into its world. That's a rare thing for me of late. I certainly don't go there with Once or Grimm or even Supernatural anymore. Nor Arrow. But this show, oh man, pushes all the right buttons for a world I want to be a part of, even though it's really scary and I in reality would be toast there. Kinda like the Buffyverse that way.

I just realized that. I know I've been Mary Suing myself to the show, but hadn't considered that it's been a couple years since I found a show to do that with. I think since Supernatural was good. It's a different level of enjoyment than just really digging a show being good, like Americans. It's a combo of enjoying an excellent show and having the world/mythology of the show really capture my imagination. That's what it is. A thrilling feeling, especially when I feel so insulated from emotion these days, something to be passionate about.

Anyway. So what to write about? Skimmed some essays on Informational Ethics that could apply. Still interested in idea of omniscience and its relation to prognostication, although that is fading a bit. Still like best I think the idea of surveillance, something about that. I have always had a huge dose of something like double consciousness, and I think that's part of what I'm liking about these shows and their focus on surveillance. Watching Carrie watch Brody on the monitors. The meta parallel of that action with tv viewing, looking into the lives of these characters like an omniscient god, getting to know them via their external actions and communications. And how it is to always be aware of being watched, how that affects your actions. Tying into even the thing in Cloud Atlas I keep coming back to, the idea of seeing yourself in the gaze of the Other. All of that is aswirl in my head and I need to figure out how to see it clearly, what is the through line that I want to tease out.

Something is enticing about the meta parallel. Even though I don't generally enjoy reading about how we watch tv or what being a fan is or any of that stuff, I do wonder about how far that parallel goes. Couldn't you imagine yourself doing the spy surveillance stuff, even if you're not into anything else about it? Isn't that part of reality tv's appeal, looking in on real lives, trying to figure out something about the truth of these lives from watching them? It's not about talking to them, but watching. Which is my modus operandi most of the time anyway, when getting to know people. I don't tend to ask them a lot of questions, to actively seek information about what they're like. I prefer to just sit back and observe their behaviors and analyze their words, forming my impression of who they are from that. Maybe it's just because of the distancing thing I do socially that I can so connect with that idea.

Many of my daydreams have involved being undercover, always being watched, having to pass secret messages, never fully trusting anyone with the truth. That's my play time. So it's no surprise that something like the Americans (also set during my COA, my preteens) would really be of interest to me. Hell, I had a story similar to theirs as a backstory for my Scarecrow & Mrs. King Mary Sue, only we were sleepers in Russia instead. Pushing buttons.

But that's all well and good. What could I write about that would give me practice, be satisfying, and teach myself something new about what I'm seeing or why it's working for me? Maybe it's just because I'm lazy, but it's hard to think of something I would want to commit to writing about. It's easy enough to throw around some ideas, think of further research that could be done, but not so much to come up with a topic sentence and go to it. This is why I worry about being able to go back to school. Writing essays used to be the easiest thing in the world, but now... Of course, it's so much harder to be self-directed anyway.

I liked Alias and Chuck, but they were very different from these types of shows, very actiony or comedic, using surveillance tools, definitely focused on tech -- spy-fi -- but not really going into the bigger ideas associated with that. They weren't supposed to.

Part of it is the whole reality of eternal surveillance coming into being around us too. It's easier and easier to empathize with characters who are always being monitored, isn't it?

Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the fantasy I liked best had some aspects of this undercover stuff too. The more medieval cloak and dagger espionage, people hiding powers or birthright, secret mages in current society, wizards and witches seeing people from afar... People not who they seem, but special. Common fantasies we all have I suspect. How many of us hope we're secretly more special, skilled, important than we actually are? It's just that we're not recognized as we blend into the crowds around us. But if someone were really looking, they would be able to figure out that we were somehow unique, no matter how much we look indistinguishable from everyone else around. We are all hiding our own secrets, we're all sleeper agents.

Or maybe I shouldn't say all. We are all heroes in our own story, but some are kings and queens, some are warriors, and some are spies who always know more than they say, who always see both the world everyone sees and the other realities happening to the side or underneath that most people ignore or are ignorant of. Some of us like seeing and not being seen. Some of us hide anything real or important to keep those things safe from those who are always trying to see us but never see us truly.

Oy. That's enough of that. At least I didn't start in on the whole female thing. You're welcome.

But what do I want to write about? I really think surveillance is the overarching, big picture part. But it's way too abstract and wide-ranging. But what's interesting is that could reach out of the spy genre and bring in things like Gossip Girl or PLL, both shows which have/had omniscient antagonists that see all the heroes do and use that intel for their own ends. How does that fit in/compare to what some of these spy dramas are doing? And again the meta parallel, do I want to go there given how little I really feel able to comment on all that? I don't know.

Then there's the whole storytelling aspect of that too. That's too real world for this topic for me I think. I always love that kind of investigation, but not in this case.

Of course, there's always the option of not writing anything about them, just enjoying what they give me. Like I do everything. Black hole. Maybe I do need school assignments to actually accomplish anything.

Well, enough rambling here.