Ruugerion

Hmph. Looks like my plan to catch up on Doctor Who (I'm only 1.5 seasons behind!) before S13 starts airing will not happen, because apparently it starts on Halloween, and I still have 50+ episodes of ER that I need to watch before mid-November.

(after having watched 100+ episodes of ER in the last months)

(don't ask)

But I'll have to really get a grip and catch up before Book of Boba Fett comes out (especially since I suspect that Obi-Wan will probably follow soon after) because I'm tired of avoiding spoilers.

(I'm still not quite OK with the fact that I'm genuinely excited about Book of Boba Fett after hating the character for nearly 30 years. Curse you, Temuera Morrison)

By the way, did I ever mention that I actually started embroidery as a hobby last year as an attempt to watch Doctor Who? Because I thought that if I had something productive to do while I watched, I might be more likely to actually do it, so I bought bunch of embroidery stuff and started doing it while I watched TV. Alas, I proctastinated so long that DW disappeared from streaming again, but I do now have a bunch of random embroidered stuff.

(just today I made a feather patch while watching ER on the train)

This draft that's been lingering in my WIPs for a few months now, so this is basically What Ruuger's Been Doing This Summer (answer: watching a lot of TV)
ER

( Read more... )

Fringe

( Read more... )

The Fall

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Cold Feet

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I'm currently rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation (as those who follow me on Twitter may have noticed) because I bought the bluray set as a birthday present to myself and OH MY GOD SO SHINY. The bluray remaster is unbelievable, and makes the show look like it could have been made today. It really makes me wish that B5 could get a similar hi-def treatment.

In oter news, I have 11 Imzy invites in case someone still needs one. Just give me your email and I'll send you one.

Sorry, the content of my journal has recently been limited to previously-written memes because work is making me hate the English language :)

Day 22 - Favorite series finale

Babylon 5 finale "Sleeping in Light", because it's exactly what the last episode of a series should be like. There is closure, but also a sense that the universe will continue after the credits roll. It's sad, but not depressing. There is meta (JMS and the light switch), but not too much to become distracting. And it still makes me cry every time.

(and the music, oh the music...)

( YT-vid under the cut )

I also liked the E.R. finale "And in the End..." for the exact same reasons:

( YT-vid under the cut )

(now, if you were to ask me my least favourite season finales, it would be a tie between "The Truth" (X-Files) and "Not Fade Away" (Angel))

Day 23 - Most annoying character

In a show that I love: Sally Field as Abby's mother on ER. Words cannot describe how I hated her and the surupy relationship-drama she brought with her. And to rub salt on my wounds, she went on to be nominated for Emmy for at least a few times for the performance! Also Rance Howard as Sheridan's dad on B5 similarly managed to ruin for me two otherwise near-perfect episodes.

In general, I've found that I have issues with character's relatives on tv-shows, especially parental figures (I think I'm the only one who dislikes Castle's mother and daughter on Castle).

I was fairly neutral about Joyce (though I wish she'd been less of a 'mom' and more of an actual character is her own right, and I also dislike how fandom makes her out to be a saint), and Scully's parents were kinda twee but tolerable, but I think the only major parental figures in my favourite tv-shows that I've actually liked (and by 'liked' I mean thought they were interesting characters) are Spike's mother, Jane's father, and Mulder's mother - I'm not sure if it's a coincidence that all three were kinda assholish towards their progeny...

Whedonesque linked to an article about the women of Whedonverse, which made me curious about whether there were any other women in the Buffy writing team than Jane Espenson and Marti Noxon since they are the only ones that people tend to talk about. A quick browse through Wikipedia taught me that yes, there are. I also learned that:

1) Ashley Gable, who wrote my favourite The Mentalist episode so far, "His Red Right Hand", and is one of the show's co-executive producers, has also co-written an episode of Buffy. Namely "I Robot, You Jane". Err... I guess she got better? I can easily see her writing for Whedonverse, though, since all her episodes on The Mentalist have been focused on Lisbon almost to the point of sidelining Jane (Gable is also the writer we can thank for this), plus she's really good at writing snappy dialogue and banter.

2) Buffy kinda sucks when it comes to female directors - of the 144 episodes, only six episodes were directed by a woman. Angel does slightly better, with five of of 110 episodes being directed by a woman (all by Marita Grabiak) while Firefly had only one and Dollhouse three.

Mind you, The X-Files does even worse - besides Gillian Anderson's "all things", Michelle MacLaren's "John Doe" appears to be the only episode in all of nine seasons (202 episodes) that was directed by a woman...

Babylon 5 had 110 episodes and 11 of them were directed by a woman (one by Lorraine Senna Ferrara and the rest by Janet Greek), so it's not like women are radically better off in other shows either. I just kinda expect more from Whedonverse shows since they are supposed to be more feminist that average Hollywood entertainment. I was actually just last week grumbling how The Mentalist has only had three episodes this season that were directed by a woman (9/65 in total so far), but I guess I should have done some research before starting to complain :D

eta: Because I'm on the roll: ER had 331 episodes (15 seasons) with 57 of them directed by a woman, which makes it percentage-wise the best one so far. I wonder how much difference there is between genres - that is, do dramas/soaps have more women working for them than 'manlier' genres?

It's also interesting that the same names keep cropping up - Darnell Martin, Leslie Linka Glatter, Laura Innes, Marita Grabiak - even though these shows are on different networks and different genres, making it even more obvious how hard it is for women directors to get a break.

(this post was brought to you by all the systems being down at work, making a very bored ruuger who cannot do any actual work)

DISCLAIMER: I don't claim for the numbers to be exactly correct because I'm a language/literature major and we suck at math. Feel free to correct me if and when I'm wrong.

I think I'll stop calling this the 30-day TV meme and start calling it the 30-times-ruuger-remembers-to-turn-on-the-computer TV meme...

Day 04 - Your favorite show ever 

I think everyone who has read my journal longer than... uh... since last Saturday will know the answer to this question.

(It's Babylon 5)

There really isn't anything about B5 that I haven't already said a million times before, but I do have few words about the runner ups, which are The X-Files, Buffy and ER.

The X-Files and Buffy have a special place in my heart because they were what kept sane during some of the worst times of my life in 1995 and 2005 - XF had Mulder and Scully, whose friendship appealed to my lonely and bullied 15-year-old self, and BtVS had S6!Buffy whose problems I could easily relate to seeing that I was unemployed and living on pretty much zero income at the time, and Spike whose arc was very poignant to me because of its theme that no matter how badly you screw up, you can start all over again if you just try hard enough.

Incidentally, both shows ended up seriously disappointing me as well - XF with its increasingly muddled mythology that culminated with the ridiculously bad season 7, and now BtVS with the S8 comics.

My fourth love is one that I don't often talk about but which I have been a fan of longer than any of my other favourites: ER. I started watching it before I became a fan of The X-Files, and continued watching it until I was already fading out of Buffyverse fandom. Fifteen years is a long time to love a show, and Thursdays just aren't the same without it, even if seasons 13 and 14 were actually pretty crap :)

I love all four shows to bits, so perhaps Babylon 5 just had the decency to end before I started hating it... although in the case of both The X-Files and ER, by the their final seasons I was again loving the shows more than ever, so maybe Buffy still has hope too :)

( The rest of the questions in case anyone else wants to play )

(sekrit message to wendelah1: sorry, I've been so busy that I haven't had the brainpower to properly go through your beta comments yet (though I did already edit in all the typo corrections and other smaller things), I'll get back to you about them later this week)

First, thanks to everyone who replied to my Doctor Who post. With your recommendations (and anti-recommendations) I might finally be able to catch up with the show :)

Second, I had the weirdest dream last night where I was having dinner with David Lyons (and his wife?) on a train. There were no people turning into jam or exploding buttocks or anything, but WTF David Lyons? I liked Dr Brenner on ER, but he was far from being my favourite character, and I haven't even thought about him in ages so... why? My best explanation is that my subconsciousness was going for Simon Baker, but when he was unavailable had to settle for the next best thing (truefax: one of the reasons why I originally started watching The Mentalist was because I mistook Simon Baker for David Lyons). Wouldn't be the first time - I once had a dream where Spike was played by Cillian Murphy, though that wasn't nearly as weird as the dream where I was played by Samuel L. Jackson.

Third, and this is the main point of my post: I just found out that I might be moving to my new apartment already this weekend. Ha ha. Two guesses if I've started packing yet (the answer rhymes with 'go'). As a result, it is very possible that I won't have an internet connection except at work for the next few weeks from Sunday onwards. So, aris_tgd, could you take care of b5_revisited for the next month? And any volunteers to look after universe_today?

If I have time, I'll do this with just one fandom later.

The Rules:
First, write down the names of 12 characters. Then read and answer the questions. You can't look at the questions (or click on the cut) until you write down the 12 characters you're going to use.

1. Marcus Cole (Babylon 5)
2. Monica Reyes (X-Files)
3. Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
4. Storm (X-Men)
5. Sam Vimes (Discworld)
6. Jarod (The Pretender)
7. Darien Fawkes (I-Man)
8. Benton Fraser (Due South)
9. Alan Grant (Jurassic Park)
10. Luka Kovac (ER)
11. Delirium (Sandman)
12. James Bond

( Read more... )

The season 11 of ER finally started here a few weeks ago and to celebrate this I decided to try to find some good fanfiction to read. I had to do this very carefully because I don't want to be spoiled of what has happened on S11, but turns out it wasn't spoilers that I had to worry about but the badfic. And I didn't even go near fanfiction.net.

At first I tried to find recs, even posting to the_rec_room, but only found two good fics. Then I went through all the good multifandom archives (such as Yuletide) I had bookmarked, and came up with a couple of stories more. Finally I gave up and did a google search. Big mistake.

What I learned was:

1. Good ER fanfiction is a) mostly slash, and b) extremely rare. Make that more or less extinct. Good fanfiction featuring Kovac that is not Carter/Kovac does not apparently exist (which I don't mind that much since Carter/Kovac is my favourite Kovac-pairing).

2. ER fandom has a serious problem with fangirl-Croatian.

3. There are stories told from the point of view of Carol's twins.

3. ER RPF (George Clooney/Julianna Margolies) not only exists, but seems to be quite popular too.

4. ER fandom has cutesy pairing names that sound like condom brands: luby, carby, carsan, cordano, samka, lusan, cacy... Except that last one which not only sounds but is the name of a serial killer.

5. There are babies everywhere.

6. I really, really love the Babylon 5 fandom.

It's been raining quite a bit lately, and I've had time to dabble with Paint Shop Pro a bit more than I should. As a result I have created not only the Londo collage I posted a few days ago, but two more:

( True Secrets and Important Things (Galen from Crusade) )

( Lost and Found (Luka from ER) )