Be safe, be seen, be anyone you like

[sovay]

While looking for something else, I found a page of notes I made to myself last summer, it looks like on the way to/during NecronomiCon. The first one reads as though it might have been shaping up to be a post, but I have (appropriately) no idea where it was going:

There are ways in which traveling by myself, especially at night, feels better than going anywhere else any other way. This strikes me as dangerous and also in some way irresponsible: one of the classic noir fantasies is to walk right out of your life and into someone else's and in most of these stories someone forgets to mind the gap. Taking the night train is itself like traveling into a dream. Outside of the safe confines of routine, you might be anyone. Might even surprise yourself. Pleasantly or unpleasantly, the journey doesn't care. Like Dionysos. When the walls fall down, it's just you against the sky, and you'd better be strong enough to stand on your own. So many characters in these dream plays find out they aren't.

In other news, I just read my own dream record dating back to 1999 (some years nothing written down, some years it's like I was never even awake) and I think I have some kind of reflective hangover. What I wish I had was the breathing room to write fiction. I feel terribly as though I am forgetting, or have already forgotten, how.

[edit] I took a hot shower and reminded myself that I am underslept and still sick to the point that I may bail on tomorrow's chorus rehearsal and that tonight's Hanukkah party was a success but also intensely full of people: in other words, not in good condition for accurate self-evaluation. I suspect it did not help to transcribe a bunch of half-finished introspection. I am going to read some more Raymond Durgnat, who delighted me almost on page one by suggesting that one could read Psycho (1960) as a werewolf story, as I do, and see what I can do about the sleep end of this problem.

Comments

[asakiyume]

That's so good. Please turn it into something. --thank you very much for that... I might. If I do, I'll share.

Voyager rewatch: We embarked on it after having finished a Deep Space Nine watch-through. I had not been interested in watching Deep Space Nine back in the day, so I'd seen only a handful of episodes. I ended up really, really liking the show. Voyager, by contrast, I'd seen a lot of (though not all of), and I *thought* I liked it. On a rewatch, I've realized that I only really liked it after Seven of Nine joined the show (which just goes to show that that character was not there only for adolescent boys; I think she's brilliant). There are occasional episodes before that which I like, but the antagonists they set up in the first half of the run are just dreadful (boring and stupid), and there is *so much* entrenched, uncommented-on sexism--despite having a female captain. Mainly it shows itself in planets they visit that duplicate 1950s-TV/film sex roles--or popular conceptions of sex roles from earlier eras. Tedious. Also, Captain Janeway is, for me, annoyingly sure of her values and happy to condescend to everyone she meets when talking about those values.** It's great to have Seven of Nine around to offer pushback. Also, Seven of Nine is that rare female character who refuses, who says no, who contradicts the people around her, without apology, defensiveness, or, for that matter, self-aggrandizement or bombast--just self-assurance. It's a thing of beauty to behold.

**Admittedly that's a trait she shares with the male captains in the franchise, but I may have some internalized misogyny going on that dislikes hearing it especially from her.

ETA: I realized after blathering on that I was writing as if you hadn't seen any episodes of the show and hadn't expressed an opinion! I don't mean to be overly negative--I still do like the show overall, upon reflection... just I like it *more* once it has Seven of Nine.

[sovay]

--thank you very much for that... I might. If I do, I'll share.

Yay!

I had not been interested in watching Deep Space Nine back in the day, so I'd seen only a handful of episodes. I ended up really, really liking the show.

I bounced off it completely back in the day, but at skygiants' instigation wound up watching several of the good Ferengi-centric episodes and had a wonderful time. spatch loves the show, full stop.

Mainly it shows itself in planets they visit that duplicate 1950s-TV/film sex roles--or popular conceptions of sex roles from earlier eras. Tedious.

And even more so now than in the late '90's, I suspect.

Also, Seven of Nine is that rare female character who refuses, who says no, who contradicts the people around her, without apology, defensiveness, or, for that matter, self-aggrandizement or bombast--just self-assurance. It's a thing of beauty to behold.

Similarly, I know from other people's reactions that she was valuable then, but she feels like even more of a treasure now. That kind of character written female is still unusual.

I realized after blathering on that I was writing as if you hadn't seen any episodes of the show and hadn't expressed an opinion!

I'm not insulted! phi essentially showed me the good parts version of Voyager, which I think was the correct decision on their part. The two or three times I'd tried to watch it while I was airing, I'd been driven away. As it is, I know I've seen a carefully hand-curated slice of the show, just a carefully hand-curated slice of the show which proved that if the writers had put that much attention into every episode, it would have been one of the high points of long-form serial sci-fi.

[asakiyume]

I'm all for that sort of curating! It lets people experience the best of a show--if they want to go back and see the whole thing for completionism's sake (or some other reason), they always can.

And yeah, some of those Ferengi episodes in Deep Space Nine were very good.