sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2015-05-31 02:50 am

Some may recall the singing of the sirens lured in the sailors who'd wreck and drown

1. Last night I fell asleep before four in the morning and I stayed that way until shortly after one in the afternoon. In between, for the first time in months, I had detailed, narrative dreams in two distinct phases. I was watching a television play and participating in it at the same time: the killing of a king in something like a Shakespearean history, filmed with all the grey skies and chapped faces and damp wool of modern adaptations. There might or might not have been a plot with a pretender. The speeches should have been in verse, but I can't remember if they were. I fell in love with the youngest of the killers, the one who got the death-blow in, a thin, cowled, gender-ambiguous person with straw-spiky hair and a round face with too many bones in it. They were quick-spoken, taking little nervous breaths halfway through phrases; they were gentle and political and I knew they would be betrayed. We never did more than hold one another, briefly and longingly. I had to watch them found out and torn apart, long after the point where the frame of the play had blurred into something that was really happening. Quartering sounds neat as mathematics, I remember thinking; bodies aren't stamps with dotted lines. After the coronation, I pushed through the gallery of spectators into the backstage that had not existed since the first moments of the dream and found them in modern dress, scarf pulled down around their neck like a cowl, packing a knapsack. They burrowed against me instantly. Later I learned that their name was Filipe and their gender identity was "boi" and we went out to dinner with a bunch of other actors and dancers they worked with (at a restaurant near Fresh Pond that hasn't existed since I was a child, though I didn't remember that until after I'd woken) and it wasn't that the events of the history play had never happened, or that we were living in some kind of metatheatrical region between dreams, but dying and going out to dinner were apparently not mutually exclusive. It was not an idyllic dream, which interests me from here. Not all their friends liked or approved of me; I hadn't introduced them yet to any of mine beyond [livejournal.com profile] rushthatspeaks and [livejournal.com profile] derspatchel. It must have been colder where we were or earlier in the year, because I remember trees breaking into flower above our heads, white and pink petals all over the sidewalk. I remember how they fit into my arms, a little shorter than I was and much skinnier. I missed them when I woke up. Those are unusual dreams for me these days.

2. I spent much of this evening with [livejournal.com profile] sairaali and M., watching Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001). It turns out that the pilot and the second half of the two-parter with the Borg Queen are not a good introduction to Voyager, but being shown four favorite episodes (and one chosen to showcase a character I was interested in) by someone who really likes the series is great. Robert Picardo continues his streak of fantastic character acting, because the Doctor was my favorite character almost at once. Her figure-hugging jumpsuit is idiotic, but Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine may be coming in second. I am interested to see a show running two very different narratives about how to be human—or not—simultaneously, without putting them in conflict with one another. Will gladly watch more episodes as recommended. Also, Kate Mulgrew has an amazing voice. The last person I heard who sounded like her was Katharine Hepburn.

(I stand by my original assessment of Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005), however: it was terrible.)

3. I should cook fruit more often. The braces and other health concerns have made eating most raw fruits difficult, but the baked-down plums and nectarines really worked.
ext_104661: (Default)

Re: Robert Picardo

[identity profile] alexx-kay.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 03:10 am (UTC)(link)
...and if you do watch it, it rewards hanging around through the end credits.

[identity profile] sairaali.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 04:13 am (UTC)(link)
That's because I haven't shown you any Harry or Tom centric episodes yet, because Harry and Tom are boring sacks of bricks. I think "Bride of Chaotica" might just be bad enough to wrap around into hilarious. Kim is still annoying, but at least he's not being kidnapped by a planet of black widows, being transformed into another species because he can't keep it in his pants, fighting Tuvok over the love of a holodeck character, or being hunted by a lovestruck Klingon.

[identity profile] snowy-owlet.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooo, I adore cooked plums. My favorite is to stew them with some ginger, cardamom, and a tiny bit of cinnamon, then eat them on top of rice pudding made with coconut milk.

(I may have told you about this before - I like to take every opportunity to tell everyone about it.)

[identity profile] cucumberseed.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Leverage is very worthwhile television. Timothy Hutton's character can be a little much sometimes, but the others are always great, and he's usually good (and in a "helps the others shine" sort of way. When the plot is centered on him, it tends to leave me cold).

Also, it's got Mark Shepard, who is not always a mark of quality (no pun intended, but now that it's here, I embrace it), but always a mark of style. And they don't overuse him like they do in Supernatural.

[identity profile] cucumberseed.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)
LJ ate my first comment, so I'll try it again.

I would expect a person who's used to the weight and bulkiness of Borg armor and implants to wear more layers of clothing, not fewer.

This nails something for me that was always an underlying, inarticulate unease about the costume, overshadowed by the fanservicey aspects.

Fanservice is one thing, and as a member of the default target audience for it, it always leaves me feeling a little insulted and filthy (at some point, I need to talk about going to the car after Ex Machina (2015). But fanservice that is also bad fiction really rubs me up the wrong way.

[identity profile] cucumberseed.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Mark Shepard plays ... oh crap. I forget his name in Leverage, he's an old rival for timothy Hutton's character. He shows up once in a while and makes a good foil for the team.

He's Crowley in Supernatural, and they love him on that show to the point where they have (amongst their many latter-day sins) kind of overuse the character.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)
The one that I really objected to was the one where Southern Guy is incurably sick, so they create a clone of him, because that'll let them somehow harvest something medically to save him. But Clone-Southern-Guy is, of course, an independent, complete, sentient being, and eventually has needs and wants distinct from acting as a healing dose for his progenitor. I think the show tries to obfuscate by having it be that Clone Guy is going to die anyway, but nevertheless, the characters were coming down on the side of this guy being a secondary being whose only purpose is to service the main guy. It was horrible.

There was also one involving two intelligent species, one of which had been cognitively less advanced (? or something?) and kept in a subservient position, but now the oppressor race was ill with something that was going to kill them unless Enterprise crew intervened. But they decided not to because of the prime directive, but comforted themselves because of clear sign that the subjugated people is now coming into its own, intellectually and (presumably, with the demise of the subjugators) power-wise, as well. I may be misremembering things about that one, but in any case, it seemed like a misinterpretation of the prime directive--or at best an indication of a real flaw in the prime directive--but instead of the episode looking at things from that angle, it was all from a Yay! This other people will get to flourish! angle. I can't recall if the oppressor people were made to be Awful in Every Way (and therefore worthy of extinction).

Finally, there was an episode in which the captain decided he needed to torture someone because ends justify means, apparently, and so he put the person in a decompression tank, just as they did to Kirk in TOS one episode, but this was not taken as a commentary on this being a wrong action. Nope. It's A-OK to torture when it's the captain doing it. That was the episode after which I wouldn't watch any more.

ETA: What made *you* give up on it?
Edited 2015-06-01 19:23 (UTC)

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 07:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow, she's so young here I can hardly recognize her.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
There's an episode I've only ever seen part of, and only once, that I'd dearly like to see, in which they seem on the verge of discovering a singularity or something--something that for the Borg is spiritually significant--and she experiences some sense of loss or regret when ? I don't know... things don't work out for one reason or another. I'd like to see the episode and see what actually happened in it.

And yes, I like that about being as like the replicator and the doctor. It's not a self-deprecating remark, it's a machine-elevating remark.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 07:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Which was the one character? I can only remember three characters: Southern Guy, Quantum Leap Captain, and Vulcan Woman.

Oh, and I forgot to say that in the clone episode, whatever it was they were going to do to the clone to harvest what they needed, it was going to kill him (i.e., it wasn't just "You're going to die anyway, so why do you mind that we're taking your kidney" it was "What we're going to do to you will kill you, but you shouldn't mind, because you'd die pretty soon anyway, and wouldn't you like to die earlier to save this person who's the REAL you?"

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 07:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Far too often alien-human compare-and-contrast plots wind up resolving as if automatically in favor of the human way, and that includes artificial intelligence stories. I liked seeing the explicit acknowledgement that the organic human way is not the only right way and it's the humans' responsibility to get over that particular blind spot, not the cyborg's to change to conform to it.

ME TOOOOOOO.

[identity profile] sairaali.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh dude, I got so bored of Nate Ford and his endless wallowing in angst and his abject refusal to make any personal growth or development at all. I could have dealt with it if I thought he was growing at all in any way, but no, it was the bog of eternal pity.

Mark Shepard was great! I love to hate him -- he was the most sympathetic ruthless tv villian I can remember in a long time. He was an excellent antagonist in Warehouse 13 too. I don't want to typecast him, but, every time I've liked him, he's been playing the dogged believer in The System going after our loveable but reckless and unlawful heroes, and he does so well in that kind of role.
gwynnega: (Mary Ryan)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2015-06-01 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
When I first saw Ryan's Hope in reruns, I kept staring at her wondering who she reminded me of, and when I realized it was Captain Janeway, I was delighted!

[identity profile] cucumberseed.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 08:57 pm (UTC)(link)
This is true. Nate is only good when he's hatching the plan or interacting with the others (except for Sophie, and I think that relationship between the two of them bogs her character down).

Shepard is great when they use him right. He's fun even when they don't. Sterling was a good example of using him correctly.

[identity profile] cucumberseed.livejournal.com 2015-06-01 09:29 pm (UTC)(link)
That's horrible. I'm really glad I missed out.

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