sholio | *falls over*

Entry tags:

falls over

Today was a yardwork day ... putting together the frames for raised garden beds and partially filling them with semi-composted chicken litter (sawdust, mostly). I think I'm ready to go get a pickup truck load of topsoil in the next couple of days -- our yard is gravel tailings (old mine waste) and we have NO dirt except for the odd bit of river clay here and there. This year, for the first time in the seven years we've been here, I'm attempting an actual, respectable garden rather than a couple of containers with tomatoes in them. It's not going to be huge, but large enough to grow some tomatoes and squash and corn and salad stuff.

The weather's been great -- 70 degrees and not too cold at night. We usually figure the end of May is the beginning of the "no frost" gardening safety zone, but the weather's supposed to be up to 80 by the end of the week and I doubt if we'll be seeing freezing temperatures again this year. My little seedlings are outgrowing their bitty containers; I need to get them transplanted. The trees are barely turning green, but it feels like summer!

And we have 24 hours of daylight now. The sun sets around 11-ish (actually a bit earlier for us, since we're in a valley) and comes up about 4 a.m. By the middle of June, it'll barely dip below the horizon for an hour or so in the middle of the night. Mmm, summer.

Also, we watched the last few episodes of this season of Supernatural and ... WHAT.

It's at times like this that I'm kind of glad I don't care about the characters all that much. I can totally understand people feeling hurt, betrayed or upset by the finale's developments. But I actually think having Castiel go darkside is a really interesting move and probably the only thing left to do with him that's really different from what they've done with him before -- and I think it was done in a fairly plausible way, that his road to Big Bad and the way that the power of Purgatory seduced him is logical in retrospect ... even though I didn't, at the time, believe those segments of my flist who saw it coming from afar. *tips hat* Yeah, you guys were right and I was wrong. And it'll be nice FOR A CHANGE to have a Big Bad that the boys are at least somewhat conflicted about killing.

After not watching SPN for a while, I've been struck all over again, watching the back half of the season, at how ... mean-spirited the show is. I don't hate SPN (obviously I don't, since I'm still watching it) and I don't mean this as any sort of insult to those who really love the show, but I do feel as if SPN displays a pretty ugly view of the world. The SPN world isn't devoid of kindness or heroism, but it's a world in which the job of a hero is to torture and kill, and everyone else exists mainly to suffer and die. The violence/torture/killing is relentless and the lack of any attempt to find viable alternatives really wears on me after a while; granted, it's not 100% the characters' faults when the show sets it up so that they really don't have a choice, but then you have episodes like the phoenix one, where the phoenix is really just a guy trying to live his life, and the Winchesters basically murdered him. And there's also the way that the humor is usually at other people's expense, and even though I laugh at a lot of it, it's often in a very guilty kind of way. Complaining about the show's gender issues is like shooting fish in a barrel, but it was particularly egregious that we got two episodes back-to-back in which powerful women were portrayed as young-looking, humorless and emotion-driven (the female fate/destiny in the Titanic episode, and the female angel captain who was killed by Castiel) -- in contrast to the male power/authority figures like Crowley and Balthasar who are older-looking, suave, funny and canny. And did anyone else notice that wife!Ellen (in the Titanic episode) was a lot more prettified and domestic than ordinary Ellen? I don't know. It's not the individual instances that bother me so much as the overall pattern. SPN is a reasonably well-written, well-acted show, but it often makes me feel like I need to do a mental detox after watching it.

I haven't figured out if I'm coming back next season. I hit the point long ago (probably season three) where I didn't really care about the Winchesters' endless cycle of angst and was mostly in it for the entertainment value and for a handful of supporting characters who have all either died or lost me. I have zero faith in the writers anymore and no desire to get attached to characters who are all going to die, often after suffering some degree of character assassination first. Honestly, I think I'd've stopped watching seasons ago if it wasn't for a combination of a) the show is still pretty entertaining, b) my husband likes it, and c) I like reading other people's episode reactions and I'm apparently still interested enough in the show that I don't want to massively spoil myself if I haven't seen the episode yet.

And I'm rather wooed by the idea of seeing the Winchesters go up against a Big Bad that they truly don't want to kill, and having to try to come up with a non-lethal alternative rather than just finding a bigger gun. (Or maybe they'll just go looking for a bigger gun anyway. Oh show.)

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/344513.html with

comments.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It still weirds me out hearing about 24 hour sunlight. I would go crazy. How do you cope (AND sleep at night?)

Heh, we cover the windows in the bedroom with cardboard! Our bedroom is on the east side of the house, too, so we have to, or I will be bouncing awake at 4 a.m. (My husband can sleep through anything. I envy him.)

I like the 24 hour daylight because you can get so much done! If I get an urge to go work on a project in the yard at midnight, I can do it. But it's also rather peaceful to have the short days in the winter to make up for it ... you can just stay inside and not do much of anything.

Well at least there's no danger of tripping over in the dark..;-)

Yea, like you said. I both like and dislike SPN at the same time. *sigh* And I watch it, then miss a few and not feel the urge because just more death. And yea, not all the happy at the ending, because geeze, can someone win, just once? So yea, I go around reading the meta and episode reactions too. But yea, I agree with your a)entertaining, b) my friends watch it c) the reactions/meta. But I seems to have distanced myself from caring as much, much like you have.

Yeah, I still get enough enjoyment out of the show to keep watching it, and I like being able to talk about it. But I also kinda dislike it for all the reasons I mentioned above. I think the show's ickiness really jumps out at me after I've been watching shows that aren't like that, and then mainlining several SPN episodes in a row ... it leaves me feeling like I need a shower. It's frustrating because the show doesn't have to be that way! They could fix so much of what bothers me just by changing a few things in each episode. But that's not the show they want to have, I guess.

Ahahahah I haven't seen the last 2 eps of SPN (am all spoiled though, so) - I just loved it when they brought back Amber Benson's character just so Castiel could brutally kill her. Even if it was what she wanted - having killed off nearly every recurring female character they've ever had, they now have to go back and kill off the more awesome of the one-shot female chars! And even bring back previously executed awesome female chars to kill them again!

...I actually find the way the showrunners seem to be actively competing over whether they can be more sexist or more racist hysterically funny, because I am a bad person. ^^; My bro insists SPN is a fantastic show as long as you accept it as an absurdist black comedy. Trying to take it seriously hurts my brain.

Otherwise - I gotta say, the 24 hour sunlight sounds awesome! One of my fondest memories of Sweden is taking a walk at midnight without a flashlight, in the twilight that's as dark as it gets there at midsummer's. Would love to experience Alaska's hour-long night. ^^

I actually find the way the showrunners seem to be actively competing over whether they can be more sexist or more racist hysterically funny, because I am a bad person. ^^;

*laughs helplessly* But sometimes I swear it is THE ONLY EXPLANATION! There are times when I feel like the main thing I'm getting out of watching the show is amusement at the sheer predictability of its everything-ism (sort of like your brother, I suppose). I'm always surprised when they find a new recurring character to kill. HOW CAN THERE POSSIBLY BE ANYONE LEFT.

The bright nights here are amazing. I grew up farther south -- still in Alaska, but it would get dim/twilight-ish at night, even in the middle of June. Fairbanks in midsummer is bright enough to read a book outside at midnight ... but our long, bleak winters make up for it, I suppose. ^^;;

Good luck with your gardening endeavours!

My, you are far north! I'd love to have so much sun, too, if for winter it then would mean that there would be NO sun for almost 24h :)
I do not envy you that at all! I always get a bit depressed in winter because I miss the sunlight.

Thank you! :) And yeah, we are far north -- we're close to the 65th parallel. Our long bright summer days are made up for in the winter by equally long dark nights.

The SPN world isn't devoid of kindness or heroism, but it's a world in which the job of a hero is to torture and kill, and everyone else exists mainly to suffer and die.

That's the reason I stopped watching. I was never bothered by violence on tv before but the scene in the season three opener, in which that fellow hunter was killed in the nastiest way possible, was the final straw. (And the two fellow hunters were black so I knew they would die... that didn't help one bit.) I still tune in for a few of the cracky episodes from later seasons and they were fun, but the show itself, unfiltered, has just too many issues to enjoy any more.

That said, the fallen Angel storyline they've cooked up for Castiel, that actually piqued my interest! That sounds like it has a lot of potential.

It's at times like this that I'm kind of glad I don't care about the characters all that much.

Yeah, sounds much like Children of Earth, which I loved but could at the same time understand when longtime fans of the characters didn't.

Yeah, sounds much like Children of Earth, which I loved but could at the same time understand when longtime fans of the characters didn't.

*nods* That was my reaction to Children of Earth as well.

And, yeah - SPN ... I'm not generally bothered by violence in most of the shows I watch, but SPN is so over-the-top with it, so brutal for brutality's sake.

Aaah Supernatural... I wondered if I should add anything since I already find your arguments and comments very rationale and pretty much agree with them...

For me, I loved it in Season 1 and then I realised how dark it was and frankly, it was depressing. There was a slight revival of interest in Season 4 when Castiel appeared (and I missed a lot of Seasons 2 & 3 and actually 4 too). But it was still very dark so I watched it intermittently. The darkness and bleakness is very depressing and there are so many times when it's just suffocating and it seems like everyone is just destined to die but the main characters... which makes it very hard for me when I actually do like other characters.

It wasn't till I came to Japan that I started watching more English shows and SPN happened to be one of them. I even watch some CSI: Miami - so that's how desperate I am at times! When you're sitting alone in the apartment during winter or rainy days, it's just cosy to watch some shows because I can't exactly spend every second reading books or surfing the net! Plus I'm all alone here so it's not as if I can chat to anyone anytime!

I enjoyed season 6 but I chose not to watch the finale eps coz I figured I'll wait till the new season is about to start and watch it. I probably shouldn't have done it but I spoiled myself by reading fan reactions. That was pretty stupid since the whole point of avoiding the finale was to avoid the cliffhanger. Anyway, I've done this with Dr Who and I'm not one who has the compulsion to watch especially when I hate cliffhangers... having said that I do adore Castiel quite a bit and he was actually the main reason I got interested again. I won't deny that I am superficial and Misha Collins wins me over all the time! I think that he could pull off the bad guy and it would be interesting. In fact it would be lovely to see him doing it.

However what ticked me off was when I read that he was no longer a permanent cast member and several comments by the writers alluding to the fact that it was always a show about two brothers and no one else was constant. With the history of this show - ie it being dark, bleak and basically every bad (and good) guy gets killed, I started wondering if they'll eventually kill off Castiel. It seems too easy for him to redeem himself and too cliche a storyline. So now I'm sort of meh about it because I really like Castiel. Plus it was so dark with him too.

What you said about the female characters is so true. Just about every female on the show gets killed and the ones who live tend to be bad ones. I mean, they're the bad guys. It's so dark that no one survives and it is depressing when I like someone and they die! I liked Anna very much and well, she's gone. Meg is just about the only person left but again, it's as if they can only write bad women. I don't know if this has something to do with the very pre-dominant female fanbase...? If so, then killing Castiel or changing him goes against that fanbase...?

I'm not really sure what's going on. There's so much angst that it's just so depressing. Every supporting character seems to meet the same end and after I read the writers' comments, I won't be surprised if they kill off Castiel too because that's what the Winchesters seem to do. I don't know if they'll be conflicted about killing him since he's no longer the guy they knew and to be quite honest, I thought that Season 6's Castiel was slightly underused. But I guess it was all there ; they were trying to drop us hints and bits of his conflict.

Well, that's my 2 cents about SPN. Luckily I'm also a bit Who fan and there are other shows out there.

BTW I love sunlight and I can sleep during the sun - however I know many people who would go nuts if they had that many hours of sunlight without any night! I'd probably be more motivated to exercise... I guess the flipside is the winter darkness!

However what ticked me off was when I read that he was no longer a permanent cast member and several comments by the writers alluding to the fact that it was always a show about two brothers and no one else was constant. With the history of this show - ie it being dark, bleak and basically every bad (and good) guy gets killed, I started wondering if they'll eventually kill off Castiel.

*nods* Yeah, I saw the discussion of this in your LJ and went looking for the season seven spoilers myself, because I wanted to see exactly what they'd said! And I think this attitude on the part of the show-runners sums up a big part of my problems with the show (not ALL of it, but a lot of it). It's the Winchesters' show, that's pretty obvious, and I don't have a problem with that, but in pursuit of that end, the writers have no problem throwing all the other characters under the bus, and I have a HUGE problem with THAT. There's a difference between "the Winchesters are the main characters" and "the Winchesters are the only characters who matter", and I think this show leans way too far in the latter direction. At this point they've basically taken a huge, varied, interesting cast and reduced it systematically to four characters (five counting Crowley), and I wouldn't be surprised if we lose some of those next season. It's really irritating, because I don't want that. At all. I don't mind if the show revolves around the Winchesters, but I want to be sold on the rest of the world as well, and this show absolutely sucks at doing that, because of its myopic Winchester-focus.

I was talking to

xparrot, oh, must have been season four or five, about the way that the show fumbled the ball when it comes to the Apocalypse, because they never gave us a compelling reason to care if the world ended! We know the Winchesters aren't going to die, so in order to really get involved in the Apocalypse storyline, we needed a compelling, interesting world full of characters we don't want to lose. Instead, we get a world that has very little else in it but the Winchesters. Result: the most boring Armageddon ever. *g*

And yeah, like you said, luckily there are other shows out there to enjoy.

Oh cool, food from your own garden!! Hubby plants runner beans every year (much nicer than the shop brought ones), and sometimes plants tomatoes. This year he's going to try growing broccoli and radish!! As for me, I prefer to leave the gardening to him - though I do get a say in the flowers and bushes (and insist that we keep the self-seeded yellow and orange poppies that came over from next door)!

I do, however, spoil the birds a little - and even have a male blackbird who comes to the backdoor every so often and waits for me to throw him some sultanas!! Cheeky so and so, it's not even his territory, he's just an intruder!!!! *bg*

Hee! I need to put my bird feeder out again -- I took it down last summer because we were doing some landscaping and never put it back up again!

I grew up in a gardening household (my mom had a huge garden -- well, we were really poor; we needed it!) but I haven't really tried gardening myself since we bought this house, except for some containers and a halfhearted attempt to put in a strawberry patch that never went anywhere. I'm really enthusiastic about it this summer for some reason, though.

Ive been lurking here for a while, glutting myself on your fic etc, and was startled and tickled to see that your a FBX girl! *waves at you from a tad further south* Good luck on the garden, container tomatoes are all I'm managing this year, sadly. Thank god for the sunlight...by April I often start to wonder if Ive gone colorblind!

Oh hi! *waves back* I was just in your neck of the woods last week, actually! (And I just went and read your account of the Saturday market windstorm -- um, wow. >_> That sounds exciting and not exactly in a good way!) haha, yeah, re: the colorblindness, the husband and I have a running joke that Alaska makes you way too attuned to very, very subtle shades of green and brown ...

Oh yes...MUD is really attractive to me in March and April: "Oooooh, look! Broooown!"

I'll be coming up your way for Tanana Fair pretty soon, so please plead with your local weather spirits to hold OFF on the damn rain, wont you? Ditto on the wildfires. Yeah, I know, good luck with that. I love the Interior, but I've lived through weather at your fair that make my last week's windstorm seem gentle. Its the only place I've ever suffered hypothermia, sunstroke and smoke inhalation all on the same day.

You should shoot me a PM when you're in town; we should have coffee or something. :)

Unfortunately we seem to get either rainy summers, or smoky summers. Or rainy AND smoky, the worst of all possible worlds. *crosses fingers hopefully for a decent summer this time*

Gardening?? It cannot make up is mind around here.
We had one day with intense sunshine and temp was 75. This week in the mid
50s and rain.......
I am just not sure I want to do any planting till it makes up its mind.
Last year it did not get its act together till July 4.........

Oh my! That's some unseasonable weather, even by Alaska standards. *g*

Here's hoping that the weather clears up and you get some nice summer weather eventually!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

falls over

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject