Life and Vidding, among other things

[butterfly]

God, I'm busy lately. I'm near the end of moving (I've been moving all this month and will do my final move this weekend, thank God, it'll be done with).

Anyway, I just thought I'd hang out a 'not dead' sign and let y'all now what's going on with me.

So, some thoughts I've been having recently:

I. The idea that a guy can't or shouldn't be a feminist is very disturbing to me -- in a perfect world, all men and women would be feminists, because the definition of a feminist is someone who believes that women deserve the same rights as men. So, I do hold the belief that Joss Whedon is a feminist, because he holds men and women to the same standards and because his female characters are as complex as his male ones. In fact, for each of his male characters, you can generally find a female equivalent, and vice versa. For every Spike you have a Faith, and for every Buffy you have a Wesley (okay, that one may only make sense in my own head, and I do plan to go into more detail on it another time).

II. Shuddering disgust at the idea of het!sex is something that confuses me. I personally know more than one person who has this reaction and it makes as much emotional sense to me as the idea that some women don't get off on boykissing. But this is because I'm very much sexually attracted to both men and women. Therefore, any kind of 'ew' reaction to attractive people getting snuggly baffles me. It's not the visual image of Jack/Sam (Stargate SG-1) that bothers me, it's the legal, emotional, and long-term ramifications. And this emotional confusion is as much an instinctive personal reaction as the disgust that triggers it. Like, I don't get people who do not love Frannie (due South). Frannie is beautiful, funny, and such a sweetheart. This is what I see when I look at her. Other people see different things -- just because I cannot understand what they see doesn't mean that what they see is invalid. I just don't get it. And that's okay, as long as people don't try to tell me that I'm wrong for seeing what I see.

III. I like season six of BtVS. I like season seven of BtVS. I liked them when they were airing. This does not mean that I am a) a moron, b) easily satisfied, or c) someone incapable of seeing the big picture. It just means that I got what I needed out of the show. Every person watching the show is watching for different reasons. Just because my reasons aren't the same as someone else's doesn't make them wrong, it makes them different.

Also, I'm trying out Adobe Premiere Pro for my Wes vid and trying to figure out if I want to invest in getting the program. Any suggestions from vidders in the audience?

Comments

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

When I first started watching Buffy, Season 7 was half over, and I didn't start watching new eps right away, so I watched everything except the last 6 episodes in reruns. Because of that, my viewpoints tend to be a bit different than people who've been watching for years. I thought that both Season 6 and Season 7 *started* brilliantly, then about a third of the way through the season, they lost what made me love them. There's no season of Buffy that I love unconditionally, but Seasons 6 and 7 are the ones that fascinate me the most. Those (especially S6) are the ones where the themes and the character arcs (all of them) speak most to me and move it from, "hey, this is a really cool show" to "this is GREAT television," even if I didn't like the execution of a lot of it, and even if some of it really ticked me off. Because of that, most of my fannish involvement deals with those seasons. I liked Season 1, for instance, but I don't have a whole lot to say about it, and most fanfic from that period just bores me. Season 6 or 7 fanfic (and post-those seasons), however, gives me the chance to look at what fascinated me, and see it executed differently than the writers did it, with different takes on the themes or conclusions of those arcs.

I don't believe I've ever heard the "big picture" argument. What do they mean by that?

I'm also looking forward to Buffy = Wesley.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I don't believe I've ever heard the "big picture" argument. What do they mean by that?

The whole 'well, parts of the season may have been good, but you can't possibly really think that, as a whole, it didn't suck eggs' argument.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Well, I thought parts of those seasons were better than others, but I could say that about any season. As a whole, I still really liked them, despite what I consider to be their shortcomings.