March 24, 2015

The Shire is Only Appealing as a Second-Semester Senior

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– Or The Branching Future and the Fear No One Warns You About –

Build me up (don’t look back)/Tear me down (don’t look back)

– Give Up On Ghosts – Computer vs. Banjo

Hello blog. I missed you.

There comes a point, I think, in everyone’s life where living in The Shire becomes something that looks attractive, rather than mind-numbingly boring. That’s how I feel now – like I would like to just sit in the sun, read, garden, eat food and drink tea with friends, and sleep. Nothing much changes, homes are cozy, and you can live, more or less, without responsibility.

It’s not that this is always the ideal place to live – if we’re sticking with Lord of the Rings settings, Gondor or Rohan would be much more exciting, and Mirkwood would have the party-elves, if that’s what you’re into.

(This is getting a bit off track)

My point is that things that feel familiar, feel like home, things that lack responsibility – those things are attractive when you’re standing at the edge of the graduation precipice.

Picture life like a timeline.

When you turn around and look at your past, you can see a few paths you could have taken and wonder, wistfully, at the might-have-beens.  Each nexus, where your life could’ve changed, has two or three branches, and you can imagine, with relative ease, what would have changed. You wouldn’t have met M if you’d never joined swim team; you would have never gone to Tech if you hadn’t decided to visit a second time.

Easy.

Now, you’re less than two months from Graduation. The end of schooling (for now). You’ve met a ton of new people recently, and you’re going to have to leave them soon. You’re going to have to leave all of your friends soon. Leave Blacksburg, maybe. You’ll need to find a job, but which job? what field? Will you go to grad school in one year or two? Maybe never.

You are standing at the edge of your timeline, and a hundred thousand branches stick out before you.

What if you fail this? What if you move home? What if you date him? What if they leave you? What happens if you stop texting? What happens when they stop calling? Can you do this job or that one, or will you fail out of hand?

Each branch has it’s own branch, and each one has enough what if’s to drown you if you let them.

You will break down. You will cry.

The good news is the you have support right now and you don’t need to retreat to The Shire. You can make it to Mordor, Frodo (oh god this metaphor has gone of track).

What I’m trying to say, audience that is really me, is that you weren’t told about this because the people who have gotten through it don’t remember how it is. Because they’ve survived it, gotten through to the other end, and looked back thinking ‘that wasn’t so bad.’ The mistake they make is that then, they want to tell you that it isn’t so bad. But you haven’t survived it yet.

You will, But right now, it’s not the tiniest bit of fun, imaging all of the nice what-if’s and telling yourself that they will never happen, and looking at the bad what-if’s and praying with every ounce of your shady spiritually that those never befall you. You won’t be able to think of neutral paths, paths that will be okay and will make you happy. There will be no in-betweens.

But you will make it.

You will graduate.

And things will work out…eventually.

August 7, 2014

The Summer of a Thousand Moves

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– Or I have been living out of a suitcase since May –

The last time I updated this blog it was June, and I was sitting in a hostel in Scotland while it rained, trying not to think about the rent email I’d received a couple hours earlier. My friends were planning out the weekend – we’d hammered out going to Edinburgh Castle in the morning – and I was excitedly writing about our 9 hour trip through England and Scotland.

Now, I’m sitting in my kitchen on my lunch break during work. I would be down in Blacksburg, except that the lease for my sublet ran up on July 23rd, which meant that I spent 23 days in an apartment with very little furniture.

What an adventure this summer has been so far.

I’m staring down the barrel of Senior year (again) and, unlike in high school, I am mostly terrified. I have to figure out when I’m taking the GRE, and whether or not I need to email a bunch of professors in Master’s programs. I need to figure out who will let me defer entry for a year, so I can take a break from school. Then there is applications and classes and a social life hiding somewhere in there. Oh man.

Because I have been living out of a suitcase since May, I am mostly concerned with donating the large store of clothing I have sitting around in my dresser. That led to me thinking about the books I probably wouldn’t read in the next two years, and suddenly I found myself planning to clean out my room to make things easier for when I graduate.

I really don’t like living a year in the future. I was doing so well at living less than a week ahead a month ago; even better living in the present when I was London. I feel like I’m clawing at memories of London and trying desperately to go back to June, while being hurtled towards August 20th. Work has been less than inspiring.

I always seem to end Summer on this note – ready to leave, and scared of the future. And restarting a blog that has been on life support for months.

It’s a new semester, so I suppose it’s time to start this up again. To try where I have failed before. I’m in a much better mood, a better emotional place than I have been in in a while. It’s time to tell stories again.

June 6, 2014

Scotland

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– Or Things You Learn on the Top Level of a Double-Decker Bus –

We embarked on our 9 hour and 15 minute bus ride this morning at 9:30. It was early, windy, and the bus was, mercifully, mostly empty. Our intrepid group of six sat in the very front of the top deck. Let me tell you, the top deck of a double decker in London traffic is absolutely terrifying.

There is a surprising amount to see on the M1 north to Edinburgh. The towns are all large and small at the same time. Like, you can see the entire town from far off, but you know that, were you in town, it would feel large. At least for a little while. There are wind farms every few miles or so…at least it fells that way. Giant white windmills in rolling fields of farmland, each plot growing the same hay or wheat…it’s long stalked and green and it’s absolutely everywhere.

We drove through towns, but the only one I really remember is New Castle. The city is more eclectic than London is, if you can believe it. There is this old, old bridge over the river as you drive in, and an ancient church among more modern buildings. The roads are windy and narrow, though that’s not much different than the rest of the UK, really. The roofs are uneven and the clay chimneys look as if they might fall off at any moment. Everything is built out of red brick, except for the older bridge, which is some sort of grey stone, and the pedestrian bridge to the right of the main traffic bridge, which is a painted white metal arch.

Scotland, at first, looked like more of the same English-y country side. But, as we passed the North Sea, the ground rose up. there were a ton more sheep, and the trees became evergreens. Each farm field was ringed round with trees. To our right, the land dropped off into the sea – a brown-green cliff bordering the ever narrowing highway. Motorway, excuse me. Looking out of the window, watching the country speed by, I could see why this was a country Author’s glorified so much in Pastoral literature. Brown watered streams cut harshly through sheep grazing fields, and I was falling in love with the scenery. I know it’s not as glamorous as it looks, and that staying somewhere for two days doesn’t allow you the time to get to know the trials and tribulations of the day to day, but I could get used to Scotland.

Staying about twenty yards from Castle Rock, and an ancient castle in Edinburgh helps the situation, of course, but I’m not biased. Not really.

May 29, 2014

So Close You Can Touch It

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– Or Please Don’t Actually Touch That. It’s Historically Relevant –

This is the announcement that I am studying abroad in England. You’re welcome for the update.

I went into the British Museum today with one goal: Find the Native American Buckskin Map they have on display and…view it, I guess. I was with A and his girlfriend, L. They were looking for the Elgin Marbles and something in the African exhibit, respectively.

So, I was going to go in, not be distracted by the other displays, and….oh, is that a mummy?

The British Museum is unlike any history museum I have ever set foot in. We walked into the exhibit on ancient Greece and Rome and were staring down statues of Hadrian, the Roman emperor. Right there. No glass case or anything. I could have touched Hadrian’s face.

(I didn’t, obviously. Incidentally, Hadrian was naked in his bust, which was done in the Greek style, to portray himself as an Epic Hero – god-like.)

There is no feeling in the world quite like standing next to a marble bust of a Roman emperor…except Being In Rome, of course, and experiencing Rome’s history in it’s own country.

(I have nothing against the British Museum, but I do like to acknowledge that they took a lot of things that aren’t theirs and refuse to give them back.)

That aside leads me to my next point – the Elgin Marbles. The hall where the Elgin Marbles are held is called ‘The Parthenon,’ so named because all of the marble carvings in that hall are from the Parthenon. But before that, is the Lykia Neriod tomb. And before that is a hall of Persian stone carvings and Egyptian statues, along with the Rosetta Stone.

Let me repeat that: The Rosetta Stone. I nearly cried. I definitely stood with my mouth agape for several minutes trying to comprehend the amount of history in that one set of hallways (spoiler: I could not comprehend it).

We saw the statues from the top of the Parthenon in person. I saw those things in slideshows and now I’ve seen them in person. And I plan to see them again.

We eventually found our way to the section dedicated to North American indigenous peoples (which was a lovely exhibit), but the galleries began to close soon after. I never did see the Buckskin map.

December 18, 2013

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D

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-Or The General Narrative Shifts in Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D –

“I hope they cannot see

The limitless potential

Living inside of me

To murder everything

I hope they cannot see

I am the Great Destroyer.”

– The Great Destroyer, Nine Inch Nails

“I hope they cannot see

Living inside of me

To murder everything

I hope they cannot see

I am the Great Destroyer.”

– The Great Destroyer (Modwheelmood Remix)

If there is one thing I could probably talk your ear off about at this point, its the narrative shifts between Year Zero and it’s companion album, Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. Since I didn’t have room for this analysis in my Academic Webtext for Writing and Digital Media, I figured I would put some of my thoughts on the remix album’s narrative qualities here.

First off, if you start Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D like I did, and you look through the track listing, the first thing you will notice is that the songs are in a completely different order. Secondly, you’ll notice that The Good Soldier is missing and Hyperpower! has been renamed Guns By Computer.

Why is this important? Well, the construction of albums, especially those that set out to tell a story, is incredibly important to the narrative flow of the music. The tone of each perspective in Year Zero shapes the story, yes, but God Given might not have been half as powerful the first time around if it hadn’t followed up The Warning. Having the songs placed in a different order completely changes the feel of the story as we listen through it. The Great Destroyer feels more like a protest song. The Warning feels soul shattering and terrifying. But, more than that, we are presented an image in Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D of a future actively in chaos. The Beginning of The End doesn’t come until after the riot of My Violent Heart, and it only goes downhill from there.

In Year Zero, on the other hand, we have a sense that things are going poorly, and that The Warning is the tipping point into chaos.

The fact that The Good Soldier is absent from the remix album also speaks volumes to the narrative arc of Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. Year Zero is an album chiefly made up on perspectives – as illustrated in the dual-perspective of The Warning – and leaving out the soldier’s perspective changes the focus of the story.

The Good Soldier presents listeners with a globalized view on war; a soldier fighting for his country, which fights for a cause they don’t believe in. Leaving that song out makes Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D a domestic album, chiefly, focusing on the chaos that America has fallen into, and silencing the voice of the soldier forced to war. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, this silencing of a voice that is so often ignored (at least after they return from war), but it is a very powerful omission to make.

The story of Year Zero is a powerful one, and I like to think of Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D as yet another perspective on the tipping point. Perhaps, to the content, Year Zero represents the reality – a build up to chaos – when, on the other hand, the reality is that the world is falling apart, and chaos is the norm.

It’s all up to interpretation.

December 4, 2013

Thoughts on Remixing

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– Or In Which Emily Links You to Many Things –

I doubt I’ll ever pay someone to do a remix again, because there’s some amazing stuff just coming out of bedrooms.
– Trent Reznor

When I am displeased with how a genre is handling itself, I endeavor to write what I would like to see out of said genre. This, according to the video series Everything is a Remix, is remixing – the process of copying, transforming, and producing something new based on the work of others. In this instance, I am taking a genre, which has certain conventions and tropes associated with it, and reusing or transforming the tropes associated with that genre.

But what is the actual argument here? What is Kirby trying to say – because he certainly sounds negative. Well, that’s an issue of delivery, and we’ll return to that.

The point Kirby attempts to make over the course of four videos is that everything is the product of people accumulating ideas, playing around with them, and rereleasing those mashed-up and revamped ideas into the world as original products. This concept applies to music, movies, books, inventions, tv shows, and a myriad of other things that comprise our digital and physical culture. The problem is that American society has all but made remixing impossible by condemning copying.

Don’t get me wrong, simply reproducing someone else’s work without crediting the original creator is wrong (like, disgustingly wrong). However, as the remix videos point out, we learn by copying. Hell, that’s how genres become genres; someone writes a fringe story that doesn’t quite fit current conventions, someone else writes based on that fringe concept, and suddenly we have an All-Vampire young adult section at our local bookstores.

It is my belief that remixing – in it’s true, transformative role – fundamentally changes the concept behind the original work. It’s why the song The Warning by Nine Inch Nails sound completely different from The Warning [Stefan Goodchild Remix]. The remixed song conveys a different message; even though it contains the same lyrics, it tells a different story*. And if you change the story, you haven’t reproduced an exact copy. The story, for me (if you’ve been paying attention), is key to the ‘originality’ of something.

(As it happens, Nine Inch Nails runs an official remix site in which they release the tracks of all of their songs and encourage fans to remix to their hearts content. Trent Reznor has also released a nine-part album [four parts of which were free] to the world so that anyone could remix and change those tracks.)

I’m not going to get into an argument about copy right law here – though I want to, because copy right law is the most ridiculous thing – because Part 4 of Everything is a Remix makes the argument better than I can. What I will say is this – without remixes in music, we would have never had the ‘golden age’ of hip hop. We wouldn’t have an alternate interpretation of Year Zero (an album that went so far into storytelling, it created a universe). We wouldn’t have Star Wars or Star Trek or Stargate. Society would have missed out on countless books loosely based on life, on genre, on problems with fantasy.

Let the world remix, because we’re missing out on that kind of originality.

 

November 21, 2013

Alpha Meets Omega

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– Or Tech in Dollhouse–

Mag (regarding the Dollhouse): They really thought they were helping, huh? Giving people what they needed. Is this what we needed?
Iris/Caroline: No. Kids playing with matches and they burnt the house down.

– Epitaph 1, Dollhouse

I find the relationship between tech and the supposed ‘human soul’ in Dollhouse to be…disconcerting. Perhaps it’s because, for the most part, Adelle thinks she’s doing good by ripping the personalities out of people and then using their empty husks as wish fulfillment for the rich. Or maybe it’s because sometimes I find myself agreeing with her, at least in some cases. (Most of those cases include helping the helpless or helping those in mourning.)

For the most part, the concept of a ‘dollhouse’ and ‘actives’ is one that terrifies me. For one, how does the person uploaded into a wedge know that Rossum will keep their word and release the active (with the correct memories) after five years? More than that question, though, I find the concept of personalities being interchangeable unnerving. To me, the soul and the personality are the same thing, and the remove one constitutes a crime against the very nature of humanity.

I think that, especially in Epitaph 1, this view becomes more common, especially when Rossum asks Adelle to offer eternal life, to sell the actives, and she refuses. It also affects Topher (who previously did not believe in a soul) in the form of guilt and mental illness, in response to the ‘army in an instant’ situation that resulted in the collapse of society. The problem is that it takes the extreme to make the administrators of the LA Dollhouse realize that their actions are fundamentally wrong.

Of course, this is probably intentional – as an exploration of what makes us human, as well as what humans would do with the technology that allows us to rip personalities out of a body and replace them with another, Dollhouse probably accurately recreates the ‘oh shit’ moment. People only ever seem to react to extremes, or when it’s too late.

What I do agree with, most definitely, is Caroline’s quote from Epitaph 1, listed above. The dollhouse is a box of matches, waiting to catch fire, as we see through the ‘memories’ left behind for Mag, Zone, Iris, and Whiskey to go through. (I only put memories in quotes because Joss Whedon has stated before that the memories may not be ‘actual’ – like the personalities routinely put into the dolls, they could be fabricated.) Technology in Dollhouse may be extreme, but it makes you think about how we currently use the tech available to us, and whether or not we are just children playing with matches.

 

November 7, 2013

My Eyes

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– Or Billy and Dr. Horrible: The Dual Identity–

And I won’t feel/A thing.

– Everything You Ever, Dr. Horrible/Billy

There is something about the duality of Billy and Dr. Horrible that has been bugging me for two years now, and I think I have finally come to a point at which I can articulate my ideas around it.

Dr. Horrible is a persona of power for Billy – you can see this very clearly in the ‘Blogs’ and in the situations where Dr. Horrible is dealing with the world of Heroes and Villains. But Billy is still a very important part of Dr. Horrible; for most of the film, Dr. Horrible and Billy are the same person. Once again, you can see this in how Dr. Horrible acts in terms of social, non-work situations.

He blinks more.

I know this is a weird, tiny thing for me to notice and latch on to, but Billy projects his anxiety so incredibly clearly through his eyes that it’s hard for me to ignore. When Dr. Horrible is talking to Moist about Penny, he blinks frequently and squeezes his eyes shut. He also exhibits the same behavior in regards to his anxiety about the Evil League of Evil. Billy exhibits the same behavior when talking to Penny in the alley, in the laundry mat, and in…basically any other social situation.

But Billy and Dr. Horrible split.

Dr. Horrible, I contend, Billy uses as a way to talk to the world (via blogs) about the issues he sees with society. Yes, he’s evil, but he just wants ‘social change!’ Dr. Horrible is the persona that gives Billy to confidence to act on things he thinks are wrong (such as the heroes of this city being total jerks), but in the end (at least in acts 1 and 2) he is still Billy.

Then, Penny dies. But Penny doesn’t just die. Penny, who has been ‘dating’ Captain Hammer for the entirety of the film, and then Captain Hammer accidentally kills Penny with the shrapnel of Dr. Horrible’s death ray and she dies. But before she dies, she sees Billy, (“Billy,” not Dr. Horrible, she said, even as we saw her realize that they were one and the same during Slipping) and says “Don’t worry. Captain Hammer will save us.”

This breaks Billy, and it’s truly a brilliant break, because you can see the transformation on his face. Dr. Horrible was a tool, but now he is Billy’s shield. Billy shrinks in on himself in grief over Penny (and anger, possibly, at her faith in false heroes), but Dr. Horrible tells the world “I am fine.”

The break is more clear with the last image of Dr. Horrible, during Everything You Ever. Not only does his costume change – from white, which is usually associated with innocence, to red, which is normally associated anger – but he pulls his goggles over his eyes. Again, this is possibly a case of over analysis, but Billy’s eyes are so expressive that putting that barrier down is important. Billy’s anxiety can no longer be shown in Dr. Horrible’s eyes. There is no room for Billy’s weaknesses anymore. This is further highlighted in the ending ‘blog’ – Blogs are Dr. Horrible’s domain, but suddenly we are faced with Billy, whose line in Everything You Ever is ‘a thing,’ following Dr. Horrible’s statement that he ‘won’t feel.’ Billy, though, is clearly feeling – he looks as if he has just finished crying.

This line is significant – Dr. Horrible will not feel, cannot feel, so Billy has to shoulder all of the guilt, grief, and sadness that stems from his continued Villainy. He has achieved his goal – The Evil League of Evil – but at the cost of the woman he loved and his faith that people could see past appearances to the truth (“Captain Hammer will save us”). Billy and Dr. Horrible, once the same person, are now dual identities, and the audience is left with the horrible feeling that Billy may never exist outside of his apartment again.

At the risk of this becoming too academic for this blog, I’ll end on this – Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long blog is rife with themes of identity. Some people are layered with a “third, even deeper layer, that’s the same as the first. Like with pie.” Others constitute a duality that is easily broken. My point, I suppose, is that this film is more than just a silly thing the Whedons made during the Writer’s Strike – it takes a serious look at different types of identity, and how sometimes our archetypes do not work.

November 5, 2013

Find My Way

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-Or … –

Note: This entry is long and makes little sense. If you read even a little, thanks. You are a champion.
Signed: E
 

You were never meant to see
All those things inside of me
Now that you’ve gone away
I’m just tryin’ to find my way…

~ Find My Way; Nine Inch Nails

I couldn’t find you a blanket or a miner’s hat, but I brought you hot chocolate.

~ El

The roar of the crowd was unreal, and for a moment there I felt like a part of it.

The reason I say for a moment” is because that moment was shattered about one song later when I realized that I really should have spent the last 17 days of October listening through my entire backlog of Nine Inch Nails that had been given to me a year prior. Granted, I didn’t have everything – not even El or D could claim that – but I was lost enough that it gave me some time to think.

Amidst the lights and the noise and the beer, I was possibly having an existential crisis. At a concert. Oh what fun.

But let’s back track, because this is a Creative Non-Fiction piece, and I do have to provide you some anchoring details so that you don’t get lost.

I suppose the relevant background information includes the following; I have anxiety and what I would call mid-range panic. Mid-range panic is a term El coined to mean “a sustained state of panic that lasts for more than a few hours.” This is an issue that, if I am honest with myself, probably started in middle school or early high school, and I am only just now getting help with.

Around October 18th, the day I went to this concert with El and D, I was undergoing a two week long self-diagnostic, because a friend of mine had pointed out that “[I] seemed sad lately,” and, though I thought I was fine, I decided it would be best if I took a look at my ‘standard fear.’ (Standard Fear is the buzzing of anxiety that always exists in the background of my life.) On the whole, I hadn’t found anything new – I had anxiety and it was being it’s standard, anxious self. In fact, for the most part, I felt comfortable in my own skin, which is not a feeling I experience very often.

For example, while driving up to Northern Virginia, I didn’t feel the usual clawing feeling in my chest, most probably because, on the tree-lined promenade that is interstate 81, I felt excitement. I was going to a concert with two of my closest friends, and we were singing duets to old, pseudo-metal songs and ghost story ballads, watching the fall-clothed mountains give way to overdeveloped XBurbia.

But, as the day wore on, I felt this strange disconnect with everything that was happening. As we walked through the new mammal exhibits at the Natural History Museum to kill time, I felt like I was walking in isolation, watching a pair of people I knew once make conversation. I felt like I had run out of things to say and, simultaneously, like what I had to say didn’t matter.

This feeling eased as we sat down for dinner at Teaism on 8th street in the Penn Quarter. The cozy basement dining room was filled to the brim with people. D, El, and I began chatting idly about our excitement and the food we had ordered. D had accidentally ordered something other than what he had intended to, so there was much trading of food between the three of us (though I didn’t share as much of mine because I had ordered a soup). We left after about half an hour (after lamenting the loss of the table next to us, who had been talking about D&D) and emerged into the distinctly warm DC air.

At this point, I had staved off full panic (regarding my disconnect) by reminding myself that I would not have been invited on this trip, yea those many months ago, if I had not been wanted on this trip.

Full disclosure: before college, I never had friends who were straight with me. I was never really reassured of friendships and such, and I would frequently get invited along on trips and to parties where I, for the most part, was not welcome. I felt this, and this has lead to an immense self-doubt and feeling that I am never going to be good enough for other people.

During the wait for the opening band (God Speed You Black Emperor, or ‘trance-industrial-lullabye’) the feeling of disconnect came back. D and El, for excellent and understandable reasons, had become much closer over the course of the semester, and spent most of the wait wrapped in their own conversation, with their own inside jokes, and I…sat in silence. I recognize now that this was not the correct way to handle things, but I felt that, if I interrupted, it would be akin to a child whining “Pay attention to me, you are supposed to be paying attention to me!!!” I made a few jokes, which fell flat as my jokes usually do, and so I resigned myself to the ‘Auxiliary Friend’ role.

It would be prudent to point out here that I did, in fact, talk to D and El, it’s just that, in my memory, everything I said was stupid and not worth remembering.

This feeling (of being-left-out-but-understanding-why, which is a tad rough) continued through what I would describe as a 45-minute outro, or the soundtrack to the end of your sad, institutionalized life. The excitement of seeing Nine Inch Nails, however, slowly crept back into us, and I pushed my discomfort to the deep, dark hole where I push most of my problems.

The lights went down again and the first few notes of Copy of A hit our ears. The roar of the crowd was unreal, and for a moment there I felt like a part of it. I sang along, begrudgingly sitting because we were in a section of we-shall-not-stand fans, and got pumped.

And then, they played 1,000,000 – a fact that, at the time, was yelled at me by D – and I lost everything. I lost the feeling of belonging in the crowd, I lost the connection with El and D, I lost hold of the one thing that was keeping me from falling to that previously mentioned deep, dark hole. Amidst the lights and the noise and the beer, I was most definitely having an existential crisis.

I eventually figured out the chorus, and sang along, which calmed me down quite a bit. I had moments of connection, like when El and I shouted the All Time Low lyrics at each other, or when we jumped up for Hand That Feeds. I felt adrenaline and excitement and joy, but I didn’t feel that usual sense of ‘yes, this is where I should be’ that I get at concerts.

The concert ended, I sat awkwardly next to a lady on the train who had clearly been hoping I would sit somewhere else, and for the rest of the weekend I felt wrong. Out of place. We drove home and it felt wrong. A Creeping Fear had seized me, and I stared it in the face.

“You are useless,” it said. “You are useless and unwanted.”

I lived with this fear for a week and a half, though I was loathed to outwardly express it. I just sat back, put a Nine Inch Nails playlist on repeat, and tried to find my lost-connection with my friends. There were lovely moments in the mix, too, like laughing into the night with El over our ‘hello-there-freaky’ attitude towards the NIN tag on Tumblr. But, towards the end of Tuesday the following week, I hit an emotional wall, and I was confused.

I hit an emotional wall because of that moment at the concert. Lights were flashing, the music was loud, NIN was amazing, and I watched my friendships (or, at least, my hold on those friendships) slip from my grasp. I was floating in a massive crowd of noise and light and I was losing my friends and I could not understand why I felt that way. I felt myself retreat into myself (frightening how easy that is for me). 

So I did something I do not usually do; I reached out, caught someone (El) by the arm and asked if I could talk to them. They told me that I mattered, and that they cared for me and I didn’t know what to do with that.

An Important Quote: ” I’ve always said that what Trent really needs is a blanky and a hot chocolate with marshmallows. He doesn’t need another hole to crawl into. I think somebody should give him one of those little hard hats with a miner’s light on it, so when he gets lost in a dark hole, he can find his way out.”

-Tori Amos on Trent Reznor

The thing is that I knew El meant what she said, I just could not process it. The knowledge that she cared, however, made me feel a bit more secure. I have the words she gave me (because that is how I think of compliments) written down in one of my notebooks, there for when I need it. I am writing this story down, too, so it is there when I need it.

This long, ridiculous blog post, is an attempt to get at the heart of that initial conversation, because I think better when I write and, honestly, I am intimidated by the idea of telling people this. Sometimes I can work through this on my own, but most of the time I can’t, and I think being open and honest about it, even if it’s just in writing, is a step towards helping me get better.

And there is no witty one-liner I can end this on, really, no silver lining except that I am getting help. I’m starting to pick up the pieces and start over.

October 24, 2013

Take the Sky From Me

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– Or Why Firefly is Different from Buffy, and How It’s Air Schedule Crippled It Narratively –

Aside from the obvious, Friefly demonstrates a departure from the narrative structure of Buffy. Starting from the episode Serenity, which is the canonical starting point for the series, viewers are thrown into the end of a war that serves as a backdrop and anchor into the setting that Mal and Zoe are a part of. Over the course of the episode, we are introduced to the well established crew – family – of the Serenity, rather than watching the crew form (as with the Scooby Gang in Buffy). All of this would be super overwhelming were it not for Simon, River, and Book, three passengers on the Serenity who get caught up in the crew’s antics. These three characters provide a relatable and stable (or unstable, in the case of River) anchoring point for views to get used to the banter, relationships, and conflicts common to Mal’s motley crew.

The way Firefly was aired, however, ruins this anchoring point.

Firefly’s first official episode, according to Fox, is The Train Job, which, in order of filming and production was the second episode. In this version, all viewers have in the way of anchoring is a short series of clips from the first episode narrated by Book, and even that doesn’t fully explain what the hell is happening. The bar fight does little to explain Mal all that much (though, he is a rather complex character, so not a whole lot of introductions are adequately going to explain Mal), or Zoe, or Jayne. Or Wash, for that matter. Simon and River are already established parts of this small community (though they are still outsiders) and Book is really…full of questions.

This, understandably, leaves the audience confused.

In any good work of fiction – book, television, movie, or otherwise – it is vital that you give the audience what I have been calling ‘anchors.’ These are concrete details about the setting, the main characters, or the plot that the reader can latch onto before they figure out how the universe they are entering works. In Firefly, the passengers Mal picks up are anchor characters – they are just as confused and out of their element as the audience is. When thrown into a show where the anchor characters have already been explained in an unaired pilot, the audience is left groping for a handhold and are let down. This causes them to abandon the story except for a few heroic cases (the original Browncoats).

To avoid turning this into a rant against Fox, I will end on this – Firefly is a weird story. It is a non-conventional mash up of the Sci-fi and Western genres and a mash up like that requires narrative anchors, or the story will never float. Joss seemed to have provided those anchors in Serenity, which where then not provided by the cable network. The situation surrounding this show is, of course, complicated, but some of the blame (I think) on why it failed is because the airing order and dates provided by the network ruined the narrative construction of the series.

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