catching up!
OK, I now have tomatoes coming out of my ears. Mostly cherry tomatoes, which I cannot seem to eat fast enough.
PLUS -- before she left for an extended vacation, K. took down her tomato plants and asked if I wanted all the green tomatoes still on the vine. Of course I didn't want them to go to waste, so I said sure. Now I have a HUGE box of green tomatoes (mostly cherries) and I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I started a thread in the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cooking comm to see if anyone had any ideas about what I could do with them (other than fried green tomatoes, which I do plan to do, but there are so many that I need other ideas too). If any of you guys have favorite ways to prepare green tomatoes, please let me know! I'd read that tomatoes don't ripen if they've been pulled too early (before they start changing color), but someone on the thread says that if I keep them out of the light, they will. If that's true, maybe I should move the box to my garage. Not that I need a million tomatoes to ripen all at once...
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Happy birthday to the incomparable![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jade_okelani today.
For her birthday, one of the things I gave her was a rant about the second XF movie.
Some context on my rant: When I first watched X-Files: I Want to Believe (calling it XF2 for short), I didn't like it. Back when I watched it the first time, I was not in XF mode at ALL, I just couldn't get back into the same headspace where I cared about the characters or what happened to them.
This time, I actually wanted to watch XF2 *because* I'm feeling the MSR love again, and after finishing S4, I really wanted to see them together in a place where they were *together* and happy (I didn't remember XF2 at all, obviously, lol), and so it was a huge disappointment that they were together and UNhappy.
There's so much double talk and ambiguity. Are Mulder and Scully breaking up ... or not?? Sometimes it's totally unclear whether they're talking about breaking up, or something else (like the situation with the kid Scully's trying to save). Like when Scully's breaking up with Mulder... and then she tells him that his stubbornness was why she fell in love with him (mixed signals much??), but then Mulder's like, "that's why we can't be together"... then suddenly they're just in the house again w/ him, neither of them having said anything about their relationship status. Then she's going off to surgery and is like, "Don't make it harder than it already is" -- is she talking about the surgery or their breaking up??? It's so annoyingly murky!! And yeah they kiss at the end, but is that a 'we're not going to break up after all' kiss?? Or a goodbye kiss? Or a 'we don't know what's going on, but we have this' kiss??? Ughghghgh.
I think the movie is weak in many other ways too... but purely in terms of the MSR, I was disappointed (whereas the first time I saw it, I didn't have much emotional investment there, so most of my criticism was about the merits of it being a standalone movie, which I still am not a fan of). Early on in the movie I was fine, because they're still together, living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, and seemed really CLOSE. I wasn't thrilled with Scully being all Ms. Doctor again, but whatever, I can accept that that's realistic in terms of her character development.
Then partway through, Mulder gets sucked back into being an agent again, which is cool because I LIKE them being in the FBI, their partner dynamic was always what I loved about XF, plus the two of them NOT being in the FBI and not being able to whip out their badges/guns when questioning/going after people was just so weird and unpleasant, lol. Not enormously so, but enough that it felt like, "This isn't right, somehow." But anyway, the point is that Mulder gets back to being Mulder, which makes Scully lose it and basically ends their relationship, and he's basically like, OK fine. And I'm like, WTF???? During S8/S9 I cringed over their schmoopy romance, but jeez, if it's THIS or schmoopy romance, give me some goddamn schmoopy romance!!
I mean, even though I don't think it was the intention of CC/FS to be like, 'be careful what you wish for, we put them together romantically and see how it doesn't work out,' it still kind of feels that way. I read some stuff about how CC/FS both had these ideas about where M&S would be after all this time had passed, and wanted to really imagine where they would be in their lives and with each other, and I get/respect that... but at the same time, I'm like, what kind of shit happened to YOU guys in the intervening years to come up with this depressing shit?!
I mean, this is exactly the kind of 'epilogue' that I don't want, where a good story is extended too far until it becomes something you don't love because of where it gets taken (that's why fanfic needs, imho, to have an END, not just go on and on and on; it's kind of like what's happening w/ the S&tC movies, too). I wasn't jumping up and down thrilled w/ the way things ended on the series (it really upsets me that they had to give up william -.-), but at least it left us in a place of hope. But XF2 feels like a story that was extended beyond its shelf life (you know, if you keep continuing a 'happily ever after' fairy tale, everyone dies). Now I wish they'd just left us with the open endedness of anything being possible, rather than telling us what did happen and sucking all the hope out, which is essentially what they did.
I think part of the issue is that I think Scully as a character became really ... what's the word ... weary and jaded by the time the series ended. Toward the end she always looked so TIRED and so DONE with everything. It was like she didn't know how to be happy anymore, and I didn't like watching her, and she's the same way in XF2. Mulder used to be able to make her smile, but in XF2 it was like even he had lost that power. She was just Done!Scully.
Yeah, given what all happened to her over the course of the series I don't think that's unrealistic, but... this is fiction! I don't need realism! This is the same woman who BARELY grieved over her sister's murder. They went through so much crap and kept their heads high, but then suddenly it became too much? I guess it's not unreasonable, but I'm not looking for reasonable. I'm looking for fictional heroes. I want Mulder and Scully to be perpetually inspired to keep fighting! A Scully who's given up, who wants/needs a normal life, is not a Scully I want to watch. Despite the end 'message' of XF2, that she isn't going to give up, essentially she already has. They both have, and it doesn't make for compelling entertainment.
Where they took the MSR just seems so depressing. I don't like that Scully's all down on the FBI, when one of the biggest attractions for me to these characters was that they were AGENTS Mulder and Scully. In XF2 specifically, I wanted to see more of Skinner. Despite being like a MotW episode, it just felt so UN-XF, somehow. I'm probably one of the few people who really wanted to see them continue the mytharc -- because I think that is the only idea 'big' enough to make XF cinema-worthy. I thought FTF was excellent. But however little I enjoyed the plot of XF2, it was really the MSR that was the weakest, when it should have been the heart of the movie, bringing it all together. It was just so dark and ... unhopeful... and cracking at the edges. I wanted to see Mulder and Scully as strong as they ever were, and I didn't get that at all. That may be fine if we get an XF3, but they had no way of knowing whether we ever would, and that being the case, I think they really did the characters and us a disservice with the way the M/S relationship is portrayed.
I also ranted to her about Salt, which I finally saw, but she pointed out that listing all of that movie's deficiencies is like kicking a baby when it's down... there's just no sport in it. Suffice it to say that it was no Bourne Identity. Plus, I realized something else -- Angelina Jolie just doesn't do it for me. She seems way more badass in real life than she ever does on the big screen, even when she's supposedly playing a badass. She has this soft, girly voice and these frail limbs that look like they could snap with the slightest pressure. She keeps disappointing me in her roles, and I think this one is finally the one that's made me realize she's just not for me.
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I need to remember to start bringing my own utensils when I bring my own lunch, if it's meant to be hot. The compostable utensils either melt in the heat of the food or makes everything taste like wood. ><
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One of my new boss's hobbies is that he likes to roast his own coffee at home. He did a few batches this weekend and brought some in to share. Now the awesome smell of roasted coffee keeps distracting me every 5 seconds.
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Second to last TV show meme!! Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
If the question is, what am I currently obsessed with, it'd have to be XF, since I'm rewatching it and am up to S5. If the question is, what current TV show (as in, currently running) am I obsessed with, I'd have to say Mad Men. It's so fab.
PLUS -- before she left for an extended vacation, K. took down her tomato plants and asked if I wanted all the green tomatoes still on the vine. Of course I didn't want them to go to waste, so I said sure. Now I have a HUGE box of green tomatoes (mostly cherries) and I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I started a thread in the
cooking comm to see if anyone had any ideas about what I could do with them (other than fried green tomatoes, which I do plan to do, but there are so many that I need other ideas too). If any of you guys have favorite ways to prepare green tomatoes, please let me know! I'd read that tomatoes don't ripen if they've been pulled too early (before they start changing color), but someone on the thread says that if I keep them out of the light, they will. If that's true, maybe I should move the box to my garage. Not that I need a million tomatoes to ripen all at once...===
Happy birthday to the incomparable
jade_okelani today.For her birthday, one of the things I gave her was a rant about the second XF movie.
Some context on my rant: When I first watched X-Files: I Want to Believe (calling it XF2 for short), I didn't like it. Back when I watched it the first time, I was not in XF mode at ALL, I just couldn't get back into the same headspace where I cared about the characters or what happened to them.
This time, I actually wanted to watch XF2 *because* I'm feeling the MSR love again, and after finishing S4, I really wanted to see them together in a place where they were *together* and happy (I didn't remember XF2 at all, obviously, lol), and so it was a huge disappointment that they were together and UNhappy.
There's so much double talk and ambiguity. Are Mulder and Scully breaking up ... or not?? Sometimes it's totally unclear whether they're talking about breaking up, or something else (like the situation with the kid Scully's trying to save). Like when Scully's breaking up with Mulder... and then she tells him that his stubbornness was why she fell in love with him (mixed signals much??), but then Mulder's like, "that's why we can't be together"... then suddenly they're just in the house again w/ him, neither of them having said anything about their relationship status. Then she's going off to surgery and is like, "Don't make it harder than it already is" -- is she talking about the surgery or their breaking up??? It's so annoyingly murky!! And yeah they kiss at the end, but is that a 'we're not going to break up after all' kiss?? Or a goodbye kiss? Or a 'we don't know what's going on, but we have this' kiss??? Ughghghgh.
I think the movie is weak in many other ways too... but purely in terms of the MSR, I was disappointed (whereas the first time I saw it, I didn't have much emotional investment there, so most of my criticism was about the merits of it being a standalone movie, which I still am not a fan of). Early on in the movie I was fine, because they're still together, living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, and seemed really CLOSE. I wasn't thrilled with Scully being all Ms. Doctor again, but whatever, I can accept that that's realistic in terms of her character development.
Then partway through, Mulder gets sucked back into being an agent again, which is cool because I LIKE them being in the FBI, their partner dynamic was always what I loved about XF, plus the two of them NOT being in the FBI and not being able to whip out their badges/guns when questioning/going after people was just so weird and unpleasant, lol. Not enormously so, but enough that it felt like, "This isn't right, somehow." But anyway, the point is that Mulder gets back to being Mulder, which makes Scully lose it and basically ends their relationship, and he's basically like, OK fine. And I'm like, WTF???? During S8/S9 I cringed over their schmoopy romance, but jeez, if it's THIS or schmoopy romance, give me some goddamn schmoopy romance!!
I mean, even though I don't think it was the intention of CC/FS to be like, 'be careful what you wish for, we put them together romantically and see how it doesn't work out,' it still kind of feels that way. I read some stuff about how CC/FS both had these ideas about where M&S would be after all this time had passed, and wanted to really imagine where they would be in their lives and with each other, and I get/respect that... but at the same time, I'm like, what kind of shit happened to YOU guys in the intervening years to come up with this depressing shit?!
I mean, this is exactly the kind of 'epilogue' that I don't want, where a good story is extended too far until it becomes something you don't love because of where it gets taken (that's why fanfic needs, imho, to have an END, not just go on and on and on; it's kind of like what's happening w/ the S&tC movies, too). I wasn't jumping up and down thrilled w/ the way things ended on the series (it really upsets me that they had to give up william -.-), but at least it left us in a place of hope. But XF2 feels like a story that was extended beyond its shelf life (you know, if you keep continuing a 'happily ever after' fairy tale, everyone dies). Now I wish they'd just left us with the open endedness of anything being possible, rather than telling us what did happen and sucking all the hope out, which is essentially what they did.
I think part of the issue is that I think Scully as a character became really ... what's the word ... weary and jaded by the time the series ended. Toward the end she always looked so TIRED and so DONE with everything. It was like she didn't know how to be happy anymore, and I didn't like watching her, and she's the same way in XF2. Mulder used to be able to make her smile, but in XF2 it was like even he had lost that power. She was just Done!Scully.
Yeah, given what all happened to her over the course of the series I don't think that's unrealistic, but... this is fiction! I don't need realism! This is the same woman who BARELY grieved over her sister's murder. They went through so much crap and kept their heads high, but then suddenly it became too much? I guess it's not unreasonable, but I'm not looking for reasonable. I'm looking for fictional heroes. I want Mulder and Scully to be perpetually inspired to keep fighting! A Scully who's given up, who wants/needs a normal life, is not a Scully I want to watch. Despite the end 'message' of XF2, that she isn't going to give up, essentially she already has. They both have, and it doesn't make for compelling entertainment.
Where they took the MSR just seems so depressing. I don't like that Scully's all down on the FBI, when one of the biggest attractions for me to these characters was that they were AGENTS Mulder and Scully. In XF2 specifically, I wanted to see more of Skinner. Despite being like a MotW episode, it just felt so UN-XF, somehow. I'm probably one of the few people who really wanted to see them continue the mytharc -- because I think that is the only idea 'big' enough to make XF cinema-worthy. I thought FTF was excellent. But however little I enjoyed the plot of XF2, it was really the MSR that was the weakest, when it should have been the heart of the movie, bringing it all together. It was just so dark and ... unhopeful... and cracking at the edges. I wanted to see Mulder and Scully as strong as they ever were, and I didn't get that at all. That may be fine if we get an XF3, but they had no way of knowing whether we ever would, and that being the case, I think they really did the characters and us a disservice with the way the M/S relationship is portrayed.
I also ranted to her about Salt, which I finally saw, but she pointed out that listing all of that movie's deficiencies is like kicking a baby when it's down... there's just no sport in it. Suffice it to say that it was no Bourne Identity. Plus, I realized something else -- Angelina Jolie just doesn't do it for me. She seems way more badass in real life than she ever does on the big screen, even when she's supposedly playing a badass. She has this soft, girly voice and these frail limbs that look like they could snap with the slightest pressure. She keeps disappointing me in her roles, and I think this one is finally the one that's made me realize she's just not for me.
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I need to remember to start bringing my own utensils when I bring my own lunch, if it's meant to be hot. The compostable utensils either melt in the heat of the food or makes everything taste like wood. ><
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One of my new boss's hobbies is that he likes to roast his own coffee at home. He did a few batches this weekend and brought some in to share. Now the awesome smell of roasted coffee keeps distracting me every 5 seconds.
===
Second to last TV show meme!! Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
If the question is, what am I currently obsessed with, it'd have to be XF, since I'm rewatching it and am up to S5. If the question is, what current TV show (as in, currently running) am I obsessed with, I'd have to say Mad Men. It's so fab.