total convenience and flowers seven days milk:

So, I am trying out Google+, half-heartedly. I hate change! On the other hand, I kind of hate Facebook! and spend so much time there anyway! and so if Google+ allows me to consolidate what I like about LJ/DW with what I like about Facebook, that would be nice.

If you are there, come find me. I am just using my real-life name but just leave me a message here if you want to know about that.

What I have found myself doing so far on Google+ is complaining about the first season of Fringe, which sucks in my opinion (I know some of you like it! Sorry! Maybe we should have started with season 2! It is nice to see all those shots of the University of Toronto standing in for "Harvard"! & etc.!) ( And so someone who hadn't seen the show asked for an explanation, and this is what I wrote )

So that is why I don't like Fringe. I hope you are glad that you asked!

I have little to add to what more diligent researchers and fen have already posted about the whole FanLib horror show. For my own reference, because surely you've all seen this already, this is what cordelia_v had to say about it and here is Henry Jenkins' take on the matter. Both of these (along with the relevant post in Making Light) refer to icarusancalion's thorough, clear synthesis of the sordid mess, which is here.

All I want to say is that this story demonstrates once again that among the many mystical properties of post-industrial capitalism is the magical power to transform regular people into lying, manipulative, creepy scumballs.

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In happier fannish news, Fishwhistle and I are rewatching Buffy, beginning to end, and I'm loving Season Two even more than I did the first time. It's so carefully thought out, in almost every detail! We caught one bobble in the editing, but otherwise, wow, perfect. There's a scene in "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" where Xander is trying to persuade Amy to cast the love spell for him, having dragged her into a classroom for the purpose, and behind him we see a "Great British Authors" poster on the wall. He has, for a moment, Dickens on one shoulder and Shakespeare on the other. Perfect.

In "Passion," a few episodes later, there's a scene in which Buffy insists to Giles that she has to warn her mother about the danger Angel poses. And behind her? A poster advertising "self-defense classes!" Perfect again.

And the coherence of the entire season! Even the supposedly stand-alone episodes are joined by a thematic thread: the dangers of virginity/the dangerous virgin. Amy's mistake in casting the spell is that she invokes Diana (!) as a godess of love; the Inca mummy girl was a virgin sacrifice; Ted's evil scheme is defeated because Buffy, wiser than Persephone, won't eat his cookies. It's such a pleasure to see that fairy-tale motif inverted, upended, and bounced around like a red rubber ball.

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I've been reading the Season Eight comics and liking them very much, except that I'm not crazy about their Xander. Yeah, yeah, I get the Nick Fury thing. And it's interesting to see what the Buffy creators do with the character without the actor's contribution. But it turns out that Nicholas Brendon brought a lot to the show; without him, Xander's just ... a cartoon.

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One last Whedon-y thing:

This rant on the topic of cell-phone film of a so-called honor killing and depictions of misogynist violence generally makes me love Whedon even more than I already did. I mean, yes, it is pretty much Women's Studies 101 c. 1983, and yes, it is kinda gender-essentialist, with which position I strongly disagree. But what other powerful man in Hollywood is asking these questions, even if he's coming to the wrong conclusions?

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So I've been weeding and planting and mulching and pruning and generally playing in the glorious May sunshine these past few days, and I find myself singing a not especially good gospel song by the Queens of Harmony: I expect a miracle! Every day! God will make a way out of no way!. Now, you know, I'm agnostic (and no offense intended to the more committed atheists [hi Ratty!] or believers [Cordelia! Fab! Femme! hello!] who might be reading this) but if I was looking for a miracle I would see it in the garden. It's the most ordinary part of life, and the weirdest too: green everywhere, all of a sudden, in May, conjured up by rain and sunlight and the passing of time.