{ leave me out with the waste. }

[delga]

Am using BBC iPlayer to download a documentary called The Poles Are Coming! which is part of BBC's 'White Week'. Mostly I'm watching it because it's based in Peterborough, and I live around there. Peterborough is a mess of a city, but the issues the show seems to be raising are relevant enough (I only know about it because I'm subscribed to one of the feeds from The Independent online). One woman was against immigration completely - and her surname's Patel. Which. YEAH. I face this a lot, especially within my family, and I don't think people are completely latching on to the IRONY of their positions. Anyway, I'll probably watch that tonight whilst The Flatmate and T are out.

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Speaking of The Flatmate (and of TV, I guess), we've started marathoning season 1 of Lost. No real reason, just seemed like the thing to do. Especially considering the unreliable nature of our net connection.

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Yesterday's meeting was useless; yesterday's class was interesting enough. Afterwards I walked back to my street with a classmate who is usually pretty aloof. Oddness. Today I'm reading poetry for tomorrow's 4-hour class (last class of the term, huzz). Donne, Jonson, Marvell and probably Herrick, too.

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I have a yen to talk about Kate Todd & Ziva David some more but I'll hold off for a while. Mostly because I'm out of practice, and my head has been eaten up by Sarah Connor Chronicles. Speaking of, call_me_daisy has posted some icons at her journal and, as ever, they're wonderfully crisp and clear, not to mention beautifully cropped and coloured.

What I'm liking about the fanfiction that's coming out right now is (a) the flexibility of future!John Connor's memories (because, of course, they're always changing the past) and (b) the introduction of characters from the film. One person wrote fic with a war-weary Kate which I love the idea of because the parallels there between her transformation and Sarah's are strong, but Kate's got other notions and other priorities. I kind of love the way in which canon has set up this notion of multiple realities (right from the start when Biehn's Reese tells Sarah that he comes from one of a possible range of futures) and fandom is completely on board with that. Fandom doesn't really care that the timelines and plots don't always crossover between the film-verse and the show because (a) it's openly plausible, and we're embracing the fluidity of the canon, and (b) we're used to fusing our own timelines between shows and books. I think the filming of the comic series has helped with that a lot, but I also think that fandom is a lot more flexible than we often realise. I mean, there are some cases where you're going to be a stickler for certain details ("That makes NO SENSE. How can A be in B when C hasn't done this yet?") but when you're dealing with time-travel... I don't know. Doctor Who fans are similar in that they appreciate the potential for inter-episodic narratives to go anywhere and pretty much do anything but that fandom is vast and terrifying in its process of fractioning itself. Possibly because SCC fandom is quite small, and quite young right now, or possibly because the nature of the time travel is different (you're always going backwards to come forwards; you're living forwards just to end up going back) there's just this manner in which this fandom is so okay with the battered timeline. It's really relaxed which I'm enjoying.

I'm not entirely certain that the above made any sense, but suffice it to say that I've been reading fic, and I've been enjoying it. I like the newness of fandoms, in the same way that I like the newness of shows and I like the nature of pilot episodes. I like how loose and free they are at the beginning before you start fixing details, and I really like shows that maintain that 'new' feeling (until the last few before the strike, every episode of The Unit felt fresh and open to me; I loved watching it). A relevant example from Lost: between the pilot and the second episode, her character transforms massively. Her character gets formed definitively when we know she was the one travelling with the US Marshall; before then, her identity - unlike Jack's - is fluid. You don't really know who she's going to turn out to be. I thought that was a nice touch when we were watching last night.

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Obviously I'm procrastinating. I'd better get my work done.

Comments

[hestia8.livejournal.com]

There was a thing on Mock The Week where Gina Yashere was talking about her mum (who is Nigerian) becoming racist.

'All these Kosovans, coming over here, taking our jobs...'
'But mum, you're an immigrant!'
'Not any more. [gestures holding up passport] I have a British Passport!'

Not exactly a British value it's positive for people to pick up, really...

I watched a bit of that documentary, but I was getting close to shouting at the screen, and if I wanted a fruitless conversation about why immigration is not a bad thing and it's not like people of any other race or nationality have the monopoly on teenage mothers/crime/complete psychos, I'd talk to my Dad.

(and on a rather shallow level, I like unusual/non-British supermarkets - Lidl and Aldi etc - so I like having a Polish/Eastern European supermarket nearby, but anything that gives me the opportunity to buy more sweet stuff is a good thing)

I want to read SCC fic, but I'm only three episodes in, so I think I need a bit more canon first.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I love Gina Yashere for a lot of reasons, but she's done a sketch on that, too, and she's so on the ball about racial stereotypes and the immigrant issue. The stuff she says is funny because it's true. But yeah, I have whole schisms of my family resenting the influx of Eastern Europeans which is so ironic, but I suppose it's also a case of our lot not really being the bottom rung anymore.

I'll have more to say once I've seen it, obviously, but the whole concept of the BBC's 'White Week' gets to me a little. There's a show that iPlayer keeps showing me and I don't really know what it's about, but the promotional picture-- it's about a girl and her mother who move to a predominantly Muslim area. So she's dressed with a blue shawl. Which, okay, I guess the show is about the parts of racism we don't see. But the promotional image is posed and coloured in a way that basically evokes archetypal images of Mary. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but I certainly wonder at people's common sense either way.

I love market diversity too, lols, and whilst I understand the social and economic concerns about migrants, I also think people (a) don't understand the nature of social change (in the sense of, if it wasn't the Eastern Europeans, there'd be some other social divide that would need conquering) and (b) underestimate how much the migrant community does for the country's economic stability. So I can see the anger, and I can understand it in a way, but I'm not totally on board with it, and I get pretty frustrated hearing the same arguments over and over.

You posted about a new Kudos show which I... missed. But iPlayer should have it up soon, I'm hoping.

edit: re: fic, there's a lot of stuff from the early episodes mixed with the film canon. I should really get off my arse and compile my recs list already. I'll let you know :)

[hestia8.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch the White Girl thing because the whole idea of the drama seemed forced (put together by committee, if that makes sense - 'quick! We need a socially relevant drama about white people and Islam! Go go go!'), but I read a review that said it was very-well-put-together tosh. And I would guess it was one of those well-meaning dramas that actually bears no relation to reality.

Oh, and the writer said it wasn't about Islam, it was about *faith*, which put me right off, because it obviously was about Islam, otherwise what would be the point? Apparently she could just as well have converted to Judaism (I'm paraphrasing), in which case my question is, well, why didn't she?

If you're going to write about such a contentious subject, then at least have the courage of your convictions.

Oh, and I'm sure the imagery is intentional - but no-one would admit it. 'Oh, we got a blue-eyed, blonde-haired actress? Gosh, I hadn't noticed!'

b) is exactly the point I keep making over and over to my Dad, and I think on some levels he gets it (and he even says he's glad that Dear and I haven't picked up his attitudes), but on others he's sort of 'well, I've had these prejudices for a long time and I'm not giving them up just because you've got a logical argument!', which is frustrating and very *headdesk*.

The fixer was on ITV - you can probably watch it on their website but I don't know what system they use.

Also, please do inform me about fic :)

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Polish people, lols. I'm sure someone has made a documentary about telephone poles but I don't think I'd take the time to watch it, LOLS.