Queen of Swords

When I made my post a few weeks ago about having just finished watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse for the first time, and saying that it was now my favorite of his creations, heron61 asked me why that was. This is the first chance I've had since then to sit down and make a leisurely reply.

( Cut for the non-Whedonists in the crowd and in case there is any concern about spoilers. )

I just finished watching season one of Dollhouse for the first time, and I confess that my favorite character is Adelle DeWitt, the boss of the house.

In her, Joss Whedon has created what I consider to be a perfect portrayal of a Queen of Swords. Adelle is emininently logical, decisive, in control, divorces her emotions from her business dealings, and when a weapon is brandished in her face by someone she knows is a) quite capable of using it and b) has every reason to kill her (as has happened at least twice so far), she remains cool and composed. At the same time, as the season wears on we are given glimpses and then entire scenes of her emotions and vulnerability.

We even get a scene of her in an intense, passionate fencing match, which is one of my favorite kinds of foreplay.

I have mixed feelings about the show as a whole, but I adore DeWitt.*







* Okay, yes, she's one of the bad guys. I don't approve of her, but I still love her.

Finally saw the Buffy episode "Once More With Feeling."

Buffy's songs are hitting far too close to home.

I don't watch television series very often, but I'm going to be tuning in to this one.

Okay, so I'm not as much a Queen of Pentacles as my dear mother, who came over for an hour and a half this afternoon to help me dig through stuff. Together we:

* Broke down and carried out the pieces of a broken bookshelf and moved a new bookshelf into place

* Emptied three more boxes and carried the wrappings out to recycle

* Took two plastic storage bins off the balcony and put them in her car to go in her garage

Hmmm. . . It felt like more than that, but it was a lot. The bookshelf transition really opened up the space, and allowed a lot of stuff to go up on shelves.

Now if I could only figure out what to do with my antique "queen's chair" that was one of the very few things I wanted from my maternal grandmother's estate. It needs to be repaired so someone can sit in it, so it's mostly taking up space -- space that I don't have right now.

I've started a box for "Papers to File" -- which is going to get scary. I need to figure out where I'm going to file what, and probably create new files. I have at least three or four different places to put files, and need to be sure I have some kind of system for what goes where.

After Mom left, I went to pay my water bill and was unable to log on to their site. A conversation with customer service revealed that the old account was closed because I'd moved -- and that I showed $500 due. Yikes! My Quicken files showed payments made -- with confirmations -- and it turned out that I hadn't properly updated my online records the last time I moved, so that payments had been credited to my previous unit. Argh! And because the account has been closed, they can't transfer the credits. They're sending me a refund check, which I can use to pay the last bill, which my apartment complex is supposed to collect.

Then I talked to my cable company, because my bill shows me as owing payment for renting a digital receiver that I don't have. They fixed that -- but an hour later I lost my internet connection. Sure enough: when the first rep corrected my account about the digital box, she somehow managed to take my internet offline. Fortunately that was quickly corrected.

Then I called the former MyCo to get help because my phone was suddenly telling me that I was almost out of storage, and I hadn't done anything recently to add new docs or photos -- and I put those on a memory card anyway. The rep -- as always -- tried to get me to do a complete wipe of my gadget's memory (which would have erased my third party programs like my Quicken register and my password vault), but I refused. Eventually I figured out that I needed to clear the temp storage and history on my internet browser. I hate it when I end up figuring out the solution for what I've called about -- and it's happened the last few times I've had an issue.

Now it's time to make dinner: garlic chicken and soba noodles with red bell peppers, with a dash of tamari sauce. Yum!

After that: a couple of episodes of Season Two Buffy with Wolfling. Things have gotten very dark and angsty -- not exactly great for my current mood challenges, but we can't stop now!

Wolfling and I have finally started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer via Netflix. So far we've only seen four episodes, and we're both enjoying it -- but watching it with Wolfling is sometimes a surreal experience. I keep getting caught up in the fact that Buffy is living this freaky, dangerous, double life and all her mom knows is that she gets in trouble at school a lot. I find myself saying, Promise me that if you ever end up fighting vampires you'll let me know, okay? And Wolfling grins and promises.

Except that the last time the subject came up, I said, You know, it would probably be easier for you to tell me you're out hunting vampires than it would be for you to tell me about some of the real things that you could find yourself involved with. I hope you'll tell me about that too. She assured me she will.

She's only thirteen, and she still enjoys hanging out with her mom, who she considers to be as "weird" as she herself is. I don't think she fully understands just how much distance can develop once a kid is in the midst of adolescence. I keep hoping that her awareness of the richness and complexity (and yes, "weirdness") of my own life will make it easier for her to share things with me as she gets older. Only time will tell.

Meanwhile I watch the mother's painfully awkward attempts to "understand" her daughter, and remind myself how important it is to be consistent in my own efforts to keep communication open, express interest in her, share my own life, connect.

The other surreal aspect is that the show that sometimes hits close to home in the area of our own practices. Last night we watched an episode called "The Witch" in which a classmate's mother was discovered to be an evil witch. We were entertained by the over-the-top melodrama, including a spooky hidden room with a cauldron and poppets where Mom cast her spells, and then I excused myself to go upstairs to my room to do my own magical practices. We all know there's a huge difference between Hollywood spooky stereotypes and real magic, but it was still an interesting moment.



Side note to MT: We're both really enjoying David B's appearances as Angel after having spent the last several years with him as Booth!

It's a slow day at work.
Don't take this too seriously.


( In which I grouch about the mis-use of the term Alpha Male in an episode of Bones. )

As I mentioned recently, my sister's belated birthday gift to me was the season one DVD collection of the tv series Bones, which is about Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, a beautiful, brilliant, Queen of Swords type forensic anthropologist who solves murders with hunky, intuitive FBI agent Seeley Booth. The primary supporting characters are Brennan's team: a specialist in spores and slime who's a conspiracy theorist as well as being secretly wealthy, a geeky genius kid who is Brennan's protege, and an artist who does facial reconstruction from skulls and holographic sequences of possible murder scenarios. They're a quirky, brilliant group, and fun to spend a few hours with. Since I don't usually watch series television, it's an anomaly for me to be spending an hour or two on the couch each evening since Christmas Eve watching it.

The relentless parade of macabre human remains and murder reconstructions -- not to mention back-to-back episodes about murdered kids -- may also have had an impact on my mood the last few days, but that's not the point right now.

The point is two episodes which made a point of featuring -- in the worst possible light -- two subcultures to which I belong: bdsm practitioners and role playing groups.

( More behind the cut )

Interestingly enough, I felt more personal offense at the way the gamer kids were portrayed and judged than the way the kinky folks were. It seemed to me to be disingenuous that a tv show would mock the ability of others to submerge themselves in story and escape for a while into another world, another identity.

Of course, normal people don't dress up in costumes and pretend to be heroic characters. Normal people sit on the couch and watch other people pretending to be heroic. Right?

I guess this post doesn't have much of a point except to observe my own reaction to the two episodes. I've never taken things like this personally before, never felt personal indignation that there wasn't the slightest suggestion that even if these characters were bonkers, they weren't representative of their entire groups. Go ahead: write stories about kinky killers and delusional kids. They exist. But there are far more sane, law-abiding members of each group. Not as much fun to write about, I know -- but at least acknowledge that your colorful characters are the lunatic fringe.

This evening I'm sorely wishing I saw a few more stories about smart heroes who happen to like kinky sex, or geeky kids whose amazing research skills and sincere aspiration to heroism solve a murder, and I saw fewer cheap shots at vilified caricatures designed to make protagonists -- and viewers -- feel disdainful and morally superior.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I'm treated to an episode in which creepy, "delusional" witches are involved in a murder involving poisonous herbs or an athame.

I can't wait. . .