Ok. I finished Six Feet Under.
Great ending. Very emotionally satisfying.
I hated Nate, but he also reminded me of one of my favourite works of literary theory — Jacques Derrida’s essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, which has a wonderful paragraph about the nature of meaning being it’s essential absence. Nate is like that — he’s the absence that brings all of the other characters together and makes them into a meaningful structure — a family. His death allows them to heal and live their lives. He has to die so that his wife and his daughters, his brother and sister and mother and everyone attached to them, can live.
He’s deeply unsympathetic, self-absorbed and emotionally absent even when he was alive, and even in some very profound ways, hateful, but his effect — the effect of his living and especially dying amongst them — is positive in the end.
Interesting.
Can I reblog myself to add this: I confirm my feeling that Nate Fisher is the Bill Compton of Six Feet Under. I loved that Nate died and left everyone around him the space to heal and lead their lives. I love the little scenes that led up to his death that involved him showing his negative influence on every single one of them, and then watching them all breathe out with relief and finally find a way to go on.
I wonder if Bill’s transformation into Billith is already a kind of death — one that will realign everyone else.
I stopped watching SFU a while ago but the parallel nate/bill is interesting and spot on.
I think what’s interesting about him, and if you think about it, the character of Lester Burnham (from American Beauty) as well, is that Nate is, really, by the time he finally dies, beyond any kind of redemption. He’s like poison in everyone’s veins. Dying is the only thing that can redeem him at all, and it’s his death that finally allows everyone to be who they need to be. His redemption, such as it is, is his death.
What’s interesting about Bill is that he has, like Lester, killed himself, and been reborn as an evil, mad God. There is no fixing him, but he will very likely be the motivation that forces everyone else to be what they need to be.
…just a few thoughts.
Ok. I finished Six Feet Under.
Great ending. Very emotionally satisfying.
I hated Nate, but he also reminded me of one of my favourite works of literary theory — Jacques Derrida’s essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, which has a wonderful paragraph about the nature of meaning being it’s essential absence. Nate is like that — he’s the absence that brings all of the other characters together and makes them into a meaningful structure — a family. His death allows them to heal and live their lives. He has to die so that his wife and his daughters, his brother and sister and mother and everyone attached to them, can live.
He’s deeply unsympathetic, self-absorbed and emotionally absent even when he was alive, and even in some very profound ways, hateful, but his effect — the effect of his living and especially dying amongst them — is positive in the end.
Interesting.
Ramblings and Ravings: Seriously, WTF?
The group think is insane.
God forbid I fucking criticize Saint Eric for anything, for he is perfect and godly, and Viking Sex on a stick and anyone who says otherwise is a stupid fucking no nothing cunt who must OBVIOUSLY love Bill.
Fucking hell.
Break out the insanity stick if a throw away…
You know what? I didn’t even think you WERE criticizing Eric.
I thought you were taking a line of dialogue out of context to make a lame criticism of Alan Ball, which is what *I* was responding to. You accuse him of bad, thinly veiled social criticism, and I thought that what you wrote was bad story-telling and writing criticism that refused to acknowledge context in any way to make your point.
And now your’re doing it again.
Parallel:
In S3 E3 & E4 Bill raped and violated Lorena and explained it as: “Any passion you felt was me killing my love for Sookie.”
In S5 he is doing almost the same thing with Salome. Not quite a rape, but straight to the point sex :). And he is killing his own humanity (the little there was of it) by metaphorically draining and killing Sookie.
Sorry, I had to get rid of the gross pictures of Bill Compton in flagrante, but I just wanted to make explicit note of the fact that yes — Bill Compton uses sex to KILL THINGS in his own mind.
I’d also like to remind us all of this quote from Alan Ball: “I think you can learn a lot about the psyche and soul of a person through sex.”
Yep. That Bill. SUCH A GOOD GUY.
(via switchbladekiller)
Anonymous asked: Could it be that you don't have the energy to answer because YOU CAN'T? Because there is no argument that you can possibly make against the fact that your ship is going down? I know Eric is hot, but take your blinders off for crissakes. If you don't you're in for a rough ride, because Alan Ball ships himself with Bill, so he's living vicariously through Sookie.
Also, the amazingly stupid assumption that being gay makes Alan Ball stupid and desperate that this message contains is particularly abhorrent.
So, let me just add this:
I hope the door hits you on the way out.
Ryan Kwanten and Alan Ball: Jason’s New Purpose 5x06 (x)
Jason is such a dopple for Eric.
Amen.
(via tempella)
THE GIF. King Gordon is so accurate.
Strangely enough, this doesn’t really bother me. I mean, the man is sitting in front of a crowd of Bill and Sookie fans (remember—this was mid-way through the airing of season 3). He’s already plotted and filmed the end of their relationship, down to the betrayal and hate sex. He set up the demise of their relationship before the show even started. What’s he going to say? SOL? The crowd would lynch him (metaphorically speaking) and he’d ruin the rest of the season, if not the rest of the series.
He knows that part of his job is surprising us. When he talked about why he chose THIS series to adapt, he said that he couldn’t stop reading (because of the surprises and cliff-hangers). In trying to capture the spirit of the books, he obviously wanted to preserve that sense of mystery. So no, he isn’t going to reveal what’s going to happen at a filmed, public forum.
If anything, the more effusive he gets about something, the more suspicious I get that it’s:
- not very important
- not going to play out AT ALL like he suggests
- he’s trolling
That’s why I love how nonchalant he (and the other major characters) are about Sookie and Eric’s relationship. When Anna Paquin just says that it was Eric’s “turn” when asked about season 4 and what it means for the future, I know we’re golden. They can’t give the big stuff away, so they try to minimize it. The bigger it is, the more they talk it down.
The important stuff is what shows up on screen. What the actors and creators say, given the importance of the show’s twists and turns, is all misdirection. It’s like the magician who removes the scarf with a theatrical flourish while his other hand sets up the trick. Want to know what’s really happening? WATCH THE OTHER HAND. Not the hand that he wants you to look at, the hand he’s concealing.
Want to know what’s really happening on True Blood? Watch the subtle, intentional stuff (costumes, lighting, set design, line choice, plot arcs) and ignore the theatrical flourishes (the interviews, red carpet soundbites, plot summaries, etc.) These are often tongue-in-cheek misdirection designed to get us to watch. The true meaning is in the episodes they’ve spent months creating, not a 45-second answer to a fan question.
Amen.
Alan Ball, the executive producer of True Blood, at the Season 5 red carpet premiere in Los Angeles (May 30, 2012).
Photo courtesy of the Vault.
(Source: tbwillfuckwithurmind, via stillhidden)
"Q: How would you explain Sookie and her rapist’s relationship in this book now compared to the past?
Charlaine Harris: Their relationship is a funny mixture of familiarity, affection, and regret. They’re no longer lovers, but Sookie has flashes of remembering how wonderful her sexual relationship with her rapist could be."
-Charlaine Harris interview, 4/19/12
Yep. That’s what she said. Of course, she said Bill in place of ‘her rapist’, but as they’re one in the same…
I just fucking can’t with you anymore, Charlaine, I just fucking CAN’T.
You wrote Bill Compton as an abusive, stalking, controlling boyfriend who repeatedly raped Sookie (I hope you’re not obtuse enough to have written a scene where a girl believes her choices are either sex or death and not have intended it to be rape). There are no take-backsies for that. You can’t undo it by pretending that it never happened, or worse, advocating a ‘what’s a little rape between friends?’ mentality, or whatever the fuck it is you think you’re doing.
In the majority of rapes, the victim knows the attacker. So I take no issue with you exploring the complex and often contradictory emotions that a woman feels when the man she loved rapes her, nor do I have issue with the fact that your rapist isn’t some moustache-twirling Snidley Whiplash.
What I have a problem with is the fact that you continue to portray the relationship between Sookie and her rapist as only a friendly one, chumming around town as chums, that her rapist is her trusted ally, a gentle and loyal rapist is he. That in your latest book, you’re teaming Sookie and her Friendly Neighborhood Rapist up as a crack investigative team (that the Rapist is in charge of), like some Gorian version of Moonlighting…Rapelighting. That you would use the word ‘wonderful’ to describe a sexual relationship that was full of rape and abuse.
Seven fucking hells, Charlaine, do you even pay attention to the words that are coming out of your mouth?
(via exitpursuedbyasloth)
Ugh. Just … I want to say something clever, but I’m fresh out. I just feel like puking.
Will let exit’s tags speak instead. They are much more eloquent:
#What the everloving fuck Charlaine?
#Rape Culture Bullshit
#Oh it was so wonderful all those times he raped her
#I JUST FUCKING CAN’T
#Seriously are you trolling us Charlaine?
#Unchecked Tire Fire Mysteries
(via stillhidden)
I went to a Q and A with Charlene a year or so ago, and yeah, she was just completely head over heels in love with the fact that HBO is running her show, and she said this verbatim, because it’s making her rich. So, I don’t think this is so much rape culture bullshit, as just a little “artistic license” rewrite to play more into the show’s version (aka Alan Ball being over the top Team Bill).
(via sarahmonster213)
No. No.
Alan Ball is not “Team Bill.” I don’t understand how anyone paying attention can think that AB is “in love” (or whatever the sentiment implied may be) with Bill as a character. He paints him as abusive, weak, manipulative, and often downright evil. And consistently a lesser man than those around him. If this is “love,” I shudder to think what AB would do to a character he mildly dislikes. Or, you know, full on hates.
Let’s dismiss that idea right away.
I will also say “no” to the idea that the only reason CH is saying such things is because she is getting some monetary gains. She isn’t getting paid for the amount of Bill Compton per square inch. And she would get the same check is she were to write Bill Compton’s death scene in some gruesome way. Bill Compton is not the meal ticket in this situation. Quinn’s got a bigger fan club at this point.
So no. Whatever she may have said — and the “I love getting paid for this” sounds more tongue-in-cheek than a blatant commercialism — I have got no issue with her loving he work filmed, or enjoying getting paid. Why shouldn’t she?
I don’t buy that the woman who has been through something like that herself, would sell rape for profit. Perhaps it’s a way of coping. Or perhaps she really did drop the ball this badly.
And it absolutely is rape culture. The culture that tells a victim that applying revisionist filters to what happened is the better option than demanding justice. Sookie reminiscing about “good old times” with her rapist feeds right into that.
(via stillhidden)
Oh by God. Seriously? Ugh.
(via stillhidden)
"To me, vampires are sex… I don’t get a vampire story about abstinence. I’m 53. I don’t care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed."
Alan Ball (via ifoundsammysshoe)
(via spuffyfeels)
[Exit, Pursued By A Sloth]: stillhidden: windyoland: Irrelevant: DEADLOCKED REVIEWSeriously? I…
Seriously? I cannot believe this. I hate to be up in arms about something that might be happened 3 months from now. Kinda a waste of energy. However the Sam thing is bugging me. Sam stood by while Bill set her up. CH may have…
Ok, I’ve read the review and all of this discussion. I can’t stop thinking about the way CH nearly killed Bill, and then didn’t, and doesn’t often plan her story arcs beyond the book she’s working on, and also thinks the fans overly romanticize Eric. The bottom line is that the story thus far has been written so that we can only take Eric seriously as Sookie’s actual love interest, but from that review and the few comments that follow it, I surmise that Eric will be further sullied by some bad shit we just never knew about while we were making googly eyes at him for the past 11 books. I simply don’t put it past her to flip a bitch on everyone and prove to us all that it’s her story by making the ending unexpected. CH is a popular writer, but in so many ways, not a particularly good one. The integrity of her story arcs is not a thing I particularly trust her with.
I know I’m an unabashed Eric Northman/True Blood drooling fangirl, but I the worst thing about it if Eric is to be sullied, would be watching that play out on True Blood — if it does remain true to the source material in the big ways. Eric isn’t a prince, it’s true, but he does have his own code, his own brand of integrity, and a deep sort of virtue, and even if he never gets his heart’s desire, I just don’t want to see all those things about him muddied.
Love,
Cranky in Prague
If Twilight and SMeyer taught us nothing else, they taught us to never underestimate the levels of complete and total batshit insane fuckery a single writer can achieve, and the total lack of anyone in either their professional or inner circles saying “Hey friend, this shit’s totally craycray. Mayhaps you should rethink it. Or burn it.” and being able to get through to them.
As far as seeing it on True Blood…if Charlaine really has shifted gears at the last minute here, I don’t think Ball or his team is going to alter their course to suit hers. I do believe they’ve set up an extremely intricate mindfuck of an epic scale with Bill as the scheming, wretched villain, Eric as the lion in snake’s clothing, a hero not in need of laurels, and Sookie as a woman who appears to the outside world as a stupid and crazy bitch, weak, but in reality has been battling abuse and torture, and is remarkably strong to have survived for as long as she has with as much of herself as she had fighting both the physical assaults on her person, but magical assaults on her mind and soul through Bill’s tainted blood and demons, battered but not corrupted. So I don’t think they’ll throw all that hard work out the window and change their whole show based on the possible whims of Charlaine Harris.
Yes. You’re right. The distrust I feel for CH doesn’t extend to the people who plot out and write True Blood, who actually seem to know what they are about and have carefully pieced all that shit together so that the likes of you and the likes of me would have pretty much the exact same sense of what the story is doing.
Love,
Getting over it in Prague
(Source: luvtheviking)
True Blood Boss Alan Ball to Step Down After Season 5
If and when HBO’s True Blood makes it to Season 6, creator Alan Ball won’t be at the helm as the series’ showrunner.
On the heels of an unconfirmed report by Forbes that Ball would be stepping down due to “exhaustion” after the show’s upcoming fifth season, HBO released the following…
I know a lot of the online fans (and bookies) hate AB, but I really like what he’s done with the show. And as much as the series is shaped by the entire writing team, I can’t help but think the overall vision of the series will suffer without his involvement (I’ve seen it happen on other shows). I’ve never realistically seen TB go beyond 6 seasons, and now I pretty much know when it’s probably going to end. :(
I like AB, too, and I like his vision. And while he won’t be executive producing anymore — a mover that was expected, since he has another show on his plate, a show that isn’t established and needs hands-on work — it doesn’t mean he is abandoning TB. The show has direction, and I don’t doubt that the team will see it through the way he envisioned. He isn’t leaving the orbit. :)
I hope you’re right. I’m mostly speaking as a Buffy survivor. Joss left his position as show-runner of BtVS in season six, and produced Firefly (which I also loved, though I still wanted him to watch over Buffy). Season six of Buffy was by far the most contentious season (I myself, had a very love-hate relationship with that season myself). It always seems as though when the creator, or intial exec-producer goes away to do other projects, the whole production suffers in some way. Hopefully, it’ll be different with TB. Most of my favorite episodes have been written by writers other than AB.
There is no telling now what it’s going to be like, but personally, he is still going to be breaking down the seasons with the writers, and he wrote 2 episodes per season, which can be picked up by someone else (though, for me, some of his episodes are definitely favorite).
Either way, shows evolve. And some will hate it and others will love it. It’s life.
Oh, and I didn’t mind season 6 of Buffy, but I absolutely disliked season 4. When Joss was still around. See what I mean? :)
Just wanted to agree — as usual with you, stillhidden, about TB and Alan Ball, and also seasons 4 and 6 of Buffy. Season 4 is the one with Finn and The Initiative, right? That was the worst.
If Alan Ball is still there to participate in planning the long arc, it’s going to fine. I think he wrote some awesome episodes, but there are also loads of brilliant episodes he didn’t write — in fact, many of my absolute favorites were written by others — and an episode or two written by Alan Ball that I don’t like to much. Case in Point, “Frenzy” at the end of season two. I think the return to Bon Temps and the end of the Maenad story is one of the low points of the season — it has great moments, but overall, it’s anti-climactic after the events in Dallas, and vampires playing Yahtzee is inspired, but I felt like all the energy of the vampire story arc just fizzled away in those final two episodes.
That said, he did write “I Got a Right to Sing the Blues” and “Spellbound”, and love him for it.
It’ll be ok.
Nwalmn: It’s official: Alan Ball Will Stop Writing True Blood
“Exclusive Update: Sookie and her pals from HBO’s True Blood are losing their creator. Alan Ball, I have confirmed, will step down from being head writer of the show about sexy vampires mixing it up in New Orleans. Explanations include exhaustion, and maybe that the show seemed like it…
New Orleans? Really, Forbes?
AB has another show he is producing. It’s not the implied tiredness, it’s simple logistics. He is going to have two shows now, and TB is established, has a good working team, and doesn’t need as much hands-on attention. This was indicated since a year and a half ago, when HBO signed him for that other thing. AB may not write his requisite 2 episodes a season for TB, but he will still be breaking down the story arcs. It’s not a big deal. :)
Exactly.
(Source: luvtheviking)
