On West Egg

It's an amazingly expansive genre, with a really strong experimental region.

Just in the last year's crop of shows we've covered, broadly, the following: comedy, drama, melodrama, farce, parody, homage, tragedy, mystery, and the (fetch) quest.

Within these bounds, the shows have tackled the concepts of: loyalty, the loss of loved ones (friends, lovers, family), metafiction, romance, the simplicity and depth of friendship, existentialism, acceptance of fate, defiance of fate, making one's own fate, (deciding others' fates in light of all of this is rather uncouth, Meteor), the depravity inherent in some people, the power of justice, the importance of tradition, the sometimes necessity of building a family of choice, nerd culture, youth, that authority figures who should have your best interests at heart do not always, and so forth.

Some shows have presented these things at face value. Some have held them as subtext or low thematic undertones. Some have presented them with bright flashing signs calling your attention to them. Some have treated none of it seriously. Some have used jokes to hide how serious they were being. Some did multiple approaches from this list (some at once).

All of it has been wholeheartedly within the genre, no matter how different Makai Senki is to Gokaiger is to Power Rangers Samurai, etc.

As long as the creative staff on a show have the talent to back up their ambition, toku can accomplish anything.

Have we gotten a single series without any ridiculous behind-the-camera drama? Have we? I bet it sucked, because ALL the series have ridiculous production stories, of the sort that make you wonder how anything wound up on the screen at all, yet there they are, airing when they should.

I mean, a quick (and utterly incomplete) list is as follows:

- Early MMPR job titles being recommendations at best - everyone did whatever needed done at that moment, they just has specialties (we'll come back to this later in this series of posts)
- The Many Cancellations of Power Rangers
- Everything Inoue has touched, but especially Decade. (Oh god, Decade. Fun! Also awful.)
- The ridiculous number of supporting actresses in KR who have fallen ill during filming, necessitating rewrites. NB: this number may be two, because the only ones I know of for certain are Hiyori and Hana's actresses, but they were consecutive, so ridiculous still.
- Speaking of: Valerie Vernon's leukemia falling in the middle of the clusterfuck that was Lost Galaxy's production.
- Tzachor
- Kobayashi potentially having been telling the truth when she said she'd never seen an episode of Kamen Rider ever before writing 90+% of Ryuki herself. It ended very, very well, but that is an ASTOUNDING hiring decision, even if she had basically just done Timeranger.
- The number of writers who decide "we've lost our last cours? SPEED UP THE STORY" instead of maybe cutting arcs. (SAZER-X WHYYYY COULDN'T YOU HAVE SOLD MORE TOYS ;_; ) (ULTRAMAN NEXUS HOW DID YOU STILL MAKE 100% SENSE IDEK)
- Goseiger
- Saban firing half of the leads of his cultural icon epic moneymaker in the middle of its sure-to-be-brief relevance, just to make a point to the other half, without killing the show.

Basically, Thing I Love #1, about how the shows don't have to make sense? This extends to the real world. I try not to think about it too much.

So, my original plan was just to summarize the shocking and amazing discoveries that second_batgirl made while watching Dekaranger (and then Carranger) drunk, but the chatlogs are kind of a thing of glory so I might as well share the whole thing.

Just as a heads up: This is A LOT. Like, 60+ pages a lot. And it starts out clear enough but eventually devolves into ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME and less that perfect spelling. (I feel like that is part of its charm though.)

( Surely this will not make me look foolish in the least )

So! Who wants to join us next time?

(Also, TSB wanted me to include our tweets to Arrow, but there is already so much text and I have the Gokai raw waiting for me.)

There's no point now, Carson Kressley just danced the dream tango with Anna Trebunskaya I didn't even know I'd been dreaming about. :(

GUESS WHAT, Y'ALL.

No really, guess.




Have you guessed yet? No? I guess I'll give you more time.




Oh, well now that's not terribly kind. But I guess it counts as a guess.

Well you're wrong. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! I am now a quarter of a century old. It was a pretty uneventful day, though. I worked both my jobs, which didn't really leave time to do anything much else (I've been working part time at a college bookstore during their rush on top of full-time at my regular workplace, btw).

Oh, and I work eight hours tomorrow.

BUT THEN TWO DAYS COMPLETELY OFF FUCK YEAH. :DD

In other news, I have moved across town from the two-bedroom apartment I'd been in to a room in a townhouse that I moved into July 30th and has only juuust stabilized as far as residents overall go. (OMG SOON THE KITCHEN CABINETS WILL MAKE SENSE AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS.)

So, my rent is up but it includes cable and heat and electric and internet and water and and and, so my bills are actually down. Working 40 hours a week (up from the 38 I had before getting the new position mid-July) has given a slight-but-noticeable increase to my income, and when I officially get the position in payroll, I'll be getting about $1.50/hr more, plus benefits.

OH HEY I FINISHED THAT PAPERWORK TODAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME.

Also, last week the super uncompetent manager got fired, and while the new one is young and over ambitious and kind of on the fast-track to burnout (AND TOTALLY NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT VENDORS AT ALL OMG, though he does at least outwardly acknowledge that I know what I'm talking about and if I say "don't do that again because" he probably won't do it again), his lofty goals are at least good goals, and he's still probably going to be better than the old one after burning out.

OH AND HEY. After like one-and-a-quarter years I have finally stopped being and Ohio licensed driver and got my PA one, and transferred the title and got a new insurance policy and everything.(Oh and I registered to vote, which I have been FAILBOT at for a while. Uh.)

I live here. With growing savings.

And I can probably go off food stamps soon! (Should, even. THAT IS MY GOAL FOR NEXT WEEK.)

(I set goals and follow through now. Soon there may even be lists. Because I'm a MOTHERFUCKING ADULT WTF.)

Oh hey, two days off. Maybe I'll finally get caught up on my currently releasing toku (well, the old stuff. I watch the weeklies and will miss OOO dreadfully) so that I can get back to the completed series I was in the middle of and last watched/live-tweeted at least like two months ago?

Or I could finish PONIES. They are starting up again soon...

(Also at some point over those days I intend to finish the scene where [redacted] from the ridiculous powerless HS AU Samurai fic I haven't worked on at all since starting. Maybe this time I won't get distracted by the internet.)

Sorry, you guys I just have SO MUCH to catch you up on.

...OH YEAH. I got (hopefully the last time ever) texted out of nowhere by Awful Ex about how he's so glad I'm still in this town and how he hopes I succeed at life and blah blah blah "I'm still in love with you."

I have two exes. How many "I'm still in love with you" messages have I gotten? TWO. WHAT THE HELL. :| At least Awful didn't wait THREE YEARS to send that one.

Also, he says he's deleted my number but AHAHAHAH EXPECTING HIM NOT TO LIE.

Oh, and he tried a "remember me by the good times" thing except the "good times" he chose were A)after he broke up with me B)a thing he was doing on his own that just happened in the same room I was in sometimes, and C)was a series he was marathoning six seasons of with the tv set loud enough that I couldn't sleep well. GOOD TIMES, MAN.

And then he misspelled my name. (And, correcting for spelling, used my birth name and not the one I go by, which is just a dick move.) (For those wondering, he didn't misgender me, I just... don't go by my birth name much anymore. It was still totally disrespectful and dismissive of my wishes, but there wasn't dysphoria or anything triggery. Just what would have been major annoyance if I had any fucks to give about him anymore.)

I think that's everything but IDK.

tl;dr: Life has been steadily improving. With health care in three months! \o/

Let's sum up the fears he's instilled as of the latest episode of Who:

-Look behind you so that you don't get killed by the creeptastic alien whose existence you forget as soon as you don't see it.
-Don't look behind you, because The Beast will kill you and possess your corpse.
-Don't turn out the lights to avoid seeing or being seen by the nasties, because if this doesn't let the Angels move to get you, the shadows themselves will devour you.

Real cheerful man, isn't he.

ETA: Every single tag I used on this post not only already existed in my tagging system, but has its own distinct flavor of what I use it for. They all apply.

Instead, I've gotten two textbook derails, plus at least two-and-a-half "SEMANTICS" derails specific to the issue from someone I know isn't a troll, over on twitter.

GODDAMNIT.

(And this isn't even getting into the sexism from the show that started this.)

ETA: My crushing letdown is noted. How magnanimous.

So, I totally died off on this meme for a while, and have been doing TWENTY DAYS OF CATCHING UP. However, my personality dictates that I backdate all the entries onto their appropriate days, because... well, because. So my solution for not being rude and making you open twenty tabs of me yammering about children's television, I'm collecting ALL of my answers here and adding the bonus Day 31 second_batgirl did as penance for falling behind on her meme. If you've been following as I posted, start at Day 11 if you don't want to reread.

( Days 1-10 )

( Days 11-30 )

( Day 31 )

( 30 Days of Power Rangers - All Links Version )

Day 30: Favorite Finale

There's a lot to be said for Countdown to Destruction, but if we're going by strength of emotional response, The End of Time hit me SO MUCH HARDER. I cried during Linkara's recap of it, you guys. The story being told in those episodes may not have reached back as far as CtD did, but it reached a whole lot deeper into human experience and emotion, in my opinion. Both were equally epic in scale, but the latter was, for me, thematically heavier, and that scores a lot in my book.

( 30 Days of Power Rangers )

Day 29: Favorite Storyarc/Episode

Favorite Storyarc? Psycho Rangers. I know I've already pointed out during this meme that their arc totally interrupts the season, but I don't care. It's an extremely entertaining interruption, and the extension of the arc into Lost Galaxy worked incredibly well and produced what would be the best teamup if not for Reinforcements From The Future. TJ got to show off his tactical mind, Zhane got to show off his trolling skills, and if not for the Psycho Rangers, there would be no character available who could credibly pull off the kind of threat needed in order to kill Kendrix when Valerie Vernon's health called for it, at that point in the season.

Also, the arc itself was one of the better paced arcs in the show, even if it put the season on pause.

Favorite single episode? Doctor K. Hands down. It's probably the best distillation of the way that RPM refused to treat kids like idiots throughout the run of RPM, and it's just a good episode, besides that. Powerful in and of itself, advancing the series arc, and providing some meaty dramatic irony for the next few episodes, it's just... good.

( 30 Days of Power Rangers )