Archive for September, 2009

Halloween is my favorite holiday. You can dress up as whatever you want, become something or someone else, and look completely different than how you look otherwise. It is a very liberating holiday, more so sometimes for adults than for the kids trick-or-treating. It’s why we have costume parties all year long, because we don’t want to have to wait for a holiday to get dressed up.

In college it was tradition that the students trick-or-treated on the street that led down the hill from our campus toward town, and we did so proudly. These days, when I want to dress up, and there isn’t anything planned for Halloween and no costume parties in the works, I have cosplay to get me through the year.

Cosplay is short for ‘costume roleplay’ and is much more than just slipping into a character’s literal shoes but becoming that character to the best of your ability. You are transforming yourself into someone else, usually for performance or competition, and there is a lot of work that can go into every detail of your persona.
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No, Joss Whedon isn’t dead, I just felt like ‘remembering’ him because he has been swept up in successes lately, and I don’t want to forget why I first fell in love with his work.

You see, I am a Whedonite. If Joss Whedon’s name is attached to it, chances are I am going to do everything in my power to at least give that something a chance. For those who may not know Joss well, most will best remember him for having created the movie and subsequent television show, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.

I love Buffy, so I am fine with that being one of Joss’ main claims to fame, but he has done so much more than that. Allow me to take you through my remembrance of a great man’s current body of work.

Joss Whedon created, wrote, directed, or was in some way part of the screenplay processes for a lot more movies and television shows than many people realize, most notably:
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People have been misinterpreting these terms for years. Even people who fall under one of these categories sometimes get wrong which one they actually are. Some people even toss these words around as if they are synonymous, which they are definitely not.

Out of the three terms most tossed around, everyone seems to agree about ‘dork’ being more negative. But if you check the many other meanings given in similar blogs and articles, ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ are still confused depending on who is giving the definition.

Allow me to give my interpretation.
 
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Now, I’m not trying to upset anyone here. Equal rights are an important thing, but so is femininity, and sometimes feminists and others can take an issue too far.

Women in comics has carried with it controversy since the first appearances of a female character on the page, and there will probably always be dissenters saying women are poorly or unfairly portrayed. In the past, those types of accusations may have even been true, but this is a new age of comics. For every finger pointing at exploitation of women, I can point a finger right back at how that same image or character is empowering, or has an empowering counterpart. Every fashion magazine on the rack has more negative effect on women than a single comic book character.

My examples, friends.
 
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Vampires on TV do not begin and end with me, sadly, so I have not had the pleasure of seeing every single vampire television show ever to grace (or disgrace) the small screen.

I have, however, seen an impressive amount of the many that existed and will be discussing those that I watched, as well as my opinion on why certain vampire shows sucked so badly—pun intended—and why others were quite entertaining.

Okay, so in my opinion, any vampire television show is going to have some level of entertainment to it, even if that is only to make fun of it. Why else would I bother watching the series premiere of The Vampire Diaries last Thursday, a blatant attempt by The CW to bank off the Twilight phenomenon, unless I was expecting horrible, horrible entertainment out of it?

As for my first vampire series, it began its run in 1992.
 
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From friendship to courtship to marriage, my relationship with my husband John was riddled with geek events and bonds that proved long before we got our acts together that we were meant to be.

Somehow, through many obstacles and several missed opportunities, everything worked out for us, proving that geeks can find love, and yes, it is worth waiting for someone who actually wants to play that video game with you, or watch that anime, or reminisce about the injustice of Firefly being cancelled.

Let me tell you our rather ridiculous, geek-ridden tale.
 
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It was the summer of 2005. I was home on break from college, being a little lazy between shifts at the movie theater, and a preview for a new series starting that fall caught my attention on TV. It was going to be called Supernatural, about two brothers fighting evil across the country.

Having been a huge X-Files, Buffy, and Angel fan, I remember being very excited at something new finally coming along to fill that gap in my life. While I knew I probably wouldn’t get to watch the show right away, as I never had real access to television in college, my interest was immediately piqued.

Of course, there was one problem, I thought to myself, “if only they were cute”.

Yeah, I really thought that. I claim temporary insanity. Read the rest of this entry »

I talk during movies.

Yep, I admit it. I’m one of those people you hate. I’m the one AMC Theaters is talking to when they play that little PSA announcement after the previews:

Please don’t spoil the movie by adding your own soundtrack.

I laugh at that every time.

Oh, I remember well that episode of Firefly, Our Mrs. Reynolds, when Book said,

If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

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