Heroes, season 2

It's been a while since the last episode of Heroes aired, and many of my friends on LiveJournal have already blogged about their feelings regarding the season. I wish that I had kept up better with this show, but I only did a good job of doing so at the beginning of the season, when I had fewer midterms and papers to worry about. Damn you, academia, for impeding my note-taking process of watching TV!

At first, I thought that season 2 was just fumbling a bit. But as the season went on, it just kept dropping bombs of EPIC FAIL left and right. Overall, I think that season 1 was better written, and more tightly-plotted than season 2 was. Season 2 was short due to the writers' strike, but it definitely seems like Heroes will be coming back. I'll continue watching, to see what happens. That's what I'm doing with Battlestar Galactica, too. Sad. I wish that all TV shows that start out amazing would stay amazing.

It's difficult to write about the season without giving spoilers, so ( they will be hidden from thine eyes! )

Link Round-up
oyceter's thoughts on 2x10 and 2x11 here
bobthehaitian on 2x11 (read the comments, too) here
bobthehaitianon 2x10 (again, comments too!) here
desdenova on 2x9 here
bobthehaitianon 2x9, which I think is the one that broke us all, here
I think my favorite comment in that last thread was by laurashapiro:

My favorite thing? My FAVORITE THING. Is how all this bullshit of big-chested white males being all scary and violent is supposed to be okay because they're PROTECTING THE BLOND GIRL, when in fact we are talking about a blond girl who is fucking indestructible. For that matter, it's not like Elle needs much help, either. When you consider that all Bob can do is turn shit into gold, and Noah's just got normal spy-man-type skills, the whole thing is fucking ludicrous.

THE WOMEN DO NOT NEED PROTECTING. GET WITH THE PROGRAM, HEROES.

I think those last two sentences sum up most of my feelings about how I wish this series would go.

ETA: More links!
coffeeandink on the season finale here

I don’t think the problem is that Kring et. al. deliberately set out to minimize women and people of color. I think that the assumption that the Important People are white men is so deeply ingrained in the writing staff that they just keep making plot decisions that reinforce it.

coffeeandink also on episode 2x09 here

Also, for those looking to do something about the sucktasticness of this season can see Save Heroes, where people are attempting to collect essays on why the show's treatment of women and people of color is BAD, making a draft of a detailed formal letter, and sending the letter to writers/producers before next season.

And now it's time for my Cesare Borgia manga

Today was very relaxing, which was a nice change compared to the last few days. I was in my pajamas for most of it, which always helps. My dad and I bought a space heater, so hopefully now when I go back to Madison, I won't feel like dying from coldness in my room all the time. Julie and her kids came to our house for dinner (steak and potatoes), and afterwards I went to Chad's house for a while, to spend time with him, Kristy, and a couple of other people.

I spent time doing some blog maintenance, too. While I originally thought that it would be too much of a pain in the ass to keep a heinously organized tagging system of labels for posts, I've since decided that it's quite useful. So, the LiveJournal tag list has been weeded through and organized, and I cleaned up the sidebar of the journal. As for the blog version of this blog, the tags list is still a bit of a work on progress, but can be found here.

Last night, I was also at Chad's while he entertained friends of his parents for dinner (delicious). After they left, Kristy, Chad, Dave, and I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is the movie sequel to my favorite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VII. Kristy had played the game a long time ago, so I wanted her to see it for closure. From an outsiders' perspective (Chad's, Dave's), and even from an insiders' perspective, the movie was pretty lol. Chad kept asking if there was a plot, and if Sephiroth was going to show up, while we all laughed at at the improbable physics, and the cutting-in-half of a motorcycle with a sword. What got made fun of the most, though, was the English dub. I hadn't watched it all the way through in the dub yet, so I didn't know how poor it was. There were a lot of sentences that had unnecessarily large pauses in the middle of them, and I don't even know where all of that "dilly dally, shilly shally" crap came from. It gave me lots of game nostalgia, though. I should check out the special features on that DVD.

Speaking of movies, I've seen a number of ones for kids in the last few days, with my sister's kids. Among them are "Meet the Robinsons," "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," and "Night at the Museum." All of them were all right, although "Meet the Robinsons" was probably my favorite of the three.

Westmark
I finished read Lloyd Alexander's Westmark today. It is the first novel in the Westmark trilogy. I've never read anything by Lloyd Alexander before, but he seems well-known and respected in the Wiscon crowd for having been an author who wrote lots of YA fantasy that included strong female characters. Westmark was quite bleak in its reflections on human nature and society, and I quite liked it.

One thing that I definitely liked about the book was that Alexander doesn't take forever doing his world-building. His prose is sparse and to the point. Action, plot, dialogue. There is no lag. A pleasant change from, say, the endless reflections that plague the Libba Bray books.

( I have other thoughts that are spoilery )

I have the next book, The Kestrel, checked out, but I have some other things I need to read first. I'm looking forward to it, though, as many people say that The Kestrel had a profound impact on them.

rilina on Westmark here (Spoilers)
oyceter on The Westmark Trilogy as a whole here (No Spoilers)

Anyway, it's time for a bit of reading, and then bed. I'll be at the Packer game tomorrow with my dad, sister, and brother-in-law. I find it amusing that many households that live near Lambeau Field plow their lawns of snow (often to the point of completely covering their windows and siding with blasted snow) in order to be able to park more cars on their property, and make money.