i can't believe this is almost working

Dear Horace,

I don't even know.

Seperis

okay, yeah

I have called my doctor to reschedule my surgery, because this is two days in a row and is very much not working for me like, at all.

Things That Are Good

Okay, so Fringe is possibly the best show since X-Files, and not only because it Joshua Jackson is unbelievably hot. I am seriously crushing on Olivia. And I say this with love.



I mean, not personally--I want to roll around in this show like whoa--but yeah, Olivia is so close to a Mary Sue it's almost painful. However, they avoided the most annoying pitfall of having every character want to marry her, the show is as ruthlessly not-shippy as X-Files (up until yeah, I know that changes, and thank God). Supercompetence and superniceness are pretty much my favorite qualities of Mary Suedom and I'm really okay with a woman on TV finally being the toughest and also a.) stating she gets emotional on cases and b.) that's an asset, which fuck yes and thank you.

But. This could have got on my nerves except svmadelyn made me watch season three's eps before going back to the beginning, and so why she's a Mary Sue is pretty logical and it would have seriously irritated me if it wasn't--and this is a shock--pretty goddamn obvious they knew what she was from the beginning. And pretty much everyone is a Mary Sue, so whatever, it's a nice change of pace for the supervisor to be caring and supportive as well as challenging, the partners to trust each other, the internal conflicts aren't manufactured but based on actual events in the characters lives and the external conflicts are fucking epic.

Recommended: watch those first three eps of season three first, then go to season one. If you aren't into it by episode six, go watch season two, episode sixteen and then go and finish season one paying attention to some of the conversations. Trust me, while I think I could have watched the first season and probably gotten through it, the mytharc in season one is really goddamn subtle, even while they're anvil-ing the mytharc all over the place, and say what you like about Abrams, at least in this show that's some goddamn fantastic continuity. Continuity from off-hand comments and from personal anecdotes that are later not quite lies, but so damn close.

Notes:

1.) This is not the heavy mytharc of X-Files. I loved X-Files like whoa--I bought VHS tapes. Used, but I did buy them. This isn't as heavy, but it's much better realized and far more logical. It almost seems unsubtle compared to Carter's work, but I remember Carter left everything unanswered forever and thank God there are actual answers.

2.) Anvils. Interestingly enough, the anvils are made for misdirection or misinterpretation.

3.) The Bishops father and son are hilarious. Walter Bishop is insane, inane, not entirely lucid, and utterly brilliant. Peter Bishop, cynical son, is bitter, cynical, but not hardened at all, sarcastic as hell, and genuinely has reasons for his bitterness, just like his father has for his insanity and actions.

4.) The most irritating villains? Go away quickly.

5.) Olivia is, admittedly, kind of a Mary Sue. That's the entire point in the end; watching season one after season three makes that very clear.

6.) Not one person on this show is irritatingly dense about the obvious. They work daily in creepy weird shit. When someone says "I am having dream sequences of murdering people" Walter asks "Did you take LSD?" while Peter worries, Astrid (who is entirely awesome, like Olivia) looks ready to bring out the sensory deprivation chamber, and then everyone gets around to not being in stupid denial of what just happened last week and solves the goddamn dream-killer problem.

7.) Walter's first question is almost always, "Did you take LSD?"

8.) Walter makes LSD in his lab and doses himself with weird drug combinations daily.

9.) The interesting villains? Don't die quickly! I KNOW THIS IS SO AWESOME.

10.) Everyone has complicated motives, and their means may suck, but most have pretty good intentions, even if they're kind of bad at doing the right thing.

11.) New to me - the team does not have the type of internal conflicts that cause separations and infighting; they do actually put their work above that, and interestingly, put their relationships with each other above those conflicts. This is important later, because this is a change I'm not used to seeing. Conflicts are rarely manufactured but instead exist with extremely good reasons. Which is--unsettling if you're used to buddy shows or any shows where there's a constant Powers That Be (Feds, etc) that cause pointless problems and irritation and drag things out forever. In this case, it would distract a lot from the mytharc and overpower the show; keeping all the conflicts very external or very for-very-good-reason interpersonal or internal really works for me.

12.) Did I mention Olivia is awesome? Because she is. She seriously, seriously is.

13.) Walter's first answer to experimenting with anything is to give people LSD and psychodelics. I am so not kidding.



That is like, my recruitment speech for Fringe. Watch it! It is amazing.

Adventures in Servers

Server has been built, and on the fourth installation, I got Ubuntu Server working. Okay, four times may seem excessive, but it did internalize a lot of linux commands. So far, the network storage parts are up and shareable throughout the LAN, and I have learned to save three copies of any configuration file I do - .original, .current, and the working configuration file. The file system still--bewilders me. Mounting alone is an adventure. Everything is very repetitious from the command line, but it's also still so new it's endlessly fascinating. I feel like I'm getting an education in computer architecture and file systems and don't know it yet.

Currently using putty for remote administration.

I still have no idea how:

a.) to set up external access to file share to people not on my LAN.
b.) I managed to turn off my ability to create folders in any shared network folder. IDEK. Creating them all from the command line is really boring. I've checked my samba conf file and all my folder permissions. Pretty sure this is supposed to drive me crazy.
c.) to work out what I'm going to do with this.

This is surprisingly fun. And stressful.

ETA: So the easiest way so far to solve the permissions problem is to always create any folders I want from root and just type in the entire directory. That's--logical, in a way. Note to self: keep doing that.

Comments

[flamebyrd]

a) I'd say SFTP - check out OpenSSH
b) I guess check that the user account you've assigned in samba has permission to create directories in the relevant folders? This is not the voice of experience, just a sleepy 7am idea. I got samba working on my Ubuntu Server box by poking at it until it worked.
c) Bah! Who needs reasons!

[brownbetty]

One of my favourite things about Fringe is Nina Sharp. She's maternal! She's villainous! She's got weird sexual tension with Olivia! Almost any other show, I think, by now, would have constructed her as monstrous "Look, a fat old woman!" but Fringe presents her as having this sort of subtle sexual magnetism that comes from power and intelligence.

[musesfool]

Not to mention the ROBOT ARM!

[sorrel]

They did have one random "Powers That Be fucking with them" storyline, and that's when one of the generals that Olivia had arrested for raping female officers under his command was cleared of charges and then made head of Fringe division. On the other hand, I was impressed by that storyline because even though the dude was an old friend of Broyles', Broyles was supporting Olivia like 200% percent the entire way through, and that was gratifying.

The current season is some of the best, most intelligent, subtle character development I've ever seen in a show. Every week I spend like an hour babbling about how awesome this show is in my journal. More people should watch it! Everybody should watch it.

[tzikeh]

On the other hand, I was impressed by that storyline because even though the dude was an old friend of Broyles', Broyles was supporting Olivia like 200% percent the entire way through, and that was gratifying.

I was super-impressed by that, because in the pilot (and a few episodes after that), it was Broyles himself who wanted to make Olivia's life hell because the dude was his friend.

Yay Broyles!

[sorrel]

Yeah, some friends and I just started watching Fringe last night as part of our weekly movie night thing (or rewatching, in my case) and I'd forgotten how much he disapproved of her to start with. The time when he said "You got a problem with that, honey?" I sort of flinched and waited for her to savage him. But he actually turned out to be so utterly awesome! And his team was more damn important that his old friend's bullshit vendetta.

[polarisnorth]

FRINGE! I literally just finished watching the entire series up to the present. It's so well done. Also, I almost never ship the canon ships, but damn I ship Peter/Olivia hard, which makes the present storyline pretty agonizing.

[scy]

Re: the surgery - I am sorry that Horace is causing such trouble, but am glad that you have set a date to have this taken care of.

Re: Fringe - WHEEEE!! I KNOW, RIGHT!!

*DANCES WITH YOU* MORE LATER. (when I am not at work)

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

Fringe!

Sorry, I totally and completely love that show. I am also totally and completely aware there is like, zero fandom presence for it, but that might just be people are terrified to write fic and be Joss-ed about it later because we all know that will so totally happen. Anything outside of missing scenes that don’t really present new ideas and only follow up on the old involves tons of minute details which, again, are likely to have their own explanations later in another episode anyway. Which makes the fic less than prime. Which does not make the show less than prime.

Also: Walter rocks like a rocking thing and there can never be too much Charlie. (And yes, Olivia is hot and Astrid is awesome.)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I am also totally and completely aware there is like, zero fandom presence for it

All of a sudden, here in the beginning of THIRD season, Fringe is exploding all over fandom.

Two links of interest:

Here's Luck (http://heresluck.dreamwidth.org/314630.html) made a spectacular post about Fringe, discussing the following categories. Each category is under a separate cut-tag with warnings for which theme discussion includes spoilers, so if people want to go about it that way, they should go directly to her journal, and not to the link I posted above (her journal is heresluck, but all of the comments are over on her dreamwidth journal (direct link there from the lj post)

Characters
Gender
Relationships (spoilers for S2)
Ensemble
Arc/Structure (non-specific spoilers for S1)
Themes
Plot (Spoilers for S2)
S3 so far (spoilers)

Laura Shapiro asks people to recommend a new fandom for her, (http://laurashapiro.dreamwidth.org/308790.html) and receives 130 comments--the vast majority a discussion of Fringe and why everyone should watch it.

And then there's my very short Fringe post (http://tzikeh.livejournal.com/592810.html)--if you can even call it a Fringe "post"--it's more like a "YAY FRINGE! AND A QUOTE!" post.

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you kindly! I found fringeonfox and fringe_olivia here on LJ and fringetv_at_dw (http://fringetv-at-dw.dreamwidth.org) on DW, but there's really not a lot of fic around (which is my primary love of any fandom).

I'll also shamelessly link to my Fringe babblings (http://cat-77.livejournal.com/tag/fringe) - random thoughts and theories mixed with some very sad attempts at short fics.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Drat! Your icon post has no icons! (http://cat-77.livejournal.com/106352.html?style=mine#cutid1)

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

Sorry! They were all stored on the server that crashed and I do not know if I still have copies elsewhere. I had linked them from there and not LJ's storage, so they might be toast.

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

This is surprisingly fun. And stressful.
Sounds like how I feel about vidding! *cheerful*

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

Conflicts are rarely manufactured but instead exist with extremely good reasons.

That's refreshing, isn't it?

You're lucky to be able to go back and watch the first season now. Because watching it straight up was less than satisfying and I hated Olivia and was often bored. NOW I am upright in my chair, full stop. The second season blew it all away.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I very much strongly disagree with your plan of watching S3 first, and then going back to S1. I think there are enough people out there now saying "Seriously, it is so good, just watch it through because everything will make sense I promise" that there's no reason to jump around. We're fans; we push through all kinds of stuff to get to the good bits, and when so many other fans are telling us that there's an absolute wealth of awesome waiting for us, we can easily making through something that's only "meh" if we know the meh will only last for half a season.

I also don't get where you think Olivia is a Mary Sue, but I think that may just be a difference in our definitions of Mary Sue.

These two VERY MINOR things aside, OMG FRINGE! It is so much of the awesome and all the stuff you talk about re: competence, and answers, and the arcs making sense, and the team acting like *people* instead of articulated Barbie and Ken dolls being moved around and voiced by teenagers who don't yet know how to tell a story (e.g. no false roadblocks, no conveniently forgetting shit that happened last week because they don't like it anymore, no wild out-of-character swings, etc.).

So, so, so good.

[anjak-j.livejournal.com]

Let me tell you - re. Horace - you are never going to be so relieved to have had surgery. I actually asked for the stones post-surgery - how something so little can cause so much misery in a person's life...

[twicet.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you on Fringe, I have loved it from the first episode.

[aivilo-18.livejournal.com]

I am seriously crushing on Olivia.

Don’t. Even. Get. Me. Started. God.
 
Also, Astrid?  Hottest thing since Season 2 SVU when Olivia was totally rocking the butchy dyke look, and Mariska hadn’t won an Emmy yet, so practically every scene *didn’t* include awful hair wings and unpretty, overwrought crying and Taking!It!Personally! cases where Elliott was always made to look like an angry, irresponsible douche canoe and Olivia was always made to look like butter wouldn't fucking melt in her goddamn mouth.
 
::coughs::
 
Sorry.  Issues.  I have them.
 
Anyway, yes.  Fringe.  I don’t even know how a cast of characters can have so much square capita of hotness crammed into one show.

Random link for you

[lambourngb.livejournal.com]

I read this and thought of you.

http://jezebel.com/5661966/fradulent-hedge+funder-puts-insane-teddy-bear-collection-up-for-auction

[aurora]

Okay, so Fringe is possibly the best show since X-Files, and not only because it Joshua Jackson is unbelievably hot. I am seriously crushing on Olivia.
YES, YES AND YES. WELCOME TO THE AWESOMENESS!

[geeklite.livejournal.com]

That's--logical, in a way.

Nice pun :/

[jamethiel]

I LOVE FRINGE SO MUCH. Their FAAAAAACES. Also, Walter is insane, and when Clare and I were watching it, we wanted to start up a twitter for Astrid. "There is a cow in my workplace eating my hair. Fuck my life." "My boss just informed me that he got an erection. Fuck my life."

I am fairly sure that she has an awesomely kinky sex life, because she's gotta blow off steam SOMEHOW.

[fyrdrakken]

I have called my doctor to reschedule my surgery, because this is two days in a row and is very much not working for me like, at all.

GOOD.

ETA: I watched the entire first season of Fringe and just didn't care to pick it up again in the second season. Huh. Maybe I should go check out those eps you recommend and see if that catches my interest after all.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I feel Fringe is actively trying to avoid creating a story which needs a more resolution than a TV show can provide. I think they learned from other shows which didn't define the mythos, or kept adding to it, until it was too convoluted to finish.

Fringe seems to recognize the limits of series television, which make plot fudges almost inevitable. So it makes outlandish and vague explanations part of the story.

Plus at first they kept the mythos elements nearly at running gag status, perhaps because they were anticipating being cancelled. Which meant when they decided to build it into something more it was a surprise. And that longer arc is basically a rather simple and well defined conflict. Which means those those mysterious little details are more backdrop than plot threads requiring completion.

Overall, they could tie it up in one episode at any time and it would only seem a bit clunky. This isn't because it's shallow, but because Fringe knows its sometimes easier for the depth to be implied.

[luminosity]

I pushed thru the first half of S1, kinda meh and kinda gagging, but killabeez suggested that I, being the completist that I am, just live through it, that it paid off. IT HAS PAID OFF. IT CONTINUES TO PAY OFF. You will regret not watching it in order--maybe not today but soon and for the rest of your life (sorry sorry just watched Casablanca last night... LOL). It kinda reminds me of why I'm so glad I watched Farscape from beginning to end. Things that were in the first episode paid off in the last. I think Fringe is going to be like that, too.

Also I need icons. heh.