Fear, Buddhism, fandom...yes, I'm bored.
Dec. 6th, 2006 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSomewhat bored at the moment. Half-watching Daybreak in the background. This is a show I watch for the cast more than the plot, which defies logic even beyond my abilities to suspend to disbelief. It stars Ty Diggs (Rent) and Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Angel). Also there's zip else that is grabbing my interest.
Saw another fan meme making the rounds - my problem with it is well, there's really only two or three tv shows I ever got into enough to be be considered a fan. The rest? I watch but do not have an emotional investment in. (ie. I don't re-watch.) Personnally? I find the "fannish" aspects of fandom annoying. Take the people out of it? They are great. In it? Crazy. When I was in BTVS fandom, I discovered that if I didn't write anything about Spike, I was safe. If I focused on him, watch the flames. After a while it just got old and I gave up, because by the time both series ended, I have to admit Spike (and possibly Illyria) were the only characters who I felt the writers and actors hadn't really finished with and were still interested in playing with - there was more story there. I was curious to see how they'd be explored. Everyone else? I was satisfied by how their arcs were completed or rather knew everything I needed or wanted to know about them. Spike and Illyria? I was still curious about - and for me that's what intrigues me in a character. I could care less if the character is a morally upstanding individual - not going to date them for crying out loud, also hate to say this but morally upstanding characters tend to bore me in fiction and come across a little one dimensional and not real. I tend to like morally ambiguous ones - much more interesting from a writing stand-point. You can do more. Delve into those dicy emotional issues. This may explain why I like Apollo, Starbuck, Adama and Roslyn in BSG. And find the Chief more interesting than Helo in BSG. Again - not in love with them. Not shipping them. Just intrigued to see how they are explored. It's the characters other people tend to dislike that I often find the most interesting. And the ones they adore, that tend to bore me.
Am still reading "Lamb" which had a really good section on fear last night. In the story, Joshua and his pal Biff are in a Buddhist monastary. Joshua has found enlightment and become the bodhisattva (and for the first time I actually get what this means - the analysis on fanboards always confused me, probably didn't help that people kept posting that a 240 year old cursed vampire could be the bodhisattva or a valley girl slayer into clothes could be - yes, fan is a derivative of fanatic this we know) - anyhow here's what Moore states: when one reaches the place of Buddha-hood (which is when you realize you are a part of all things, not separate from anything, and do not require anything - literally anything, including a body for that matter, you are a part of all things) and realizes that there is no Buddha because everything is Buddha, when one reaches enlightenment, but makes a decision that he will not evolve to nirvana until all sentient beings have preceded him there, then he is a bodhisattva. A savior. A bodhisattva, by making this decision, grasps the only thing that can ever be grasped: compassion for the suffering of his fellow humans. Anyhow, as a reward, his teacher sends him off to shave a yak. (A yak is a huge wooly mamoth type of creature. And hates to be shaved. Also stomped on Biff and almost killed him when Biff tried to shave him. Biff survived because Joshua healed him. Biff offers to do it instead and is terrified of Joshua doing it.) Joshua shaves the yak without any problem. And Biff asks him how he did it.
I told her what I was doing, said Joshua. She stood perfectly still.
You just told her what you were going to do?
Yes
She wasn't afraid, so she didn't resis. All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.
That's not true. I knew what was coming - namely that you were going to get stomped by the yak and that I'm not nearly as good at healing as you are - and I was afraid.
Oh then, I'm wrong. Sorry. She must just not like you.
Yep. It's not just trying to see the future that causes fear, it's fear of what we believe the future will hold or repeating an experience that was nightmarish the first time around. The child fears fire - because the child has been burned by it. We fear what we believe will be the consequences. If we knew the fire would not burn us - or did not know it would - we would not fear it.
Saw another fan meme making the rounds - my problem with it is well, there's really only two or three tv shows I ever got into enough to be be considered a fan. The rest? I watch but do not have an emotional investment in. (ie. I don't re-watch.) Personnally? I find the "fannish" aspects of fandom annoying. Take the people out of it? They are great. In it? Crazy. When I was in BTVS fandom, I discovered that if I didn't write anything about Spike, I was safe. If I focused on him, watch the flames. After a while it just got old and I gave up, because by the time both series ended, I have to admit Spike (and possibly Illyria) were the only characters who I felt the writers and actors hadn't really finished with and were still interested in playing with - there was more story there. I was curious to see how they'd be explored. Everyone else? I was satisfied by how their arcs were completed or rather knew everything I needed or wanted to know about them. Spike and Illyria? I was still curious about - and for me that's what intrigues me in a character. I could care less if the character is a morally upstanding individual - not going to date them for crying out loud, also hate to say this but morally upstanding characters tend to bore me in fiction and come across a little one dimensional and not real. I tend to like morally ambiguous ones - much more interesting from a writing stand-point. You can do more. Delve into those dicy emotional issues. This may explain why I like Apollo, Starbuck, Adama and Roslyn in BSG. And find the Chief more interesting than Helo in BSG. Again - not in love with them. Not shipping them. Just intrigued to see how they are explored. It's the characters other people tend to dislike that I often find the most interesting. And the ones they adore, that tend to bore me.
Am still reading "Lamb" which had a really good section on fear last night. In the story, Joshua and his pal Biff are in a Buddhist monastary. Joshua has found enlightment and become the bodhisattva (and for the first time I actually get what this means - the analysis on fanboards always confused me, probably didn't help that people kept posting that a 240 year old cursed vampire could be the bodhisattva or a valley girl slayer into clothes could be - yes, fan is a derivative of fanatic this we know) - anyhow here's what Moore states: when one reaches the place of Buddha-hood (which is when you realize you are a part of all things, not separate from anything, and do not require anything - literally anything, including a body for that matter, you are a part of all things) and realizes that there is no Buddha because everything is Buddha, when one reaches enlightenment, but makes a decision that he will not evolve to nirvana until all sentient beings have preceded him there, then he is a bodhisattva. A savior. A bodhisattva, by making this decision, grasps the only thing that can ever be grasped: compassion for the suffering of his fellow humans. Anyhow, as a reward, his teacher sends him off to shave a yak. (A yak is a huge wooly mamoth type of creature. And hates to be shaved. Also stomped on Biff and almost killed him when Biff tried to shave him. Biff survived because Joshua healed him. Biff offers to do it instead and is terrified of Joshua doing it.) Joshua shaves the yak without any problem. And Biff asks him how he did it.
I told her what I was doing, said Joshua. She stood perfectly still.
You just told her what you were going to do?
Yes
She wasn't afraid, so she didn't resis. All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.
That's not true. I knew what was coming - namely that you were going to get stomped by the yak and that I'm not nearly as good at healing as you are - and I was afraid.
Oh then, I'm wrong. Sorry. She must just not like you.
Yep. It's not just trying to see the future that causes fear, it's fear of what we believe the future will hold or repeating an experience that was nightmarish the first time around. The child fears fire - because the child has been burned by it. We fear what we believe will be the consequences. If we knew the fire would not burn us - or did not know it would - we would not fear it.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 05:02 pm (UTC)The novel reminds me a little of another book entitled Sophie's World, which does take itself too seriously and could use a little humor. Like that book, Moore examines philosophical/religious views through the pov of his characters, but unlike that book - we see how each philosophy affects and changes the lead characters, how it influences them - and it also explains why Christ may have done the things he did later. Why his view of what a Messiah was and how to obtain "freedom" was quite different than say his countrymen or fellow Jews. Because he took the "eastern philosophical" view or that you can only have freedom if you let go and seek it yourself. No one can give it to you, because if they do - you become their slave, their dependent. You have to win it your own self - and he's right.
That's what happened. They got free of their oppressors when they created and settled their own land. Book is funny, gripping, moving, and enlightening all at the same time - rare feat that.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:48 pm (UTC)Still, I've found a lot of cool people still talking about and exploring the JossVerse, and Spike's character, with a minimum of drama. On the other hand, I did wade thru a lot of LJ entries by people who make me roll my eyes before I found the journals I like to hang out on.
And I totally agree about the morally spotless characters being teeth-grindingly dull in fiction. My husband and I have this discussion a lot because he is , in theory, more attracted by that type. So, for instance, he loved Apollo from the get-go (back when I thought he was nothing but a dull do-gooder) and, conversely, he liked Wesley less and less as AtS continued its run. Of course, in practice, he usually admits that the storylines are much improved when those 'good guys' get all morally compromised...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 04:11 pm (UTC)Same thing happened with Wesely - did not find him interesting in Angel until he stole Angel's son because he thought it was the right thing to do. Or Giles - was horribly disappointed in the character (ASH fan) until the episode Halloween, when suddenly we met the Ripper persona.
I, unfortunately or fortunately depending on your pov got obsessed enough with the show to post on fan discussion boards in 2002 - about the time that the writers of the series were pushing the characters into a different direction - which of course caused the majority of the long-term obsessed fans to go crazy. This was around the time of Season 6 BTVS and Season 3/4 ATS. Most fans hate those seasons - mainly because they aren't comforting and neatly plotted, which is why I loved them. Took a lot of time to find people who were interested in the same aspects of the shows that I was. Tea At The Ford - was, I think, the best of the boards I posted on and I didn't discover it until late in 2003 - but that was partly due to the fact that it was NOT public and mainly academic in nature.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 05:28 pm (UTC)So when I think of myself as an out-of-step fan (because I like the later seasons, was interested in Riley and Dawn, disliked the Willow/Tara relationship) I'm not sure how out-of-step that really is.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 08:53 pm (UTC)I landed on the boards in a round-about way. I'd never would have discovered them from the direct route - ie. what the sites were about, since I had moved past the whole B/A romeo/juliet thing in S4 and was never that obsessed with it and these sites to an extent were or were obsessed with Angel. And since both board runners made them public and took a more or less hands off approach, the boards got interesting discussions. That said, while posting on them, I was ALWAYS aware of the fact that people in charge weren't watching the show in the same way I was or interested in the same characters. And would support people, no matter how trollish, who supported what they liked. (Although, there were degrees - AngelX basically deleted anyone who caused a kerfuffle and if they kept doing it - got banned. She had to, she had over 800 people visiting on a daily basis and did not archive threads, so a kerfuffle would cause new posts to disappear fast before anyone could see them.) It was admittedly frustrating and is the reason that I drifted to other forums. One gets tired after a while of pointless character debates. The most eye-rolling where the moral superiority ones. Yes there were actually people online who thought Angel was the bodhisattva. One of the best arguments was between a snarky Tibetan Monk and a navy housewife regarding whether Angel or Spike was the bodhisattava. LOL!!!