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janie_tangerine1) *waves* hi world. Sorry for being scarce but if you look at my icon the reason will be clear. ;)
2) Anyway, classes have started again. Out of the two I went to out of four (the other two start this week) one is good and the other is a painful experience, mostly because I'm apparently the only one attending/giving that exam and if there's one thing I hate is attention focused completely on me in that kind of circumstance. And out of the two I have to do, one I totally don't give a damn about and the second is totally useless, but at least the only book in program for that one is by Margaret Atwood. If anything at least I'm not going to sleep through it, but I really, really don't like that out of three classes I'm taking I basically picked one and three were forced down my throat. /end rant
3) I should get a Guinness World Record certificate in the mail fairly soon. Misha Collins, if my cousins ever start thinking that I'm cool because I did your scavenger hunt, I'll owe you a drink.
4) Anyway, in the week between having my last exam and classes starting, I figured that it was time I took advantage of the shiny dvds for all the Sopranos season that I was given for Christmas and watched them. Right now I'm done with S1 and S2 and I'm spoiled just for how the finale ends (because I mean who doesn't know that by now) and for another huge thing, but I know nothing about all the rest so reaction to those ones will obviously only take those two seasons into account.
a) So, uh, this is going to sound totally, utterly and completely weird, but the only reason I sometimes find this show hard to watch is the... utter italian-ness of those people even if they're American enough to be their own thing. This probably makes no fucking sense whatsoever, but one thing I was thinking about while watching this was that they had the italian roots thing down pat (okay, it's kind of negative talking from now on, but it's still true). I mean, gosh, I've never ever seen a show that managed to nail so much how Italian façade-catholicism works.
With that I'm not referring to people who actually have faith for real, I mean that for a lot of people it's more looking like they're good religious people rather than acting like that and that a confession fixes almost everything, and it's not like the powerful part of the catholic Church here cares about souls more than about power/money (seeing from how many divorced politicians totally attend mass and do things that divorced people shouldn't in theory do). That entire part in S2 where Tony was ranting at Carmela because she was religious only when she found it convenient (according to him, but then again forcing the neighbor's wife to write the college recommendation letter for Meadow rather than for someone who really needed it wasn't much Christian...) or the both of them not even wanting to hear it when their kid is like 'hey maybe I'm agnostic or I could be agnostic' or Carmela convincing Pussy's wife not to ask for divorce because if you're Catholic you don't do it (which lol actually HERE we do that a lot - guess they take it a lot more seriously, but still that was pretty damn low) is... just, so very spot-on that at times it almost feels uncomfortable. (Let's not get into how for these people it's totally okay to kill others/beat others/earn dirty money but at the same time they have absolutely no problem whatsoever with going to Church or dismissing it as 'heck if I repent I go to Purgatory', because that's... well, quite accurate.) Or at least, I didn't need to think about all the time I had to hear 'but why don't you take the religion hour [while in high school/junior high] and spare everyone the hassle of dealing with what the fuck you'd have to do while not in class'. Or with people being like 'oh you're not baptized, but it doesn't seem proper!'. And that was just one side (which I ranted about because hey, hitting close to home!), but I get the 'oh shit TOO ITALIAN TOO CLOSE TO HOME' feeling a whole damn lot of time. That said, those people have a pretty darn good accent. [Also let's not get into the 'PEOPLE CAN'T BE GAY' thing or the fact that a man giving head to a woman is TABOO, because that part? Geez. None of my male friends would have ever admitted out loud that they'd give head to a woman whether they liked it or not.]
b) That said, the whole thing is excellent. I'm starting to get the Boardwalk Empire syndrome all over again - meaning that apart from maybe a couple of people (with reserves) I don't find anyone in there sympathetic or 100% likable but I still enjoy the hell out of it. Seriously, most characters in here are a thing of beauty even if I've wanted to strangle everyone except Silvio, Dr. Melfi and Tony's son at least once. [That said, people, STEVE VAN ZANDT IS EPIC. No really, I'll admit half the reason I wanted to watch this was HIM (I mean, LITTLE STEVEN PEOPLE!), and on that side he totally delivered because Silvio is just epic.] I mean, I can sorta half-identify with poor Anthony JR because of the not wanting to do religion issues, and as stated Silvio is epic, but everyone else has had their moments of wtf are you doing. With that premise, my favorite is probably Dr. Melfi (that woman, I admire her guts, seriously), my least favorite will have to go to Livia because other than well, everything, she also reminds me of one of my grandmothers (it's the martyr syndrome part - my grandmother is actually a very loving person and wouldn't harm a fly, which I can't say about Livia, but the entire martyr complex thing just hits too close to home). Tony and Carmela are darn glorious and realistic and I love them the way you love characters you totally don't empathize with. Meadow I kind of get even if at times she frustrates me, but I can't connect with her the way I could with Claire in SFU, even if I'm not really similar to either of them. I feel like I should have a lot more thoughts on Christopher but I can sum it up in 'well, poor kid is a trainwreck'. I mean, I can't look away while he keeps-on-fucking-shit-up, and I don't necessarily like him most times (Adriana = saint), but he's a darn good character.
Re the mafia people, I think I might have a sort of 'oh my god YOU'RE ALL SO DELICIOUSLY MORALLY FUCKED' syndrome. I find them all so very compelling (and I'll miss Pussy - then again I had been waiting for him to kick it since the beginning of the season). Apart from Silvio (which is EPIC therefore above everyone) my favorite is probably good old Uncle Junior (mostly YAY SMART PERSON), but really the only one that grated on my freaking nerves was Richie Aprile.
Whose demise was pretty fucking darn surprising by the way. Well, I also had figured out that he wasn't going to get out of S2 alive but I wasn't expecting Tony's sister to kill him. That said Janice = meh. I'm far from liking her but I don't dislike her either. Too much, at least.
c) The whole psychoanalysis angle is the selling part of this though. I love the idea at the base of it and gosh the Tony/Dr. Melfi interactions are just so amazing, I can't deal. It gives Tony an entire other layer and tbh it makes him a lot more.. I don't want to say likable, but let's say more understandable. And she's just too good for this world - flawless character is flawless. Well, okay, not without-faults-flawless but I just like how they interact too damn much.
d) That episode when they went to Italy was very very good but I couldn't escape the secondhand embarrassment (while being impressed that people at HBO actually know names of villages near Naples). Apart from the rest for now my favorite episode is probably the S1 finale but that could change. I'm not sure I'll manage to marathon the rest as quickly as I did now (not two seasons each week for sure sadly :( ) but hopefully I'll go pretty quick. I mean, while I'm not sure that I'll end up liking this more than I like Deadwood/SFU because Deadwood is Over Everything That Was Aired And Will Ever Air and in SFU I actually empathized with people while here I really don't, but it's still freaking brilliant and the writing is great and the dialogue is GOOD and occasionally priceless and IT'S IN NEW JERSEY BY THE WAY (with LITTLE STEVEEENN) and I'm really getting into it, so now I'll just go see the rest and hopefully classes will give me enough time to get through it steadily enough.
5) Other than that I have stuff to catch up with and OMG GAME OF THRONES IS BACK IN LESS THAN A MONTH and about that, I'm not in the habit to post meta but there's stuff I've been brewing about a couple of certain issues so there might be some GOT related meta posted here at some point.Who am I kidding, Robb Stark related meta
6) Also, I'm trying to sort out all the comment fic/exchange fic I've never posted properly so if in the next week I end up spamming the world with round-up masterposts, sorry in advance.
7) Fic speaking (and last point): anyone who finished ADWD would be cool with betaing my fic for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
smallfandombang? It's, uuh, 18k of post-ADWD Jon/Sam, very much NC17. If you're interested I can give you details. Thanks in advance! ;)
Also: to the new people who friended me the last week, would you like for me to friend you back or anything? I don't do it automatically so it's just to know.
2) Anyway, classes have started again. Out of the two I went to out of four (the other two start this week) one is good and the other is a painful experience, mostly because I'm apparently the only one attending/giving that exam and if there's one thing I hate is attention focused completely on me in that kind of circumstance. And out of the two I have to do, one I totally don't give a damn about and the second is totally useless, but at least the only book in program for that one is by Margaret Atwood. If anything at least I'm not going to sleep through it, but I really, really don't like that out of three classes I'm taking I basically picked one and three were forced down my throat. /end rant
3) I should get a Guinness World Record certificate in the mail fairly soon. Misha Collins, if my cousins ever start thinking that I'm cool because I did your scavenger hunt, I'll owe you a drink.
4) Anyway, in the week between having my last exam and classes starting, I figured that it was time I took advantage of the shiny dvds for all the Sopranos season that I was given for Christmas and watched them. Right now I'm done with S1 and S2 and I'm spoiled just for how the finale ends (because I mean who doesn't know that by now) and for another huge thing, but I know nothing about all the rest so reaction to those ones will obviously only take those two seasons into account.
a) So, uh, this is going to sound totally, utterly and completely weird, but the only reason I sometimes find this show hard to watch is the... utter italian-ness of those people even if they're American enough to be their own thing. This probably makes no fucking sense whatsoever, but one thing I was thinking about while watching this was that they had the italian roots thing down pat (okay, it's kind of negative talking from now on, but it's still true). I mean, gosh, I've never ever seen a show that managed to nail so much how Italian façade-catholicism works.
With that I'm not referring to people who actually have faith for real, I mean that for a lot of people it's more looking like they're good religious people rather than acting like that and that a confession fixes almost everything, and it's not like the powerful part of the catholic Church here cares about souls more than about power/money (seeing from how many divorced politicians totally attend mass and do things that divorced people shouldn't in theory do). That entire part in S2 where Tony was ranting at Carmela because she was religious only when she found it convenient (according to him, but then again forcing the neighbor's wife to write the college recommendation letter for Meadow rather than for someone who really needed it wasn't much Christian...) or the both of them not even wanting to hear it when their kid is like 'hey maybe I'm agnostic or I could be agnostic' or Carmela convincing Pussy's wife not to ask for divorce because if you're Catholic you don't do it (which lol actually HERE we do that a lot - guess they take it a lot more seriously, but still that was pretty damn low) is... just, so very spot-on that at times it almost feels uncomfortable. (Let's not get into how for these people it's totally okay to kill others/beat others/earn dirty money but at the same time they have absolutely no problem whatsoever with going to Church or dismissing it as 'heck if I repent I go to Purgatory', because that's... well, quite accurate.) Or at least, I didn't need to think about all the time I had to hear 'but why don't you take the religion hour [while in high school/junior high] and spare everyone the hassle of dealing with what the fuck you'd have to do while not in class'. Or with people being like 'oh you're not baptized, but it doesn't seem proper!'. And that was just one side (which I ranted about because hey, hitting close to home!), but I get the 'oh shit TOO ITALIAN TOO CLOSE TO HOME' feeling a whole damn lot of time. That said, those people have a pretty darn good accent. [Also let's not get into the 'PEOPLE CAN'T BE GAY' thing or the fact that a man giving head to a woman is TABOO, because that part? Geez. None of my male friends would have ever admitted out loud that they'd give head to a woman whether they liked it or not.]
b) That said, the whole thing is excellent. I'm starting to get the Boardwalk Empire syndrome all over again - meaning that apart from maybe a couple of people (with reserves) I don't find anyone in there sympathetic or 100% likable but I still enjoy the hell out of it. Seriously, most characters in here are a thing of beauty even if I've wanted to strangle everyone except Silvio, Dr. Melfi and Tony's son at least once. [That said, people, STEVE VAN ZANDT IS EPIC. No really, I'll admit half the reason I wanted to watch this was HIM (I mean, LITTLE STEVEN PEOPLE!), and on that side he totally delivered because Silvio is just epic.] I mean, I can sorta half-identify with poor Anthony JR because of the not wanting to do religion issues, and as stated Silvio is epic, but everyone else has had their moments of wtf are you doing. With that premise, my favorite is probably Dr. Melfi (that woman, I admire her guts, seriously), my least favorite will have to go to Livia because other than well, everything, she also reminds me of one of my grandmothers (it's the martyr syndrome part - my grandmother is actually a very loving person and wouldn't harm a fly, which I can't say about Livia, but the entire martyr complex thing just hits too close to home). Tony and Carmela are darn glorious and realistic and I love them the way you love characters you totally don't empathize with. Meadow I kind of get even if at times she frustrates me, but I can't connect with her the way I could with Claire in SFU, even if I'm not really similar to either of them. I feel like I should have a lot more thoughts on Christopher but I can sum it up in 'well, poor kid is a trainwreck'. I mean, I can't look away while he keeps-on-fucking-shit-up, and I don't necessarily like him most times (Adriana = saint), but he's a darn good character.
Re the mafia people, I think I might have a sort of 'oh my god YOU'RE ALL SO DELICIOUSLY MORALLY FUCKED' syndrome. I find them all so very compelling (and I'll miss Pussy - then again I had been waiting for him to kick it since the beginning of the season). Apart from Silvio (which is EPIC therefore above everyone) my favorite is probably good old Uncle Junior (mostly YAY SMART PERSON), but really the only one that grated on my freaking nerves was Richie Aprile.
Whose demise was pretty fucking darn surprising by the way. Well, I also had figured out that he wasn't going to get out of S2 alive but I wasn't expecting Tony's sister to kill him. That said Janice = meh. I'm far from liking her but I don't dislike her either. Too much, at least.
c) The whole psychoanalysis angle is the selling part of this though. I love the idea at the base of it and gosh the Tony/Dr. Melfi interactions are just so amazing, I can't deal. It gives Tony an entire other layer and tbh it makes him a lot more.. I don't want to say likable, but let's say more understandable. And she's just too good for this world - flawless character is flawless. Well, okay, not without-faults-flawless but I just like how they interact too damn much.
d) That episode when they went to Italy was very very good but I couldn't escape the secondhand embarrassment (while being impressed that people at HBO actually know names of villages near Naples). Apart from the rest for now my favorite episode is probably the S1 finale but that could change. I'm not sure I'll manage to marathon the rest as quickly as I did now (not two seasons each week for sure sadly :( ) but hopefully I'll go pretty quick. I mean, while I'm not sure that I'll end up liking this more than I like Deadwood/SFU because Deadwood is Over Everything That Was Aired And Will Ever Air and in SFU I actually empathized with people while here I really don't, but it's still freaking brilliant and the writing is great and the dialogue is GOOD and occasionally priceless and IT'S IN NEW JERSEY BY THE WAY (with LITTLE STEVEEENN) and I'm really getting into it, so now I'll just go see the rest and hopefully classes will give me enough time to get through it steadily enough.
5) Other than that I have stuff to catch up with and OMG GAME OF THRONES IS BACK IN LESS THAN A MONTH and about that, I'm not in the habit to post meta but there's stuff I've been brewing about a couple of certain issues so there might be some GOT related meta posted here at some point.
6) Also, I'm trying to sort out all the comment fic/exchange fic I've never posted properly so if in the next week I end up spamming the world with round-up masterposts, sorry in advance.
7) Fic speaking (and last point): anyone who finished ADWD would be cool with betaing my fic for
smallfandombang? It's, uuh, 18k of post-ADWD Jon/Sam, very much NC17. If you're interested I can give you details. Thanks in advance! ;)Also: to the new people who friended me the last week, would you like for me to friend you back or anything? I don't do it automatically so it's just to know.
