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[redbrunja]

Finished my taxes. It is actually embarrassing how long it's taken me to freaking sit down and do them, considering how easy they were and the fact that for the first time ever, I'm actually getting money back. (Seriously, I was at the 'let me reorganize my bathroom drawers to avoid doing taxes stage of procrastination).

I feel like I blinked and today vanished - part of that was because I was up super-late watching The Hunger Games (again, a friend had free IMAX tickets)* and part of that was because I basically woke up, did errands, and then spent TWO FUCKING HOURS with a Century Link technician and my landlady in what was the most awkward, stressful internet repair job of my entire life (short version: my landlady hated the tech, the tech wanted to tell me his entire life story).

I'm now painting my nails to de-stress. (OPI What A Broad on my toes, Edin-Burgundy on my nails - this color isn't really a burgundy, but the best blood-red color I've found).

12_12_12 had a great (and also depressing) meta post about the kind of love stories television shows are choosing to tell these days, which prompted me to ask: flist, can you give me examples of currently airing shows where characters in a romance choose the larger picture or their personal ideals over their loved on, without this being textually seen as Not Loving There S.O. Enough?

*So, on the drive home from my second viewing of THG,

I was got to talking about Johanna, and how she and Haymitch (SO MUCH HAYMITCH) are both fractured mirrors of who Katniss would be if she lost more people earlier in her life. And I have to admit, the changes they made to Haymitch make me kind of sad, because as funny as the line about spilling his drink on his new pants is, it means that movie!Haymitch is an entirely different beast than book!Haymitch, who would never have said that. (Tangent: I lot of really cool Effie/Haymtich prompts have popped up online, which I would kind of love to take a crack at, but I don't feel like I have a good handle on Haymitch a.t.m.)

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

But this is not new. True Love Conquers All is the oldest trope in the universe and it will never be any less prevalent in the way we look at romance.


This is true; but we can hope, you know? I'd really love to get some variations in the kind of love stories we are told, and I think that - especially when looking at non-romance novels, I can think of a lot more examples of romances that talk about different types of love than just True Love Conquers all.

Today's young adults are very different animals than the young adults of ten years ago. I know, I was one. Buffy was the same age as me and I grew up watching it. I grew up during the third wave of feminism. Girls today are living in tail-end of the backlash, and everything they are taught to want out of life is affected by that. Basically, television is only a small part of the problem.

That is unfortunately very, very true. It's very sad, because I'm looking to the same media sources I did as a teenager to find entertainment, and the field is often dominated by narratives that REALLY do not appeal.