(no subject)
New Girl
ugh I loved this ep!!! It just makes me so consistently happy, kind of like how Parks episodes make me consistently happy (I mean, it's not on that level yet, but it's getting close).
BEE ARTHUR. I DIDN'T GET THAT REFERENCE UNTIL LONG AFTER THE EPISODE ENDED. And ughhhhh Nick/Jess!!!!!! I love that it doesn't even feel like they're being overtly shippy with them, but everything feels so shippy anyways? SHE TELLS HIM TO GO INTO THE METAPHORICAL HAUNTED HOUSE FOR THE GIRL HE LIKED AND THEN HE GOES INTO THE REAL HAUNTED HOUSE FOR JESS!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND HOW HE WAS HOLDING THE PEAS TO HER FACE AT THE END AND HOW HE TOLD HER HE DESERVES SOMEONE WHO'S CRAZY ABOUT HER OR WHATEVER. And it's not like I felt he was actually talking about himself, but the subtext is clearly there, and ughhhh so great!!!!!!
Also, on a side note, as much as I loved Nick in this episode, I also liked the girl yelling at him that she's not an idea of a person, she's an actual person. SO GREAT, I CAN'T HANDLE IT.
I didn't love Winston in this episode in terms of storyline. I mean, god, HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE REIGNING CATS AND DOGS???? SO GREAT. I LOVE YOU, SHELBY. But I'm glad they finally broke up because I wasn't enjoying them this season anyways. I'm really hoping he has a good storyline soon because I do love Winston, but it seems like they either only give him side comments, which are great, but he needs to have his own stuff, but it doesn't seem like they really know what they want to do with him when they give him his own storylines. DO BETTER, SHOW, I KNOW YOU CAN.
And the Schmidt/Cece stuff was great!!!! I liked Schmidt telling her at the end he did want to hang out with her, including Robbie, and how happy that made her. Also the failed headbutting pretty much killed me.
Basically, the show is the best!!!!!!!!
So for the past week I've been kind of obsessed with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and unable to think about or focus on anything else. I mean, I mentioned back in August that I had started watching the series and that I really enjoyed it, and I've been keeping up with it since then, but this week the combination of… well, what happened this week in the 2 episodes (trying to keep it vague for people who haven't watched it yet, because if you haven't, you really should, it is the greatest!!!!!! I mean, obviously if you already like the source material I would suggest you check it out, but also if you're into awesome ladies and female friendships because this series has that in spades!!!! Obviously Lizzie is great, but they've also managed to develop Lydia, Jane, and Charlotte in such wonderful ways, and ughhh seriously you need to watch!!!!), but also because suddenly everyone on my dash and quite a few people here have started watching, and now I finally have people to flail with!!!! Yay!!!!! I ended up actually rewatching the entire series on Thursday because I was watching Thursday's episode on pretty much a continuous loop and I needed to break the cycle but had no interest in watching anything else. And now I have a bunch of random musings about the series to talk about since I never really went in depth about my feelings/thoughts on the show when I first started watching, and since I can't think about anything else right now, I might as well take the time to talk about them!
I have no idea how to make a coherent post about all my feelings at the moment, so here is just a random incoherent assortment of feelings about stuff. (Also, I rewatched the 2005 version of P&P on Saturday because I was obsessing but felt a little ridiculous rewatching the entire series when I had just done that 2 days earlier, so that was a thing that happened, and so when I make comparisons between the LBD and P&P, I will probably be remembering things more from that movie than from the book just because it's been a lot longer since I've read the book, and I know the movie made some of its own changes, so. Just fair warning!)
-So, first off, DARCY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, I do want to say that as excited as I was to finally see Darcy appear and get to the proposal (AND THE LETTER TOMORROW AHHHHHHHH), there is SO MUCH else I absolutely adore about this series with how they've chosen to develop Charlotte and Lydia and even Jane (I say even because I think she's more similar to the source character than the other 2, but they have still developed her in some really interesting ways) and other more minor characters and all their friendships and everything, and like… as much as I loved Thursday's episode, I would probably rank the episode of Charlotte and Lizzie's fight or the one where Jane's pretending to be fine about Bing but breaks down at the end above the Darcy stuff, which is not a slight against the Darcy episode either, but just that those episodes are SO GOOD and I'm so in awe of how the show has really focused on these 4 main girls and their friendships and like… they pretty much have to do the Lizzie/Darcy storyline and the proposal scene and all that if they're going to adapt P&P, but they absolutely did not have to develop those other characters in the way that they did or their relationships in order to adapt P&P, but they did make those choices, and I'm just in love with the entire writing staff and everyone involved.
…I was supposed to be talking about Darcy, oops. So back to Darcy! HE IS SO GREAT. At first I was a bit… idk, surprised to see what he finally looked like, which like… I didn't even have a good idea in my head for what he would look like so I'm not sure why I was surprised. But it did take me a couple viewings to get used to him and his face, but now I'm in love. He was stiff and awkward and wooden, but that's absolutely perfect for who Darcy is as a character and where he is at this point in the story. I mean, yeah, he's in love with Lizzie, but he's not comfortable around her, he barely knows her really, and he has the social skills of an agoraphobic lobster (ily Fitz), so it makes perfect sense he'd be that stiff and wooden, especially considering he has clearly rehearsed this and planned what he was going to say (which goes all to hell, but still). I watched the actor in a couple random short videos I was linked to where he was natural and funny and not wooden at all and I could barely recognize him as the same guy who's playing Darcy, so I have no concerns that he'll be able to soften and be more of a human and less of a robot as the story progresses.
-Also, after this Twitter exchange plus him tweeting about needing a DJ Roomba (people who like Parks enough to be able to make references go up about 100 points instantly in my book), I am pretty much in love with Daniel Gordh (who's playing Darcy). I also determined from Mary Kate Wiles's tumblr (who plays Lydia) that she is also a Parks fan, and so is Rachel Kiley, one of the writers, so basically the people involved in this project have excellent taste.
-"Are you fake texting?" / "IT'S SUPER IMPORTANT." ACTUAL FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE ENTIRE SERIES BAR NONE. Jane!Darcy is my actual favorite. My only disappointment with Darcy being around as an actual person is that we won't get any more Jane!Darcy, but… they have to find an occasion for Jane!Darcy at some point, right??? Also let me take this opportunity to talk about how much I love Jane because godddd I love Jane!!!!!! I keep struggling with who my favorite character in this adaptation is, because I keep going "JANE'S MY FAVORITE" and then remembering Lydia and deciding she's my favorite, and then going to Lizzie because they're her vlogs and she is also my favorite, and then there's Charlotte and Darcy and Bing and Caroline and ok they're all my favorites.
BUT JANE. JANE IS SO GREAT. I feel like she's actually one of the more difficult characters to develop because while she does get more attention in the source material than Lydia who is pretty much just dismissed by Lizzie overall and is really only focused on at the end as ruining the family's reputation rather than anything about her specifically, there's clearly a lot you can do with Lydia to develop her character what with exploring her motivations for running off with Wickham in the first place and focusing on how she does feel kind of forced aside and not taken seriously by Lizzie or Jane or her parents, there's less that's obvious that you can do with Jane, you know? She's just the perfect angel beautiful eldest sister who's nice to everyone and can't say a bad word about anyone. And that could easily be super boring, but they do such a wonderful job with her (and Lauren Spencer is SO GREAT, god) that she's possibly my favorite and I've been missing her so much since she went to L.A. I think they really let her have a sense of playfulness and a sense of humor that's wonderful, and letting her actually show her devastation about Bing leaving, which she isn't really able to express in the source material or in the movie adaptations. ugh, idk, this isn't very coherent at this point, but I just adore Jane, and I'm glad we at least get to see her face again in Lydia's videos, but I need some Jane/Lizzie time stat.
-Also, as I was saying, LYDIA!!!!! GOD I LOVE HER AND WHAT THEY'RE DOING WITH HER. In like the 2nd episode of the series, Lizzie refers to her as a slut, and i think she might one other time in the series, or at least say something that's kind of slut shame-y, and that really bothered me the first time I was watching the videos, but it was earlier on, so I kind of forgot about it after catching up, and there was enough I loved about the series that I was able to get past it. But as I was rewatching the series on Thursday, it kind of bothered me again. But then I came across these two posts from the person who wrote that episode, and now I'm dying because omg yes this is perfect. (In the first post, she links to a separate post from the head writer of the series, Bernie Su, in regards to it as well, which I don't like as much because… it was still wrong to slut shame before all the political stuff last spring with women being sluts for wanting birth control, but whatever.) I think my biggest issue is just that it comes so early in the series that this is like your first exposure to Lizzie, and since they are her videos, it's not as clear what the show's perspective is about calling Lydia a slut, so I still think they should have shied away from going that far? But I do love that it's part of Lizzie's prejudice and how she views her sister and that she's NOT right in doing so, but Lizzie is an unreliable narrator (GOD I LOVE UNRELIABLE NARRATORS, ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS). And I feel like since it does come as part of her prejudice and part of the story is Lizzie examining that prejudice, I have to believe that they'll go back to that and Lizzie will realize she was wrong about her sister and wrong to judge her in that way, and I'm so excited for that.
And her (and Jane's) relationship with Lydia is so fascinating to me because while she does love her, she is also clearly very dismissive of her and doesn't think too… highly of her in a lot of ways? And with how the show has developed Lydia what with her first videos in getting to know Mary and then the more recent ones with her feeling completely alone and ignored and running off to LA and how she talks about her mom only every being concerned with Lizzie and Jane, and you get such a different perspective of their mother from Lizzie's view, and… I don't know where this sentence started but this is all so fascinating to me, and soooo different from what the source material did, which I mentioned before didn't really focus on Lydia very much other than kind of as a plot device. But all that makes me really curious what they're going to with the Lydia/Wickham storyline, because I just can't see this series ending with Lydia and Wickham together, you know? The series has developed her too much to just have her end up with this total shallow dick. And they're obviously open to changing things to make it fit for modern contexts, like with the Charlotte/Collins "proposal," but I still have no clue how they're going to handle it. All I know is that I trust the writers and I am excited for it!!!
-Also, Charlotte!!!!!! Her and her friendship with Lizzie is so wonderful. It feels so much more like a friendship than their friendship ever did to me in the book or movies, you know? As I already mentioned, their fight was one of my absolute favorite episodes of the series. I absolutely adore how clear the series made it that Lizzie was wrong. Charlotte wasn't making the choice Lizzie would make, but that's fine, because Charlotte is not Lizzie, she is more practical, and Lizzie was being selfish and a bad friend. And the show didn't try to make it seem like Lizzie was right, but you could also sympathize with her because you could see how she just didn't get it because she would never make that choice for herself, and that she was just going to miss her friend a lot, and that also sucks. And she apologizes and accepts Charlotte's choice in the end, and it's wonderful. I just adore their friendship so much!!! Also, on a sidenote, Collins!!! HE'S KIND OF DELIGHTFUL. Not that I think Lizzie should have said yes to him, of course, and if I knew him, I would be horribly irritated by him, but I just love watching him on the show because he's so enthusiastic about everything! It's adorable!!! But back to Charlotte, I'm really interested to see what the series decides to do with her from this point because… from what I remember, she doesn't appear post the proposal, right? I mean, she definitely doesn't appear again after that point in the movie, and I can't think of any place she appeared in the book after that point. But I really can't imagine Charlotte disappearing from the show at this point, that would just make no sense. So I'm really interested to see what they do with her storyline after this point.
-When I first started watching the series, I never really thought about the medium being video blogs affecting the story other than just limiting the number of people who would appear and that we'd get Lizzie's (and her sisters' and friends') interpretations of them instead. But after rewatching the series and reading other people's thoughts, I'm realizing just how much the fact that she's making these videos and they are public to anyone in her life to see really has to affect the story. We already saw it with Caroline deciding to be nice to her to kind of manipulate her into continuing to hate Darcy in that one video where she's really egging her on, rather than the source material's Caroline who just has no interest in Lizzie and is pretty much just constantly as disdainful as she can be without being overtly rude or impolite. But what with Darcy finding out about the videos now, I'm just like… ughhh I'm so excited and desperate to see how this affects the rest of the story. I was possibly dying at Darcy's tweets over the weekend about everything making more sense (presumably after finishing the videos). It's really interesting because in the source material, obviously all he has to go off of is what Lizzie says to him when rejecting his proposal, which, I mean, she does describe that he broke her sister's heart and that he ruined Wickham, but he doesn't get all the details, and it's obviously secondhand through Lizzie, so he can still doubt Jane's affections. But after watching the videos, there's no way he can doubt that Jane is in love with Bing, and he actually gets to hear firsthand from Wickham what he tells Lizzie about what Darcy did to him. And that element is just fascinating to me that he's actually going to get all of this firsthand and see a side to Lizzie he never did before, and ughhhh WHY IS IT NOT MONDAY.
But even beyond just that, I'm really curious to see how the videos affect the story from this point in terms of like… I mean, Charlotte and Jane have definitely implied in the past that at the very least Darcy doesn't hate Lizzie, and I do think they have an idea that he has a crush on her ("Are you fake texting?" / "IT'S SUPER IMPORTANT." I KNOW ALREADY QUOTED IT, BUT IT IS ALWAYS RELEVANT.), and obviously in the books Lizzie keeps the proposal from everyone, but… she chose to post it here! And not everyone in her life watches the videos, but Charlotte clearly will be, and Jane will I would imagine (even though I think she's a bit behind at this point, but still, I have to imagine she'll see it at some point), and I would think Lydia might. Wickham I doubt would watch them now that he's not in Lizzie's life because I think he probably just watched some videos that were relevant to him when he was getting to know Lizzie and the ones he was on, but once he left town, he wouldn't care enough to. And I think Caroline probably stopped after they went back to L.A. and she didn't feel the need to watch them anymore as to use them to her advantage because… she got what she wanted! But even if most of the characters don't, I can't imagine that at the very least Charlotte and Jane will find out, which is definitely a departure from the book, so I'm fascinated to see how that affects things. And then in the books, Lizzie's changing feelings about Darcy are kept pretty hidden from him, but like… I feel like we will probably be able to see her feelings change in her videos, and if Darcy watches the videos, then he'll see that! Although I guess they could go the route of having him stop watching the videos because he won't want to watch her continuing to insult him.
But yeah, idk!!! The videos aspect is clearly going to continue to affect the story in different ways, and I'm absolutely fascinated by that element. As I said before, the series has clearly changed some things to make them work in a modern context, but I'm curious as to how much they'll feel like they can deviate from the original story, since they are going to keep Charlotte around in some capacity (I imagine), and with Darcy watching the videos and all, and the Lydia/Wickham stuff can't play out in the exact same way either. UGH IDK I JUST NEED MORE VIDEOS NOW!!!!!!
Anyways, even if you didn't make it through all that (I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS), please come flail with me about the series if you've been watching it, or if you haven't, go start watching it and then come back and flail with me please!!!!!!!
In terms of real life stuff, the past week was kind of both better and worse than the hell week the week before?
I mean, it was not as crazy with like phones ringing off the hook and crises every 5 seconds, but like… my responsibilities are such that while everyone was having a crazy week during that hell week, last week was really just crazy for me whereas it was a normal week for everyone else. So even though it wasn't actually as crazy for me as the week before, it was crazy enough to make me really frazzled, and I didn't have the comfort of knowing everyone else was going through the same insane week as me. And plus, people would ask me questions or ask me to do things and not really think about if I was busy because they weren't busy and the crazy week was over, except… I still had a ridiculous amount of stuff, so all that just made it so much worse. I was just so tired and exhausted all week I could barely think straight, and I made a really stupid mistake on Friday that is a mistake I never make and I felt awful about it and my coworker was like "Don't worry about it, I do that all the time, it'll be fine," and such, but I just kept kicking myself over it. idk, it just wasn't a great week and my supervisor was gone on Friday because she finally is getting a vacation she should have had months ago, and it's well-deserved, but I rely on her so much that it was really difficult without her (plus we just get along well and she can usually pick up my spirits pretty well, and I could've used that on Friday). And on top of that, she put in her out of office email to anyone trying to reach her to ask for me directly to help out with whatever, and when she told me she was doing that on Thursday, I was like "...are you serious right now, I can barely handle my own stuff at the moment!!!"
And then there was the new girl who started Monday who I talked about sits next to me. She's… fine, I guess? She's really quiet and so I feel kind of awkward, like… idk, it's hard to explain, but I feel like her personality is a lot like mine? She reminds me of myself when I start out in a new place, so I feel like I should be making more of an effort to talk to her and get to know her and be nice and welcoming, but I just didn't have the mental or emotional energy last week to really do that. Like, I can interact fine with my other coworkers who've been around awhile because I know them and that just… takes less energy for me than interacting with a new person? Because I'm just really awful meeting people and getting to know them. I'm fine after a certain amount of time, I can socialize and not feel like an idiot or constantly second guess what I say, but interacting with someone new just takes a lot more energy for me. (I really, really, really introverted, if I haven't mentioned before.) So I felt myself like… talking to other coworkers around and kind of ignoring her because it was easy to talk to them but difficult to like… get to know her, and then I felt bad about it, but… I also had no energy or time to fix that.
And I also felt bad because like… I sit right next to her, there's no one to her other side, so she'd ask me questions, and normally I don't mind answering questions, but I do when I'm exhausted and behind on a million things, and like… I wasn't really annoyed with her, but I was just so tired that I felt really grumpy and like I seemed like she was annoying me whenever she'd ask a question, even though it wasn't about her, it was about all the other work I had to do. But after a certain point on like Tuesday or Wednesday, she was like, "You're going to kill me, but I have a question…" and I was like "No, no, it's fine, I don't mind!" but I don't know if she believed me. Although I was saying at the end of the week that I had had a bad week and I felt grumpy and irritable all week, and the Annoying Coworker was like, "That was you grumpy? But you're so sweet!!!" and I was like "oh awwwww thank you!" and felt better (…even though I'm still calling her the annoying coworker. WHATEVER SHE'S STILL MORE ANNOYING THAN ANYONE ELSE. I mean, she does annoying things still from time to time, but I do like her as a person? So whatever). Hopefully I didn't scare the new girl off anyways.
There was a weird thing with her on Thursday, though, where she just… didn't show up, and I don't know why. And like, I know she didn't call in because no one had any idea why she wasn't there, my supervisor had to call the staffing agency to let them know she didn't show and then they had to contact her to find out what was going on, and… I never found out, and she didn't show up the rest of the day, so I kind of thought she had quit, but then… she showed up on Friday like nothing was wrong. And now I'm horribly curious about what happened Thursday!!! But I hate prying, so I probably won't find out.
Anyways, my supervisor also isn't going to be in on Monday, which will suck. And I think we're supposed to get more new people soon??? Actually, we did get another new person on Thursday, but she's doing different stuff from most of us, so I didn't see much of her, and I don't think we'll end up like… interacting much just because her responsibilities are so different from everyone else's. I can't even remember at this point if I've mentioned before, but the company is going to like… MAJORLY expand. I mean, we're super small, there was a point at the end of August where there were 8 of us including me and even the higher ups. We're now at 11, and my supervisor told me the other week there was one guy who was definitely hired who hasn't started yet, and they were still doing interviews last week, so I know they're looking for more people. We're going to fill up on desks soon, and like… it's hard to explain, but we all work in just one room in like a desk system (no cubicles or separation really, we're all right next to each other, it kind of sucks), and there are 3 small offices, 2 being used by the CEO and the VP, and then the other one had just been kind of storage. But they've put temporary desks and 4 computers in there, so I guess some people are going to be over there. It'll be cramped and looks kind of awful, but on the other hand, the room does have windows (unlike the one I'm in currently), so part of me kind of wants to move in there just for the windows. I don't know how they're going to handle figuring out who is where, though, since like… shuffling everyone around would take a lot of work, but at the same time, I can't imagine them just putting all the new people in one room that's isolated from everyone else, that makes zero sense. So who knows.
They're also talking about putting a hole in the wall into the office that's next to ours (which is currently unoccupied) and the CEO was saying he thought he could fit about 25 people adding in that office, which… that's a lot of people when you consider the fact that we only have 11 people total now. Obviously that wouldn't happen like overnight, they wouldn't work on getting the other office they said until the beginning of next year, and hiring on 25 people would take time since they wouldn't start all at once, they'd all need training. But still, it's kind of scary? I mean, like I said, I'm not good at getting to know people, and like… I'm really good in the group we have, but I'm bad with really large groups, and I don't like the idea of not knowing everyone? I also just don't like change. On the plus side, the worse my work situation gets, the more motivation I have to finally figure out what the hell I want to do with my life so I can quit and go to grad school or whatever! Which reminds me that I'm finally going to that career counselor this Wednesday, which is a bit terrifying to me, if only because like… I am kind of really counting on this helping me figure things out, and if it doesn't help at all, I'm at the same place I was a month or two ago, except I won't have the hope of going to the career counselor helping me on the horizon anymore. If that makes any sort of sense. idk. I had a friend go to this guy and he really helped her figure out what she wants to do and get on that path, so I guess I'll try being less pessimistic.