Archive for Musicals.Net Musicals.Net |
| Jagienka |
Les Mis / LotR on youtubeAnyone following JaguarJedi's Les Mis / LotR videos? They are just amazing.http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4FD8A808274F88E3 Here's the playlist. I think it's better than the original LotR... 
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| Torrentious |
Haven't bumped into this. Seems like it could be enjoyable, but it's a little too "obsessionist" for me (a struggle, personally, to mentally link LOTR footage with Les Mis songs, and pretend the two are happily married).
It'd be easier for someone who can cancel out the above factors, and comfortably imagine the witch king as Javert, for instance... For me, it's a little too much like mixing butter and Tabasco sauce (results in curdling). Then again, I'm the type of person who simply doesn't understand "fanfic-style" obsessionism to begin with (or even just hyper fan-dom; you know, the people who get petty book scenes and character-circumstances stuck in their heads, as if those were the moments of their marriage, and have to go make videos or write about them). I'm more of the "appreciate it for what it's worth" type (no matter WHAT topic it is), so I can't reach that far into the world of fan-fic/fan-videos, for instance... There, it just disturbs me to see people digging so incredibly deeply for meaning in recreations of some of the most dreary scenarios I've ever come across in fiction. (not saying this in regard to the above videos... just talking about fanfic-style obsessionists who hang themselves up on such bizarre things. But the maker of those videos... yes... I do suspect he's one of those people who pushes pieces of cereal around the table, contemplating the secret motives of characters) I don't say the above harshly at all (I can already hear the fanfic police on the way)... I just, uhh... *sniff*... goddamn. I don't know what I'm trying to say here. And why someone would write this when he has to get back to work? Only the destroyer of hearts knows... (quote from a famous 200,000+ word work of great literature that shall remain nameless and un-replied to) |
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| Orestes Fasting |
You know, I don't understand people who get their kicks from playing beer pong at frat parties, but I don't go around seizing minor pretexts to whine about them on the internet. | ||||||
| lesmisloony |
Agreed.
Though I'd actually never heard of anyone (besides a few loathesome authors) who objected to fanfiction... |
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| Fantine |
For me writing fanfiction or creating fan videos is being creative, being able to express my feelings and appreciation for the fandoms I love. | ||||||
| lesmisloony |
And a darn good way to improve writing and characterisations and whatnot based on feedback... | ||||||
| Torrentious |
I don't object to fan-fiction (I myself used to make "fan-missions" (video-game fan-fiction) for an intriguing game called Thief that I liked. Relaxation and escapism). I simply misunderstand obsessionism (or what I call hyper fan-dom), such as that leads some people to over-consider certain scenes or characters in fiction, often to the point of "making stuff" to explore them even deeper.
This wouldn't apply to a music video starring Darth Vader in a tutu; there's usually an obvious and quite natural goal there (like making comedy + getting attention for having made the video)... but in short, it would apply to anything that non-fellow-obsessionists simply couldn't comprehend the purpose/appeal of, even after it's explained to them. ...this is not to be confused with scenarios where you simply can't understand the appeal of different "flavors" of things, like how someone can like X type of music. That's just your lack of thought making you forget that ALL music has the same appeal (immersing your mind in a kind of artificial emotion), just coming in different flavors... kind of like food: you don't question why someone from India likes X type food, you just take for granted that it's a flavor you don't like. Understanding obsessionism, for me, is a bit different. It would be like wondering why a food-loving person from India would go so far as to hang pork-chops on his wall, and write about it. I know there's a heightened sense of appreciation there, but it renders the obsessionist partially incompatible with others (an effect they would probably remove, if they realized its source), and ebbs away at their future prospects of healthy integration with people/society. Being unique/non-conformist is not to be confused with harboring what the world considers odd tendencies. You can do it if you want, sure - others in the same bandwagon won't complain - but side effects can apply. (one of them would be someone called Torrentious commenting on it) |
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| Orestes Fasting |
I dunno, I feel pretty well-integrated with the parts of society I want to associate myself with. I kinda have to wonder about you, though, since you don't seem to realize the side effects of walking onto a fan forum and comparing fangirling to hanging slabs of meat on your walls. That reaction there? That's not the fanfic police, that's the equivalent of being politely escorted out after you walk into a goth club and shout "HEY, YOU MALADJUSTED NIMRODS, IT'S NOT HALLOWEEN!" | ||||||
| Torrentious |
(said very politely) Your website (link) is just a biiiiiiiiiiiiiit too revealing of your underlying motives for saying the above, for me to take as coming from a non-biased source. (which in this case would be a terribly, terribly biased source) I mean, considering the below site intro, it sounds like you may be the goddess queen of what I'm talking about (no idea for certain; just an impression) so just happily swallowing your point of view is not in the best interests of balance.
As for what you said:
By the way, having absurd amounts of net-experience (I'm a software designer, and even designed some elements going into SMF2, a forum platform like this one), I understood fully that the likely side-effects included people popping in to disagree; hence the topic I was talking about in the first place is all about people who, well, obviously don't see eye-to-eye with me at the moment... But "All communication must lead to change" (Aristotle), and likewise, the goal of speaking isn't always to agree with everyone, but sometimes to offer useful, potentially change-inducing insight on things, in the hope that people might improve themselves (if the person speaking thinks that's what's most useful... I mean, I'm certainly, certainly not here to cast everything down, so that I might feel big. I write articles about those types of people (launching a "peoples' psychology" website soon)) If I were shouting this place up with a load of unexplained opinion (like saying, "YOU PEOPLE SUCK, BUT I'M NOT GOING TO EXPLAIN MYSELF!!" like certain religious lunatics, who think the best way to change gay people is to anger and insult them), I would have used caps, and not had any useful reasoning (nor shown what the alternative looks like, when you see things in a non-obsessionist light). But realistically, even reasoning with the goths you mentioned has its effects, if you present useful food for thought, and not just spout opinion... (it's like feeding someone a new type of food; you put the food in front of them, and let THEM get used to it at their own pace... you don't pry their mouth open, and shove everything down. That's guaranteed to have no help in getting used to it)... (this) is an image I made on the actual topic of goths/emos, for (an art series) on society issues, that I'm working on. By the way, I will point out that yes, I DO understand the ways in which it may seem a little strange to drop into a thread like this and say what I did, but I know a bit more about Jagienka than meets the eye (we go wayyyyy back), and she knows what I'm meaning to say. To everyone else, it may seem to be coming a bit more out of left field. |
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| Orestes Fasting |
I'm not really seeing the difference in horrendousness here. It was an unflattering analogy that got cast in an unflattering light. Let's try another analogy then, shall we? Since you mentioned the raving anti-gay lunatics of the right wing, let's imagine one who doesn't rave, but walks into a gay bar and starts engaging people in conversation. Within two minutes of talking to him it becomes abundantly clear that he thinks homosexuality is a mental disorder and that gay people should seek to correct the error of their ways, and is perfectly willing to expound upon this at length. Right after he gets done comparing PFLAG to pro-anorexia groups--not, he claims, to be outrageously insulting, but "because they're both groups that advocate celebrating an illness instead of curing it!"--the butch dyke who's a regular at the bar asks him what the hell he's doing here if he looks down on gay people so much. He says, "Look at you, you're wearing rainbow shoelaces on your combat boots for god's sake. You're exactly the kind of person I was talking about. Why should I listen to you?" The question still stands though. What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish in marching into a place where weird people congregate and where it's socially appropriate for them to share their weirdness, and telling them they're weird and it's not okay and you hope they'll "improve" themselves by listening to you? Why are you making claims about our level of social adjustment, when you have only our pseudonymous identities in nerd-space to go on and know nothing about our behavior in real life? Are we the bugs under your amateur-sociologist magnifying glass? Or are you trying to start some sort of Platonic dialogue with yourself set up as Socrates and all of us as the Euthyphros and Charmides benefiting from your enlightened line of questioning? Why do you think we need to change, and why in hell do you think we'll accept on your authority that we need to change? The upshot is that the gay bar, the goth club, and the fan forum are not appropriate places for you to engage people who are gayer than a Victorian poet convention, who dress like Lucrezia Borgia as seen in Neal Stephenson's bad dreams, or who amuse themselves by naming their Sims Jean Valjean and Raskolnikov, in persuasive debate about whether what they're doing there is legitimate. Because you are barging into their appointed space for them to do their thing among similar people, and the only response you're likely to get is increasingly elaborate variations on the theme of "Go away, we do this because we like it." |
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| bigR |
You know, Torrentious, you're incredibly lost. Seriously. Because obsession can't be explained.
No, seriously, as far as I remember I have been always obsessiong with one thing or the other. Since I was a small child. I have obsessions that come and go, others stay with me for years, some disappear and then come back. My obsessions are multiple, compatible and non excluding. (I think that part of the understanding problem comes from the term obsession. I like to use it, because I like to make fun at myself, but you could also use the term adiction or passion, and then the meaning somehow changes). Along the years I have endlesly obsessed about sports, towns, tv shows, books, historical characters, etc... and whenever I've been obsessed with anything I've always wanted to explore that world to the tinniest details. And that's simply called curiosity. None of my apparently discordant obsessions had made me live inside a bubble or leave out other activities or do anything antisocial (like hanging meat on my walls). You ask where is the point in obsessing over tiny details? Well, the answer is very simple, my friend: THERE IS NO POINT. At all. You seem to have the kind of mind many scientific oriented people have. The kind of mind who needs to find a goal for everything. But they are so many pointless things in the world. And I love pointless things. Much more that goal-oriented activities. Because they are absurd, and have no practical reason to be, and they are fun. That's all. You can't try to understand an obsession. They same way you can't understand a passion. Because they are absurd and have no practical foundations. You either have the kind of mind who can endlessly obsess about tiny absurd things or you don't. And I've always felt kind of sorry for those who can't, because frankly, lack of imagination is a very impoverishing thing. Anyway, if you reaaaaaally want to find a goal or a point for crazy obsessions, you should keep in mind that obsession is often behind most academic/creative work. Of course, most people who obsess about the location of the barricades in the 1832 uprising won't end up writing a masterwork about european liberal revolutions. But most people who train 8 hours a day since childhood won't go to the Olympics either. Most artistic types have a very obsessive mind. Artistic greation goes hand in hand with inhabiting fictional words to a point when they are more real than real-life, and fictional characters are more real than real people, and fictional worlds can be a source of real live feelings. Of course, only a handful of this people will end up producing wonderful creative things. But again, how many hyper-realistic types who want to become rich end-up working 9 to 5 for a regular salary? So, my answer is: there is nothing that we can explain. Because obsessing about fiction is totally pointless. There is not a pre-set goal. And there's no much you can do to understand it. You either have a mind that can do it, or you don't. You obviously can't. I pity you. But it's no big deal. |
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| Jagienka |
Gahh! He knows about me! They found out I'm a Sovjet spy, I stole atom secrets and I'm the real murderer of Kennedy! Oh, dammit.
Seriously, I've never heard of this person, and don't even know who he is. 
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| lesmisloony |
Things that make me angry include bashing Orestes' insanely resourceful website and trying to tell everyone how great you are based on your profession. | ||||||
| mastachen |
You couldn't have killed Kennedy! It was the Cubans in cahoots with Tony Soprano. |
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| bigR |
I've just realized something about Torrentius!
He's the one who reads everything "abridged" because otherwise he gets bored! Like small children! ha, ha, ha (in most countries abridged editions for adults don't even exist. only kiddies read them). "if you have the plot, why do you care about reading all those boring litterary flourishes?" Don't even bother Orestes, he probably had to google Raskolnikov 
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| Orestes Fasting |
Especially when that profession is software development and he's telling a huge group of people that we have Odd Tendencies in the bad way... while his compatriots find new and interesting ways to make their kitchen appliances run Linux. In fact, his writing style sounds suspiciously like he learned it from "+3 Preten^H^H^H^H^H^HInsightful" Slashdot comments. |
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| MlleTholomy�s |
And that your circus career is only a cover for a super duper sekret spy ring! |
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| Jagienka |
*evil smile* Exactly. Maybe I should begin smoking from long halters and paint my nails red. And make typical '30s hairdo. 
Now you gave me the idea. I just have to write a novella about my secret spy self. I officially name her Mata Sue. |
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| MlleTholomy�s |
I'd buy it. |
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| Torrentious |
By request from Jag, I just wanted to pop back into this thread to clarify that I don't actually know her, and had confused her with someone else. I mentioned that we "went way back", but I can certainly relate to no Polish acrobats... (Polish programmers, yes, but not acrobats).
And a note while I'm at it:
Not sure who's post you were reading. I simply pointed out that because he/she was the owner of that site, one couldn't easily take his/her opinion on obsessionism as perfectly balanced. I sure HOPE a statement like that doesn't require any further discussion. If you gather anything different from what I said, you're reading wayyy too into it. Read that post again, if needed. If you still pick up any connotations that I'm bashing that site, I retract them, because they shouldn't be there.
I'm going to guess that you were VERY tired when reading that (which I say lightly, because I don't trust myself with anything half important when I'm tired), because I wasn't trying to look great, and "greatness" had nothing to do with anything; I was merely pointing out that my vast history on the net should be evidence that I know when I'm setting myself up for a potential disagreement. (if anything, you could use that to mock me for wasting my time) Forgive me if when I have to make a point, my example unintentionally happens to carry a little weight. It's like when someone says to an astronaut: "How would YOU know about moon gravity?" "I'm an astronaut". "OH, SHOWING OFF NOW, ARE WE?" Anyway, I'm quite done with this thread, and apologize to Jag for what it became. I can easily say I didn't willingly sign it up for the direction it went, but go it did... |
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| lesmisloony |
Great. Bye. | ||||||
| Torrentious |
Oh, grow up. | ||||||
| Orestes Fasting |
Gee, I thought you were done with this thread. |