Personal is Political

I sort of got lost during the last weeks - first I had a deadline, and every moment I was psending bloggin was a moment I wasn't working, so I stopped myself. And then, I just... got unused to blog in English, I think. But as it's my plan to become better in the language (and also, as this blog is a place I can express some things I can't express in Russian and/or in y other blogs), I'm coming back.

I got a new job, though not quite - I can't be sure until I get my first paycheck. But it it works, it will be pretty good. I love translating, but I became worse in it, mostly because I read and watch too much in English, so during translation, I can't switch to normal Russian patterns and vocabulary. My translated text look like English text in Russian words and letters. It sucks. It's a signal of a professional burnout. It takes time and effort to heal. So, I hope I'll spend some time at my new, entirely different job.

Also, I now have time for two things I wanted to do but my translator job prevented me. (Mostly because it was always big projects, when I spent months with the knowledge that I have a job to do, and every minute I'm not doing it is lost. The curse of a freelancer.) I can go to the swimming pool/gym, and I can write fanfiction.

I really need some physical exercise in my life, and the doctors are telling me to go swimming for ages. I started to visit the swimming pool in May, but then stopped because of workload. Now I'm back there, and it's mostly great though I dislike some slight discomfort before/after (as the place I go swimming isn't perfect in their client service). I'm thinking about going back to the gym I've visited a year ago, to go there and to the swimming pool in turns. Also, though I like the way I look, I want to make my belly flat, and it seems that exercises at home aren't enough.

Speaking of which: this is how I look if you were wondering.
And speaking of entirely different which: Huge, the new ABC's project, looks promising though can become a big fail. But it has Nikky Blonsky and Gina Torres!

As for fanfiction... I totally missed the dates of LGBT-fest, but I will finish the story and post it for the Amnesty. Actually, I finished my part and sent it to the beta-reader but haven't heard back yet. This is my main problem with writing in English: I don't have a permanent beta-reader, and don't know where to find one. In Russian, I have one constant beta and a group of first-readers, so I have feedback at different stages or working on the story and have it beta-read fast enough to get the bigger feedback almost immediately after finishing. Also, I'm very sure in my Russian style and grammar so if the fic is short and/or my beta is busy I can post it unbearead. In English, I can make stupid mistakes and am generally afraid of showing the text without having it read by an English speaker. And I don' have one on hand, sadly.

I checked my drafts folder and discovered that I have several stories in English which I have shown only to the closest circle. There's a Torchwood/Equilibrium action story, with the Doctor and Cybermen, and some Torchwood cast RPS rp0n, and also some Robin Hobb kinky fanfiction, not to mention the unfinished drafts and parts of the Big TW/EQ Crossover (which includes the LGBT-fest story). All of them unbetaread and thus, sitting in the table. I'm thinking about posting them at least to this blog - it's my personal space, so I can edit them whenever I want, and they will still be out there.

In addition, Winzavod, a well-known Moscow art gallery, awarded Trushevsky a 'Moral Support' award.
Brilliant.

I think there's some special kind of hell for people who write woobie!Gene Hunt.

I should really stop watching ongoing TV-shows I get emotionally invested into.
Really. I'm too sentimental for this. I get invested, and I spend the week before the finale waiting and watching previous episodes back to back, and then I spend the last 24 hours running in rounds on the ceiling, and then I spend s couple of hours hypnotizing the torrent into going faster, and then it's 5 in the morning and everyone is asleep while I want to talk about it.
I'm fine with being emotionally invested in the show, that's what they are for. I'm fine with ongoing shows, especially when they are planned with separate plotlines per episodes. But sometimes it's too much.
Let's not talk about Children of Earth (which had me doing nothing for a whole week because I couldn't). Let's not talk about End of Time because I was strong enough to wait until both parts aired, to spare myself from the guesswork of the period between the episodes (which means that I stopped reading any of my friend lists and talking to most of my communication circle to esape the spoilers). And I'm really glad that I wasn't watching Buffy while it aired for the first time because I would have a heart attack somewhere during season 6, and another one while waiting for Chosen. Also, I'm glad that I started watching Criminal Minds after Mayhem and Lo-Fi aired, because that cliffhanger? Not nice. I had enough waiting between episodes 99 and 100 this fall.
This year, I had Dollhouse back in winter, and now Ashes to Ashes. I suddenly became invested in Ashes somewhere after episode 3x06, and I spent this las week waiting for the finale. And it came, and I watched it, and now I'm burning with both satisfaction and afterglow and craving for more and a little bit of dissapointment which has more to do with my personal desire to have all the characters living their happily ever after in some sort of family units, never alone. (I will probably have to write some reaction-fanfiction to get read of this nagging feeling. Something sappy. Or smutty. Or both.) It was brilliant, really - some very good television, something I add to my list of most recommended. But... bloody emotional investment into ongoing TV-shows. Now, when it's over, I miss it.

Digest of other shows I watch:
Castle left me a bit dissappointed with the way they started to resolve the UST - too much mansplaining, too little action for the girl.
Criminal Minds have one more episode which will be a cliffhanger, so I'm thinking about skipping it until the next year. The last three episodes in a row were very good. (Though I'm still waiting for the echoes of Hotch's tragedy and breakdown.)
House made my OTP into reality. And the scene itself was so very sweet. Oh my. I am sentimental.
Doctor Who still goes on, and Lie to Me starts in a couple of weeks.

I'm sitting in the cafe, drinking coffee and smoking. My friend leaves for the bathroom. There are two men at the next table. One of them looks at me and says to me that I should stop smoking and start running. I say that's not his business. He says (and his friend joins in) that the nation is dying because there are no healthy women to give birth. I ask how is it my problem exactly, and what is his business with me again, and what the fuck, really. (I'm very angry at the moment because I was having a lovely time with a very good friend chatting about Criminal Minds and feminism and guess what? women's health, and I'm sort of unprepared for a stranger to talk to me like that.)
It ends up with me nearly telling them to shut the fuck up, and them eventually shutting up and leaving. I didn't say anything really rude because first, they are two big men twice my age and I am a small young female, and two, it's a cafe I frequent (the only one good cafe in a neighbourhood and one of the two in the entire town, and the coffee is of Ianto Jones's quality) and they probably frequent, too, and I don't want to have problems.

Now, how much is wrong in this situation?

1. What I do with my body is nobody's business.
2. Especially not the business of the strangers...
3. ...who were - guess what? - sporting beer bellies and smoking cheap cigarettes!
4. And especially not because of my own health, but the health of my potential babies.
5. Which I might or might not have, but it is, once again, nobody's business but mine.
6. And if I have them, it's not for the bloody 'nation', whatever it is.
7. Also, those strangers better not make assumptions about my health, habits, family status and plans for the future.
8. The fact that I have to tell them off sucks, but the fact that I have to be careful with it sucks even more, because I should not be afraid of telling off rude people in a peaceful public place, but I am.
9. Because they are male, stronger, and I doubt that anyone will come to my side in a conflict.

End of the venting. Shit happens. And the day was lovely except for this little episode.

Last weekend, I had sort of new experience/discovery about romance and relationship and stuff.

( Read more... )

Aside from that sour romance stuff, the weekend was really good. Dancing and people and a night outside of the sity, with wine and fod under open sky. Then people again, good friends, exiting talks.

I've started watching X-Files, for the first time since 2000. I was a huge fan back then, but now, I remember little of the series.

The thing that is sort of a cultural shock to me today is the male gaze in the show (lack of it). During the first three series I've watched, Scully is wearing sensible outfits. When she's in the Bureau, she's dreassed as a business lady, no cleavage visible, shirts up to her neck, long skirts, comfortable pants. When they are in the woods she is dressed for the woods: jeans, big warm shirt, big overcoat, hair tied in a ponytale.
It's so... unusual. Today, the heroine goes into the woods dressed in skin-tight jeans and low-cut top, leaves her overcoat open (if she has one), and her hair are long on her shoulders.

Then, there was a bathroom scene in Episode 3. You know those scenes when the heroin is going to take a bath, and then shit happens? She starts the water, and sensually takes her clothes off, the camera following all the lines and curves of her body, and then she steps into the bath, and maybe there is foam covering her skin... then shit happens and she has to fight almost naked for the viewer's titillation. *yawn*
What do we have here? Scully starts the water. She's almost fully dressed, wearing her comfortably wide pants and white blouse, also rather wide and buttoned almost to her neck. She's also wearing comfortable flats. No male gaze camerawork. She is just a women filling the bath to relaz after a hard day.
Then shit happens. While she is fully dressed. Nothing is done for viewer's titillation at all. She doesn't fall into the bath, so that her blouse would become transparent and wrap her body tight. Her clothes aren't torn to give a glimpse of her body. Nothing.
Oh, and she gets the bad guy before Mulder comes to resque. While being fully dressed and awesome.

In Episode 2, she took the bad guy, manhandled him and forced him to do what she wants at gunpoint, wearing big shirt and big overcoat. No high heels, no sexy tight tops, no flirting. Only Scully, no-nonsense and awesome.

The only titillating scene was in the Pilot (Episode 1) where she is actually in her (quite sensible) underwear. (And then Mulder was looking at her naked back. UST on the way!) One scene in three episodes. And I have a feeling I'll have to wait a lot to see Scully undressed again.

Oh. And did I mention that all this time, being dressed sensibly and with her body fully covered, giving nothing to the titillation, she was not just awesome - she was hot like hell?

I should really, really stop multitasking.
Because doing four things at once and eating on top of that leads to eggs tasting like deleted files. I'm not kidding.

Also, I need to make my life even more simple and my priorities even more clear. Because while I'm doing many things at once, it all somehow ends with me reading someone who is wrong in the internets. And replying to them! Not good.

Black leather dress.
I now own a black leather skin-tight dress.
Oh, I love my reflection in the mirror.
Pity my high heels are over in Moscow. They would complete the look.

( Random thoughts on clothing and feminism )

# Watching Firefly for the second time. How could they axe it? It's brilliant.
# Though I have huge issues with sex-work theme in the series. I wonder where Whedon was going with it.
# Ashes to Ashes seem to blow up the fandom with possible Gene/Sam fanservice. These series are wicked, with all those mysteries and plot twists.
# The doctors still don't know what's wrong with me. It's frustrating, not to know if you have a condition, or psychosomatic symptoms, or you are just lazy. I spent months trying to deal with it on my own, on sheer willpower, because I thought it's just my temporal depression, emotional stress, overworking and so on; then I finally accept that it can be a condition, and go to the doctors - and they say nothing at all, so it seems that it was just my emotions and outside factors. Not that I want to be sick - but I want to know what's going on with me and why, and what to do with it.
# tw_itallchanges has a lovely edisode about Ianto's family. I love Ianto's family. Rhi is awesome, and the whole dynamic in CoE is a sheer pleasure to watch (and has a huge backstory hidden between the lines).