![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
a promising start
I have a weird fondness for Friday the 13ths! They always seem to be full of awesome. For instance:
i. My moving stress has been greatly reduced by a potential bed! Ugh, furniture. If I could, I would renounce all material possessions. Except for my laptop, which is basically a part of my brain. And my books, because, books.
ii. Still on that notion of Cumberbatch!Master: a manip for your enjoyment. It mostly works, but I have spent too much time staring at John Simm's hands to not be a little freaked out to see them disembodied from John Simm's face. Also, I suspect that Cumberbatch!Master wouldn't have laser.
iii. On the Prowl, a VVC vid that is fascinating me. I ... don't necessarily recommend it, because I don't know where anyone's line is. (In short, warning/enticement: it's 3+ minutes of pretty boys being hurt in increasingly graphic ways.) It's an amazing observation of fandom, and fandom's enjoyment of these scenes, and it's definitely something of which I'm culpable -- if "culpable" is even the right word; I'm going back and forth on whether it's a reclamation or if it's just as goddamn creepy as it is in Women's Work.
It's especially interesting to me because I was raised in a household where any media that had a high rating for sex was totally okay, and any media with a high rating for violence was totally not. (The reasoning explained to me by my father, in summary: "It's not okay that we live in a society where two men walking down the street holding guns is acceptable, and two men walking down the street holding hands isn't.") I deeply approve of this philosophy, but it necessarily means that it took me until my involvement in media fandom to even stumble across the concept that there could actually be overlap in the Venn diagram of sex and violence. I still really notice it -- I think it would pretty much take an act of god to get me desensitized to violence -- but I was still amazed when I watched this vid and discovered that my line isn't until the three minute mark. Only thirty seconds of that footage make me uncomfortable.
Now I'm really curious where everyone else's lines are.
i. My moving stress has been greatly reduced by a potential bed! Ugh, furniture. If I could, I would renounce all material possessions. Except for my laptop, which is basically a part of my brain. And my books, because, books.
ii. Still on that notion of Cumberbatch!Master: a manip for your enjoyment. It mostly works, but I have spent too much time staring at John Simm's hands to not be a little freaked out to see them disembodied from John Simm's face. Also, I suspect that Cumberbatch!Master wouldn't have laser.
iii. On the Prowl, a VVC vid that is fascinating me. I ... don't necessarily recommend it, because I don't know where anyone's line is. (In short, warning/enticement: it's 3+ minutes of pretty boys being hurt in increasingly graphic ways.) It's an amazing observation of fandom, and fandom's enjoyment of these scenes, and it's definitely something of which I'm culpable -- if "culpable" is even the right word; I'm going back and forth on whether it's a reclamation or if it's just as goddamn creepy as it is in Women's Work.
It's especially interesting to me because I was raised in a household where any media that had a high rating for sex was totally okay, and any media with a high rating for violence was totally not. (The reasoning explained to me by my father, in summary: "It's not okay that we live in a society where two men walking down the street holding guns is acceptable, and two men walking down the street holding hands isn't.") I deeply approve of this philosophy, but it necessarily means that it took me until my involvement in media fandom to even stumble across the concept that there could actually be overlap in the Venn diagram of sex and violence. I still really notice it -- I think it would pretty much take an act of god to get me desensitized to violence -- but I was still amazed when I watched this vid and discovered that my line isn't until the three minute mark. Only thirty seconds of that footage make me uncomfortable.
Now I'm really curious where everyone else's lines are.
no subject
Same here! The rest of it is blisteringly hot and I don't think I'm even very sorry or introspective about it.
no subject
And then I watched it again.
no subject
no subject
no subject
unf.
no subject
I have been gently told that I should not, in fact, watch Smallville, and also that I have to stop after season three, but I am very much up for taking recs on good Lex episodes.
no subject
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YOU SHOULD WATCH IT ALLLLL. And okay, by "all," I really mean s1-s3 and maybe s5, but yeah. Gosh, I wish I could remember which are good Lex episodes. I will try to find out! ESPECIALLY WATCH "SHATTERED" AND "ASYLUM" IN S3.
LEX'S PAIN: YES.
no subject
I WOULD LOVE YOUR RECS. <3 If not maybe I will just read wiki summaries. That approach seems to work okay for me usually.
no subject
It's super hard, because every episode of SV has a stupid one-word title. >:( HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER ANYTHING? But yeah, most of s1-s3.
Oh, oh, "Onyx" has two Lexes! That's a good one! I think Lex gets tied up in "Bound."
"LEXMAS" IS GREAT. SORT OF.
Uh. I will get back to you.
no subject
So it feels strange to watch this vid and to know from reading the vidders' explanation that all these scenes were ones that they enjoy watching on some level.
Now I'm really curious where everyone else's lines are.
Happy to oblige!
Like you, I grew up in a household where I saw very little media with high violence. But unlike you, I also grew up in a household where I saw very little media with high sex levels. Actually, I just plain saw very little media.
So watching this vid told me something very interesting about myself, in terms of where my lines are, since I've never actually thought to think about it before. To you there was a specific line that got crossed, after which stuff was too extreme, and was thus uncomfortable. Me, I had moments of discomfort throughout the vid. The first thing to make me physically flinch was actually within the first minute of the vid (the bit at 0:52, where someone's getting a pinchy bit of metal put on his skin). But only maybe 2/3 of the stuff after the three minute mark made me squirm.
Based on my reactions to the various scenes shown, my line is not about level of violence but on type of violence. I more-or-less calmly watched people getting beaten up, people getting threatened by guns, people with blood dripping from their mouths, people with really terrible scrapes and scratches and wounds of various sorts bleeding all over the place.
But if it was obvious the wounds had been made with a sharp, piercing object (eg a knife) instead being from something like abrasion, that was a no-go. And watching anything deliberately pierce the skin, like the knife, or like that dude peeling his skin off, or that one bit where a guy's sticking his fingers into the cut on another guy's stomach, also a no-go.
(on a second watch I notice that the fingers being stuck into the cut were in fact the guy's own, so presumably he had a reason for it, and the scene is thus less squicky. But on first watch? I reacted strongly to it)
And I guess that first flinch-worthy clip, with the pinchy metal, is just part of the spectrum of purposeful attempts to violate the skin barrier.
It's...kind of weird to think that I have such a specific response to different types of violence. I don't quite know what to make of it. (except to say that my extreme discomfort with getting needles makes SO much more sense in this context.)
no subject
no subject
But I never did hit a wall of squick, because there was enough stuff after three minutes that I didn't mind too much, interspersed well with the stuff that squicked me. I dunno. Human reactions are weird!
no subject
The first thing to make me physically flinch was actually within the first minute of the vid (the bit at 0:52, where someone's getting a pinchy bit of metal put on his skin). Same here!
And: Based on my reactions to the various scenes shown, my line is not about level of violence but on type of violence. I more-or-less calmly watched people getting beaten up, people getting threatened by guns, people with blood dripping from their mouths, people with really terrible scrapes and scratches and wounds of various sorts bleeding all over the place.
But if it was obvious the wounds had been made with a sharp, piercing object (eg a knife) instead being from something like abrasion, that was a no-go. And watching anything deliberately pierce the skin, like the knife, or like that dude peeling his skin off, or that one bit where a guy's sticking his fingers into the cut on another guy's stomach, also a no-go.
That's mostly how I felt too! Blood already dripping, not a problem. But actually seeing the wound being inflicted by a knife, or anything really sharp, that made me squirm.
no subject
no subject
I watched the whole thing, but after 2:12 was iffy and after 3:04 I was definitely discomforted.
no subject
I think my tolerance has increased some, but violence has always bothered me. When we watched "Roots" in school one time, I had to leave the classroom during certain scenes. The first time I saw "Fight Club", I walked out of the room.
Anyway. I didn't find the video hot. Yeah, lots of shirtless guys, but the blood and violence just overpowered it too much for me.
no subject
The rest of it, I can deal. But not that. D: I don't know when that image appears in the vid, but that's my line.
I love your dad's explanation for his policy on sex vs violence, though. <3
no subject
What is "VVC"?
I suspect that I'd spend about a quarter to half of that video wondering if the injuries were faked for the camera or were real. "Faked for the camera" means that someone put a lot of effort into makeup and staging and genuinely trying to make the vid look violent. Whether I agree with the sexualizing of violence or not--and I don't--someone would have worked on this. If, on the other hand, the vid showed real injuries of real people, either in clips from news shows and documentaries or created for the camera--well, that's just creepy. And if it's injuries of real people who WANTED to be injured...ewww. Dudes, this is private stuff.
By the time I got to about the quarter to halfway mark, I'd have turned away. This is due to my habit of multitasking on the net--I'm far more inclined to LISTEN to vids while doing something else than I am to look at them. And by the time I got to the halfway to three-quarters mark, I most likely would have decided that I didn't like this, and why the hell was I watching it again?
At which point I would turn off the vid and close the window.
And I know this would be my reaction because I don't want to watch this. Not even to be fair. I'm not comfortable even with the idea.
no subject
no subject
I never used to be this sensitive to it, but then I watched Spooks and now -- nope. Can't deal. ENGAGE AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOURS.