throbbing light machine

Partway through the third season I'm still really enjoying Farscape; I appreciate the way it keeps bending my brain around in weird ways. But watching it is also kind of like playing Crazy Chicken. While I'd picked up the analysis from fannish osmosis of John Crichton as raped, I wasn't prepared AT ALL for the degree to which the show/Ben Browder are dedicated to the depiction of the cracks in his psyche. This is a show about madness - and while at the moment I find that topic deeply compelling I have to admit that there have been moments when I've had to tap out. I couldn't handle the clone arc, just couldn't handle it. I feel so on edge, watching, because I worry that they're going to crack his sanity like an egg at any moment.

And then there are the bits like "Look at the Princess" and "Liars, Guns, and Money," which are just altogether delightful and delicious and delovely and man I love SF multiparters. I'm really into John/Aeryn as a ship, no surprise there. I already knew that I was in love with Claudia Black because duh who isn't, but Gigi Edgly is charming the pants off of me, and I also am really digging on John&Chiana as a platonic bffs deal.

I bopped over into Pushing Daisies because I did kind of need a break from the psychological intensity of Farscape. I'd seen half of the first episode of the second season at home with my parents, and we'd backbuttoned out because it was clear we'd missed too much context by not starting from the beginning. I am PRIMED for Lee Pace; his movie The Fall has been occupying a lot of my psychic real estate since I saw it a few years back, and I just his face. However I did not anticipate the degree or speed with/to which I am DEAD GONE on Ned the Piemaker, who I lust after with more fervor than I've experienced in rather a while. Despite the whimsical charms of lonely tourist Charlotte Charles I ttly ship Ned/Olive; Cheno is da bomb and I cannot resist her squawky little voice. My sib and I spent a lot of hours listening to Jim Dale read the Harry Potter books, so I also pick up a lot of snuggly comfort from his narration.

Aren't media texts with narrators cool? I was trying to list other ones in my head last night and could only come up with Sally Potter's Orlando and Stranger Than Fiction, though I guess you could also say that most of Baz Lurhmann's films and, like, Singin in the Rain are also essentially narrated, just through a variety of schticks rather than an Eliotian interpretive voice from on high.