Oh, god, John Simm is just so cute that I can't even stand it. Look at this interview. And he's so adorably shy in this one (contains spoilers for the end of Life on Mars). And he's such a Paul McCartney fanboy! (It's not my fault; writteninstars mentioned watching YouTube clips of John Simm all day, and I couldn't get the idea out of my head.)

I watched him in this thing called "Chiller" last night and it turns out that David Fury was right about me after all. Because John Simm plays a serial killer and I totally just wanted to hug the poor darling. He's all sad and lonely! His mother abandoned him! It's not his fault he keeps killing people; his evil imaginary boyfriend will leave him if he doesn't!

He's such a cute little woobie, all angsty and sweet and sad, and then he turns into evil scary psycho!killer. This is clearly the best sort of role for John Simm. He's so young in this; he must've been around 25 but he looks about 17. And I haven't seen him in anything with this much homoerotic subtext since Doctor Who.

lozenger8 has a great summary/picspam here which anyone interested in adorable pretty boys being psycho and having lots of ho!yay really ought to click. (It took me four tries to write "click" instead of "lick." Freudian slip, much?)

Also, I may have just spent $100 on John Simm DVDs from amazon.co.uk. What? I need to test out my new region free DVD player.

***

In, um, non-Simm related news, I listened to three Doctor Who audio books read by David Tennant. It's super fun to hear him read them in his adorable Scottish accent, and then do all the characters with different voices. The Resurrection Casket and The Feast of the Drowned were pretty forgettable childrens' stories, but The Stone Rose was nifty. ( It's super Doctor/Rose shippy. )

It's been so long since I've posted in an active fandom that I forgot what it was like to have trolls in my LJ.

Apparently the Doctor was Martha's bad boyfriend, I'm a bad feminist for liking him, and I'm just blinded by David Tennant's abs.

Oh, fandom. You are too cute.

[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]

( I loved Voyage of the Damned )

( I made my parents watch Doctor Who and observed their reactions )

( oh yeah, and I finally saw the end of season one )

I'm happy because I have a whole bunch of shows to watch. I'm still only on episode five of Life on Mars, so I get to finish the first season and watch the whole second season. Then there's season one of Torchwood, and I'll be able to watch season two in real time if I decide to. Oh, and I've been downloading the new Robin Hood as it airs, although I haven't watched it yet, so I'll be able to watch its whole second season in one go (I'm all about Guy of Gisborne). And then Doctor Who starts up again in the spring. (I think I should just move to England.)

Oh, and the Daily Show and Colbert Report start up again in January. I'm still feeling a little iffy about that, since I support the strike, but I know there's no way I'll be able to resist Colbert. ;)

Real life continues to suck, but thank god 2007 is over. I so hope that 2008 will be better. I'll finally have vacation days again! I'm going to London and I'm going to see David Tennant in Hamlet! (I'm putting all my Christmas money into a "London fund"; maybe by the time October arrives I'll actually be able to afford to go there. Damn exchange rate.) What else? I haven't seen Sweeney Todd yet. There's a new Christian Bale Batman and isn't Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man coming out this year? And a new Harry Potter movie! Who needs real life when you've got fandom? Good stuff to look forward to. 2008. Yay.

MsScribe is back!

Thank you, gods of wank. I needed some entertainment today.

(If you missed the original MsScribe saga, you are missing one of the funniest things in fandom history. Read it here.)

Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one to think up this conspiracy theory.

* elfwreck: Stop Calling Yourselves Criminals!

There's so much commentary going around right now about how the fan community "should know better" than to express itself freely, about how "we're all criminals," so much shame and so much desire to hide, and it makes me so sad.

This community is *wonderful*. There is so much creativity and intelligence here. I've never encountered a real-world community that even comes close to what we have here. We have nothing to be ashamed about, and so much to be proud of. It breaks my heart to see smart, talented people ashamed of the great community they've helped create.

* buggery: Hold that 'yay' -- everything is NOT suddenly okay.

The best analysis I've seen on why Six Apart's recent "clarification" is just more of the same old bullshit.

I'm making InsaneJournal my main journal for now, but for the time-being, I'll also be cross-posting to my LiveJournal. (Eventually I will stop posting in LJ, but I'll give plenty of warning when that happens.)

I picked InsaneJournal because, compared to its rivals, the server is faster and the code seems more up to date. The account-creation process is easier than that of JournalFen and its dictator is more benevolent than that of GreatestJournal (which is no better than LJ in terms of random deletion of users). I am still awaiting a real non-profit alternative, though.

So, anyway, a couple of things about InsaneJournal, if you're also thinking of moving:

* It's ugly, but you can fix it! Go here to change the default site layout. Some of the options are still ugly, but the text-only version is as clean and simple as you can get. (This is not your journal style; it's the site style).

* You can change your journal style; InsaneJournal supports S1 and S2 styles. (Go here to do so if you already have an account.)

* You can still read your LJ friends via syndication. Instructions here.

* Free users could only have 100 friends. Well, they just changed it to 250. Yay!

* You can buy a permanent account for only $40. It comes with tons of features. I bought one.

* I'm trying to keep my FL at InsaneJournal up-to-date (ie, I'm trying to add anyone on my LJ friendslist who creates an InsaneJournal). I'm terribly haphazard about this, though, and have probably missed people. It's not intentional; just let me know if you want to be on my FL in any of the other places.

(Thanks to miggy for pointing some of this out.)

Other stuff:

* I loved fodian's post about why disturbing art should not be banned.

* elfgirl summed up the repulsiveness of Six Apart's stance on pro-anorexia communities. While frequently contradicting themselves, Six Apart has said that even if artwork depicting underaged characters engaging in sexual acts is legal, they think it's icky and don't want it on their servers. But they allow hate speech and groups that teach young women how to kill themselves, "because it's legal." Having already said that they'll delete legal stuff if it offends them, we can only assume that they're okay with racism and girls starving themselves?

(I'm not saying these disgusting communities should be deleted; I'm hugely in favor of free speech. But if you're going to selectively decide which "legal but icky" stuff you're going to delete, isn't actual people being hurt worse than fictional characters having sex?)

* "User Generated Content" & Ownership: The User as Citizen - a great post about the larger issues at stake here.

* We're on Slashdot.

And in real-life news:

* I went to see Juliette and the Licks (Juliette Lewis's band) play five acoustic songs at the Union Square Virgin Megastore the other day. They were really good. Juliette is a passionate singer and amazing performer, and the band was energetic and fun. Plus, the crowd was pretty small--you could just walk right up to the stage, and the band was just walking around interacting.

I bought their album, and it's okay, but the live performance was much better. If you get a chance to see them, I highly recommend it.

* jaydk and I went to see Harry Potter 5 in IMAX again last night. That's the fourth time I've seen the movie, and the second in IMAX. It's just so cool! (Still not Alfonso Cuaron cool, but what is?) Then we stayed out late having dinner and talking endlessly about Harry Potter. It's fun to share an obsession! (She loves Remus, I love Sirius, so we squee over the same moments but for totally different reasons.)

She keeps telling me that I *must* read a story called "Beyond the Veil" by Helene, but I can't find it anywhere. (All the Google results lead to broken links.) I don't suppose anyone out there knows where I could find it?

We're ridiculously excited about DragonCon; check out the YA Lit Track schedule. (I am totally going to check out at least one Cassandra Clare panel this year! And I'll totally be polite and sit in the back and not snicker.)

And the Goth Track schedule is looking pretty good, too, although I'm upset that they've scheduled what looks like the most interesting panel ("The Craft of Songwriting" with Andy Deane, Rick Joyce, Rogue, and Voltaire) on Monday at 2:30pm, when I'll already be gone. :( (Although the good news is that I'm going to Disney World for the Pirate Party on Monday night with jaydk and drujan--yes, drujan is finally coming to DragonCon!)

[I'm cross-posting this from my LiveJournal. Hi everyone!]

If you haven't seen it, check out bubble-blunder's open letter to Six Apart (and, y'know, sign if you agree).

Lots of interesting stuff in metafandom today.

I'm too busy reading to post any coherent thoughts, but I will say that one of the things that really gets to me is the underlying sexism and homophobia going on here. Both users were suspended due to homoerotic art. Would we have seen the same response to a piece that depicted a heterosexual couple? The younger party was clearly post-pubescent--he could've been anywhere between 16-24. If that had been a young woman instead of a young man, would Six Apart still be screaming kiddie porn? The idealized woman in our youth-obsessed culture is 16-24, so I have a hard time believing there'd have been a similar outcry.

I think that part of SixApart's underlying discomfort with this type of art is that it reverses the male gaze. The (male-dominated) company is worried about upsetting its (male-dominated) advertisers who are worried about a offending a (male-dominated) culture. Sexualize young women, fine, we'll look the other way. But sexualize young men and now we have a problem. They're getting a taste of the same discomfort that women have to put up with every day, and they don't like it--so they're banning us and trying to make us feel like dirty perverts.

It makes me really sad, because this community has been such a wonderful place for women to explore their sexuality in creative ways--and a refuge from a culture that objectifies us and stigmatizes our desires. Now the real world is intruding on our safe haven, and it totally sucks.

If you haven't seen it, check out bubble_blunder's open letter to Six Apart (and, y'know, sign if you agree).

Lots of interesting stuff in metafandom today.

I'm too busy reading to post any coherent thoughts, but I will say that one of the things that really gets to me is the underlying sexism and homophobia going on here. Both users were suspended due to homoerotic art. Would we have seen the same response to a piece that depicted a heterosexual couple? The younger party was clearly post-pubescent--he could've been anywhere between 16-24. If that had been a young woman instead of a young man, would Six Apart still be screaming kiddie porn? The idealized woman in our youth-obsessed culture is 16-24, so I have a hard time believing there'd have been a similar outcry.

I think that part of SixApart's underlying discomfort with this type of art is that it reverses the male gaze. The (male-dominated) company is worried about upsetting its (male-dominated) advertisers who are worried about a offending a (male-dominated) culture. Sexualize young women, fine, we'll look the other way. But sexualize young men and now we have a problem. They're getting a taste of the same discomfort that women have to put up with every day, and they don't like it--so they're banning us and trying to make us feel like dirty perverts.

It makes me really sad, because this community has been such a wonderful place for women to explore their sexuality in creative ways--and a refuge from a culture that objectifies us and stigmatizes our desires. Now the real world is intruding on our safe haven, and it totally sucks.

[I'm cross posting this to my InsaneJournal, which feels totally scary!]

I'm rusty_halo at InsaneJournal, JournalFen, and GreatestJournal.

I'm going to begin posting my entries here at LJ and also at InsaneJournal. I'll eventually switch to either InsaneJournal or (hopefully) a new non-profit, fan-oriented journaling service.

InsaneJournal looks the best for now because they seem less likely to censor than GreatestJournal, and because it's so difficult for new people to set up accounts at JournalFen.

If you missed it: people are again getting deleted without warning for fannish activities relating to fiction and art. (More info here). I don't feel comfortable staying on LJ knowing that my presence lends tacit support to a company that is mistreating fans--not to mention that it could be me or any of my friends next.

This happened before and was called Strikethrough '07. Apparently LiveJournal decided that instead of clarifying their policies or warning their users before deletion, the answer was to remove the strikethroughs from the names of the suspended users. Because apparently fans are so dumb that we wouldn't realize it was happening again without the strikethrough?? *headdesk*

Honestly, what is so hard about asking people to remove objectionable content, and setting up a review process? How is okay for Six Apart to randomly delete a paying customer's journal (and multiple journals, most of which had nothing objectionable)? A company that thinks it's better to delete first (and ignore questions later) is not one I want to be associated with. And a community cannot thrive when its members are at constant risk of arbitrary deletion.

And the latest thing they're spending our account fees on is this. Which, y'know, couldn't possibly be abused. Given Six Apart's track record, it's safe to say that this is just the beginning of fannish deletions.

Anyway. Go to fandom_flies for more discussion about moving.

Thank you so much to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. You guys are awesome! :)

So far, this is the best articulation I've read of the issues at stake during the recent SixApart/FanLib controversies: "User Generated Content" & Ownership: The User as Citizen by elements.

At core are issues that go much deeper even than the internet, to basic conflicts in modern consciousness between private and corporate ownership and the meaning of public space. Keep reading...

I like it when other people write smart stuff so that I can link to it without putting in my own effort. ;)

Also, stewardess has a pretty good run-down of what probably happened with the deletions.

fanarchive is putting together a non-profit organization to run a fandom-wide archive. This makes me very happy (and I SO wish I had time to help). Setting up a proper non-profit seems the perfect way to do it, since it'll be governed by a set of principles and won't be subject to the whims of any individual or company or fan-faction.

china_shop wrote fanfic about the deletion thing. Fandom/LJ, NC-17. Just, there are no words, go read it.

My two cents: SixApart--or ANY for-profit company--is a bad match for fandom. Companies EXIST to make money. If freedom of speech threatens that (which, in this culture obsessed with preserving the "innocence" of childhood, it will), they *will* curtail freedom of speech. It'll keep happening, and we'll lose communities and friends, until eventually we get fed up and move. And yeah, fandom will fracture, because some people will see censorship as an acceptable price for the convenience of not having to move. I *don't* think that compromise is acceptable, so personally, as soon as folks start moving to somewhere better, I'm totally there.

I've set up accounts at GreatestJournal, JournalFen, and InsaneJournal, because, uh, you never can be too prepared. (I'm *really* hoping for a fan-owned, not-for-profit alternative, though.)

Actually, one of the things that struck me about fan reactions to the journal deletions was that it was at least as much about fear of losing touch with each other as it was about fear of losing our freedom of speech. People weren't just setting up journals at other services to make sure their content would be preserved in case of censorship, they were setting up journals to make sure their friends could find them (and they could find their friends). Which is one of the things that makes the culture of LJ so different from the blogosphere at large (as the bewildered/derisive reactions at Slashdot showed)--we're much more about community.

(There's more about all this on metafandom, of course, if you haven't been following it.)


Semi-related: nimnod posts that it's not shameful to express strong opinions. I like this, because I do think a lot of us (myself included) fall into the trap of dismissing/mocking those who express strong opinions, or of denigrating ourselves for doing so. (For example, it drives me insane when someone goes "It's just the internet" in response to any online controversy. Um, yeah, it's "just" billions of dollars and a cultural center for millions of people.)


In other news, I've been contemplating the mediocrity of Scott Weiland. (YouTube is fun. So many videos!) I don't think he's every done *anything* extraordinary. He doesn't really have his own sound or look or anything--he just copies one predecessor after another.

Seriously, I was thinking to myself, "What is the Scott Weiland sound?" and it's like, um, he emulates Eddie Vedder, Layne Staley, a bunch of seventies singers, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Axl Rose... but who is he REALLY? What does HE actually sound like? I can't figure it out. I can recognize the tone of his voice, but if I were to try to emulate him, I'd really just be emulating whoever he was copying. Right?

He's kind of mediocre in an above-average way, though. Like, I've been listening to the first Velvet Revolver album, and everything is kind of 6 or 7 out of 10. Nothing that strikes me as brilliant, but it's all pretty enjoyable to listen to. He performs a pastiche of rock star tropes, he writes a few interesting lyrics, he sings them well enough... it's all fine.

It makes me happy to listen to, though. Which is funny because when I was younger, admitting you liked Weiland was like admitting you had bad taste. Even if you secretly rocked out to Stone Temple Pilots songs, you didn't tell anyone. Maybe it's that I'm too old to care now, or that I don't know anyone who'd care....

It reminds me of a quote--I think it's from Michael's graduation speech in Christopher Pike's Final Friends III (which raises its own issues about being embarrassed to like something!)--about how you end up missing *everyone* from high school. Not just your friends, but even the people you hated. Eventually the fact of your common shared experience and memories becomes more important than the rivalries of the time. I don't know if this is actually true of high school, but it seems pretty true of music. I'm just so glad to hear a familiar voice in a music scene that's become mostly foreign to me that I don't even mind that it's Scott Weiland.

What a ridiculous kerfuffle.

*shakes head at LiveJournal*

I'm rusty_halo over at GreatestJournal. If you have an account there and still want to be friends, please friend me. (I'll try to do the same with everyone on my FL that I can find.)

I don't really expect fandom will end up migrating over there, but it's nice to have as a backup. I do think an exodus from LiveJournal is inevitable, but a better alternative will have to come along and establish itself first.

Hopefully it'll be something fan-created, non-profit, and free of censorship. People are working on this, right? I vaguely recall seeing something on metafandom. *sigh* I'm so out of the fandom loop.

If you haven't already, join fandom_counts and fill out the poll at fandompays.

(If you've been living under a rock, you can catch up at metafandom. It's also making mainstream news.)

Oh, and back up your journal: PC / PC and Mac.

This leaves me feeling so disgusted and angry. LJ is so *personal*--many of my most heartfelt thoughts and writings are here, and many of my most important social relationships are based here. It feels deeply disturbing to know that my journal or that of someone I care about could be arbitrarily deleted by the Thought Police.

I realize that SixApart has the *legal* right to do what it wants--it's dangerous that we've allowed something we care about so deeply to be under control of a commercial interest that doesn't care about us at all. (For all the crap FanLib spewed, the one argument that I sympathized with was that we're *already* entrusting our community to a commercial venture). Hopefully this will be a lesson that fandom learns and takes to heart in its migration away from LiveJournal and to whatever hopefully-improved place the future brings....

I mean, when I got into fandom, I met everyone on YahooGroups, and LJ was this crazy newfangled thing that I didn't want to have to deal with. And it really wan't that long ago. LJ seems so established now, but in a few years we could be totally happy somewhere else.


Anyway, in better news. What I was actually coming here to post about (before getting distracted by all this crappy stuff) is the new Velvet Revolver video, in which Scott Weiland pulls off an absolutely *stunning* Clint Eastwood impression. I can't stop drooling. My god, the hotness. *drifts off to happy place*


ETA: Oh yeah, and if you're on MySpace (I know, it sucks), you can friend me there.

drujan informed me this weekend that BAPS is closing, which makes me sad, particularly because they're deleting the archives.

I haven't been back there in years, but that's where I entered fandom. (And my opinions have certainly changed dramatically since!) Still, the nostalgia is strong.

I'm looking through old posts now. 2001, and everyone's wondering what's going to happen when Riley returns. (Kelly suggests that Buffy will have to kill him to save Spike--oh, those were the good old days!) There's drujan, 10zlaine, kellyhk, redeem147, chenanceou, ww1614, spikewriter, jerrymcl89, jaydk, shipperx, klytaimnestra, cindermom... and plenty of others, but I can't spend all day scrolling through BAPS. To think, the different places we were in our lives back then.

It's amazing, looking through the list of people posting, how many of those people I later met in person, and how many I still know today. Fandom is crazy. In a good way.


The weekend was fun. jaydk and I finally celebrated drujan's birthday with a dinner at Pukk, which involved lots of their excellent sangria, and I secretly squeed over the fact that I'd gotten my two omnivorous friends to be enthusiastic over a vegan restaurant. ( seeing The Illusionist and other movies )

On Sunday I got some actual work done, and then watched my three latest Netflix movies, which were Less than Zero, Richard III (with Ian McKellen), and Wonder Boys.

( Wonder Boys )

( Richard III )

( Less Than Zero )

( Sharpe's Honor, the book )

Oh, and I'm leaving for DragonCon tomorrow. I'm not really into anything fannish at the moment, but I'm sure I'll find stuff to do, and I'll definitely be seeing Godhead, the Cruxshadows, and Voltaire, and hanging out with jaydk and 10zlaine.

I think that if there was a heaven, it'd be a lot like WriterCon. You're surrounded by hundreds of brilliant, talented people, all of whom share your interest in delving deep into the meaning of TV, movies, books. Everywhere you turn, there's an old friend who you haven't seen in ages, or have never even met in person, or else there's someone you don't know but would love to meet. There's even yummy vegan food in the hospitality suite, so you never have to starve. And random strangers keep coming up to you and either 1) thanking you for your website or 2) complementing your shoes. And then when you finally go back to your room, there's three people so cool that, even though you're exhausted, you stay up another hour chatting.

Heaven would probably have a nicer hotel, though, and in (my personal) heaven no one wakes up until at least noon. Aside from that, it was pretty much perfect. I just wish I'd had more time to talk to and meet everyone--there were so many awesome people that I did get to hang out with, but plenty more than I either missed entirely or passed in the hallway and went "OMG, it's you! We'll have to talk later!" and didn't see again.

There's no way to list everyone, but just, y'know, to everyone who was there: I miss you! I want to go back! The whole weekend was awesome!

( Here's a more specific con report )

So, yeah. The point is: WriterCon was awesome. And, seriously, if I could choose any social group in the world to hang out with, it would be the WriterCon crowd.

Peter Tolan's posting over at the Rescue Me TWOP board.

Quite interesting. Though, of course, he had to get in the middle of an argument about whether a recent scene was or wasn't rape, so there's wank. His posts start on this page.

If you're not watching Rescue Me.... come on! It's good!


In other news, I went to a big brunch on Sunday. drujan and I were discussing the recent Harry Potter wank, and slowly the entire table (7 non-fandom people) fell silent and gaped at us with mouths open as we explained the thing. It really is boggling.

I know this already making the rounds within fandom, but for anyone who's managed to miss it, you really must read this: apparently a huge amount of the wank that's gone on in Harry Potter fandom for the past few years was all caused by one batshit insane fan and her zillion sockpuppets. I was over here (barely) participating in Spike fandom, yet even I remember a bunch of this stuff happening. Crazy to see that it all ties together like this.

It's quite a fascinating study in human social interaction--almost a guide on how to manipulate people and play on their biases in order to gain social power. Very much worth reading, even just to recognize the signs and avoid such people in the future.

10zlaine, you'll find it quite interesting.

( personal/tmi )


In other news, now that I've had a good night's sleep and washed off the ickiness of the Hartford train station, I've decided that going to Hartford wasn't a mistake after all. I mean, you know, it was PIG. And ... yeah.

Now I'm trying to decide--should I go to San Francisco and LA, or should I try for the three Texas dates, Austin, Dallas, and Houston? I want to go to the ones that'll have better crowds. I'm leaning toward SF and LA, but those guys I hung with in Florida might be going to the Texas ones, in which case it would be fun to have traveling partners. And then, should I go to the final show in Nashville, too? I'm tempted, but it's on a Thursday, meaning I'd have to take two vacation days. Argh. I'm going to wait and see.

You know what? If you're going to defriend me because I have the gall to read the journal of someone you don't like, then chances are, you're not someone I wanted to be friends with anyway. Goodbye and good riddance.

Seriously. Way to tear fandom in half. And completely alienate people who might've otherwise taken your side.

(And obviously, no offense is meant to those who judge me for who I am instead of for what I read.)

I'm so sorry to hear that nandibble has passed away.

I didn't know her well, but all of my interactions with her were positive. I archived a few of her stories and met her briefly at WriterCon. She was polite, and passionate about her work, and I was honored that she always had something nice to say about my website.

She was a great contributor to Spike fandom, and she'll be missed.

queenofthorns finally wrote her long-threatened Big Post of Jaime Love. Well, at least, she wrote Part 1. Check it out.

If you still haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire ... oh, c'mon already! It's perfect for Spike fans; I already got drujan and 10zlaine hooked.

If only this fic by lunasky had been the actual ending of Veronica Mars this week.

Speaking of VM, ( spoilers for 2x09 )

And speaking of nostalgia, sophia_helix posted this poll about best and favorite Darin Morgan episodes of X-Files.

*sigh*

Remember Darin Morgan? Remember X-Files? Remember the cockroach running across the screen, or that time Mulder shrieked?

*gets all depressingly nostalgic*

That was back before I knew about internet fandom (I think maybe we had AOL, pay by the minute, and my dad let me have 15 minutes a week or something useless like that). But I was a fan, like in the fan club, and my best friend and I used to watch it together over the phone, calling each other at the commercials and screaming about whatever amazing plot twist had just happened. And we'd have sleepover marathons and we even kinda wrote fanfic--at least, Mulder and Scully parodies appeared as characters in original stuff that we wrote.

Stupid nostalgia.

I've barely been reading LJ. I know, I suck. Sorry.

I was channel surfing the other day and came across Logan Echolls. I haven't watched, or really even thought about, VM for a couple of weeks. So the level of my emotional reaction was surprising; it was close to the kind of affectionate happiness you get when you see an old friend after a long time apart. I've not felt that level of emotional investment in a fictional character since, oh... Spike.

I guess we'll see what happens when the new season starts. Thus far I haven't felt any need to write essays or participate in the fandom or any of that. And I've (hopefully) learned my lesson from BtVS: don't get your hopes up and never allow some TV show to influence your own personal happiness. So, emotional investment heavily checked. And I'm sure it helps immensely that I'm not a shipper, though I continue to hate the way that these shows are framed so that any character who is not important to the main character is supposed to be considered unimportant by the audience, too.

Part of what I love about "A Song of Ice and Fire" (to switch topics here a bit) is its true ensemble nature. There is no one hero around whom everything else revolves, and no one "truth" against which all opinions are judged. You can have characters on completely different sides who are each understandable and sympathetic despite their differences (and it's also nice that the series has many different factions, not a "one side vs the other side" binary).

( A bunch of babbling, mostly about moral ambiguity in A Song of Ice and Fire and more comparing Jaime Lannister with Logan and Spike )

( Bad Christian Bale movies: Newsies and Equilibrium )