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thessalianUm ... all of them?
Seriously, much likelithiumdoll, I rewatch series rather than episodes. I have a small but adequate collection of TV series DVD box set (Ultraviolet, Buffy, Angel, Being Human, two seasons of Eureka, Torchwood S1 ... wow, can you tell where my genre flag flies?) and I will mainline them quite happily ... or at least, happily provided I can skip a few episodes that I find particularly annoying now and then. However, there are 'comfort episodes' of various shows that I will switch on when I only really have time for the one episode and want something I know I adore. In this case, I think I will have to go with the Buffy episode "Hush".
I pick this one because it's one I actually watch rather than having on in the background while I'm doing something else, because it's not a background-noise episode in the least. There's minimal dialogue by the very nature of the episode, and is - in my opinion, anyway - one of the most clever episodes Buffy has. To be able to convey so much in facial expressions and gestures is just plain awesome, and it's one of the few times the actors can really shine beyond the one-liners that make that show so popular. I have a certain admiration for anyone who can tell a story with nothing more than body language. Een the spots where the written word is used in the place of actual speech says something about the characters (for instance, when Willow takes the time to write "Hi, Giles" on her whiteboard when a simple wave would have done; it just suits Willow's shy-polite awkward friendliness so well). So when it comes to episodes I watch rather than listening to with half an ear and then tuning in when the dialogue or lack thereof indicates that something is going on that I need to look at, that's probably the one that best fits the bill of an episode I have really, actually watched more than five times.
In other news, apparently having a best friend is bad. It apparently promotes possessiveness, bullying and cliques. Well, they can frankly stuff it, in my opinion. Look, that would not have worked for me. I could not have had a group of a dozen or so friends in elementary school because just about everyone in my class thought I was weird. There were limited people that I could actually talk to, who shared my interests, who didn't think I was a freak. To be 'in with' everyone in my class at school, I'd have to have been very, very different as a person. I would have had to hide who I was, be ashamed of my tastes and interests. How is that healthier than having a best friend with whom you can share those interests and be yourself?
Welcome to the monoculture, where everyone is expected to behave like everyone else just so they can fit in and be 'normal'.
It's not like I haven't heard this shit before. I recall being mercilessly bullied by a particularly violent and mean-spirited girl when I was in junior high school. She stuck chewed gum on my combination lock, she shoved me in the corridors ... once she tried to steal my handbag but because I wear mine with the strap across my chest instead of just over one shoulder, all she did was claw my back while reaching for the strap hard enough to draw a bit of blood and nearly choke me before she gave up. The only time I ever physically retaliated was when she picked on my then-best friend. He had a broken leg and was on crutches, and she kicked them out from under him ... at which point I hit her. There was a scuffle, I bloodied her nose, I got detention while she got suspended. (It was my first offense and there were mitigating circumstances; she'd been in detention so often she more or less had her own desk in there.) Anyway, point is that before we got to this point (I think around the time she tried to steal my handbag, actually), Mum went into school to talk to my principal about the ceaseless bullying I was getting from this girl. The principal's answer was to handwave the bully's behaviour - she came from a troubled family environment, allowances were made, yadda. Then started in on me, saying how "Maybe if she were more like the other girls, she wouldn't get picked on so much". As I recall, my mother's response was, "So you'd like my daughter to be a vicious little bully?" The principal's response was, after a brief stammer, "...Well, maybe if she just dressed more like the other girls..." That earned him a verbal reaming as only the women in my family can truly manage (you think I could rant for my nation in the Olympics? Where do you think I learned it from?) and things returned to the status quo - in-between lessons was a giant open-ended game of "Kick the Thesski".
Point is that encouraging people to not have best friends, to socialise equally with everyone, is the end result of the kind of thinking my junior high principal employed: if you do what everyone else does, say what everyone else says and never, ever show a spark of individuality that will get you shunned, then you'renot any trouble for the school administration so they don't actually have to punish anyone or do their jobs a healthy, happy child. Bullshit. I was not a stupid kid. Maybe I could have fit in if I'd figured out what these little shits wanted. But I didn't want to be a sheep. I wanted to be me. I wanted friends I could have on my own terms, without hiding who I was for the sake of an easy life. It's nice when there are more of them, but sometimes it doesn't work that way. That's a large part of why some people have just a couple of close friends ... and a best friend; someone with whom they can share everything and not be judged.
These days I have a long list of friends with whom I can share just about everything, and I am grateful for them. Back in the day, though, I was very much alone beyond a few people. So here's to the list of people I called 'best friend' between the ages of three and sixteen:
Stacy Dion
Gillian Murray
Jason McLean (despite what he did to me when we were ten)
Richard Strother
Leanne Toffell
Fuck this article and every bit of research that went into it - for some people, best friends is how it works and I'd rather be seen as 'unhealthy' by people who don't even remember how crappy school can be than have been without them. I'd have been lonely and miserable without them, so I call it a win.
Seriously, much like
lithiumdoll, I rewatch series rather than episodes. I have a small but adequate collection of TV series DVD box set (Ultraviolet, Buffy, Angel, Being Human, two seasons of Eureka, Torchwood S1 ... wow, can you tell where my genre flag flies?) and I will mainline them quite happily ... or at least, happily provided I can skip a few episodes that I find particularly annoying now and then. However, there are 'comfort episodes' of various shows that I will switch on when I only really have time for the one episode and want something I know I adore. In this case, I think I will have to go with the Buffy episode "Hush".I pick this one because it's one I actually watch rather than having on in the background while I'm doing something else, because it's not a background-noise episode in the least. There's minimal dialogue by the very nature of the episode, and is - in my opinion, anyway - one of the most clever episodes Buffy has. To be able to convey so much in facial expressions and gestures is just plain awesome, and it's one of the few times the actors can really shine beyond the one-liners that make that show so popular. I have a certain admiration for anyone who can tell a story with nothing more than body language. Een the spots where the written word is used in the place of actual speech says something about the characters (for instance, when Willow takes the time to write "Hi, Giles" on her whiteboard when a simple wave would have done; it just suits Willow's shy-polite awkward friendliness so well). So when it comes to episodes I watch rather than listening to with half an ear and then tuning in when the dialogue or lack thereof indicates that something is going on that I need to look at, that's probably the one that best fits the bill of an episode I have really, actually watched more than five times.
In other news, apparently having a best friend is bad. It apparently promotes possessiveness, bullying and cliques. Well, they can frankly stuff it, in my opinion. Look, that would not have worked for me. I could not have had a group of a dozen or so friends in elementary school because just about everyone in my class thought I was weird. There were limited people that I could actually talk to, who shared my interests, who didn't think I was a freak. To be 'in with' everyone in my class at school, I'd have to have been very, very different as a person. I would have had to hide who I was, be ashamed of my tastes and interests. How is that healthier than having a best friend with whom you can share those interests and be yourself?
Welcome to the monoculture, where everyone is expected to behave like everyone else just so they can fit in and be 'normal'.
It's not like I haven't heard this shit before. I recall being mercilessly bullied by a particularly violent and mean-spirited girl when I was in junior high school. She stuck chewed gum on my combination lock, she shoved me in the corridors ... once she tried to steal my handbag but because I wear mine with the strap across my chest instead of just over one shoulder, all she did was claw my back while reaching for the strap hard enough to draw a bit of blood and nearly choke me before she gave up. The only time I ever physically retaliated was when she picked on my then-best friend. He had a broken leg and was on crutches, and she kicked them out from under him ... at which point I hit her. There was a scuffle, I bloodied her nose, I got detention while she got suspended. (It was my first offense and there were mitigating circumstances; she'd been in detention so often she more or less had her own desk in there.) Anyway, point is that before we got to this point (I think around the time she tried to steal my handbag, actually), Mum went into school to talk to my principal about the ceaseless bullying I was getting from this girl. The principal's answer was to handwave the bully's behaviour - she came from a troubled family environment, allowances were made, yadda. Then started in on me, saying how "Maybe if she were more like the other girls, she wouldn't get picked on so much". As I recall, my mother's response was, "So you'd like my daughter to be a vicious little bully?" The principal's response was, after a brief stammer, "...Well, maybe if she just dressed more like the other girls..." That earned him a verbal reaming as only the women in my family can truly manage (you think I could rant for my nation in the Olympics? Where do you think I learned it from?) and things returned to the status quo - in-between lessons was a giant open-ended game of "Kick the Thesski".
Point is that encouraging people to not have best friends, to socialise equally with everyone, is the end result of the kind of thinking my junior high principal employed: if you do what everyone else does, say what everyone else says and never, ever show a spark of individuality that will get you shunned, then you're
These days I have a long list of friends with whom I can share just about everything, and I am grateful for them. Back in the day, though, I was very much alone beyond a few people. So here's to the list of people I called 'best friend' between the ages of three and sixteen:
Stacy Dion
Gillian Murray
Jason McLean (despite what he did to me when we were ten)
Richard Strother
Leanne Toffell
Fuck this article and every bit of research that went into it - for some people, best friends is how it works and I'd rather be seen as 'unhealthy' by people who don't even remember how crappy school can be than have been without them. I'd have been lonely and miserable without them, so I call it a win.