Wow - I feel flush with power! ;)

How about we compromise and call it either: 1) Who doesn't love Monkey? or 2) Go Denzel. Choose Denzel.

Bwah! I love #2.

Slug: Did you know that the Chinese characters for "movie" translate literally into "electric shadow"? Isn't that pretty? Um. Yeah, so, this is the Buffistas movie talk thread. Drop on by.

Wow. There's a movie theatre in Canberra called Electric Shadows. That now makes sense.

I have been reading this weekend about the cognitive powers of monkeys, apes and occasionally rats. I like "Go Denzel, Choose Denzel", but only if we first drug him, die his hair lime green and see if he then reacts to seeing himself in a mirror by watching his hand move.

I'm with Jess on the total impossibility of a spoiler policy catering to Unamericans. In any case, film spoilers aren't like Buffy/Angel spoilers; because I don't have a mental image of which character is which, or a pre-existing narrative to fit them into, I find I tend to forget spoilers after a month or so anyway. Major HSQ excepted, but most films are released here before they're released on video in the US, so the two-weeks-after-video thing should cover that.

For the record, we've already used "Buffistas go to Hollywood," back on Table Talk.

Xposting because this to me is community-related though with a few edits

I've been sitting here thinking about msbelle's post in Natter which she doesn't want to post here. What she brought up has really been on my mind quite a bit over the past few days. I've been in a kingshit mood which isn't really related to here, but is inflamed by here.

I think one of the things that I've been mulling over is that I know our community is changing and that instead of having a conversation about that, we are conversing about things like thread proliferation or how natter is too fast or whatever.

I think one thing that I've noticed is that I feel like, community wide, there is a hunkering down going on that is depressing. It feels like in an effort to shape our community, that people keep knocking at the walls and saying, "I want to create this space just for me and people 'like me' and I want it to operate in this manner. If it doesn't operate in this matter to suit me, then I'm going to keep bringing it up until it does suit me!"

People complain that Natter has become so superficial and so uninteresting. I think, to paraphrase Nutty, it's become a place of my dinner discussion coupled with "Timelies". What worries me is that as we remove the "content" type posts from natter, it will only become worse. Deep things can be discussed, but it feels like we don't discuss them because we don't want to upset anyone or to offend anyone. There's a whole lot of eggshells and I feel like I'm tiptoeing a lot.

But I don't think it's true for just Natter. Lots of the conversations here have moved to the surface. We are all hiding in corners where we feel safe and unthreatened and, well, unchallenged. This of course is a blessing but it's also a curse. Without impetus to lean into discomfort a little, there is also little impetus to grow. Maybe right now this is all about comfort, rather than learning?

I guess I'm just sad because I don't feel like I can voice a minority opinion anymore. In my paranoia, I feel like there are long silences and tense pauses after I post. Maybe it's me being paranoid. Or maybe I'm just annoying people and they are going back channel in an effort to keep it polite. But I miss times when people keep it real too.

If I'm the only one dissatisfied (and I don't think I am), then I'll just roll up my carpet and go for a while because I miss the old Buffista vibe.

If I am not the only one, then I propose a change. To make change possibelf or me, I'm going to drop Bureacracy completely because it just pisses me off and raises my blood pressure (in part because of what I stated above)

So, as of now, I'm declaring a Take Back Natter campaign. I don't mean that I don't want any of you to stop nattering. In fact, just the opposite, I want us all to Talk Hard. It might be uncomfortable, but it also might bring the magic back.

Thanks for that post Kat. I'm not sure I'm dissatisfied in exactly the same ways as you, but I am dissatisfied.

Lots of the conversations here have moved to the surface. We are all hiding in corners where we feel safe and unthreatened and, well, unchallenged.

Not true of Bitches, IMO. I don't hang in Natter because it does move too fast, but that's my problem, not Natter's. Substantive things do get brought up in the show threads, between episodes, and some of those conversations get fairly gritty. I've seen Bureaucracy get very challenging--sometime's it's the most invigorating thread on the board.

Not true of Bitches, IMO.

Really? I've felt that that's more true of Bitches. So many people have said that Bitches is their "safe space" that I'm really reluctant to bring up anything too controversial there.