Went to the midnight showing of Watchmen. My thoughts: (1) The fight scenes were WAY overdone. I thought that the point of the movie was that these people weren’t superheroes and yet whenever they got down to business, people started flying through the air with the greatest of ease. (2) Excessive gore. I l like blood and guts as much as the next guy but some of the stuff in this movie was BRUTAL. I thought Doc Manhattan vaporized people, not turned them inside out and strung their organs across the ceiling. Or if you want to establish that Dan and Laurie have still got their superhero chops, enough to take down a large group of muggers, show them doing their karate and stuff but I don’t need to see them stabbing people in the neck and crippling their limbs. (3) WTF music. A lot of the songs seemed kinda fitting but the way they were tossed into the film, which was basically just to blast the song at full volume with no concern for background sounds or even if the song was appropriate for the scene, was ridiculous.

Now reading this, you might assume that I didn’t actually enjoy the movie and that is because you couldn’t see the rapture written across my face as I sat there for almost three hours watching one of my favorite comic series come to life on the big screen. Sure it wasn’t a perfect adaptation of the original but I know better than to look for that in a comic book movie. Despite all of its shortcomings, Watchmen was an experience to see and I count it as an overall success.

In my own opinion, one of the biggest difficulties in research (particularly in my own kind of research which amounts to “Oh wow that’s interesting I want to look at that”) is breaking into that really important group of people who are doing what it is that you want to study and are doing it well. It’s tough to know that these people are out there doing what it is you’re interested in but have no way to get involved with it. Contrary to popular [research] beliefs, many people don’t care about research. What’s in it for them? Enrichment of the field? No thank you. Even having done my own masters thesis, I’m not sure I would sit through a 30-45 minute survey and followup interview solely to help out that research area.

When discussing online communities, many times researchers point out that there is no need for physical or previously-existing community interactions between members. While in a pure sense of the term ‘virtual’, I can see this being true, what I wonder is how these existing physical or “real world” relationships affect the virtual spaces. What I am imagining are RL friends who join forum communities together or play MMO games with each other primarily because of their previously existant relationship. Is this something that virtual spaces need? Does it enhance the development of a virtual community by providing an anchor of sociability that need not be formed in an environment that, according to numerous researchers of virtual spaces, has a good deal of trouble letting people interact in a deep and natural way?

And this is a good thing! Though my inital reason for writing this has long since escaped me, I wanted to say that as I slowly finish writing my thesis I’ve found myself back in that place where I get to see all of academia spread out before me, a big wide landscape of possibilities, directions, and futures. It’s still intimidating on the best of days (and you don’t want to see me on the worst) but…

I think I like it.

Also, I’m just getting back from a fun-filled weekend of drinking, debauchery, and marriage and I’ve got quite a few new ideas/doodles/designs kicking around in this noggin of mine. Let’s see what I can toss up here, all the while staying on target with my thesis schedule…