glass houses

Yah so I watched Sleepy Hollow over the weekend and it was fun. That movie had a higher body count than I usually see in a year's worth -- OK a decade's worth -- of movies, but it was all Tim Burton style cutesie-pie death so it didn't make me squirm.

And why is it so very delightful to see Johnny Depp get squirted with blood repeatedly? Tim must think it is just as delightful as I do, because he must have done it seven times in that flick.

So that fulfilled my need to watch an attractive man prance about in breeches and a cravat for the weekend. But I still felt compelled to indulge my Jane Eyre obsession by trolling the netherworlds of the internet to find other, similarly obsessed individuals. And that little experiment was much more of a horror show than anything Tim Burton had to serve up.

Here's a tip: if you ever need to rid yourself of an obsession, find a fansite devoted solely to the object of your affection. Preferably one with lots of fanfic. And animated emoticons.

I found a few of these dedicated to Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre fame, (or at least the actor who portrayed him in the latest BBC adaptation) and may I say this:

Holy le Crap.

People are nuts! And have enormous amounts of free time!

And THEN I saw what these people post on YOUTUBE to attest to their undying love.

Wow.

I had actually come across this breed of fansite once before when I became enamored of a certain TV show that originated in Scotland. I wanted to know what the backstory was between some of the characters, since I had discovered the show several seasons in, so I went a-googling away one Saturday and found some very helpful sites with episode summaries, which had links to other sites which had transcriptions of each episode, which had links to other sites which had all manner of homemade screen savers and wallpaper and avatars and ever-so-slightly pornographic fanfic about the main male characters...

And I was done! Obsession: cured.

Once you find yourself possibly in company with people who express themselves primarily through the repetition of exclamation points and bouncey smiley faces, and who use their God-given photoshop skillz to create video montages of fictional characters set to current pop tunes, once they have penned an ode or two in praise of their surpassing beauty and grace, and perhaps speculated on what they might do were they to run into them on a windswept hillside in Wales, well, you have a choice to make. And it is a pretty clear-cut choice at that.

I won't say that this cure has been complete yet, because I am in no way ready to erase my cache of this installment of Masterpiece Theatre off my DVR. But I am at least willing to rein it in a little. It is vital that one remain on the right side of certain lines in the sand, especially those lines that involve jumpy little emoticons and poorly written fanfic.

But the less said about those wallpaper montages the better. You know, some of them are really quite tastefully done, actually. From a purely aesthetic point of view.