In other news, I'm completely and entirely in love with AJHall. (I fell in love while reading Lust Over Pendell and I've been falling in love again and again via LiveJournal. I've been pondering the Recent Kerfuffle over that one egomaniacal fan who demanded payment for finishing their WIP and have concluded that as much as I love some authors in fandom, I probably wouldn't pay to read their stuff, if payment was acceptable in fandom, which I continue to think it isn't, but I'd pay AJHall, even just for continued access to nothing more than her Livejournal.)
Anyhow. Before I went on Semantic Safari, the point of introducing AJHall was to mention that if you haven't followed the link to Pandarus' discussion of love, eros, agape, and sexual versus emotional connection, it's a really fascinating topic and you should go read it. I didn't find much to quibble with, and that's unusual for me. LoTR, SG, DS, HP, XF, Firefly, and a lot of other fandoms make an appearance.
It made me think. Is the concept of "love," is the deep emotional bond shared by two characters trivialized by insisting upon a sexual component?
To a certain extent, I think it is. Those who prefer the adversarial pairings (Mulder/Krycek) won't have as much of this problem, because that's about a different kind of attraction, but those who see who characters deeply bonded emotionally (Starsky/Hutch) and nudge it into sexual attraction...yes, maybe that trivializes the true complexity of the emotional connection.
And, yes, I believe that in the Western tradition, a selfless, "pure," and non-sexual love occupies a very special place, being considered in some ways "superior" to sexual love, but I also think that the Western tradition is the product of the church screwing with and trying to grab control of people's emotional and sexual lives in an attempt to retain control of society and that's all just an entirely different rant, so I won't go there. (Although I think a case could be made for a semantic discussion of the gap between "selfless" and "sexual.")
The odds of fandom being able to take on the delicately nuanced territory of an all-encompassing emotional but non-physical love are slim to none. It doesn't feed the kinks of the blind herd of readers just looking for a sexual bounce and that kind of thing can be so damned hard to write that only the smallest handful of authors would even take the time to try it. An even smaller percentage of them could probably handle it decently.
As a reader...well, when I go to pro fiction, no, of course I don't need the sexual component. Mostly I don't even want it.
Frodo and Sam are not "so doing it" and not the entire world full of fangirl squeeing over the casting of pretty actors can't change that. But they do love each other, deeply and sincerely and I think sexualizing it reduces the relationship to something less than it is. Sexual love does encompass the selfishness of sexual desire and sexual desire is a drive strong enough to overpower almost anything else.
If Sam wanted to get into Frodo's pants, then his selfless sacrifice is no longer selfless...he's hoping for the 'reward' of physical gratification and that's not selfless. It demeans Sam's actions and his willingness to sacrifice himself.
I don't doubt it's possible to write a truly selfless love that also contains sexual desire, but not one in a million authors could handle the balance in the way necessary to make both the selflessness and the sexuality stand up to scrutiny.
OTOH, that's not really what I come to fandom for, is it? If I'm looking for quality fiction that's deeply nuanced and explores the ramifications of the various emotional bonds humans can form, I don't come to fandom. I'm delighted when I find it (all four or five times I've found it) but it's not why I'm here. I'm mostly looking for a very specific emotional development between two specific characters. Frequently, since I read only slash, I want a sexual connection between characters, even if it's not an explicit one. I don't expect complex layers of emotionality and I don't expect a delicate interplay between selfish and selfless motivations.
Which does, now that I think about it, make anything I could add to Pandarus' entry rather moot. But do go read it, because it's really worth considering.
I'm still pondering the whole MYSA-AS thing, but I don't have any startling conclusions. I've looked at most of the new books I bought, even though I haven't had time to read all of them thoroughly.
Seems to be like almost any genre of fiction. There are things being sold that surprise you.
There are people whose story-telling ability doesn't rise much above that of the average (and not in a good way) fanfic story.
There are people whose drawing ability seems to vary wildly from one panel to the next. (I understand from the author's notes that there's sometimes a "team" of people working on the graphics, but surely that can't explain why some panels look remarkably like the drawings that I, with a dozen hours of "practice" under my belt, am producing.)
There's too much non-con (okay, that's my squick, but this is my blog) or borderline non-con stuff and when it is consensual, it's not always clearly laid out that way.
Avoiding complete titles to stay below the radar of fandom, let me mention that the "Gravit___n" series was mentioned to me. I looked at it in the bookstore and decided it did look like something I'd like to read.
Upon getting into it, I find borderline non-con, actual non-con in the form of a gang-bang r*pe scene (from which the victim recovers instantly with no aftereffects), a storyline that tears along like an out-of-control freight train for no sensible reason, very uneven drawing, and an almost inconceivable lack of depth and nuance in the primary protagonist. At one point his lover advises the guy to get some ritalin. Me, I would have suggested prozac. And maybe some heavy-duty therapy. (Even before the gang-bang.)
Also? The thing about drawing a character looking like a two year-old, to indicate he/she is acting immature? Such a squick when they're in a sexual relationship with another character. Just gross. When, in the series under discussion, the "hero" was suddenly pictured as a toddler, hanging desperately from his lover's arm? So. Grossed. Out.
Don't get me wrong. The series is very compelling, but not for the character of the "hero" of the story. It's actually the lover and his familial/business/etc. ramifications that make the story work.
Oddly, the whole half-morphing into an animal thing doesn't bother me half as much. It's also used to illustrate emotion (or to hint at motives), but it doesn't squick me.
And I find the reading back-to-front, right-to-left fun and interesting, although that could be my dyslexia kicking in. One series I bought turned out to be laid out like a "regular" book and that annoyed me.
I get lost in "action" scenes sometimes. Remember how Batman (60s era) filled the screen with POW! SOCK! WHAM! sometimes? Some MYSA-AS books offer a panel like that with no indicator of precisely what happened or who done what to who. While I'm irrationally entertained to see, in the next panel, a character with a bandaged X on his head, to indicate he got smacked, sometimes these "action" scenes go on for three or four panels. You never know quite what's happening or who is involved. I don't quite see the point. I've studied a few of those panels and it's not like the visual being presented is particularly creative or important. Why bother? Without even the corner of a face or the shadow of a fist, what am I supposed to understand from these?
But there's a lovely freedom in the graphics. Sometimes things are "boxed" the way I'm used to seeing them from the funnies in the daily paper. Sometimes a panel is laid over a larger, unframed drawing. Sometimes there are bits of drawings at the bottoms or sides of panels.
There's a confusing freedom in the text. How am I supposed to read text placed outside of any graphic? What about text that falls outside the "speech balloons"? Am I supposed to understand when I'm reading a character's thoughts and when they're speaking aloud? Because I don't. And sometimes there's an exchange of sentences between two characters (in a different lettering style) that doesn't seem to belong to the story at all. Do I assume the characters are muttering these things at each other or do I assume the author/artist was just having a little fun?
Possibly I'm over-thinking the whole thing. I tend to do that.
Especially when I have too much time on my hands. I finished my beta-testing two hours ago. Now I'm back to Nothing To Do.
Oh, well. Count your blessings. I could be going on and on and one about RayK and Fraser again, and we've all already been through all of that. At least this is a new topic. (Anyone complains and I really will start posting endlessly on the wonderful rectangles I'm learning to draw.)
I have no idea where the phrase came from and couldn't care less, but there you go. A murky provenance is no bar to theft in Anne's World.
I don't normally enjoy the squalls and tempests of fandom. In fact, I normally go far to avoid them. Having said that, there's no rational explanation for why I've enjoyed the foaming-at-the-mouth freak-out that has been the response to JKR's most recent offering.
But I have been. I've been enjoying it (Mostly via a link on Ari's journal, but the link isn't working at the moment.)
On the off chance that there's some fan out there who still hasn't read the book but for some inexplicable reason reads this blog, and who doesn't want to be spoiled, the rest is hidden....
RPS...stalking.
Stalking...RPS.
I don't see a lot of difference.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)So. Hypothetically. If you opened your refrigerator and got out a Tupperware container full of grapes and a couple of grapes appeared to be growing mold, would you:
A) Throw those two away, rinse off the rest, and eat them, or
B) Throw them all away?
Let me know, soon. I'm hungry. [This Food Adventure moment brought to you by the letter P (for ptomaine) and the color Green (for mold).]
Today's office excitement...I have some actual work to do! I'm beta-testing a workflow management interface we designed for the Belles, a new client. Buehler's out of the office right now, so I'm not actually working on it. I'm saving it for when he's around, so I can be Noticeably Working.
Besides, I've been down this path before. I'll tell the Three Stooges what's unclear or inconsistent and they'll ignore me. I'm not in any hurry to complete that cycle again.
One of my favorite in-office games is the Outlook Note. I pick a date six months or a year into the future, and then write myself a note, setting it as a "reminder" in Outlook. I tell myself what I'm doing at the moment, and what I'm thinking about. One popped up today, which is why I'm thinking about it. The last time it popped up, I was still struggling with the late, unlamented SEN. Heh. It's nice to be free of that monster.
Last night, I indulged in...well, not much. I called my mother and chatted with her. I called the Resident Consultant (who isn't resident this week) to ask her how her trip & meetings were going. I read some blogs. I read a book. I played some computer games. I over-ate.
I did not work on cleaning the kitchen, which was the Number One item on my Wednesday Agenda.
Instead, I pondered MYSA-AS. I get how people are all in love with reading it, but my On-Line Researches indicate that the fandom around the genre is...text only. Obviously I understand that drawing isn't something everyone can do and maybe it's no different from writing text-only stories about television shows or movies, but it strikes me as odd.
I have no desire to read any of it. Whatever it is that's interesting the Pondering part of my brain about MYSA-AS, it has nothing to do with being that kind of fannish about it. It's the marriage of picture and text that's holding my attention at the moment.
The Resident Consultant did suggest that if the original series Rapunzel loaned to me is the one sticking in my brain, I'd be better off buying copies of that series and not struggling to find something else "like" those.
Of course, she subsequently reminded me that I'm on a Fiscal Austerity program, and not allowed to buy any new books, so the suggestion wasn't worth that much. (But I could buy one. I could buy the first of that series. I know the B&N I pass on the way home has it because I swung by there the other day. Or, I could buy the first two. $9.99* isn't that expensive, I could afford two and still be being reasonably Austere, right?)
Tonight, as I scrub the kitchen floor, I will be Further Pondering these topics.
Unless I'm Pondering Fraser's current predicament, a thing I may well need to do. He's at a tricky point right now, what with both Dief and his dad giving him problems in their own separate ways.
The story is going to be a tad longer (certainly longer than that last TS piece), but I promise I'm not attempting to Plumb the Depths of Human Experience. In the end, I've decided that I'd rather turn out 50 pages of silly stupidity than sweat over 50 pages of Raw Emotion.
I'm not built for dealing with Raw Emotion. When faced with it, I tend to back out of the room slowly, pretending to be invisible. (I could have an Issue around that, but at my age, it's a bit late to be rocking the boat of contented placidity to work out Issues that aren't really damaging my life.)
I am getting pretty ungry, though. I can't make up my mind about the grapes, so I'd better go snag a turkey sandwich instead. After which I will need to do some Actual Paid Work.
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* Except, of course, it is. When I was a kid, you could buy new paperbacks for less than half that price.
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What I love more than blogging is the knowledge that practically no one is reading this blog. And that the friends who do visit are free to leave without reading all the way through entries like this one.
So, what about that manga/yaoi stuff, anyhow?
Yes, I'm still pondering it. That's what I do. I ponder things until I understand them. (That's how I got started writing slash. And why, when I pondered g*y pr0n, the project wound up costing me...let's just say, enough to get Amazon.com travel cups two years in a row, back in the early days when they sent you a cup for spending $1,000, or was it $2,000 or more in a year. And how I wound up with a political blog that eats up about 20 hours a week of my time. Etc.) (I don't intend to do that with MYSA-AS. Spend a ton of money, I mean.)
For reference, I read the previously mentioned "found on-line" manga stories and wasn't amazingly impressed with them. I found one that wasn't bad and if I remember, I'll post a link to it later. Not that I think most of you care.
I pondered it all for a few days, then went back and re-read the two "Moon" volumes again. I wouldn't have bought them if I'd known gender-changing was at the heart of the romance. Whether it's my lack of imagination or what, I didn't find the gender-changing character at all strongly drawn. His/her personality never rose above "bland" at any point.
So, I invested another $30 in the project, but just to buy a couple of books that were more single-mindedly "yaoi/shounen ai" (y/sa) and one book that wasn't yaoi/shounen ai, for comparison. I didn't mind the gender-switching, per se, but I would have preferred that my "samples" of the genre be more purely m/m.
Only the Ring Finger Knows was, I think, the title of the two y/sa books. Hmmm.
It could be that I didn't pay enough attention to what I was buying, but I wasn't happy to run across a non-con scene. My on-line research assures me that this is a fairly common set-up, almost a required structure, in the genre and not even really thought of as non-con. One partner seems always to be very aggressive and the other seems to be expected to be amazingly passive...to the point of having to be overpowered to have the sex he's not willing to admit he wants.
I personally think that's a tough line to walk, to keep it erotic without becoming rape, and I don't think this particular pair of books managed it. From my on-line reading I also know that many other readers find this line gets crossed too often. I suppose, knowing that in the original culture/context, it's not considered rape, should make a difference, but I'm not sure it does for me.
It could have been the characterization. The primary narrative character was okay in emotion and in responding to things, but he didn't have a...well, he didn't have a clear personality. I never quite got a handle on who he was. Besides that, we wound up meeting three or four of his siblings, but not for any particular reason that I understood. One character would have been more than sufficient, dramatically. The story was a bit cluttered with excess characters, which weakened the drama.
(Also, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the age thing. A lot of the stuff I've seen is about kids maybe, barely 18. Beyond everything else, I'm not really that interested in adolescents.)
I wonder if there's any western-tradition y/sa available, where the sex roles aren't so limited and where non-con isn't practically de rigueur? Certainly the Fake series wasn't like that. (There was a fair amount of pouncing on one guy and smooching him whether he agreed or not, but that's not quite the same thing as...well, you know what I mean.)
The non-yaoi/shounen ai title was....drat. I've forgotten. Something about Dungeon Dimensions, I think. It was the first in a series, anyhow. Seems to be a series of shorter stories around one character and his fictional universe and it was completely charming. I was delighted with the "hero" character and the premise of the series was one that would lend itself to any number of good stories. There are something like 15 or so books in the series and I'd buy and read them if I were, you know, going to get into this stuff. Which I'm not.
Anyhow. That's what I did Tuesday. I sat down and read the three new books.
Then I stared at the walls and frowned for a while.
Then I looked at the books again, this time ignoring the words and focusing on just the pictures.
Then I got out my pad of sketch paper and my pencils and erasers, and spent three or four hours drawing. I drew heads. Faces. Eyes. (Those were the most fun.) Bodies. Arms. Hands. Legs. Feet. Clothing. I started on perspective, horizon lines, and vanishing points, then decided to let those go. All I was doing was getting a feel for it, after all. I didn't sit down to learn to draw manga.
Then I looked at the pictures in the books some more. I studied the difference between the "sketch" drawings in the stories and the fully-inked title pages, and tried to imagine what pen-and-ink drawing is like.
(Pondering is fun to do, but it doesn't make a riveting narrative.)
You know what? I'm in awe of the people who draw these things. People who can both draw and tell a story. Astonishing.
There still aren't enough words but I figured out how there don't need to be, if you're visual and you're looking at the pictures. They're suggestive without being overwhelming...you're led to the emotions the author wants you to feel, but you're not beaten over the head with them. When I worked at looking at the pictures as I read, I could definitely understand the appeal. A few words with an appropriate or suggestive picture can create a very strong emotional impact.
In a way, it's shortcutting "writing a story." They're using pictures to convey some of the things that are hardest to write, but it's a completely valid alternative approach. At its best, it works.
The key (well, in all writing, right?) is in characterization. When I can tell the characters apart, when they have distinct personalities, then the emotion is there. When half the characters in the book look and act alike, so I can't really tell them apart, then it's not so interesting.
I still don't know that I'd ever go for this in a big way. I mean, I spent less than an hour yesterday reading those three books. Trying to keep myself in books would bankrupt me. I'd have to spend $50 just to get enough stuff to read for one evening, you know?
Someone who has to constantly interrupt themselves in the reading of the story to force themselves to look at the page may never be comfortable in a such a visual world, although it could just be a matter of practice.
In the end, I definitely see where the manga fans are coming from. I have to admit that honestly. (After, what? Three years, of mocking manga fans? Four years?)
There's a definite charm in the genre and I can see how you could be come massively fannish about it. For the characters I was able to get to know, I found their lives every bit as fascinating as I would in any "regular" story. And when I was concentrating, I could definitely see how the pictures enhanced the whole experience. Reading about someone kissing can be hot. Watching two well-drawn characters smooching can also be hot. Reading that someone is mad...looking at a picture of someone who's mad. Sometimes the pictures carry a lot more emotional impact than you'd get with words. There's a loss of nuance in some ways, yes, but I'm assuming most sophisticated readers are capable of filling in those blanks for themselves.
I know there are m/y/sa fans in the CoSlash group. I wonder if I can browbeat some of them into loaning me some stuff? I'd certainly be interested in taking a look at what's considered to be the "best" of what's available without having to spend $500 to buy it or, worse yet, figure out where to store it.
And, yes, I still have too much time on my hands at the office. If I had any real work to do, you wouldn't get stuck reading 1,500 word rambles about a fandom I'm not even part of, would you?
So, what about that manga/yaoi stuff, anyhow?
For reference, the books I bought were a duology, Until the Full Moon, or something like that. Interesting concept, shallow handling.
I talked to Rapunzel last night. She said she has the first of these two and that she didn't really like it that well, so maybe I just didn't choose the right book(s) to experiment on, I don't know.
The books I read while on the Familial Visit, Rapunzel's books, were the Fake series. I don't why "Fake," but I enjoyed them. I'd like to see more like those, if I knew how to find them. I'm not sure it's a fair experiment to read something that's maybe not as good (like the ones I mentioned above) and to dismiss the rest of the genre on those grounds?
In my ongoing question for Information and Education, I did a bit of surfing last night.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that you can actually d/l some scanned/translated stories, free of charge, on the net! I'm assuming these will be the same picture format, although I confined myself to bookmarking last night and didn't actually look at any of the stories.
Imagine my amusement when I discovered the manga/yaoi "fandom" and read that it's tolerated, even tacitly encouraged overseas.
Imagine my interest when I found a site of definitions. (Imagine my surprise when I learned that "yaoi" stands for, ""yama nasi, ochi nashi, imi nashi," which roughly translates to "no climax, no plot, no point.") (Imagine my further surprise when I discovered that a story that's a, "lemon" isn't a bad one, it's a story with sex. And that "lime" and "citrus" have their own places on the sexual scale o'manga/yaoi.)
(Imagine my embarrassment as I realize I should have memorized those definitions before I started writing this post.)
I love the internet. If I wanted to put the effort into it, I could be an "expert" on this stuff in a week.
OTOH, I haven't really decided if I want to or not. The problem is that I'm not visual.
Most people are visual. That is, their preferred mode of taking in information is through their eyes. "You have to see it, to believe it" style of thing. (Something like...70% 80% of the population? Is primarily visual)
This explains the amazing popularity of television. And of movie adaptations of books. And, I've decided, of manga.
But I'm not visual, I'm auditory. For instance, I rarely watch television. I listen to television. When I read, which I do voraciously, I "hear" the text, I don't "see" it on the page.
There aren't enough words in manga/yaoi. For instance, those Moon books I bought? I'm going to have to go through them again, spending some time consciously staring at the pictures to see if they're as shallowly written as I thought they were at first.
Sigh. I'm about to start calling my employed friends and asking them if they'd like to hire me. I'm really bored of not working.
(P.S. I'm going to have t0 stop dissing Bossyboots. He just brought me spoils from the training conference.
A tee-shirt, two little blue rubber men, and a jump drive which I understand from McSwain! Is a gem of a thing to have, indeed.
Right now, my two blue boys are having sex, but that's just how I accidentally laid them down on the desk. I hate to interrupt, though. It seems impolite not to wait until they've finished.
How do you know when a rubber man is finished? I guess I'll just wait for him to stop bouncing and to start looking for his pants.)
I wanted to chat about the con earlier, but the backlog on my desk discouraged goofing off during work hours this week and by the time I got home in the evenings, my brain was fried.
(Remember the days when companies had enough employees to have someone cover for you when you went on vacation? I do...barely.
These days, forty-eight hours after I get back from a vacation, I'm as tired as if I'd never left. I have two more trips planned this year, one in May to see a dear friend graduate college Out East, and the Obligatory Familial Visit in July. I have to space these things out, otherwise the backlog of work on my desk would do me in.)
Besides, I had that whole SpikeFest to finish up in the evenings.
Con....
It was nice.
Very nice. The sun shone and the wind only blew a little bit and the rain didn't. There's a Starbucks within walking distance of the new hotel, which is pretty much all I ask for out of life. As a bonus, the beach was a short 2-block walk. A walk I took three times, with increasing enjoyment.
The hotel staff was helpful and charming. Especially the two delicious bellboys. Heh. Heh. It didn't hurt that there was a medical meeting going on when I checked in (young and handsome doctors everywhere!) or that a swim team (college-age, okay?) checked in to brighten our lives for one day.
Hmmm...the con itself, I hear you asking. What about the con itself?
Fine.
The con.
I had fun, okay?
I mean, I arrived at the hotel about three hours before my room was ready. So, I ate, for the first time that day. (I love having short layovers but the disadvantage is that you can sometimes go six or seven hours without the opportunity to buy food. On my return trip, for instance, I wound up with fifteen minutes of free time in LAX. I had time to buy food, or a book to read on the plane. The choice was simple and, fortunately for me, the flight attendants on the plane were happy to give me a couple of extra bags of pretzel-mix to tide me over.
After all that, I walked to the beach. Ahhh...sand! And debris.
Did that.
Walked back to the hotel. Watched the yummy young doctors and the sweeter-than-sweet bellboys. (Wondered exactly when I'd gone from being a woman admiring attractive men to being a dirty old woman because the attractive men suddenly became so much younger than I am.)
Walked around the neighborhood and explored what stores were within walking distance. Found nothing worth walking to. (Later I was to discover my mistake.)
Went back to the hotel. Read. Waited for People I Know to arrive.
That pretty much covers the first three hours. You'll be happy to know things picked up from there.
That evening...dinner at the nearby House O'Meat, where I was served a steak that was inexcusably tough, considering the price. Accompanying me to this MeatFest were Ashlyn and a couple of her Vegas Cohorts. (Later that weekend, said cohorts and I were to have a chat and agree that face-to-facing once a year via Escpade does not, for some of us, a friendship make. But we also agreed that if we met again next year, and possibly the year after that, we might all agree to become friends.)
PostMeat, I returned to my room and fell into a coma.
Friday arrived.
The con begins! (Well, no. Anyone who is everyone arrives on Thursday for Escapade. So, technically, the festivities commence with the Thursday Evening Encounters. These generally commence around 4:00 p.m. and involve various and sundry of us lurking in the hotel lobby, available to pounce upon and squeal over new arrivals.)
During the course of the weekend, I went to only one fandom-specific panel and to a handful of more meta panels.
(I'm a big lover of meta-discussion. I know it's become a dirty word in fandom, but get over it. The only reason people don't like it is because, as with all discussions on conceptual topics, it allows idiots to spout nonsense. Between intelligent, rational people, meta-discussion is very stimulating. So, it's stimulating at Escapade.)
I have little of interest to say about these panels. Some years I talk incessantly and make myself obnoxious. This year I confined myself to a total of, IIRC, three "raise your hand and speak" comments in official panels. That has to be some kind of record. (I mean, aside from the year when I was Between Medications and too freaked out to leave my hotel room 80% of the time. Let's all take a moment and give thanks for Modern Medicine.)
Panel the First: "Where Have All The Good Conversations Gone?" In terms, you understand, of the Escapade panel. Good suggestions ensued. Fascinating suggestions, in fact.
Me, I know that running two tracks of panels (one for fandoms and one for meta-discussions) is already a nightmare for the organizers. They've opened up a third track of "come as you are" programs that the attendees pick and schedule for themselves, so the smaller fandoms have a chance to get their own panels. With three tracks, you'd think each panel would be small enough that you could really get a discussion going, but it seems to me that many of the panels have far too many attendees to really come to any conclusions in as little as an hour.
(I want the world to like what I like so I have people to talk to in "my" fandoms and stories to read. But I don't want them all at My Panels because it cuts into my opportunities for grandstanding and hogging the conversation. And, "conversation" in Anne's World is a monologue.)
Next, I tried "You Can't Say That About My Friend" (How loyalty is killing fandoms) - I went to this by accident. (I meant to go to the SG1 panel in another room. I'm not a SG fan, but I thought it might help me talk to my friends who are.) This one was tedious. (No, fandom is not now and never was a place of universal kindness and civility. No group liberally sprinkled with people who are emotionally six years old and yet possess the invective of street thugs is going to be "nice.")
I arrived late (which is how I failed to notice, at first, that I was in the wrong panel) and spent most of the time thinking about how lame some Escapade panels are.
This made me reflect on Panel #1 at great length, and to remember some of the panels in the early days. Tiny rooms, a third of us sitting on the floor, talking, arguing, interrupting each other, and piling into the hallway to continue the debate when we had to give up the room to a different panel. I really think the tiny meeting rooms were an asset. None of this spreading out, sitting in the back row, getting lost in the dark gloom of the meeting room corners stuff. Nope, we were all in there, knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow.
Physical proximity (assuming all parties are practicing Modern Hygiene) encourages livelier debate.
About this point, I completely missed a panel I wanted to attend on how slash has changed with the advent of the internet. It's a pity, because I had a lot of mean things to say. Unusually for me, I also had some very good things to say. No one will ever know what any of them were now.
There was a panel bemoaning the fact that movies won't show "slash" that I wanted to attend, purely for the sake of pointing out that if it's canon, or "real" then it's not slash. The question about just how timid USofA movies are about discussing or portraying homosexuality in history is a completely different topic than "movie slash." I do hate the blurring of the lines between "slash" and "homosexuality." They just aren't the same thing. (This appears to be a battle I'm destined to lose, but I don't intend to quit fighting. There's little that has less to do with Real Life than fanfiction, even aside from the unrealistic portrayal of men in 8o% of fanfiction.)
Moving on, I did not attend the panel on LJ but I heard much about it. (Cultists!) Many things surprised me. The idea that a conversation started in one LJ "belongs" to the owner of that LJ and that moving the discussion, or carrying it on in a different LJ is "theft" surprised me. From whence comes this attitude that any one person in fandom "owns" a conversation? Still, I'm not on LJ, so it isn't my problem. (See: fannish conversation as AnneZo monologue, above.)
Similarly, I didn't bother to attend the panel on "what to do" if the pairing you like isn't the primary pairing in a fandom. Another pointless topic, from my perspective. I went through all of that in XF (I was writing Skinner-Mulder, most of the rest of the world was writing Mulder-Krycek) and have nothing to add.
Me, I think a better topic might have been, "what makes you think you're entitled to organize fandom for your personal benefit?" and if it weren't for the fact that I'm as guilty as anyone, I'd suggest that as a topic.
(rudeness removed)
I won something in door prize drawings! I never win things, but I won a $25 Borders gift certificate! Hooray for Escapade! Hooray for presents! (I put it with the $20 gift certificate I got for Christmas and went off this past weekend to have a blow-out. Now I have to find bookshelf space for five new books.)
Friday night - big Welcome Aboard! party for everyone at the con. I went. I wandered the crowd. As usual, I saw almost no one I knew. Always confuses me, how invisible I am in a crowd. I mean, I'm not that short. I must put out some kind of psychic, "I don't talk to strangers" vibe. And since my friends like me best when I'm in a different state, I rarely blame them for pretending not to know me in public.
Saturday...I slept in! Then I found Meghan who revealed the existence of the longed-for Starbucks and forced her to walk over with me. (It's good for your butt, Meg. Besides, I bought you a drink, as a thank you, okay?)
I totally wanted to attend a panel on what you, the writer, get out of writing your story (putting readers aside for a moment) but I got involved in one of those inevitable "hallway panels" that Escapade is so famous for and missed it.
(Most of the panels I wanted to participate in but missed, I missed because of these hallway panels. These are not infrequently the best discussions I have at Escapade. Once again...people excited about a topic, huddled together, all wanting to contribute and all having time to contribute because the group is small.)
I attended a panel about Methos just because it was being put on by a good friend and enjoyed it much more than I expected to. Much, much more. For the first time in a long time, I can almost see myself writing HL again. Certainly I was feeling the MethosLove to a large extent by the time I walked out the door. (I was even surprised to notice that my previous DuncanIndifference has mellowed over the years to a sort of amused tolerance.)
Saturday night was Sushi night. About nine of us walked to a restaurant. They courted early deaths or lifelong digestive disorders with sushi. I had the chicken.
After that, the vid show. I spent an hour working in the con suite (I generally do 3-5 hours worth of volunteering) then retreated to my room. I'm not a vid fan. I am, I'm aware, almost alone in this approach to fandom, but I'm at peace with my outsiderdom.
Besides, owing to a conversation I had with the illustrious Kat A. earlier that afternoon, I was finding myself inspired to abandon the SEN and work, instead, on a less-intimating story.
After a three-year absence, she pointed out wisely, you shouldn't start back into writing by tackling something the size of War and Peace. Take a smaller bite. Write a PWP or two in a fandom you find easy. Ease back into the process.
(That's one of the best things about Escapade. Those with knowledge, reaching out to give a lift to those of us pattering along behind.)
By the time I stopped Saturday evening, I had a 20-page start on my current Due South story and I'll be dedicating a heaping helping o'eternal gratitude to the courteous, patient, talented, and all-around amazing Kat.
I've always liked her.
Of course, she also pointed out that she spent 4 years working on her last long story, which was a bit daunting for those of us with WritingADD. (Besides, it's not like anything I turn out will be half as good as what she writes. Did I think I'd turn out a minor masterpiece, I might be inspired to put that kind of effort into a story, but I don't, I won't, and I don’t think I will.)
Sunday morning, the Big Breakfast. I did not miss it, making this the first breakfast in about three years I've managed to attend.
I went to "The Tipping Point." This was a panel to explore why some fandoms explode suddenly into supernovas while other fandoms grow slowly and still other fandoms never go anywhere at all. It was very interesting, in spite of the fact that we spent most of the hour defining terms.
I'd hoped to discuss the actual fandoms, instead of potential underlying mechanisms.
You know...how a fandom comes on the scene at the moment when a group of fans are ready and eager for it. It has, I believe, a lot more to do with characters and situations in the show/movie than it does about who is spreading the world and how. I think, if you could trace the path of the Exploding Fandoms, you'd find an emotional path laid out clearly. Fans run en masse for a new fandom that provides the right new emotional blast for them.
And, finally, "Where Do We Go From Here?" An Escapade Wrap-Up panel. Very interesting. I look forward to seeing what transpires next year.
In between the panels I attended, or missed, I spent a lot of time in conversation with small groups of fans here and there. Discussing characters, writing, canon, and other fascinating topics.
I capped the weekend by stealing three zines from the zine library, a fact I will be confessing to Ashlyn via e-mail when I tell her I'm returning them. I know they have to close the zine library so she can pack it up and take it home, but the last evening of the con is the one when I have a lot of time to read. And with the dearth of any new zines I want to read, turning to the zine library is natural.
I know you waited a week for this. I'm sorry it wasn't more fascinating.
But Mallory? I have your songvids! I'll get the disk sent this week.
ConReport. In progress. I meant to finish it this afternoon but I had to spend two hours installing MT Blacklist. I'm going to be leaving comments open now, to see if it works.
In the meantime, naturally I've been SpikeFesting.
Angel S5. Finished. (The Sentinel and DS stories should move faster now.)
Read the hidden stuff only if you're okay with spoilers, cause that's all you'll find.
Publishing/publicizing RPS?
So very, very wrong.
It is my intent to go through everything I've ever written and remove any reference to "fandom" just to distance myself from that kind of thing.
Not that it seems to be waiting on my permission out there. Very sloppy commute this morning.
I think I deserve more points. I've been watching the entire run of BtVS during a weeks-long marathon, and I haven't been coming over here Spike-blogging even once.
I mention this because my brain is all full of S7 Spike today and yet I am nobly refraining from inflicting this upon you. (Okay, not so much refraining.)
It's an odd fandom for me. I go all obsessive about the canon (and, okay, about one character, although Willow and Giles share corners of my heart) but I have absolutely no desire to read or write in the fandom. (Least of all do I want to read Xander-slash since, next to Dawn, Xander is one of the most tiresome characters in the show for me. And Dawn, make no mistake, is amazingly tiresome. Last night, as I watched, I found myself fast-forwarding through her scenes, even in eps I've never seen before.)
I did find both Cordy and Anya more entertaining this time than I did the last time I watched the show. Cordy, especially, really grew on me.
Anyhow. The phone was already ringing when I walked in at 7:45 this morning. So I went right to work. It's 9:15 now and I have a 10:00 call for which I need to prepare (remember what it is I've done for the past couple of weeks and be prepared to discuss it), as well as having at least seven really critical calls to make today.
I need to get my head in the game and not be all focused on platinum blonds, okay? I cannot be thinking about ensoulled Spike, all muscled up and looking angsty.
(Okay, now I'm all sweaty and overheated...but we'll assume that's the IC and has nothing to do with Those Eyes.)
(Mmmm. Spike.)
(Stop that!)
In terms of labeling, what I think would be more useful would be a Quality and Canon system, you know? Every story would get two ratings. One for the quality of writing and one for how closely it adheres to the actual universe in which the story is, presumably, as fanfiction of that universe, set.
Canon
A = Superb grasp of characterization and universe
B = Excellent, amazingly accurate
C = Very well done
D = Adequate
E = Canon and characters not well-defined
F = What universe was this again?
An AU, of course, wouldn't get a Canon rating, but you could still Quality-rate it.
Quality
1 = Kill. Me. Now.
2 = Eye, meet sharp stick
3 = Hurt to read, but I'll get over it
4 = Enjoyable moments, could have been much worse
5 = Not bad, not bad. Some good stuff there
6 = Is there any more like this?
7 = Recruiting material!
Seriously. This would be a lot more useful than most of the labels people use today. Forget labeling content (except for my squicks). Label the thing with something that tells me if it's worth reading.)
Or...go ahead...label for squicks. That would be a color-coding system.
Red = Excessive violence (death, rape, psychological or physical torture, maiming)
Orange = Extreme violence (mutilation, beating, minor psychological or physical torture)
Yellow = Moderate violence (abundance of pain and suffering, possible threat of death or rape)
Green = Canon-level violence
Blue = No violence, or no more than moderate hurt, balanced by an abundance of comfort.
Indigo = Sweetness and light abound
Violet = BunnyLand (Warning: pet names, baby talk, animated toys, and other excesses)
If you say a story is F1-Red...well, that pretty much says it all.
A story would be B3-Green for an author who has an excellent grasp of the canon universe but whose story is just not well-written.
A story could be F7-Yellow and if you have the tolerance and you care more about a well-told story than you do about a particular canon...you'll jump in with glee.
I wouldn't read anything below C6 unless I was really rabid about a fandom and there wasn't much available, in which case I'd go D4 in my weaker moments.
(I'd read only Green - Indigo. Should I start thinking that reading about someone suffering is "entertainment," I'll read the news for a few days and cure myself of that delusion.)
Sitting in on someone else's meeting for an hour is so boring.
Not much, but marginally.
You'll be glad to know I'm not that single-minded about everything. I mean, I go back and forth on some issues.
Like...story labeling? I'm all "yes, but no, but yes" about that one.
One the one hand, I completely understand the irritation of an author who spends 30,000 words or more building up to an emotional climax in her story, even as she knows the impact has been diluted or destroyed because she was forced to add a "spoiler" label up front to keep the fragile fans from drowning in a pool of tears when they ran across an idea they didn't like.
On the other hand...I don't want to find myself reading something I don't like.
I don't like death stories and I don't want to read them. It's all very well to say it's just a story and that it won't do me any permanent damage, but this is where the good author, the one who can really write, is a liability.
I can read a dozen death stories from TypoidMary(tm) and not blink. She couldn't touch my emotions with a sledgehammer. No talent? No problem.
On the other hand, one story from WonderWriter, someone with actual talent, can fry my brain for a month. Well-written death stories are the ones I fear the most.
Rape stories? Not under any circumstances. Yes, I understand it's one of the most common sexual fantasies for both sexes, but I don't share it. To me, rape is rape and I don't want to read about it happening to characters I love. Or even characters I don't love.
And...well...I have issues around consent. (Rape labeled "non-con" as though that somehow made it not rape? Who are you pretending to fool? I mean, I've backed off from this topic in other forums because this is not the kind of topic where arguing will change anyone's mind, but that doesn't change my private beliefs.) I'm a big believer in consent. I won't read anything that includes non-consent.
The problem probably lies in the different way different people view the characters. To some, a story is a thing they put themselves into and the characters are there to react to them. So, as long as they share whatever fantasy is being presented, the story is okay. It's not only a fantasy, but they have an additional psychological distance from it because it's not actually their fantasy, so there's almost no point at which they cry enough! and bail out. (I sometimes wonder if this is why some fans seem to be able to tolerate and even enjoy astonishing amounts of pain and damage in a story? )
To others, like myself, the characters are alive within the confines of the (well-written) story. These readers don't put themselves into the story because it's already full of real people. And, while they're reading the story, they don't really want to read anything they would be uncomfortable hearing about happening to any real person.
Death and rape are probably my only two real squicks. There's other stuff I don't like (MPreg, etc.) but I can just barf and move on. Or even be amused, if a competent writer constructs a story around such a premise, but that's rare.
Fandom should label for my squicks.
Few fans I know would be willing to stand up publicly and say, "my fandom is okay, your fandom sucks" but I'm willing to do it. (Much of this, of course, is the courage that comes from knowing no one is listening and no one cares what I think anyhow.)
The fandom that says you can slash a character with the actor who plays the character? That sucks.
The fandom that says it's okay to write sex stories using actor's real names? That sucks.
I'd like to say that the fandom that turned women into some evil that has to be erased from the face of the planet to allow the men to boink each other in peace also sucks, but slash has always had a fair amount of misogyny, so I'll just say I strongly disapprove, and we'll move on.
The fandom that says it's okay to mix-and-match an actor's roles? Use the name from Show A and the personality from Show B, mixed together with the fictional universe from Show C? That sucks.
As far as that goes, the fandom that says it's okay to take the character names and nothing else from a show and label it fanfiction for that show? Sucks.
The fandom that says you're entitled to positive and loving strokes because you took the time to type out some words and give them a title? Sucks.
The fandom that says punctuation and grammar aren't important? Sucks. (I know they're important. I'm just not good at them.)
The fandom that says canon isn't important? So. Totally. Sucks.
The fandom that says no one should ever see a negative critique of what they've written? Sucks.
The fandom that took the once-in-a-lifetime and only-for-the-shock-value-gimmick of MPreg and turned it into a genre? Really sucks.
The fandom that turned torture into a genre? Sucks and blows. (Angst and H/C aren't torture. There's a noticeable difference.)
Feel free to add your own suggestions.
Probably I need another Starbucks chocolate drink, don't you think? To soothe the trauma?
I was going to write a lot of rants about how stupid the newer fans are, but after I posted my first one, McSwain pointed out in the comments section that not everyone is an idiot, making it clear that I'll just look mean and spiteful if I say anything else rude about fandom in general*. Also, on a list I'm on, someone posted a much more intelligent and rational dream of how fandom could be, so I'm dissed and trumped.
Bah.
We had Purple Mountains Majesty this morning. I love those sunrises. The sky starts blushing in the east, and to the west shadows begin to harden into solid, rocky shapes. As you watch, the east brightens, the color spills across the clear sky, and there they are...the mountains, purple granite nested in a lavender sky.
There's something wrong with the punctuation in that sentence, but there's something wrong with the punctuation of most of my sentences, so whatever.
_______________
* I'm just saying. I didn't come back to fandom to be taken seriously, okay?
I swear, some days I think that if I open One. More. Story. in a fandom I think I know and, ten lines later, find myself wondering whointhehell those characters are, I'll give it all up and buy a Chia Pet.
It's not just that these people don't know the characters or the show, or that they failed to convey what knowledge they did possess over to their story that bothers me.
It's the fact that it's not only okay to write that way these days, it's considered in the worst possible taste to want fanfiction to actually connect to the source material that you're ostensibly a fan of.
I miss real fandom. I miss ClassicFandom. This new stuff is just icky.
Let's talk about something besides me for a while.*
. . . .
As you might suspect, a long silence ensued after that sentence. It's rather embarrassing, actually. I'm scrambling for something to talk about.
Oh. I know. Take a look at this:
Water Baby II, A. Sequel to A Water Baby. Alex Krycek leaves a life as a sea creature for love of Mulder and Skinner. A baby whale helps him adjust to his new life.
As you might also suspect, three friends are, at this moment, trying to talk me down off the ledge.
Once upon a time, I had an idea of starting up a new movement, a sort of ClassicSlash Fandom universe that was By Invitation Only. To weed out, you see, the people in NewCrap Fandom, with whom I would be embarrassed to be associated if the world held us up and looked at us, side-by-side.
Guess who won't be invited?**
__________________________
* Not really.
** The person who sent me this and broke my brain.
I kept my mouth shut about this when I first heard about it, but I can't stand it any more.
From Wolfe Video's newsletter:--This Submarine has some hot Sea Men! "Highlander" hunk Adrian Paul is currently filming TIDES OF WAR, in which he plays a gay naval sub commander on a covert mission who is having an affair with another commanding officer, played by none other than "Six Feet Under" star Mathew St. Patrick. The film also stars "The Shield" hottie Catherine Dent!
There's so much room for mockery in that I don't know where to start.
One assumes that a movie that aspires to a more rounded level of entertainment than, say, gay porn requires...acting. (I'll stop there, mindful that I have otherwise intelligent friends who seem inexplicably unable to share my opinion of AP.)
Anyhow, I understand the movie will be shown on some channel I don't remember the name of and hadn't ever heard of when I did.
Nor, quite frankly, would I have been inclined to turn the movie on, no matter who it starred.
Those exclamation points in the description are probably what reminded me of gay porn, not to mention the "hunk" and "hot sea men" and the "hottie" woman. That description has, "Please don't watch me" written all over it.
(Can't help it. I have to ask. What on earth makes people keep casting that man and why? There are a lot of people with talent in Hollywood.)
(Also, I have to wonder if his appearance in this role is the indicator of a career going down for the third time that it appears to be.)
Fandom became a wasteland for me a few years ago I attribute that to a lot of factors, all of which are someone else's fault. (And I'm at peace with this position.) First, of course, there was the dearth of decent shows on television. (This year, as I think I've said frequently, I'm watching Navy NCIS and nothing else.) That's number one.
At that time I was bored of my old fandoms, burned out on struggling to write OaT, and discouraged because there wasn't anything in that fandom I wanted to read anyhow, and no place to talk about it. (My friends were more than tolerant, but even my ego stops short of nattering on endlessly about something no one else cares about. Certainly after the first year or so.)
It's your fault. You all left the fandoms I was actually interested in and went off to write insults removed* stuff I didn't care about. The scavengers and bottom-feeders** moved in and it became almost impossible to find the good stories being posted amongst all the misbegotten garbage. After a while, it just didn't seem worth the effort.
The point of this entry is to inform you that I hereby demand that everyone I know stop dinking around with fandoms that don't attract me and write something in a fandom that does. And let me know where you post it, so I don't have to go looking for it.
And none of your rapefests or angstwallows. If I want to be depressed, I'll go back to politics. I want a giggle. Or at least a smile. XF, DS, SEN , OaT or even HL,*** I'm tolerant, you can write in any of them.
I mean, I'm writing in four of them myself, at this very moment. (Well, I have things started. Whether or not they'll see the light of day remains a mystery.) But I don't read my own stuff, so I require that someone else write something for me to read.
Do you guys re-read your own stories? For pleasure, I mean, not with an idea to editing or anything. I frequently wonder how many fandom authors read their own stuff and enjoy it.
______________________
* This was a better post before I removed the rude bits insulting fandoms that don’t interest me, but I'll probably lose fewer friends with this one.
** I probably should have removed that one, too.
*** Five fandoms, no waiting! Not necessarily slash. Any of them, really, could be gen. As long as they're light.
If you have any interest in HP stories, you should read LynnZo's little story on her LJ.
I don't read much HP and I don't read Harry/Draco when I do, but I found it charming.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:06 AMDoes it taste weird because it's lowfat cottage cheese, or because it was sitting in a bag next to your desk for the last five hours, instead of in the refrigerator? Is that odd flavor that's almost yoghurtish a sign of nutrients at work, or parasitical bugs that are going to lodge in your intestines and make your life a misery for the next twenty years*?
Today's dietary indulges so far include - 1 scrambled egg, 4 oz lo-fat cottage cheese. I'm not exactly back on the diet...but I'm sort of back on the diet. Much as I love those memories of years filled with high-caloric, non-nutritious junk food, the truth is it just doesn't agree with me any more. I feel better when I don't replace vegetables and lean meat with Cheetos and ice-cream bars.
Writing challenges abound during November. It seems that those reluctant or unable to commit to NaNoWriMo's (really**) very reasonable 1700 words a day are promising at least 100 words*** added to stories currently in progress.
I think that's pretty cool. Everyone should commit to some kind of goal in November, from the grandiose to the modest. Make a concrete commitment and work to keep it. It's the practice...the writing every day...the getting into the habit, that's what it's all about.
Me? My commitment is to write 10,000 words in November. Somewhere in between the two mentioned above. That's because I estimate it's going to take 10,000 words to finish the S.E.N. That's 333 words a day.
The Weinermobile! is next door. I must remember to bring a camera to work tomorrow.
* Or did I just overdo the salt?
** Really, it's very reasonable. I write blog entries longer than that. Frequently. I've probably written more than that today. (Your mistake is that you continue to be obsessed with quality.****) But I can't participate this year. I have the S.E.N. to beat my head against. That's enough for any one person.
*** Seems hardly worth opening the file for that, but that's the opinion of someone who finds it easy to add words but hard to add words worth keeping*****.
**** I must admit, I'm somewhat embittered by constantly reading about people who are polishing up their efforts to create actual stories out of them. I can't do that with mine.
***** For instance, my one, completed NaNoWriMo project was about 57,000 words. Of which the first 30,000 words would have to be replaced completely, in order to make a decent story.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:41 PMToday, I'm working.
Check out Works In Progress.
Fan fiction on the internet is revitalising classic stories and bringing back an oral tradition to society
Heh.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:26 PMI am in such a foul mood.
After an early a.m. doctor's appointment that ran 40 minutes longer than I expected (tell me, how can they possibly be running late already at 7:30 in the morning?), I had to swing back by my apartment on the way to work to change clothes because I remembered that I had a Business Lunch today. And it's raining. I keep meaning to buy a raincoat.
Then, instead of puttering to work through near-empty streets (I usually go in before rush hour), I had to fight my way in through a flood of morons who saw water falling from the skies and assumed it was the End Times and that traffic laws no longer applied.
I should never make early morning medical appointments. I do it under the theory they won't be running late (hah!) and that I'll be in and out faster, but the truth is that I loathe and abominate going to the doctor...any kind of doctor, and it puts me in a filthy mood for the entire day to have an appointment first thing in the day.
Also, Buehler (who gets a bad rap on this page, he's really one of the most considerate bosses I've ever had*) is on my short-list today because the bookkeeper is coming in again tomorrow, a fact Buehler casually informed me of just a few minutes ago. This means I'll be kicked off my computer for the day. I should point out, it's even less convenient than it was before because I have tele/internet conferences scheduled and the only two unoccupied computers in the building are too old and feeble to use for the purpose.
That means that after smacking Bossyboots down for the past month, I now have to go to him and beg for the use of the (company-owned) laptop that will run the necessary software. I'm sure he'll enjoy it. (One wrong word out of him and I'll just go home and do the meetings. I have a very good computer at home and it already has all the necessary software on it.)
(*That probably says more about my previous bosses than it does about Buehler.)
I can't believe torch not only writes Wodehouse slash, but now she's thinking of crossing over Bertie Wooster with Peter Wimsey.
I can't decide whether to die of apoplexy or envy.
Last night I tried my own new theory of writing for the SEN, just put words on the page and worry about the rest of it later, and it wasn't a howling success.
Possibly I shouldn't have spent two hours reading Wodehouse first. I had to throw away the first page or two.
Then, however, I buckled down and managed to scrape out three or four pages. It's not great material, but the key is that I'm getting words on the page, right? Boring words, dull scenes, and lackluster characters, but words on a page.
This never works for me...if I don't love the story enough to do it right the first time, it ain't going to happen. The odds of me having a complete personality switch and becoming the sort of person who edits with care and consideration, happily taking the time to do rewrites and polish her prose, are slim to none.
I'm going to do some work. In the back of my mind, I'll be contemplating the memory of my favorite BSOs. I can't think of anything else likely to improve my day besides a huge slab of chocolate and I'm not allowed chocolate on the diet.
Skinner in his underwear...and in that green sweater...Methos in almost anything...Spike in nothing....
I wonder why I never wrote anything for Spike? He certainly tripped my fannish switches harder than anything I've seen since XF. I hadn't thought about him in a while, but I had lunch with a friend on Saturday who mentioned him and now he keeps floating through my mind.
later....
I remembered that two of the protein supplements I brought with me today are hot chocolate-flavored. The day is already improving. Now all I have to do is figure out how to eat Mexican for lunch without destroying my diet.
Also, I have to stop thinking about Doing Things to Skinner. It's 11:00...time to get some work done.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:54 AMWhat is it with the mockery in the comments section? I know I demanded some attention, but I was thinking more of adulation.
I wasn't expecting adulation, mind you, but I was thinking of it. Sort of wistfully. I should mention that there are 15,000 (or maybe 32,000*, I never really did learn to read that stats program) people waiting impatiently for me to return to political blogging. Some of them regularly said nice things to me.
(*That's not actually true. There were only 8,000 different people. Or maybe 15,000. I read the FAQ for the stats program, but it didn't really help much.)
(And some of them were mean to me.)
But seriously. I'm feeling marginally better, but I think it had better be a while, a long while, before I repeat Tuesday's fried-food and carbohydrate binge. I seriously over-estimated my body's ability to absorb that kind of food any more. I've been eating "healthy" for a year now and I think my stomach forgot how to process the grease from a deep fryer.
Stupid stomach.
As my indisposition eases, my disposition improves. (I hope I never get anything seriously wrong with me. I can't imagine the plunge into bitter depression I'd probably have to endure if I had any actual problems.)
(Although, if the mockery continues, I'm going to eat some French fries and an entire pie and then come here and blog at you.)
So, what have we learned since yesterday?
The show "Cooking Lessons" was a "one-hour romantic dramedy about the exploits of a female food critic based on the book "Cooking For Mr. Latte: a food lover's courtship." For those of you not in the know, this was the show Peter Wingfield was in. Sadly, "the completed pilot was not given a series order by CBS at its upfront presentation."
So much for seeing him this year. Not that I was fascinated by the pilot. While I can see that a cooking show might be entertaining to watch, I'd rather see him in a role that actually uses some of his abilities.
Also, I have a finicky distaste for any show advertised as a "dramedy."
Anyhow, we won't be seeing it.
I tried Hawaii last night. I still like Ivan Sergei but what is it with everyone in the show forgetting to shave? Are we supposed to think of them as gritty tough guys because of the stubble on their cheeks?
Whoever told IS to cut his hair made a mistake. I'm no more a fan of stubble-headed guys than I am stubble-faced ones.
I watched the show for 20 minutes, then turned it off. It was, in the end, just another CSI rip-off. (I might have kept watching it just for IS and MB if I hadn't been trying to write OaT. I'm having enough trouble with the characters' voices without confusing myself by the same faces in different roles.)
In other, lesser news, I figured out one of the problems with the story. My "plot" involved the guys, especially Victor, being pretty unhappy for a week or so. I've never yet written a successful scene with a character who's unhappy, much less 70 or 80 pages. What was I thinking?
So much for that.
Last night I reviewed my plot outlines and all my notes with an eye to removing any abortive attempts at drama and replacing them with my usual brand of idiocy and discovered, not at all to my surprise, that 98% of what I've planned so far is sheer, unadulterated crap.
I imagine that that's what comes of trying to write beyond your own abilities although part of me suspects that the depression that went along with yesterday's physicial malady could be partly to blame for the verdict.
I'm afraid to open the file and look at the actual story, though. I mean, part of me also knows that you can't make trash into diamonds by just pretending you've changed your mind about what you want to write.
Posted by AnneZook at 07:48 AMYou like the new look? I think it's pretty.
I haven't changed my template in a long, long time and I was dismayed to see that Blogger now offers only about a dozen choices. I must go read the FAQ and see if they've moved the other 20 or 30 they used to offer somewhere else or if there's some reason why they no longer offer a lot of different templates. I know a lot of people were offering templates on other sites, maybe Blogger just assumes everyone is going somewhere else these days?
I came in today to find our office internet access out, which is frustrating since I've been trying to get online to post an apology for a rude remark I made.
(I'm going off the whole political blog thing, anyhow. I've been at it for two years and it's been very entertaining but I do find it a strain to be constantly trying to give the impression that I'm well-informed and intelligent.
I liked having a political blog at first - no one was reading it and if I wanted to rant and rave and call people names, I could. I mean, that's why I started it, you know? So I could be rude and say things that were stupid without caring if I was right or wrong. I'm not quite sure when I lost track of that goal, but the strain of being open-minded and tolerant is starting to wear me out. (As witnessed by the fact that when we get our internet service back today, I have to go apologize for ranting and name-calling.) I mean, I'm not tolerant by nature, okay? I figure people can either agree with me or go away.)
(For the record, I find that really, really annoying. There must be half a million political blogs out there, most of which are being maintained by people posting stupid or ill-informed opinions twenty times a week, and no one cares. No one bothers to read what they say. I didn't invite anyone to read my political blog and I rather resent the influx of strangers and the moral pressure that came with them.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Internet access, or the lack thereof.
There are times it's no advantage to be the person who shows up in the office an hour or two before everyone else rolls in, you know? I mean, since I usually spend that "before official hours" time dinking around on personal stuff, it's not like I can even leave early.
Ah well. I guess I could have gone all conscientious and started work early, but I do a lot of my job via e-mail and the internet (our call-tracking program is internet-based) and without both of those, I'm sort of twiddling my thumbs sometimes. (Yeah, I have phone calls I could make, but I'm not really at my best and brightest at 7:30 in the morning. I'm usually better off sticking to e-mails for the first hour or so.)
The Tweenybopper showed up. She noticed the absence of internet access right away. She logs on to IM every morning and has chat windows open all day. She seems to find it hard to settle down today. (I know the feeling.) I give her credit, though. She is working, which puts her one up on me.
(... pause ... Okay, I went and made a phone call.)
I'm putting weight back on, I'm sure. I meant to weigh myself this morning, but I forgot. Anyhow, I'm trying a new breakfast thing. It's called Nouriche Light and it's a sort of drinkable yogurt thing. It's strawberry flavored. It's not bad. I'd try it again. Not maybe every day, it's a little too sweet, but I'd drink it once a week or so. I have to stop eating my previous breakfast food. It was a sort of oatygranolabar thing and I really liked it but when I checked the label, I realized it has four kinds of sugar in it. That's not good.
Ah...the Three Stooges are here. If they can't fix the internet, no one can.
(They couldn't. The phone company is having an outage for some reason. I have internet based meetings scheduled for tomorrow morning so I told everyone if the access doesn't get fixed, I'll be working from home tomorrow.
Except that it just occurred to me that when I was trying to send someone an e-mail last night, my net access seemed to go out. I was tired, so I didn't really think about it, I just closed down the computer and went to bed, but now I'm wondering if my service it out at home, too.)
I'm not really fascinating these days, am I? I'm obsessing about my weight, my access to the electronic world, working, but without massive enthusiasm, and doing much less in the evenings than I really should be. I mean, last night I went out to dinner (salad bar) and went to the grocery store. Came home, read, played computer games, went to bed.
I may find it necessary to invent a fictional life full of drama and excitement to spice up my blog entries.
A man...no, two men. Maybe employed by some shadowy, government agency, you know?
The kind of men likely to be sent undercover in some weird or unlikely locale to ferret out naughtiness the regular police force is unaware of. That leaves plenty of room for me to spin fantasies for almost any otherwise improbable scenario.
I need to start with one situation...one case...just to try the idea out, you understand.
I mean, say they dislike each other (except when no one is looking), then being forced to rely on each other exclusively for an extended length of time might produce some interesting emotional complications, don't you think? Especially when it's a case of lies, misdirection, danger, and information gathering. Something very hush-hush that keeps them out of touch with their agency for a while. They need to be forced to deal with each other without allies.
A run-down neighborhood and some kind of gang that the local police inexplicably don't seem to be able to catch and a curious conflict of instructions from their boss. Toss in an armload of innocent and oppressed bystanders (maybe some elderly shopkeepers or some vulnerable homeless people) for the gang to pick on. There's some potential there. For one thing, you could use the assignment to force the guys to play along, or at least seem to play along with the gang for several consecutive weeks. That would create a lot of emotional conflict for a couple of law-enforcement types.
Mmmm, maybe one of them should be something of a drama queen. The other one could be the kind that adopts stray kittens but is protective of what he thinks of as his "tough guy" image.
The drama queen needs to be the type to pick up sudden fads and get obsessive about them. He probably does it in part to drive tough guy bonkers and tough guy probably knows this, but he usually can't resist reacting anyhow. A sort of add-on complication, just to ratchet up the tension the guys are feeling, you understand
Tough guy is probably constantly on the simmer...always about to grab the drama queen and punch him in the head, because they really don't like each other except that they do when no one is looking or they're not thinking about it, or maybe he winds up kissing him but that might be getting a little ahead of my plot, there.
It could work.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:49 AMI feel whiny. I've been sick, you know. (Well, I was sick three weeks ago, anyhow. But I still have a little cough.)
Oh. I forgot. I already begged for sympathy on that one, didn't I? Sorry. Didn't mean to be repetitive.
Well, I had The Talk with Alvin. While he'd certainly like to have me back working for him again some day, he's not going to be able to afford to take me back January 1, which was what the original plan was. So, he and the Other Brother Darryl moved out of the office suite yesterday and into a basement office in Alvin's house. I'm about to be Out Of Sight Out Of Mind.
He told me that Friday, so yesterday I asked Buehler what his future plans were.
While admitting that if the (all-important) contract gets signed, he's going to be looking at hiring more people, he stopped short of offering me long-term employment.
It may be that he doesn't want to make a commitment until the contract gets signed. It may be that he doesn't want to interfere with whatever Sekrit Plan he and Alvin originally concocted between them when I was traded to the new team.
It may be that he's decided I'm a little pricey for the amount of time I spend actually working and not, you know, sending personal e-mail or blogging. (Admittedly, when I think about it objectively, I'm not sure I'd keep on an employee who'd written 700 or so blog entries* on company time over the last nine months.)
(* Presumably he doesn't actually know I'm blogging for an hour or two every morning, but who can ever be positive about these things? I mean, I'm sitting here typing madly at the moment and he's at his desk ten feet away. What does he actually think I'm doing at the moment, I wonder?)
I used to have a work ethic. I'm sure it's still around here somewhere. I should dig it out and dust it off some day soon.
Cough, cough.
I'm getting old. It will be my birthday in a couple of months, and I'll be Much Older. I'm not sure exactly how old (I'm not good with numbers), but I know I'm getting perilously close to the Big 5-0. (If you love me, please don't figure it out and tell me exactly how old I am. I'm really okay with not knowing.)
I looked out my office window and realize that for some inexplicable reason, there are three oversized (6') representations of Hershey Kisses on a trailer in the parking lot of the building next to ours. They're labeled, "Dark" and "Caramel" and "Kisses" and painted to match the foil colors for each candy. I don't know what it was all about, but it was fun to see.Hmmm, what else? I've been watching my S2 Starskey & Hutch DVDs over the last couple of days. They really are just Amazingly Doin' It in a closeted, 70s kind of way, aren't they? It would be hard to write, though. I'm not big on angst and I can't imagine enjoying having to write a story where I'd feel almost obligated to have the guys paranoid and guilty.
I prefer my men post-liberation on the homosexual front. Maybe not wearing tee-shirts or marching in parades, but not afraid of destroying their careers and their lives, you know?
I'm not interested in gritty reality.
The easiest couple I wrote was, of course, Mulder and Skinner. That rather unfortunately resulted in somewhat pointless stories, of course. No need to go through a lot of gyrations to get them together. Just get them alone and it happens. I wouldn't go back to them, though. I think I wrote enough meringue for the two of them to last anyone a lifetime.
The most challenging was Mac and Vic, but that was mostly because the show itself was so poorly written. Characterization was a nightmare. I would up having to make a chart to lock in the characterization before I started writing. On the other hand, as I've said many times, that universe was by far the most promising in terms of potential stories.
I'm aware, in an objective sort of way, that I wrote a couple of Sen stories and a couple of DS stories, but I remember nothing about them. (No...wait...I gave Ray a uniform fetish, didn't I?)
All I remember about writing HL is Methos.
There's no particular reason I'm talking about that today. I just sort of am.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)It's not something I bother to do often. After all, when you haven't been "active" in fandom for four years, it's a bit much to expect to see your name being flashed around.
Still, there were some surprise.
For instance, I didn't give permission for this. I guess it's good to know that fanfic authors don't have to worry because they're not multilingual, but asking permission IS ALWAYS APPRECIATED.
(Of course, someone might have asked permission years ago and I just forgot. I do that kind of thing.)
And how, exactly, did this occasional smutfest and frequent whining board hit the notice of a Canadian media magazine? And why did someone link to this blog when it had been on hiatus for something like six months when that article was published?
What is this and how did a quote I don't remember making (but am humiliated to have posted without spell checking) get into it? (Oh…never mind. Metafilter.)
And someone quoted me! How flattering. (And here, too. Sort of. )
And, last but not least, Google tossed this at me:
Eye of Moscow Adult Links: index - [ Translate this page ]
... On the off-chance you feel the need to communicate with me, I can be reached at AnneZo@aol.com LynnZo can be reached at lynnzo@yahoo.com X-Files characters ... www.eyeofmoscow.com/i-links/page-0093.htm - 11k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages.
Hee. Hee.
Except that they're nicer than I would be, this totally captures what I think about most fanfic.
"Why are the vampires lesbians?" sales agent Cal Fagan asked. "Were they lesbians before they became vampires, or did getting bitten have something to do with it? I never understood that. And is it necessary for them to seduce their victims before killing them? Why do they 'writhe sinuously' on every other page? And what did William's secret meeting with the dominatrix have to do with anything? I'm sorry, it just seemed gratuitous."
So. Totally. True.
"I think the writer wanted feedback, but was afraid to ask for it outright," Gates said. "Well, my message to him is: Don't quit your day job. Unless you've accidentally let everyone at your day job know that you get off on lesbian vampires."
Not even then.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:23 PMDepressed. It's all gray and cloudy outside. It takes very little gray and cloudy to interfere with my disposition. I like sunshine. I can take one gray day if I'm home and curled up but I hate having to work and pretend to be all chipper and happy when it's gray outside.
This is the second gray day in a row.
What some people might think of as "fog" but what is at this altitude actually low-hanging clouds are covering most of the city I can see from the windows. Visibility is about five or six blocks. It's drizzling. It's cool. It's yucky.
It's annoying me.
I forgot to pack a lunch yesterday (deprived!) so I had a choice between braving the elements (spending the rest of the day looking like I'd put my finger in a light socket) and just skipping lunch. I'd about made up my mind to live with the light socket look when it occurred to me that I had a two hour training session coming up fast and that I'd debated lunch for so long that I no longer had time to go and get it, much less eat it.
Today I packed a lot of food, none of which I'm in the mood to eat.
You know what I hate? I hate spending two hours in a training session learning to use a new gadget when the first hour of it is spent on remedial training for people who didn't bother to actually look at the gadget before the training or even bring a modicum of common sense to using it.
It's a freaking telephone, okay? How can you walk into a training session and say you need to start by learning how to dial a call?
I swear, people do shit like that just to piss me off.
I mean, I'm old, okay? My brain cells are dying by the thousands every day or something, and even I was able to figure out how to make a call, take a call, transfer a call, and check my voicemail without expert assistance. How is it possible that the Tweenybopper, at about 23 years of age, couldn't figure these things out?
Also? To everyone who was too busy and/or too important to talk about the configuration of the new phone system before it was actually installed? Shut up and live with the choices I made. I don't actually give a shit if you don't like how it works. You had a chance to put your two cents in and you couldn't be bothered. You're not going to drive me nuts, demanding idiotic adjustments now, after the fact, so get away from me before I hurt you.
I'm not in a bad mood, though. Not really.
I mean, yeah, I'm, sick to death of hearing about the new phones and listening to people bitch because they don't work like the old phones did, but other than that, I'm not in a bad mood.
I have a lot of work I should be doing. My phone is ringing off the hook, I have, at last count, 118 people standing by, dying to hear from me about using our new product, I'm two days behind in putting my notes into the shared MIS system so everyone can see I'm actually working during the days, and I have a stack of things on my desk that I've been accumulating all week, all under the heading of, "what is this and should I be taking some kind of action about it" but here I sit…blogging.
The Head Stooge showed up yesterday (actually, he dragged me out of a meeting) to casually inquire if I'd set him up with any appointments for a business trip he didn't tell me he was making.
I'm sort of proud of the fact that I didn't explain to him, very, very gently, that you don't drag someone out of a meeting with outside vendors unless it's an emergency, that I am not his (or anyone else's) secretary and I don't actually book other people's appointments, and that since I don't actually work for him, I'm not obligated to read his mind and become psychically aware that he's considering making a business trip.
All of that is, I think, indication of a mood that's better than it might be, considering the circumstances. I even went all out and booked one appointment for him before I went home last night.
From someone who hadn't eaten anything all day except an apple, I think sitting here until 6:00 in the evening to book his stupid appointment was going above and beyond, don't you? (Ed. Yes. Way above.) (Me: I knew you'd see it my way.)
Also? Allow me to explain to all of you that if I tell you someone is ON THE PHONE, it does no good to call me every sixty seconds demanding to speak to this person. I have neither the authority nor the desire to go to someone's desk, forcibly disconnect them from another business call, and demand that they speak to you.
By the time you call me for the fifth time, the only real desire I have it to leap through the phone and throttle you. (Yes, I'm looking at you Sassy. You've worked in this office. You know what kind of nutcases these people are. Why are you making my life a misery in this fashion?)
If anyone, anyone asks me why I'm not getting my work done, I may go postal.
Okay, I could be in a better mood.
I've been re-reading the HP series this week. I hadn't actually read the books for several months but seeing the new movie put me back in the mood.
First, I was amazed afresh by the amount of material in the books that didn't make it into the movies. While not the richest, most textured universe in literature, the books are more well-rounded than I'd remembered. Also, because of the ruthless plot and character pruning for the movies, I'd forgotten how much better JKR's adult characters are than her child characters. In the movies, the adults are mere walk-ons most of the time, but in the books they're far superior to most of the 'stars' of the series.
Tuesday night, with a certain amount of trepidation, I picked up Book Five to re-read it for the first time. I remember hating it. The characters were too different than they'd been in Book Four, and I loathe torture, I loathe mistreating children, and unexpectedly coming across torturing children in Book Five nearly drove me 'round the bend when I first read the book.
It was more like bad fanfic than a novel from the pen of the same author who wrote the first four novels. You know what I mean. Wallowing in character abuse just to wallow in it, not because it really adds anything to the plot. (Those of you in fandom who like character abuse probably don't agree with my assessment, but that's okay. I personally have never been able to understand how you can reconcile your protestation that you "love" the characters with the kind of pain you feel impelled to inflict upon them. I'm just saying. If this is how you treat the ones you "love" you might want to consider a bit of therapy. Or a lot of therapy, for that matter.)
(No, seriously, I know that although we use the same words to describe our reactions to our favorite characters, few of you truly view them as "real people." Most of you have no problem separating fact from fiction. Unfortunately, I'm someone with a problem that way and when I "love" a fictional character, I have great difficulty treating them any differently than I would any other "real" person. It's with the greatest difficulty that I manage to inflict even the slightest emotional suffering on my characters. I don't care for "hurt/comfort" for instance. I can sometimes manage "comfort/owie/comfort/comfort/comfort," but not often.)
But, let's stick to the topic at hand. I hate it when an author or a series gets too popular and no one edits their work any more. (Stephen King became completely unreadable in later years.) Some judicious pruning would have improved Book Five enormously. I thought that the first time I read it and I'm not changing my mind this time around.
It's like JKR couldn't remember how to build tension between characters, so she keeps falling back on having the kids squabbling with each other for little or no reason.
While I do understand that kids do squabble, I feel like I've been reading, "Harry didn't speak to _____ for the rest of the day" over and over and over.
On a more personal note, I also object to turning Sirius into an idiot who confuses Harry with his (Sirius's) dead friend and who, contrary to all of his (Sirius's) behavior up until this point, never hesitates to tell Harry to take chances and go into danger "for the fun of it." This character actually bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Sirius in the earlier books.
Okay, maybe I'm not in such a good mood.
I'll stop now.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:59 PMThey're all here today. The Three Stooges, the Mad Doctor, Sassy, and Buehler. Mostly having meetings that I'm not invited to.
I was feeling paranoid about it (I get that way) until I mentioned it to Sassy and she told me they just don't want to "bother" me with a lot of these things. I sometimes forget that I was just 'loaned' to this company for a year when Alvin, my original employer, decided it would be more convenient not to have to pay my salary for the next twelve months.
As it is, I was told to clear my calendar today for a full day of meetings, so I did. So far I've been in one meeting for about an hour and then had lunch with the group for another hour, leaving me, so far, an unexpected six hours that I've regrettably not been spending doing much work.
I sometimes wonder what's going to happen at the end of that twelve months if Alvin decides he still can't afford to pay me? I mean, it's nice an all that he wanted to be able to keep me in reserve for when he could afford me. Very flattering. But what happens if he has no money? Will Buehler and the gang invite me to stay on here? (Okay, probably not if I keep spending hours blogging on company time, but aside from that, I'm a reasonably decent employee.)
Also, we have a new phone system. The Tweenybopper and I are supposed to be "power users" which means we have to sit though a two-hour meeting tomorrow for (if experience is any guide) training that could more efficiently have been handled with a cheatsheet of instructions and a ten-minute introduction session.
I've decided to look upon the occasion as time for me to bitch about all of the things that haven't been done the way I wanted them done.
To me, business training sessions are like grade school. Remember grade school, when you sat there screaming with boredom (inside) while the class plodded along reluctantly at the pace of the slowest student in the room? Remember how material that any sensible person could absorb in ten minutes was stre-e-e-tched out painfully for hours while you sat there and wished for an invisibility cloak or an escape hatch or a really big stick to hurt people with?
Don't get the wrong impression, though. I'm blogging mostly to tell y'all that I'm not cranky today. I thought you'd like to know, that's all.
So…lemme see…what's new?
I went to see Harry Potter last week. I was…underwhelmed.
I'm not sure why they felt the need to redesign Hogwarts, but I swear I spent the entire movie on the edge of my chair, waiting with breathless anticipation to see just which student was going to get decapitated by the inexplicable pendulum suddenly infesting the main hallway of the castle.
The Whomping Willow still doesn't look like the description in the book but that bothers me less than the question of why the director felt it necessary to flash upon occasional scenes of the tree murdering passing birds.
The books are full of material there's no time to show in a movie, so I'm puzzled about why extra book material was excised so that the director could add unneeded new scenes that in no way advanced the plot or character development.
Why was the us full of talkative shrunken heads? Did anyone but me find that completely unnecessary and kind of stupid?
What on earth was the point of the choir? Was the director intimidated by threats of the religious organizations denouncing the books? Or was the inclusion of frogs (or were they toads?) some kind of subtle insult that I failed to understand?
Why was Dumbledore standing at a podium and why was the podium decorated with a Ravensclaw eagle?
Why keep Hermione and Ron outside of the pub so that time had to be wasted for Harry to expound on what he heard? Were they afraid that at 2 hours plus, the movie might run a bit short if they didn't include some completely unnecessary exposition?
Why did the Dementors float around like milkweed pods caught in a high wind? Did anyone but me think of the Indiana Jones movies when they saw that particular special effect?
But I'm not in a bad mood. Not at all.
We went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day for it. Mostly sunny with just enough clouds to keep the heat down.
(Now there's a mystery for you. How did they manage to build that site in such a way that no matter where you go, you're walking uphill? I swear the place was designed by Escher.)
I ate…not as much as I have in the past, but I ate a fair quantity of ridiculous things. I mostly go to the Renaissance Festival for the food. I love a buffet.*
This year, about fifteen minutes after we arrived I managed to drop an artichoke and pour about a cup of butter down the front of my shirt and my shorts, which put a bit of a damper on the rest of the morning, but whatever. I had Steak Onna Stake and Sausage Onna Stake and an artichoke with butter (they replaced my dropped one) and…I think that's all. I used to manage about three times that much. I think that stupid diet made my stomach shrink or something. (Not that I'm complaining. It made my butt shrink, too.)
And I had my tarot cards read. The lady took me for $25 to tell me there was a mature man wanting to make a commitment in my future. And that was after I told her I had no interest in marriage. She seemed sorry about it, though.
She predicted financial fortune three ways from Sunday. If there's a card that means fortune in the pack, I drew it. Apparently I'm going to be swimming in wealth some day soon.
She also said I work with a man who is a bit of a flake (Buehler, I'm looking at you) but that I should be nice to him because he's going to do something really good for me.
I had a good time, in spite of being all greased up.
* On a recent trip to San Francisco, I paid $50 for a buffet, purely on the strength of the view from the restaurant windows and the fact that both caviar and paté were featured on the menu. I figure I ate about a dollar's worth of each, and had about four dollars worth of "the view" from where I was sitting, but it's all experience, isn't it?
For instance, I learned that no matter where you walk in San Francisco, you have to make sure to stay near the trolley tracks because it's sure to be uphill on the way back to your hotel. Imagine walking up a playground slide. I did that for three, solid blocks at one point.
I also learned that if you ride the trolley early enough on a Sunday morning, the money-collector isn't always at work yet and sometimes you get a free ride. Mostly it costs $3, though.
I had a good time, which is unusual for me on a business trip.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:23 PMBah, and humbug. And the horses they rode in on.
I'm in a pissy mood today.
I mean, the day started well enough. The Sinus Infection From Hell seems, finally, to be moving out of my body. Cough disappearing, fever negligible, hearing back in both ears, nose almost completely back to normal. All of those good things.
I felt quite a bit better over the weekend but when Buehler showed up for work this morning, the first thing he did was diss me because I forgot to send a status update on one of my projects for him on Friday. He also dissed me because I forgot to send out a shipment on time last week and it had to be sent overnight.
I did forget the shipment, yes. But I 'forgot' in the three or four days when the shipment could have been sent out regular ground because I spent those days either at the doctor's office or in bed with a high fever and various other unpleasant symptoms of the SIFH.
I also 'forgot' because I lost Every. Single. Note. I had about projects and tasks to be done in the big network/e-mail crash.
As for the status report on Friday, I was having one of those days when I could either work or sit and write notes about what I was doing, and I chose to work.
I just think he's being unfair.
Granted, I do understand that making excuses doesn't get the work done, and I realize that since I've only worked for him for three months he doesn't know how very unusual it is for me to forget to something important, much less to be sick enough to miss multiple days of work, but I'm still mad at him.
I won't address it with him, of course. I'm not about addressing problems head-on. I'm about ignoring them until they either go away or fester and spread and eventually cause a gangrene of the workplace that requires an employee amputation to cure.
But since I'm passive-aggressive, I'm getting some of my own back by goofing off on company time. Which can only exacerbate the problem of me not being productive enough, I know, but I don't care at the moment.
So...on with the festivities!
Television still being a wasteland of non-entertainment, I'm currently shoving DVD's into the machine when I want to escape from it all. (I'm still reading the Aubrey-Maturin books as well, of course. Just finishing Far Side of the World and wondering when I'm going to find time to get to the movie.)
What am I watching, you ask? Purely escapist television. Britcoms (As Time Goes By and Are You Being Served), and sitcoms (Sports Night) for the most part.
I'm a big fan of Britcoms. Those mentioned above, along with Chef, and Mulberry and A Fine Romance and Good Neighbors and others live on the shelves at my house and get re-watched with surprising frequency. Some of my favorites, seen on television long ago, don't seem to have made it onto tape or DVD yet, which is sad. I've been waiting to see Butterflies again for years and years.
I'm still waffling on The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin though. I can't decide if that's one of the ones that won't have stood the test of time well. I may have to go ahead and buy it and see for myself.
I was about to start the first season West Wing DVDs I got for Christmas, but my roommate bought Sports Night so we're watching those instead at the moment. And then she bought the Highlander DVDs, so those were up next on the schedule, but then my first season Starsky & Hutch DVDs arrived Saturday, so those jumped to the top of the list. And then, of course, there are the Season Two Due South DVDs.
Not enough hours in the day.
Starsky & Hutch is the gayest show. I'm really surprised, even though it's always lived in my memory as amazingly slashy. The pilot, which I haven't seen for ten or fifteen years or more, was surprisingly gay. Much more, even, than the first few episodes. No matter how much time these two spend talking about the "blonde lovelies" they'd like to be spending time with, there's just no doubt that they're totally in love.
I understand that the movie has a great deal of fun with the 'homoerotic subtext' which is pretty much the only reason I can think of for going to see it, but it's pretty much enough to convince me to go and see it, so that's okay. I also understand that if you walk into the theatre with the firm idea that this is more a spoof than a real prequel, it's very funny.
I just keep looking at the casting and shaking my head, though.
Actually, I guess that's the only "festivity" I have to report at the moment. Getting laid low by the SIFH 24 hours after I got back from Escapade kind of derailed my nascent desire to become active in fandom again.
I went shopping over the weekend and practically everything I grabbed to try on was too big. I kept having to go back to the rack for smaller clothes. That's a nice ego boost. A very nice one, in fact.
It's the kind of positive reinforcement you need when you're sitting at your desk, trying to nerve yourself up to Make The Call to get The Lump examined.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:09 PMBah, and humbug. And the horses they rode in on.
I'm in a pissy mood today.
I mean, the day started well enough. The Sinus Infection From Hell seems, finally, to be moving out of my body. Cough disappearing, fever negligible, hearing back in both ears, nose almost completely back to normal. All of those good things.
I felt quite a bit better over the weekend but when Buehler showed up for work this morning, the first thing he did was diss me because I forgot to send a status update on one of my projects for him on Friday. He also dissed me because I forgot to send out a shipment on time last week and it had to be sent overnight.
I did forget the shipment, yes. But I 'forgot' in the three or four days when the shipment could have been sent out regular ground because I spent those days either at the doctor's office or in bed with a high fever and various other unpleasant symptoms of the SIFH.
I also 'forgot' because I lost Every. Single. Note. I had about projects and tasks to be done in the big network/e-mail crash.
As for the status report on Friday, I was having one of those days when I could either work or sit and write notes about what I was doing, and I chose to work.
I just think he's being unfair.
Granted, I do understand that making excuses doesn't get the work done, and I realize that since I've only worked for him for three months he doesn't know how very unusual it is for me to forget to something important, much less to be sick enough to miss multiple days of work, but I'm still mad at him.
I won't address it with him, of course. I'm not about addressing problems head-on. I'm about ignoring them until they either go away or fester and spread and eventually cause a gangrene of the workplace that requires an employee amputation to cure.
But since I'm passive-aggressive, I'm getting some of my own back by goofing off on company time. Which can only exacerbate the problem of me not being productive enough, I know, but I don't care at the moment.
So...on with the festivities!
Television still being a wasteland of non-entertainment, I'm currently shoving DVD's into the machine when I want to escape from it all. (I'm still reading the Aubrey-Maturin books as well, of course. Just finishing Far Side of the World and wondering when I'm going to find time to get to the movie.)
What am I watching, you ask? Purely escapist television. Britcoms (As Time Goes By and Are You Being Served), and sitcoms (Sports Night) for the most part.
I'm a big fan of Britcoms. Those mentioned above, along with Chef, and Mulberry and A Fine Romance and Good Neighbors and others live on the shelves at my house and get re-watched with surprising frequency. Some of my favorites, seen on television long ago, don't seem to have made it onto tape or DVD yet, which is sad. I've been waiting to see Butterflies again for years and years.
I'm still waffling on The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin though. I can't decide if that's one of the ones that won't have stood the test of time well. I may have to go ahead and buy it and see for myself.
I was about to start the first season West Wing DVDs I got for Christmas, but my roommate bought Sports Night so we're watching those instead at the moment. And then she bought the Highlander DVDs, so those were up next on the schedule, but then my first season Starsky & Hutch DVDs arrived Saturday, so those jumped to the top of the list. And then, of course, there are the Season Two Due South DVDs.
Not enough hours in the day.
Starsky & Hutch is the gayest show. I'm really surprised, even though it's always lived in my memory as amazingly slashy. The pilot, which I haven't seen for ten or fifteen years or more, was surprisingly gay. Much more, even, than the first few episodes. No matter how much time these two spend talking about the "blonde lovelies" they'd like to be spending time with, there's just no doubt that they're totally in love.
I understand that the movie has a great deal of fun with the 'homoerotic subtext' which is pretty much the only reason I can think of for going to see it, but it's pretty much enough to convince me to go and see it, so that's okay. I also understand that if you walk into the theatre with the firm idea that this is more a spoof than a real prequel, it's very funny.
I just keep looking at the casting and shaking my head, though.
Actually, I guess that's the only "festivity" I have to report at the moment. Getting laid low by the SIFH 24 hours after I got back from Escapade kind of derailed my nascent desire to become active in fandom again.
I went shopping over the weekend and practically everything I grabbed to try on was too big. I kept having to go back to the rack for smaller clothes. That's a nice ego boost. A very nice one, in fact.
It's the kind of positive reinforcement you need when you're sitting at your desk, trying to nerve yourself up to Make The Call to get The Lump examined.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:09 PMWell, I hope.
After I returned home from the joys of Escapade on February 23, I promptly succumbed (on Feb 25) to a horrendous, evil, endless, soul-destroying sinus infection from which I am only now able to say I am recovering. I'm still a bit cranky about it, as you can probably tell.
I actually missed two and a half days of work. I haven't missed that much work because of being sick in the last ten years.
It's been a while. I know. Again. I'm not doing well at regular blogging, am I? I experienced two moments of distinct guilt at Escapade when people told me they read this blog. And, at this moment, I'm experiencing a little panic at the idea that I need to be entertaining.
I'm becoming very experienced.
I should have blogged earlier this week, when I was on enough medication to send my brain to Pluto.
Escapade...Escapade...let me think.
I attended not one but two panels on the joys of Napoleonic War era slash. One was specific to Master and Commander and the other was a bit more generic. Since the Aubrey-Maturin books are the ones I chose to take for airplane/hotel room/spare time reading at the con this year, I was 'up' on the subject, a rare experience for me.
I also attended a panel on "the best stories I never finished" or something like that. It was about why some story ideas die half-born. Interesting, but not really productive.
I remember helping form the "shock and awe posse" but I'm not telling you what it was about or who the other guilty parties were. It was funny at the time, that's all.
I attended a couple of panels, I've already forgotten which ones, where I was obnoxious for no particular reason except that I felt like being obnoxious.* (It's possible I was mostly obnoxious in the privacy of my own mind, though. My doctor is of the opinion that I was already getting sick over the weekend, which explains why I was tucked up in bed at the unusual hour, for me, of 10:00 most nights and reminds me that I'd like to apologize to anyone to participated in Monday morning's promiscuous round of good-bye hugging that caught any cooties from me.)
I made cucumber sandwiches in the con suite. That's a regular feature of Escapade for me. Ever since my very first year, there's been some point at which I've found myself making cucumber sandwiches in the con suite.
I didn't attend the LotR panel. I've given up on complaining about that fandom and have decided, graciously, not to be bitter just because I seem to be the only person on the planet who didn't hear a fannish bell go off when the movies came out.
Go ahead. Indulge yourselves in hobbit porn. See if I care, you selfish perverts.
I learned a surprising number of things. Like that there's an unusual and rather inexplicable concentration of outspokenly "Christian" fen in Mag 7 slash.
Like that there's a noticeable percentage of slash writers and readers who are militantly anti gay marriage. (The illogic of some people boggles the mind, doesn't it?)
That last group, by the way, can confidently expect never to receive an invitation to join my new universe of a-better-kind-of-fandom when I get done creating it.
I saw a great many people I'm very fond of and didn't get to spend half enough time with most of them.
Then it was over, The End.
(* Speaking of obnoxious, I had a conversation with someone about why some lists take off and some don't and we came to the surprising conclusion that what lists, and maybe even fandom, need are a small but significant percentage of idiots. Say what else you will about them, idiots generate discussion.
For instance, I'm on one list where none but intelligent, rational people were invited to join and that list is lucky if it sees two posts a year. I've volunteered to be the village idiot on that one in an attempt to spark some discussion. I'll have to dig through my vast stock of stupid opinions on fandom for something suitable. If anyone has a favorite, feel free to speak up.)
It's hard to remember details when you've been heavily medicated for a week, okay? I had a great time, probably the best time I've had at Escapade in 3 years or more, which is saying a lot. I'm just a bit fuzzy on the details at the moment.
I did not, for instance, enjoy having my flight home cancelled and having to wait four or five hours for another one while in LAX, but it was very amusing to stumble across fen also roaming the airport. I have no memory of who I saw, but I do know I saw eight or ten people.
I remember that on my first day back to work, I discovered that the IT guy had been "fixing" my computer and that it was, in consequence, barely functioning.
I remember being told that our e-mail server had crashed and that, contrary to intelligent expectation, IT had not in fact, been backing up the e-mail files. I lost 1-1/2 years' worth of saved information, including the details on this new job that I was just beginning to understand and am now completely bewildered by once again.
Then, last Wednesday, I got dizzy and I don't remember much of the next six days.
I was ill, so I took 'ils' like Dayquil, Nyquil, and Advil. I took decongestants. I took horse-pill sized antibiotics from my doctor that cost $4.50 each. (Is that right? I got 20 pills, they cost $90 total.) I should say, I only paid 50 cents each for them because I have good insurance, but retail was $4.50 per pill.
I'm just saying. At $4.50 a pop, I really think I should have felt a lot better a lot faster, don't you?
Anyhow, enough about me for a sentence or two.
Note: I typed that last sentence twenty minutes ago. Surely I have something to talk about that doesn't center around my egotistical self, don't I?
By the way, I checked my blog this morning to see the date of my last post and noticed a pop-up ad appear. Please let me know if this is becoming a regular occurrence. If it is, I'm going to be pissed. I paid money to upgrade to BlogSpotPro (before they abolished it) so that readers wouldn't have ads inflicted on them and if Blogger is now putting pop-up ads on blog sites, I'm moving off of their server.
I'll work on something to talk about that isn't egocentric and I'll be back later, okay?
Posted by AnneZook at 10:59 AMI have eaten two bitty-bags of spiteful potato chips today. (Spiteful potato chips are the kind you eat when you didn't bring enough lunch and don't CARE if you're going to get fat.)
I'm not really in a bad mood, even if someone I work with this morning was being a complete moron.
I'm just...it's a combination of feeling guilty because I haven't done much work yet today and wishing it was 5:00 so I could go home because I'm tired of being at work.
Television mostly sucks these days. I'm aggravated that I haven't been able to find a new fandom. West Wing just gets worse and worse. Sometimes, watching this "new" version, it's hard to remember that the Bartlett Administration is supposed to be Progressive. This weeks' episode had entire sections lifted almost wholesale from real-life Republican talking points. When they said they wanted to bring more "balance" to the show with conservative views, I thought they were going to introduce or bring back characters to argue those viewpoints, not try and cloak Republican dogma in liberal clothing.
And what is it with the plot retreads? The last two new episodes were both covers of stories Sorkin already did in past seasons. How can the new staff of writers be that barren of ideas after only half a season?
My roommate bought Sports Night and we've been watching it. I now understand the complaints of SN fans when they were first watching West Wing. It is, in fact, disconcerting to run into lines of dialogue and plot points lifted from SN and planted on WW.
Oh well. At least Sorkin was only stealing from himself.
I've also been watching Mark Harmon's new outing, Navy NCIS which I persist in referring to as, "the JAG show" for some reason that escapes me since I've never actually watched JAG. I'm enjoying it enormously but not in a fannish way.
All of the energy I used to put into fandom is going into political blogging these days, I'm afraid.
I'm thinking I may have to give up political blogging, though. I spend far too many work hours on it. It's addictive, like any hobby, but I'm sure I can quit.
I mean, sure, I'm reaching a hundred times the number of people with my political opinions and mockery that I ever reached with my porn, proving once and for all, I think, that we are not obsessed with sex as a nation, but there are a lot of people pulling a hundred times the traffic I do in the world o'political blogs and I'm not really adding much to the body of intelligent opinion. (Okay, I'm not actually trying to be intelligent, regardless of the fact that politics is a serious, intelligent subject, but still.)
Escapade is next week and I'm a bit worried about it. When you've been "out" of fandom for two or three years, it starts to occur to you that you should give up your spot at Escapade and let someone who is really keen on fandom get a chance to attend. Plus which, I'm worried I won't have anything to say to anyone. Not only am I not active in any fandom, I haven't even read a story in the last couple of years. I don't even know what fandoms are out there right now.
Okay, I know about LotR but I've got sort of an attitude about the people who fell all over themselves with fannishness for Tolkein based on the casting of attractive men in the movie roles*, so I'm not likely to be popular in any discussions of the topic. Where the heck were all of you the first 50 times I read the books and wanted to discuss the themes of questing and self-sacrifice and the imagery of color and the wonderful complexity of relationships between characters and various species? Nowhere. No, it wasn't until they cast actors that made your little loins moist with unrequited passion that most of you cared at all.
I have no patience with you. None at all.
* This rant naturally excepts those of you whom I know read and enjoyed the books long before the movies were discussed.
I don't get Horatio Hornblower fandom, either. In the books the title character is a gawky, geeky, disadvantaged, unattractive, insecure sort of guy. And the first book in the series is so badly written that it's physically painful to read.
But I've seen the guy they cast in the miniseries and I know why y'all are all fannish over it.
I'm just saying. You don't fool me. If they'd cast an actor who looked the way Hornblower was described as looking in the books, 99.9% of you would never have given it a second thought.
You're a shallow bunch, aren't you? One glimpse of a pretty face and integrity goes out the window. You're panting for freaking hobbit slash, never mind that the Frodo-Sam relationship is one of literature's all-time greatest examples of platonic, selfless love and one of the clearest portrayals of the overriding geas imposed by a Hero's Quest.
No...they made one of the actors look pretty and your brains went on vacation. I hate you all.
I'm very bitter about this.
I want to find a show to be fannish about. It's just not fair. I know the source material for both of those fandoms, backward and forward. It's just wrong that I didn't get to be fannish about them and use that knowledge, don't you think?
What about Master and Commander? I haven't seen the move (yet) but I've read that series three times. It's useless, you know. I'm sure there's nothing in it for me or I'd have heard about it by now.
Life is very unfair.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:57 PMSo, it's been a while. How are ya? Have a nice holiday season?
Get plenty of good loot?
Eat a lot of good things, none of which made your butt swell up until it threatened to block the sunlight and throw Cleveland into a permanent shadow?
Me, too.
So...what's new?
Well, the new job continues to go well. I'm a lot busier than I was with the old one, which is all to the good. The days don't drag as much. I mean, I still devote an hour or two a day to my (other) blog, but some days it's a stretch to find the time, which is nice.
I'm wallowing in my annual Winter Hibernation. Don't go out much during the week, just curl up at home and mess with whatever project I have on hand at the moment. This year I'm struggling to master not one but two new GameBoy games. Final Fantasy Tactics and Sword of Mana.
I'm also, quite surprisingly to me, getting back into reading fantasy again. A Kind Friend started me off last year on a new fantasy series and then I discovered Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and now I'm catching up on the "in the universe of...." new Amber books and I discovered a couple of others this weekend. The nice thing about bailing on a genre for a while is that when you get back to it, you sometimes find that your favorite authors have finally released something new.
Other than that, I've been reading a lot of nonfiction, which is interesting to me but wouldn't be to you.
(At the moment, I am doing nothing more exciting than eating an apple and proofreading something I transcribed, wondering if "cryoglobulinemia" and "taida" are really words or if I'm just completely failing to read this person's handwriting.)
I was reading a discussion about the changes in fandom on a list and that made me start thinking, again, about why I bailed out on the whole thing.
The conversation stated with someone saying that someone new to her fandom had blithely announced that she liked X dynamic between two characters in a previous fandom so she just brought that with her and applied that to her "view" of the characters in this fandom.
No concern over whether or not X dynamic fit the characters or the universe or anything else. That's her kink and so that's what she writes.
Lots and lots of people writing fanfic take this approach any more.
Heck, everyone writes according to their personal preferences, biases, and kinks. The key is to make it work in the universe you're writing in. Make it...transparent. You can just write butch/femme relationships because that's what floats your boat. You have to check the personalities and the emotional relationship between two characters and see if it works for them.
But then, as I learned from the discussion, "canon" is one of those quaint, archaic concepts that don't matter much in fandom these days. Today's crop of "fans" don't care much about source material.
(Once there's a body of stories available, there's plenty of fanon around and from there on, most of the twits fans don't understand the difference between the two or see that there's any real necessity to make a difference. In fact, since fanon is usually spelled out in simple, one-syllable words, fanon is easier than canon, so I'd imagine a lot of the lazy swine fans prefer it.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that for many of us, fandom was and is about the show/book/movie/whatever. That's passé.
For today's crop of fans, it's about each other.
Where stories used to be written essentially in isolation, and read the same way, by individuals sitting alone with no preconceptions of a story and no one telling them what to think ten seconds after they finished, today it's a hive activity.
People go into a new fandom and get a primer telling them what they're going to see, to like, and to talk about. They want the primer, okay? They don't want to take a chance on not fitting in with the rest of the group. Baa-baa. Sheep.
It's not about the writing. It's about the feedback. (There's nothing wrong with liking feedback. I think, though, that when it's the only reason you write, it's going to be hard if not impossible for you to write well. Because, let's face it, very few readers are discriminating. Writing well is something you do for personal satisfaction and for that 5 percent of readers who can tell the difference. It's a lot more work than transcribing a sweat-stained version of your late-night fantasies.)
And, of course, fifty idiots readers are sure to send gushing feedback on how wonderful it all is, no matter what a piece o'crap it was, because that's their function in the hive. They're the canned applause. (The metaphor is getting a bit mixed.)
Anyhow. To many of the more recent "fans" the source material isn't the reason for fandom, it's just the excuse. It's simply a jumping-off point and not to be used to stifle someone's creativity (Kill. Me. Now.) or limit their ability to write whatever they want. Everyone is "entitled" you see, and it's elitist to care about writing quality.
(Yeah, I'm still working on coming up with a different name for what I think of as "real" fandom. I'll let you know and issue formal invitations when I get the new universe organized and some curtains up.)
As I mentioned in that list discussion, it's like collectors of Matchbook cars invading the Monster Truck Rally fandom and demanding equal rights because, after all, it's all about fantasy automobiles, right?
What little I've seen of the current crop of stories over the past few months (which, admittedly, includes only excerpts sent to me by so-called friends who want to see my head explode) suggests that today's "stories" bear about the same resemblance to what I think of as "fanfic" as a Matchbook car does to a Monster Truck, too.
In both cases, we're talking about a small-scale, inoperative model of something that's almost but not quite entirely something different than the real thing.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:07 PMI don't know why I treat that like it's an EVENT. It comes every week, after all. And it's not like my job is one of those hellhouse offices where you live for the instant the clock strikes five.
Still. Friday is a Good Thing in my world. Especially this week when I find I'm having a lot of difficulty with the time change. By the time I get home from work, it's completely dark out, which makes the evenings feel very, very short. I'll adjust, I know, but right now I'm having some psychological difficulties.
Of course, the fact that it's been drizzling ice for the past two days doesn't help. I do miss the sun and this morning's roads were horrendous in places. I whomped into a curb (came around a sharp corner onto a stretch of pavement that was solid ice) with a fair amount of force on the drive to work this morning. Guess I'd better go have my alignment checked.
Okay, we all know it's coming, so let's get it over with.
The diet.
I was not, in fact, down half a pound at last week's second weigh-in. I was up half a pound. Whatever. That still puts me down over two pounds for the week, okay?
The way I've been eating since then has discouraged any further weigh-ins, so I haven't returned to the scene of the crime yet. I have to check in with the FN's tonight, but I won't be having another official weigh-in until Monday.
Monday!
That's a significant Diet Date. Next week, is when I give it all up. I'm sick of the entire thing so I'm taking a month or two "off" of dieting.
The fact that I'm losing weight, getting thinner, developing muscle tone, and have gone down two sizes in pants notwithstanding, I'm just sick of the entire thing. I'm tired of measuring the food, writing it all down, and hauling myself 45-minutes across town in rush hour traffic twice a week to check in with the FN's.
I have a lot of qualities, good and (mostly) bad, but none of the good ones have anything to do with finishing what I start or being the kind of personality with drive, determination, and self-discipline.
So, anyhow, I'm going in Monday and Thursday next week, then I'm taking a little hiatus from my quest for youth. Then, sometime in December or, more likely, early January, I'll start up again so I can take off another 5 or 10 lbs before mid-February.
It's my hope that my doctor, even though she didn't tell me I should lose weight, will be appropriately appreciative of my efforts at better health.
I have no idea why I care. Like I said, she's never mentioned my weight at all.
Okay, the truth is that with my social life in the state it's been for the last two or three years, the only person in the world who ever sees me unclad is my doctor. If I get hit by a bus, I don't want anyone's last memory of me to be the flabby blob I looked down and saw at my last physical.
Also, as a consequence of my job, I've done a lot of research on health-related issues over the last year or so and I was shocked and actually impressed by the fact that I could lower my risk of developing heart disease, osteoporosis, and type 2 diabetes by forty percent or so just by dropping 20 pounds and taking a 20-minute walk five or six days a week.
Anyhow, even in my self-indulgent brain, that looks like a lot of profit for a fairly simple investment.
(Yes, if I give up smoking, I can lower my risks by another 30 percent, but I'm not ready for that yet.)
Next up: NaNoWriMo
Checking the old schedule and my social calendar, I still can't figure out how I'm going to find time to write 50k words in November. It may be time to take myself off the hook for this.
I do still encourage the rest of you to play along, though. I'll be here on the sidelines, cheering and making admiring noises.
The trouble with this blog thing is that it's a lot harder to do when you don't have anything to say.
Oh, by the way.
West Wing?
This week's episode?
Yes, we GET IT that if the President is out of sorts, everyone is out of sorts. Aaron Sorkin gave us this situation a couple of seasons ago and with a lot more nuance and subtlety.
I do hate being hammered over the head with plot points, especially when they should be subtext.
IMO, this episode looked like it was written by someone who didn't really understand or care about the ins and outs of politics, so they applied a heaping helping of melodrama to the show's personal relationships to try and distract from the lack of actual, you know, content in the episode. (Yeah, I know the writer worked with Sorkin in the past. IMO, that means there's even less excuse for how off-base this episode was.)
It was all retread ideas. Josh's supposed power in negotiating with Congress, CJ blurting out something she shouldn't have during a briefing, Amy burning all her bridges for one political 'win' - it was all rehashed moments from earlier episodes.
Someone please tell me that this isn't part of the show's vaunted "new direction"?
Someone please reassure me that the advertised addition of a "right-wing viewpoint" isn't going to be handled by making the current characters into two-dimensional idiots.
Pierce is very annoying, but Russell is surprisingly interesting. Much more so than I'd expected him to be.
I did not see Will deciding to switch jobs! Nor does it seem to me to be in character. Is this the man who is so driven to finish what he starts that he actually managed to win a campaign even though his candidate died before polling day? I don't think.
Why is C.J. suddenly the goat? Why is Leo suddenly on her case all the time in that ham-handed fashion?
Who are these people and where are my characters?
This was a travesty. It was nearly as bad as I feared the show would become after Sorkin's exit.
I don't like "ripppped from the headlines!!!!" television and a show can be timely without being exploitative.
A show can also be intelligent and absorbing without featuring a cast of unbalanced, unprofessional idiots, but you wouldn't have known that from this week's WW.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:21 AMWould you walk for 40 minutes to lose a hundred pounds in a year?
Would you walk for 20 minutes to lose 50 pounds?
My roommate, She Who Shall Be Cursed for getting me into this diet, walks for 40 minutes (20 minutes, twice a day.) She's averaging 2 pounds a week on this diet. I walk for 20 minutes, once a day. I'm averaging 1 pound a week.
Understand, neither of us will be losing 100 or even 50 pounds. There's no way we're staying on this diet for an entire year. We're already intermittently homicidal after only 60 days.
Still, it does occur to me that if I dragged my behind out of bed and took a walk before work in the morning, now while the weather is still nice, I could drop another five pounds in the three weeks I have left before I go on "maintenance."
Granted, the supplements are a bit expensive. We're spending about $60/week on the supplements and vitamins. On the other hand, my grocery bill has dropped to $12 a week, so I'm actually spending almost the same amount of money on food. (It's amazing how much you save when you're not going through four bags of potato chips and a couple of bags of candy a week and eating dinner out two or three times a week. Food is expensive.)
(I think I'm blogging too much. It's become such a habit with me to type in the html codes for the formatting I use most often that I find myself "formatting" text in documents that aren't supposed to have html code in them.)
I'm don't really obsess about the diet as much as these blog entries make it seem. It's just that today I treated myself to lunch out, for the first time in six weeks, and I sat down and ate my entire day's allowance of food at once.
I dread the moment when all of those carbs wear off.
I have no idea what I'm going to do for dinner tonight (well, yes, I do, because all I can eat is lettuce and celery), but one thing I do know is that tonight's 20 minute walk had better be 40 minutes to work some of those calories off.
I have no self-discipline at all. It's very sad. I could blame PMS, but I've already been blaming PMS for everything I've done for the past six days and after a while that excuse starts to get a bit tarnished. I'm a glutton, that's all.
I have absolutely nothing to say that could be of interest to anyone besides myself today. I'm getting new tires on my car tomorrow. That's the weekend's planned excitement.
Last night I watched Will and Grace and it wasn't very good and now I'm regretting having given up CSI.
I finished The Belgariad and now I'm working my way through The Mallorean with occasional forays into Jingo (a Discworld novel that I somehow missed when I was buying and reading them the first time through).
But
I was thinking about fanfiction last night.
Specifically I was thinking about when I used to write the stuff. Every so often I stop and marvel over that.
There was a time when I did nothing but write. I wrote at work, pondered story events in my head as I drove to and from work, and hogged up the computer at home every night and half of every weekend. One year I went to Escapade and missed one entire day of the con because I was busy writing a story. I wrote incessantly and obsessively. It was like the stories were grabbing me by the brain and forcing their way out through my fingers. Writing was almost all I thought about. (You'd think the results would have been more worthwhile, but that's a different rant.)
And then, one day, it just sort of...went away. Poof. The one time I actually tried to write a story since that time was a dismal failure. I couldn't think of anything to say and, worse yet, I couldn't think of any clever dialogue not to say it with.
Isn't that weird? I think that's weird.
It's another subject that's on my mind these days, because NaNoWriMo is coming up again soon and I have to decide whether or not to write another novel this year. The people who sucked me into playing that game last year both wimped out without finishing their 50,000 words, which made me a little bitter, I promise you.
The thought occurs to me that I could work on last year's novel, add another 50k to it, or I could write something completely new and different.
I don't feel any actual urge to write any more, but as I recall, the freedom to write without regard for quality or logic was a lot of fun last year. Not like writing something that someone will someday actually read. (The grammar police may come after me for that last sentence.)
Anyone want to play? It's easier than you think, you know. I didn't even start until the 7th of November last year and I easily got my 50,000 words written before the end of the month.
Any takers?
Posted by AnneZook at 03:20 PMWell, gosh, it looks like I forgot you again.
That could be because I was once again enmeshed in the toils of Real Work, or it could be just that I'm not back in the habit of blogging yet. After all, Alvin's out of town today and he was out yesterday, as well. What's up with me that I didn't take the opportunity to goof off for hours on end?
Or, maybe it's just that nothing that interesting has happened to me since last Wednesday.
I have lost no more weight and was about to quit the diet in fury (after eating massive quantities of "forbidden" foods on Sunday) when the PMS Monster subsided and I realized that it was Just One Of Those Things.
Today I've talked myself into sticking with it for another four weeks. Until my birthday, in fact.
Regardless of what weight I have or have not lost, or the state of the world in general, I'm eating barbecue for my birthday. And I'm eating a ton of it, okay? I'm not counting the slices of bread, weighing the chunks of sausage, or scraping the sauce off of the beans. I'm eatin' every bite I get within forking distance of.
And then I'm taking the leftovers home and eating them for dinner later that same night.
Hmph.
Anyhow.
We did turn Lyon's Den back on again on Sunday and were even less impressed with it than last week. I doubt we'll be trying it again.
Also, in Mitch Pileggi's honor, we tried Tarzan on Sunday and pretty much found it as unwatchable as we'd expected. (No, it wasn't a case of pre-sabotaging ourselves. It's just that you have to figure when the promos for the premiere don't interest you, it's unlikely that the show itself is going to turn out to be a favorite.)
The Tarzan character was cute enough, from the neck down, and I give him full marks for the unselfconscious way he knuckled around the screen imitating a giant ape, but he really wasn't that interesting. I saw no chemistry between him and his "Jane" and am not that interested in seeing Pileggi play a bad guy, even though it appears it will be less of an all-or-nothing evil role than I'd expected. Plus which, the plot was stupid, as well as being mind-numbingly predictable.
We do plan to try Mark Harmon's new show again tonight. I sort of enjoyed it last week, although not as much as during the premiere episode, but then I really like CSI so I expected to. It's not as intelligent as CSI, though, and my roommate doesn't care for the genre, so I don't know how long we'll keep watching it.
It's very sad when a new television season starts and you don't pick up a single new show. I dunno. Maybe we didn't try enough of them.
West Wing was...less wonderful last week. I'm hoping against hope that this isn't the beginning of the end for the show. I disliked the way the characters were twisted out of character in order to provide an unrealistic, and too-quickly resolved "crisis." John Goodman continued to be impressive, though.
That show had better not tank, okay? I'm giving up the opportunity to see Spike on Angel to keep watching West Wing. If West Wing goes down the tubes, someone's gonna get hurt.
I'm being hurt, okay? Just knowing Spike's probably up to something and I'm not getting to see it is...painful.
I gave up CSI, by the way. My summer infatuation with Will and Grace was just too strong and I wanted to know what was going to happen. CSI wasn't as good last season as it has been and I decided to make the switch.
In other news...well...what?
So, how about that California recall election? No...sorry...wrong place for that kind of talk.
I'm re-reading Edding's Belgariad series at the moment. I have a huge stack of non-fiction, but I've been in the mood for escapist lit the past few weeks. (Let's take a moment to offer fresh kudos to Piglet, who encouraged me to read it in the first place.)
I also have about two more books in Pratchett's Discworld series to read. Those should keep me busy until this mood wears off.
I'm just not a very exciting person, okay? I'm just not.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:59 PMI remain entirely amused by the way people consider fanfiction an internet phenomenon. Apparently the reams and reams and reams of stuff written in the 70s and 80s and 90s (yes, offline fanfiction is real, Virginia) has no real existence.
I also remain amused by the way these articles always carefully fail to mention things like the constant stream of "Sherlock Holmes" stories that have come out in the last ninety years because, of course, that's not fanfiction because someone got paid to write it and those are professionals and not just, you know, someone writing. (The fact that some fanfic authors get paid for their stories seems, still, to be a secret.)
And there's the obligatory titillation about Kirk/Spock. If this were still the 30s or 40s, we might all be writing things like a certain famous, "Was Watson a Woman?" (or whatever the exact title was, it's been a million years since I read it) but it's not, so we're speculating in today's daring new field which is all about single-gender relationships and I think it's okay that K/S, the fandom that brought slash out of the closet, is used to define "that kind of thing" in fandom. It's better than the alternative which is most of the XF or the underage S&M HP stuff that's out there.
And, of course, there's the obligatory self-congratulatory author who, at the ripe, old age of 18 has no problem declaring herself as one of fandom's most prolific authors.
I don't even need to search her out to know her stuff is going to suck.
(Why is it that 98 percent of the time, those congratulating themselves publicly on their writing prowess are those whose work falls among the two percent worst stuff out there? Why is it that 90 percent of those who swear they'll never write again if they don't get feedback telling them how wunnerful their sh*t is are the ones who write the least coherent, least readable, least interesting, most half-assed stories on the 'net?
But I refuse to get sidetracked by that because I've ranted about it ad nauseum (sp?) in the past and today's topic is a different one.)
I'm never sure exactly what these articles are trying to accomplish. Do each of these 'journalists' discover fanfiction all on their little own and bring it out like a shiny, new toy to share with the public or what? Are they, in some way we aren't privy to, related to or desirous of sleeping with one or more of the 'authors' they interview? Are they in desperate need of quickly written copy fifteen minutes before a crucial deadline?
Anyhow. I think by now both of you well know my opinion of the havoc the internet has wrought in fandom.
Too much, too fast. Every idiot with a keyboard decided they were entitled to an opinion, no matter how manifestly insane said opinion was. Every dittohead with experience of viewing two or three episodes decided they were a 'writer' and shoveled their half-baked debris onto the 'net.
(Even I did it and I promise you that had the process involved anything more strenuous than staring vacantly at a wall while my fingers did the walking, I would never have involved myself in the process. And I wasn't the only one.)
The highway of fandom is littered with the carcasses of those who labored under the illusion that they could write and the road-kill piles higher every day. Were it not for the inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder (way to mix a metaphor, there, gir), I might cherish hopes that some day a balance would return and that those few, gifted writers who possess such rare attributes as the ability to tell a coherent story and spell the characters' names correctly might return to the ascendant but, alas, I suspect that that will never be.
I should point out that I'm not actually in a bad mood today (regardless of references to 'road kill' that were inspired by a certain doggish author that those who need to know will identify without further clues).
I'm working on my syntax problem, I promise you. Having recently seen someone strip four pages of my (non-fiction) prose down to a terse four paragraphs, I have come to accept that I have a problem.
That's the first step, right? Admitting that you're powerless over grammar and that you need The Manual of Style?
I do, in fact, know people who could help. I know the kind of people who know, I mean actually know the rules for when you hyphenate "on site" and when you don't. It was explained to me and has something to do with a noun but I wasn't really listening so I can't pass the education along.
I even know people who not only know but who could, if asked, explain to me whether or not I'd spelled ad nauseum correctly and offer six interpretations, both literal and figurative, together with footnotes documenting famous usages of the phrase in classical literature.
There are times, not many because I’m an egomaniac, but there are times when I wonder why some of the people who let me hang out with them let me hang out with them.
That sentence might have needed another comma. I know people who would know.
The old diet is going well today, which might account for the improvement in my mood since yesterday. This morning's pre-dawn weigh-in (my favorite, since it's the lowest I ever see) was mighty-fine, indeed. According to the scale, I've lost an impressive 13-1/2 pounds since August 19. My jeans are definitely loose today. And baggy in the butt, which is less pleasing. These stupid jeans are almost new.
Still, the whole diet thing is a drag and my roommate and I have agreed that it's time we put an ending date on it. She's stopping 10/20. I'm stopping 10/24 because she had a four-day head start on me when we started. Then it's the whole "stabilization and maintenance" process which goes on for I don't know how long and then I'll be free.
Not free to eat the way I used to do but at least free from the tyranny of weighing out a careful two ounces of tuna for lunch or a scant one ounce of chicken for dinner on a daily basis.
I intend to go wild. I'll eat Mexican and consume six, eight, or even ten tortilla chips without guilt. I'll have a side-salad before my Italian meal and consume the restaurant's delicious oil-and-vinegar dressing without shame. One evening, when I'm hungry, I'll go to the kitchen and grab a handful of crackers and I won't even count them. And one day I'll just go out and eat barbecue without planning three days in advance to "save" enough calories to allow me to have six, uninterrupted bites.
Totally wild and crazy.
It's one of the "sad but true" facets of getting older that one's rebellions become so small. So completely trivial. It's hard to imagine that the woman currently plottingmto eat four whole ounces of sausage at one sitting, once participated in a vocal (but non-violent) protest against the KKK.
Does life move to a smaller scale as one ages? Does the weight of years of experience teach one to accept a lessened sphere of influence? Does the magnitude of the world and its problems become too much for one to bear after a space of decades?
Is one inevitably to wind up speaking of oneself in the third person or is that a pretentious affectation adopted by just a few?
It's true, though. People who once wanted to change the world become content with owning two pairs of comfortable shoes so they can change them whenever they want.
It's hard to know if we scale back our expectations, become calloused to the world's ills, or just get bored with it all.
I know my generation started out with Vietnam and Richard Nixon then lived through Reagan and Iran-Contra, so even the current ills of our society and the venality of those in charge are more "business as usual" to us than outrages to be fought with passion and conviction.
Doggone it, I'm in a good mood and before I get back to accomplishing at least one of the many things I intended to do while Alvin is out of town, I am determined to spread a little cheer around the world.
Actually, I'm hungry at the moment. I'm having an extra supplement. They say if you get hungry, don't eat snacks (unless it's lettuce or celery), just have an extra supplement and it will actually make you lose weight faster. We'll see. This morning's supplements were cappuccino and mocha hot chocolate. Right now I'm having one that tastes like grape kool-aid. I have to admit that they did a good job of making this stuff taste good.
I'm still working on a cheerful thought but I'll have to get back to you on it.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:20 PMWell, yesterday's weigh-in was...uneventful. I didn't lose any weight, but I didn't gain any, either, and that's probably all to the good considering the dietary sins I committed on Tuesday.
With a family birthday to celebrate this weekend so I'm just bracing myself for the fact that Sunday and Monday both are going to be a total loss as far as weight loss. I mean, no loss. I mean...well, you know what I mean.
Monday we've both taken the day off and we're taking a bus up to Blackhawk to immerse ourselves in the wild and wooly excitement of low-stakes gambling. I hope they've got the same nickel machines we found in Reno. I have to say, being the shallow type, that it adds some thing to dropping your nickels in if you know that a big enough win means the little guy on the display is going to do a strip-tease for you.
Other than that...I'm working. Still. Some more. Bleah. As a refreshing change from writing procedures for docs to use to evaluate conditions I don't precisely understand, I'm writing information sheets about our programs for such procedures. I've gone from winging it, to winging it about winging it.
I've been loving seeing the West Wing Season one episodes on Bravo, but then two days ago I discovered that they're bringing S1 out on DVD in late November, and now I'm wondering why I'm still bothering to tape these every night?
(Also I'm wondering if Bravo is annoyed that the money they paid to repeat these is going to be hard to recoup since die-hard fans will buy the DVDs, but I don't care so much about that because my opinion of Bravo went drastically downhill when they started advertising that, "reality behind the reality tv" series. I used to think of them as a station that offered slightly more intelligent, edgier programming. Cashing in on the mindless idiocy of "reality" television doesn't qualify as intelligent. Okay, so they have the same need for ratings as any other station, but I reserve the right to be bitter.)
And, speaking of idiots and fandom (Well, we were. Sort of, anyhow.) it occurs to me that the internet might actually succeed in killing fandom or at least driving it back underground. Now that the babbling idiots and sock puppets have taken over and are making jackasses out of themselves in every public way and forum they can discover, maybe it's time for the real fans to go back off-line? We could go back to mailing our stories to each other, writing letter-zines, and throwing the occasional low-profile cons for face-to-face interaction. Whaddya think?
(I'm finding writing this blog to an audience of zero pretty entertaining.)
Posted by AnneZook at 03:23 PMBlogging has been light recently. I'm sure both of you noticed that. There's not really a reason for it. The truth is that I find I'm becoming increasingly reluctant to much time on-line these days, a change that has been coming slowly over the past few years.
I first got on-line over a decade ago and for years my primary amusements on-line revolved around fandom. I met some amazing people, read some astonishing stories (and some astonishingly bad ones), and made some great friends.
It's probably not a coincidence that as my interest in on-line fandom waned, so did my interest in spending hours and hours every week (or, indeed, every day) sitting in front of a computer. (It's not that I didn't search for a new fandom, because I did. In the process, I found and learned to love CSI and West Wing and Monk but not fannishly.)
First I quit writing and now, for all intents and purposes, I've quit reading fanfiction. It's just...it isn't holding my interest. I was in and out of BtVS so fast I never got around to the fanfiction. Whatever fleeting interest HP fandom had for me turned out to be exceptionally fleeting. (All the more so since I have less-than-zero interest in the sexcapades of children, which, at my advanced age, pretty much includes anyone under 25. HP, as a fandom, is just too immature. Plus which...well, that's a spoiler for the latest booki, so I'll stick it at the end of this entry, okay?)
Now...well, now it's summer and the days are long and lazy and every evening I have to choose between sitting next to an open door, smelling the warm summer air, or shutting off the computer and actually going out in the air. As I said before, more and more often I'm choosing Option B. I'm also doing a lot more reading, but the nice thing about a book is that you can take it outside with you, you see. If I'm feeling too lazy to do anything else, I can carry my book across the street, pop into Starbucks for a latte or something cold and sweet with caramel, then move on to the lush grass near the creek or under some shady tree in the park.
I can, as I did a couple of weeks ago, take a summer ride on the Ski Train and spend a day in the mountains. I can go to the Renaissance Festival, ride the Georgetown Loop railway, meet friends for a leisurely afternoon tea, take a bus up through the canyone to Blackhawk and drop $5 in the nickel slot machines, or go haunt the library and work on one of my multitudes of "research projects" if it's raining. I can, as I did this past weekend, experiment with cooking and try to figure out why the food never tastes as good as the recipe makes it sound. I can hem those pants that have been hanging in my closet unworn for three years. I can get some exercise, shop the Farmer's Markets for fresh fruits and vegetables, or stroll down Broadway and spend hundreds of thousands of imaginary dollars furnishing an imaginary house with the gorgeous antiques I can't afford to buy.
And, as I was going to say before I got all distracted by all the things I'd rather be doing than sitting at work today, things have gotten busy around the offices. So much so that I'm feeling a bit guilty about not working more hours, so you can understand my reluctances to spend an hour or two a day blogging.
Anyhow. I'll probably blog from time to time, should anything to say spring to my vacant brain, but this entry is to serve as notice to anyone stopping by that I'm done feeling guilty about not blogging every day. I'm thinking of getting myself a life and the way I look at it, I have time to do it, or time to talk about it , but not both.
N.B. To those of you who pretend to be my "friends." You are not off the hook, so don't even think it, okay? You're stuck with me.
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Hyre Bee Spoylers For Ye Olde Ord O'Phnx (I'm avoiding proper names to prevent this from coming up in a google search, okay?)
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As I was saying....
This last book? No doubt, as she said in an interview, the author made it long because she had so much she needed to set up for the last two books, but I was under-whelmed in all drections. Who were those people and what happened to the real characters?
I couldn't believe it when I got to the end of the book and found out that I'd slogged through 870 pages in 7 hours only to find out that H was not, in fact, the 'hero' of this book, nor were any of the kids. H was just a typical teenager who had to be bailed out of a mess in the end by the adults around him.
Dmbldr's explanation" of what was going on was anticlimactic. The entire book was anticlimactic.
We didn't need almost a thousand pages to tell us that, in the end, it was going to have to be H or the Evil Guy, okay? We all knew that from Day One.
And the reason Evil Guy was out to kill H? Because of a prophecy? How dumb is that when Evil Guy's desperate attempts to get his hands on a copy of the prophecy proves that he doesn't know what it says? For all he knew, it said if Evil Guy killed H, he'd be dead within a year.
The returning characters were mostly out of character and the death was....much like the scenes of H being tortured by the Evil Teacher, completely unnecessary. The last book already proved that Bad Things Can Happen. What did this death do except, along with the Prefect-ization of R and Hmn, turn H's isolation from the world around him into melodrama?
Most of the action and events here actually showed up in the fanfiction already (even as little as I've read of it, about twelve stories, I know that) which says a lot about how creative this book wasn't. The OOT torturing of the main character was also in the most mediocre tradition of fandom.
Oh, there was good stuff in the book, including a couple of excellent new characters, but if we hadn't been assured that this was, in fact, the work of the original author, I'd have assumed it was a bad job of ghosting. The emotional entanglements were handled clumsily when they weren't outright ignored, almost all of the characters were a bit "off" and the story itself...well.... Let's just say I wasn't thrilled.
Looks like number three is going to remain forever and always my favorite.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:02 PMEvery now and then, I think its advisable to recommend some educational reading. Take a look at Grant's Letters From Leather Camp.
(Working, working, working. Now that I have, after nearly a year on the job, finally settled down and started working for a living, this company had better turn out to be successfule, okay? If it doesn't, I'm going to get aggravated.)
Posted by AnneZook at 10:13 AMI can be irritating if I want to.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the WIP. Too many of them are left unfinished, or inadequately edited because the author doesn't want to take the trouble of going back to change something she's already posted.
It's especially stupid when the story in question promises to be about six pages long when (if) finished.
On the other hand, I'm hard-up for material to blog about these days, aren't I?
"Do me."Do Me"I beg your pardon?"
"Do me. It's been hanging in the air since practically the second we met. We've both been thinking about forever and now I think it's time. I want you to do me."
How was he supposed to answer a statement like that?
He was a little too old to do 'offended virtue' and mentioning that it wasn't the most romantic offer he'd ever had didn't seem to strike exactly the right note.
"No," he said. "I haven't been thinking of it. Why have you been thinking of it?" He glared at Mulder. "Why aren't you working?"
"You haven't?" Mulder looked surprised, then shrugged. "Never mind. My mistake I guess. I'll see you tomorrow."
Walter stared as Mulder nodded briefly and left the room.
That was it? Want to? No? Okay, see you around. Was that how it worked these days?
The world was going to hell in a handbasket.
* * *
It was close to midnight before it hit him. 11:42 p.m., to be exact, and the digital clock beside his bed was always exact.
That precision normally reassured Walter, but on some rare occasions, it also annoyed him.
The problem with a digital clock was that there wasn't any context.
It was 11:42 p.m. No earlier, no later.
With an old-fashioned clock, it was also about twenty till midnight. It was a little after 11:30. It was, and you could count the hours quickly, around five and a half hours until the alarm was going to go off. It was 42 minutes after he'd laid down and started not sleeping.
42
42 was one of those weird numbers that showed up more often than there was any reason for. 42 was the number of Mulder's apartment.
Mulder. Do me.
Walter sat up and glared at the darkness of the far wall.
What the hell kind of thing was that to say to your boss?
He'd backed Mulder and Scully through hell and this was how Mulder thanked him? By playing some weird practical joke or running some half-assed psychological experiment or sending coded messages disguised as come-ons or whatever the hell it was he'd been doing?
There were moments, and 11:42 p.m., 11:44 p.m. now, seemed to be one of them, when he wondered what it was that was stopping him from reassigning Scully and kicking Mulder's stubborn, nonconforming ass right out of the Bureau.
Whatever it was that was going on, and Assistant Director Skinner had long, doubtful hours when he still couldn't believe the stuff about aliens and colonization, Walter didn't need this additional layer of weirdness in his life, keeping him awake half the night.
Right. Tomorrow, all it was going to take was One. Wrong. Word. from Mulder.
One eyebrow out of place and he'd find himself back on wiretapping before he finished smirking. In fact, Walter was looking forward to the opportunity.
* * *
What astounds me is that I used to churn out this much stuff while brushing my teeth. Now it takes me two weeks to get around to writing 50 words. (And I still haven't gotten around to rewatching any episodes and am fully aware, thankyou, that the character's voices are wrong. Blame JiM. She's the one who made me promise to try this.)
Posted by AnneZook at 09:41 AM
RPS
These RPS stories are getting completely out of hand.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:03 AMSome kind of vestigial work ethic seems to have overtaken me in the last week or two.
West Wing! That was a great season-ender. It speaks volumes for Sorkin's ability to suck me into his world that the entire "ripped from the headlines" cheesiness of the "Zoe gets kidnapped" plot didn't occur to me until three days after I saw the first half of this arc.
I loathe those shows that scream RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!!!! at you during commercials. I go to television to escape from reality or, in some cases, to get a context for what's happening in the world but I have serious doubts about whether or not a cop show or lawyer show would treat its RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!!!! material with enough honesty and accuracy to qualify as "educational" in my book.
WW, in spite of being impossibly idealized, is educational. (There's no way they could cover the real, messy details of political life in an hour show. Each plot point would have to cover three episodes.) It's also enthralling, engrossing, and fascinating.
Charlie! Josh! Toby! POTUS! And Leo! "Leo will know what to do."
How can I wait months to see the rest of this? How can the rest of it possibly measure up if it isn't written by Sorkin?
Am I the only one wondering if Sam is biting his nails and wishing he was in the White House now that his friends are having all of this trauma and really need him?
Does he feel out of the loop, lost and alone? Does he lose sleep over these things?
Did he win his election?
I also wonder how Hoynes is taking it, realizing how much POTUS needs him right now and realizing that his own idiocy not only took him him out of his party's running for the next nomination but probably handed the next presidency to the other party into the bargain?
What do they do to members of foreign royalty who thought they were taking, and sharing, illegal drugs but who turn out to be the victims of terrorists? Probably just send them home and never issue them another visa until said royalty wants to come back to the country and has some kind of political or economic clout that someone in the Administration wants to take advantage of. (I know. "Cynical much?")
I've read a lot of people who thought that Frenchie was Part Of the Plot, but I never thought so.
It's a pity they cast John Goodman as the temporary president. Not that I have anything against him except that the only think I know about him is that he was one Roseanne and I used to flip past that show ASAP since I don't find "slob humor" at all humorous.
I suppose if I say the guy needs to drop a couple of hundred pounds before he keels over dead from congestive heart failure I suppose I'll start a huge war about me being bigoted or something, but that guys' size was scary, okay?
Anyhow, I'm sorry they cast him because while it's easy enough to bring on a guy who plays the Hostile Heavy-handed Replacement and who turns out to be an honest man who does the right thing even when it's not his personal choice, I think it would have been a lot more interesting to bring on someone more low-key and then have him either appear to be cooperative and turn out to be two-faced, or have the staff try and walk on him and have the whole "I'm in charge!" outburst come a bit later.
This coming in and laying down the law fast is the right way to take temporary control, don't get me wrong, but dramatically it was predictable.
I'm just saying, okay? Everything they've done with Replacement Guy (I have to learn his name) I predicted the instant we heard what '25' was and that the guy was a Republican. Except for not knowing it was Goodman, I "saw" the whole thing play out in two seconds in my brain.
Without Sorkin, I fear the wrap-up of this plotline won't be subtle enough to surprise and please me.
Spike BtVS!
I've been very good about not boring y'all with this lately, haven't I?
Posted by AnneZook at 09:21 AMI've been thinking of you. Honest, I have.
I taped Spike BtVS Tuesday and was thinking sadly that when I get a chance to watch it, I won't be able to blog about Spike it obsessively because of complaints about the all-Spike, all the time nature of recent entries.
I also thought about blogging the SB, as I mentioned before, but there's still a possibility it will show up in a story some time soon, so I don't want to use up the concept.
I could have blogged about the new airline that's being started up, but I think the concept of Hooters Air is pretty much self-basting, don't you?
I was having lunch with a couple of friends earlier this week (yes, I hogged all the conversation, as usual) and got to brooding over the hiatus in writing that some of us are having. Three of us got medicated at about the same time, making us card-carrying members of the Prozac generation.
Not one of us has written a single word since we got the dosages right.
There's a lot to that theory that writers are unbalanced, isn't there? The more mentally and emotionally stable I become, the less I feel the drive to write.
And yet, I did write one thing. I wrote the NaNoWriMo novel, and while it sucked on an Oscar-worthy scale, that tells me that the three of us could be writing, if we could just find a different way of tapping into that energy than the pressure of escapism that used to drive each of us. (Writing well is another story. I have nightmares about some of the passages in that NaNoWritMo novel.)
I wonder how many other fanfic writers have dropped out of fandom, not because life got really stressful and bad, but because things improved for them to the extent that they also stopped needing the outlet for stress? (Not that my friends and I are now leading stress-free lives, especially in the case of one of us, but the medication means she's able to deal with it all.)
It's a Point To Ponder, isn't it?
You ponder for a while, while I go get a little more work done....
[time passes]
I see no one has commented on this yet. (Okay, it's not posted yet, but that hardly matters around here. I don't think anyone accidentally stumbling over this place is under the impression that I'm doing anything more than watching myself perform in a tastefully decorated but largely empty theatre. Have I mentioned the egomania thing recently?)
Anyhow. I'm sort of proud of this manual. From a blank pages and a hand-waving description of a piece of vaporware, I've created a 46-page explanation and walkthrough of the program, complete with screen-captures and explanations for how to do a great number of things I'm not certain I could do myself if pressed. It's highly likely, in fact, that I will be called upon to do these things.
It's a good thing I have a walkthough, isn't it?
And now, I have one hour and ten minutes until my 4 hour meeting and I'm not ready for it, so I have to leave you again. I'll be back soon. Promise.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:57 AMThe stupid lawyer just sent me 14 pages worth of document he wants to use to create a contract that should have been outlined in 2-3 pages. There goes the weekend.
All I can say is that this client had just better come through with a substantial amount of business, and darned soon!
Also, the Terminator was on her way out of my life but she's ba-a-a-ack and likely to be becoming a much larger part of the problem things. She seems to have discovered/remembered that an outside consultant has wide latitude for coming in and laying down the law right and left without actually having to do any of the work, so she's about to become an outside consultant.
Just what I need. Her, licensed, even paid to explain to me how I'm doing it all wrong and need to stop and consult her every five seconds to keep myself on the right path.
When I grow up, I want to be an outside consultant.
At some point Wednesday evening I seem to have enraged an Attention-Deficit Demon. I was just sitting in a chair, and when I stood up, ouch!. My ankle sprouted pain and stiffness for no discernable reason. It was sore enough yesterday that I could barely walk on it, but today it's practically well.
What kind of crippling owie disappears in 24 hours? Cut-rate demons, that's all you get these days.
And, speaking of demons, our VCR had a problem Tuesday and I didn't get Spike BtVS taped. (Our VCR needs a new user. The old one is defective.) I wouldn't care, except that I've heard there were some great funny scenes.
(Two more episodes, that's all. Surely it's not beyond me to be able to tape two lousy episodes of a show? Surely I have brain enough for that?)
This week I exercised (well, until the ADDemon struck), did huge amounts of laundry, Collapsed for many hours, fed about a million Insaniquarium fish, read five books, watched one hour of television, ate at least half a pound of chocolate, sat up until midnight every night, overslept every morning, and was generally a less-than completely productive member of society.
It was lovely.
It isn't that I can't, or don't do exactly those same things when my roommate is at home, except for leaving the television off for days at a time, it's just the luxury of hours and hours of untrammeled solitude.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:07 PMI should be working, of course, but I'm approaching the start of this week cautiously.
I overslept. Sort of. The alarm kept going off, and I kept not getting up. I wasn't precisely late, but I didn't have a lot of time to spare by the time I was ready to head for the car.
While waiting for the elevator, I dumped a full cup of coffee on the hall carpet, so I had to go back into the apartment, start another cup of coffee brewing, get some rags to soak up the spilled coffee, and dig out the Resolve so I could spot-treat the hallway carpet.
This is never a good start to a day. (I suppose some would think that the public hallway carpet wasn't their problem, but I see it differently.)
I need to cut my fingernails. I caught the apostrophe key with the edge of a fingernail first thing this morning and now I can't get the stupid cover to stay on.
Five minutes ago I figured out I've had my contact lenses in the wrong eyes for the past four hours. (It may sound minor to some of you, but I assure you that having the world snap back into focus is a lovely sensation.)
I'm hoping that the new clarity of the computer monitor, and of the notes I made on Friday, will go a long way toward erasing my continuing indifference to the work I'm paid to do. It bothers me that, after close to ten months of employment, I still haven't managed to gather any enthusiasm for this job. I mean, I have plenty of time to dink around, no one looks over my shoulder or sets impossible deadlines for accomplishing things, and I'm overpaid. What's not to like?
And yet, day after day, I come in, think of a few useful things I could do, and fail to do them. I don't really miss being a workaholic, but I do wish my work ethic would at least visit me from time to time.
On the other hand, it visited me last week and I worked all week to get some material written that Alvin wanted to take with him on his trip today. And then late in the week, the client called and cancelled the meeting, so I had to drop everything, including the on-the-verge-of-completion projects to spend two hours arguing with Orbitz and canceling the car and hotel reservations. So, even when I do work, it's wasted time.
I'm making excuses. Right now, at this moment, I could pick up the phone and call any of six people with whom I'm supposed to be establishing a business relationship. The fact that I'm not doing so is what I need to focus on.
Okay, enough of that.
I had a nice weekend. A very nice weekend. Cleaned out the hallway closet (a once a year, day-long exercise), made six trips to the dumpster to get rid of unloved debris, cleaned the bathroom, dusted, bought three new shirts, and ate out twice. I bought some other stuff, too. I don't remember what it all was at the moment, but I'm sure it was all lovely.
Put like that, it doesn't sound like much, but I also slept until 10:30 Saturday morning (no doubt exhausted by the press of non-work last week), watched three movies, read 3-1/2 books, and drank innumerable cups of coffee.
Okay, it still doesn't sound like much, but I think you had to be there.
I had a nice weekend.
Speaking of me (Heh. Heh. Egomania!), I took another look at what I wrote last week and confirmed my previous decision to bury the prose in an unmarked grave. I did come up with one thing I want to keep for whatever story I might wind up writing, and that's Walter's grumpy reflections on the dearth of romance in today's society. (Hopefully this will be funnier than it sounds.)
He finds Mulder...less than convincing in that area. I do see Walter as a romantic kind of guy, really. I can understand why he was less than bowled over by Mulder just dropping a casual, "hey, you wanna do me?" into a conversation. Once Walter stops brooding over this, I guess Mulder's going to have to put some real effort into the situation if he wants to get what he wants.
Also, I have to work SB into it somehow, because I haven't written a story with a peculiar sex toy in quite a long time.
I was recently reminded, by someone who doesn't mind dredging up my past sins, of a particular excess committed in reference to a tiny cowboy hat and some other accessories. Also, a fire hydrant, if I'm not mistaken, although I don't remember such a thing and refuse to believe I wrote anything of the sort.
(I consider such reminders to be unforgivable acts of memory from people who usually pretend to be my friends. Do I remind any of you of the more embarrassing things you've written? I do not. Let's have a little charity in return, okay?)
Anyhow, that's my concept for the story so far. I hope it suits JiM's demands. It's all she's likely to get. Some yakking, maybe some arguing, some weird behavior from Mulder, that kind of thing.
In the meantime, though, I'm still more interested in the OaT story.
With my roommate out of town for the next five days, I plan to re-watch episodes and figure out a way past a little plot-related dry spot I've run into.
I need the guys to mess something up (well, that won't be hard), but in a particular way. so that they're giving a particular task as punishment, you see, and then can mess that up, and then be punished with this other particular task that I haven't entirely figured out yet.
That's all I'm giving you. If I tell you the entire story now, no one will even pretend to go and read it when it's done.
I will say that large portions of the story were inspired by The Art of War, for no better reason than I decided they could be. There's some good stuff there, trust me.
(In TAoW, I mean, not in my story.)
(Funny is where you find it, okay? I found 'funny' in TAoW before this Iraq thing and I'm hoping recent events haven't spoiled the mood.)
(Can we elect someone different next time? I hate getting government in my slash.)
"Voices" are always a problem when I haven't been watching a show recently. It's impossible for me to capture the characters voices and mannerisms in any convincing or recognizable fashion unless I've been immersing myself in episodes. (Another thing I accomplished this weekend was to make a list of XF episodes I'll have to re-watch before I can write that story.)
Of course with my roommate out of town for the next five days, it's quite possible I'll spend every spare minute sitting in a chair and reading. That's what I usually do when I'm left to myself for any length of time. Being alone for a few days is just license to sit and peacefully read a book (or a dozen books) with no one reminding me to do anything more 'productive' or more likely to contribute to the betterment of society.
My interest in the betterment of society tends to be like my interest in working, or sleeping, or paying bills. It's an okay way to spend the time you're not allowed to spend reading a book.
Right about now, you're asking yourself, "Is she making this entry because she had something to say, or because she just thought she should make a new entry," right?
I ain't telling.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:48 AMPardon my absence.
I've had a remarkable number of bloggable thoughts jostling in my head for the past few days, but Circumstances have, as Circumstances occasionally will, intervened.
We've been having a drought in Colorado for the past three years. I'm sure many of you are aware of this. For those grateful that said drought has been broken, please send me money via PayPal.
Like when it only rains after I've washed my car, this time we're getting a solid week of rain because we had the carpet cleaned in our apartment. It's...damp at our house. It's been damp for what seems like eons. The carpet may not dry until 2004, who knows? Or it may rot away, hence the demand that you send money.* We'll probably wind up having to pay for it because jinxes aren't covered in the management company's insurance or something.
No Spike BtVS thoughts at the moment. I missed Mal's Caleb's appearance last week due to a defective VCR. (For those interested, the defective component was the user.)
Mars, Venus, Blah, Blah, Blah
However, speaking of Spike (and aren't I always?), I'm less than amused by the tedious TNN rechristening itself as Spike TV. It's typical, isn't it? A channel devoted to women is giving the future-affirming "Lifetime" moniker. A channel devoted to testosterone-targeted entertainment for men is named "Spike." Fast, violent, and final.
At this point, I just deleted about 900 words on the Mars-Venus theory that such diametrically opposing naming conventions reinforces. Those grateful for this show of forbearance on my part should send money.*
Descartes and Spike
I was also going to write more (well, I haven't written any yet, but I threatened to once, so it's not precisely a Mad Tea Party thing) about Cartesian dualism, based upon my current reading material, "The History of Knowledge" but it occurred to me that no one but me would care and that by the time I'd "thought" the essay in my head, I already knew what I was going to say so taking the time to type it all out would be merely transcribing, a thing I loathe.
Still, don't send Gratitude Money* for that one yet. It's all tied up with my half-baked theories about Spike BtVS and may yet see the light of day. I'm still brooding over that "soul" thing, and the way that vampires are supposedly not the people whose bodies they inhabit in spite of retaining the personality and memories of those people.
No, I wouldn't send money.* I might yet care enough to write it all down and inflict it upon the world.
In other news, I'm a raving egomaniac.
Well, okay, that's not news to anyone who knows me, but it's connected to this next bit of rambling and I always think it's good to get your premise out fast.
In another forum, I ran across (finally!) an answer to that age-old question, "Why are so many people in fandom so determined to push themselves and their idiotic and embarrassing opinions out in public?"
Okay, let's try that again, with a little courtesy this time.
Why do we see so many 500-part 'stories' that are essentially rambling dreck and yet for which the authors still demand a constant stream of praise? Why are so many people so loudly obnoxious on lists and in discussion groups? Why do people with very little to say insist upon saying it again and again? (Why are you looking at me?)
Okay. Not much courtesy in that, was there?
Once again, with restraint.
Why do people post stories, or beginnings of stories, and then post a note saying that if they don't get enough strokes and feedback, they won't finish the story and, further, they'll leave mad?
Why do people demand "payment" for the stories they choose to write and to share with others, as though the sheer act of creation was not, in and of itself, enough payment?
That's probably the best I can do on the courtesy front, so let's move on.
I ran across someone willing to stand up publicly and admit that they, and in their opinion most of us, don't get enough attention from other people. This person argued that most of us thrive or wither based upon our contact with Actual People. Based upon the affirmation of existence and worth we receive, or don't receive, on a daily basis from those around us.
So, all of these people I diss for demanding "payment" for the "work" (Hah!) they put into writing aren't trying to get "paid" at all. They're only writing* because they see that as an avenue for gaining attention, for gaining acknowledgement of their existence from other people and they're just not shy about demanding the attention and affirmation they're seeking. That's either honest or pathetic, I can't decide which. Maybe it's both.
(* If you think about it, this explains the mind-numbing volume of crappy fiction out there. They're only writing to get attention, so they don't care much about the actual writing.)
This is sad. I mean, I set out to be nice on this topic.
I was going to say that this blog entry made me finally, truly understand what all of these desperately screaming for attention fans are feeling, and here I am being all rude and stuff.
That's because, as I said previously, I'm a raving egomaniac who finds it inconceivable that anyone's opinion on any subject could be more interesting to me than mine, so mostly I don't require a lot of feedback for what I write or my opinions as expressed here. (Fortunately, since I don't get much feedback. It may be a chicken-and-egg style problem. I've occasionally wondered if I got a lot of feedback, how that might have changed my perception of the same, but I'll never know. It's quite possible that I'm taking this lofty, superior attitude toward feedback because my Inner Child got its feeling hurt when no one sent any. I mean, I doubt it, because my Inner Child is rarely interested in anything but potato chips and re-runs of Andy Griffith, but it's possible.)
Also because the people I care most about in my life give me plenty of attention and positive strokes, so I'm not starved that way. So, you know, I'm sending love and gratitude to the people I love, and you know who you are.
I'm a raving egomaniac and if not for your care and attention, I'd be a hundred times more obnoxious than I am, and the world really doesn't need that much more negative karma, does it?
Okay, enough with the mushiness already.
Speaking of writing
I did a trifle. It might be optimistic to call it the start of a story, so we'll think of it as a writing exercise. A purely mechanical placing of consecutive words in sentence format. This is in response to the demand (albeit a gentle and pleading one) for new XF. At some point, I'll go back, watch an episode or two, try and remember who these guys were and how their voices sounded, and write an actual story to fulfill my commitment. For anyone who cares, it's M/Sk and a first-time story.
In the meantime, I have to admit that my current OaT story attracts me more. Mostly because I've already got a story, and half a dozen humorous scenes, plus a sketch of most of the plot. Also because I wasn't as invested in OaT and am not suffering the trough of depression over how it sucked. I know the show sucked. It did have brilliant moments, though. And it's amazingly slashy, it's wide open for story possibilities, the boys are pretty, there's angst, there's comedy, and there are plot holes you could drive a slash convoy through. With all of that gong for it, it seems a little greedy to demand that it also have been quality entertainment.
In closing
I had more to say, but I've forgotten what it was.
I had a whole other bloggable topic with a snappy punchline (well, maybe it would have possessed one) and everything.
To recap:
It's raining.
Television is weird.
Read Descartes.
I'm a raving egomaniac.
I love my friends.
Looked at dispassionately, this is hardly the stuff of deathless entertainment for the casual reader, but thanks to #4 I don't have to care.
* Please don't actually send money.
Fans Rejoice
TOUCHING EVIL (USA) - Peter Wingfield ("Highlander: The Series") has signed on to the cable channel's two-hour backdoor pilot. Based on the british series of the same name, jeffrey donovan stars as a detective who focuses on solving shocking, high profile crimes after surviving a gunshot to the head.
VEGAS DICK (UPN) - Vincent Ventresca ("Invisible Man") has nabbed the title role in UPN's drama pilot presentation. Katherine Heigl ("Roswell") is on board UPN's drama presentation about a former con man who ends up the inhouse detective at a hard rock-like casino in Vegas.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:48 AMAfter the sins of the weekend, which included getting drunk on Friday night and having to have a cab called to get me home and then suffering the discomfort of a thankfully mild but persistent hangover on Saturday, I'm feeling somewhat...chastened.
So, I came in today full of virtuous intentions and I'm going to get some real work done this week.
Except for right now, when I'm blogging and stuff, of course.
First things first, of course.
Spike. BtVS. They seem to have started over with the reruns, so I'm going to quit taping the daily repeats for a few weeks. I have S1-S3 on DVD, after all. I did get to watch last week's Tuesday night episode, which was a repeat for those au courant with the current season, but not for me. Now, of course, I know that Spike was apparently rather thoroughly evil at some point in his vampire past. Still doesn't explain why he's so mellow by the time we meet him, but whatever, okay?
During last night's shower (I hope that's not TMI. The fact that I bathe, I mean.) I was contemplating this whole "first evil" thing. While naturally remembering that there are still large gaps in my knowledge of this season's events and that I have only the vaguest memory of the first encounter with The First, I have to say I'm not buying a lot of this.
If this massive evil is so massively evil and powerful, what is it with all the parlor tricks and games it's playing with people? Why not just take out the Slayer's support group? I don't think anyone could deny that Dawn and Xander, at least, would be pretty easy targets, even if you're just a street mugger. For the First Evil, not even Giles or Willow would probably be a challenge, would they?
And why lurk around in the shadows brooding over its agenda for so many years before striking out? What is empowering it at this particular time? Is it one of those cosmic alignment of the stars things, or did it just get bored with its hell dimension? What is its plan, anyhow? To wipe out humanity, or what?
What is its agenda for Spike (well, I know we don't know that yet) and will it turn out that Spike's inexplicable passion for Buffy was, all along, rooted in some maneuver of The First's, being merely a ploy to insure that this tool would be on-hand at the appointed moment? (I don't get the Buffy thing, as I've said before. Willow, aside from the whole lesbian thing, would have made more sense to me. Her character is much more interesting and more layered than Buffy's. Still, I try to remain aware that I have a blind spot.)
Surely there's more to its power over Spike than that easily avoided song "trigger"? Was that a ruse, intended to prevent the gang from finding out what was really planned for Spike?
Is this show falling apart, or is this entire season some complex web of deception that won't be revealed until the last minute? Has it become a mishmash of imbecility (What is it with the fluctuating number of "potentials" running around? Are there only three or four of them, or are there about twenty? Depends on what scene you're watching.) or is there some incredible subtlety at work?
Why is Spike so impossibly sexy when he's, you know, dead and murderous and evil and stuff?
Don't ask me.
Even if Spike shows up on Angel yet year, which I understand is a rumor that's been floated several times, I won't be watching. It's not that the SpikeLove has waned, it's just that I discovered that Angel shows opposite West Wing. It's a pity, but maybe it was just a rumor anyhow.
Enough of that. What else is happening in my life?
Inexplicably long pause ensues.
Doggone it, I'm not just a collection of addled hormones brooding over a dead guy! I'm not!
I've been thinking about sex lately. Not, you know, in terms of sex, so don't get that TMI queasiness and run away. I mean in terms of writing. About the "place," if you will, of sex in fanfiction.
(As always, when I discuss "fanfiction" I'm talking exclusively about slash unless I specifically say otherwise.)
I like stories that don't have graphic sex in them. It's enough to hint at what's going on and then move on with the story. The whole, tab-A-slot-B thing is pretty tedious after the first four or five hundred times you've read it, don't you think?
Really, long before that.
It's not because I've lost interest in men doing men or anything. I think it has more to do with (here we go again) the lack of decent, or even consistent, characterization in fanfiction stories.
I think I could still get very interested (Heh. Heh.) in the idea of Mulder and Skinner doing the deed. I'm reasonably certain that reading about Krycek would still raise my temperature noticeably. Jim and Blair? Fraser and Ray? Still enticing ideas.
In theory.
In reality? Maybe it has something to do with that "wave theory" or something, but on those rare occasions I go out looking for fanfiction, I'm not finding stories with anyone I recognize in them. And while I object to no one's interest in porn-for-the-sake-of-porn, it's really not my cup of tea. Especially when it's all so poorly written.
I like Krycek. (Well, as well as anyone can "like" a dishonest, murdering thug, but it seems, as time goes on, that my capacity for liking that kind of person is greater than I'd anticipated, but that's not really the subject here, is it?) I like his twisted brain and his flexible ethics and his sliding between catastrophes, escaping disaster by the skin of his lying teeth. I like Mulder's perverse, pretzel brain. I like how Mulder's perversity and Krycek's twistedness can mesh like puzzle pieces and I really like the erotic fireworks that can ensue.
I'm phenomenally less interested in reading about some whiney character coincidentally named Mulder having badly written sex with some inexplicably psychotic character coincidentally named Krycek.
Hmmm. I dunno.
Am I less interested in XF fanfiction because of the sucky characterization that dominates the fandom or because the writing is so bad? And ditto for the other fandoms I used to write and read.
Anyhow. That wasn't really today's point. I meant to contemplate the appearance of graphic sex scenes in fanfiction. The bottom line is that I'd happily trade a dozen graphic sex scenes, even three dozen, for one decently characterized story.
And I like a story in my story. I have nothing against a PWP, but I really prefer longer, plot-driven stories, when I can get them. And first times. I'm a sucker for a well-written first-time story.
Mostly I'm just off fandom. It happens to all of us from time to time. I have other things I want to spend my time on, other interests I'm currently re-interested in. Whatever it is that I get from fandom, I'm not interested in at the moment, preferring the payoff from my other hobbies.
Fandom eats your life. Especially if, like myself, you tend to be a bit obsessive under the best of circumstances. (I mean, what is it with the Spike thing, okay? I don't go for blonds, the whole vampire thing is something I outgrew when I was fourteen, he's too in love with women to be slashable, and he became a whiney lapdog instead of an interesting character. Bleah, okay? Make him leave me alone!)
Ahem.
I'm not saying that a brilliant new show couldn't revive my interest in fandom, of course. It happens. But I'm remembering that my last hiatus lasting for about a decade, give or take a year.
On the other hand, and quite inexplicably to me, I'm sort of interested in writing again. My OaT story is actually coming along. Slowly, but it's working. I have vague but potential ideas for that XF story I promised JiM.
Why is lousy fanfiction encouraged in fandom?
(Why did my brain jump from JiM encouraging me to write a story to people who encourage lousy fanfiction? Actually, that's not that much of a mystery.)
Are fans really so desperate for stories, any stories, that they encourage even the worst of writers to keep churning out reams of dreck? Yes, it seems that they are.
I mean, what is it with those 58-part failures of plot and characterization, anyhow? Why is anyone reading that stuff? Why does anyone encourage those authors to keep pumping the handle on the sewage tank?
In a sane world, those authors would be fined a substantial amount for every writing sin they commit, but instead they get lavished with praise and encouraged to turn out ever-increasing amounts of brain-damaging compost.
It's not that, when considered dispassionately, I object to anyone's right to suck. They've all got a right to suck, even those among them who suck beyond rational excuse.
I think I object to a system that discourages honest labeling. (And it occurs to me that I've been here before. Probably several times. How predictable I'm becoming. Maybe next time I'll write about the liberating glory of RPS or the intellectual stimulation of crossing over cartoon/anime characters with live-action characters or something else both improbable and untrue.)
(I should stop dissing RPS. I won't have a friend left pretty soon.)
Anyhow. Honest labeling.
"This sucks, but if you're new to the fandom and completely desperate for something to read, it won't actually make you want to commit hara-kiri when you're done.""Don't read it. Trust me. No matter how desperate you are for a new story, you're not this desperate."
"Doesn't suck as badly as a lot of stories. If you work at it, you can almost find recognizable characters."
"Hallelujah! A real story!"
"Read this one only if you hate the characters."
"Author has inserted self with disastrous results."
Now I've entirely forgotten where I was going with all of that.
I guess I'm saying that I don't want to read fanfiction because I've been reading good pro fiction for quite a while now and so little fanfiction even pretends to measure up. But I'm going to go ahead and write new fanfiction because (a) I feel like it, and, (b) nothing appeals to me less than reading something I myself have written, so I won't ever have to suffer the consequences of my own suckage.
Also. POV? Don't wander from one POV to another. I hate that. Forget what the writing books tell you. You can't do it. I mean, it can be done. You just can't do it.
The next person who needlessly pads their word count by retelling every scene from an alternate character's POV without adding anything new to the reader's understanding of what's going on is going to get bitchslapped from here to Detroit.
The next person I catch doing it so that they can insert luminescent descriptions of the beauty of a quite unremarkable character will have their keyboard confiscated.
(Worse than deliberate attempts to switch POV are those inadvertent moments when the reader finds themselves in an alternate dimension from an unheralded and probably unintentional POV shift. The next person I catch changing POV in the middle of a paragraph is moving to number one on my hit list.)
That's pretty much it for the moment. I was probably going someplace different when I started this, but I really should be spending my day figuring out how to turn a 1584k jpg into a 45k gif that doesn't look like an abstract sketch on-screen.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:52 PMBored of working, ate too much lunch, feeling like a nap. Tomorrow is Finally Friday, but between now and then, I have to get through 3 more hours of actual work.
Or at least look busy enough to pass for someone who is working.
I'm reading a fascinating book but I'm not going to tell you about it because I'm annoying that way. It's really cool and occasionally gross and sometimes emotionally upsetting.
That's all you get.
In other non-news, a Kind Friend to whom I just offloaded passed along a box o'books told me that I forgot to put my return name and address on them. Apparently she had some internal debate about the wisdom of opening unidentified packages in these days of terrorism and bioterrorism alerts before she decided to live dangerously and cut the tape.
I don't know why she didn't know they were from me. Sheesh. I told her only three months ago I was going to send her a box of books. Maybe she has memory problems.
Last night, my brain suddenly spoke up to remind me that I might, just possibly, have committed to turn out a new XF story within six months of Escapade. I mean, I don't remember making an actual commitment, but something tells me I was penciled in as agreeable to the idea anyhow.
I remember, vaguely, what the characters looked like. I remember they were pretty cool in the first four or so years the show was on. I'm a little fuzzy on the rest of it. I could, of course, re-watch episodes, but I don't think I've attained the necessary distance from the disaster yet.
(I may be developing some kind of brain disease. If I type a word that ends, for instance with 't', as in "don't" and then the next work begins with 't', as in "think", my fingers have taken to typing only the first 't' of the pair. It happens rather consistently. It could be a conservation move, of course, but it could be a brain disease. I doubt that my physician, if confronted with the information that I'm losing 't's and 's's, is going to show much sympathy.)
(The above digression was brought to you courtesy of a highly sugared dessert item.)
Other people around the net are getting heads of steam up over the cancellation of various shows. Although I understand many of these were amazing works of art, I didn't watch any of them, so I'm not particularly involved with the topic. That's one advantage of watching very little television. It lowers the odds that some beloved show will get the axe. I picked up "Monk" last summer and it was fabbo. It was also renewed, so I have that to look forward to this summer.
I've been watching CSI since the first episode and since it remains one of the highest-rated dramas on the screen, I don't think it's in any imminent danger of dissolving into mist.
I watch West Wing, for which the ratings aren't as good, but they're not bad, either.
I miss the heck out of Sam Seaborn. Don't get me wrong, I like the new guy. He's totally cool. I just miss Sam's silken articulacy. There's really no other character on the show who can say the things Sam said, in the way Sam said them.
Ah well. The show isn't cancelled. That's the key thing. And Josh remains aboard, a vital element to my enjoyment of the program. And CJ. CJ rocks. And I love Margaret. And Charlie.
Okay, I love pretty much everyone on the show. I miss Sam's voice, though.
I quit watching Andromeda partway through season two and I'm astounded that it's been renewed for a fourth season. Astounded and appalled.
Okay, maybe not quite "astounded" when I remember that a recent TVGuide promoted the show as one of those on the air today that's ideal for you to sit down and watch with your small children. Maybe TV is a wasteland for that kind of thing and all twenty-three people who watch television with their eight year-olds are now tuning in.
What happened to the intelligent, thought-provoking show I watched that first season, I don't know (Psss. It was Star Stupidity and Corporate Greed!), but if it's now being touted as ideal fodder for the under-ten demographic, I'm glad I bailed on it when I did. I'm pleased to see that Keith Hamilton Cobb finally got out of his contract, and plan to never think about the show again.
I don't really have anything interesting or startling to share, so this isn't likely to get interesting at any point, okay?
I'm just saying. If you have something better to do, now would be a good time to trot off and get started on it.
Dum dee dum Two hours and twenty minutes left.
There's just nothing to say about the office, okay?
I've been working. Alvin's been working. The Chipmunk hasn't been heard from since shortly after he heard we wanted a divorce. The Terminator has decided to move on to "new opportunities" so she won't be popping in and driving everyone nuts any more. Buehler has, for some reason, decided I'm funny, so he speaks to me when we meet. The Brother Darrell has (brace yourselves) spoken to me three times, quite voluntarily, in the last week. The Other Brother Darrell has been pulling a fair share of 24-hour workathons and he talks to everyone, albeit not very coherently.
I'm still hard-up for a new fandom. I mean, sure, there's the Spike BtVS thing, but that's really more about obsessing over one facet of the mythology of the show, mixed with a heaping helping of hormones over one character than a whole "fandom' thing.
I haven't forgotten the idea of carving out a new corner of quasi-reality and starting a new, more exclusive kind of fandom.
I'm leaning toward making it a kingdom. I'd like to be king and then there's all the opportunities for patronage. You get to wear great costumes, too.
I haven't forgotten about it, but I'm not really interested in it at the moment. I just wanted to say that if I name the new neighborhood, "elysium", then the new fandom would be "elysiumdom" which has a certain charm. It's like an IQ test. Anyone who can't say it, or spell it, can't join. We could be "elysiods" too, which would make us almost strange enough to be scary. Or, better yet, we could be "elysiosts," a word guaranteed to spark fifty fights over pronunciation.
Think about it, but don't give yourselves a headache.
I just remembered that I have a 2:30 meeting.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:47 PMCurrently I'm being driven crazy...well, okay, that's not true, but I'm somewhat frustrated...by requests from someone who is apparently blogging in Swedish and who wants me to go read their blog.
Do I strike you as a person who speaks Swedish? Of course not. And, unfortunately, I can't find an on-line source for translating from Swedish. (Well, I found a primitive one, but I just don't have time to sit down and translate an entire web page, one word at a time.)
Anyhow. I'm sure he's a great guy with many interesting things to say and I regret that I'm going to have to write back and explain to him that it's not that I'm having trouble with "some of the language" on his page, it's that I can't read a word except for the ones he posts in English.
I mean, he's in Sweden, anyhow, according to his last note to me. I assume he's writing in Swedish, but I can't even be sure of that. I have a vague memory of his having told me once before that he was, at least at the time, in Austria. Maybe he's just in Sweden now temporarily or something.
I'm giving this more thought than it deserves, aren't I? Still. It's very sad to be an ignorant American sometimes.
I'm avoiding working at the moment. It's boring to write papers on subjects you don't understand and don't particularly care about, okay? I finished one a few minutes ago and then realized that I'd forgotten to put in all the salesy stuff about how wonderful our system is and how everyone should use it. Bleah.
Spent a fair amount of time yesterday getting caught up on the week's accumulated Spike BtVS episodes. A lot of repeats of episodes I've already seen, so I didn't have to spend the entire day at it. I also got to watch the first-run episode that CP (she's such an angel) loaned me.
Many thoughts, all jostling frantically for release in my head.
Why does everyone who gets vamped become a nearly unrecognizable monster (personality-wise, I mean), except for Spike?
William's mother became quite the uberbitch, didn't she? She seems to have been overtaken by a vampire of significant ickiness, what with the whole sex-with-mommy motif. I'd say she was the one with the issues, and not William. I mean, based on the theory that the "personality" of the person vamped is reflected in the vampire, she was a woman with a few problems, right?
But is that true? About the carry-over personality, I mean? I'm not sure I buy it.
There's Angel. An average sort of an idiot, from what I've seen of him historically, but he became a major force for the dark side, post-vamping. Decimating gypsy encampments, driving innocent girls to insanity, etc.
Drusilla's a harder case to figure what with the madness and all, but certainly her lunatic post-vamp personality bears no noticeable resemblance to what we saw of her before.
And Mom, as seen this past episode, well, in that era it's true that women had major acting to do, but did she have all of that Freudian weirdness stored up inside of her before getting bitten? The flashback is ambiguous, at most.
But Spike? Just post-vamping, when he turned his mother, he was little different than he'd been before. In the slayer-slaying flashbacks, when he took the first slayer, he was still Spike. All fighty and stuff, yeah, but hardly in the grip of some overpowering evil force.
When Angel is Angelus, you can feel the evil. Even when he's demon-controlled, Spike's just...Spike. Sometimes a little crankier and more prone to biting than other times, but none of the psychopathic traits that seem so clear in Angel and Drusilla. I continue not to buy the description of him as a major force for evil. I'd suspect he was more trying to live up (down?) to Drusilla's expectations than anything else.
Anyhow. Moving on.
Okay, so now Buffy is willing to kill anyone who stands between her and success? She'll sacrifice friends, family, anything necessary.
Except Spike.
If I'm not mistaken, at the end of that episode, she rather definitely chose Spike over Giles, even.
And I'm watching this and thinking that now she's ready to kill her little sister but not a guy she's not even willing to admit she's in love with?
What kind of plot-related reason can this have? In the end, will it be Spike who saves the world?
Stay tuned for no additional discussion.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:06 PMMy head is all full of Spike-thoughts, though. I blame CP. While she's the same virtual goddess who hustled down to Denver to loan me her tape of last week's episode, she's also the one who sat and talked Spike with me for an hour Saturday.
So, even though I didn't get a chance to actually watch the episode, I'm still all distracted.
I meant to watch the tape. I wanted to watch the tape. As it happens, though, at the same time I was out, getting the tape, buying two new pair of jeans, a ream of paper, some really cool folders that I'm not sure what I'll do with but that were on sale, etc., my roommate was falling off the gadget wagon.
After three years of hemming and hawing and looking and wishing, she bought one of those little, portable DVD players.
Heh. I, of course, get to be the virtuous one who didn't bring yet another gadget into the house and I get to play with the new toy. Hooray! for being me!
So, anyhow. Besides the usual laundry and some housecleaning, that's mostly what I did Sunday.
Which reminds me. I was watching my Jeeves and Wooster (Season Two) DVDs, and I owe torch a good kick on the shins. Until she wrote J&W slashy naughtiness, it never would have occurred to me to slash P.G.Wodehouse. And now every time I watch those DVDs, I see it.
She's a very bad girl, sometimes, isn't she?
Posted by AnneZook at 03:31 PMMy problem is that I have trouble getting past the concept of fandom as a "community." It's not a community and hasn't been one for a long time. Actually, it hasn't been one since the dawn of internet fandom.
(Later note: I didn't mean to, but I see I went off the deep end here and there. Be aware that my scornful references to "fans" refer to Them, not Us. We, of course, Do It Right, while They are hopeless morons. This is neither a fair nor a balanced view of fandom, which should surprise no one.)
(Admit it. If I were fair, balanced, and rational all of the time, you wouldn't even bother to read this, would you?)
(We now return you....)
Before the Internet (BtI), fandom was, more or less, a sort of community.
Conventions were small, run on a shoestring, informal, and cosy. (Beyond the Trek Machine that kicked in in the 80s, I mean.)
Fanzines were sold or passed from hand to hand. A few of these fanzines were discussion-based and included debate on stories and shows. Larger fandoms, or those with more passionate adherents, had their own discussion zines, but everyone was pretty much aware that they were a part of something larger, something known as "fandom" and it had a flexible but defined "shape" to it.
There were standards of behavior, too. There weren't that many people "active" publicly, so what you stood up and in public, or even via a round-robin letter discussion, was going to get around. (I'm not saying there wasn't a percentage of fans with no concept of acceptable behavior, just that they were fewer and farther between when there were, on the whole, fewer active fans. As is natural.)
BtI, bad behavior got you talked about, and not in the way most of us want to be talked about.
There were zines of dubious, not to say gawdawful, quality, but not thousands of them. Not many fans were willing to lose money in publishing something just as a vanity effort. Also, you didn't get much feedback on zines. Even if you sold a hundred copies, you weren't going to get a hundred loving feedback notes. (This was a Good Thing. It encouraged the talentless to stay out of writing.)
And then...the internet. In the very early days, things weren't much changed. On-line fandom was difficult to find and the "communities," while they tended to be more isolated within show-specific fandoms, were still largely self-policing.
The voices of sanity, at that point, still seemed to outweigh the lunatics. (I found on-line fandom via Highlander, BTW, just as a point of reference. There were some nutcases around, but we knew who they were and it was possible to avoid them.)
It was...you've all heard this before, but bear with me...The X-Files that really started the avalanche of mediocrity.
Suddenly (!) there were thousands of breathless little girls squealing over Mulder and Scully in lurrrve and they couldn't have cared less about quality, continuity, or the (really) ground-breaking nature of the show in the first season.
There were the conspiracy-theorists debating whether or not Chris Crapfest Carter knew something about our government that he was trying to tell us. (Absurd, but they made for some interestingly paranoid discussions.)
There were the science buffs, hotly debating the feasibility or otherwise of various gimmicks on the show. (They left first...TXF was anything but "science" fiction.)
And that was all well and good, as far as it went, but as with so many human endeavors, it went far too far. First, the media discovered and celebrated these "philes", attracting an avalanche of newbies to the fandom.
These weren't "fans" finding a new fandom, you understand. These were people who discovered the concept of fandom while in the throes of obsession, thus piling fanaticism on mania with just the results you might expect. Chaos. No rules, no boundaries, no restraints.
(That's good and bad, okay? I remember those early fanaticism days with bemusement...I can't remember a show that was as immediately addictive as TXF in a long time. Nor one that generated as much discussion and debate and breathless anticipation. But I, I hasten to point out, am not really prone to public displays of idiocy.) (Well, not often.)
(Don't even get me started on the decline of on-line fanfiction inspired by the reams and reams of truly abysmal "stories" posted by these clueless idiots, but I could make the same argument that the flood of unreadable garbage that TXF inspired has a direct relationship to the overwhelming FoUG most fandoms see these days.)
And, of course, as the show went downhill, the fandom changed. They always do. Enraged and disappointed fans, unable to take their ire out on Those Responsible, turn on each other like staving hyenas.
That, I think, set a pattern for on-line fandom in the years that have followed. There's the first rush of enthusiasm for a show then, when the summer re-runs go on for too long or a beloved character leaves or the direction of the show changes or whatever happens, the fans turn on one another.
There are fights, wars, and flames, and every day a fresh crop of "newbies" joins the throng. They see what's happening and assume that this is "what fandom is" and they mirror the behavior they're seeing. Because of how they were indoctrinated into fandom, they look upon it as an arena for bad behavior...for acting out in a way few of them would have the nerve to do in real life.
So, you see, in the end, it's all back to The X-Files. And it's all Chris Carter's fault.
(This is so not where I was going with this, but I always think that at the point where I'm able to blame CC for the world's ills is a good place to stop.)
I think it's important to establish that I haven't given up on the idea of either running the frenetic, over-emotional newbie fans out of town or of splintering off and starting a private party somewhere else.
I mean, I got distracted by two or three feet worth of snow and then there's Dimwit's war going on which is distracting even though I'm trying to avoid most newscasts because they give me bad dreams.
But. I was answering some survey yesterday evening about on-line fandom and fanfiction and naturally that got me to thinking. (Well, what passes for thinking with me, anyhow.)
Before we get to that, though. Spike! BtVS. I'm still taping and watching the repeats and pleased to see that I'm getting some different episodes this time around.
The other night I sat down with hot, buttered popcorn and a big, old gong to experience the Singing-And-Dancing episode because, after all, if a show is going to expose itself by putting on an episode like that it would be churlish of me not to gear up the laughtrack, right?
Except. You know. It was actually pretty darned cool. In fact, I enjoyed the heck out of most of it.
Who'd a thunk it?
(The shark-headed demon episode, and yes, I know he was a loan shark and I still maintain that doesn't make it all any less stupid, was shown right after it and that episode works better in context. Still stupid, but better in context.
It's annoying that the one show on the air that really does pay close, even constant attention to continuity is the one I'm seeing bits and pieces of.)
I'm still not looking forward to watching Spike become a love-smitten lap dog but I must admit that Marsters is sure selling me on the process.
So often one of these late-blooming relationships seems grafted onto a show, you know? But in this one, I find that I really believe it. I mean, I believe that Spike is in love with Buffy. (Nor can I imagine how anyone watching the way he feels about her could slash the character, but that's a different topic, isn't it?)
I still don't get why he's in love with Buffy since the charms of her character continue to escape me. It's no doubt some flaw in me that I'm unable to see any real depth in her, even in scenes where there might as well be a neon sign flashing, "angsty moment approaches!"
I'm seeing the plot-related rationale behind why she turned, even temporarily, to a relationship with him at this point in her life, though, which is a tribute to the excellence of the writing more than anything else.
Willow continues to charm me. As does Giles, of course.
The Xander-Anya relationship continues to bore me. Anya seems to serve no purpose except to give Xander a girlfriend he can dither about and since I don't really find Xander interesting, the whole relationship is just a waste of screen time in my house.
Pause.
Sorry...Buehler's monthly beer shipment arrived and I had the usual argument with the delivery guy about how come he never brings a case of beer with my name on it.
Now, where were we?
Oh, yeah, I remember. Fandom. (You thought I'd forgotten entirely didn't you?) Presumably I had something to say when I started this.
Let me think about it and get back to you, but in the meantime, let's all ponder how odd it is that I haven't been on public lists for three or more years now and thus have had almost zero contact with the kind of "newbie" fans I'm always bemoaning and yet I have no trouble constantly ranting about how they're ruining fandom.
Pause for pondering.
As I said in a previous post, I'm a dork sometimes. But I'm an elitist dork, and don't you forget it.
"Ficcies." Bleah.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:16 PMI don't know what it is with the comments, but I don't suppose it matters that much. Since Honeybunch posted an agreement that Spike was better when he was evil, an idea I heartily agree with, no one has had anything to say, so that's okay.
I don't required a ton of feedback anyhow. I have no objection to talking to myself. (A captive audience is a thing to be exploited.)
This weekend I made soup (Yes, McSwain! Soup! Evil vegetable-beef soup!).
I also made meatloaf. Owing to a misplaced faith in the recipe writer, I used a 12x7 pan when I should have used a 12x4 pan, so instead of "loaf" I would up with something more like "meaglob." Last night, my ungrateful roommate, for whom I undertook this arduous task (I'm not a big meatloaf fan), took one look at it and stuck a frozen thing into the microwave.
Kids today. No gratitude for the effort you make. It tasted right, okay? I tried it myself.
Lemme see...what excitement over the weekend? Friday I went to the grocery store. Apparently every working person in town stops by the grocery store on the way home on Friday evening but that's better than Geezer Thursdays.
Saturday...I can't remember. I remember that food figured largely into the day. I ate lunch and dinner out, but the reasons for such an unusual activity escape me. (Oh, yes, it was 75 degrees and sunny, so we walked about half a mile up the street to a restaurant for dinner. It seemed a shame to waste such a nice evening sitting inside.)
Whatever events took place in between the two meals are lost in the mists of forgetfulness.
The major chore I undertook this weekend was to get the bulk of the 22 hours of Spike BtVS I have on tape watched. I started Saturday evening and picked up again Sunday morning and I can assure you that by about 4:00 Sunday afternoon, I was sick to death of teenagers standing around bleating, "What shall we do?"
Some shows, and some subplots, are good in marathon and some aren't.
This whole "Glory" thing was probably great in first-run, but sitting down to watch it all at one go was amazingly boring. I haven't quite finished it. I have, I think, one more episode in the arc to finish up but I just couldn't take any more of it yesterday.
Spike was cute. Heh.
I may be suspicious of whether or not I'll like him once he's firmly in the throes of EnsoulledBuffyLove, but I like how he's getting there. I liked him having hotsie-totsie dreams and getting a RoboBuffy made and I liked the flashback bit with Drusilla.
I like the way that the more we see of "evil" Spike (at least, during the time frame covered by the show), the more he is revealed as the most "human" of vampires.
More than anyone on the show, he's totally ruled by his heart. When he was in love with Drusilla, he was as evil as he knew how to be, because that's what she seemed to want. From the bits I've seen of EnsoulledSpike, he seems to be trying to be the "normal, everyday guy" that Buffy has fooled herself into thinking that she wants. (Before he was Ensoulled and when they were doing the hokey-pokey was probably much closer to what she really wants, but her own inability to admit it destroyed their relationship.)
Even beyond Buffy, I think he has a true fondness for Dawn. If he lost his soul tomorrow and didn't have the chip regulating his behavior (I understand it's been removed), I'm not sure he'd attack Dawn. I think he might go after Buffy just because he's obsessive, but he's not Angel and he wouldn't take out everyone close to Buffy in an insane attempt to "impress" her.
Oddly enough, I'm not sure he'd go after Giles, either. Xander or Willow, yes, but I'm not sure about Giles.
And, regrettably, I'm not liking Tara any more than I did at first. The character gets on my nerves. Now that I've seen the episode with her family in it, I understand her better, but I don't like her. It's a pity because I still adore Willow and I'd like her to have someone. It's nothing against the actress, I just wish they'd written a different character.
I like Xander better than I did at first. The character does seem to be growing and changing. I understand that he's the touchstone for "normal" among the group, but that hasn't made his incessant whining any more attractive up until now. He's better as he begins to carve out a more-or-less normal life for himself aside from his SlayerSupport duties.
I loved the bit with the gang tromping through the cemetery, crunching potato chips and watching Riley do his SuperSoldierSneak from tombstone to tombstone. Heh.
I like Riley. (He's big, he's reasonably (ahem) buff, and he's willing to take his clothes off. What's not to like?)
Looked at objectively, the whole Initiative subplot had more holes than a Swiss cheese, but on the other hand, we live in a world where just a couple of years ago, the Department of Defense actually commissioned a study to find out whether or not coffee keeps you awake, so I guess the idea of them wanting to capture demons to try and create supersoldiers out of them isn't that farfetched. The military is pretty much dumb enough to try anything.
The whole chip thing they did to Spike never made sense. As clumsy as the Initiative was, the idea of capturing vampires one by one and making them unable to harm humans was a lot stupider than just figuring out better ways to kill them. Nor does it explain what they were doing with the other demons they captured, but whatever, okay?
I'm just saying. It's a pity that I'm going off the show right about the time I'm finally seeing the most Spike episodes, but I'm not sure how much more teenage angst I can take.
Plus which, the episodes just aren't as good. The whole thing with Buffy going catatonic once Glory snatched Dawn was just filler...it was something they did because they didn't have enough action to fill up the required 45 minutes and there wasn't anything for Buffy to do. On the grounds that it gave Spike some extra screen time, it was a good thing, but I found myself fastforwarding through the, "this is Buffy's brain" section of that episode.
That's about where I dropped out yesterday, so I'm not certain how they resolve the whole subplot. I might get to it this week.
Overall thought:
Spike: Yum.
Spike having hotsie-totsie dreams in which he appears nekkid: Yum, yum!
Posted by AnneZook at 12:57 PMIt's my journal. I can be an egotistical maniac if I wanna be one, okay?
I got two (count 'em, two!) notes, complimenting me on my blogs!
The late, and much lamented, missing rant on the ickiness of fandom these days generated a post from one poor soul (whom, partly out of love for the positive strokes but mainly out of sheer obnoxiousness, I will refer to as "Honeybunch") who thought they were alone in feeling this way.
Honeybunch, you are not alone. There are a thousand fans or more on-line who feel substantially the way we do. It's just that I'm the only person I know who is rude enough to keep calling the idiots, well, idiots publicly again and again.(*)
(* Purely my opinion, of course.)
My middle name is not "tact." It's something more like...well, I can't think of anything that strikes just the right note at this moment. I'll get back to you on it.
Still no flames on the subject have been received, though. Even though I was sure I'd offended dozens of people.
No one ever sends me flames. As I've repeatedly announced, you are no one in fandom until you've been flamed. I am resigned to being no one, but I'm not planning to take it gracefully.
The other feedback came from someone who stumbled across my political rantings and meanderings and decided I sounded intelligent. (!) Clearly someone who needs to get out more, but I'll take what I can get.
That's a lesson to all of us who do any writing. (It's not necessary to write, Honeybunch, in order to be active in fandom. Being a fan is about a lot more than churning out a few stories.) We may put the stuff out there, secure in the knowledge of what we were trying to accomplish, but when the reader arrives, it's up to them to interpret what they've found.
I have about six episodes of Spike BtVS stacked up to watch. I guess I really am losing interest in the show. I do have, as I noticed when cataloguing tapes last night, the episode where we learn All About Spike. I'm looking forward to seeing that one.
I'm still all thrilled about having been at Escapade. Rumor has it that most people blogging (or livejournaling, or diarylanding, or whatever) about the con are full of whining but as I can attest (having done so much random whining), it's a lot easier to find things to complain about than to compliment.
Me, I'm still pleased by the new location (restaurants! bars! bookstores!), the hotel itself (flaky bartenders and all), the panels I attended, and the discussions I fell into. I saw friends, met strangers, bravely walked up to people I barely knew and spoke to them (social anxiety disorder really is a curse), and made myself objectionable for a few seconds in at least one panel. What more could I ask for? I even got to ride a train!
I love trains. Some day I want to fly to San Diego and take that coastal train all the way to Seattle. And then I'll get back on board and ride it all the way down the coast again.
My love for trains is irrational, like my love for escalators. Unless I have more than three floors to climb, I'd rather take the stairs than an elevator, but if there's an escalator there, I'll ride it every time. Every evening I go for a walk. Half the time, my entire route is planned around a way to get to one door of the mall across the street from my house so that I can go in and ride the escalator up one floor.
There's a sort of "queen of all I survey" feeling about rising in a slow, stately manner above the heads of the hoi polloi. You can gaze down remotely upon the common people and think sorrowfully, but distantly, of their little lives and troubles.
If escalators went up more than one floor, I'd probably disembark with some kind of mental disorder. I'd insist that I was Charlemagne or Queen Elizabeth I or something and have to be locked up in a comfy padded room and have nothing but crayons to play with.
But they don't, so it's a fleeting insanity pleasure.
How did we get to escalators? I was going to write a long post about how Honeybunch suggested that I co-opt the BNF acronym, alter it so that it stands for, "Brave New Fandom" and begin to gather subjects members.
There will be a brief pause while I rid myself of certain delusions of grandeur.
[ ... ]
Okay. Better now.
Anyhow. Honeybunch petitioned to be allowed to join the Brave New Fandom but I suspect said petition will be withdrawn after Honeybunch reads this particular blog entry and finds how I've referred to them(*) throughout, don't you?
(*Personal pronoun hell strikes again.)
Anyhow. I would, except that I suspect the current BNF contingent would object to having their status-marker co-opted by someone who might not let them join the new group. Not that I care about most of them (I don't know them and they don't know me), but I do know a couple of people who have been slapped with the label and I'm not necessarily here to piss them off today. Anyhow, I like them.
Still, as Honeybunch reminded me, having a good acronym is as important these days as a catchy slogan. Now I not only have to find an appropriate synonym for "fan" but I have to find a short phrase that makes a good acronym, and then spell out the Brave New Fandom's Mission Statement in a catchy and memorable slogan.
Fandom is a lot of work.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:49 AMBuilding a better fandom. My way
Okay, so five minutes ago I decided on a new blogging strategy. It's sort of a tapering-off approach, like any addict might use. From now on, I have to stop blogging, no matter what I'm in the middle of, and get to work no later than 9:30 each day.
So, now it's 10:30 and here I am, writing a blog entry.
Oh, well. That deadline was supposed to kick in tomorrow, so I'm still okay, right? Anyhow, I worked yesterday. Quite a lot. I have a lot more to do today, but I can start in 15 minutes and still be okay. I think.
I forgot to set up Spike BtVS to tape last night. I hope I didn't miss anything crucial.
And, speaking of fandom...I have Rude Thoughts to share.
I've been thinking about this whole fandom thing, okay? I mean, thinking about it as it existed when I "discovered" fandom in the late 70s, when I rediscovered it as on-line fandom ten years ago, and what it is today. And, please be aware than unless I specifically state otherwise, "fandom" is synonymous with "slash" because I've never been active in gen fandom and don't know a thing about it beyond the prevalence of MarySue, author-insertion fic.
Anyhow. Fandom today?
We Are Not Amused.
What was once a fairly geeky but at least privately geeky pastime has become this huge, public farce. As I've been telling friends for years now, I'm embarrassed to be labeled a "fan" today in ways that I wasn't even embarrassed when standing next to the guy with the Spock ears at a convention in the 70s.
First, I accept that we're "out" as fans. The internet and the public have "discovered" fandom and slash and I'm resigned to the fact that a thousand new "fans" or more are going to be appearing each and every month. I don't like it, but this isn't one of the kinds of reality I intend to rail against.
Today's question (yes, we're getting to the point) is about what fandom is. Who defines fandom, and more importantly, slash, when there are (numbers rounded for ease of discussion) two thousand "old" fans who have been around for years and 200,000 "new" fans who have been around for weeks?
Is this a democracy? Does the majority prevail, even when they're steering us off the tracks and toward a ravine? Or is there an "old guard" who should be installed as hall monitors to make sure that everyone is coloring within the lines and no one is running with scissors?
If an "old guard" exists, could you pay them to try and monitor this group of lunatics? I think not, so that's not going to happen.
Who gets to define what "we" are these days? Do "we" even need definitions? Should anything and everything that some newcomer defines as "their kind of fandom" be scooped under the general fandom umbrella?
If someone wants to take the two prettiest dogs at the dog show and write slash fiction for them, is that acceptable? Is writing stories where the teapot and the candelabra from Disney's animated "Beauty and the Beast" film marry and have deformed appliance offspring a legitimate form of "fandom"? How about those Teletubby slash stories, mostly meant as satire? Are those "fanfiction"?
digression
Are we really willing to have the woman who stalked Adrian Paul and made his and his family's life a misery identified as, "one of us"? Are we willing to have the so-called "fans" of Peter Wingfield, the ones who sent his fiancée death threats, as part of our group? Are we willing to stand up and be counted with the people who have moved beyond the core "fictional characters" part of our identity and who are now writing and posting graphic sex stories about actors?
Where do we draw the line between our playful obsessiveness with television shows, movies, and books and the fictional characters that populate them and the people who are comfortable dragging the private lives of actors and musicians into their public fantasy world?
With, in short, those who have given up on exploring characters and who are now obsessing only over "pretty faces" since I don't think any of the folks writing sex stories about real people are pretending they're doing any more than using attractive faces and bodies to populate their too-public fantasies.
Okay...this isn't the moment to get all distracted by my ongoing distaste of real person sex stories, I know.
(Just for the record, I'd totally support a movement to corral those folks and explain to them, gently, why they can't call themselves part of "fandom" and should find another word for what they're doing, though.)
/digression
Anyhow. Back to the topic. The RPS idiocy aside, let's stick with fandom and fictional characters. Mostly, as I said before, slash.
Slash: The exploration of a closer emotional and sexual relationship of two same-sex characters than is portrayed on-screen.
I think that's a pretty fair working definition. I know it leaves out the threesome fans and the m-f-m kink, and litfic, but I have to reduce things to some kind of basic standard or I'll go crazy trying to talk about everything at one.
(I am not!)
So, without denying the existence of the multitudes of kinks that abound today, let's stay with the basics. Two characters. One gender. The urge to Do The Deed with one another. Usually accompanied by feelings of emotional attachment.
Okay?
Well, there's one more requirement, but I'm not sure how to phrase it. Maybe it's implicit in that definition, though. When I speak of "two characters," I do mean that part. Characters. Those two characters who will naturally need to be placed in their fictional universe in order to make it a true exploration of their personalities. Because if you move 20th C. characters to the 17th C., they aren't going to be the same people. Different cultures and different mores will produce different personalities. Ditto on moving characters forward in time. Moving your guys from the Old West to 1996 eliminates most of the "ohmigod, I'm a homosexual!" conflicts, but if you're exploring the characters and not just writing out your fantasies of the guys' pretty faces you shouldn't be looking for such a cheap fix.
That neatly eliminates AUs and crossovers, doesn't it? Even though I don't care for either of those genres, that wasn't really my intent, but I'll let it stand for the moment. We're sticking with the basics, and I'm staying with the same line of thought for a few consecutive paragraphs if it kills me.
So...slash is about a further exploration of personalities that attract us, or the interaction between two personalities that we find interesting.
Where does that leave today's newbie fans? (See? Back on topic!) They make the right noises at first. "I'm a fan." "I love the ____ character." "____ and ____ are so doing it!"
But then...the stories start to come out and you're asking yourself, "who are these guys?" Because other than sharing names with the fictional characters, these story characters are complete strangers. They don't talk, act, or react in any way the on-screen characters do. These newbies post crossovers between live-action shows and anime and don't seem to have the slightest understanding of how mind-bogglingly weird it is. They claim to love the character, but the first thing they do is have him raped and pregnant. (Why? Not because they can "see" it, or because they wonder how the character would react because they have no clue about the character. Because this kind of crap gets tons of feedback and they're all about the feedback, not about the writing.)
Characters are twisted out of...well, out of character. Canon fictional universes are tweaked, twisted, and downright distorted because these writers and readers don't really care about "that kind of thing."
The only thing they care about is a labeling system that defines their particular kink (Talking teddy bears! Male pregnancy! Curtains!) so that they can find and wallow in it.
Forget bringing their brains to the story, they want to read with their gonads and nothing more. And as long as they have a screen capture from an episode to look at, they don't really require much more from stories than that the author use the same names, or something resembling the same names, in order to label something, "fanfiction."
Somehow this rant isn't going anywhere like I thought it would.
I was going to talk about fandom, what it is today, whether or not it should be as all-inclusive as it is, and whether or not the remaining intelligent, thoughtful fans should run away and form a new, "invitation only" clique.
Also, I had a lot to say about the current climate of fandom that I haven't even touched on. People who post stories and demand, "positive feedback only" and the multitudes of lists where the slightest whiff of a negative comment about a character or story draws inflamed responses from the legions of thin-skinned and all-too-involved list members. Sock puppets and cliques of like-minded ninnies who exist for the moment when they think they hear the clarion call of battle against those with differing opinions or tastes. Those over-identifying fans who take criticism of a fictional character as a personal insult. People whose idea of reasoned discussion is, "So's your mother!" We've all seen them in action. We know who we're talking about.
Is this a democracy? Has "my kind of fandom" been kicked out of office?
Fandom has always attracted a fair share of marginalized personalities. Any fandom has, whether it's stamp collecting or salt-and-pepper shaker collections or comic books. In every group there are those whose identities and lives are far too closely entwined with their hobbies, but I think it's only in this kind of fandom that the line between reality and fantasy has been so dangerously blurred.
I'm not here to psychoanalyze anyone. I've spent my fair share of time "hiding" in fandom as a relief from everyday life, so I'm not in a position to point fingers. (Okay, I'm pointing. But that wasn't really why I gathered you here today.)
Let's skip ahead and pretend I've laid the foundation for the idea of moving to a better neighborhood because I'm pretty sure there's no way I can stay calm for long enough to actually discuss how and why we'd want to do this and in any case I really do have to get back to work at some point and I've already been at this for an hour instead of fifteen minutes.
I'm sure there are fans out there who would revel in a return to in-depth discussion of canon, personalities, human interaction, and plausible storylines. People who would like to be able to open the morning paper, see an article about "fandom" and not have to cringe. People who are more interested in reading, or writing, better fiction than they are in collecting more, "It was great! Write more!" e-mails than anyone else. People who find the characters interesting and want to read or write more exploration of them. People who find the universe the show is set in is fascinating and want to read more stories set in that universe.
You know the kind of thing.
digression
No one who refers to fics, ficlets, ficcies, or eppies need apply for inclusion in this new group. We are not six year-olds, nor is actually typing the entire word, "fiction" too much work for our brains. I would accept, if pressed, the use of "eps" as shorthand for "episodes."
/digression
Anyhow. Is fandom a democracy? Are those of us bemoaning the disappearance of open and honest discussion that centered around the foibles and quirks of the characters dinosaurs? Are we doomed to be shouted down by the legions of "fans" shrieking in joy over a character who shows up wearing leather pants and sporting an obvious sweat sock stuffed in an unusual place? (I made that up, but it's probably happened.) Is fandom destined to become a place of sweetness-and-light with everyone's kinks accepted equally and everyone's "issues" treated with kid gloves? Is list-posting to be confined to, "I loved last night's eppie!" and "Loved your ficlet!" while we all pretend we're having real discussions?
I'd say, 'yes.' That's the way I see things going. There are still pockets of real discussion, what I think of as "real fandom," but they're getting fewer and farther between.
So I've been considering (I've mentioned this before) starting a whole new...well, a whole new thing for my kind of fans(*), so that they can separate themselves from the raving, incoherent lunacy that general fandom has become. We can leave "fandom" to the giggling, ATP-as-long-as-there's-a-sex-scene groupies.
(* Yes, I'm an elitist snob. No, I don't really have any issues with this fact. I'm quite comfortable with it, but thankyouforcaringenoughtoask.)
We can go back undercover, to a certain extent, and build a new playhouse. "No dorks allowed."
So, what other words are available that might carry some of the same connotations as "fan" but that don't automatically imply "raving lunatic"?
advocate – Too judicial
aficionado – Too pretentious
apostle – Too biblical
booster – Too sixties
connoisseur – We're not really going to be that discriminating
devotee – A bit pretentious
disciple – Again, too biblical
fancier – Sounds like an older guy who breeds cats, doesn't it?
follower – Too stalkerish
groupie – Too juvenile
habitué – And my mind always goes to, roué, so no.
junkie – Unfortunate associations
lover – Too fanatical
maniac – This is what we're trying to avoid
monomaniac – Too psychotic
partisan – Too political
patron – Hey! We're not sending money!
proselyte – A bit old-Testament, don't you think?
rooter – Too fifties
supporter - Bland
votary – A bit too Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Greek
worshipper – Too obsessive
zealot – Too monomaniacal
Surely there are other possibilities, but my imagination (and thesaurus.com) aren't offering any at the moment.
What does that leave me with? Three potentials:
fiend - A touch demonic, but not bad. Implies devotion with an air of unreality. "Fienddom" is impossible, though.
freak – A few unfortunate disco associations, but "freakdom" isn't bad. A nice sort of self-mockery about it, as well.
nut – "Nutdom" is absurd, but the word itself has a sort of playfulness about it that might work.
Of course, the suffix itself isn't fixed, and "-dom" isn't the only thing that would work. There's always "-hood" or "-ist" or "-ism" or "-oid" or any of probably a dozen more that I'll think of later. I'd fight to the death to avoid, "freakazoid," though.
Maybe I should be looking more in the "dweeb" category, to find something playful. I dunno.
I guess we could always go back to the long form of the original and identify ourselves as, "fanatics" instead of "fans" but that implies a kind of single-mindedness that I'm uncomfortable with. I'm looking, as you might notice, for something that takes itself a bit less seriously.
Something that implies dedication without an edge of psychosis.
In some ways, the English language can be very limiting.
I guess the label isn't important, but if you're starting a movement, a name and a slogan really are critical for establishing an identity in the minds of the public. I love a good slogan, too.
We need a slogan that implies fanaticism, but under control. Obsessive, but leashed. Maniacal, but medicated. Loyal, but level-headed. Devoted but within limits.
Fascinated but sane.
Nothing is coming to me at the moment. I mean, "no dorks allowed" is a good slogan, but sometimes I'm a dork, okay? I'm all about exclusion, but I don't want to be one of the excluded. It's my game and if I can't play, no one can.
Except that now I'm bored with the whole subject.
Let's kick the morons in the seat of the pants, tell them to behave or they won't be allowed in the playground, and reclaim "fandom" as the crazy-but-loveable absurdity that it used to be. Tell the folks writing about real people to go away, beat the newcomers over the head and shoulders until they've memorized the definitions of "canon" and "characterization" and have promised to stop inflicting mind-bogglingly impossible fates on facsimiles of our beloved characters, and get down to the serious business of drooling, discussing, reading, and writing actual fanfiction.
Or, you know, not.
I'm pretty flexible.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:27 PMPsychos abound in all corners of the world.
Do you know what Wayne Newton fans call themselves? "Wayneacs," that's what.
I'm just saying. What is it about being a "fan" of someone or something that brings out the lunatic in people? What kind of person thought this up and shared it with someone else and then found an entire group of people who thought it was clever to refer to themselves this way?
Wayneacs. Huh.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:33 PMOkay, it's not that cold outside, but it's snowing. Of all the days to forget to bring a scarf, I picked today, the only day where wet stuff is actually falling from the sky.
Fortunately in such a small office, there are only a limited number of people to witness the dissolution of my hairdo. Such as it was, I mean. I didn't take much time putting myself together this morning for some reason. A minute ago I realized that I hadn't even remembered to put on make-up. I'll bet the world (as represented by the people in this office) is glad that I sit with my back to the room.
Darrell! He actually spoke to me today! Not only that, but he held a door open for me! This is not, let me make clear, one of those doors on a closer. It's just a door that stays open until someone closes it. Why Darrell felt that today of all days was the day he needed to stand there and wait until I'd entered before he closed it, I don't know. He even responded to my "thank you" in a very polite fashion.
Maybe it's the no make-up thing? I might look worse than I know.
The Other Brother Darrell has been chatty this week. I wanted to print to the color printer and he, as our network guy, has been unable to get the color printer to function. I think he feels guilty, but it's no big deal. I've grown accustomed to taking documents home, printing one copy on our inkjet, then taking them to Kinko's to have multiple copies made.
Not much time for blogging since I got home from Escapade (as proven by yesterday's blast from the past entry culled from a three year-old trip) because I'm trying to get Alvin ready to go on the road next week. He has to go to Minnesota (and suddenly it occurs to me to wonder if I've booked hotels or anything for that trip) and two days after he gets back, he and the Terminator are going to DC for a week.
While he is gone I will not be indulging in hours and hours of blogging daily. I will work conscientiously! I will!
(Okay, I'm not doing it at the moment, but my intentions are good.)
And!
To return, if only tangentially, to the subject of Escapade, I also want to point out that there have apparently been myriads of bitches, whines, and complaints about the vids shown and I'd like to request that you people find a ladder and get over yourselves.
You're darned lucky so many people are interested in the hours and hours it takes to put together vids for your amusement and if you can't be gracious, even when you don't care for the fandom or the subject of the vid, then be quiet.
Sheesh. It's like story critique, okay? If you want to discuss the stylistic choices or whether or not the characters are being portrayed accurately or the structure the author/vidder used, then go ahead.
If you just want to whine because no one is writing/vidding what you want to read/see, then shut up. Or write/vid it yourself.
"I don't like that kind" is not an appropriate critique of anything.
This goes especially to those of you whining about het vids. I've got a secret for you yahoos. Men have been sleeping with women for at least as long as men have been sleeping with men, okay?
Get used to the idea, it's here to stay.
Deep breath.
Okay, I'm not sure where that came from. I didn't actually sit down to rant but Ranting Happens, doesn't it?
Disasters abound in reality, maybe that's why my brain is trying to hide in fandom.
One aunt, recently diagnosed with fast-spreading, terminal cancer, seems to be responding well so far to treatment. My brother's father-in-law and two brothers-in-law were in a car accident a couple of days ago. The F-I-L broke his arm but he has bone cancer, so they can't set it. I'm assuming amputation will be the only choice. One of the B-I-L was being CAT-scanned for neck/head injuries last I heard, no update yet. Back to my family, one dregs of society cousin just got nailed for what I think is the third time on a drug bust, so he's probably going away for a long time. The day after he got picked up, his girlfriend was in a fatal car accident.
Family is such a mixed blessing. When you need them, they rally 'round, but they're also subject to these little traumatic incidents.
Be well.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:53 AMWhy has my recent Escapade adventure been reminding me of a similar and yet-so-different trip I took to Vegas in 1999?
I wrote an trip journal about said vacation and I'm about to inflict it on you for reasons that aren't quite clear to me. Maybe I'm just hard up for something to talk about today, who knows?
Stop me if you've heard this one, okay?
* * * *
After arriving, with admirable promptness, at DIA, the requisite 1 hour (Remember those days? Only an hour!) before my own flight to the City of Scantily Clad Babes and Far Too Few Scantily Clad Hunks, I checked in, snagged an aisle seat, and settled down in a comfy chair to write down a few brilliant thoughts on travelling. (I tend to do this in airports. It keeps the nuts at bay and gives me a record of the beginning of each trip.)
Minutes, if not seconds, later, I noticed a fairly well dressed man eyeballing me from beside a nearby store. I did the vacant thing with my eyes, pretending I hadn't really made contact, and looked back down at my journal.
I don't know how long it was before it was borne in upon me that this individual had crept quite close to my comfy chair and was eyeing me with an expression somewhere between lechery (no doubt my ego talking) and, "Too long since my last meal and do you work out regularly?" There was even a touch of, "Do you have room in your bag to take a small package on board the plane with you?" On an every scarier note, it occurred to me that he might want to discuss whether or not I've received Jesus as my personal savior.
My mother won't let me take presents from strangers and being prayed at makes me itch, so I refused to acknowledge this lunatic's existence until he suddenly cleared his throat and asked if I smoked. He must have been desperate – he even accepted one of my lady-thin menthol jobbies.
The entire tedious story is made fractionally less tedious by the news that I saw this same man, fifteen minutes later, accosting yet another person in the same comfy lounge area. But this time, his approach looked more like, "Wanna get a drink and maybe feel each other up?"
Since the new approachee was a man, that could have been my over-active, dirty mind at work.
Be that as it may, I grabbed my little bags and high-tailed it into the terminal where the nuts are at least screened for potential pockets full of C-4 before they're turned loose on a helpless population.
All this, and the Joy of Mallory was still in my future!
I mean, Joy of Menippee, too, yes, but she and I have done the face-to-face thing a time or two without any actual attempts to batter each other senseless with a nearby chair, so I figured we'd be okay. It was, to coin a phrase, Mallory-Happiness that we were meeting in Vegas to establish.
And establish it we did, as soon as I landed in the Capitol of Neon Sin.
Menippee first tried to ditch us in the airport parking lot but we were too smart for her and managed to throw ourselves in the car before she could drive off.
Mallory later told people that we saw David Marciano as we drove to our Casino Home and we did.
She also told people that Menippee tried to run David down with the rental car, which is also true.
What Mallory doesn't realize is that since Menippee's from LA, she's required to try and mow down second and third tier celebrities at every opportunity.
It's a pollution control thing. If they don't keep that kind of thing under control, the glare from capped teeth and LipSlickers lip gloss would cause a spontaneous eruption of everything flammable thing in the city.
My experience with hotels is quite varied. I've stayed in everything from a no-name, grunge-infested dump with Actual Things Growing in the shower all the way to the world-famous (and quite gorgeous) Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, but there's nothing like Vegas.
When booking the room, the reservations clerk insisted that we'd really enjoy a Pyramid Room and the ride sideways on the "inclinator" and she was right. This same inclinator later featured, albeit briefly, in a story that I wrote.
It was a Total Trash Vacation. Any hint of tastefulness in the surroundings would have diminished the experience, so a sideways elevator fit right in.
Still. Taste isn't something you have to consider at the Luxor, no sirree! When I tell you that it was the only casino we found that offered a dead cat slot machine, you'll understand the fine attention to detail they gave the surroundings. (Okay, cats were sacred in Ancient Egypt, and making a dead one a winner in a slot machine was in poor taste, but what the heck? Besides, it didn't pay off, which is probably some kind of karmic retribution or something.)
Vegas is the coolest place on earth. It's not an experience I'd enjoy too often, but every four or five years, I adore the flash and glitter of endless acres of neon lights, the ker-chin of a slot machine paying off (or, not), and the oddly timeless experience of never seeing a clock, a calendar, or the outside sky without making a serious effort so to do.
Anyhow…on to the Vacation Experience.
The next thing that happened was Menippee and Mallory ditching me in the casino. Yep, right after we checked into our room and unpacked. It was unnerving, because I'd been reasonably well behaved up until that point, made sure we'd all gotten keys to the hotel room (instead of taking one myself and forcing them to offer obeisances every time they wanted to visit their clean clothes) and I hadn't sung at all.
In spite of this restraint on my part, they waited until I blinked, then they ran away.
That's about it for several hours. I wandered around, spent some quarters, got my fingers all nasty, filthy dirty, looked for my friends and occasionally sobbed quietly under unused roulette tables.
Eventually it occurred to me to sneak upstairs and make apple-pie beds to pay them back. That plan was scotched by the presence of Menippee in one bed, and Mallory spread out on the other making leisurely calls to some of the 900 numbers she'd seen chalked up on the bathroom wall. I think I minded this most because she refused to put the calls on speakerphone and let me listen in. Apparently Mallory's perversions are private. Hmph.
(Nothing in the above paragraph is true except the part about Menippee being in bed when I got to the room.)
Since it was only 8:30, Mallory and I left Menippee snoozing peacefully and snuck back down to the casino. Specifically, to the bar, where we each drank a beer and made quiet but relentless mockery of the gamblers around us. After cheering on this old couple who looked like they needed a serious win, we watched in awe as some totally enraged guy fed dollar after dollar into the Big Machine and yanked the arm with a fervor appropriate to a gunner attacking an enemy stronghold. We could have made a better job of mocking him if we hadn't been afraid he'd hear us and use one of us to batter the machine into submission.
Giant Jackpot in Vegas Disallowed After Woman's Broken Body Found in Coin Slot!
That was Day One of The Big Summer Adventure.
Day Two!!
Menippee and I played possum until we heard Mallory leave the room. This was, you understand, my way of trying to make her go get some coffee and bring it to me so I could sip it in bed like a Lady of Vacation Leisure. This plan was foiled when Menippee found a note from Mallory, selfishly saying that she was going to go get coffee for herself and bring it back to drink in front of us. I gave in and ordered coffee from room service.
It arrived before Mallory's return (I was in the shower, so Menippee answered the door in her Temptress Turquoise Nightie, but this was the room service guy's tenth delivery that day, so he grabbed his tip and ran like hell).
I drank coffee and was less bitter than I might have beem when Mallory walked in the door holding a giant cup of Mickey D's brew. Besides, I'm a coffee snob and wouldn't drink MD's unless it was the last source of caffeine on the planet. So, there.
Then…the Whirlwind Casino Tour!
Let me take a moment here to apologize profusely to Mallory and Menippee. I swear if I'd known you didn't know drinks were free as long as you were gambling, I would have told you the first night! I'll admit that your insistence on finding a bar the second we entered every building had me stumped.
Our Home – The Luxurious Luxor! We liked this one best. Mostly because if we had to go to the bathroom, we could just go to our room and do so. Other casinos have the Necessary Facilities very well hidden. It's quite the challenge to find them. Also, by the time we left, I could very nearly walk around in this casino without getting lost, which is quite a feat for me.
Mandalay Bay is a sister casino to the Luxor, which means you can go to and from each of them without going outside. MB had little to recommend it beyond the House of Blues (which we skipped, although we visited the gift shop and mocked the coffee mugs) and some listless water here and there, trapped in mock ocean bays fabricated of plastic and bailing wire. This was a particular favorite of someone's (who shall remain nameless since she bribed me) because the waitresses skirts only came halfway down their butts. If they'd offered any men thusly clad, we might never have left the premises, boring décor or no boring décor.
Sirrah! Is't how thou treat'st a lady? I think not! I challenge thee! To the death for a rose from M'lady's hair!
Merlin! Magic! Round Tables!
We didn't really see anything like that at the Excalibur except for the ads they showed on the trolley. It's an interesting thought, though. What with one thing and another, we never quite managed to get around and see the Moat Monster that was billed to appear half-hourly, beginning at sunset, either. We made the usual trek to the gift shop, but I don't remember buying anything.
If I'm not mistaken, and I frequently am, the Bellagio is the one with the scantily clad statues out front, purporting to be Grecian or something. Some people will claim anything is Art just to keep from getting arrested for pornography.
The thing I remember most clearly from the Statue Casino is that I had an overwhelming urge to sneak back in the wee hours of the morning and paint all of the statues' toenails bright red. Someone in our little group suggested that a tasteful nipple ring is always in style, but no one had a chisel on them, so that idea had to be abandoned.
As always, Ballys was very tasteful inside. NOT what I go to a casino for, but there you are. Even in Vegas, there's room for a touch of class.
Caesar's Palace was...Caesar's Palace. A personal favorite, since staring at David's dangly bits with the proper expression of reverence will get you pegged as an intellectual. I remember that the plaque on the base of the statue mentioned, "growing enthusiasm and rising excitement" or something but no matter how long I looked, nothing grew. Or rose. Kind of disappointing, actually.
Bathrooms in Caesar's are particularly hard to find, I remember that. Also we went to explore the shopping area and finally had to ask for directions for how to escape that particular maze.
Caesar's was also memorable because Menippee's True Profession was uncovered by a sympathetic food service employee in the food court. I get the feeling that if Menippee had admitted she was looking for a ahem date, she might have been able to do a little trade to pay for her lunch. That's just a hunch, though.
Seriously. I told her not to wear that blouse. If she got mistaken for a Working Girl, it wasn't my fault.
The Boardwalk Casino - Mallory has discussed this House of Joy since this vacation, but I notice that she failed to mention that I won about fifty bucks in the Elvis slots. Nowhere does Mallory mention the many, many jackpots I won when she discusses this trip. I spent a lot, but by gosh some of those machines paid me a lot, too!
At one point, I was walking around with so many quarters in my front pockets that I looked...well, it was obscene, that's all.
I came home broke, but that's hardly the point.
I have no memorable memories of the other casinos, except for remembering that we danced and sang our way into the MGM. I can't remember which song. It wasn't Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz, which is unusual. Might have been something by Liza Minelli. Time and alcohol have mercifully blanked my memory.
Menippee eventually decided it was time to get drunk and we all agreed that we'd better do that at the Luxor, it being our considered decision that the odds of winding up rolled and dead drunk in a ditch would be minimized if we never went outside.
So, we hopped it back to the Luxor, I blinked, and Mallory and Menippee left me again.
Hours later, after searching for them (not as much as I pretended) and gambling (more than I admitted to), I gave up and went back to the room. It was after midnight, so I made Menippee and Mallory wake up to chat for a while, in punishment.
Day Three!!
We sobbed! This was our Last Full Day of Flashy Trashy Fun!
A repeat of yesterday's Coffee Selfishness from Mallory so I ordered the superior room service coffee and pointedly did not offer her any when she returned bearing her characteristic Giant Slurp from McCoffeeHell.
On this last day, Mallory had promised, or threatened, never to leave me. She stuck closer than airplane glue (but she smelled better) as we heartlessly abandoned Menippee and traipsed off to find M&M World.
On the way, I also found a Starbucks, so my joy was complete. It was the World's Most Delicious Latte. In fact, the guy in the Harley Davidson store threatened to steal it, until Mallory showed him the tire iron she was carrying under her jacket. Then he forgot about me and bargained desperately with her to trade her chromium steel utility tool for anything in the store. She wouldn't settle for anything less than him stripping off his pants and standing on the sidewalk with mistletoe pinned to his boxer shorts, though, so the discussion came to nothing in the end. I bought a cool shirt and, in spite of Mallory's advice, a very tasteful Harley Davidson Café pin.
Somewhere right about here, two men jumped onto the sidewalk in front of Mallory and me and offered us a helicopter ride and asked if I was Jenny's sister. Being wise to that ploy (we've heard about those impromptu organ removals), we fended them off with a combination of karate and bad breath and made our way on down until M&M World appeared in the distance.
Embarrassingly enough, we got lost in the 15 foot square store on the main level and someone had to take us by the hand and show us the escalator to M&M Joy. Once we arrived, though…whooee!
M&M goodies crammed in every corner! Mallory declared her ambition to fill her life with M&M Joy, right up until the moment she was buried in an M&M coffin. Then they kicked us out, being unwilling to admit that anyone who consumed their chocolatey, crunchy confections would ever reach The Last Bite.
Heart-breakingly enough, we had to skip the rest of our journey down the Strip and were therefore deprived of the sight of the famed Mirage Volcano, as well as the odiferous pleasures of Circus Circus. Ah, well, it leaves something for our next excursion.
Back home, to Luxor Luxury and Menippee. When we returned to the room, Menippee was asleep. Amazing how that keeps happening, isn't it?
Anyhow, she woke up, and we couldn't decide what to do, so we checked through the invitations we'd received since arriving in town. (Oddly enough, party invitations in Vegas seem to be delivered by grubby men standing on street corners and they're all published in the form of brochures.) Tami, Jeni, Susi, no one who was throwing a party was quite my cup of tea, although I believe Menippee saw an invitation that involved complex knots and motion detectors that intrigued her.
If you've heard Menippee's or Mallory's version of events, I deny everything. Except the part where Raymond was the only guy with the nerve to put his picture in a magazine...and someone should have stopped him. God help me, every time I looked at him I saw a beefier version of Duncan MacLeod.
After the first four pictures, I would have been more than willing to pay him money for the privilege of shaving him and cutting his hair. And that's all I'm going to say.
Except that the guy on the knife channel was scarier than I've ever been able to explain. If you've never heard the story, well, you'll just have to use your imagination..
That evening, more gambling but the thrill was gone. We were all tiring of the charming ker-ching of a slot machine not paying off, the stale air in the casinos was tedious, and the grim, determined faces of other gamblers were beginning to frighten us.
The next morning I relented and let Mallory have some of my fabulous Room Service Coffee before she and Menippee wended their way back to the lobby and, presumably, recovered Menippee's car to begin the long journey home.
I don't know, she thought wearily. It was all so long ago, in a country so far away. Who knows what dreams we might have brought forth, had the golden autumn days lingered but a short time longer?*
* * * *
(* That's weird and pretentious, but I can't help it. That's the way the original essay ended.)
There! Not a single thing about Spike BtVS in the whole thing!
Most important things first. I bought a new pair of shoes!
And three new books, but new books in my life aren't really that rare. Hardly worth mentioning.
And a t-shirt for my sister. I wanted a new shirt, but I had my heart set on one that said, "Oxnard" and, not finding one, decided to sulk instead.
I loved the new hotel. Both the facilities and the location, within walking distance of a dozen restaurants and two dozen stores. And a biker bar that a group of us unanimously declined to visit. "Road Rash" will forever remain an unexplored mystery, as biker bars should to those of us untattoed and without any chainlink accessories.
My fabulous room in fabulous downtown Oxnard was fabulous. It had a balcony, a view of the hot tub and pool, and my key worked every time I put it in the door. I don't ask for much out of life...these simple facts made me happy.
In theory there was high-speed internet access from each room, but mine didn't work. It didn't matter much because I didn't spend much time there anyhow.
I saw most of the best people in fandom although a few people didn't make it. I'm not going to mention names because I'd forget about half of the people and maybe offend someone but there were great people there! As usual, I felt as though I'd been let in completely by accident. Like a stray cat or something.
Panels and gossip! What a lovely experience Escapade is. Panels to discuss, or even disagree about, our favorite fannish obsessions and masses of people gathered in hallways or in the bar, doing more of the same.
I spent, you'll be surprised to hear, amazingly little time discussing Spike BtVS. There were two panels, and I attended 1-1/2 of them. (Never enough time!) I listened politely. (I don't talk much in panels unless the conversation doesn't seem to be swinging along without my invaluable help.)
I attended an X-Files panel where, in some fashion I still can't quite fathom, I found I had committed myself to writing a new X-Files story. The brain boggles. Krycek is dead and Mulder turned into such a moron that not even Skinner would have him. I'll have to dig back into the first four seasons to find something worth writing about.
The best panel by far was the first one on Friday. "Sex, schmex." It was one of those, "when did storytelling disappear in favor of endless sex scenes" discussions and drew a substantial crowd.
My take, which I did share with the group, was that sex took over slash when feedback-hungry writers started getting story comments on nothing but their sex scenes. If they wrote a 200 page story and got comments on nothing but the 3-page sex scene, they soon started leaving out most of the other 197 pages worth of material. Very few fanfiction writers are writing for the sheer love of creating a story. They're writing for feedback and strokes and are willing to do what it takes to get them. Especially if it means not having to do the work the other 197 pages required.*
Several good points were made, including the reminder that when a like-minded fan first finds slash, they tend to go overboard on the "sex between guys!" part of the concept. With so many thousands of new fans finding fandom, and slash, every month now, there's a constant influx of newbies who are fixated on The Act.
Presumably if some of them stick around long enough, they'll become jaded with sex-only stories and start to hunger for more from their fanfiction. There are good writers out there writing real stories. They're just harder to find these days because there are so many stories hitting the net every day.
(*This isn't bitterness. I wrote mostly short-short sex stories and didn't get feedback, making me uniquely qualified, I think, to diss both "storyless" stories and people who like lots of feedback.
P.S. If you read something I wrote, don't sit down today and send feedback. Really. Too little, too late and anyhow I don't really care. I mean, it's cool if someone liked it, but McSwain was the only person I was trying to please most of the time, okay? Do fandom a favor and send feedback to someone writing good stuff.)
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. Panels I have liked.
There was one on the "Loyalty Kink" that looked good but there were too many people there and by the time they spent the first fifteen minutes or more identifying "loyal" pairings (as though such things weren't obvious), I got bored and left.
I'd have liked to hear a discussion about what it is about loyalty that's such a kink for some of us and the panel did look to be heading toward such a discussion but this was late on Sunday afternoon and my brain was fried.
Hmmm...there was a Firefly panel I attended out of affection for the person leading it. I tried Firefly, liked it, but just lacked the time to make a commitment to it. Anyhow, it was dense and intelligent and required the viewer to pay attention. It was doomed from the start in a country that thinks a "reality" show about a man pretending to be a millionaire so that he can marry a starlet is fascinating entertainment.
Must. Not. Get. Sidetracked.
There were other "general" panels I wanted to attend but I frequently got involved in conversations and missed them. Maybe next year.
Next year!
Pursuant (what a great word) to complaints that there aren't enough arguments any more, I'm already working on contentious panel suggestions for next year. (Anyone that responds to these suggestions here will be smacked and fined two donuts. Save it for Escapade.)
#1 – But They Aren't Gay! (Taking back the slash)
I think that one's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it? No? Hmmm.
I liked slash back when the writers felt obligated to put 'why and how' into the story before the guys tumbled into bed. I don't require that we go back to the days when gay was evil and closeted, but I'm sick of...well, as mentioned above, stories that are nothing but two gayboys finding each other and doin' the wild thing.
Not all of the characters being slashed can reasonably be portrayed as gay. In fact, darned few of them can. Regardless of the statistically small number of "bisexual" people in our population, I prefer my BSOs to be bi.
I don't require that every kiss or shag they've shared with a woman be invalidated by a statement that he was really thinking of the pool boy all the time. In fact, I loathe it I don't share the misogyny so many fans seem to feel toward female characters. I'm perfectly happy being a woman and I'm perfectly happy to see women in stories.
I like the kind of story where a guy might have been aware of even a passing attraction to his own gender in the past but I don't like the stories where every sexual encounter he's had with a woman has been unsatisfying and he never knew true sexual pleasure until he got boinked.
Also. I'm sick of seeing the guys go from 'howdy' to boinking in sixty seconds or less. These aren't gay guys meeting in the park under cover of darkness. They exist in a context of jobs, families, and mutual friends. There are going to be some stops along the sexual highway before they get to all-out boinking. (Have none of these authors ever necked with someone?)
Anyhow. That's what that panel is about. We're not gay men writing about gay men. We're not even women writing about gay men, for the most part. These characters aren't all-out gay, although they might be bi, and slash is not the same thing as gay porn.
And I'm willing to fight about it.
#2 – My Fandom Sucks!*
Well, it does, doesn't it?
Where are the days of lively, even acrimonious debate that didn't sink into the swamp of flaming and name-calling three seconds later?
Where are the lists talking about who the characters are and how they got that way and where they might go from there? Is there anyone out there still interested in discussing how to get the guys together in a way that doesn't violate canon or invalidate the show's universe?
Are there any forums for discussing fanfiction where you can have honest discussions of the good and the bad without getting an army of sockpuppets in your face or have someone calling your boss and outing you as a slash fan? Where disagreeing with someone is understood as a disagreement and not a personal attack on someone's character?
Are there any discussion lists where "me, too!" is banned, as are postings about the health of your dog or your parakeet or speculations about the actor's personal sex life? Are there any lists where there's still interesting and intelligent discussion of the show itself, the plots of the episodes, and the motivations of the characters?
Where are the lists with grown-ups on them (of any biological age) who wanted to discuss the show they were a fan of, including the good, the bad, and the simply ridiculous?
Where are the carefully crafted stories, "case files" in themselves that provoked weeks of fascinated deconstruction and debate from thoughtful readers?
I remember when I first found on-line fandom, I found all of that in Highlander.
Heck, I found most of it in The X-Files lists, in the beginning. I found less of it as I wandered in and out of Due South and Sentinel.
Is fandom nothing now but hordes of screaming adolescents (of any biological age) drooling over nekkid weenies and becoming dangerous when their favorite actor has the temerity to date a woman instead of his male costar? Are the few intelligent and thoughtful fans remaining all in hiding or have they moved on to needlework and cartography as new hobbies?
I should point out that a friend offered to try and get me on a BtVS list recently. The list, she promised me, was full of intelligent discussion by intelligent people. After consideration, I declined. I don't have anything intelligent to say about the fandom. I just drool over Spike and since I'm three seasons behind the rest of the fandom, I'm not even drooling over the same Spike they're all watching. Still, I was encouraged by the knowledge that such a list existed.
(I'd be willing to consider that the blog, far from "killing" fandom lists, is actually going to be the savior of "good" fandom since it allows those intelligent fans who want to discuss intelligent topics, rationally and at length, to find one another.)
(*Caveat: I'm not actually on any fandom lists right now, but these are the sorts of things I hear people complaining about and a lot of the these same things are what made me give up on lists in disgust in the first place.)
#3 –Jumping The Shark
Fandom jumped the shark, okay?
With the X-Files and the Mulder/Scully fanfiction, to be specific.
That's right. At the same time that online fandom was exploding into an international phenomenon, it was already sitting on the motorcycle, heading for the fatal ramp.
I've never in my life witnessed such an outpouring of sheer, mindless crap as the unfortunate (but surely existing) intelligent het fans of that show had to put up with. (Speaking of fandom misogyny, I've always been astounded by the number of "fans" of Scully's who treated the character worse than dirt in their stories.)
The slash fiction attracted some stellar authors and produced some amazing fiction, but it had its share of life-shortening putridity, too. There were contests to produce lousy stories.
Anyhow. Some good fiction has continued to appear in the years since XF reached its fanfiction peak, in that fandom and others, but the volume of odorous garbage has continued to climb until the world's largest landfill would be insufficient to hold it all if printed out.
(*Microsoft Word is a stupid program. It actually thinks, "putridity" is a real word.)
Should I think of anything else rude between now and next year that might make a good panel, I'll keep you posted.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:55 PMHome safely from Escapade. Some of the attendees (those living in the South) faced monumental obstacles in getting home due to the weather. Here in Denver, the snow didn't start until this evening, though.
I meant to write something about the weekend today but I just lazed around the house and rested. Back to work tomorrow but I don't doubt I'll find a few minutes at some point to get some thoughts organized.
Had a great time, but it's good to be home!
Posted by AnneZook at 09:50 PMI've put up with a lot of impossibilities from this show in the interests of suspension of disbelief, but blue, fish-headed, demon bookies?
I have to draw the line.
__________ <-That's it.
Honestly! (And if the episode hadn't, by and large, been so amusing, I'd be serious.)
I accept that it's probably my failing of imagination that's giving me trouble accepting Buffy as a woman with a penchant for rough sex, too.
This is the problem, as I do understand, with seeing only random episodes. This week FX has, in its wisdom, abruptly jumped from the opening episodes of S4 to episodes in S6. So I'm missing seeing most of S4 and all of S5 to put S6 into perspective.
I'm just saying, okay? A few days ago I was watching Buffy graduating from High School and having her first, college crush. Now she doesn't want it unless the guy can use her skull to crack the building's foundations first?
Serious cognitive dissonance for the viewer, okay?
You'll suffer the most for this as I babble aimlessly over the multitudes of things I don't understand over the next few weeks.
Brace yourselves. You have the time while I'm at Escapade to find some other blog, almost any other blog to read instead of this one.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:08 PMSo, I got to watch several episodes of Spike BtVS this weekend, those being the repeats I taped off of FX last week. (Hooray! for some S4 finally showing up!) (Boo! for FX not showing all episodes and showing different episodes in the evenings when I can't tape them!) (But hooray! for FX for actually showing repeats, of course.)
I have, as usual, thoughts. I'm not sharing them with you, though. Not out of some kind of warm-hearted desire to spare you the endless rambling of my disorganized brain or anything kind like that, but because if I'm going to leave here Wednesday and not return until next Wednesday, I feel compelled to spend the time between now and the (first) Wednesday doing some real work. ("Here" being the office, in this case.)
I'll say that I had my doubts about the episode where Willow casts a spell that results in Buffy and Spike getting engaged, but that was before I saw it and now that I have I thought it was highly amusing. (If I'd have been Buffy, I'd still have taken Spike home and found a better place to chain him up than the bathtub, but I realize the dangers of revisionist viewing of these early episodes, so I won't go there.)
Also, I know know that Spike is 126 and I know that an unfed vampire turns into a "walking skeleton" which is an unattractive image at best.It's good to be getting these little questions answered.
I dunno if I'll have time for more blogging before I leave town or not. If I don't, I'll just sit and have Beautiful Spikey Thoughts all alone. If I do, well...you'll probably notice because there'll be a new entry, won't there?
I think I had something nonSpikeBtVS-related to say, but I've forgotten what it was.
Let's talk about something new for a change, okay? (Dunno what's up with the missing comments, BTW.)
Lemme see...what else is going on in my life? I dislike RPS as everyone knows, but sometimes you just have to laugh anyhow.
I'd thought of discussing demonic immortality or boomeranging souls, but those are demon-related topics and thus off-limits.
We might be at war by Monday. If not, certainly in a couple of weeks and somehow I feel compelled to make the most of these last few days.
It's a pity I haven't had a chance to watch any of the Spike BtVS episodes I've taped this week...but no, I remember, I'm not talking about that right now, am I?
Hmmm...
Escapade! I'll be there in just days! That's pretty exciting.
What with one thing and another, I didn't have much of a chance to check out the panel offerings for this year or anything, but I'm sure there will be topics I want to hear about.
And, of course, there are the gatherings, outside of formal panels, where you just yak with people. That's mostly what Escapade is about, after all.
I'm pretty eager for this year's con. Last year I was suffering the slings and arrows of recent Unemployment Depression. The year before, IIRC, was the year I was suffering the slings and arrows of Extreme Job Dissatisfaction combined with Frequent Panic Attack Syndrome with heaping helpings of Social Anxiety Disorder Freakouts.
I think I skipped the year before that, making this the first con I'll have attended where I'll be healthy both financially and emotionally (more or less) in four years.
And I get to ride on a train! From the airport to beauteous (one presumes) Oxnard! I love trains.
Of course, the down side is that Escapade is nothing if not a fandom con and I haven't been active in fandom for several years now. I was in a fandom-free zone for quite a long time.
Bowing to pressure from An Unnamed Reader, I had to stop letting Kind Friends pass on random fandom idiocies to me as well.
Apparently it isn't nice to do nothing but rant and rave. At least, that's what An Unnamed Reader told me, in no uncertain terms. I was directed to cease ranting until I had something nice to say.
As you might imagine, such a directive, directed to me, achieved nothing other than completely constipating my brain. Until my recent bout of (ahem) SpikeInfatuation, I was fairly hard up for blogging topics for several months.
As you can tell by today's entry, it's a pretty sorry state of affairs.
This afternoon I have a doctor's appointment.
This morning, I ate a cookie.
Yesterday, I broke a nail.
Okay, enough of that.
Anyhow, it occurs to me that I haven't actually been blogging about Spike so much as a sort of stream-of-consciousness musing over demonology in general. So, blogging about Spike very nearly constitutes a new topic!
I continue to be worried by the fact that these vampires on this show are so "human." It's the soul thing that bothers me.
I mean, Spike gets chipped and he can't hurt humans any more and that depresses him but after a while, he appears to feel sort of badly about vampires who still kill people, although that could be just a side-effect of the whole I Luurve Buffy subplot and his frank enjoyment of his ability to fight demons, even if no one else.
I don't think he really cares much about other vamps for the most part. Certainly not enough to care about being "one of them" when he sets out to do some slaying with Buffy and the gang. (Aside from Drusilla, of course.)
I think it would have been more interesting if he hadn't bothered to side with B&tG at the point when he realized that the chip didn't prevent him from defending himself against other demons since he didn't need B&tG to help him find fights to get into, but instead had just gone off on his own and learned how to deal with his situation.
Of course, from a fannish point of view I'm glad he became a regular on the show instead and plotwise they were already doing that whole luuurve thing, weren't they, which still might annoy me when I actually watch it happening.
Anyhow. I don't get the impression most vamps are big on loyalty and solidarity with one's peers but then it occurs to me that the Spike-Drusilla-Angel trilogy was an anomaly that way.
The Judge felt nothing but contempt for the vamps he could sense were full of human emotions and he dissed Drusilla and Spike big-time that way, but he approved of Angelus's entirely non-human focus. So why did Angelus bother with Drusilla and Spike?
Well, we know about Drusilla, but why didn't Angelus do in Spike when Spike was annoying him? Drusilla would have been annoyed, but she'd have forgiven Angelus pretty much anything.
Also, I can't remember how "old" Spike is, but vague memory tells me he's about a hundred (born in the 1880's, right? Making him about 115 when he hit the show?) and if Angelus became Angel a hundred years ago, when did they have time to do all of that bonding and becoming of a "family" that Drusilla refers to as though it was just a couple of decades ago? (Does that 1880's date refer to the date he was vamped or when he was born? Can't remember.) And where were Drusilla and Spike when Angelus was pissing off the gypsies and getting himself cursed? I can't imagine they could have been anywhere around and not getting into trouble right alongside Angelus.
Makes no sense. Not that television ever does if you look at it too closely. Sigh.
For someone who was originally brought on the show as a sort of unstoppable evil, they certainly didn't take long to start reinventing Spike.
Angel was worried when he first heard that Spike was in town, although now we know he was mostly worried about whether or not Drusilla and Spike were together at the moment, and he said something about Spike never stopping until he'd finished what he started. Even the first time around, we didn't see much of that in Spike. (Although I've suspected that they always intended to have Spike fall in luuurve with Buffy, based on his reaction to her the first time he saw her and what is it about blonde, teenage girls that makes guys go so gaa-gaa, anyhow?)
(Although now I remember that that can't be true because Spike wasn't intended to be a recurring character. Oh, well.)
(I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, Buffy was cute but Cordelia was always ten times prettier. Can't have been the I'm a cheap slut wardrobe they put Buffy in because Cordelia and 80% of the schoolgirls on the show dressed the same way. Can't have been personality because, let's face it, Buffy's nothing special there. Aside from the slayer abilities, she's a carbon copy of a million other teenagers.)
(Perhaps more will be revealed as I watch future seasons. Maybe she'll develop a more distinct personality or exhibit some talent for understanding or compassion or cooking or something that makes her stand out from the crowd.)
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. Spike and that 'unstoppable' rumor. It's a pity they haven't, yet, revisited that part of his character in the eps I've seen (which, granted, are few in the post-Drusilla era).
I would have expected him to be a stronger character than he was developed into.
After all, when Giles was first talking about Drusilla, he referred to her as Spike's "sometime paramour" which implies that they'd fought and split before so why did this one break-up send him over the edge so badly?
Was he somehow afraid that she was right, that he was becoming, in vampire terms, "weaker"? Was he supposed to already be feeling the pangs of humanity, or luuurve, this long before he got the chip?
Inconsistent characterization drives me nuts but I have to remind myself, repeatedly, that there are a lot of episodes I haven't seen yet and that Spike features largely in the show in later seasons.
Sigh. It's a long time until the S4 DVDs are going to be released.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:16 PMI have webstats on this page, which I remember to check every so often to see, (a) if anyone is actually reading this stuff; and, (b) where they're from.
I'm surprisingly popular in Finland. I don't get that.
And today, about 40 different people have shown up here, which is unsettling. At least one person seems to be running through the archives, which is completely disconcerting.
Should I feel compelled to start being relevant or amusing? The pressure is immense. 40 people went to the trouble to click their mouse buttons...and this place is all the reward they got? I pity the person looking for Relic Hunter slash, as I do the person who searched for CSI fanfiction. Granted, the graphics here are nice, but still. It's hardly the smutfest these individuals were hoping to find. In the end, and pursuant to my usual policy of disregarding reality when it doesn't match up with my expectations, I've decided it's some kind of software glitch, so I'm going to continue talking to myself and my imaginary audience.
I prefer an imaginary audience because they never call you on getting your facts wrong or write you querulous e-mails about your mistreatment of the semi-colon.
I know people capable of defending the mistreated semi-colon, but none of them show up here, thank goodness. I admire their knowledge in a sort of open-mouthed, awed fashion, but punctuation rules have always been a problem for me. I acknowledge this, as I acknowledge the fact that it's only my own laziness that has prevented me from acquiring the skill to use these necessary adjutants to communication.
For those who know better, here are some marks for you: (. . . . , , , " ' ' ' ; ; ; ; : : : )
Scatter them about wherever you feel the page requires them and make me appear smarter, okay?
Now...on to the show.
Yes, I taped Spike BtVS last night. No, I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.
Also, as it turns out, the person who was going to give me tapes had S1-S3 tapes to offer. Since I bought those three seasons on DVD, I was able to offer her my gratitude but tell her she didn't have to bother.
Yes, I checked what I got taped on FX yesterday and hooray! I'm getting at least part of the arc where Spike gets chipped this time around. No, I haven't had a chance to watch the episodes yet.
With a sigh of relief, you tell yourself that at least you won't have to sit through another aimless ramble on the subject of canon demonology or a bitter diatribe against actors who walk around with their mouths half-open all the time.
You're quite mistaken.
When I obsess, I obsess.
Yesterday, half my brain spent the day proofreading and editing account management documentation and the other half of my brain contemplated the question of how the show might have managed to portray Spike in love with Buffy without, as I fear will happen, turning him into a poodle.
I also spent some time contemplating the character of Buffy and acknowledging that my pattern in fandom is to ignore the "hero" character of a show in favor of brooding endlessly over the motivations and morality of secondary characters.
As it happens, I don't find Buffy any more interesting, or any more three-dimensional, just because she's a she. She interests me no more than McLeod did on HL or Fraser did on dS. I find the inconsistencies the character is forced into in the name of moving the plot along irritating an unbelievable. Willow is a lot more interesting.
Anyhow.
I've been considering this "human personality" versus "demon personality" thing, which seems to be worrying me more than it should. (For those keeping score, we have now arrived at today's topic.)
I started with this whole id, ego, superego approach, but that's too simplistic, so I've gone back to deciding to accept the premise that some kind of demon spirits loiter around the ether, waiting for a human to get bitten, then they swoop in and take over.
(Do you suppose they follow vampires around, hoping to get lucky, or are there so many of them that there's always a spirit handy when you want one? Is the delay that takes place before the body reanimates caused by a demonic version of commuter traffic or because there are six of them duking it out over who gets the body?)
(How about animals? Can you vamp an animal? Could you turn a wolf or a monkey into a vamp? If not, why not? Surely the potential a wolf or a wild dog has for wreaking havoc is substantial? What is this affinity for humanity? Is it a sort of race war carried on by demons who remember when they ruled the planet?)
Not to digress, although I already did, I'm also considering the "strength" of the vampire, as reflected in (1) longevity, and (2) sheer evilness.
What does the "human personality" bring to this equation? Does the "demon spirit" bring anything more than a renewed ability to walk and talk and a connoisseur's interest in blood types?
Is, in fact, the "demon spirit" just a handy scapegoat the remnants of the humans' consciences create to excuse their behavior?
What, precisely, does this "demon" or vampire spirit consist of? I know that Buffy, in later seasons, excuses Spike's previous naughtiness (and Angel's, one presumes), during pre-soul days, with the explanation that he didn't have "free will" but I'm doubting that premise.
I mean, yes, we're accepting that whole demon spirit thing, but it's not like most vamps are wild and untamed things, dashing from neck to neck in a frenzy of blood-lust, is it? A certain amount of control is always present, as are choice and decision-making ability.
If there is indeed a lack of "free will" for the human...well, really, how is that possible? It's self-contradictory to the notion that the "human" is dead and that the reanimated body and personality traits have nothing to do with the "person" who used to inhabit the corpse. And you can't say that the "soul" which seems to define "human" in this canon had/didn't have free will because as we've seen the soul is off somewhere, drinking martinis, while all of the carnage takes place, so it's not a matter of the "soul" having free will since it was on leave.
Where does the soul go and how is it possible for some vampires to get "their" souls back? These aren't "their" souls, right? Vampires don't have souls, do they? These are the souls that used to inhabit the vampire-resurrected bodies is all.
Why does a soul have an affinity for one body over another? If such an affinity does exist, it implies an ongoing connection with the body, one that lasts past death, which makes the whole "eaten by worms" thing sort of distasteful, not that it wasn't already.
It also implies that the "person", however you define a unique individual, continues to exist past the loss of "their soul" since "they" are present to "regain" their souls.
Which answers my question (Yes, I'm surprised myself. I don't think I've ever come full circle and arrived at an answer before, have I?) that the evil and the strength of the vampire must be significantly impacted by the "human personality."
That also satisfactorily answers my question about why vampires seem to be, on the whole, such an ineffectual bunch o'goomers.
Viewed like this, though, being vamped seems to be more a matter of upsetting a balance. Removing the "soul" that governs conscience or imposes guilt or whatever it does and substituting, instead, a sort of two-dimensional, demonic "me-generation" inspired selfishness.
I mean, yes, vamping is defined as evil because:
(1) Someone is killed to make a vamp, although I'm starting to have doubts about that part and it seems that what actually happens is someone's body is killed and then reanimated, but the "person" is sort of divided. The "two halves" of this person seem to continue to exist although they function differently when apart.* The "soul," as I said before, seems to head for the hills while the-rest-of-whatever-it-is-that-makes-a-person-a-person-in-this-canon hangs around and contributes their strengths and weaknesses to the "demon spirit" in the interests of future survival, not only for the spirit, but for the remaining "personality." (Proving, among other things, that most people really will do anything to survive.)
(* Right now, I'm awaiting the gratitude of the multitudes. This was a great place to discuss Cartesian dualism and I very nearly gave you an essay on the subject. Count your blessings, okay?
For those possessed of intellectual curiosity and having too much time on their hands, there's an interesting and possibly relevant discussion here.)
(2) Vamps kill (actually kill-until-dead) people.
So then, I ask myself, if vampires fed primarily on mice or birds, or simply required huge amounts of animal blood in order to subsist, would they still be considered such an evil? Isn't it, in the end, the whole jumping out of bushes and biting passersby shtick that really annoys the populace?
I suspect I'm wandering from my original point. I usually am by this time.
Hmph. I checked and I'm still discussing the same topic!
I'm astonishingly linear today. I mean, I don't remember where I was going, but I'm going there by a fairly direct route. That's progress, right?
Ah, yes. Evil, and blaming demons for same. If I prove to have further thoughts, I'd probably better save them for a new entry. This is getting absurdly long and I just remembered that I made a resolution to stop spending hours blogging when I'm supposed to be working.
Next time: Longevity: Do it really make you smarter or do you just learn to dread rainy Sundays?
Coming soon: The Soul: What is it and how do I get the tarnish off of mine?
Actually, nothing of the sort, but I can never resist alliteration.
So...what about these demons, anyhow?
(Is there anyone here unaware of the fact that we're discussing Spike BtVS? Good.)
So, we got yer standard vampire demons, we got some slimy ones with tentacles, we got the friendly, bar-hopping, wedding-attending ones, we got the about to be spawned and start wreaking havoc big baddies variety, we got the vengeance demons, and we got the drag some assembly-line fodder down to our level of hell demons. What else?
I think that's all I've seen so far except Whistler, who is clearly in a different category and while I'm full of speculation on how he got his job and if he's up for promotion and just exactly how much advance information he gets and from whom, that's really a whole, separate topic and I'm trying to be a lot more linear today.
What other kinds of demons are there? If there can be a demon like Anya who is under a geas to fulfill vengeance-related wishes of women, is there a similar demon that works on behalf of men?
What other purposes do demons exist to fulfill? How much energy does it take from an infuriated population to spawn a demon inspired to act on people's wishes? (Or, in fact, is that how vengeance demons came into being at all?)
Why are there demons dedicated to fulfilling wishes, even naughty ones? What other kinds of wishes can be granted?
Are there demons running around under compulsions to rend limb from limb those thieves who steal shopping carts from stores and leave them, abandoned and forlorn beside the roadway?
Is there a demon in charge of ripping the noses off of people who cut you off in traffic?
Where do all of those abandoned socks beside the road come from? Is this some kind of evidence of demonic activity? Are odd socks stolen from people who take your clothes out of the washer and throw in on the dirty laundry-room table? A sort of on-the-job training program for newbie demons*?
Clearly not. Okay, then, demons aren't somehow "created" or "inspired" by the sheer amount of negative energy people put into some pet peeve.
Maybe it's some kind of primal energy thing. Maybe all of the specialty demons were created back when the world was simpler, there were fewer people around, and there was less static interference from tens of thousands of conflicting aggravations.
Maybe it's a question of focus. Too many people getting too pissy about too many different subjects these days. I'm sure the vibrations in the ether are very confusing.
No wonder a bunch of demons are sitting in bars, swilling swill and looking lost and forlorn. They were probably slated to become vengeance demons and then found themselves in a tug of war between the people who want tailgaters to be squished in an earth mover and people wishing deboning on in-laws who don't call before dropping by.
What's a demon to do?
* Are there newbie demons? Demons-in-training? Where do they come from? Were they all present in the long-ago beginning and have they been hiding ever since, coming out occasionally to chomp a neck or did they somehow get trapped in one of the many versions of hell and have they been leaking out of the hellmouth and/or other places ever since?
Can you draw a pentagram and summon up a demon and if you do, do they really have to do your bidding? Because the kitchen floor at my place is a disgrace and I'm just not in the mood for mopping, okay?
I'm assuming there are greater and lesser demons. Certainly most of the vamps we've seen have been lesser demons. I mean, I can't imagine any truly big, bad evil being content to lurk in bushes and take a chance on a fresh meal wandering by. They'd organize a buffet and have a raffle or something.
There's not much luring going on, is there? In most vamp mythology the vamps have some kind of hypnotic power. It's probably just as well that BtVS didn't go that route.
Some demons, as we've discussed before (okay, I discussed it and you tried not to listen), are more proactive than others. Is this a product of the human being they infest or a reflection of the demon personality itself?
If it's a reflection of the human being, then all of that about the "person" being dead and what's left just being a shell of personality inhabited by evil doesn't make much sense. Plus which, is there's no "person" in the "person" then surely you'd be able to tell that by looking in their eyes if it was a friend or loved one? Although, admittedly, most people don't look closely at those they've known for a long time.
Of course, it could be the demon's personality, which begs the question of why there are so many lackadaisical demons boogying around. Hell must be a seriously boring place if they're content to lurk around Sunnydale after dark for thrills. So far, beyond the biting thing, I haven't seen many vamps doing much with their time. A lot of loitering, that's all.
Spike's explanation of most vamps not really wanting Armageddon still makes sense, but beyond that, what motivates your average vampire? Is it nothing more than the next meal?
Next time: What was all of that about the big evil being a "demon" instead of a "demon-human hybrid"? Why are we having a lot of inferior demons palmed off on us? Did we fail to pay our bills on time? How do we get in line for the first-class product?
And what happens to the demon when you stake the vamp? Is it dead-dead, or is it sent back to hell to try again, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars?
P.S. Did you notice that I didn't drool about Spike at all? I'm trying not to jinx it...tonight I just may finally get the episode where he gets kidnapped and gets the chip stuck in his head, so that I'll finally understand exactly how all of that happened. So I'm trying not to annoy fate....
Posted by AnneZook at 02:20 PM
Hmph
And what's the deal with those demons, anyhow? I've been thinking about the whole demon thing and I have Many Questions.
Stay tuned.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:17 AMLike...proving that I'm not single-mindedly obsessive.
I started to post a bit of nothing for a Once a Thief story I'm working on in between bouts of obsessing over Spike BtVS but then it occurred to me that posting bits and pieces of a story that may or may not ever be completed would be a lot more obnoxious.
So, I'm not.
But I wanted you know know I was thinking about you. And about Mac and Victor.
SpikeObsession!
(Hey, there are over a million blogs on-line. No one's forcing you to read this one!)
First, due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn't get to watch tonight's new ep. Sigh. I mean, okay, I should stop trying to catch S7 when I haven't seen S4, S5, or S6, but still.
So, as I was saying earlier, I rewatched the S2 two-part ender, all about Angel's past and stuff, and now I know that he survived on very little blood for quite a long time. I mean, I'm sure Whistler was being facetious when he said, "a rat a month" but certainly we were to understand Angel was on the verge of starvation for a long, long time.
I'm not sure about the whole soul thing, though. I mean, can the soul control the demon? Is that why possession of same made Angel willing to starve for decades? Or does he do it from sheer strength of will because of the memory of the horrors he'd committed? That's a lot of willpower. I'm not sure, if I was starving, if I'd have been able to resist getting a decent meal for decades on end, okay? Maybe I would have, I don't know, but still. That whole Donner party thing comes to mind and yes, apparently the buffet was deceased in that case, but….
The whole soul thing is a mystery to me. I like the idea that a vampire can get their soul back, though. It opens up potential.
And, of course, rewatching these episodes and less distracted by Spike's beauty, I listened more closely to what he was saying. That whole speech about how most vampires are all "big talk" but don't really want Armageddon made sense. Fits in with the whole "lost boys" mythos that so much of this version of vampirism seems to be based on.
Plus which, Spike looked prrretty while he was saying it all. Heh. I liked him when he was whomping on Drusilla, too. I wonder if she shows back up again?
I think Spike and Buffy are cute together, but it's more of a "traditional" pairing than Spike with the psychotic Drusilla, so consequently a less-interesting pairing dramatically.
As I said before, I didn't get to see/tape this week's episode, but I did see most of last week's and I noticed two things.
#1 - Spike. Pretty.
#2 - Spike. Doing very little except staring moon-eyed at Buffy and watching her back. Lap dog. Borrring.
I do fear seeing how they go about leashing Spike. Seems to me that the show can't but get more "ordinary" if all of the "bad guys" are either killed or have their rough edges smoothed over so that they can join the white-hats, you know?
And this thing of everyone falling in love with Buffy got old by S3. I can't believe they're still doing it in S7.
Someone sent me a link to a site that appears to have a lot of backstory, discussion, and links to other BtVS sites on it. I bookmarked it but haven't had time to read yet. Actually, I looked, but the first thing I found was a discussion board that seemed to be more involved with saying, "hi! I'm post number fifteen!" than with discussion the show, so I decided it would have to wait until I had more time.
In any case, now that I have access to the information I requested, I'm remarkably reluctant to go ahead and dig into it. Maybe I'm happier speculating in a vacuum? Ignorance is bliss when you're in my brain. Maybe I'm sort of afraid to see what's been happening for the last season or two?
Posted by AnneZook at 12:06 PMI'm doing pretty well with my resolution to spend my days working instead of blogging.
On the other hand, I rewatched the two-part Spike BtVS Season Two season ender on Sunday evening and now I have New Thoughts.
Watch this space....
Posted by AnneZook at 01:37 PMIn case you were wondering
Happy as I am to be here today addressing you, I must admit that I didn't prepare a topic in advance.
First, let me thank the organizers of this fine event for giving us all something to do while we drink our morning coffee. Let's have a round of applause for those fine folks, okay?
Second, let me take a moment to speak to the Kind Reader who sent me the ipreviously mentioned nformative post with instructions for how one might deal with Geezers in Grocery Stores. Much food for thought certainly but I'm currently balancing the pleasure of the moment against the somewhat liberal odds that a jail sentence would result.
Does anyone have suggestions, a spell or a potion maybe, that could be used to alleviate Psychotic Checker Syndrome?
I thought not.
Aw, well, keep me posted.
Another Kind Reader, via comments, suggested that I slap myself and get over the Spike BtVS thing. To her, I say, Bah! And also, humbug! And, while I'm at it, a touch of the old pot, meet kettle. I'm not the only obsessive personality in these parts my child. Your secrets are mine. Don't ever forget that.
Yet another Kind Reader finally wrote to tell me that the S4 DVDs won't be released until June. That sucks.
I'm just saying. Now that I've decided to grace this fandom with my personal attention, they should be catering to my desires a little more. The next DVD player I buy is going to be one of those fancy, multi-region ones.
Today I must vacuum the carpet and carry out some trash. Not a strenuous agenda but, remembering last Sunday, I need to add something quasi-strenuous. A brisk, mile-long walk in the late-afternoon or something.
And before anyone tells me to embrace my insomnia and make it my friend, let me warn you that I've got PMS, okay? What I'd really like to do it bitchslap my insomnia back to the netherworld.
Actually, I think I've had PMS for the last two or three days. I mean, speaking of bitchslapping, I've been restraining myself with both hands to prevent myself from doing the same to a witless, congenital idiot with an underdeveloped sense of reality who is insisting that passage in the 19th century of laws to make it illegal for a man to kill his wife is one instance of proof that women are and have always been the "privileged" gender.
Ahem. Okay...deep breath.
I bring the subject up, not to thresh it all out again in this forum, but to mention, with a sort of distant bemusement, that my inner feminist has been reawakened by this experience in much the way that the gift of the Presidency to that man reawaked my inner liberal.
I'm currently putting as least as much passion, time, and energy into politics as I ever put into fandom.
Hobbies are odd things, aren't they? I never would have thought, when I was searching for a way to spend those idle hours that might have been dedicated to laundry and dusting the bookshelves, that I would settle on politics. (Lest anyone think such a hobby is devoid of opportunities for mockery, let me point out that just this past week I had the opportunity to heap piles of scorn on a woman who actually wrote a little fantasy about imagining George Bush, as Clark Kent, ripping off his clothes to expose his 'S' during the State of the Union speech. No, this wasn't some deranged fan, it was a deranged national columnist and she posted this in her column in a nationally known newspaper. Psychos abound in this field.)
Not that that matters here, today, in this forum, because this is the me-me-me blog. Except that there isn't much me-me-me yet today since I just got up and haven't actually done much except work for the past week.
Well, okay, I watched most of the S2 Spike BtVS DVDs again, of course. Goes without saying, doesn't it?
Even though their exclusion of about two out of every three episodes is annoying, I'm still looking forward to the time when FX gets back to showing S4. Something is better than nothing, right?
Of course, it will be a decade before I finally get to see Seasons 5-7, I'm sure, but whatever. Doesn't matter what I want.
(Sorry. Little PMS moment there.)
As it happens, I know someone with tapes who has offered to loan me a chunk of tapes, so I shouldn't be whining. At least not until after I see which seasons she's loaning me.
And, speaking of Spike (I was, even if you weren't), I'm having More Thoughts about the canon on this show.
(You gotta love having a topic where you possess a complete absence of facts. Really opens up the field of speculation.)
I'm still a little unclear on this demon possession thing. I know how it goes. Bite, drain, return favor, voila! vampire, but I don't get the point.
In one place, maybe in more than one, they say that vampires are choosy about who they "bring over" or whatever they call it, but it seems to me that a pretty motley collection of characters has been deemed "worthy" by someone.
I mean, who thought that Research Boy, the little geek that helped Spike and Drusilla figure out Drusilla's cure, was a suitable candidate for an eternity of blood-sucking evil? The guy looked like a dry-cleaner and was afraid of his shadow.
And Harmony? What on earth was wrong with Spike that he thought anyone would want to spend a week, much less eternity, with such a half-wit? (If you make someone a vampire and then change your mind, is it considered in bad taste to off them?)
Nor did I understand Angel's early fascination with Drusilla, but I'm less interested in that, of course. What is it about Drusilla that makes her supposedly a Big Evil, anyhow? So far I haven't seen her doing anything except have visions (useful, but hardly evil) and threaten to poke people's eyes out. Granted, the whole poking thing is something I'd rather pass on, personally, but I don't see anything else out of the ordinary about her.
Maybe it's revealed in later seasons, I don't know. I do find her less annoying post-healing, though. Now that she's not running around with her mouth hanging open, on the verge of drooling on herself all of the time, she looks less like a lobotomy patient. (Also, she combs her hair, post-healing, a pastime I approve of.)
Anyhow. If these demons, or bits of demons or whatever they are, are all about evil, why are they only bringing over people they seem to "like"? Why not roam the back alleys and biker bars of the planet and bring over some seriously mean characters who can add psychotic personality flaws to the natural human-hating inclinations of the demons?
If I were in charge, these things would be organized a lot better, I can tell you.
Also…is burial required for those about to be reborn as vamps, or is it possible to just drop the body into a quiet corner and wait? Is it sheer ritual and tradition or does burial serve a purpose? How long does the transformation take?
And what about all of the other variety of demons who appear to be non-vampiric but are running around Sunnydale? What is it with these characters? Does the Hellmouth emit some kind of cosmic rays that the demons like to bask in? Is this why they don't just spread out across the continent, if not the planet, and wreak havoc at such distant locations that no one Slayer would be able to stake them all? It would up their individual odds of survival, surely they see that?
Not that they seem to care about such things. For evil beings, these guys are remarkably social, aren't they? I mean, they have their own bar and everything. They go to weddings.
You don't see them out on the streets much, though, do you? I mean, in one bar scene, there must have been a dozen or more assorted demons, sitting around drinking some kind of unimaginable swill. Why weren't they out killing people?
Whoever demonized these characters must be tearing their hair (or tentacles) out in frustration. I'm serious. You just can't get good help these days. There's just no commitment to the job.
I'm thinking that one of my original speculations might have been right. Evil demon possession or no evil demon possession, most "people" just don't have the drive and determination to go out and make a success of things on their own. Everyone waits for someone else to come up with a plan.
I mean, supposedly they all get this supernatural strength and this lust for blood when they're demonized, right? Why aren't they out running amok? I don't see many of your average demons running amok. Newbies, mostly. Do they get some kind of control if they survive for a while? Is that whole, bite everything that moves thing just a phase, like a two year-old putting everything they get their hands on in their mouths?
How much blood does a vampire need on a daily basis, anyhow? And how long can they go without it? What happens to them? Do they just get hungrier and hungrier?
And, while I'm at it, who are these friends of Anya's? They seem like a fairly genial bunch. What's their purpose for existing? Are they vampires I just haven't seen vamping anyone yet? What is it with all of these demons not being demonic?
Did Angel and Spike and Drusilla and vamps like them just get lucky and get possessed by the spirit of a more proactive evil?
Or, maybe I should say Angel and Drusilla because when Spike isn't being led by the nose by one of them, he doesn't seem to get up to that much. Not in a big way, I mean. He's not all apocalyptic or anything.
Actually, he's kind of an insecure mess, isn't he? Starting with his period of weepy mourning for the slack-jawed Drusilla, he's always got some petty-schemer variety plan to make himself more powerful going, but he seems to lack any deep-seated conviction about it.
I'm not sure I'm going to like the episodes where he comes over all lurrrrve-enthralled to Buffy. I mean, sure, it worked for Angel because of the contrast. Big Evil vs. Big Brooding, you know?
I'm not sure I see the point of taming Spike. Dramatically, I mean. In the context of the show.
Anyhow, I like him this way.
Of course, he couldn't have become a regular on the show if they hadn't put him under some kind of control. I do understand that.
I also understand that he gets a chip in his head that prevents him from hurting people which sounds like a process that's going to annoy him pretty extremely and also, either before or after that time, he gets all in love with Buffy, but I'm not sure I'm going to like the character as much when they turn him into Buffy's lapdog, that's all. What's the point of a fangless vampire?
Maybe they work with that concept. I mean, finding a 'point' for a fangless vampire, but I strongly suspect that, dramatically, they confine themselves to having him loiter around and be in lurrrve.
Bah.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:46 AMSo, it's been a while since I rambled on endlessly about Spike BtVS, hasn't it? Between work and venting ire at our sort-of elected officials, I've been busy. Mostly work, I'll admit.
I tamed the beast that is FrontPage. Well, 'caged it' might be a better way of putting it. Alvin helped. As we were dinking with formatting I re-read my prose, realized it all sucked sugarless lemon-lime, and re-wrote 75 percent of it on the fly. It's still not good, but it doesn't wander as aimlessly as it did.
For the rest of today I'm working graphics. I'm probably the least visual person I know. Why do I get stuck with choosing layouts and finding graphics that don't suck?
We're migrating the new page up to the web this weekend, so I don't have time to complain and get the work done. (Well, at the moment I've clearly chosen 'complain' over 'work' but it's just a brief interlude.
Next week's delightful chores: A mock white-paper I'm putting together for Version 2.0 of the site, and marketing/sales material we can e-mail or hand out at trade shows.
I've made an outline of the elements that should, generically, appear in a white paper. I'm still waiting for inspiration about Spike.
Freudian typo, there. Honestly. I meant to type, "content." Still waiting for inspiration about content.
Oh, well. On to the matter at hand.
Finally watched the ep I taped last Tuesday. Not enough Spike, but don't I usually feel that way?
What's with all of the proto-slayers? They aren't really thinking spin-off, are they?
Do I care? Not. I doubt Spike will appear, after all. Or Giles. Or Willow. What would be the point?
Reluctantly I'm compelled to admit that I like Xander better after watching that episode. I still think that anyone whose been in the thick of things for seven years should by now be less whiney about it all and should have developed a few useful skills beyond the window-replacing variety but I doubt I'd fare much better in the same situation, so I won't annoy the Xander fans by complaining about it endlessly. He had a seriously good point, though. It would be hell to be no-one in the middle of all of that talent for years on end. (Pudgy little devil, isn't he?)
Why doesn't anyone write and tell me when the S4 DVDs will be released? Have I not made it clear yet that time is at a premium for me right now? Can you informed fans step up to the plate and share a little information?
While you're at it, someone give me the URL to a decent site on the web where the backstory of this show is listed, okay?
(Apparently it's me-me-me day at Casa AnneZo. The world sighs in irritation and starts to sidle out of the room, hoping to find a decent rant going on somewhere else.)
Someone wrote me a long, lovely note about the Geezers In Grocery Stores rant. Condensed, let's just say that she advocates a degree of violence toward the old dears that I can't quite reconcile with my passively passive-aggressive nature. But I've thought about doing those things, yes.
I've thought about handcuffing Spike to a bed, too. That doesn't mean I'd do it if given the opportunity.
Hot flash ensues.
Oops. My mind is never far from the gutter, is it?
(An intriguing flash of a pristine, white bed and a pair of empty handcuffs distracts Anne's attention for several consecutive minutes.)
It's not like I had anything to say, okay? It's a blog. It's not a staggering work of heart-breaking genius. Just me, wandering around inside of my psyche, picking out the more publicly acceptable bits to share.
I'm disappointed. I've watched three seasons of this show, and bits of a few episodes from this season, and I'm still getting zero slash vibes. It's all very upsetting. Spike is too beautiful not to slash but I can't go there without subtext. I need the vibe.
(Another long pause while the critical 'vibe' is considered in the context of Spike. The world fidgets and wonders why it bothers to come over here, anyhow.)
Fine. Go somewhere else.
I may have brilliant thoughts to share later, but you'll never know, will you?
Posted by AnneZook at 11:46 AM
Kids today
I should point out that my objection to Angel's brooding, open-mouthed stupidity shtick doesn't in any way interfere with my appreciation of watching him rolling around naked on the floor. Last night, for instance, I managed not to be annoyed by that scene during four consecutive viewings.
My appreciation, I assure you, was purely aesthetic.
But.
Buffy chains a half-naked man to a wall and then all she can think of to do with him is to stand in a corner and stare at him pensively?
Kids today, I swear. Youth is just so wasted on the young.
I was getting ready to leave the house this morning and my brain suddenly flashed on an image of Spike handcuffed to a bed. Could have been imagination, but I'm thinking I saw this in an episode?
It doesn't really matter because by the time I finished mopping up the coffee from the kitchen floor, I was late to work.
Today I've stayed virtuously away from blogging, in spite of an invitation, in a different forum, to comment on a post that is going to require a 1,200 word response to do it justice. Today I'm working.
Why this burst of virtuous behavior, you ask? Because I'm aggravated that my Season 3 DVDs arrived last night and, upon investigation, promise to provide only one Spike episode in all 22 or whatever episodes.
What a ripoff. And I have a sad, scary feeling that Season 4 isn't out on DVD yet. Life is sad.
Of course, I still have the new episode I taped (most of) on Tuesday to look forward to, right?
And I can spend the weekend re-watching Season 2 episodes, right?
Or, you know, mopping the kitchen floor every time my brain flashes on an unlikely, but I swear it's canon, picture of Spike handcuffed naked to a bed.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:59 PMI'm feeling a bit smug today because I am not thinking about PrettySpike and how Pretty he looked smacking that annoying Drusilla around and carrying her off.
And he looked Pretty, looking at Angelus and Buffy and thinking Angelus was about to kill Buffy, but shrugging philosophically and going on about his business.
Sometimes I like disinterested altruism, but not most of the time. My favorite characters tend to cast a somewhat jaundiced eye over the concept of noble, self-sacrifice and decide it's a sucker's game.
I like it that Spike kept his eyes on the main point, dragging Drusilla out of there before Buffy did her in, not that I don't want Drusilla dead, or at least gone, but whatever.
I like his capacity for loving extravagantly. I think it's interesting that we're getting this in a character who lives (so to speak) in an environment where this kind of passion is completely unexpected.
I liked the contrast between Drusilla's relationship with Angelus and her relationship with Spike, as well. (I'm marginally put off by the violence of these relationships, but I'm pretty wussy.)
Anyhow. For whatever reason Spike is crazy in love with this pathologically sadistic lunatic. (Why is he in love with her? Just because she's the one who vamped him? Does he lack alternates? Why do we only see three, so far, "human-looking" vampire women, and one of them not until post-Drusilla? Are women who aren't half-decomposed rare enough in the vamp world that Spike has to stay with Drusilla or risk not getting any?)
Why won't anyone explain to me why there are a few human-like vampires scattered amongst the armies of animated, decomposing bodies?
You people who know these things and won't tell me are pissing me off, but don't bother to write and tell me now because I'm not listening. (La-la-la-la I can't hear you.)
I don't need no stinking canon. I can make up my own reasons. I'd tell you what I've decided, but I'm not speaking to you, either.
Continuing with my original train of thought, if vampires are, as that annoying Xander keeps shrieking, just demons inhabiting the bodies and memories of "real people" then does that mean demons have the capacity for love as well as hate? For loyalty, even honor? Where do these emotions come from? Are the side-effects of inhabiting human bodies with all of the hormones and whatnot? Can't be...once the body is dead, all of the chemical reactions that produce emotions are pretty much at an end. That means the emotional reactions have to be those of the demons, and not the original humans. Unless the bodies are "alive" again once inhabited, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on Angel saying he doesn't breathe (and we'll just skip on past Spike being able to smoke, but he is Pretty, isn't he?), in which case it could be that the demons are getting all tangeled up in the "human" emotions produced by the chemical reactions in the bodies they take over.
I may be over-thinking some of these details, of course.
What in the heck is a "demon" in this universe, then? Are we getting a bait-and-switch and are all of these elements really just standard-issue bible/mythology characters, with angels and fallen angels and whatnot?
Not that I care. I love that Whistler guy. I think it's sort of amusing that instead of demons being "fallen angels", we're getting some "ennobled demons" or whatever the guy is. I hope we see him again. Also, I think Angel was out of line complaining about Whistler's wardrobe, considering that he, Angel, looked like he'd been living in a dumpster and apparently smelled much the same.
What is it with this whole vampire thing? How much of a "person" is their memories? It's an Id thing, isn't it? Vampires are the Id and without souls, they don't have an ego or superego? (Didn't I hear that on one episode?) Sounds plausible, except that I don't think we've seen any vamps that are really focused on the "I want" to the complete exclusion of everything else. (Plus which I've always had my doubts about Freud.)
What kind of intelligence does a vampire have? The average vamp, I mean. The same intelligence as the person who used to own the body had? Not if "the person" is gone, though. Not unless you're postulating that "intelligence" is somehow a function of the structure of the brain instead of...whatever else it actually is and no one really knows.
Why do some vamps kowtow to the humanish looking ones? What is "power" in the vamp world and how is it exercised? How do the vamps "in power" keep the others in line? Or is it that demons aren't that much different from "people" after all, and most of them really just want someone to tell them what to do and to think?
So, we have vamps that can totally pass for human, vamps that almost can, and vamps that should just start shedding bits of bandaging and moaning, Ooohhhh since they look so completely like something out of a Vincent Price movie. What's up with that, anyhow? (La, la, la Not listening.)
How boring does it get that every episode has to have the action stopped for ten minutes while the characters fight with a bushel o'baddies? Why does Buffy whomp the enemy around forever before she stakes them? Why not just stake them when they show up? But, noooo, we always have this scene where she's getting ready to fight and they're getting ready to fight and when everyone is finally settled and braced, then they fight. Even when a baddie jumps out of the bushes, everyone stops to collect their thoughts for a few seconds before any real battle commences.
Tedious. I love being on DVD. I mostly fast-forward the fight scenes.
I don't care if he got his soul back or not, I'm glad Angel got stuck and sent to the netherworld. How dare he smash up Giles?
Spike looked Pretty, didn't he?
Posted by AnneZook at 01:26 PMI think I just like typing it, what do you think?
For those of you who don't actually know me, and there seem to be a couple of you, based on the comments, which is very flattering because why on earth go and read a rambling, self-absorbed blog kept by a stranger but don't answer that because this is the doggone internet and it's still a place of largely open access, no matter what the gov'ment and certain corporate profiteers want to make of it....
I hate when that happens.
I've entirely lost my train of thought, not that it doesn't derail easily at the best of times.
Anyhow. For those of you who don't actually know me, be aware that among my other half-hearted hobbies, I follow competitive figure skating. At this point in time, an important event called "Nationals" is taking place and since figure skating gets good ratings (ever since Nancy Kerrigan, may she stay off my television screen, got her knee whacked with a pipe, anyhow), they show it during primetime. The televised coverage usually goes on for 2-3 hours and there are usually three or four installments.
That means that tonight and tomorrow evening and for a significant chunk of the day on Sunday, I'll be watching thin, talented people do amazing things on ice instead of (sob) watching Spike BtVS episodes.
By the time I get to the second part of that two-parter, I'm going to have forgotten why I cared in the first place.
Also, an event which is very sad, my roommate will be leaving for several days, beginning next week. It's very sad to be all alone in the world.
On the plus side, on evenings where there isn't any ice skating I need to tape, or when I don't need to tape Frasier for her, or watch West Wing or CSI for myself, I'll have plenty of time to watch Other Things.
I don't know the skating schedule for the week when she's gone, but even without it I'm down to Monday and Friday for watching DVDs.
There's no point in writing to say I can watch Spike BtVS before and after these other programs. As I've been trying to establish, I'm running several, consecutive hobbies at once here. They each need their moments of TLC. I can only allot about an hour on a weekday evening to watch DVDs.
(Did I fool anyone or do we all know I just ordered the Season 3 DVDs, and that I intend to spend most of my "free" 10 evenings watching the rest of Season 2 and then Season 3? I thought so.)
Posted by AnneZook at 05:01 PMHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will clock in around 225,000 words, according to its publishers. One report says that this entry is 33 percent longer than the Goblet of Fire, suggesting that the 272 page Goblet was around 151,000 words and that the Phoenix will be around 350 pages, so we'd all better start muscling up our biceps.
Here are the lengths of other literary works:
Hawaii James Michener: 500,000
David Copperfield Charles Dickens: 357,000
The Bible (King James Version): 181,000
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte: 116,000
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson: 68,000
Julius Caesar William Shakespeare: 19,000
Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln: 272
The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss: 237
What I really wanted to know was how long this book is going to be compared to War and Peace, but whatever, because I found that elsewhere. (It's around 600,000, for those interested, and Gone With the Wind is around 416,00.)
I don't actually remember now why I wanted to know those things except that I thought 225,000 was too darned long for a children's book and started mouthing off about the subject and someone sent me some comparative numbers which seemed like as much of a reason as any to start a new blog entry.
In any case, publishers don't actually count "words", they count pages, right? They assume something like 250 words to a page, so the new HP book, at 225,000 words, must be 900 pages and even as I'm typing this, I know that's got to be wrong but math isn't my strong suit, okay?
The critical thing to remember is that the new book is about 1/3 longer than the previous one and while I grew to like Goblet, the first time I read it, I thought it needed some serious editing.
I hate the part where an author gets really famous and the publisher stops editing their work.
It's practically undemocratic and I don't care if J.K.R. lives in a Constitutional Monarchy. It ain't fair.
The lack of decent editing had a lot to do with the drastic decline in quality of Stephen King's stuff. R. A. Heinlein suffered from stringent editing and, late in his life, admitted that it had been a good thing. For that reason, I never bought any of the "expanded" versions of his works that were released after his death.
Speaking as someone who suffered the slings and arrows of having about 30% of my output deleted each time I wrote a new story, I think it's unfair that other people don't have to go through it.
Spike
Nothing new to report on that front is all I have to report.
Haven't had a chance to watch any new episodes since Monday and I stopped in the middle of what appears to be a two-parter where they'll either restore Angel's soul or Buffy will finally have to kill him or something. And Spike is Up To Something, based on the fact that he's hiding his renewed ability to walk from both Drusilla and Angelus.
I'm finishing up a book I want to do a review of (no, not in this space, so don't be afraid), re-reading P. G. Wodehouse, as I said previously, and playing the new Zelda game on the Game Boy. All of these hobbies require time and I can't neglect any one of them in favor of another, can I?
And!
Today I'm having lunch with a friend. Saturday I'm having lunch with a friend.
I just booked my airline ticket to Escapade and I'm going to book my train ride from the airport to Oxnard later today.
I get paid this week!
All in all, things aren't bad.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:45 AMActually, I think I got that from a Doonsbury cartoon about a million years ago.
Still. It's funny. And! I do care, and deeply!
I care about making blog entries but as most of you are aware, it was my habit to spend from 2-6 hours a (work)day writing the things (okay, mostly for a different blog, but sometimes for this one) and now that there's, like, work to do at my work, I'm having trouble finding time to write blogs.
I mean, my roommate was out all Monday evening and I could have written reams but instead I selfishly chose to spend that 3-1/2 hours watching Spike Buffy DVDs.
Which, rather neatly I think, leads us to the subject of...Spike!
Heh.
I won't go on and on because I have no idea how many of the four people who read this blog give a sh*t about BtVS but I do want to say that my favorite Spike moment so far came in the "new home" Angel found for the three of them, when ChinlessDrusilla was making like a slut with Angel and Spike had to sit there in his wheelchair and watch the groping and moaning. He looked so hurt and jealous. And then a few seconds later, we see that he's got a lot of self-control, because he managed to disguise his recovery from Angel so that he can get his revenge. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. It was a great scene.
I'm becoming sort of impressed by Marster's acting. He's got an amazing subtlety that I really do enjoy. I hate those, and this is my 'determined' face actors who just go from emote to emote.
For those already bored of the subject, I assure you there's more going on in my head than Spike right now. Honestly. I'm a person of many interests, none of which have ever before been platinum blond dead guys.
For instance, I got my OaT tapes back and I plan to rewatch some episodes and work on my OaT story one of these days soon.
In today's news, the fifth Harry Potter book will be released June 21 and is reputed to top 250,000 words.
That's sort of appalling. (The word count, not the release.) What with trickster being down and all, I don't know how long my own longest story is, nor can I find a word count on the fourth HP novel to use for comparison but I can state with authority (which is not, let us be clear, the same thing as expertise, it just means that I sound very sure of myself, regardless of the facts of the matter) that 250,000 is an absurd length for a book aimed at twelve year-olds.
That's a QUARTER OF A MILLION words! She's making the rest of us, including Tolstoy, look like slackers.
I've been following two or three HP slash WIPs on-line and have decided, in the last couple of days, to give up on all of them. I guess I'm just not a WIP kind of person. I don't find that a story is improved by being dribbled out to the readers a few words at a time and I don't find that the already shaky quality of most fanfic writing is easier to ignore when each new story installment is so action-limited that you couldn't get carried away by the action and ignore writing weaknesses if you wanted to.
There's something wrong with that sentence but I know what I mean.
I mean, it's okay if you never read anything but fanfiction or the average quality fiction that shows up on the shelves these days, but if you make the mistake of reading someone who can really write with a side of genius, then it's very, very difficult to "step down" and lower your standards to accommodate fanfiction again.
I mean, I've read, maybe, five fanfiction authors (that I remember at the moment) who didn't make part of my brain feel, guiltily, that I was slumming by spending the time to read their writing. It was better in the first rush of on-line enthusiasm when I was all-fanfiction-all-the-time, but once that fever died down (several years ago, I might add), I found that I was increasingly dissatisfied with fanfiction.
That includes reading it and writing it. I reasoned that if I was going to suck at writing and if that suckage was eating up time I could be spending reading good writers, then why not just give up writing and read real stories?
So I did, but now I've forgotten where I was going with that when I started.
I'm re-reading P. G. Wodehouse (a thing I habitually do when reality becomes too much for me) but not (no matter what bad example torch sets) contemplating writing J/W slash. Not! Not, I say, not!
Except that I adore PGW's use of language and upon occasion I do feel a teeny-tiny urge to try and mimic it.
So far I'm holding out.
I'm sort of tangential today, aren't I?
Someone asked, via e-mail, what the heck had happened to the Chipmunk. I will naturally be answering her directly but in case anyone else was wondering, Alvin and I have long suspected that the Chipmunk's so-called "strategy" for the company was sadly flawed and recently Alvin and Buehler got together and agreed that not only was the Chipmunk's original idea a dud, but that the Chipmunk didn't have much else to offer as compensation for the something-like 25 percent equity he was demanding in the company, so we're spinning the Chipmunk and his original concept off into a separate company, giving him full control, and Alvin and I are now hard at work on creating an all-new company with an all-new concept.
If you've never met me, you'll be appalled to know I talk just like this. All one long run-on sentence with very little punctuation.
Still. I blogged, right? One more thing I can check off of today's list.
(If anyone is bored, they can post a list of 10 reasons why not to watch the Horatio Hornblower series. I'd appreciate it. I've been tempted since I first heard about it but managed to resist since the Hornblower books are far from being my favorite Napoleonic War series, but recently....
No, never mind. I'll buy a new season of Jeeves & Wooster DVDs instead.)
Posted by AnneZook at 03:27 PMOkay, so ChinlessDrusilla is back on top, Spike's on wheels (Who knew that a pipe organ, if knocked to the floor, would burst into flame?), and Angel got laid and turned into a jerk.
Drusilla is pleased to have her "daddy" (oh, so ick) back, Spike is jealous, and Angel wants to do a psycho trip on Buffy.
At the core of these problems are an early-model Frankenstein and a gypsy curse.
What a weird show this is.
Giles remains completely edible, as does Willow and I'm enjoying watching her falling in love with her cuddly little werewolf boy.
Xander hates everyone, is willing to do Cordelia, is in love with Buffy, and exhibiting a mountainous ration of sour grapes over Willow's affection for another. Could this character be any less attractive?
Giles is wonderful. Did I mention that part yet?
But, sad to say, I'm just not getting any slash vibes from this show.
I'm told that Giles is slashed with Ethan but my brain doesn't want to go there. I can see Ethan living a life of sleazy once-offs under cover of darkness, but not Giles. (I can see him going down the path of sex, drugs, and evil magic in his misspent youth, but not today. Maybe the slashers are writing the two of them in their youth or something. Whatever.)
It's also my understanding that the unlovable Xander is slashed most often with Spike and I'm thinking that even the undead would show better taste, okay? I don't even want to know how people envision these encounters coming about.
Maybe I'll look at it all differently when the characters grow up a little, who knows? I find it hard to contemplate high-school kids sexually in a fannish sense (or, really, any other). Makes me go all squick and stuff.
I wonder how long a fannish obsession lasts without the fuel of slash? I've never really had a slash-free fannish obsession. It's an interesting experience.
I like EvilSpike. He's interesting. Multi-dimensional, and much more so than Drusilla or Angelus.
I wonder how they wrote Spike-in-Slayer-love on the show? I really haven't seen more than three or four of those episodes and I wasn't paying that much attention at the time. I wonder if there's a contingent of fans who think his later obsession Buffy ruined the character? I wonder if it did?
Having now met both Angel and Angelus, I'll admit I'm curious to see the ensouled version of Spike. (Maybe the actor playing Angel wasn't sure of how to play the part or something, I'm not sure, but I find myself mentally referring to his before-and-after-evil personas as "ham and hammier" and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get that same feeling about Spike.)
I still want to know how come some vampires can pass for human and some lurch around the dark streets grunting and losing parts of themselves on the pavement.
I am totally buried at work today so I'm blogging. That's just so typical of me.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:41 PMBut it's late on a Friday afternoon, so who would fault me for goofing off just a little?
Probably no one but Alvin and Buehler, since they're responsible for paying my salary.
Angel - I withdraw my remarks about him being an annoying mouth breather. I mean, okay, he's like that later, but in the early eps he's a lot more fun. I like the episode where he talked about his jealousy and attributed it to spending a century 'feeling guilty and honing his brooding skills.'
Also, now that we're hearing excerpts of his early behavior (i.e., the Drusilla incident), I understand the crushing load of shame and self-loathing he seems to be carrying around (Although I still have issues with the demon vs. reanimated human thing and I'm wondering just where the soul, or lack thereof, fits into everything.)
One of the best parts about coming to a fandom late is that all I have to do is buy a new set of DVDs or whine at friends who have spare tapes to lay my hands on 20+ episodes all at once. It's much preferable to that whole one week at a time with long summer and holiday breaks system. I get to do all of this speculating and objecting and wondering all of the time, knowing that I have only to pop in a DVD and watch a few episodes to either get answers or get a whole new series of fascinating questions.
Spike - He's a verrry naughty demon. I still wonder why he's so smart and human-like and why the demons around him are mostly shambling ghouls, but whatever.
Drusilla - A character I'll never like but she's much more interesting now that I know how she got so crazy. And she's, you know, butt-ugly, so I don't understand why she's portrayed as being pretty or even beautiful on the show. I mean, it's possible the buck teeth and receding chin are some kind of fx they put on her right now to show how sick she is, but what kind of illness would eliminate someone's chin? It's a mystery.
Giles - If someone doesn't restrain me, I'm going to grab a spoon and dig in. When he took that first swing at Ethan, I fell even more deeply into lust. There's something about the combination of tea-drinking and street brawler that's incredibly sexy.
Willow - I remain convinced that she's one of the best things about this show. Totally. The more I see her, the more fabulous I think she is.
Xander - Continues to be irritating and so far I'm seeing no reason why I'd ever like the character. He's a typical teenage boy and I thought they were mostly nutcases even when I was a teenage girl so there's not much likelihood he'll ever grow on me. Yeah, yeah, he has issues. I'd be more impressed if my brief viewing of a couple of later episodes didn't indicate that he never really moves past them.
Buffy - Eh. In the same way I'm indifferent to most "hero" characters, paying attention to them only as they impact the more interesting (to me) secondary characters, I don't mind her, but I don't pay special attention to her either.
Cordelia - Watching her sail through these disasters has a sort of train-wreck fascination. She's a character who probably should annoy me, but doesn't. Maybe because she's pretty much the only person on the show who approaches Buffy as just another teenage girl, instead of with the Kid Gloves of Slayer Care.
I remain impressed by how creative these early episodes were.
And now, I really must get back to work.
(P.S. Sorry about the missing graphics. The crash of trickster's server has eaten my graphics. And my website, of course.)
Posted by AnneZook at 04:15 PMNo, I don't really have anything to say about him. I just wanted to remind myself that I'm supposed to be in thrall to a new obsession and that this is no time to start getting all involved in actually working for a living.
I've watched the first couple DVDs from Season Two and am bemoaning the fact that the only time I do get to watch episodes is on Sundays.
How can I be this short on time? I don't get it. No husband, no kids, no pets, no house that I have to do my own maintenance on. I don't work much overtime and don't watch much regular television. I should have hours a day to spend on my obsessions hobbies, shouldn't I?
But somehow, between commute time, my exercise schedule, trying to get chores like banking, grocery store, dry cleaning, eating, bathing, and laundry done, I seem to have about two hours an evening of free time. By the time I get relaxed of an evening and get some reading done, it's time to go to bed.
I have no idea how women with families manage and that's the truth. If I had a whole house to clean, a family to cook for, and/or laundry for four people to do, I'd go insane.
Anyhow.
I've finally gotten to see Early Spike and, when I can drag my attention away from the charms of Early Giles, I'm finding him interesting. I've only seen the famous Drusilla once and so far I'm not impressed. I understand she's supposed to be ill or something, but I find her babyish behavior and prepubescent dolly fetish fairly icky.
But then, as I have to keep reminding myself, I'm not supposed to like these characters. They are, after all, demon animations of dead bodies.
It was fairly easy to overlook that aspect of Spike, coming in, as I did, after he'd been given the chip and more-or-less domesticated by his lust for Buffy, but it isn't as easy to over look it now that I've seen his first outing. I'll admit that hearing that he got his nickname from torturing people with railroad spikes has somewhat taken the luster from my lust for him, anyhow.
I'll have to think about this when I have some time. I mean, I'm all about not torturing people but on the other hand it's very hard to tell yourself that you simply mustn't become all BSO-fannish about some character because he's evil when your psyche has already glommed onto him, you know? I have no control over my brain and never have had.
I'm sort of brooding over what it means to be a vampire in this particular universe. We have all of the standard, allergic to garlic, freaky about crosses, can't stand the sunlight, dine on fresh blood things but why are some vampires barely animated decaying bodies that look subhuman or extraterrestrial and others able to pass in a crowd? Why are some vampires always bumpy-faced and some only when they get aggravated? Why can Spike eat Wheatbix? Why do some vampires have personalities while others are shuffling, stumbling ghouls?
There are other more technical objections, but I don't want to get too mundane. A vampire is essentially too impossible a construct to take critical deconstruction well, but I'd like to see that the vampires in this universe follow some kind of consistent plan.
I guess I had a few things to say, didn't I?
Alvin, sans Chipmunk
Work continues to be...interesting. I'm doing my best but Alvin came in this morning with New Thoughts and we rearranged the priority on some of the things we'd decided to do pursuant to our latest reinvention, which means the stuff I've spent the last three days on is now at the bottom of the priority pole.
If we'd just keep moving in the same darned direction for several consecutive days, I might have a chance, but I can't simultaneously invent marketing material, sales and promotional material, and website information for five different strategies.
Something Gaia, Alvin's wife, said to me today leads me to suspect that this is more or less Alvin's modus operandi and that I'd better get used to being dragged off to work on a new project before I get done with the old one.
It's a bit absurd. I mean, I like change as much as the next person and more than most, and I'm all about planning work instead of doing work, yet my brain remains stubbornly attached to the notion that if we don't pick a direction and stick with it for a while, the money will fail to roll in.
P.S.
And if vampires are dead bodies animated by demons, why do they want to have sex? And why did Angel pretend he couldn't breathe and give Buffy CPR when he naturally had to be able to breathe, based on the fact that he can talk and that we've seen him out of breath? And if vampires can't breathe, how can Spike smoke? Why do these vampires bleed? If vampires are dead bodies, how can Spike get drunk?
Those are sort of the "obvious" questions I wasn't going to ask, but what the heck.
Okay. Now I'm stopping. Back to work....
Posted by AnneZook at 02:39 PMPeople are writing about elves, everywhere you look.
I understand that Cesperanza started it in some inexplicable fashion and now there are elves infesting every fandom in sight.
And torch, to compound the evil, has written not only elf fiction, but (may her tiny, little conscience kick her on the ankles and tell her she's naughty) P.G.Wodehouse elf fiction.
Of course, maybe I shouldn't get uppity. I got this whole attitude thing going about those "shack" stories and then it naturally turned out that some of them were delightful.
I'm not reading elf stories, though. I mean, okay, I read torch's and of course it was charming, even with my irrational prejudice against the concept because that's just sort of how torch affects me, but I refuse to get sucked into stories featuring elves in such disparate fandoms as Firefly, CSI, Oz, and Seaquest. I've seen each of these shows at least once and the thought of them in connection with elves makes my head hurt.
Well, maybe not so much Seaquest which I found pretty stupid. It would be funny if the elf was the dolphin, wouldn't it?
I do encourage the rest of you to go and read, if you haven't already, just because I'm mean. (And because I suspect, based on the list of authors, that many of the stories are well worth reading, of course.)
Yes, I'm still busybusybusy at work, but I'm tired of working. I could, of course, read about the development of tools for the assessment of depression or about knowledge integration across distributed heterogeneous data sources, but a little of that kind of thing goes a long way, don't you think?
I've been hard at it for the past seven hours or so. Take a look at this:
For example, the nature and incidence of depression varies across the lifespan; negative cognitive styles or negative information processing, when coupled with stressful events, place an individual at elevated risk for depression; a ruminative coping style is predictive of longer and more severe episodes of depression and appears to enhance negative cognitions; stressful life events predict the onset of new episodes of depression; hopelessness appears to mediate the relation between the cognitive vulnerability-stress interaction and depressive episodes; and primary depression has been associated with a variety of neuroendocrine, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and neuromorphometric abnormalities.
And people wonder why, when I sit and read things like that all day, I keep Advil at my desk.
Hmph. This really makes me long for the days when I sat around and doodled patterns for stoneware pots, okay?
Posted by AnneZook at 04:31 PMThere's, like, a ton of work happening at my workplace.
I wanna talk about Spike BtVs but I have to work!
Bleah.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:53 AMAnd, of course, I'm talking back. What follows is probably more a series of unconnected responses to comments than a coherent entry.
C says, quite rightly, that it's a huge investment to bring a new television show to the air and that she deplores the waste when a show is cancelled before it has time to find its feet. It is a huge investment and I don't imagine anyone hates the idea of wasting all of that effort more than the people whose jobs are directly tied into the success of the new shows that debut yearly.
I agree that it sounds as though "Firefly" could have been a sleeper hit, growing to become a favorite. I don't suppose, though, that when you're sitting in the isolation booth of an LA studio, it's all that easy to tell the difference between "Firefly" and "Family Affair." There were some people watching both of them. I'd be interested in seeing the ratings numbers on "Firefly" to see exactly what the "improving ratings" someone mentioned looked like. I'll have to surf around and look for them.
As far as "stupid-ass decisions", well, the television industry doesn't have a monopoly on those. Alvin and I, for instance, are currently reworking the business model for this new company for the third time since I started working here because neither of the two original concepts was well thought-out.
And the ego we're working with might not rise to the glorified heights of an arrogant network executive, but I assure you that the Chipmunk is quite arrogant enough to serve our needs.
Also, a company I worked for a few years ago lost a multi-million dollar contract by bidding completely incorrectly on the RFP no matter how loudly I screamed, kicked, and argued with TPTB about it. They were determined they were right, even though I had more experience both in the industry and with this particular client.
Stupid is pretty universal.
I agree it's a bitter pill to swallow when a show you really like bites the dust but I stand by my statement that it's just silly to think people deliberately cancel a show that has the potential to make them money. There are assholes everywhere but few even of them deliberately set out to cut their own throats out of spite.
I still think that if people had put half as much effort into evangelizing about the show before it went under the axe as they have since the event, maybe some of that precious "buzz" would have been generated and the show would be facing a long and healthy future.
Chris Carter is Satan's minion and I refuse to discuss his multiple failures.
I will say that there's such a thing as throwing good money after bad and that even though a studio has commissioned half a dozen or a dozen episodes doesn't mean they're going to be willing to incur the extra expense of airing them.
Especially if the advertisers announce that they'll buy ad time on reruns of Gilligan's Island but not the new show.
I agree that the fans should be heard. It's just that I wish they'd speak up earlier. (While I'm at it, let me say that it would be a lot more honest if the people who actually are watching the show were the only ones writing in and speaking up, okay? It's absurd to have ten thousand people write letters of protest when only a thousand of them are actually members of the viewing audience. I consider it an artificial inflation of the numbers to convince five or six of your closest friends to join into your campaign and it's also an attempt to dishonestly convince the network execs that there are a lot more of the "vocal and committed" fans than really exist.)
Merchandising is great for the successful show. It's a sweet frosting of profit to spread over the richness of the cake, but it's not enough money to really make a difference if the core viewership isn't there.
Fans willing to buy merchandise in enough numbers to make it profitable are a small percentage of the number of fans watching, okay? Not every viewer buys merchandise.
Anyhow.
Enough of my opinions about fandom. Who cares what I think, anyhow?
Let's talk about Spike Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I got the Season One DVDs for Christmas and have watched four or five of the early episodes and I'm actually pleasantly surprised and impressed. I commented previously that my only problem with the show is how predictable the action is but in these early episodes I'm finding that it's not predictable at all. I'm also, as could have been expected, coming to like all of the characters more as I see where they started, versus where I've been seeing them. Even Angel, he of the relentless brooding mien, was a lot more fun in the early days.
No Spike, of course. I understand he doesn't show up until the third season or something, but there's Giles! I love this early Giles. I want to take him home and make him cups of tea and cuddle him while he reads to me from his monster books. (I also want to get him nekkid and do naughty things to him, but that's probably TMI.)
So far I'm not seeing any slash in this show, though. I have a lot of trouble with the whole "16 year-old children" thing. Giles is yummy but there's no one to pair him with so I can't tell if he'd be slashable or not.
I also got books for Christmas, thanks to friends who love me. And jewelry! And chocolate! I even got red socks! I love red socks.
Loot! I love loot. I love occasions where people who pretend to like me are forced to prove it with gifts. Heh.
And. I had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off last week. I'm getting New Year's Eve and New Year's Day off this week. Life is very good.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:40 AMThis is in response to the comments to my previous entry.
I'm no Nielsen expert :) but I've always heard that the ratings system has about a +/-2 percent accuracy, which is pretty accurate. Statistical sampling isn't a new technique and it wouldn't continue to be used unless it was pretty reliable and I think most of us will admit that.
I fault the economy. Or no-neck beer drinkers. Or women who really do watch soap operas. Or George Bush. Or someone like that.
The bottom line is that a "growing" body of viewers isn't always enough to convince advertisers to keep committing money to a show's production until it pulls enough viewers to make it a cost-effective proposition for them. Paying for a television show is expensive and science fiction shows tend to have hefty FX budgets that increase their costs even more.
Similarly, if a show pulls a reasonable number of viewers, but they're not the "right" demographic, advertisers aren't going to keep paying money to keep a show on the air.
I don't know any polite way to say this, so I'll just say it.
Advertisers and production companies care a hell of a lot less about hearing from twenty thousand passionate thirty year-old women than they would about hearing from 5,000 rabid eighteen year-old boys.
They want the boys watching. They want young viewers whose purchasing habits aren’t set and who can be convinced that this car will make them sexy or that soda pop will make them cool or these jeans really are babe-magnets, okay?
Advertisers aren't nuts. They know that the average 40 year-old makes more money than the average twenty year-old, but they also know that the 40 year-old already has brand preferences and is, statistically, very unlikely to change brands because of a catchy new advertising campaign.
I'm even less impressed about the effects of write-in campaigns from a "rabid" audience that is, in the end, a core group of dedicated fans and ten thousand volunteers who jump in to save any show someone loves, regardless of whether they watch, or intend to watch, the show themselves.
Every single time one of these campaigns succeeds in bringing a show back, even for one season, and the viewing audience either remains constant or (as often happens) drops, that makes the next campaign much less likely to succeed.
When these campaigns were rare, they had real impact. Now that every single show that manages to air two or three episodes before being cancelled gets a similar write-in campaign, the effect of each campaign is just that much more diluted.
I know "Firefly." I watched it in the beginning although I didn't watch it for long. But I've never even heard of the show called "Prey" that's quoted in the CNN article as having a "Save Our Show" campaign on a par with Firefly's.
Is Prey equally worthy of saving? Does it have the quality and potential attributed to Firefly?
I'm just asking, okay? Because the "rabid fans" organizing these campaigns don't seem to know the difference between true quality and "hey! I like it!" most of the time.
I could go on with a long list of shows I have heard fans crying over but whose cancellation didn't surprise me in the slightest, but there's no need in pissing off the entire world at once, is there?
The fact that "fan favorite" shows get cancelled doesn't automatically make everyone in the business of television some kind of evil troll.
The bottom line is that TV networks and execs and advertisers put their money where the numbers are. If the Nielsen's weren't accurate, TV networks and execs wouldn't use them because they get paid for success. Advertisers, similarly, would not be paying huge sums of money to fund various shows if they weren't damned sure that those shows were, in fact, pulling something very close to the number of viewers the Nielsen numbers claimed for them.
The fact that the large viewing audiences are tuning in to those half-witted "Survivor" and "Marry a Millionaire" shows is just that. A fact.
If you want someone to blame for the death, or the dearth, of what you consider intelligent entertainment, blame the tens of millions of Americans who don't want to think while they're watching television and who prefer the back-stabbing politics and jiggle factor of "Survivor" or the vapid Cinderella-story of some aspiring actress pretending to fall in love with a rich man while making sure to keep her best profile turned toward the camera.
Don't blame the people who produce the shows. Like yourselves, they have a job to do.
And don't forget that just because "everyone you know" thinks a show is great is not proof that it's great. Fandom is made up of a self-selected group of people (as are you and your friends) and we are not a valid group for statistical sampling.
In closing, let me add that one thing and only one might work. Write to the sponsors of the shows you like and swear you'll buy their stuff if they keep paying for the show. Then buy the stuff. If enough people do this, they'll keep the show on the air.
Of course, "enough" is a relative term. If 10,000 rabid fans start buying Bounty Paper Towels, that's hardly going to be a blip on the radar, is it?
Isn't it a shame that there aren't, in fact ten million people watching the show who would be willing to switch to Bounty to keep it on the air?
Posted by AnneZook at 02:37 PMIt's interesting how these campaigns get more and more attention from the national media. And it's gratifying that the campaigns are treated seriously.
But, in the end, I don't know if they'll do much good.
" "It's gratifying that so many fans are speaking up for these shows," said one network executive. "But where were they in October?" "
Indeed. Publicity can bring a show back for an additional season, but if the viewership doesn't improve, it won't make a difference in the long run.
In other musings:
HAPPY HOLIDAYS, everyone!
Posted by AnneZook at 08:44 AMI had it for breakfast yesterday. It's called "The 18-Wheeler" and you get it at La Peep, the breakfast place we walk over to once or twice a year. We don't go any more often than that because I'm pretty sure that every meal there increases my cholesterol count by out 20 points.
I don't have high cholesterol, understand, but I also don't want it, and I'd imagine that eating two slices of French toast, two eggs, two slices of bacon, and a heaping helping of fried potatoes at one sitting could be considered a step in the wrong direction.
I barely ate anything at all for the rest of the day.
Alvin is off in the conference room "beating on"' the Chipmunk via telephone. Once he finishes that portion of today's business, he'll bring me in and make it a conference call. Nothing I like better, approaching the holidays, than being invited into the room just after everyone has had a fight.
Blah, blah, blah. I am completely ready for the holiday, including being ready to not work for a couple of days. I've been here for 3-1/2 hours and the only work-related things I've accomplished so far are to check my e-mail and voice-mail.
My head is still full of Spike, in spite of the repeats being in a Spike-free zone at the moment and yet I'm still finding the show itself woefully predictable, I'm afraid. The plots of the episodes I've been seeing recently have been yawningly unsurprising, anyhow.
I'm willing to believe that things improve, but I am, after all, watching Season 3, so it's not like I'm judging the show by its freshman year or anything. I have to assume that, by now, the show has hit its stride. Still, I find it easy to believe I'll prefer the upcoming episodes, set after the characters graduated from high school.
I've also heard a lot about "snappy dialogue" in this show over the years, but I've heard darned little of it in the episodes I've seen.
After a while, a character responding with tangential non-sequitors becomes so predictable that it's no longer amusing, and having half the characters constantly making sarcastic rejoinders isn't, in my book, enough to qualify as "witty dialogue." The writing seems to be good, so maybe it's that the actors aren't delivering the lines in a way that raises them from "lines" to "repartee" or something.
Dialogue requires rhythm and that's what the show seems to lack. There's this sense that many of the actors are delivering their "line" and then stopping politely to let the next person deliver the next "line." Drives me nuts to hear it.
There are, of course, exceptions.
(Long, uneducated rambling about the acting of the various actors removed. Suffice to say that I think Giles and Spike are sexy, that I'm impressed with how the actor handled the part of the Mayor, and that I love the character of Willow but that I think the actress needs to stop trying so hard.)
I have no idea why I'm writing all of this. It's not like I have any intention of becoming involved with any of the online fandom/reading/writing contingent.
I think I'm just bored and avoiding honest work since I am fully aware that I haven't seen enough episodes to make an overall judgment about the show yet.
It's been an hour, maybe more, and Alvin is still locked in the conference room. I wonder what in the heck is going on?
Posted by AnneZook at 02:30 PMNot much to say today.
I might, in my newfound lust enthusiasm for Spike Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, have forgotten to mention that, in addition to the uncle's heart attack and the aunt's broken hip, we were dealing with my foolish mother's head-first plunge off of her porch last weekend.
Turns out that she cracked a bone in her finger, had to have 14 stitches in her hand, and bumped her head badly enough to make the E.R. folks shove her down the hall to get an MRI, but nothing worse, thank goodness. The MRI showed that her brains were unscrambled.
Some weeks you're almost afraid to answer the phone.
Lust Random unconnected thoughts
And, speaking of Spike, although I know I wasn't actually, I was favored, in yesterday's re-runs, with two non-Spike episodes, confirming me in my opinion that it's Spike and not the show that fascinates me.
I was reading Metablog last night, a thing I like to do from time to time, and stumbled across a link to an LJ post by elynross about Spike. I agree with her take on the character.
I like seeing him evil, seeing him having to do the 'right' thing only because he's made a temporary truce with 'the side of good', and seeing him conflicted between his homicidal impulses and the chip in his head. I neither want nor expect to see the character all redeemed and "good" because he's obsessed with Buffy. Character development is one thing but that would be character assassination.
It wasn't out of character for Spike to attempt to rape Buffy, either, when he was so frustrated at her dumping him. It was, in fact, quite typical of the way Spike reacts to problems with his love life. (Remember when he was going to go find Drusilla and torture her until she loved him again? Remember the whole, "love is pain" speech?)
Love doesn’t make you into someone new. It might make you act differently, but underneath is all you're the same person and under stress you'll react like who you are and not who you're pretending to be.
The entire relationship between Buffy and Spike was sick and twisted. She was, as she told him, "using him." I wonder if there's any history of slayers becoming so attuned to the evil they're supposed to be fighting that they sort of "go over"?
Spike isn't a "nice" person. He may have been a tortured poet before he was a vampire, but where is it written that a poet can't have a wide streak of brutality in their nature? I'd say that the fact that he survived, and grew stronger, as a vampire indicates that there's a part of his nature that isn't at all at odds with the violence.
He's also incredibly emotionally unstable. I think it's something that, at his most evil, he was able to sublimate to a certain degree, but with the chip in his head, it keeps causing him more and more problems. That's what the whole "love's bitch" speech was about, after all. It's not just Drusilla or Buffy, it's love. Most of Spike's precarious emotional balance is rooted in whatever "love" relationship he's in at the moment. He's not good alone, even as a vampire he's not very functional when he's alone, which is why he bounces from relationship to relationship and why he usually goes for very strong women. He's looking for a strength in them to bolster up a weakness in himself.
He's not, as elynross points out, a likeable person. He's vain, weak, insecure, untrustworthy, and has violent, even homicidal tendencies that are only tangentially linked to vampirism.
(I figure I'm about two sentences away from talking myself out of being in lust with the character.)
In a side note, I'm not that crazy about the Buffy character, either.
She's one of those impossibly virginal, pure characters that is very hard to empathize with, but she may grow on me as I watch the show.
In the admittedly few episodes I've seen so far, she's very self-absorbed, and emotionally shallow about everything except her own needs. She did use Spike, she treated him like some kind of object that she could pick up and drop, like a puppy dog she could kick around whenever she got mad at the world and it serves her right that he attacked her*. That either has to be an incredibly shallow person, based on what she knows of the emotional capacities of some vampires or bad writing.
*I'm not in any way, of course, excusing rape or attempted rape. But the character said it herself, "she 'forgot' what he was." Why did she forget? Because she was so tied up in her own wants and needs that she didn't consider him as an individual. Again, in the few episodes I've seen, the character seems to frequently 'forget' to consider other people as people, even her friends. So, while Spike was "wrong" to try and rape her, he wasn't acting like anyone other than himself. She was just as "wrong" to treat him like a toy she could throw around when she was in a bad mood and then stuff in a drawer when she got tired of it.
I wonder how I'll be viewing the characters once I've actually seen more than about ten episodes of the first six seasons?
One thing I'll say for this show is that they don't hesitate to offer unusual characters. I'm hoping some of the others will grow on me.
I'm also hoping that no one jumps out of the bushes and tries to slay me if I say that I think Angel was an annoying, mouth-breather whose posture of brooding angst wore thin on me about five minutes after I first saw him. At least Spike does lighten up from time-to-time, even if it's usually because he's just killed something.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:37 AMAn article in the globeandmail.com about fanfiction, and slash. Apart from cringing at the end to see "steamy excerpts" lifted out of context, I found it interesting.
I can't believe this has been out for weeks and I never heard about it.
Posted by AnneZook at 07:13 PMI'm busy at work. Very busy.
Someone tell Spike to leave me alone!
Posted by AnneZook at 12:16 PMAlvin and I are still brooding over exactly how to best position our new concept for our product to be most successful. We've spent a lot of time discussing this over the past couple of weeks, as well as how to get the Chipmunk up here and beat on him until he does what we want the way we want.
Okay, that last part isn't true, but we've spent a fair amount of time bemoaning the fact that he seems to be spending about ten minutes a week on business for this company and when he is working, we never know quite what he's doing or to whom he's talking.
Drives me nuts. I'm not a control freak, don't get me wrong, but I feel like I'm floundering around drooling on myself when I realize I'm unable to follow-up on a three week-old conversation that I only heard of five minutes ago and during which I'm entirely uncertain what precisely was discussed or agreed upon, when following up on things and making them happen is what I was supposedly hired to do.
If you're confused after reading that, imagine how I feel.
Also, it looks like Tuffy the Tank overstepped the bounds in her Friday meeting with Alvin and demanded not only that our two companies merge, but that she and her current partner be given 44 percent of the equity and that she be named CEO of the new company.
Based, as I'm guiltily aware, on a lot of my own information on how Tuffy was as a boss in my previous experience with her, Alvin's not really willing to go that route with her.
Which makes me glad because while I don't doubt she has the energy to go out and make the sales to make us successful, I cannot convince myself that the emotional pain and mental exhaustion that come with working with her are worth it.
Buffy! I'm still embarrassed, but I'm completely in love with Spike (in a fannish, but non-writing way) and I rabidly disappointed on Sunday when I watched the eps I'd taped last week and realized that FX is starting their re-runs over at Season Three, which means lag time between Spike episodes because the character apparently wasn't a regular back then.
It's weird, okay? If they've finished the run of shows that they bought the rights to, why start over with Season Three instead of One? Or do they not own the rights to repeat Seasons One and Two?
It's nice to have Giles, though.
On the other hand, I know one of those amazingly gorgeous, talented, and generous fans and she says she's transferred all of her Buffy tapes to DVD, and she's offered to give her old tapes to me, hooray! I should have plenty to feed my obsession in January. Hooray for K!
I want to transfer all of my VCR tapes to DVD, too!
I'd love to be able to capture some of the shows I watch and rewatch, put them on DVD, and save the 200 feet of storage space currently occupied by VCR tapes.
For instance, they're rerunning Sentinel in January. We almost never watch it any more, but occasionally we do and it would be nice to get rid of those lousy-quality VCR tapes we have and have a short stack of tidy, clear DVDs.
However. Taking a quick look at the budget convinces me that I can't have any more high-tech toys for the next three months or so. I just don't have $1000 to invest right now.
Anyhow, I'm all torn on the subject of new toys.
I might want to bail on ATT Broadband and get a satellite dish instead. Maybe I want TIVO, too. And then if I could TIVO and transfer things to DVD instead of VCR tapes, I'd be in techno-heaven, wouldn't I?
The thing to remember is that I watch about three hours of television a week.
From whence comes this urge to spend $2000 on fancy equipment purely as toys for a three hour a week activity? I don't know, okay? I only know that when I hear people dissing Americans for conspicuous consumption, I tend to hide under the table and pretend to be a shoelace.
I want the stuff anyhow. Like I wanted the $45/month cable modem to facilitate the five minutes a day that I spend checking my e-mail. I neeeed these things! (My car needs tires and a new windshield, too, but those aren't fun.)
Of course, now that I have experienced this sudden and inexplicable burst of lust for Spike interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'll have to be watching an additional 10 hours (Good grief!) of television a week until I get caught up on the repeats FX is showing.
I'm not sure how long this will last, though, because I don't think I've ever watched 13 hours of television in a week in my entire life, outside of something like the Olympics. It's a fairly major commitment of time.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:32 PMLet me see. I can write a blog, or I can go watch four hours of Buffy that I have on tape.
Such a decision....
Posted by AnneZook at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)Actually, I don't have any. Alvin's working at home today, not that I mind having him in the office, and my little corner of the world is fairly peaceful.
I've decided to develop a better attitude about this blasted business trip. It is, after all, what they hired me to do and much as I might wish we could get only non-stupid clients, the world doesn't work that way.
The mood-adjustment could well be connected to discovering that I just might be able to hook into our network while I'm traveling so that I can, at least intermittently, check my e-mail. I know, it's a sickness, but I can't help it. I can't be off-line for five days!
Now all I need to know is whether or not there's a coffee pot in my hotel room.
Related to writing
The NaNoWriMo project is over and I'm glad and sad.
Glad because I was spending far too much time not working at work.
Sad because it's the first time I've written in several years and it was kind of fun. I actually felt at loose ends on Sunday, wandering around aimlessly and not quite able to settle down to anything. It took me a couple of hours to realize that I've spent the last two Sundays writing madly and that I was missing it!
Along with the NaNoWriMo piece o'crap, I've been dabbling with a fanfiction story over the last couple of weeks but I can't really go any further with that until I get my OaT tapes back from the person I loaned them to a few months ago. It's not an easy fandom to write in under the best of circumstances, what with the crappy characterization in canon and all, and I wouldn't dare try it until I'd re-watched several episodes.
Until that point, I've amused myself over the past couple of days by going through the NaNo'crap and deleting the worst of the worst that I wrote. I've only managed to remove 6,000 words so far (mostly gratuitous sex scenes and one endless passage of interior monologue that served no purpose but to pad out the word count), but I'm sure I can get another 10,000 out of it easily. I have huge sections marked in blue (code: re-write) that should wind up substantially shortened.
Original fiction is an interesting problem and I'm beginning to get intrigued by this story. Unlike my fanfiction, I didn't immediately have "voices" for the characters so my main character didn't really develop a personality until about 25k into the process. Even now his personality isn't what I'd call well-defined or memorable. In fact, he's appallingly bland. In fact, most of the characters are essentially interchangeable.
That's what comes of not planning in advance.
I wasn’t in the habit of planning most of my fanfiction stories out ahead of time (What was there to plan? Characters yakked and then had sex. That's pretty straightforward.) You can't write OC fiction that way, though. (Well, you can if you're just writing porn, but I wasn't. At least not at first, even though it turned out that way.)
Must. Stop. Digressing.
As I was saying, you can't really write original fiction that way. Since you can't rely upon the reader's memory of the characters on-screen to fill in voice, personality, and diction, you have to work a lot harder to establish your characters. And in order to do that, you have to know yourself who they are.
If you begin, as I did, with the vague idea of a good-looking guy with brown hair, green eyes, and a nicely developed set of muscles from the scalp down, you don't wind up with much in the way of memorable characterization. (In retrospect, I should have made him smarter, but whatever.)
It's turning out to be sort of an attractive problem, though.
What do you do with a primary character of average intelligence but not much given to introspection who finds himself in the middle of a major confrontation with the Forces of Evil? He has a slew of intelligent assistance and will probably even wind up being the sidekick to the guy who does the real work, which makes it troublesome to decide just how to present the story and what is to be gained, if anything, by using such a traditional mythic structure but breaking with tradition by making a secondary character the eyes through which the reader sees the action. Sort of, "Dr. Watson meets Ulysses" I guess.
In my own defense, I never expected the NaNo'crap to develop anything resembling a plot in the first place. It wouldn't have happened if, 30,000 words into it, I hadn't gotten bored with my Hero and with writing huge, indigestible lumps of backstory and exposition.
The point of all of this babbling is that I've come to the conclusion that one thing that must go from the NaNo'crap is the only part of the novel that I really liked, the beginning, and that pisses me off. Not only because I liked it, and I almost never like anything I write, but because now I have to come up with a new beginning and a catchy opening scene is both vital and hard to come up with.
I love this blog/journal thing! Not even my nearest and dearest friends want to listen to me rambling on endlessly this way and I know it, but there's something about a forum like this.... Even if I'm just talking to myself, it feels like a conversation.
I get the benefits of discussing my problem "out loud" without actually having to inflict it on anyone and without anyone having to try and compose a coherent response that sounds like they care.
I have no idea if I'll be able to get on-line over the next five days or not. If not, you can always hope that my interest in the NaNo'crap will have waned by the time I get back to town.
Be good.
P.S. The Chipmunk just called and suggested that as long as I'm going to Louisiana, I might as well go to Alabama. What planet does this man live on, anyhow? I said no. I already have my tickets bought and I have a full schedule over the next five days. Sheesh.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:33 PMWhy do so many people have so many quiz results as blog entries? Sometimes people have entire entries that are nothing but quiz results. This confuses me but I'm about to do much the same thing.
Reading someone's blog tonight, I see another of those "lists" is going around. I've never done one before but I feel bloggy tonight with nothing particular to talk about, so here goes. (Except that these lists are always so positive and I'd rather be more balanced, so I'm including mistakes and disasters.)
Best story I think I've written: Ummm...I don't have that high an opinion of my stuff, but I have an invisible sister who insists that I list "Alley Trap."
Favorite story of mine: "Billowing Seas"
I had more fun writing that than anything else I've ever written.
Most underrated story of mine: Dunno
I doubt it's possible to underrate one of my stories. Maybe "Billowing Seas" because I thought it was funny when I wrote it but only one person read it. (Can something be underrated if it's completely unread? Or does "underrated" have to be something people have read and didn't think much of? And how would you know if you don't get feedback on anything?)
Most overrated story of mine: "Going Deep"
I've had a dozen feedback notes on that one, which is some kind of record for one of my stories, but it's sadly flawed, the sex doesn't fit the characters, and the plot just sort of fades away without a proper resolution.
Story of mine I can actually re-read and enjoy: N/A
I've never re-read one of my own stories, sorry.
Story I most regret trying:
The NaNoWriMo psuedo-novel I just wrote. (I don't think I wanted to know that I could write that badly.)
Technique I most regret attempting: SM
Shudder. I should never have done it. What a load of crap I churned out during that experimentation. I am irretrievably vanilla and at peace with that. (Although, a little light bondage....)
Worst story I ever wrote: Tie
That's a tie between a challenge-induced Methos/Richie attempt (Shudder.) and an SM Skinner/Krycek thing.
I may, finally, have found a critical "bonding point" with the Chipmunk. He's supposed to be visiting our fair city, and office, in a week or two and I discovered this morning that among his other charms (like, he hasn't called us for a week because he took the week off without informing anyone so we've been thinking he was down there working and he's really at Disneyworld or something), he has a daughter who's in competitive figure skating.
As some of my friends know to their dismay :) I am something of a fan of figure skating and if I can't create a bond with this fool on the subject of his beloved daughter's pastime, I'll hang up my B.S. shoes and retire from the business.
Hmph.
Because I'm not a nice person, I'll mention that it continues to be good news to me that Alvin's dissatisfaction with the progress of things around here is centered upon the Chipmunk and not on my probably-equally-as-culpable self.
If Alvin were aware, of course, that I'd composed the larger part of a 50,000 word novel while sitting at my desk over the last two weeks, he'd feel differently, but I'm actually dishonest enough to be okay with that.
Ah. The novel. It's done. Or, as done as it's likely to get. The weak attempt at plot I scrounged up was enough (with the addition if yet another gratuitous sex scene, bringing the novel's total, I believe, to six) to put me over the mark. It's not what you'd really call a 'novel' in the strictest sense of the word since it's characterizationally appalling, structurally aimless, and stylistically schizophrenic, but since I don't intend that any human being on the planet will ever read it, I don't care.
I wrote the bloody thing in 18 days and that's enough for me.
Well, okay, I didn’t write all of it in 18 days. When I was racking my brain for a plot to use to pad out the word-count, I happened to remember that my first, never-to-be-completed, Highlander story had a scene in it that would be easily adapted for my purpose, so about 3,000 words of the 50k were written ten or more years ago. Similarly, one of the sex scenes was lifted from another abandoned story and adapted. Hmmm...okay, so I'm short of "new, original" material by about 5,000 words.
Sue me.
Life is fairly peaceful on the urban front at the moment.
As I was getting this morning's coffee (stop me if I've mused on this subject before) it occurred to me to wonder exactly when I became able to carry on a conversation with a man wearing two heavy silver earrings, about five bracelets, and two silver necklaces and not even notice anything odd for about five months.
I spent the morning printing the documents I'm going to need in New Orleans next week and putting them in some kind of order so that I could find what I need when I need it.
I've decided against renting a car, what with my complete inability to navigate and all. A visit to Mapquest proved that four of the five offices I have to visit are less than 5 miles from my hotel. That means taking cabs will actually be cheaper. Hooray!
I'm staying near the Superdome, which is a crummy neighborhood, and staying in a Ramada Inn, and I hate two-star hotels, so I'm massively cranky about the whole trip even before I start. The good news, so far, is that I did manage to find a direct flight so I don't have to deal with one of those annoying layovers in the airport in Houston.
If I never again see the shrine to the Bush family that they've erected there, it will still be a year too soon.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:13 PMI haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I see the Sydney Morning Herald is featuring Fanfiction in one of today's on-line articles.
I'm not sure if I'm eager to read it, or frightened, knowing that the overwhelming number of half-wits in fandom have buried the decent fanfiction under a tidal wave of crap that no newspaper journalist would have had the time to wade through.
I have a vague feeling there's something grammatically wrong with that sentence. Checking.... Half-wits, tidal wave of crap, those look okay.
Well, I'm sure someone will tell me. In the meantime, I'm off to go read.
Update
Well, we're all in trouble now. The article is actually All About Fanfiction.Net and it leads with a (clearly underage) slash story feature Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.
And the writing quality of the excerpt? Kill. Me. Now.
(P.S. As soon as I hear from the people who host my webpages, I'll fix the missing graphics thing.)
Hee. Hee. Drink coffee! Every day! It will make you smarter when you're old!
It other non-news, I'm currently debating, via private e-mail, how to tell if someone who suddenly begins to correspond with you is actually a PsychoFan just waiting for the chance to freak out on you. No solutions, except to ask around privately. Some of the weirdest people in fandom seem very normal when you first meet them.
Also, just where to draw the line at publicly dissing something that stinks. Does it help anyone to improve, or does it just make us feel better to stand up and shout that something is just crap?
None of the discussion will appear here because, for a change, I'm busy working today! (Well, I'm working hard enough that I can't both send e-mails and recap the discussions here at the same time, anyhow.)
Posted by AnneZook at 11:28 AMCourtesy of a kind friend, I just waded through over 3,000 words of disclaimer and author's notes by the most self-involved author convinced of her own brilliance who ever convinced me that I won't even be reading her stuff when hell freezes over.
Leaving aside the fact that someone who has written a magnus opus long enough to be broken into fifty parts and requiring over three thousand words of apology and explanation before the first word is posted should just post it to her website and never mind trashing out mailing lists with her dumpster o'crap, the idea of trying to explain in advance to all of the readers not to write and say that something doesn't make sense or the character wouldn't act that way because It's All Part Of The Plan is absurd and insulting.
There's a way to write that leaves some events murky that doesn't actively make your readers wonder if they've strayed onto another planet. If you're so convinced that your heartbreaking work of staggering genius requires to be shrouded in fog half the time, learn the technique.
When you combine the promised muddy plotting with copious warnings about how dark and angsty and amazingly emotional the story is, I find myself looking forward to closing my e-mail program and getting back to work.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:33 PMLong after the rest of the world has undoubtedly moved on to newer and more interesting topics, my brain still has a firm, not to say obsessive-compulsive, grip on the question of slash and men and the women who love them both.
I'm thinking about an earlier, dictatorial announcement of mine that slash should not under any circumstances attempt to emulate gay male porn.
That was largely because the percentage of decently-written-versus-crap in porn is about the same that it is in slash.
But it's also about audience. The most self-absorbed, reader-indifferent writer in the genre is probably still writing for a female audience, if only herself.
Working on the theory that one writes out of a desire to communicate, I think it's important to remember that the sexual situations with which you're hoping to enthrall and even titillate your audience have to be situations that are erotic to women.
Thus, while it's important that the men be men (in Anne's World), it's important that this male-to-male sex be, I don't know, translated into a scenario erotic to a woman.
Leaving aside rape fantasies and other improbable scenarios I'm unqualified to discuss, this means that the successful slash writer has to walk a narrow line wherein she shows Manly Men having Manly Sex while allowing her female reader to vicariously participate in the scene.
That's not an easy path to tread but there are a number of things that simplify it.
Men are not women but it is true that the human body (male or female) possesses certain almost "standard" erogenous zones.
The degree of arousal produced by manipulating these zones varies but that holds true from one woman to another as well as between different men and I think it's frequently possible to watch a character on-screen and come up with an idea which zones would be their hot spots.
Remove pointless digression on various characters specifically since the entire paragraph was about to distract my brain from whatever point it is I'm trying to make.
Suffice to say that you can watch how a character responds to a kiss on the cheek, a hand on the back, or their body language when someone gets close to them and make some deductions that should ring true to your readers.
I firmly believe that most people pick up on this stuff subconsciously. It's up to the writer to bring it to the forefront of the reader's mind.
Mouth, neck, ears, elbows, nipples, back, genitals, inner thighs, feet, etc., if it feels good to you, it's probably going to feel good to a man. (The only difference is in penetration, but that's a lost cause in slash and I'm not here to try and fight that fight again.)
The point is that you have to write a male reaction to these caresses in order to stay true to your characters. While it's true that there's no sexual reaction that never happens, it is possible to generalize to a large extent.
(A solely, or primarily heterosexual man is not going to respond to sexual arousal, by feeling a "melting" desire to be penetrated.
Most men enjoy the chance to lay back and be passive*, to allow someone else to take control, upon occasion, but by-and-large men are socially and biologically conditioned to be aggressive in sex. It's natural for them to want to reach out and touch and look and be active. Therefore it rings untrue to the reader to read of a guy, even a comparatively young and inexperienced guy, being willing to take and not give pleasure without questioning the situation. It's actually more likely to be an older man who has learned the control to enjoy being ministered to upon occasion.
*I am not referring here to that pervasive yet inaccurate "top and bottom" terminology that's bandied around in fandom. Just so you know.)
I'm getting distracted from my main topic, which was meant to be the difficulty of writing erotica for a female audience when there are no female characters in a story for the reader to identify with. Although, as the popularity of slash proven, there are plenty of women who can bridge that gap just fine.
And now I'm all distracted by those thousands of stories where one so-called male character is a very thinly disguised female and I know those are amazingly popular with a lot of readers and yet if they want to read about women, why don't they just read het?
Doggone it, when I started this, I was going to be all nice and complimentary to slash writers who manage to write erotic stories while keeping the characters recognizably male, but now that I've meandered all over the place aimlessly for so long, I've lost the thread.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:20 PMMcSwain has posted a hundred personal facts. I gather that this is a thing people are doing.
I'm astoundingly self-centered and yet I seriously doubt I could think of 100 things about me that anyone on this planet would care to read. Still, I always do what McSwain does, so here goes....
No, on second thought I don't think I will. It took me two hours to get to 30 items (hours when I should have been working), and I can't imagine that anyone would have cared to read about any of them except maybe the Australian soccer player and I wasn't providing any details on that one.
Also I am completely unable to comprehend why blogger hates my posts from the last 30 days. I've checked and rechecked them and there aren't any forbidden characters. I've deleted a few of them and it didn't help. I've turned archiving on and off and on and changed the frequency, and nothing helps.
I've decided to work on the theory that there's a charming transience to blogging online and to take advantage of the ephemeral nature of my posts.
(But first, let's try this... Okay, now it load without errors, but I have no archives at all? Maybe I'll just live with that.)
Posted by AnneZook at 04:10 PMWallowing in self-pity first. Thanks to a rather explosive nasal incident this morning (ACHOO!!) my head is once again firmly stopped up, I have a headache, and I'm already starting to hear my inner hypochondriac pointing out that I can't get on a plane two weeks from today if my sinuses don’t resume something like normal operation. Wouldn't want to burst the other eardrum as well, would we?
As I go through life, I'm always surprised by which moments and images stick with me.
I remember ten(ish) years ago we went to the IceCapades. I hadn't been to the IceCapades since I was a young 'un and I wasn't prepared for how the whole thing had deteriorated. This time around, I didn't really understand what the point of most of the numbers was or why out of all of the tens of thousands of ice skaters in this country they couldn't have hired a few that could stay on their skates.
I didn't mind the skating food number. Really I didn't. But the image that's lived with me ever since is the moment when the wiener threw itself ecstatically into the embrace of the bun.
If I were a better person, I might not have had to be forcibly removed from the arena a few minutes later.
I also remember the exact moment when I realized that Happily Ever After isn't a guaranteed right under the constitution, that some people don't get to marry the ones they love, and that others might just not marry at all. The same year, if I remember correctly, that I actually realized that the world kept on turning whether I was watching or not. That other people's lives did not, in fact, revolve around myself.
It was something of a shock.
I don't know why I felt like today was a good day to share that.
Still, the memories of those moments stay with me.
But. Enough about my and my life. Let's talk about me and fandom.
Reading torch, I see she is pondering the emotional story wallow today. (I always like to read what torch writes in her journal but I'm not commenting over there any more until I learn to behave myself and not call some people's taste in fanfic evil.)
Anyhow. I've read and enjoyed the occasional emotional wallow in fanfiction, but I'll admit that it's never been of the "interior monologue" variety. I dislike that kind of story more often than not.
You know what I mean. The story where it's all someone sitting around thinking about what happened so that the author can write the character's every angsty thought connected with it.
Honestly? I think of it as a gimmick and I think writing a story in that format more often than not results in pages full of predigested pablum.
Certainly it's a lot easier than writing the actual story, showing what happened, giving clues to the characters' emotional reactions, and letting the readers chew the material for themselves. Maybe that's why so many people write that way?
The problem is that not one in a hundred fanfiction writers can capture a character's voice and translate it to internal monologue in a way that I find convincing.
I also find that kind of story boring. Unless the author is very skilled indeed, no amount of dragging out the process of letting me know what it is that happened to inspire all of this brooding dismay on the part of the character will make me eager to read on.
Beyond my elitist suspicion that it's easier than writing a "real" story, I'm not sure I have any clue why someone would write something like that.
Some people say it's what they're "hearing" from the characters.
I say they're not listening closely enough. If the characters are telling you how they feel about what happened, they're telling you what happened and maybe you're just not choosing to listen to that part of the story?
Or, you know, not. I'm sure there are some perfectly lovely stories out there where Ray or Jim or Walter just sits around and examines his life, dissecting minutely each important incident, and puzzling over every word to find complex layers of emotional meaning.
After all.
It's such a guy way to behave, isn't it?
Forget Men With Brooms. There are days I'd be glad to find Men With Dicks in fandom.
Because, you see, I am not one of those readers/writers who comes to slash to work out my feminist issues or post thinly veiled revenge stories for the abuses I think I or other women have suffered at the hands of men or even because I think the world would be a nicer place if They were more like Us.
I'm here because I like men in all of their incoherent, fumbling, emotional awkwardness. I like the tendency to act first and think later. I like the territorial possessiveness about their emotionality and I like the way that half the time they don't know themselves why something is "right" for them to do or say. I like their testosterone approach to solving problems and their complex antipathy to tenderness that's all mixed up with a desire to be cuddled. I like the way they feel all of the things we want them to feel but that they don't know how or want to put those things into words. I like their reluctance to let down their guard and the amazing amount of warmth and compassion they hide behind their bravado.
I think in a lot of ways the stereotypically "male" emotional A=B reaction is more honest than a woman's tendency to put life on hold while she gets in touch with her inner self and figures out how she's supposed to feel about something.
Plus which, men tend to be big and strong and I like that. Even "small" men are usually bigger and stronger than I am and I don't have a problem with that. I think muscles are just fine, thankyouverymuch.
I like reading about men. I like reading about men building relationships with other men when they can't rely upon a woman's interpersonal skills to bridge the gaps. And I like men having sex with men because if one man is hot, two men together is at least ten times that hot.
I like men.
I think I had more to say, but I'm supposed to be writing a presentation for a meeting next week.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)Hee. McSwain joins me in my ranting about the various idiocies in fandom! Stand up and protest, people! You have nothing to lose but your pain!
Sigh. I've been sick.
Six days of fever, sore throat, headache, sinus congestion, and a host of other symptoms that I'll spare you. I've been in pacing-the-floor, wringing-my-hands pain and suffering from collapsed-in-a-chair, moaning-feebly fevered chills and hot flashes. My head hurt. My ear hurt. My throat hurt. I couldn't eat. I was so dehydrated that I couldn't drink enough water to satisfy my body. I couldn't stay awake and didn't sleep well when I was asleep.
I have been very unhappy and I fully expect to feel waves of belated but sincere sympathy rolling my way.
(You don't have to write. Some form of telepathy will do.)
Today, thanks to the miracle of miracle drugs (which I finally wised up enough to go to the doctor and get some of) I'm actually thinking I might rejoin the land of the human sometime later this week. I am not well and I do fully realize that anyone with half a brain would still be home in bed, but I have a plan and I'm sticking to it.
A plan, I might add, that those who continue to insist they like me while simultaneously destroying my brain cells, are doing nothing to further by sharing with me the news that some moron actually wrote a Harry Potter/SG-1 crossover. Or that someone else wrote a "Harry Potter meets Jim Ellison in a leather bar" story. (Presumably they shared bottoming techniques but I do not want to know and if anyone tells me, I'm taking out a contract on them.)
Nor is the news that this string of dismayingly stupid words:
Vaelen peered out from his shield. In a defiant smile, he said, "In the words of my hosts' people, 'Nanny nanny boo boo.'"appeared in a text format that some nitwit has the nerve to insist is a story going to speed my recovery.
Don't torment me with this stuff, okay? I'm not strong enough right now. I have a ruptured eardrum, I'm still running a slight temperature, and if I move too fast, I still get dizzy. Have some pity.
Last week was Fall Television Premiere Week. I wonder if it's a coincidence that I tried a number of new shows this year and wound up at the end of the week in a high fever?
I knew the Tim Curry vehicle, Family Affair had DISASTER tattooed all over it but we watched the premiere anyhow, to see the preview of the new Harry Potter movie, which was amazing. The show itself was inexcusably painful.
Push, Nevada was a show that I had some vague hopes for but it turned out to be a lackluster rip-off of Twin Peaks. I mean, okay, it was advertised as a new sort of Twin Peaks, but lacking the amazing music, the intriguing characters, and the memorable sets of its progenitor, I doubt that Push is going to last long. It's trying far too hard and the cracks were showing by the end of the first 30 minutes. Of course, they might hit their stride in a few episodes, but I won't be there watching if they do.
Lackluster is also a good word to describe the new Twilight Zone. I don't remember ever yawning when I watched the original.
CSI: Miami debuted last night to something less than the critical acclaim that was expected for it. I'll say the same thing I said last spring. They need to get rid of whatshisname, the guy who used to be on that cop show, and replace him with a character, and an actor, who brings something new and solid to the mix.
Among the things I didn't try were any of the new sitcoms about how funny family life is. I always feel that my grown up and childless state excuses me from having to sit through any of that crap. We did try a few minutes of Everwood, not because we liked the premise but because it was supposedly set in Colorado and we thought seeing some familiar scenery might be fun. Silly us. Naturally it was filmed in Canada or Nova Scotia or Greenland or something. We won't be turning that one on again, either. Next to stupid family comedies, I think I loathe sappy family dramas most.
And then there's Firefly, Joss Whedon's much-ballyhooed SF outing. I thought some of the characters were too predictably what I expected they would be when I read the character descriptions, but I'll admit that I wasn't in any condition to enjoy subtle nuances by Friday night so I might have missed something significant. But I did like it. A lot, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. From the BtVS discussions I've followed over the years (I don't actually watch the show), I know that Mr. Whedon can be relied upon not to pull an X-Files and just abandon his original concept in two or three years. He's known for character development, backstory, creative plots, and smacking you with the unexpected just when you think you have his characters all figured out. I'm looking forward to this journey.
So, when you consider that I picked up both Monk and Dead Zone this summer, and that I have the return of CSI and West Wing to look forward to, I'll be watching five hours of television a week this year! I can't remember how long it's been since I watched that much television regularly.
One day last week a very attractive if young ATT rep showed up at our door to tell us that the joys of broadband connection could be ours for only about $45 a month! When you consider what we currently pay for AOHell and our second phone line (neither of which will be needed in the future), it's a bargain.
And for some reason, that makes me realize that it's now 10:04 and I've only spent ten minutes out of the last three hours working. I think it's time to give the company a little of my time.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:10 AMWhere do archives go to hide?
I'm not going to get a pissy about it, though. No. I've sworn off of that. I'm all about something resembling tolerance these days.
Why shouldn't some illiterate dweeb post a story crossing over ER with the Teletubbies if she wants to?
Why shouldn't some clueless infant reinvent herself as Galadriel's wiser, more beautiful, more powerful younger sister and single-handedly save Middle-Earth while fending off her hordes of sex-mad and love-struck admirers at the same time?
I'm not, as people have been trying to explain to me for years, required to read that kind of garbage and I promise that I do understand that the world is not required to bend to my will.
(If you're wondering what it was that finally broke my spirit, it was reading today that someone has actually crossed over West Wing's Leo with a member of some band. I've decided that it's just not possible for fandom to get any stupider. So I quit.)
(Of course, it could be low blood sugar. Maybe I should eat something.)
Posted by AnneZook at 10:58 AMOkay, I'm going to break a lifelong vow here.
(Well, no, I'm not. But I'm going to depart from my usual free-form, white-knuckled ranting style for a moment to talk about torch's latest post.
I think the purpose of the "comments" function is so that I can agree or disagree with what she's saying right there on her site, but it's not really my place to be taking up space in her life with my bad attitude, is it?
I didn't think so, so I put a little response into a comment, even though I tend to stay out of other people's journals because I assume they'd rather the rest of the world didn't know that they know me, even slightly, and now it does occur to me that I was sort of inflammatory, what with calling some people's choices in fanfic evil and all and maybe I'd better go look for an edit button.)
Anybow.
I intend to babble endlessly on one of torch's topics, so I'll use up my own bandwidth.
I liked her point that a writer might hit their stride in their fifth fandom instead of their first. And I'd like to add the thought that because of a writer's style/voice/approach/whatever, she may write brilliant Sentinel fiction but the world's worst X-Files fiction or completely forgettable PM fiction.
Some of that is because the writer can "visualize" (for lack of a better word) the one fandom better—it fits better into her personal world-view and experiences, it's something she can relate to.
"Write what you know" doesn't necessarily mean write high school romance and bad grades stories just because you're seventeen. Think of it more as "write what you know" emotionally, instead of literally and maybe you'll understand what I'm trying to say.
Much as someone might love the idea of Mulder/Krycek, it's just possible that her intellectual understanding of the whole hate/love dynamic is simply insufficient to carry a story.
It's possible that you can't have to a real understanding of the emotional ambivalence of the M/K relationship just because you understand, intellectually, how such a relationship functions. If the author lacks that emotional connection to the action of the story, I'd argue that she's going to find it difficult if not impossible to write in a way that allows the reader to connect to the emotional heart of her story.
I'm not saying this well, I know.
Or, as t mentions, sometimes the person has learned enough about the craft of writing that by the time she hits her third or fourth or fifth fandom, she's putting out a better product.
See, I disagree with t about the HP story Lust over Pendle. I think it does capture the feel of the source material and better, really, than almost any other HP story I've read.
The charm of Lust over Pendle, as with the books, lies largely in the secondary characters for me. Neville's grandmother, Draco's mother, Harry's appalling family, all of these characters come alive in Lust over Pendle. They're three-dimensional with fully realized personalities and flaws. Draco is still the same jerk, but an older and slightly wiser jerk. Hermione is still a bossy, know-it-all, but mellowed by time and experience. Neville is still somewhat uncertain of himself, prone to dithering and making mistakes.
I don't find the adult versions of the book children hard to connect with the source material. They're not the exact same characters, but I think they're believable, convincing representations of who the book children might have become.
The plot of LoP is at least as well worked-out as the plots of the HP books and if the writing itself is more complex and mature, well, this story wasn't written for ten year-olds, was it?
But t sees a heavy influence by Terry Pratchett when she reads LoP. I can't tell if she's objecting to the humor or not, but surely not since the HP books themselves are pretty humorous.
Surely not the writing style since, while I'm very much a fan, I'd argue that Pratchett's characterization is fairly two-dimensional, plots simplistic, and writing style very straightforward. Nothing, in fact, like the way I perceive LoP.
As t makes clear, LoP doesn't work for her as a connection to what she perceives as the HP universe. Since it connects very solidly for me, I'm thinking that I wish I had the nerve to write to her and demand she produce a special essay, just for me, composed of what she thinks of as the essential identifying factors of the HP universe.
I should also mention, just to be fair, that I know of one other reader of the story who complained that it was "emotionally distant" to her. That's a different problem, I know, but I'm just saying. Not everyone who has read LoP has loved it although its fans appear to be numerous.
In a move that may be illegal, or at least in bad taste, let me quote t's words here:
The idea that it is desirable for fanfic to be compatible, in tone and/or subject matter, with the source material unfortunately made me explode through trying to agree and disagree at the same time. If you look at it one way, it's the whole more vs. different question--do you want more of the same, something as close to the source material as you can get, or do you want something different, something that goes places the source material never did? And my answer to that is usually a resounding and confusing yes, please. I like more, and I like different. I like a connection to the source material, yes, but I tend to think of that mostly in terms of believable characterization; I do think it's possible for a horror fandom to support a romantic comedy, and vice versa. But then again, there are times when tone is everything.But. I think the "tone" of the source material is a more fundamental issue than whether or not you're writing romantic comedy in a death-and-destruction fandom. I agree with t that you can write that kind of thing successfully, but I also insist that the romantic comedy of Law & Order is going to be significantly different than a romantic comedy for West Wing because the "tones" of the two fandoms are so very different.
And I naturally agree with t that it all comes down to characterization. Because the behaviors and reactions of the characters in West Wing are nothing like the behaviors and reactions in characters in Law & Order. (Although I'm making some blind assumptions since I've never actually seen L&O.)
I'm still explaining myself badly, aren't I?
Let me try using well-worn clichés.
A romantic comedy set in the universe of a gritty cop drama is necessarily going to be different than a romantic comedy set in the universe of a political drama that, even in canon, has a certain screwball tone.
"Comedy" is likely to be darker in the L&O universe, even mean-spirited. If someone slips on a banana peel, his co-workers are going to gather around, laugh at him, and then tell, everyone else what happened. And he'll be finding banana peels in his locker and in his lunch sack for six months.
In the political world of WW, comedy is likely to be screwball, even with a touch of gentle slapstick and the same slipped on a banana peel is going to be met with a caustic remark and then not mentioned again until it's used as ammunition to throw the slippee (is too a word!), off-balance in a later argument.
"Romance" is going to differ between the two universes as well.
I'd assume that L&O characters might fall into each other's arm, in a convention beloved of fanfiction—the "ohmigod we almost died and now my sex-drive is in overdrive and by the way I love you," scenario.
In WW it would be more likely to be the result of verbal sparring that masks a very real attraction when, in some late-night bull-session, the characters find themselves grappling on a sofa with only an indistinct idea of what sparked the move.
I'm still explaining myself badly, aren't I?
What I mean to say is that any genre of story can be written for any fandom universe. But that has nothing with what I define as being faithful to the "tone" of the universe
I'm still not saying this well.
This is why I never responded to any of t's interesting thoughts before. She's so much more articulate than I am. Plus which, I suspect she takes the time to re-read and edit her livejournal entries instead of writing while at work and then posting on the sly, the way I do.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:27 PMI don't understand where the movement came from to make everything in fandom all-inclusive, that's all.
HetSex fans, Slashers, Gen-only readers, these are all designations that evolved in fandom because the fans wanted them.
The only overall descriptive term used to sound a lot like, "geek." Of course, that was long before Bill Gates and his billions make "geek" into something enviable, wasn't it?
Now we're all being scooped back into the melting pot, or at least slash, the former outcast portion of fandom is being asked to take a lot of other, unrelated topics under its wing.
I don't think so.
There are a lot of fans, what with the easy access of the internet and all, and most of the newer ones don't have much of an idea what fandom is beyond the fact that they finally found a place where they can gush and squeal and share badly spelled fantasies about their favorite television characters. (Don't get me wrong. I've done my share of gushing and squealing. I even make typos. But some of these newbies are making "clueless idiot" an art form.)
Even fewer of these newer fans seem to have any real idea of what slash is supposed to be. The proof is that so many people have been trying to define it for them. If we used the original description, then it wouldn't need al of this debate, but everyone's trying to broaden the term so that it gathers more and more of the fringe elements of fandom into one category.
Why?
What's wrong with some kind of mapping system where people interested in different things know where to find like-minded fans? I don't personally have a problem with people who want to form their own little list about two members of some boyband who get bit by vampires and become creatures of the night forming said list, okay? It moves some of the Real People Sex fans out of my orbit. In addition, it collects up some AU fans and removes them from my line of vision as well. Both very good things.
Me, I'd like to find a place where people interested in fandom can gather without being infested with the tens of thousands of twerps whose only real interest in it all is being able to read about sex without having to check out or buy a books and reveal their interest in the topic to (god forbid!) another human being.
I want to hang out in a different fandom than the one inhabited by people who find the characters and canon irrelevant to their enjoyment of the physical attributes of one or more of the actors.
There was a point where fanfiction was becoming a phenomenon. Almost a real genre. People were paying attention to what we were doing and trying to figure it out. It was something with an identity, something clearly evolving into a significant force.
Fanfiction took that most mainstream of mainstream entertainment, television, and started turning it inside-out.
Fanfiction started finding nuances, expanding on character potential, and writing the backstory and the off-screen stories that television didn't have time for or wasn't interest in. Creating depth and resonance from material that could not have been more shallow. (Come on, do you remember television in the late 70's and 80's?)
Slashers went one step further. They watched characters interacting, considered the personalities and the cultural and professional biases the characters might possess and then figured out a way to overcome those things to expose and explore a perceived emotional/sexual connection between the characters.
From the 70's through the end of the millennium, slash evolved as the writers' and readers' own cultural biases evolved. From something barely mentioned above a whisper, homosexuality became openly and publicly acknowledged. Slash gained respectability (in fandom) at the same pace.
Even F/F slash, originally a vanishingly small percentage of fanfiction, started gaining a significant fanbase.
As alternate sexualities became at least marginally accepted by mainstream society, slashers turned more and more to arenas where old-style prohibitions still existed, both because those situations were fraught with potential homoerotic interaction and because stereotypically male-only environments might be considered to be the venues where men were...well, where they were mostly like men as opposed to the domesticated male found in the average sitcom. And where the female characters in those traditionally male environments might also be free to explore different sides of their own personalities.
All that and it was hot, too.
And now it's just this mishmash of crap with six different kinds of kitchen sinks thrown in. As long as something getting off, it's slash. Animal, vegetable, or mineral, it doesn't matter. Bring it on. Want to turn someone into Puff, the Magic Dragon? Go ahead. Want to write some guy doing it with a tree? Please do.
Is this what we really want?
Instead of redefining what slash it to include more people, shouldn't we be sending them politely worded notes asking them to coin their own labels for what they're doing?
(A case, and a good one, could be made for the expansion of the fanfic genre because of all of this extra imagination being thrown into it. I'd probably even buy the idea if it weren't for the fact that this oddball stuff is mostly just crap. You're not exploring a brave, new world if you can't even spell what you're trying to write about.
And, again, the vital necessity of decent characterization comes into play. If it were actually canon characters being translated into these new areas, I'd buy that some interesting results might ensue. Since most of these stories consist of simply applying character names to completely unrelated beings, it doesn't hold water.)
P.S. I want points, big ones for not going off onto a tangential rant about the abysmally stupid woman who actually wrote a story where one (male) character bemoaned that is was his male love interest who was raped instead of a female co-worker since women, having vaginas and all, are better built for rape than men. The misogyny of fanfiction, even some purportedly hetfic, is a whole 'nother subject.
Massages, I think. I seem to be becoming obsessed with the idea. To the relief of everyone hoping I don't begin infesting their fandom, my brain is still stuck on the OaT track.
Last night I was doing some cleaning out and throwing away and I counted at least 17 uncompleted and unloved stories. I've abandoned quite a few stories unfinished as I've moved from one fandom to another over the years. A fair number in XF of course, but also HL, OaT, and Sen. One thing most of these seem to have in common is that they were intended to have, you know, plot of some sort. There were actually things that would happen, aside from the usual banter-and-smut routine.
I can't remember where I was going with this.
Oh, yeah. Massages. Unfortunately, if memory serves, I think I wrote a massage into an OaT story already. Actually, I think I wrote massages into two OaT stories, but I'm reasonably sure I printed one of them out for the pleasure of shredding it and burning it while reciting curses toward the hardrive upon which it had lived, but that really has nothing to do with the subject at hand which, contrary to appearances, I have not forgotten.
I'm thinking, you know, if you've only got one (two? three?), anyhow...if you've only got a small number of stories out there in a fandom, maybe it would be better if every one of them didn't have the same elements. I mean, how often can you write, "the guys go undercover and then one of them gives the other one a massage" without becoming tedious? Once. If you're lucky. I don't actually remember if the massage scene I posted was tedious or not, but I distinctly remember that it was fun to write.
And, of course, the obvious solution is to write any darned thing I want and just not post it publicly. Like deleting blog entries, or cleaning "stories I really, really hate" off of my web page, it's my right.
Also I'm remembering that writing sex scenes gives me the hives and that swore if I ever, ever, ever wrote more fanfiction, it would not contain explicit smut.
That's a pity. I'm really in the mood to do something involving massages to men with beautiful bodies and, failing that, I'd settle for writing about it.
Not that I'm pretending I have a choice or anything.
This is me, Blogging Without Bile. A very strange sensation.
But I feel very polite.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:54 PMI have been informed by a Usually Reliable Source that that last post was excessively bitter and mean-spirited.
I have been informed by another Usually Reliable Source that it was nothing of the kind.
Whatever.
I don't mind sounding bitter, but if I sounded mean-spirited, I apologize to the world at large. In the future, I will refrain from lifting quotes of How Not To Write from anyone's writing except my own.
Which, considering that I can't bear to read my own stuff, means I won't be quoting in the future.
Not even to point out that something like, "He couldn't last this facade that had slowly became his demure when he had been kicked out of the country" is unforgiveably incomprehensible and an abuse of the highly developed brain power that allowed us to develop language in the first place.
Or to point out that a disclaimer that starts with the words, "I haven't actually seen these episodes" is the reader's clue to run screaming from the room.
No, I will be nice.
Even though Cap'n Nasty reminded me of that old saying, "if you're not angry, you're not paying attention", I will not be posting again until I think of something nice to say.
Have some coffee. Sit back. Relax. It's intermission.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:48 PMSex has been on my mind a lot lately. Not in terms of, you know, sex but in terms of, "how come so many fanfiction writers write such crappy sex scenes."
For years I worked on the theory that 75% or more of fandom's writers were not only virgins but had never actually seen a nekkid body other than their own which pretty satisfactorily explained the complete lack of comprehension not only about The Act but the basics of human anatomy when you start intertwining two or more bodies.
It also pretty much explained why "sex=penetration" to so many writers and readers. I mean, if they were getting their information from fade-to-black scenes in romance novels and movies they couldn't be expected to be acquainted with even a fraction of the range of very satisfying sexual activities indulged in by a significant percentage of the het adult population, much less the gay adult population, right?
However.
These are the Internet Years and even if you haven't Done the Deed yourself, there are an abundance of free sites where you can view graphical representations.
You can see nekkid men, nekkid women, or, if your tastes tend that way, nekkid coeds doing things to nekkid barnyard animals.
All of which pretty much eliminates the "ignorance is bliss" excuse.
It's possible, of course, to fall back on the old, "they're crappy writers" thing and that's probably largely true. If TypoidMary(tm) can't write a believable conversation between two adults, the odds are exceptionally good that she's going to be even worse at trying to write an erotic sex scene.
(I don't know…I've barely even started ranting and I'm already discouraged. I don't even know why these people bother to write, except that they seem to be desperate for approval.People used to write because they had something to say.
Now they write because some actor floats their boat or because someone issued a challenge to see who could bring the stupidest possible elements into a fandom, or because they think it makes them special.
I got news for y'all. Being one in a group of ten thousand idiots doesn't even make you a special idiot.
I really am discouraged. Even as I type this sentence, I just know there are fifty TypoidMarys(tm) out there simultaneously insisting that the quality of their writing has nothing to do with whether or not their stories are any good and they actually seem to believe this.
Anyhow.)
Some time later....
Okay, let's try this again.
"Are you gonna just stand there and jerk off or are you gonna come over here and shoot your wad up my ass?"Yes, this is from a fanfiction story. I saw this same line in about 50 gay porn stories in the days I was researching gay porn.
Apparently I'm not the only one who has researched gay porn. I wish I weren't the only one who had realized that, (a) real people don't talk like that, and (b) gay porn isn't usually well-written or sexy.
"(deleted) stood at the foot of the far bed and raised the enema bucket to let the warm water flow between the shapely buttocks of his arch nemesis"This line is notable because it wasn't even part of a sex scene. The story, if you believe it, opened like this. I couldn't bring myself to read any more.
Anyhow, I got all distracted by that "far bed" thing and wondering how far it was, where the arch nemesis was standing and just how big that damned bucket was anyhow.
"(deleted)'s feet began rubbing against each other as if he'd transformed into an amorous cricket"I am just speechless with arousal at the image of a man bedding an amorous cricket.
"They both cried out as the big man fell right on top of them. They whimpered but snuggled up against his big furry chest and began kissing each side of his face. Suddenly they stopped their kissing and (deleted) heard snores. The little bastards had worn themselves slap out and were sleeping right on top of their papa bear!"Must. Control. Fist. Of. Death.
"Instead he closed his palm around (deleted)'s cock. And hurray, it evoked the exact reaction he wanted."She actually wrote, "hurray." And it's not even Andy Hardy slash.
"(deleted), for his part, had locked his eyes with (deleted)'s and nonchalantly *swallowed* three of his long fingers into the back of his throat."And then he choked to death and we were glad.
The End.
You might think I spent the last hour finding these examples of highly unerotic writing, but I assure you it took exactly nine minutes, most of which was spent waiting for pages to load. I did a search for "slash fanfiction, found three archives, and opened about 10 NC-17 stories entirely at random.
Imagine what I might have found if I'd taken the time to actually read anything. (I think I just felt 23 brain cells die at the mere thought.)
TypoidMary(tm) aside, let's think about the decent authors for a change. I think that the problem is that even these people can't figure out how to get the guys' to put their hands on each other.
I mean, they have an idea for a story, they have characters, and maybe even an idea of how the sex should go, but getting the boys right up to the plate and ready to take action isn't easy.
Let me say that I have a lot of sympathy for this problem. Since I like using myself as a bad example, I can honestly say that I once had an idea for a short (8-10 page) story that wound up going on for fifty pages or more because I could not get the guys into bed. And when I finally gritted my teeth and just wrote the damned sex scene, it was pretty bad.
Anyhow, I think other people must run into that same problem. At some point, they just start shoving any old sex scene down on the page with no regard to erotic intensity, appropriateness to the setting and characters, or anything else.
Some of these people might be able to visualize the sex scene in their minds, but they lack the ability to get it down into words correctly. Contrary to what some seem to believe, writing a story isn't the same thing as a minute description of a visual scene.
I think that whenever you run into one of those, "and then A moved his arm over three inches to let B's mouth move to the side of his neck and then A arched his back until the tendons on his neck stood out" kinds of sex scenes, you're reading an author who got confused about a visual image in her head.
Some people, shudder, don't know the difference between a private sexual fantasy and a sex scene appropriate for a story. I think we all know those when we read them. For those in doubt, highly inappropriate "dirty talk" like that in the first Bad Example above is frequently a component of those private fantasies.
Ditto for the scenes where the characters are abruptly behaving wildly out of character although I admit that as much as characterization is ignored by TypoidMary(tm), this is probably too ubiquitous to be a good indicator.
Which brings us, at long last, to the subject of today's musings.
Why do people write crappy sex scenes? And why do so many of them insist on trying to write rape stories or torture stories?
Couldn't you all just give up the beatings and the tortures and the rapes and the whips and the chains?
If your friends won't tell you, I will.
Honestly, you suck at writing that stuff, okay?
The proportion of really crappy so-called BDSM stories to decent stuff is higher than the proportion of crap-to-decent in any other genre. And you're most of you so clueless what BDSM is really about that you've actually managed to give BDSM a bad name.
Very few people find that kind of scenario truly erotic and to be even more brutally honest, if you were any good at writing it, you'd probably lose 75% of your readers because most of them would be totally grossed out by a realistic scene. In other words, it's only because you write it so badly that anyone reads it at all.
And give up the torture while you're at it. You know what I mean. " 'A' gets kidnapped by Bad Men and beaten all up and probably raped ten or fifteen times and then 'B' comes in and rescues him and takes him home and they have wild anal sex and it's all better."
It was stupid the first time someone wrote it thirty-five years ago, and it hasn't gotten any more believable or any more intelligent since then.
Plus which, you know, you also suck at writing that stuff.
I've read so-called "torture" scenes that left my eyes glazing over from boredom and others where I was laughing hysterically as the poor victim was made to take more abuse than any fifteen human bodies could sustain without fatality before bouncing back like the Energizer Bunny.
You don't have to write like that. Many of us wish you'd stop trying.
What's wrong with sex? Why can't you write it unless one of the men is bleeding?
Let me guess.
You don't actually know any men, do you?
You don't actually know how men would behave in bed and you refuse to believe that men are, after all, human beings who act and react pretty much the way a human being should, right?
You have trouble believing that if you write a man being touched in a way that feels good by someone who wants to make him feel good it's going to be erotic, right?
Or are you afraid that if you don't include some bruising and maybe a little blood-letting, they're not going to seem like Real Men? That if there isn't some kind of schoolyard wrestling, they're going to seem all girly?
You don't actually know any men, do you?
Sex doesn't have to involve bloodshed, even between two men. (Nor should one of them necessarily be portrayed as an escapee from Barney's purple world. There's a middle ground between teddy bear-fondling infants and psychologically crippled brutes, and that's where most people's sexuality falls.)
It's sex, okay? It's not rocket science.
How about a nice massage scene? A massage can be verrry sexy, it's a good way to get at least one of the guys partially unclothed, gives the other guy a reason to start fondling him, and can lead to all kinds of delicious scenarios.
What fandom needs is fewer butt plugs and more massages.
A couple of bodies, a little friction and you've got fireworks. Nudity optional.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:38 PM
Gone!
Removed another one. I'm on a cleaning kick.
Posted by AnneZook at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)
I removed it, okay?
It's my right.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)I'm not making fun of anyone's religion. Seriously. While I've never been one for organized religion myself, I've always been a believer in Karma in a casual sort of way. The Zen Guide gives us this definition.
Karma is intentional action, that is, a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind. Karma means good and bad volition . Every volitional action is called Karma.That works for me, although I usually say, "you get out of life what you put into it, which neatly covers not only Karma but the work ethic I learned from my father.
Anyhow, I've decided that I'm putting too much negative Karma into the world with all of this ranting.
In other words, Karma is the law of moral causation. It is action and reaction in the ethical realm. It is natural law that every action produces a certain effect. So if one performs wholesome actions such as donating money to charitable organizations, happiness will ensue. On the other hand, if one performs unwholesome actions, such as killing a living being, the result will be suffering. This is the law of cause and effect at work. In this way, the effect of past karma determines the nature of one's present situation in life.
I can't do much about my past Karma, but I guess I can try to start working on this lifetime's Karma by resisting the temptation to think, or say, the many rude things I think, and say, about fanfiction.
Of course, refusing to write down the bad thoughts is one thing. Refraining from thinking them is going to be trickier.
I'm still working on that bit.
Anyhow, if Typoid Mary (oops) is having fun writing down her fevered fantasies of Daniel drinking an alien potion and morphing into a woman so that he and Jack can celebrate their love openly, who am I to pass judgment? If TM thinks that her idea of removing Chris and Vin from the Old West and putting them on a the first manned spaceship to Mars is a cool one, who am I to say otherwise? If she really does believe that in his spare time, Blair is a practicing sadist.... *Grabs head and starts moaning.*
Okay, I need more practice. I squicked myself out with that one.
You get the point, though. I've been thinking about this because I read torch's LiveJournal again. (I should link to her journal because I do read it. You're supposed to link to the people you like to read yourself, right? I wonder if she'd mind. I don't quite have the hang of the rules of this thing yet.)
ANYhow. I read torch's LJ again and she linked to a really good essay on writing that she wrote. Her basic message is, "whatever you do, make sure it's a conscious choice." I think that's cool. Instead of the rude ranting and raving approach that I generally take to the topic, she's all about, "just think about what you're doing."
She has such an open, accepting approach to these things.
When I stop to consider the many, many writing faults I, myself, possess, I wonder where I get the nerve to keep running around, laying down the law about how things ought to be done, you know? I didn't think about what I was doing when I was doing it. I just wrote stuff down and shoved it onto my website, then moved on to something else.
Som