Entry tags:
it's too early in the morning for paragraphs this size
Someone is holding an epic Remus/Sirius nostalgia & love party, and I don't ... care. Wow. I am tempted to write at least one R/S fic for Cliche Bingo, if only because I'm sure I have at least one leftover thing to say about Harry Potter, and it is still Baby's First OTP, but I just ... I think my disenchantment with those books (no pun intended, oh god) is complete. This does not mean I do not still love Prisoner of Azkaban. This does not mean I can't still recite embarrassingly large swathes of the entire three-plus chapters in the Shrieking Shack from memory. This does not mean I am not a little irrationally excited about the HBP film next month. But I think I am done, and the realization is kind of nice.
Meanwhile in the light of day I am not going "oh my god why did I go mad at midnight and post porn??" which I think is a win; Fraser POV, I own you. Uh, I probably am going to watch more Twitch City over breakfast, oh god why, and also this morning I woke up with the excited phrase "Sweet baby Jesus and all his angels!" running through my head, and it took me five bewildered minutes to remember that it's something the curling commentator in Men With Brooms says. I observe all these things in aid of acknowledging that, although I am feeling kind of an irrational sense of accomplishment in letting go of the fandom things I loved at fourteen, I am still a migratory fandom caterpillar who is unlikely to ever hatch into a butterfly of normal adult life. What do people in normal adult life do for hobbies? My dad gets fannish about history and my mum volunteers for everything ever. But then in the evenings they enthusiastically watch Slings & Arrows with me, so maybe normal adult life is a myth anyway.
I am going to a wedding this afternoon in my pretty new dress, so any actual interaction re: this meme might be a little slow coming, but here is the interview meme that occasionally goes around: If you want me to interview you--post a comment that simply says, "Interview me." I'll respond with questions for you to take back to your own journal and answer as a post. Of course, they'll be different for each person since this is an interview and not a general survey. At the bottom of your post, after answering the Interviewer's questions, you ask if anyone wants to be interviewed. So it becomes your turn-- in the comments, you ask them any questions you have for them to take back to their journals and answer. And so it becomes the circle.
Answers to questions from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintercreek:
1. How did you decide what information to include on your Master Fic List? (Because I am abig geek librarian, I am fascinated by what details people include and why.)
I actually stole it wholesale fromfahye's model, because I really dug the way she'd organized hers. It's organized by alphabetized fandom, obviously, which I would do anyway, and then all the fics are listed alphabetically instead of by date; maybe fics by date would be more helpful, but I am slightly compulsive and feel much better with them properly alphabetized. Each fic is then listed by title -- pairing(s) and/or major characters -- wordcount -- month and year; on the next line I have the summary, although by "summary" I actually mean "a sentence or two lifted from the fic that best encapsulates what the fic is about." I should probably also put the rating somewhere in my listed info, but I'm never quite sure how to rate anything, and the fic link does go straight to the header notes. Besides omitting the rating, though, I think what I have covers most of the pertinent information I'd want before clicking a fic link.
2. What's the best book you've read that's not part of the literary canon?
I have a double answer for this one. The most well-loved book on my bookshelf is Good Omens; I read it whenever I need cheering up or a good laugh. It's certainly not Terry Pratchett's best book, and it's so unlike Neil Gaiman's usual work that it just doesn't compare, but it still manages to be an absolutely perfect mixture of the two of them, and it's just -- it's like a comfort blanket, honestly.
Possibly one of the best books I've read in recent memory, though, is Cloud Atlas; it moved me, deeply, in ways I haven't really thought about yet. I read it during a definite emotional dip in late 2007, and while it didn't make me better, it helped -- I haven't read it since, partly because I don't really want to recall all of the associated memories and partly because I'm worried it won't be as stunningly good as I remember, but it's sitting on my bedside table and I do want to revisit it sometime this summer, because it was absolutely beautiful.
3. Paul Gross arms: do you make them in real life? Are there other pieces of online/fannish convention that have infiltrated your offline life?
I have slowly picked up the habit of doing Paul Gross arms in real life during the past few months, yes. (I used to do the \o/ thing in real life before this, too, but very infrequently and without the laughing sense of a silly injoke.) In fact one of my favourite memories of last month's WisCon was whenoliviacirce, modding a panel on book vs media fandom, asked the audience, "Does anyone here know what Paul Gross arms are?" and all of us in the first row immediately threw our arms into the air. I know I also incorporate various things-from-the-internet into everyday speech, but I can't recall what specifically; when I'm at college, my group of friends tend to share bits of online/fannish conventions which then become incorporated into our general mode of conversation and become kind of invisible. I do also have a tendency to start taking on character tics if I write about a certain character often enough, which is not quite the same thing but is deeply related. For instance, at the moment while flustered or under stress I will, to my horror, awkwardly rub my eyebrow, and I'll occasionally do Fraser's nervous lip-lick. No one has called me on this yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
4. What was the greatest thing about your due South rewatch? The most infuriating? The coolest?
Definitely the greatest thing about the due South rewatch was having the whole thing in my head and being able to make sense of it -- I was kind of astonished at how much I got out of it by going back through while paying attention for thematic patterns and character arcs. Among other things, it made me feel like I actually understand Fraser enough to try writing him from inside his own head now. And the rewatch has given me the ability to be coherent about why I ship Fraser/Kowalski -- rather than shuffling people through the "Do you find me attractive?" scene and the buddy breathing, then going "SEE?" I can actually say things about symmetry and symbiosis and identity and sound reasonably intelligent. (And in fact I can probably pull up CotW and do the same thing for F/K/V, which is pretty great.) Anyway, basically the wonderful thing is that I've taught myself how to talk about due South intelligently. I hope.
The most infuriating thing is deeply related to the greatest thing: because I went through paying careful attention, I really noticed all the stuff that didn't work, too. In the grand scheme of things, what didn't work for me is negligible -- I've had Harry Potter and Doctor Who was major fandoms before this, and I could write whole essays on the things that didn't work for me in those canons -- but discovering the small flaws was frustrating, in much the same way that it's frustrating when you hang out with a new friend long enough and begin to discover all of their more annoying qualities. Due South's more annoying qualities, for me, are mostly limited to sometimes dancing over the edge into un-charming absurdity or just making no sense, and making me occasionally uncomfortable about the way it treats Those Scary Women, Haha, but comparatively dS is still pretty great.
The coolest thing was discovering, to my delighted astonishment, that this time through not only did I understand the previously-bewildering Meg Thatcher and to a lesser extent Stella Kowalski, but I actually like them, too.
5. Have you ever found yourself using fic to work through something from your real life, or is it purely separate? (If this question is too personal, substitute: what was the feedback you wanted to give me about "Northwest Passages" that one time?" Optionally, tell me that anyway because I'm curious to know what you thought of it. *g*)
Hm. It's not too personal a question, but it is a difficult one to answer, because ... I know I do that, possibly frequently, but never very consciously. Almost inevitably, what I choose to write has a lot to do with what I'm finding it relevant to work through -- possibly the most obvious example is when I wrote the naming of things, a Doctor Who fic about the Doctor and the Master's childhood romance and spectacular breakup, among other things. I'd recently had a breakup of my own, and while neither the circumstances or the feelings involved were particularly similar, I think writing about telepathic aliens with an even more complicated love life than mine was extremely helpful. The overlap of my own life and fic comes through in other subtler ways too: Terminus, for example, is intensely personal -- not because it has to do with things I was working through, but because it's about place, about drastic relocation, about loving your best friend, and those things are always very important to me even if I'm not technically working through them. I think the overlap also comes out not in stories but just in fragments of character -- I'm still a little nervous about writing from Fraser's POV, for instance, because I tend to attribute motivations to him in a very similar way to how I understand my own motivations, and if I'm not careful writing him will become about working through things from real life, which isn't necessarily what I want to go for -- it's wonderful and serendipitous when writing a story helps me work through something, but the object of the writing should not be to work through whatever it is, but rather to tell a good story.
5b: I completely forgot I wanted to give you feedback about Northwest Passages! I believe what I wanted to say was that I love how it is kind of a quest fic, but assumes all the things that happened, and is kind of About Ray instead of About How Fraser And Ray Got Together, and I think possibly fandom needs more fic like that. Out here, where the ice sounds were realer the further north you went, there wasn't much to do but embrace death and change and the whole shebang is probably my favourite line -- and incidentally, you give fabulously good RayK voice. And I like the switch from Fraser to Benton -- I have an inexplicable dislike of fic where RayK starts calling him "Ben," but a corresponding inexplicable joy for the same thing with "Benton," so that your fic goes in the latter direction delights me. Is good fic. <3
Meanwhile in the light of day I am not going "oh my god why did I go mad at midnight and post porn??" which I think is a win; Fraser POV, I own you. Uh, I probably am going to watch more Twitch City over breakfast, oh god why, and also this morning I woke up with the excited phrase "Sweet baby Jesus and all his angels!" running through my head, and it took me five bewildered minutes to remember that it's something the curling commentator in Men With Brooms says. I observe all these things in aid of acknowledging that, although I am feeling kind of an irrational sense of accomplishment in letting go of the fandom things I loved at fourteen, I am still a migratory fandom caterpillar who is unlikely to ever hatch into a butterfly of normal adult life. What do people in normal adult life do for hobbies? My dad gets fannish about history and my mum volunteers for everything ever. But then in the evenings they enthusiastically watch Slings & Arrows with me, so maybe normal adult life is a myth anyway.
I am going to a wedding this afternoon in my pretty new dress, so any actual interaction re: this meme might be a little slow coming, but here is the interview meme that occasionally goes around: If you want me to interview you--post a comment that simply says, "Interview me." I'll respond with questions for you to take back to your own journal and answer as a post. Of course, they'll be different for each person since this is an interview and not a general survey. At the bottom of your post, after answering the Interviewer's questions, you ask if anyone wants to be interviewed. So it becomes your turn-- in the comments, you ask them any questions you have for them to take back to their journals and answer. And so it becomes the circle.
Answers to questions from
wintercreek: 1. How did you decide what information to include on your Master Fic List? (Because I am a
I actually stole it wholesale from
fahye's model, because I really dug the way she'd organized hers. It's organized by alphabetized fandom, obviously, which I would do anyway, and then all the fics are listed alphabetically instead of by date; maybe fics by date would be more helpful, but I am slightly compulsive and feel much better with them properly alphabetized. Each fic is then listed by title -- pairing(s) and/or major characters -- wordcount -- month and year; on the next line I have the summary, although by "summary" I actually mean "a sentence or two lifted from the fic that best encapsulates what the fic is about." I should probably also put the rating somewhere in my listed info, but I'm never quite sure how to rate anything, and the fic link does go straight to the header notes. Besides omitting the rating, though, I think what I have covers most of the pertinent information I'd want before clicking a fic link.2. What's the best book you've read that's not part of the literary canon?
I have a double answer for this one. The most well-loved book on my bookshelf is Good Omens; I read it whenever I need cheering up or a good laugh. It's certainly not Terry Pratchett's best book, and it's so unlike Neil Gaiman's usual work that it just doesn't compare, but it still manages to be an absolutely perfect mixture of the two of them, and it's just -- it's like a comfort blanket, honestly.
Possibly one of the best books I've read in recent memory, though, is Cloud Atlas; it moved me, deeply, in ways I haven't really thought about yet. I read it during a definite emotional dip in late 2007, and while it didn't make me better, it helped -- I haven't read it since, partly because I don't really want to recall all of the associated memories and partly because I'm worried it won't be as stunningly good as I remember, but it's sitting on my bedside table and I do want to revisit it sometime this summer, because it was absolutely beautiful.
3. Paul Gross arms: do you make them in real life? Are there other pieces of online/fannish convention that have infiltrated your offline life?
I have slowly picked up the habit of doing Paul Gross arms in real life during the past few months, yes. (I used to do the \o/ thing in real life before this, too, but very infrequently and without the laughing sense of a silly injoke.) In fact one of my favourite memories of last month's WisCon was when
oliviacirce, modding a panel on book vs media fandom, asked the audience, "Does anyone here know what Paul Gross arms are?" and all of us in the first row immediately threw our arms into the air. I know I also incorporate various things-from-the-internet into everyday speech, but I can't recall what specifically; when I'm at college, my group of friends tend to share bits of online/fannish conventions which then become incorporated into our general mode of conversation and become kind of invisible. I do also have a tendency to start taking on character tics if I write about a certain character often enough, which is not quite the same thing but is deeply related. For instance, at the moment while flustered or under stress I will, to my horror, awkwardly rub my eyebrow, and I'll occasionally do Fraser's nervous lip-lick. No one has called me on this yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.4. What was the greatest thing about your due South rewatch? The most infuriating? The coolest?
Definitely the greatest thing about the due South rewatch was having the whole thing in my head and being able to make sense of it -- I was kind of astonished at how much I got out of it by going back through while paying attention for thematic patterns and character arcs. Among other things, it made me feel like I actually understand Fraser enough to try writing him from inside his own head now. And the rewatch has given me the ability to be coherent about why I ship Fraser/Kowalski -- rather than shuffling people through the "Do you find me attractive?" scene and the buddy breathing, then going "SEE?" I can actually say things about symmetry and symbiosis and identity and sound reasonably intelligent. (And in fact I can probably pull up CotW and do the same thing for F/K/V, which is pretty great.) Anyway, basically the wonderful thing is that I've taught myself how to talk about due South intelligently. I hope.
The most infuriating thing is deeply related to the greatest thing: because I went through paying careful attention, I really noticed all the stuff that didn't work, too. In the grand scheme of things, what didn't work for me is negligible -- I've had Harry Potter and Doctor Who was major fandoms before this, and I could write whole essays on the things that didn't work for me in those canons -- but discovering the small flaws was frustrating, in much the same way that it's frustrating when you hang out with a new friend long enough and begin to discover all of their more annoying qualities. Due South's more annoying qualities, for me, are mostly limited to sometimes dancing over the edge into un-charming absurdity or just making no sense, and making me occasionally uncomfortable about the way it treats Those Scary Women, Haha, but comparatively dS is still pretty great.
The coolest thing was discovering, to my delighted astonishment, that this time through not only did I understand the previously-bewildering Meg Thatcher and to a lesser extent Stella Kowalski, but I actually like them, too.
5. Have you ever found yourself using fic to work through something from your real life, or is it purely separate? (If this question is too personal, substitute: what was the feedback you wanted to give me about "Northwest Passages" that one time?" Optionally, tell me that anyway because I'm curious to know what you thought of it. *g*)
Hm. It's not too personal a question, but it is a difficult one to answer, because ... I know I do that, possibly frequently, but never very consciously. Almost inevitably, what I choose to write has a lot to do with what I'm finding it relevant to work through -- possibly the most obvious example is when I wrote the naming of things, a Doctor Who fic about the Doctor and the Master's childhood romance and spectacular breakup, among other things. I'd recently had a breakup of my own, and while neither the circumstances or the feelings involved were particularly similar, I think writing about telepathic aliens with an even more complicated love life than mine was extremely helpful. The overlap of my own life and fic comes through in other subtler ways too: Terminus, for example, is intensely personal -- not because it has to do with things I was working through, but because it's about place, about drastic relocation, about loving your best friend, and those things are always very important to me even if I'm not technically working through them. I think the overlap also comes out not in stories but just in fragments of character -- I'm still a little nervous about writing from Fraser's POV, for instance, because I tend to attribute motivations to him in a very similar way to how I understand my own motivations, and if I'm not careful writing him will become about working through things from real life, which isn't necessarily what I want to go for -- it's wonderful and serendipitous when writing a story helps me work through something, but the object of the writing should not be to work through whatever it is, but rather to tell a good story.
5b: I completely forgot I wanted to give you feedback about Northwest Passages! I believe what I wanted to say was that I love how it is kind of a quest fic, but assumes all the things that happened, and is kind of About Ray instead of About How Fraser And Ray Got Together, and I think possibly fandom needs more fic like that. Out here, where the ice sounds were realer the further north you went, there wasn't much to do but embrace death and change and the whole shebang is probably my favourite line -- and incidentally, you give fabulously good RayK voice. And I like the switch from Fraser to Benton -- I have an inexplicable dislike of fic where RayK starts calling him "Ben," but a corresponding inexplicable joy for the same thing with "Benton," so that your fic goes in the latter direction delights me. Is good fic. <3
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Tell me about Cloud Atlas!
Ahaha, oh man, I project so hard into my writing that it's a bit ridiculous, so I'm glad I'm not the only one.
Also you should interview me!
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Holy shit Cloud Atlas, okay, it is ... first of all it is amazing because of the way it is structured. It's six nested stories, so the book kind of reads like [Adam Ewing sailing home from New Zealand in the 1800s [Frobisher the penniless musician in Belgium in the 1930s [Luisa Rey being a noir journalist in 1970s California [Timothy Cavendish the grouchy old English man in the early 2000s [Sonmi~451, a clone in dystopic near-future Korea [Zach'ry in Hawaii in the post-apocalyptic far-future] Sonmi~451] Timothy] Luisa] Frobisher] Adam]. And each of the nested characters finds something written by/about the previous character, is interrupted halfway through, and finally gets to finish in the second half. So structurally it is mad awesome, but it is also ... about Doing The Right Thing In The Face Of Adversity, but not in a preachy way, just ... about people, in a way that really gets to me. (I think this book sort of marks the beginning of my Good People Doing Good Things phase? Christ, now I want Fraser to be friends with Sonmi~451. Ahaha.) Anyway, I think it is a genuinely good book whether it is your thing or not, but the two stories nested closest to the middle are my favourites, so you do kind of have to stick out Adam's travel journals, and also everything about Timothy, who is the only one I am genuinely impatient with.
ANYWAY. I am going to interview you now!
1. Since you say you project on your writing, I'd like to hear about that! Do you use fic to work through things from your real life? Do you just end up identifying with characters and thus giving them the kind of motivations you have? How does this projecting-on-your-writing thing work for you?
2. So what's the deal with Watchmen, anyway? I have so far failed to either read or see it, but I know you love it: tell me why!
3. What's the thing you're most looking forward to doing when you get back to college in the fall?
4. Okay, you're suddenly a superhero. What's your power?
5. And what is the best thing that's happened to you in the past month?
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That sounds like the coolest book ever! I love books that do new things structurally, so I'll probably pick it up at some point. That reminds me, have you read House of Leaves?
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And oh man no, I have not read House of Leaves! I keep meaning to, partly because one of Nai's friends once wrote a crossover between it and due South (IDEK, okay) and partly just because it sounds awesome.
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It's such a weird book! I started it a few years ago, but it gave me nightmares, so I stopped. I keep meaning to finish it, though.
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(Interview me!)
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HEY LOOK AN INTERVIEW.
1. Significant Seven cylons: who are your favourites? Your least favouries? Why?
2. Tell me more about the neuroscience project you're doing this summer! Are brains still awesome? Is your apartment less bug-infested? Have you had time to go out exploring?
3. Would you ever consider creating little college-friend Sims and dropping them among your BSG Sim party? (This is an unfair question and a transparent ploy to make little pixelated me make out with little pixelated Leoben, so let me add a second question:) If you were to drop college-friend Sims among the BSG cast, what do you think would happen? And more importantly, would you Enthuse About Science with Gaius?
4. Since you're in the same dorm room next year as you were this past one, what are you going to do to make it new and different?
5. If your parakeet had an unlimited ability to retain the words you taught him, what phrases/sentences/speeches would you teach him?
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I will totally be answering these, although the 2nd question is one I'm going to be answering in an entry I just started writing. Do you have another one, or shall I keep it up? :3
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2. What is your very favourite thing about brains?
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ALSO I know this is so gratuitous, but, um, interview me?
*flees*
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Interview! Apologies for the high number of ridiculously hypothetical questions.
1. You are suddenly thrown back in time a few years and instructed to begin playing NML from scratch! What do you do differently?
2. You are suddenly thrown back in time and land ANYWHERE AT ALL. Where and when would you like to be? (And would you like a Doctor to accompany you?)
3. You're in a magical shiny a capella group and can choose to sing anything you like! What songs do you want to sing, and which if any do you want to sing a solo for?
4. Since you mentioned it, tell me an inappropriate joke about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
5. In a perfect world where things like money and social expectations are unimportant, what do you want to be doing in ten years?
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Ask meee?
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I loved reading this because your responses were all so thoughtful! I don't want any questions because I spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME thinking about myself already, but I might try to come up with some for you.
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And I will not give you questions then, m'dear, but if you would like to give me some, I am ... always up for talking about myself, obviously.
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2. What color do you wear the most?
3. Do you write with an imaginary reader (or plural imaginary readers) in mind? Or a friend? Or just yourself?
4. What kind of feedback do you like to get?
5. What is your least favorite book genre?
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Ummm let me see.
1. I am cheating and giving you a duplicate of a Sares question, but I want to ask this to everyone who was in the game, so: You are suddenly thrown back in time a few years and instructed to begin playing NML from scratch! What do you do differently?
2. Top five celebrity/fictional/historical crushes at the moment, go.
3. As you have observed, I intentionally or not am drawn to stories about good people doing good things. What kind of stories are you drawn to? This may or may not be a different question than "What are your favourite stories;" I'm specifically curious about thematic patterns that speak to you.
4. On the subject of favourites, what is your very favourite place to be in San Francisco?
5. And on the subject of place, you are suddenly barred from ever living in the United States again. In what country if any do you set up a permanent residence, and why?
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And because I looked back and noticed that I did not comment on this story when I first read it...well, I have just reread "the naming of things" AND its DVD commentary for the umpteenth time. It remains the best Doctor Who story I've read in twenty years of fandom, and the only one that has ever made me feel sorry for the Master. It is brilliant and makes me want to bite my keyboard in half from sheer envy.
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Your questions:
1. Daemons: what form would yours take? (Alternately, in case you haven't read His Dark Materials: what form would your Animagus take?)
2. You mentioned twenty years of Doctor Who fandom, and now I'm really curious: what was the fandom like when you first found it? What did and do you like or not like about it? (I'm not looking for a Complete History of Fandom and as far as I know you're not particularly active there, but I love hearing these kinds of stories.)
3. What's your favourite Discworld book, and favourite Discworld character? (You do not have to choose only one in either case; I don't think I'd be able to.)
4. Do you have any original stories in progress right now? If so, let's hear about them!
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Question away! Though I have to work for the next ~4 hours.
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1. If you were a tree, what sort of tree would you be?
2. What is your least favorite color?
3. Tell me about your best friend when you were six.
4. Where is the best place you've ever vacationed?
5. What's your favorite film genre?
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Normal adult life? Probably very boring things. Normality is vastly overrated. ;-)
(And in fact I can probably pull up CotW and do the same thing for F/K/V, which is pretty great.)
\o/
Interview me, please?
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1. What is the best film you've ever seen? (And if this is separate from your favourite film, what's your favourite film, and why are they different?)
2. What is your favourite kind of weather?
3. Tell me the best thing about living in New Zealand.
4. I have just discovered that you also know Buffy; when did you first see it? Who's your favourite? Who if anyone do you have a crush on? Tell me your Buffy experience!
5. I kind of want to ask the whole fandom this, but I'll start with you: which due South character do you identify with the most? (And, separately, which one would you be? Also, which one is your favourite? If they are all the same answer I will be astonished.)
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comment from aralias (openID does not love me, i do not know why)
(Anonymous) 2009-06-30 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)also, this - under stress I will, to my horror, awkwardly rub my eyebrow, and I'll occasionally do Fraser's nervous lip-lick is hilarious.