a conspiracy of cartographers

I have this horrible tendency to actually want to talk about the ridiculous sci-fi rubbish I watch sometimes. Sorry.

I enjoyed Tin Man! I enjoyed it in a ropey-effects-and-uneven-acting way, but I unironically like Doctor Who so this is totally normal. It also gets points for making me want to rewatch The Wizard of Oz despite the fact that I don't even like that film.

aria: I watched the ridiculous tin man thing!
aria: I KIND OF LOVED IT despite the fact that it was horrible
anekdot: THIS IS TOTALLY FAIR, MAN
anekdot: is it super dystopia-y???
anekdot: because if so I DO NOT JUDGE AT ALL
aria: YES although in the hilarious way
aria: where a hot chick who looks suspiciously like kristen bell without actually being kristen bell wears ... lots of weirdass corsets
aria: and tells ckr to go and terrorize the peasants
anekdot: ... HAHAHAA

( A little more re: Tin Man, this time with complete capitalized sentences and a little coherence. )

This morning I woke up and, completely unpremeditated, signed up for polybigbang because apparently wanting to do a blackout in Cliche Bingo isn't good enough for me, oh no, if I'm not spending my summer writing a Doctor Who season then the insanity has to leak out in other ways. I'm not particularly worried about the bigbang, though, because [a] I have three months, [b] it's a story I've had in my head since ... April? anyway and it's already at about 4000 words, and [c] the last time I wrote F/K/V it went waaaay over 10000 words, so this is not actually particularly daunting.

When I say "this morning," though, I mean "less than an hour ago" because I sensibly set my alarm to give me about eight hours of sleep but still wake me up with some of the day still left after I went to see midnight HBP last night. I could've made the 3AM post going Woo guys it was kind of awesome! but instead I'm making the noon post that is slightly more coherent.

( Rocks fall surprisingly few people die considering that Voldemort is in power. )

MUCH more importantly, I've now seen at least two separate places that Paul Gross and CKR are apparently goofing around on the Gunless shoot and bewildering everyone with their old due South inside jokes. I mean, really, "We spent a long time together on 'Due South' so that stuff keeps coming back, all these stupid things we used to do on 'Due South' we started doing again on set. And of course, nobody knows what we're doing and I think we look like fools." dsksddsf I don't even know what to do with that. Besides have more joy in my soul for that one quote than for a whole two-and-a-half hours of Harry Potter. And I'm sure Gunless will be rubbish but that absolutely doesn't matter.

Now for breakfast and Tin Man! Because going indiscriminately through CKR's entire oeuvre is a perfectly valid way to spend my day off, but also because I'd been vaguely meaning to watch it before I knew CKR was in it anyway.

Today I bring unsolicited DVD commentary for And Count Myself a King of Infinite Space. It is only thinly masquerading as DVD commentary, though, and when it grows up it mostly wants to be an essay about Billy Tallent. Right now, though, it mostly exists in demonstration of the fact that I have watched both Slings & Arrows and Hard Core Logo enough that I can meta about both of them with reasonable intelligence.

( Commentary! Interactive in the sense that people should totally talk about HCL with me. )

So I watched HCL again and I may be slightly floored by how much I love it so quickly. This is what happened to all of you who got dragged into new Trek fandom, isn't it? But, um, I am just not used to movies doing this to me. I mean, I loved Life On Mars right away, but because I'd already gotten acclimated to Doctor Who over a year or two; I loved due South right away, but I'd already seen Slings & Arrows and mildly enjoyed it (mildly, yeah, I don't know). I guess this is due to the magic of already loving CKR? The fact that it's some sort of nesting doll fandom-within-a-fandom? I have no idea!

Mostly I think I am bewildered because it does not at first glance seem like the kind of thing I would enjoy. (Of course, neither was Fight Club, which is neither here nor there but at least both of them fall under the "Emotionally screwed-up guys hitting each other, woo!" category?) I mean, at first thought it kind of goes, Things I normally like: Callum Keith Rennie! and Things I normally don't like: ...everything else? but then I actually thought about it for a little while, and it actually goes something like this:

Things I normally like: Callum Keith Rennie; actors who are so obviously friends that no, really, I'd happily just watch a whole hour and a half of them playing their stupid time-travel game and calling each other names; things you need to watch at least five times in order to catch more than fifty percent of the nuances; stories that are told not quite in linear narratives; stories with unreliable narrators (seriously, we have the documentary conceit but no way was John actually reading his diary and I am beginning to have suspicions of Joe-POV shots, plus I have a hilarious dislike of 'Bruce' and do not really trust him to have edited for appropriate foreshadowing); people who are in love and do stupid stuff and fail at any emotional articulation ever sfdldsfdjf; and the way I feel like I'm being spoiled a lot lately and given subtext that at second glance is just basically text.

Things I normally don't like: the way I am beginning to suspect that if I watch that film often enough I will just get lung cancer by osmosis, seriously; sacrificing goats :( NO REALLY WHY; and SPOILER that goddamn movie ending where someone unexpectedly dies because I've been crushed when this happens in otherwise good movies plenty of times, but ... in this particular case my sense of narrative is perfectly happy, possibly in part because I already knew and had fun with the foreshadowing.

So I guess it makes sense! I am still a little bewildered, though, and also slightly despairing because when I get that much fandom love I want to do something fannish and I cannot conceive of a world where I would be able to write fic I'd be satisfied with. (And no, really, somewhere in a corner the Master is crying to himself because his Doctor obsession has got nothing on Joe's for Billy. Oh yeah, and Joe's fast one kind of works for a little while and he doesn't look too stupid doing it. ...I have a couple of OTP types, but one of them is so hilariously unhealthy!) Anyway, um. *flaily hands*

This probably wasn't coherent at all. Maybe I'll try to go write more Kowalski; he cooperates.

Okay, BURNING QUESTION TIME, because I'm trying to write Fraser POV things and I keep tripping over and second-guessing the damn pronouns. When in doubt, consult the internet!


Me personally, 'Fraser' is invisible to me when I read it but I kind of feel weird having the guy refer to himself by his last name inside his own head when I'm writing him. My default is 'Benton' because I assume that's the name he uses in his head, and at this point when I read it, it also comes up invisible. I actually hate 'Ben' except in exceptional circumstances ie when the narrative starts when he's a child, because plenty of old friends call him Ben without it making me twitch. ('Benny' is not even an option, although if you're writing Vecchio-POV I find it mad charming.) The problem is that this makes sense to me but I imagine that 'Benton' is not invisible to other people and possibly even annoying, and having some raw numbers might be nice.

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 wintercreek: ( 1. How did you decide what information to include on your Master Fic List? 2. What's the best book you've read that's not part of the literary canon? 3. Are there pieces of online/fannish convention that have infiltrated your offline life? 4. What was the greatest thing about your due South rewatch? 5. Have you ever found yourself using fic to work through something from your real life, or is it purely separate? )

A couple links, of varying importance:

i. I've been fairly quiet regarding the warnings debate in which fandom is currently engaged. (Here is a fairly comprehensive list of various posts; where would we be without delicious these days!) I really don't have much to contribute in the way of relevant discussion, mostly because I can't wrap my head around hearing someone say, "This is hurting me," and being able to respond with, "It's your problem, not mine." In any case, many people who take a similar view have already said it better than I could; in particular I'd like to link oliviacirce's post On Being A Village Elder, as I think it articulately covers all the things I don't quite know how to say.

ii. In much less serious news, wintercreek is getting married in a couple of weeks, and thus is holding an Online Fannish Bachelorette Party! Ficlet prompts are supplied, with fandom suggestions but also wild cards; as wintercreek says, Do not feel limited by my fandoms - the best parties are the ones where your friend brings her sister, who brings those guys who live next door with the tattoo artist, right? Right! Go play, the party's great. :D

Two bits of conversation:

aria: I am PANTS at writing fraser
oliviacirce: I bet you are not as pants at it as you think
oliviacirce: but it is sort of a trial by fire, yeah
oliviacirce: I mean, I've never tried, I am too scared to try
aria: well, see, he ... wants to say everything! he is bad at just implying things because he doesn't really pay that much attention to his internal state
aria: so if I make him do so, then he starts paragraphing it
aria: and I am sitting here going "oh my god, you incompetent man! MAYBE I SHOULD LET RAY DRIVE"
aria: it's not that he has a difficult voice, he just has a terrible time saying anything.

oliviacirce: how are you aside from fighting fraser tooth and claw?
oliviacirce: (that is a great image, btw)
oliviacirce: (I am really into it)
oliviacirce: (I am imagining you actually fighting fraser, now.)
aria: (ahaha oh my god you are cracking me the hell up)
aria: (FRASER WINS)

Re: conversational snippet #1: those of you who do write Fraser's POV, how in hell do you do it? It's not a matter of not having his voice; it's a matter of coaxing him into actually telling a story about himself, and then making him do it with subtlety.

Behold, a Cliche Bingo card!



I am even more wildly excited than I might've been, because apparently the response to Cliche Bingo was much greater than the admin expected and they're now cutting off assignments at 400 cards. I am kind of shakingly glad to have made it under the wire, which is kind of silly, but apparently I really care about these silly fic prompts.

At a glance I already see two lines for which I could easily fill in all the squares (hint: they both have the "Families" square in; hello, the excuse I was looking for to write kidfic!) and I kind of love how I see the free square in the middle and immediately think that it must be a section of the cover of Sword of Desire, that romance novel Frannie keeps around.

I kind of want to do a blackout of the card, though. Ahaha. (I am kind of sad I got "tentacles" because really? this is the closest I ever want to get to doing fannish things with tentacles, and I can't really believe I linked it again anyway.) The best part is that not everything on here can be due South fic, so if I want to do a blackout (25 fics? before August 31? WHY NOT) I will have to produce some other things too. \o/

( Call of the Wild: In which Fraser goes home, there are TWO RAYS, YAY, and everyone maybe lives happily ever after; lots of subtext in permutations of an OT3, my many varied joys and frustrations with this damn episode, and some endings. )

Now I have no excuse not to go write fic. :D