International Geek-Out Report (and a note on catching up)

[hmpf]

First, the note: I haven't gotten any further with my LJ catch-up plans because it was the last week-and-a-half of term and I was busy doing university stuff (except for the three days beccatoria was visiting me, when I was busy geeking out). Will get around to the catching up next week, I think.

***

Now for the International Geek-Out Report.

beccatoria arrived on Friday and left on Tuesday; in between lay three days of unrestrained geekiness. We watched all of Life On Mars and nine eps of Battlestar Galactica. Thankfully, she turned out to like LoM and I turned out to like BSG S3. We sang the chicken song. We had loads of crisps and sweets and other unhealthy food. We watched fanvids. We decided that Gene Hunt is the God of Children and should open an orphanage with Adama. We decided that Saul Tigh was a Russian intellectual in another life. We pointed at the screen screaming "battle shorts!!!" in unison. We visited the future of the 1980s and the Frankfurt University book warren. We talked writing and politics and Star Wars (I now know everything about the Star Wars Extended Universe.)

When she left I told her to write fanfic, and she did! And it rocks! (Sorry, beccatoria - I know I said I'd give more detailed feedback but I haven't gotten around to it yet - uni interfered.)

beccatoria also gave me a live read-through and betaing session of "68 Wives", which she loved and said is actually a lot more ready for publication than I thought it was. So, I may actually publish that *really* soon. (amonitrate, you got time for some beta reading?) I also showed her the Maya fic, which she didn't like so much - possibly, as we tentatively concluded, because it is unashamedly fanficcy, in an 'easy' way. Which is exactly what it is supposed to be, and I think it does the job it's supposed to do - namely, lovingly circling an emotion - so I'm fine with that. It's essentially emotion porn, no more, no less.

***

In other news, somehow I am now completely zen about any changes to Life On Mars canon that season two may possibly bring about. Oh, and I won a Magic Alex CD. :-)

Comments

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

ooo. I would love to. (YAY!)I have to finish up a piece for dejla first. What's your timeline like? I could get to it towards the end of the month, I think, if you're ready by then.

I think it could be ready by then, yes.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

It's super-short, so it shouldn't be much work. 1358 words at the moment, and not likely to grow any longer, as I'm just shifting parts of sentences around etc.

Re: I think it could be ready by then, yes.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Let me know when you're ready, and what kind of input you're looking for!

Re: I think it could be ready by then, yes.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just noticed that after the last couple of changes I made, the fic is still/again exactly 1358 words long. How weird is that?! (Now that I wrote that down, I seem to remember something like that happening to me once before... Seems like my fics have a predetermined length that can't be changed even if the fic itself is changed! *g*)

Just sent it to you, btw. But there's no hurry if you're not ready yet - I just figured that since I'm really quite certain that I've done everything I could, on my side, I might just as well send it off to you guys now so you can tell me what *you* think might still need work. (I'm actually suffering from delusions of grandeur at the moment, feeling that nothing really needs changing anymore. *g*)

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

My mouth is watering just by reading about that 68 wifes thing... post it soon?

I will try!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

As usual with a MacSlow, I can't really promise anything, though. ;-)

[ommadon.livejournal.com]

Surely the programme itself is canon-defining, the problem is the stuff the fans have devised themselves?

New canon

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

"New canon" means the canon that will be established by series two, i.e. new stuff that might throw a monkey wrench into all our theories and our fics and so on. I don't define our creativity as a 'problem'. I don't really define new canon as a 'problem', either - it just made me uneasy to think about for a while because I have become quite used to, not to mention quite emotionally invested in some of my ideas and speculations about how the show is going to continue/end, and if the show takes a radically different route I may be disappointed, depending on how well I think the route they choose works. There are quite a few ways the show could end that I can imagine being disappointed by, but, as I said, I am now quite zen about it.

Also, it will be more difficult to keep working on some of my fics, depending on which route the show will take. I don't like having to bend canon too far, unless I'm deliberately writing an alternate universe scenario, and I'm afraid that some of the possible endings for the show could ruin my fics quite thoroughly, or at least make it necessary for me to turn them into radical AUs, which I'm not very eager to do. I like AUs, but I like my AUs to be created by deliberate decision, not caused accidentally by the addition of new canon while I'm still writing. This is why I prefer writing for 'dead' shows, or if I'm writing for 'live' shows, to write 'filler' material that won't conflict with future developments. Unfortunately with Life On Mars I've embarked on several 'post last episode' stories, I really don't know why. But I don't want to abandon them, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey! I have an LJ tag all to myself!

ALL HAIL GENE HUNT & WILLIAM ADAMA'S ACADEMY FOR AGING ORPHANS! (Starbuck, stop hitting your brother, you know how impressionable little Chris can be!)

And he is so the God of Children, and no one will take that away from him! (Believe me, you don't know everything about the Star Wars Extended Universe, because NO ONE does. But you now know the important bits, as dictated by me.)

Don't worry about slow feedback - I actually only got to read your email on Saturday because I was having bizarre net-connection problems, but I've resolved the issue now. I was busy on Sunday, but I do mean to reply to your email, specifically to knock some sense into you. ;)

I do love 68 wives; unashamedly so! Though you need to be happy with it for yourself too, so take all the time you need. I'm sorry I don't think that the Maya fic is your best work. I don't dislike it, I've just seen you pull off incredible emotion porn *cough*Normal*cough*, and don't like to see you sell yourself short. Then again, your enjoyment of writing it counts as much as the finished product - one of the quirks of fanfic I suppose (though one could argue it's one of the quirks of writing in general.)

BATTLESHORTS!

PS. I have not written any more of the crossover mainly because a Neverwhere vid to The Raven (as in that cool Highlander vid) ate my brain. I've come to conclude that no matter how much I might want to make a vid - however much detail I plan it in - if it doesn't eat my brain and force me to vid it IMMEDIATELY, I probably won't get around to it. Still, I hope to be wrong about that. So anyway, I currently have 40s of Neverwhere vid. Oh Windows Movie Maker, thank you for making my first foray into fades not quite as agonising as it could otherwise have been (though I still maintain that .25s is too short a fade and .5 is too long...)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Um...that was me. Not logged in apparently. D'OH!

Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

(There's a meta essay or two waiting to be written in here, but I'm too frelling tired for anything like that today, after my first day on the new job.)

Of course the Maya fic isn't my best work. It doesn't need to be. I'm fine with writing something merely 'decent' on occasion. This is emphatically not 'selling myself short', at least not by my definition. It's the equivalent of deciding to just have fun playing in the sandbox for a little while.

I somewhat object to the classification of 'Normal' as emotion porn, btw, or perhaps rather to the comparison of the Maya fic with 'Normal'. They're very different animals. 'Normal' was the expression and culmination of everything I loved most about Farscape and John Crichton. It's the result of an enormous process of distillation that lasted considerably longer than the three years it took me to write the actual fic.

(Also, it was written from John's POV, which necessitated a certain style and a certain attitude and so on - essentially, a certain voice. That wasn't *my* voice. Neither is the one I'm using in the Maya fic, of course, though it's closer to 'my' voice than the one I used in 'Normal', I think. But a lot of the 'voice' in that fic is down to Maya, not me, even though it's not a first person fic.)

Now, the Maya fic is essentially fluff, popcorn (slightly angst flavoured), mental masturbation - and I'm saying that with a great deal of respect and love for these things, because I think they're a large part of what fanfic is about. This may be the/a part of fanfiction that you are uncomfortable with, I think. It's the 'easy' and artistically kind of pointless part, the part that marks it as a literature meant to be used and - possibly - discarded, a close relation to porn. If the Maya fic can be compared to anything else I've written it's 'Together', which is nearly identical not just in structure but also in purpose.

I continue to think/feel that the Maya fic does exactly what it's supposed to do (well, within limits, of course - it *is* unfinished, after all), in a way that is quite satisfying to me. 'Feel' is probably a more pertinent word in this context than 'think' - I know that when I reread what I have so far of that fic, and especially when I reread the beginning, I get exactly the kind of emotion I want to achieve. It conforms very much to the aesthetics of fanfic. It's not exactly paint-by-numbers, but it does stick closely to the rules of the genre. But it's a genre I love.

Okay, becoming incoherent here (brain falling asleep), so I'm signing off now. Sorry for the self-centred ramblings...

Re: Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

I somewhat object to the classification of 'Normal' as emotion porn, btw, or perhaps rather to the comparison of the Maya fic with 'Normal'. They're very different animals. 'Normal' was the expression and culmination of everything I loved most about Farscape and John Crichton.

Then I'm sorry. By comparing them I wasn't intending to lower Normal's place or elevate what the Maya fic "should" be. I completely understand the difference between emotional porn and emotional oscar-winning drama which has sex-scenes in it (tastefully and in full service to the story!) But perhaps that's the point - both tell a rough story, both involve sex - finding the point at which emotional porn becomes something as awesome as "Normal" is tricky. I do feel that Normal has more in common with the Maya fic in terms of its evolution (angst!popcorn being, perhaps, it's long-distant ancestor) than, say, your HP AU Epic. Which is, perhaps, why it comes to mind when trying to think of what the Maya fic could evolve into.

That said, it's your sandbox, and in a way, I envy your ability to cut loose and revel in it without worrying whether or not it's your "best" (whatever that means anyway...)

For what it's worth, I agree that the Maya fic does what it's meant to do. It's higher quality fan-fic that conforms to the rules of the genre. Perhaps the only difference in our opinions stems from how much we each love the genre. My preference being from crack!fic... :P ALL HAIL ADAMA'S ORPHANAGE!

Re: Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>I do feel that Normal has more in common with the Maya fic in terms of its evolution (angst!popcorn being, perhaps, it's long-distant ancestor) than, say, your HP AU Epic.

Oh, Misunderstanding Alarm! I didn't mean the HP AU epic. That has absolutely nothing in common with the Maya fic. If that HP fic has anything in common with anything, it is with the two Life on Mars AU fics I have started. All three have a lot of angst porn but are also intended to tell a longer, coherent story than I'm used to, their main point being to teach me how to do plot (well, actually, the horribly depressing Sam recvoery fic has several other points besides).

What I meant was the quick, throwaway fic 'Together' I wrote in 2003. *That* is very similar to the Maya fic - a focus for a burst of a particular kind of fannish emotion. It started in a very similar way, too - very unconsciously; it basically 'happened' without my ever consciously deciding to write it. Same with the Maya fic - I was half a page into that before I knew what I was doing (and the first half page, which just sort of 'happened', is still the part I like best about it.)

Re: Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

>Oh, Misunderstanding Alarm! I didn't mean the HP AU epic. That has absolutely nothing in common with the Maya fic.

Ah, Misunderstanding Alarm! Sorry - I am actually aware that the HP AU has nothing to do with this. I was trying, somehow, to explain why I thought that "Normal" was perhaps a better comparison to the Maya fic than some others that you'd written without me thinking they were actually the same in terms of desired effect, emotional importance or effort involved. Like I said, the best way is perhaps to say that fics like 'Normal' evolve from the baseline of fics like the Maya fic. I could see the Maya fic evolving into something like that (though that would be difficult given the lack of source material about her), but I can't see it evolving into a great, plotty epic. And perhaps that's what I'm pining for (evolution towards "Normal" not towards plotty epic), even though there's nothing wrong with you keeping it at the base level and not "upgrading" it. If I'm making sense. Argh, it's hard when I can't stand in front of you and make hand gestures.

Ultimately, yes, I think it's a matter of genre preference. It's always harder to appreciate something written in a genre you aren't particularly enamored with, although...

>Quite possibly. I'm the one who has eight ringbinders of the stuff printed out, after all. *g*

Indeed, and I could legitimately be accused of writing it. ;)

Re: Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Argh, it's hard when I can't stand in front of you and make hand gestures.

Heh. Maybe you should have Kev and Adrian film you while you try to express it in the medium of dance?

>Indeed, and I could legitimately be accused of writing it.

Yes, but writing something is almost like a bodily function, sometimes - something just needs to get out, (pardon the horrible imagery here). My point is that to write something you don't need to love it particularly.

Now, printing out eight full ringbinders of the stuff - *that* takes serious love. Or at least a serious kink.

Re: Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Perhaps the only difference in our opinions stems from how much we each love the genre.

Quite possibly. I'm the one who has eight ringbinders of the stuff printed out, after all. *g*

Okay... some more replies...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>ALL HAIL GENE HUNT & WILLIAM ADAMA'S ACADEMY FOR AGING ORPHANS! (Starbuck, stop hitting your brother, you know how impressionable little Chris can be!)

Oh, bwahahahahaaa! I *do* love the idea of their Great Unlikely Patchwork Family of Love!

>But you now know the important bits, as dictated by me.

Which is as good as knowing everything, since your word is like unto the word of God to me.

>I was busy on Sunday, but I do mean to reply to your email, specifically to knock some sense into you. ;)

No need, I'm quite sensible. I have a fairly good idea of who I am and what I can do.

>I have not written any more of the crossover mainly because a Neverwhere vid to The Raven (as in that cool Highlander vid) ate my brain.

I'm conflicted. Do I chide you for not writing, or do I cheer you on for vidding a show I like to a song I like? Ah, decisions...

Re: Okay... some more replies...

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

>Oh, bwahahahahaaa! I *do* love the idea of their Great Unlikely Patchwork Family of Love!

We should really start a family tree... They currently have, what, five kids? Six if you've seen "The Passage" and count Kat?

>Which is as good as knowing everything, since your word is like unto the word of God to me.

Dude, really, I do not need encouraging in the area of my meglomania...

>No need, I'm quite sensible. I have a fairly good idea of who I am and what I can do.

Actually, yes, you do in most areas and that comment was largely tongue-in-cheek. Though I feel that encouragement and deserved praise is never out of place. I sometimes wonder if you know who I am and what I can do (good lord that makes me sound like I'm about to reveal myself as a serial killer!), but that could be my own insecurities.

>I'm conflicted. Do I chide you for not writing, or do I cheer you on for vidding a show I like to a song I like? Ah, decisions...

Cheer me. The quicker I get it done the quicker you can go back to bugging me to get over my fear of writing fic and, err, write it.

Re: Okay... some more replies...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>They currently have, what, five kids? Six if you've seen "The Passage" and count Kat?

Definitely six. Kat definitely counts. (Then again, she's dead, so I dunno...)

>Actually, yes, you do in most areas and that comment was largely tongue-in-cheek. Though I feel that encouragement and deserved praise is never out of place. I sometimes wonder if you know who I am and what I can do, but that could be my own insecurities.

To be blunt...

I think you are a more talented writer than me. (Well, you already know that I think that, so that's not news, and that is not what I was going to be blunt about. Wait for it.) How *much* more talented exactly is beside the point, as these things are impossible to measure, and also, we're both not even remotely done growing and learning. But I know that when I read your stuff I am frequently awed, and that doesn't happen to me very often. With about 95% of all fanfic writers, and perhaps 70% of 'real, published' writers, even writers I love and admire, I feel like 'yeah, well, with a little bit of practice I could probably do something like that, myself'. (See? My megalomania doesn't need much encouragement either!) With you (and a select few others) I don't.

The fact that you are very talented indeed does not guarantee anything, of course. It does not even guarantee you'll manage to write a single decent book in your lifetime. (This was the blunt part, in case you hadn't noticed.)

Talent is just talent; what you make of it is subject to the decisions you make for your life, and to a lot of outer circumstances, too. And you may very well still have a lot to learn about writing - frankly, I haven't seen enough of your writing yet to judge that. I do know that it's possible to be very, very good at one aspect of something and be completely clueless about the next. Also, at least some of the areas you may still need to improve in would probably be areas in which I need even more to improve, so I may not even be aware enough of the possible flaws there to judge yours.

>(good lord that makes me sound like I'm about to reveal myself as a serial killer!)

Oh, but you *know* I like serial killers! *g*

Re: Okay... some more replies...

[(Anonymous)]

>Definitely six. Kat definitely counts. (Then again, she's dead, so I dunno...)

Hey, even dead kids need parents. Plus this can be pre-death. She can be Kara's growth-stunted irritating twin. Or maybe the eight year old that's really mad the six year old keeps out-doing her.

I'm going to skip over all the praise because it makes me shy, because I'm genuinely uncomfortable believing I'm better than people even if I am (and there are lots of people I think I'm better than - there's that irritating meglomania/fear of arrogance rearing its head again!)

>The fact that you are very talented indeed does not guarantee anything, of course. It does not even guarantee you'll manage to write a single decent book in your lifetime. (This was the blunt part, in case you hadn't noticed.)

That blunt part doesn't upset me. Or rather, the notion does upset me but you saying it doesn't, because it's something I'm hugely and acutely aware of. It's the main reason I feel unworthy of the praise sometimes given me (by you, but also by others like my writing profs at uni) because I feel a fraud. Like you say in your comment, one can be great at a certain aspect of writing (language) but fail, utterly at another (plot). That and my character flaws that prevent me from getting on with anything really do cause me to fear that I'll end up wasting whatever talent I do have. I think this is a real and terrifying possibility and it's one of the reasons I feel uncomfortable being held up as "better" than anyone.

See? We're both allowed self-indulgent self-centric posts!

Ooh, also, watched Life on Mars. Also will likely get to the 68 Wives beta work tomorrow or friday (going out this evening for Valentine's thingy) and get it back to you by the weekend at the latest. Hope that's all right. :)

Re: Okay... some more replies...

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

ARGH! Me again... At least I'm artificially boosting the number of comments you're getting on this post, right? Am I making you feel hugely popular? ;)