forget your Unified Theory of Everything

-Last year I wanted to talk about Star Trek, but I had so many things to say that go in so many random directions, I eventually just started this doc I just randomly add to from time to time. I've started breaking it down and posting pieces of it every Tuesday, but not today, because:

-My laptop is broken. The backlight doesn't work. My dad says it's probably just a $1.70 capacitor on the inverter board which he can solder on, but he's in Houston. I'm going to be in Houston in 3 weeks, so . . . three weeks until I have a computer. The shop says $150-250 for a repair. Do I buy a new comp, or wait for Dad? Choices, choices.

-Earlier this year I posted about a girl at work, T. ( Update on T )

-I have been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. ( Update on the best show ever )

-I started an Avatar: TLA Haiku Comment Fest.

Go write a haiku.
It can be a lot of fun.
I did it--now you!

I banged this out in the last two hours. Some things I spend days and days and days on and pour my heart and soul in. In fact all of the fanfic I try to write these days is like that, which is why I never post any. So I made myself do this, and here are the results, all unfurnished. It was supposed to be a series of vignettes, but it got loooong.

Why am I writing BBC Sherlock fanfic? I don't even know.

Title: The Anatomical Difference
Word Count: ~2,000
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson pre-slash, I guess.
Warning: genderswitch.
Characters: John, Sherlock, a girl named Mary
Summary: John broke up with his girlfriend. Sherlock doesn't comfort him.
A/N: edited Oct 9, 2010, with thanks to pandarus for the Brit-pick.

( The Anatomical Difference )

About ten years ago, when I was sixteen, I was spending a significant portion every day looking for an objective morality. I didn’t feel I could definitively tell right from wrong. It bothered me, so I thought that I could find a “platform” from which to view the world, I could determine the difference in any situation. I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about it.

Later I found out what philosophy and religion were about.

That’s my best example of having Things To Say about something, then realizing Things had already been said. Finding out you’ve been chipping away at a question that is pretty much the central theme of all abstract thought in the history of the world can be kind of a downer, actually. Gets to be even more of a downer when you realize that people have always been chipping away at all the questions you’ll ever think to ask, and they’ve chipped deeper than you’re going to.

It makes you wonder, what’s the point? ( Are you unwilling to speak unless to say something that will impress the whole room? )

So, do you feel the intimidation thing? On LJ? In writing? In real life? How do you get past it? Do you think about someone who inspires you, or does that make it worse? Who/what is it that intimidates you? What do you want to do with your life, anyway?

This is what I've been doing with my free time:



my_daroga is Kirk; I directed. Both of us produced. This is a video preview for our production, which ends this Sunday.

I want to keep a list of all the books I have read this year, in case I ever get time to review them (unlikely).

Finished
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
The Leisure Seeker - Michael Zadoorian
Man In The High Castle - Philip K. Dick
Love In Infant Monkeys - Lydia Millet
Demon's Covenant - Sarah Rees Brennan
Leviathan - Scott Westerfield
Reading Lolita In Tehran - Azar Nafisi

In progress
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
Locksley - Nicholas Chase
At The Water's Edge - Carl Zimmer

Next Up
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
Harold and the Pursuit of Happiness -
The Girl Who Played Go

On Hiatus
Cosmos - Carl Sagan

I don't know how it can possibly be that I've only finished five books so far this year. Possibly all the fanfic . . . But Daniel Deronda should count as six!

On my interest list on LJ, I've had a lone little interest no one else shares, probably because I just don't know what else to call it: super hero ethics.

Probably three years ago now, I started writing meta about it which I've since lost. It started with a question raised by Cordelia Chase in an early episode of Buffy:

CORDELIA: I don't get it. Buffy's the Slayer. Shouldn't she have...

XANDER: What, a license to kill?

CORDELIA: Well, not for fun. But she's like this superman. Shouldn't there be different rules for her?

WILLOW: Sure, in a fascist society.

CORDELIA: Right! Why can't we have one of those?

I've thought a lot about those lines since I first heard them. It's an interesting question. Buffy is superman, whom Nietzsche said should get to obey different laws. Can we? Should she? What will become of us if she doesn't, and if she does?

These are questions I'm always looking for superhero stories to address. The big budget blockbuster superhero movies never do.

I'd say more, but lots of my thoughts are really well expressed here. This is a great, thoughtful examination of who superheroes are, and popular culture's treatment of them. Since those are all things I've always wanted to talk about, I hope people check it out.

When was the last time you participated in fandom on the internet not through a journaling site? I don't really mean posting fanfic to something like fanfiction.net, unless you also post and discuss in the forums there. I mean discussion, meta, the posting of fanfic, the making of graphics, etc, all being share through a medium other than LJ, DW, Insane Journal, JournalFen, etc. This would be a forum, website, mailing list . . . if you did something like a fanzine, not online, I'm interested in that too.

1) What fandom was it?
2) What was the medium? (e.g. was it a forum, a mailing list, etc)
3) When was this?
4) Are you still active in that fandom?
5) Why did you participate there, and not at a journaling site?
6) Are you more active in fandom on journaling sites or at other places?
7) How did the different mode of interaction affect your fandom participation?
8) Does there seem to you to be a difference in fen between the other medium and journaling sites? What are the differences? Why do you think those differences exist? Is it the nature of that fandom, or do you think it has anything to do with where that fandom is taking place?
9) What were the fen in the other medium's thoughts on yaoi? (No, seriously. What was the general sentiment towards slash?)
10) Was it easier or harder to get into a fandom through a medium other than a journaling site?
11) Which medium do you prefer?

If it sounds like I'm doing a study, I'm not. I'm just dabbling around in this other fandom, the fen of which seems mainly to congregate around a forum rather than playing on LJ/DW. I'm wondering how many people share my experiences there. Forums used to be my main method of fandom access. I was comfortable in them and found LJ inconvenient and not very suited to my style. I became used to it because I decided a lot of cool people were here...and now I'm beginning to think it's the only way!

-This totally made my day! Someone mentioned a fic I wrote on fandom secrets: here, post 164. I figure I can post that here, since I don't know who did the secret. But thanks to scabbyfish for directing me to it.

-Now, that makes me want to write more porn. Luckily, I just wrote 16 pages of porn in MS Word. Why so long, you ask? Because it's Victorian porn. Victorians take forever to get their clothes off.

-To add to all this encouragement, I keep getting really nice comments to random fic. Different fic, and the comments are from different people. So . . . thanks, random fandom brownies!

-But speaking of feedback and encouragement . . . the secret spot is delicious. Does anyone else check there for feedback to their fic? You bookmark it, then see who else bookmarked it, and look at what they say. You read some really nice things that people say about your stuff, even if they didn't comment on your fic. You also get to read some negative comments you'd otherwise never see. Most people are using delicious for themselves, you know? So they don't bother with being nice. Which is kinda nice. I don't solicit con crit any more because no one ever gave it to me with the exception of an awesome few, but I still like to see it from time to time.

Hello everyone! I was trying to post to a comm when I delighted you all with The 5th Element and inscrutable numbers. I'd tried several times, and the last time, did not check to see if I was still posting to the comm or myself. So, apologies.

In much the same news, I'm writing a novel. I'm trying to write a little bit every day, and posting helps me keep track. But just word count posts are boring, so I post various things that come to mind when I'm working on the story. Here are some images, and here's what to do with them:

1) Pick one! Then write a drabble.
2) Name that context.
3) Pick all of them! And try to figure out what the hell I'm writing about.
4) Tell me about your own writing adventures; I miss you and would like to hear about them.

( pictures under here. )