forget your Unified Theory of Everything

sci fi, fantasy, and mainstream today

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 05:44:00 GMT

I’ve always loved the fantasy genre. When I was younger, I had two major problems with it:
-It was sort of looked down upon. I saw fantasy/sci fi authors writing about it themselves, that it was not a “respected” genre, and the flack the writers receive for not being “literary” or “serious”. Mostly I didn’t like this because my sophomore English teacher told my mom she wished I’d read higher brow novels instead of reading Dune.
-When I was around 6-12 years old, I could never find anything aimed at me I wanted to read. I liked the fantasy novels, but they were some hard reading for a 9 year old sometimes. There was A Wrinkle In Time and Narnia and some others, but finding things was hard work!

I feel like all of that is different now. And I feel like the number one cause or effect is named Harry Potter.

( amiright? )

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Conundrum

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:51:46 GMT

What are people's thoughts on making a fanfic into an original work of fiction and attempting to do something professional with it?

For instance, if you took a Wolverine/Rogue fic you wrote, took away their super powers, gave them different names and different histories, but otherwise kept what words you could of the fic you had written intact?

What if that fic was already posted? Would that mean taking the fic down, or locking it, would removing people's access to the fanfic be reprehensible, would it be in violation of some kind of copyright if the professional thing you were trying to do with it demanded that the work be previously unpublished? What if your fic is on someone else's archive? Do you ask that to be taken down too?

I feel like some people will answer that one should just try to write something new instead of recycling a fanfic for a professional purpose, but I have one or two things that I have posted that . . . were more just using characters in order to say something for me, rather than using something for me to say something about the characters, if that makes sense.

All thoughts and opinions welcome.

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Are you there, science? It's me.

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:41:52 GMT

I’ve always wanted to know everything about everything, and I’ve always loved the way everything connects to everything else. Except science.

( Is it just me, or is this a hard subject to get into? Is it just me, or does it seem like kids will more likely be interested in anything else more than science (or possibly math)? And is it just me, or does it seem like the latter are more often girls? )

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Reason #1 why I like books so much

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:03:24 GMT

The nature of reality trips me up a lot, to the point where sometimes I can’t say stuff because I’m confused about what’s real or not. So I figured I’d say stuff about the nature of reality. This is kind of teenage existential angst stuff, the stuff I was worrying about when I was sixteen, the kind of stuff I think you’re supposed to get over by now, unless you take up a career in philosophy, religion, or theoretical physics.

I’m aware the fact that I sit around contemplating the universe probably comes off pretentious. I’m also aware that other people before me have done so better and already thought of (and probably have specific jargon for) all the things I’m saying.

Mostly I must just like to hear myself talk. I love words and I love writing and I love saying things and things being said. So I do also love to discuss, so I have a request for trippy existential books and discussion of trippy existential books at the end. You can skip to that part if you want. Or just not read at all. I won’t be hurt!

( Existential angst. )

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It's been done

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:39:41 GMT

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?

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