a fool's musings

Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write...

Warning: Adult Content achromatic unfinished fic graveyard recs journal new stuff recent stuff my back pages January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 the five Ws, or, all about me profile e-mail victoria my livejournal the original P&R comments current mood: "pathological and unbalanced" Items of Interest People LiveJournal folks Baraita bishclone claritylit Jintian Kat Allison Kit Mason metablog mix-tapes Neil Gaiman Nestra Sarah T. Seema Shrift Sundry Mourning zendom Music Walk On - U2 Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen If I Can't Change Your Mind - Sugar Sick of Myself - Matthew Sweet Town Called Malice - The Jam One - U2 The Space Between - DMB Books Lord of the Rings Catch-22 The Neely Trilogy Absalom! Absalom! Possession: A Romance Foucault's Pendulum Dreamhouse LA Confidential I Capture the Castle Sandman Waking the Moon Shows Angel Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in reruns) Alias West Wing The Simpsons webrings < ? fanfiction ! > < ? writers ! > diaryreviews.diaryland.com NYC Bloggers Comments by Haloscan.com all links, if I haven't screwed up somehow, should open in a new browser window

2002-04-24 - 4:50 p.m. ruminations on Secretaries' Day Secretaries' Day. Or, excuse me, Administrative Assistants' Day. I don't care what they call me, as long as they pay me, you know? When I was younger, and foolishly believed I wanted a "career," I fussed about being an Admin. instead of a Secretary. Then, when everyone was an Admin, I wanted to be a Project Assistant, or a Project Coordinator. I wound up with the title Executive Assistant, with Special Projects Coordinator appended on when I fussed (long story about being given the runaround about titles that is too boring to share). Didn't get business cards, though. it was a running joke between me and Sue about the business cards, so much so that when I left, and told her I was going to a job where I'd have a title that was entitled to them, one of her parting gifts to me was a leather business card case from Coach. Having business cards is lovely. It's so nice to see your name engraved on that square of vellum, with the telephonic digits embossed on it, and a title like "Meeting Planner" or "Conference Producer." But you know, I never did make much use of them. I left boxes full of unused cards behind at both IQPC and NMSS. Now, I'm an Admin again, and it's Administrative Assistants' Day. We went to lunch on BEMC, all the admins on the floor, and AP got each of us a rose, which was nice of her. I had a lovely plate of gnocchi, so light and melt-in-your-mouth good, in sauce with ricotta salata shaved over it. Also bruschetta and for dessert, a lovely hazelnut gelati and some cappuccino with little biscotti. Molto delicioso. Also, my cousin - the one who works here - was in the restaurant, so I finally said something. He was surprised, to say the least. He was like, "You look familiar, but I can't place you. Obviously you work for BEMC, because you're with CC" and I said, "Yeah, I work for MW, and I'm also your cousin Victoria," which threw him for a loop. Hee! When I got back to my desk, there was a box of Godiva truffles and a card from my guys [and L.], and then K gave me a small box of truffles as well, since I do stuff for him occasionally. It's all very sweet and makes me feel very appreciated, considering I screwed up and sent the wrong letters out yesterday. Now I'm opening all my WIPs and hoping one of them strikes a spark, so I don't have to go back to the orgyfic. In light of that, ficcage, to see if I get inspired... Here's the very beginning of something I've been calling "Breakdowns & Wake Up Calls," though that's subject to change, if I get a better idea. *** Logan sat at the kitchen table, reading the New York Times. He was luxuriating in the silence. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and most of the kids had taken off for points unknown. Sure, he missed Marie, but it was almost worth it to have Jubilee and the other noisy brats gone for three whole days. She'd gone with Jubilee and Kitty up to the mountains for the weekend. Something about a Fireworks Festival up by Lake George. He hadn't paid much attention, because he'd been watching NASCAR. They were supposed to be getting home sometime that afternoon, and he couldn't help but feel a little excited at seeing Marie again. It was strange -- he'd gone that first time, and stayed away for six months before he'd been overwhelmed with the urge to go home. First off, the whole idea that he -- Wolverine -- had a home was ludicrous. Second of all, that he had missed Marie -- that he had missed *anyone* -- was not something he was prepared to deal with, either then, or now, three years later. He continued to occasionally go away, but like a magnet draws iron (or adamantium, in his case), he always came home, drawn by Marie's inexorable pull. The day wore on, and he began to get impatient as the kids returned in small groups from their trips, but there was no sign of Marie or her friends. By seven that night, he was climbing the walls. "She's supposed to be here, 'Ro," he growled to the weather goddess, who smiled sympathetically and patted his arm. "Stop that! Stop humoring me. Where the hell is Chuck? Can't he get on the brainphone and find out where Marie is?" "And Kitty and Jubilee, as well," Storm reminded him. "Yeah. Them, too," he said, though they hadn't even entered into his thoughts. "I will mention it to him when he calls, Logan, but he is on vacation, also. I'm sure the girls just got caught up in the festivities and left late. The traffic is probably terrible. They will be home soon." "Hmph." He stalked off and Storm let her laughter ring out. Who would have expected the Wolverine to be such a worrywart? But then, where Rogue was involved, his responses couldn't be predicted. Who'd have thought he'd stick around for so long, taking his promise to protect her so seriously? Certainly not any of the X-Men. Yet he had. He'd also proved to be a damned fine self-defense and martial arts instructor. He was so good that she and Charles no longer worried quite as much about the younger ones joining the team when it was time. And she knew Scott was happy to let him handle the combat training, allowing him the freedom to focus on tactics and planning, his own strengths as a commander. All in all, the situation had worked out very well indeed, over the past few years, though she knew neither Logan nor Scott would ever admit to it. Shaking off such serious thoughts, Ororo made herself a cup of tea and headed up to her room for a night of backgammon with Hank. *** ~victoria [current mood: food coma'd] [current music: You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-24 - 11:31 a.m. reactive and speculative fanfic Happy Birthday, Daddy! ~*~ I keep adding people to my reading list, and the more people I add, the less frequently they seem to update. Huh. ~*~ responses to some people to whom I've owed responses for a while. ~*~ I was thinking on the train this morning about various types of fanfic, brought on by this damn dark AU orgyfic. See, originally, it was supposed to be a sex romp, an L/R romance. But when I started writing it, I couldn't figure out all the motivations and still keep it light. Maybe it's my own bourgeouis morality getting in the way. Maybe it's the characters' bourgeouis morality getting in the way [looks darkly at Scott, per usual], but I couldn't see the X-Men, as I know them, behaving this way without some sort of exterior motivation. And well... you see where that got me. Or you will, if I ever finish writing it. So it's totally AU or, perhaps Elseworlds, to be geeky and technical about it. Part of the fun of fanfic is taking the characters we know and love and plunking them down in other times and places [I love well-done Elseworlds fic. Pirate!Logan. Arabian!Logan. My own Soiled Dove, Dee's Austentatious X-Men]. Elseworlds totally foregoes traditional "canon" and relies on canonical characterization to carry the story through when everything else is different. I guess AU would be taking canon to a certain point and then diverging, ala The Wish. Buffy never comes to Sunnydale, then XYZ never happens, but ABC does. I write a lot of AU. In fact, with the exception of Parallax, everything I've written is AU, because everything but that will be Jossed when the next movie comes out. In a movie fandom, you kind of have to go AU pretty early on. I mean, there's only so much canon you've got. There are only so many missing scenes and conversational gaps to fill in. So while some things are blatantly AU [hooker!Rogue; Consumption; the whole Unspoken RR; now the orgyfic] because they don't even follow canon through the movie, some things are what I'd consider speculative fanfiction, they extrapolate from the movie canon into a future I'd like to see, but never will onscreen. Television shows, it seems to me, produce more reactive fanfic, in that people write stories to fix what they view as wrong. TV-fic lives very much in the interstices, the unseen conversations and downtime the audience is never shown. It, too, can be speculative [see the huge array of AU and future fic in Smallville already], but a lot of it is speculative *in reverse* [see all the Lily Luthor fic out there, or in HP, the James/Lily/Snape/Sirius stuff that gives backstory. I lurve backstory, personally. I generally don't *write* it, but I spend a lot of time constructing it in my head], but I think the majority of shows produce this reactive type of fic. We [generic, not royal *g*] see the subtext between Clark and Lex or Faith and Buffy or Bayliss and Kellerman, and need to write about what's really happening between them, that the show will never tell us. (Speaking of Bayliss, I bet there's a ton or slash about him from before he came out, but is there any that posited the abuse before that was revealed? Let me know. I'd be interested in reading it, since all the clues were built into the character, even though the storyline wasn't decided on until the fifth season.) Does anyone else see this type of genre split with fanfic as a whole? Or am I being reductive? Obviously, I think there's fic that does both, and that these categories are only *one* way to look at fic, but I think the type of fic one writes -- reactive or speculative -- says a lot about why we write fic and what we want out of the fic we read. *** I've been thinking of stealing Jenn's idea and putting a little "link" button at the end of each entry to link directly back to it, for easier reading. Anyone think that's a good idea? I mean, I already put (and my b-p problems continue *g*) named anchors in the entries I think people would be interested in finding quickly, and use them in the links in the LJ, but I don't know if it enough people bother to link to individual entries in here that it would be useful and not just extra work. Or maybe put the named anchor in the entry title? Hmm... must think on this. Feel free to throw me your 11 cents on the topic. ~victoria [current mood: contemplative] [current music: Tiny Dancer - Elton John... love this song] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-23 - 11:54 p.m. Just because I can! Ava Adore is so sexy... "In you I feel so pretty / in you I taste God" I made an oopsie earlier. The CC song is "I Wish I Was a Girl." I just happened to write a fic that used a line from that song and called it "The Devil's in the Dreaming" and since it went with the theme... You can see why I made the mistake, I hope. In other news, Blue Smoke was quite good. Diana looks fabulous. They're very happy about the pregnancy and it's definitely twins. *grins* Babies. I nub babies. The food was good - and fast! We were out of there by 7:15, 7:30 at the latest. No music while we were there, but it was way too early. *** Jenn writes: I don't necessarily write for shock value--that term still pretty much confuses me when people use it in a dismissive tone, because I honestly don't get the issue there. If you're not trying for an emotional response from your audience, then I'm not sure what exactly you are writing for. and But--the shockfic question is hitting me now, especially with CreepyLexFic wandering around my head. The point isn't necessarily to shock the reader, but that's supposed to be part of it. Emotional connection is important to me--if the reader isn't connecting, then the story is a failure to me personally, whether I'm writing a PWP or an epic. You can't do halfways when you're on certain subjects, though, you've GOT to make the point--rape is the one that I see often done badly, glossed or used in romance-novel terminology or done with the clinical precision of a surgeon, and that just doesn't work usually. Backing down in the middle of that level of intensity is simple failure. See, I think shockfic or writing for shock value is completely different from putting everything you've got emotionally into a fic, or ratcheting up the emotional intensity to a near-breaking point. I think it's more a function of bad writing. Authors do it because 1. they think it's edgy or cool; 2. they can't write well enough to get the emotional reaction from the reader without going over the top; or 3. hey, maybe people won't notice the big gaping plot holes or totally flat characterization if I have character X chop character Y up into little pieces and make a pie out of him! It's totally gratuitous and comes out of nowhere. It's putting in graphic violence or nasty, degrading sex or whatever into the fic, even if it doesn't fit the story, just because you can! It has nothing to do with the writer trying to pull out all the stops and tell the story and everything to do with the writer just trying to shock the reader because she *can't* write a good story without that over-the-top shock. A hypothetical example, to use your paraphrase of Te, with the skull fucking, since I think that's a great phrase... *g* You want to show your bad guy is really a bad guy. I mean a mean, a real Charles Manson-type psychopathic motherfucker. What do you do? You show him killing his mother in a particularly ugly and violent manner. Now, I think in most places and most societies, matricide is pretty horrifying. The reader is going to get the point that this guy is a nutjob etc. Shockfic is having him cut off his mother's head and then fuck the bloody stump of her neck. Just because he can! (As an aside, I think I'm going to have to make myself an LJ icon that says, "just because I can!" with Lionel on it. Or somebody even more evil. And Beth has just provided me with some wonderful LIonel pics. Squee!) There's shocking that serves the story, and then there's shocking just for the sake of being shocking, of being "edgy" or "dark". And the latter is bullshit and bad writing and deserves to be dismissed. In my opinion, of course. But since it's my diary, who else's opinion would it be? *snerk* I wanted to discuss something else, about fanon and canon and being in a fandom too long to look at the characters the same way you used to, but I guess that can wait, since I'm tired. As always, comments are welcome in the LJ or guestbook ~victoria [current mood: tired and content] [current music: Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-23 - 5:29 p.m. the devil's in the dreaming Just quick 'cause I'm meeting D & F for dinner in a little bit: Annie (aka ShadowyMoon) has a new blog. Check out her theme. *G* Also, Nestra has a similar motif now. (And how many alarms just went off with our IT security guys, as I tried to access a "restricted/adult" site? Sigh. I hate corporate America. Gotta clear out the history now.) I love the way that once I find something, it appears *everywhere* I look. If everyone else wasn't doing it, I'd be tempted to do it myself. *g* Is it simply that I'm paying more attention and I know what I'm seeing, or is it Hive Mind again, and I'm riding that wave of the collective unconscious, and it's seeped into blogland and I'm just jumping someone else's train? And now that I've mixed more metaphors than can possibly be healthy *or* legal, I'll stop. I have some things I want to say in response to Jenn's musings on shock value, but as I said, running out the door to go have BBQ. Blue Smoke. Apparently the hottest new BBQ restaurant in NYC. Who knew? ~victoria [current mood: rushed] [current music: The Devil's in the Dreaming - Counting Crows - seriously. It's on my tape in my walkman. OK, I put it on 'cause it suits. I'll admit to fudging that.] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-23 - 12:53 p.m. Omar is *so* our boyfriend Choice quotes from Omar's Smallville recap: "Uh-oh. I hope Clark/Luka buddyism isn't anything like Clark/Lex buddyism." "It's a cheese satellite! Beaming down a cheesy premonition! My God. A beam of light made entirely of cheddar. It's beautiful." "So far we know this kid can probably read minds, but that he's not getting anything from Clark. Is that because of Clark's superpowers or because Clark's head is just devoid of any thought?" "She also lames out something about how she sees Clark in a brotherly way -- he's always there for her. Here's an idea, Lana. Why not just ask Clark to slice off his testicles and hand them over to you in a jar? Because for as long as you're on the show, he won't be needing them." "The kid has got total distaste going and Lex seems chagrined that he's getting such a royal cornholing at the hands of this middle schooler." "'A strange visitor from another planet who protects the weak?' Lex says. The cheese truck just pulled in at the back of The Talon for a delivery. The delivery guy says it's pretty gouda, but not great." "Clark asks if Luka wants to go over to Lex's and check it out. "Yeah, would you like that, buddy?" Lex asks. Hey, I don't want to give off a NAMBLA vibe here, but I'm not liking all this "buddy" talk." "He says Luka's been doing chores all day and can have whatever he wants. The "chores" involved letting Bo know what the cows really think of him." "Luka wants to stay; he says he can warn the family when trouble is near the farm, like a mind-reading Lassie." "It's a foil, Clark," Lex says. "Every hero should have one." Oh, I see. He needed the limo because it's full of pounds of cheese, glorious, cheese!" "Lex, as he's about to turn back to the limo, gives Clark a long, lingering, hot, beefy, tremendously obvious look up and down, pausing slightly at the crotch level, and then walks back to the waiting car. It is an amazingly obvious choice for the Gayest Look of the Episode, and an especially smoldering one at that." Are we sure Omar is straight? Get this one: "A road-beautification project: it's been beautified by Lex being dumped on it." "Papa Luthor holds his blue balls in contemplation." "Lex half-smiles and walks off. Papa Luthor is left behind to hold his own balls. " "Clark shakes his head a little and says he likes to see people's best. Like, say, Lex's naked torso." Can you see why Omar is our boyfriend? The snark is magnificent. My head hurts and I need to do work. Bleh. ~victoria [current mood: bleh] [current music: Alive - Pearl Jam] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-23 - 10:05 a.m. can't fight the muse Those of you on the A train this morning got treated to the spectacle of me removing and replacing my contact lenses [pun intended]. Every once in a while [and more often closer to the time I need to change disks], I guess I don't rinse the lenses thoroughly enough or something, and my eyes burn like crazy. The weird part is, it doesn't usually happen until the lenses have been in for a bit, so since that's the last thing I do before I leave the house, I'm often caught off guard by it, and always on the train. Suddenly, I can't keep my eyes open, but it burns to close them, and I can't focus - it feels like the muscles behind them are out of my control. I'm also suddenly light sensitive. It's very weird and I don't like it. And today was the worst it's ever been. I mean, I actually took the damn lenses out and rinsed them with a bit of saline and put them back in on the subway. I can still feel a little of the weirdness behind my eyes, but at least I can keep them open and focus now. ::shudders:: The idea of somehing happening to my eyes really freaks me out. That's one reason I won't even consider that lasik surgery. The idea of letting someone with a knife or a laser get that close to my eyes? You've got to be fucking insane. Also, neck injuries give me the heebie-jeebies. On the writing front, got nothing done. Got about 1/8 of the way through changing the contact email addy on my website when I decided I didn't want to use this musesfool address, and will instead go with victoria at unfitforsociety.net. I mean, I'm paying for it, right? I may as well use it. And I'll admit to loving our URL. Originally, it wasn't my favorite. I wanted something else, which I can't remember at the moment. Something about realitysmirror, and also we looked up unholyalliance.net but it was taken by some gamers. So we decided on unfit, based on the Brian Aldiss quote, which is really fitting. And I've come to love it, as I love so many things about online life. It just makes me happy when I see it. Anyhow, as for writing, I was thinking last night what I wanted to work on next, what story seemed most interesting, and *of course* the story I like least is the one clamoring for attention. I hate that damned orgyfic - the sex isn't joyful, it's ... sordid and dirty, and not in a good, fun way. It's... ishy. It's probably the only truly pornographic thing I've written, and it makes me feel ... unclean. Last night I realized how Rogue would tell Logan what's really going on, and there's some ishy sex involved there too. ::shakes head:: The thing is, I don't even want to *open* this file at work, let alone write on it, I *don't* like the story, and it's just... ick. I'm surprised I even came up with something that's as dark as this could be. I mean, it's not dark in the way of Jenn's Illusions, or something like that, but almost. I mean -- oh hell, I don't know what I mean. I don't have the stomach to write true darkness. I know that. I shy away from it in myself, though I know it's there, and I shy away from it in my characters. I'll make them petty and flawed, but truly twisted and evil? No. Not yet, anyway. Not the good guys. But this fic... it goes down that road. It raises questions of power and free will and rape and just... stuff I don't know that I'm ready and able to handle as a writer, and in a fanfic that people will be expecting to be a lighthearted sex romp. So yeah, still thinking about how to handle that. And possibly not ready to do so. Maybe I should write Metropolitan first, which also deals with similar issues, on the SV front. The Prodigal still needs a plot, and amnesiac!Rogue is making noises, and I might be ready to tackle Dreams in Red again. And always, Consumption looms, mocking me with its plot complications and tangled relationships. Maybe I'll hit CIAC and try to do something light and foofy. Though I have a feeling in this mood, I'll end up with something dark regardless. There's no fighting the muse. ~victoria [current mood: bleak] [current music: The Stranger - Billy Joel... scarily fitting] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-22 - 11:44 p.m. discussions of canon and style Okay, I have to say, I heart Naomi. She's got some interesting things to say about canon in fanfic. Since I agree with what she's saying, I'll just send you over there, and say, "What she said." Thamiris has a good discussion of style v. substance over in her LJ. I think I've made myself fairly clear on where I stand on that, so... go read the discussion she's got going on. *G* Angel thoughts are up in the LJ. Let's just say... it wasn't good. I'm sure there's more I wanted to say, specifically about Naomi's canon post, but Jenn just forwarded me the link to a CLex fic that made thinking impossible. Very hot. Which reminds me, I need to update my recs. Oy. ~victoria [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-22 - 2:48 p.m. more on ratings in the LJ FYI More on ratings and the writer-reader relationship in the LJ [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-04-22 - 12:40 p.m. wankery on writing And again, no one is updating. *Waaah* Entertain me, peons! Ahem. Meg mentioned something to us on email this morning that I found interesting. She was talking about looking back at one of the original stories she's working on, and being able to trace the influences, and what she was thinking at the time, etc., and how her writing has evolved. I find that quite fascinating. A lot of the writers I've met on the more "writerly" lists are all, "Oh, I sucked when I started. I hate my early work. I'm glad I changed names when I changed fandoms" etc. etc. blah blah blah, whereas I'm like, Enough for Now? Fucking one of the best things I've written. I mean, I've said it before and I'll say it again now, I think my first finished fanfic was pretty fabulous [gotta love that alliteration], and that if you didn't know it was the first fiction of any sort that I'd finished in about 8 years, you couldn't tell. It was tight and spare, and I think it portrayed a real, possibly canonical Rogue, one that made sense of her character from what we saw in the movie and extrapolated into what she'd be like two years later. The rest of AtB is a little cringe-worthy in places (which could be why I don't reread that one and haven't finished it, along with the fact that I have somehow moved *beyond* that initial characterization, and not necessarily in a good way. I think that might be a topic for later, about how in fandom, your understanding and perception of the characters change [and not always for the better] the deeper you get into it, the more you write, and the more canon *and* fanon that accrues), as are some of my other fics [most of the BtVS ones. ::shudder:: And I've definitely found that without a set idea in mind for a series, they tend to meander] but while some of my stuff is merely mediocre, I don't think any of it is *bad*. Not that that's what Meg was saying. She was talking about looking at one's progress as a writer. I've gone back and looked at things that at the time I thought were so different and cool, and now I'm like, what the hell was I thinking? One Sure Thing and Their Little Game spring to mind on this one. I still like them, and think One Sure Thing is actually well-written, for what it is, but all of my style experiments seem to sound the same to me. But I think my writing has gotten tighter and more spare over the 18 months I've been doing this fanfic thing. Which I consider a good thing. *g* I've also gotten better with using adverbs far more sparsely, and perhaps using adjectives a *wee* bit more. I also don't tag dialogue as much, leaving it just the conversation without any "coding" a lot more [when youse let me]. I'm also less afraid to repeat names, though unlike most writers, I like the confusion a profusion of pronouns brings. Or, not confusion, but ambiguity. I don't mind a little ambiguity, as long as it's cleared up at some point, and not naming the speakers can sometimes be a fun way to play with the readers' expectations. On the other hand, I'm not sure I can so easily trace my *influences*, if by that we're talking about published writers (previously discussed here and here [scroll a little - there's two entries on it on that page]. I mean, yeah, my influences are there - both Faulkner and Hemingway, in my love of long, convoluted sentences that lack adjectives and causal links. *g* Didn't think you could synthesize two such disaparate styles, did you? Well, you can't really, which is why I wind up breaking the long sentences at the command of my betas. But I like long sentences, short paragraphs. I like the idea of using many different words, but I inevitably wind up choosing the simplest one that will fit the need, though sometimes it's not a simple one at all. (Also at the command of my betas. I like a good $10 word more than occasionally. Fairly frequently, actually. Which you'd think would make Hank easy for me to write, but noooo! *g*) I also write to rhythm, which can be ascribed to the poet in me, and the fact that I've written poetry far longer than prose, and seek to emulate the *sound* of some of my favorite [dead white European male] poets. I think that other fic writers have had more influence on my writing than profic writers have. I mean, I've tried to wrap my head around Jenn's Logan, for example, and her Jean to some extent. Dark Ferret's spunkier Rogue is something that also has influenced me, though some of that also comes from learning about comics Rogue and wanting to incorporate that kick-ass-ness into the flirty girl we saw all-too-briefly. Some discussions of Magneto and Scott that happened on atbvs influenced my views of them, and I'm *still* learning about Magneto and Xavier from the doyennes of such fic, Alara and Andraste (who, btw, I still owe an email, though I'm giving up on my yahoo address until this klez business is sorted out.). Because Charles and Erik have recently become more of a focus of interest for me. I mean, I've always quite liked X/M fic - it's my favorite X-Men slash pairing - but I never had any desire to *write* it until recently. And now that I *do* have that desire, I need to learn more about them, because while I think I get Erik [at least, *movie* Erik], Charles baffles me. Same reasons as Jean and Storm do. That serenity, with all the stuff going on underneath? So not my thing. I'm "wear everything on the surface" girl. I understand straightforward types. The manipulators trip me up every time, which could be one reason I find Lex so hard to write. And why I like writing him from Clark or Chloe's (Or Cordelia's - I'll have to try that) POV - because they're "think it, say it" kind of people, or open and not expecting to be manipulated, so Clark, at least, doesn't see it 'til after it happens, and Chloe sees it and knows it and can't help but going for it anyway, because of her curiosity. I don't quite buy a lot of the Lexes I see in fic, but I'm trying to work out my own version, who matches what I see onscreen, along with the vibe he gives me about what's going on underneath. I also don't know that you can trace me by subject or "genre." I mean, you'd think that say, Chasing the Blast and Jim Morrison's Dead were written around the same time, but there's months between them. I guess that's because noir is what I like best, or second best after happy/silly romantic fic. Or third best after short yet rambly thought pieces and character vignettes. *G* Sheesh. I really rambled, and I probably have more to say, but I must go make books now, before K. has a hissy fit. ~victoria [current mood: busy] [current music: My Woman from Tokyo - Deep Purple?] [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ previous - next DiaryLand Disclaimer: Reading this diary is not required by law. If you do not like or agree with the contents herein, or find them to be offensive on more than one occasion, please go elsewhere and don't come back. Management is not responsible for any adverse reactions to content within. The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme. The quote is from Sir Philip Sidney. This site is best viewed with IE4+ | 1024x768 | true color | verdana | tables