a fool's musings

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

Warning: Adult Content

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current mood: current mood

"pathological and unbalanced"

Items of Interest

    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
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10.31.02 - 5:34 p.m.

Cool stuff to read and think about

Spread the word!

Arts and Letters Daily Lives!

Very happy about that.

and also, The New Yorker actually has content on their site!

When did that happen?

Last time I looked (which, admittedly, was several months ago), there was nothing but a subscription form.

Other cool places I visit on occasion:

The New York Times on the Web - you need to register, but it's free, and it's still all the news that's fit to print, even when I don't agree with them.

The New York Daily News for sports and entertainment listings.

Bartleby.com - where do you think I look up all my quotes and stuff?

Barbelith, a cool (if frequently highly pretentious) webzine

ArtMagick and Artcyclopedia for lovely images.

And, to assuage my guilty conscience, The Nation and The Progressive.

Now, with my computer acting up every time I ask it to do something complex like, oh, let me open an email (work-related), it's time to go home.

Halloweeny quote: "Ok, on sleazing extra candy: Tears are key. Tears will normally get you the double-bagger. You can also try the 'you missed me' routine, but it's risky. Only go there for chocolate." ~Xander Harris

~victoria



link



[current mood: tired]
[current music: Money - Pink Floyd]
[random quote: Does anybody else miss the Mayor \"I just wanna be a big snake\"?]

~*~

10.31.02 - 12:49 p.m.

colors

this is for my own amusement.

I'm trying to find a hex code for the color I'm thinking of for Rogue's special undies. I can see it in my head, and I wonder if any of these match...

there's this one

this one

and this one

I think #1 is the winner...

~victoria



link

[current mood: curious and silly]
[current music: Fear the Reaper - BOC]
[random quote: What color is your underwear?]

~*~

10.31.02 - 10:29 a.m.

Shopping with Rogue

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

And Happy Halloween!

~*~

Since DD is worrying about it, and NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, here's another snip of watchfic:

***

That afternoon, Jubilee dragged Rogue to the mall. "You have to feel sexy to look sexy," she said. "And your granny panties and sports bras are just not cutting it."

"Hey!"

"Have you ever worn a thong? Or even lacy undies? Be honest now, Rogue." She grabbed a pretty pair of purple satin panties in Rogue's size, and then rooted through the table to find the matching bra.

"It never seemed important. I mean, who was going to seem them? It's not like I can just get naked with someone at the drop of a hat, like some people."

"Hey! I don't get naked at the drop of a hat! I just ... I have needs. And maybe you find it easy to stay chaste until Gruff and Growly gets a clue, but some of us don't have Mr. Right all picked out. We have to go out and find him."

"Or Mr. Right Now, anyway." She frowned at the red lace demi-cup bra Jubilee held up. "No red."

"Whatever."

"Jubes -- it's not like I don't *want* to have sex, and lots of it. But even if Logan weren't interested, it's not like guys are knocking down my door to be with me. Deadly skin, remember?" She fingered the silk on a green bra and looked it over thoughtfully.

"How could I forget? You act like you're the only one who ever had relationship problems because of your mutation."

Rogue gasped, her attention locked on her friend instead of the lingerie in front of them. "Is that what you think?"

"I'm just saying. Nobody likes a martyr. You could have any guy you wanted, but you totally give off this 'untouchable' vibe, and it has nothing to do with your skin."

"What does it have to do with then, huh?"

"Logan. You buried yourself, waiting for him to come around. And while I think it's great that he finally has, and I'm gonna do everything I can to help you snag him, I don't think you should cut off all your other options."

"What other options?" Rogue's voice rose, and people began shooting sidelong glances their way.

"Bobby. Remy. Piotr," Jubilee counted off. "And that's just the beginning."

"I--"

Jubilee interrupted, pulling a cameo pink bra out of the pile on the table. "This is it, Rogue. This is your color."

Rogue blinked. She was used to Jubilee's short attention span, and she didn't really want to have that conversation in the middle of Victoria's Secret, but even she was thrown by the rapid change in subject.

"It's very... pink," she said doubtfully. Heedless of the danger, Jubilee held the bra up to Rogue's face. Rogue flinched. "Jubes!"

"Look in the mirror, chica. It's you. It's *so* you."

Rogue took the flimsy garment from Jubilee and walked over to the full-length mirror on the wall. She pressed the soft silk to her cheek, and was amazed at how it seemed to make her skin glow with health. She lost herself in a brief fantasy of Logan seeing her in the bra and, more interestingly, seeing her take it off.

"I think you're right," she said. She made a beeline for the table where Jubilee had found the bra, looking for the matching bikinis.

She bought other things as well, dainty, lacy things in green and gold and black and white. Camisoles edged with lace and matching tap pants that made her feel a little naughty. A cobalt-colored teddy made of silk so fine it felt like air against her skin.

She hadn't thought about how she was going to pay for everything, floating on the fantasy of modeling all of it for Logan, until she reached the counter.

"Cash or charge?"

"Uh--"

"Cash," Jubilee said, peeling off three one-hundred-dollar bills and laying them on the counter. She took the six dollars change from the cashier and said, "Excellent. We still have enough to get you one of those mochaccino lattes your so fond of."

"Jubes, I can't let you spend that kind of money on me. That's crazy!"

"That's Logan's dough, babe."

Rogue's mouth formed the word, "Logan?" but no sound came out. After a few seconds, voice working again, she said, "Logan? What? How-- Jubilee! Did you steal money from Logan?"

"Oh, as if, Rogue. The man probably sleeps with his wallet under his pillow." She smirked. "Here's to hoping you get a chance to find out. But no, I told him he should get you something nice in return for the watch. And voila! He gave me money and told me to show you a good time." The smirk widened into a grin. "He really has it bad for you, Rogue."

Jubilee wouldn't say any more, and she wouldn't take the money Rogue offered her to help pay for the lingerie she'd bought.

They stopped at Starbucks on the way out of the mall, and got mochaccinos, pleased with the way their afternoon had gone.

On the ride back to the mansion, Rogue asked, "So, what's next?"

Jubilee gave her another wicked grin. "Plan B is multifaceted. Tonight, we go out dancing."

"With Logan?"

Jubilee burst into laughter. "No, Rogue. We're not going to some honkytonk where Wolvie can two-step with you. We're getting dressed up and going clubbing. We're going to show him he's not the only fish in the sea, and if he doesn't want you, someone else does."

"I don't know, Jubes. I--"

"Would you just trust me?"

"It sends a shiver down my spine whenever you say that."

"Heh. Look, I want you to get what you want. You deserve it. So, just trust me."

And with that, Rogue had to be content.

***

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I'm thinking romcom. The characters' names are Audrey and Mike. My gusys have heard this tale before, and since I don't know how far I'll actually get with it, I'm not going to say more. But yeah, somewhat like Time's Fool, if you've read that. Only no mutants. *g*

~victoria



link

[current mood: moody]
[current music: Maggie May - Rod Stewart]
[random quote: I guess I should go back to school or steal my daddy's cue and make a living off of praying fools...]

~*~

10.30.02 - 5:09 p.m.

::girly sigh::

I finally realized why I love that X/A exchange in GD1 so much.

It *so* reminds me of the Han/Leia dynamic, especially in Empire.

"I love you."

"I know."

::Girly sigh::

~victoria



link

[current mood: swoony over Han Solo and Xander Harris]
[current music: mama pajama rolled out of bed and she ran to the police station]
[random quote: when papa found out he began to shout and started an investigation...]

~*~

10.30.02 - 1:03 p.m.

Alexander Lavelle Harris, My Hero

I'm working (as in actual job-work) and working on watchfic, so this isn't going to be long, but:

Why I Prefer Xander Harris to Clark Kent/Superman
(and most other superheroes with special powers)

In two easy sentences:

Xander knows he's going to get his butt kicked every time, and he's always there, always ready to sacrifice himself for his friends and for the good fight.

Clark knows that he's probably going to come through everything unscathed unless there's some kryptonite around.

To explain further:

Yes, both are heroic, and I would never dismiss Clark's honest-to-god desire to help people and all the good that he does and the danger that exposing his secret could be to him and those he loves.

But Xander does it knowing that he's going to get killed sooner or later, whether eaten by a demon snake, having his neck snapped by a vampire, or having one of his friends (or exes) turn evil and flay him/beat him/rape him/mate with him and feed on him afterwards.

He *knows* this, and even while the world is ending and he's gibbering in fear ("I do not babble. I occasionally run-on, every now and then I yammer..." and "I'm telling you. I woke up the other day with this feeling in my gut. I just know there's no way I'm getting out of this school alive".), he doesn't run (see GD:

Anya: Come with me.

Xander: I can't.

Anya: Why not?

Xander: I got friends on the line.

Anya: So?

Xander: That humanity thing's still a work in progess, isn't it?

Anya: Are you really going to be that much help to them? I mean, you'll probably just get in the way.

Xander: Your stock is plummeting here, sweetheart.

Anya: Fine! You know what? I hope you die.

Xander walks past her.

~taken from the transcript by someone)

He saved Willow (and Jonathan earlier) in Inca Mummy Girl (the episode which Redux was, well, redux of *g*) by stepping up to Ampata to let her suck the life out of him instead of Willow.

There's something to be said for the kind of guy who will do that, you know?

Yes, there's a lot to be said for superpowered aliens and mutant humans with healing factors or percussive eyebeams (I know, I know, *concussive*. I just prefer percussive. "He blows holes in mountains and plays drums with his eyes. She's a doctor who uses her mind as a weapon. Together - they fight crime!"), and even regular human guys just this side of insane with pots of money and tons of cool gadgets, who's well trained in many martial arts.

But the Everyman, the Not-Chosen One, the Joker - the one who takes a licking and keeps on ticking (even when, by rights he should be dead - see Olaf's Troll Hammer of the Gods that did Glory in but didn't even break Xander's shoulder), with no special skills (they took his soldier memories away from him, damn writers), no training, and no superpowers aside from a quick wit and a heart bigger than all outdoors - that's the guy I want at my back in a fight.

I mean, I want the others too. I don't wanna die or anything. But in the end, Xander helps figure out how to save the world, and when the chips are down, he's going to be there.

The same goes for Cordelia and Willow before they got powered up, and Giles also, (but Giles has many more years of training and knowledge behind him). I just like to point out that Xander has nothing special about him, except his willingness to sacrifice ("You're a whipping boy. Raised by mongrels and set on a sacrificial stone.") and his determination to protect the people he loves (and for him, it *is* that simple. He loves Willow. He loves Anya. I hope he now understands Buffy in Becoming a little better), regardless of the cost to himself.

And now that this has turned into the Alexander Lavelle Harris Admiration Society, I'll stop.

~victoria
La Regina dei Xanderisti



link

[current mood: Xanderriffic!]
[current music: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley and the Wailers]
[random quote: Demons that want money. Whatever happened to the still beating heart of a virgin? No one has any standards anymore. ~Giles]

~*~

10.30.02 - 12:49 a.m.

I'm trifictional, baby

Let's see... Smallville thoughts up in the LJ.

The episode made me realize why I prefer a Xander to a Clark, but I'm too tired to write about heroism tonight.

Other thoughts brought on by the big movieverse/comicverse discussion:

*the meaning of canon and multiple source texts influencing readers' views of character.

*how this influences my Smallville writing v. my XMM writing

*visual v. written media as a starting point for fanfic

*the sheer gall of people a person who can say, "I don't take you seriously, you suck, your fandom sucks and Logan/Rogue is evil, bad and wrong. Not to mention pedophiliac. And exploitative. and written by 14yos with a Hugh Jackman fetish. And it sucks. But I'm sure somewhere out there someone's written something decent, which, by definition, sucks. Oh, and I'm as openminded as anyone. I just think you and your sucky fandom all suck." Yeah, okay. whatever. ::rolls eyes::

Also, in response to Kathe's post, though I was thinking about it recently, I like het.

In fact, if I *had* to identify myself, I'd say I write het. Just looking at the amount of het I've written v. the amount of slash, it's a reasonable conclusion.

But I'm trifictional. I'll try almost anything once, and I read and write het, gen and slash. I prefer to ship, because the ship is what pulls me in emotionally, but I love the characters too - I love and miss the Xander-Buffy-Willow-Giles dynamic, and miss the Pete-Clark-Chloe dynamic from last season. While I'm not really good at writing scenes for groups, I enjoy reading about the X-Men being friendly with each other and just hanging out.

It seems lately that my circle has narrowed to mainly slashers, and well, it's weird. Because I can see that slash-superior attitude starting to creep in, and I hate that.

Buh... suddenly really tired, so that's all for now...

~victoria



link

[current mood: sleepy]
[current music: silence]
[random quote: \"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.\" Dick, Henry VI, Part 2, Shakespeare]

~*~

10.29.02 - 3:47 p.m.

We are family... er, community, er... that's not quite right...

I haven't been neglecting my diaryland diary. It just seems more appropriate to post about an LJ discussion in LJ.

But this is an offshoot of that CBFFA/movieverse discussion, and one that isn't directly related to X-fiction, but is more meta.

It's about community and fandom and what makes a community of a fandom etc.

Way back in May (and god, how sad is it that I remembered the post was from May 23, but for some reason I'm still confusing Kitty Fisher and Julad, so I looked in the wrong LJ for half an hour? Mi molto dispiace.), Julad wrote about community in LiveJournal, and I had the link saved for a long time for discussion, and then deleted it because I never got around to it.

Until today.

So I had to go looking. Sigh.

Because the original question in what has become the CBFFA/movieverse/comicverse discussion, was "What is the comic fanfic community?"

And after Min and I got everybody fired up with the phrase "some comicverse people", Persephone Kore wrote:
perhaps the reason some of us take "some comicverse people" personally or at least assume it means "somebody on OTL/somebody in whatever-we-define-as-this-community" might be the tendency to identify ourselves as "the" comic fanfiction community.

And I thought this was a really interesting response, not just in the actual discussion, but in terms of fandom sociology.

I responded:
[...] to *me*, fandom always seems to define itself - and fans define themselves - by exclusion.

Not "we're the cool kids and you're not" (which would be the typical high school scenario we all decry), but "They're (whoever this mysterious 'they' is) the cool Divas/BNFs/whatever today's buzzword is and *we're* the outsiders, the fringe-dwellers, the marginalized, the ones who speak the truth and should be listened to because we haven't bought into the political bullshit The Cabal of Mighty BNFs(TM) has set up."

Or maybe that's just my time in Smallville speaking. *g*

Because fandom is always setting up these juxtapositions, these dichotomies - slash v. het, noromo v. shipper, dark v. light, pairing X v. pairing Y, quality v. crap etc. etc. - and where one stands (much easier to find out nowadays with LJ/blogs) allows one to be slotted into a box by one's fellow fans.

So I find it interesting that you're saying people in comic-fandom would make the leap to "we are the community", because the other fandoms I've been involved in or observed would have the opposite leap, to "we're being marginalized by the community!"

Which, in fact, may be part of the dynamic at work in my own response to the original question about the CBFFAs.

This was the response:

Persephone_Kore wrote:
I think this community (such as it is?) or subset of the fandom tends to define itself as a community based on being linked by various forms of communication.

CFAN, Subreality, and OTL are kind of central. Subreality was... a little different, broader in once sense and something else entirely in another and a community in yet a third.... Darn it, I'm being inarticulate again and don't know how to fix it. CFAN and OTL were started, I believe, with the explicit purpose of being inclusive -- Kielle wanted to link ALL the fanfiction archives to CFAN so people could find them after one really big, inclusive one bit the dust; it spread. OTL is in theory (somewhat ambitious theory, perhaps) supposed to be the mailing list for all comic-book fanfiction,

I answered:
Oh, I believe you that there is a more cohesive "comics fanfic community" than there is say, a "Buffy fanfic community."

Buffy is very, very splintered, even with the BFA, which was set up recently to be like what Gossamer is for XF because there was no central Buffy archive *at all*, just lots and lots and lots of very specific ones and then loose confederations of sites like the BtVS Writers Guild, etc.

So I find it interesting that quite a few people *do* see OTL/CFAN etc. as a community (for meta) reasons in comparison with other fandoms, where groups are often made of those who perceive themselves to be marginalized and the community is this amorphous mass Other that nobody wants to belong to because the ever-mysterious They is doing the marginalizing.

There's a pervasive "It's my bat and ball and if you don't play by my rules I'm going home" mentality in fandom, and since it's so easy to create a new mailing list, fandoms splinter over the merest trifles.

And I recall that LaT discussed this in depth a while back as well, and I wish I could remember her conclusion, 'cause I think I thought she was right.

While mailing lists tend to foster tightknit group-feelings, as well as cliquish-ness, LJ/blogs allow us to be more loosely confederated with other fans and to cross fandom lines.

I have numerous people on my friends list (and we won't go into the misnomer of that, though Jae Gecko recently had a great post on it) with whom I don't share any fandom at all, or one or both of us has left the fandom in which we were both interested or something like that.

Since I've withdrawn from most mailing lists (the multi-fandom being the ones I'm most active on, not including posting fic), I tend to have a broader view of the 'fannish community,' since my main interaction with other fans is now via LJ or blogs. Even before, I was never really part of any clique, beyond Limbo. And that was rather a desultory involvement on my part after a while. In the end, I'm not a joiner. Especially not if there are expectations and obligations.

Er, that was a tangent.

Anyhow, it's interesting to me that "some comicverse people" inspired such a reaction in well, some comicverse people.

Had I said, in a similar forum, "Some Buffy fans" or "Some Smallville fans", I don't know that there would have been such a clear picture of who those fans in particular consider "the community."

I mean, take XMM.

Who is the XMM community?

I have no freaking clue. I would say that there is no XMM community, per se.

I mean, yes, the XMMFF list and the archive(s) (which I *am* going to get back to caring for, I promise. After NaNoWriMo.), but beyond that, there's no central IRC channel like Smallville has, no message boards or central gathering points.

The other fans I've met in person? Not through XMMFF but first through Buffy and then through blog rounds and (indrectly) Glass_Onion/zendom.

So when I say movieverse people, I should qualify that, in that I don't think there *is* a 'movieverse community' (nor even the *perception* of one) the way there obviously is of the 'comicverse community'.

There are lists and archives and people with LJs, and there are people who are friends with other people, but there's no power structure and no overt group. I mean, if say, XMM were a tv instead of a movie fandom, I don't know how quickly or easily a thing like Save Farscape! or Support Firefly! would be put together.

And then yes, there are factions within movieverse, as there are factions in every fandom I've ever run across (including the ever popular, 'Lennon or McCartney' *g*), but those internecine squabbles are unknown to most people who read/write XMM, I'm guessing (or they know and stay very far away, which is a very wise decision).

I don't know what all this means, but I just found it interesting enough to ramble on for a few hundred words.

I have other thoughts growing out of this discussion, about canon and movie/comicverse stuff, about visual v. print media fandoms... yeah, just lots of thoughts, *and* new Smallville tonight.

No more watchfic, though, dangit.

My bosses are out today, so it's been quiet, allowing me to putter around with all these discussions.

I love my job.

Oh! The LJ also has some comments on the latest zendom article about writing sex.

~victoria



link

[current mood: thoughtful]
[current music: Electrical Storm - U2]
[random quote: \"Banish play and laughter from the bed of love and you may let in a false goddess.\" The Four Loves, CS Lewis]

~*~

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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.

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