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

12.08.02 - 1:28 a.m. busy busy bee Have been very busy socially this weekend. No online time. Tried to convert friends to Buffy last night (with the help of another woman who thought she was going to be ridiculed for admitting she liked BtVS - she admitted it hesitantly, and I jumped right on it.) and went to see Analyze That with Leslie this afternoon (our breakfast plans were botched) and then went to dinner afterward - Doris met up with us, and then they came back here and after shooting the breeze for a while, we watched Moulin Rouge and the "good parts" version of FotR, as I called attention to the possibilities of slash (which I don't even *see* in the movie, except for the three hot guys running around together angle) and snickered muchly at the Horn of Gondor and the Fiery Vagina. We all decided that while Ewan McGregor has never looked bad and is amazingly talented and adorable, Viggo Mortensen was the most beautiful of the men we watched, but Sean Bean runs him a close second. I got all het up anytime Legolas used the bow or his sword or knives, plus being the posterboy for Breck helped his cause when the other two looked like they'd washed with mud. It was lots and lots of fun, and now I'm going to bed. We've rescheduled breakfast for tomorrow. Even more importantly, at 8:30 am, Diana goes in for her C section, and the twins should be born. Woohoo! ~victoria link [current mood: tired] [current music: silence] [random quote: the greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return] ~*~ 12.06.02 - 6:28 p.m. because I'm bored This week's horrorscope from NY Press: Cancer (June 21-July 22) Tradition sucks. Thanks for being courageous or desperate enough to break free of limiting ideas about "how things are done." You know better. Last time, you followed all the rules and the situation still blew up in your face. You’re justifiably bored with that illusion of predictability. It may be much scarier being a pioneer into emotional frontier land, but that’s all that’s left. Now it’s just you and the truth of how it’s been all along: You can never know what to expect, despite what you’re taught or told. Don’t be afraid, venturing into that unknowable landscape. Be thrilled. And from Free Will Astrology: I've worked hard at learning to love all the astrological signs equally. When I launched this column years ago, I confess I had favorites, but since then I've forged myself into a paragon of objectivity. Having said that, I admit that I still understand one tribe best: my own sign, Cancer. I've also accumulated evidence that the twists and turns of my life story often have parallels to the destinies of my fellow Crabs. That's why I recommend that you proceed as if you'll soon be awash in fresh ideas about how to reinvent your work and make adjustments in your long-term job strategies. Over the years I've often crystallized new career goals in the weeks before the solstice. *** Huh. I'm supposed to break new ground in my currently non-existent love life *and* re-energize my career? My god, it all sounds so... tiring. Sigh. I have to go meet some people now. In other news, Maveness shares her own Elvis musings, and I finally posted the Snapefic. Go me! Hasta mañana, peoples. ~victoria link [current mood: bored, and now rushed] [current music: Rock Lobster- B-52s] [random quote: If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. ~Machiavelli, The Prince] ~*~ 12.06.02 - 11:13 a.m. All Hail Elvis, King of Rock-n-Roll Ah, thanks to everyone who answered the unreliable narrator question. Things are a little clearer in my head this morning, and I think I've managed to add in a few things here and there which make it clear that while *he* believes that what he thinks is true, it's not true at all, it's just his impression of the character he's thinking about. And I think it manages to keep both him and her in character, because what he's thinking about her *could* be true, except that we know it isn't, because we know her from canon. Still editing, but I think I've straightened it out. So, last night at 1:08 am, guess who decides to show up in my head and start jabbering? River Tam. Goddamn crazy woman. Of course, by the time I found a pen that worked, I'd lost half of what she was saying, and it won't make a full story on its own - just her impressions of Kaylee and Mal and Simon. Because I so want to write Kaylee/Mal, but I have no feel for either of them. Is it scary that I feel like I can more easily grasp Mad!River than cute!Kaylee or Captain Tightpants? *** So this morning on the busride I was listening to my Elvis CD and thinking about him. Because to me - to most people of my generation and younger and maybe one or two generations before me - Elvis is... Elvis. To me, he's like Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald or someone of that era, and not just in iconic status, but also somewhat in song styling. And that's wrong. Part of me has a very hard time believing that Elvis is rock-n-roll. I mean, listen to some of the musical arrangements, some of the lyrics. "Are You Lonesome Tonight" is a pop standard. "It's Now or Never" sounds like it should be Tom Jones; it's not something that top 40 or rock radio would place today. Think about it. It's so easy for us now to dismiss him as a culture vulture, someone who stole his gig from black culture and made millions off it. We can't even imagine what a shocker he must have been back in the day, when "Don't Be Cruel" or "Hound Dog" came out, when he swivelled his hips on Ed Sullivan It's so weird to me. I mean, I can't imagine music without the Beatles, but they're easily identifiable to me as rock - 2 guitars, bass, drums. Elvis is... horns and stings and back up singers and... Does anyone else have this disconnect? Just thinking of how different music was before him (and Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins etc.) blows my mind. I mean, I love pop standards and big band swing music, but that was popular radio back in those days. Three or four artists recording the same song and all of them out at the same time. Songs from movie and Broadway musicals on the charts. Perry Como and *Pat Boone* for god's sake. All Hail Elvis, King of Rock-n-Roll. ~victoria link [current mood: okay] [current music: Can't Help Falling in Love] [random quote: Take my hand, take my whole life too For I can't help falling in love with you] ~*~ 12.05.02 - 11:56 p.m. It is a puzzlement, or, unreliable narrators If I choose a character as my POV character, my narrator, does it not follow that everything in the story - especially if it's a short story told completely from that one POV - is that character's thoughts and opinions, and not necessarily what the other characters think, or what is actually true? I mean, I thought that was fairly obvious and common and implicit in a very close third person limited or first person narrator, but... some notes I received on a story make me wonder. When you read a story, do you assume that everything the narrator tells you is true? Even if nothing explicitly in the story proves him false, isn't it possible that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about? Especially with fanfiction, with knowing the other characters, wouldn't it be obvious that the narrator is reading the other character(s) wrong if the reading he comes up with is completely contrary to canon? How can a writer signal that this is so, beyond sprinkling the story with "he knows" and "he thought" (which I do *way* too often already), but without adding a second POV to correct the character's misapprehensions for the reader? Or do you just trust your readers? And if the person sending you these notes is someone you don't really know and have never worked with before... how do you know that it's not just them? I mean, this is a semi-reliable narrator. He knows why *he's* doing what he's doing, but he's almost completely misjudging the person he's thinking about. He doesn't understand her or what motivates her, so even though for once in his miserable existence he's trying to do something good for her, he's doing it for a wacky reason. I mean, if he was *right*, what he's doing would be good, but it probably wouldn't work. Ah, I'm just so confused. I think I may just do what I can to fix the story and then post it and get it out of my hair. I'm wheedling Jen into answering some of my questions by asking them in a "well, if you said this in a story, hypothetically, would it make sense or would it need more explanation?" Heh. I think she's seen through my mostly-transparent efforts though. Anyhow, if anyone's got any ideas on this - how to make an unreliable narrator work without making him stark staring mad like the guy in Cask of Amontillado, and without including an objective POV? I mean, this thing isn't even 1500 words. And how do you approach a story? Are you always willing to trust the narrator or do you go in with a certain amount of skepticism? Do you trust some characters more than others, and how so? I mean, do you trust Character A when they're thinking/telling you about Character B but not when discussing their own motives? And vice versa? Or do you believe them when they tell you why they've done something, but not when they tell you why someone else has? What informs that decision on who to trust, and what to trust them on? 'Cause I thought I was being pretty clear that this was simply one character's take on the situation and not really what was happening, but now I'm not really sure, and it's puzzling me. ~victoria link [current mood: puzzled] [current music: the hum of my laptop] [random quote: Rebecca: Have people ever tried to kill you? Dan: Yeah, but I defend myself with my superior wit and guile.] ~*~ 12.05.02 - 4:52 p.m. "You oughta be in pictures" From Vera's LJ:: The Movie Meme 3 movies that I love to rewatch: Speed The Matrix Raiders of the Lost Ark Yeah, I'm an action movie girl at heart. There's just something about these movies - especially Speed - that's hypnotic - they demand my attention whenever they're on, and occasionally I crave them. I watched Speed and The Matrix every night for at least a week the when I first got them on video, and not all of that is Keanu-love (Though a great deal of it is *G*). 3 movies that were better as books: I'm tempted to say Dune, but that's like shooting fish in a barrel. I didn't even like Dune and the book was better than the movie. Wuthering Heights The Great Gatsby Possession 3 movies I wish I'd written: Not based on books, right? Gosford Park Casablanca (though I wouldn't have wanted to do it the way they did it, as they were filming) The Thin Man (witty, sophisticated - anything in a similar vein makes me gnash my teeth with envy - Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, Adam's Rib, His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey. Sigh. They don't make movies like that anymore.) 3 movies I've seen that I won't watch again: Anything by Jean-Claude Van Damme Anything by Steven Seagal Choose Me And I've added a couple of questions: 3 movies that were just as good as the books on which they were based Howard's End The English Patient L.A. Confidential 3 movies that you can't help but watch when they show up on tv, even though you've seen them a million times and own them on video/dvd: Beetlejuice Major League Warlock *** In other news, I did blather on about online identity over in the LJ, but it's not really a substantive addition to the discussion. ~victoria link [current mood: tired, but okay] [current music: Stairway to Heaven] [random quote: In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees... and it makes me wonder] ~*~ 12.05.02 - 11:56 a.m. I Am Mine Been thinking about Te's thing and Jenn's thing and Ingrid's and Sarah T's responses (all of whom are linked on the side there [Ingrid's on my LJ friends list], or in previous entries - I'm feeling better, but not *that* much better) about seeing the author in the stories and trying to get a feel for them as a person and-- I don't, generally. Not with good authors. And moreover, I don't want to. One of Dot's most salient arguments *against* fanfiction being equal to original fiction in quality and relevance is that it arguably puts even more distance between the writer and the reader, and between the writer and the characters. I don't necessarily believe this, but there are several things that factor into her point which I *do* think are important, mostly on the writer-reader tip. I come to an original (non-series/sequel) work of fiction pretty much blank slate. I may know the author from other things, I may have read the blurb on the back of the book (and so often those things are so very, very off in their descriptions of books that I wonder if the blurb-writers even read the books). I may have even read a review or two, or heard my friends enthuse about it. But I don't generally have preconceived notions about the characters going in. I don't know them, and don't have any idea how they're *supposed* to behave. So, blank slate. With fanfiction, I'm always, always going to have the preconceived filter of my own interpretation of the characters. One of the joys of fanfic is familiarity - I get to see characters I already love in new and exciting situations, and sometimes in new and different ways. But not too different. Turning Lex into a girly-man and Clark into an uber-femme isn't the Lex and Clark that I know and love. That story is, for me as a reader, a failure, whatever the author's particular kinks or agenda may be. With a story like that, or a story that features a kink that I 1. don't think the characters would engage in and 2. don't find particularly sexy myself, I can obviously see the author's agenda, and I find that bad writing, personally. But that's not what this is about. One of the things of which I've been... accused is a harsh word, so let me rephrase - One of the things that has been pointed out to me on a few occasions as a flaw in my own writing is that I seem emotionally distanced from the characters, that there's not enough of *me* in the story. Writers should be willing - and good-to-great writers are able - to spill themselves onto the page without being overwhelmingly obvious about it. They put a piece of themselves in each of the characters, and that shows because the characters of authors who do this are generally 1. more realistic and 2. more sympathetic/empathetic. We can feel what they feel and see what they see more easily than when the characters are simply two-dimensional constructs that the author overtly bends to her will. Quite simply, those characters take on a life of their own, and in fanfiction, we may be inclined to begin replacing augmenting or fleshing out the onscreen character with certain writers' notions of them. That's good and bad in various ways, which is a whole other essay. Anyhow, as far as I'm concerned, I *do* think that I put myself in each of the characters I write about, and that when there appears to be an emotional distance, it's generally intentional. But I can never tell with my own writing, since it rarely moves me. Do I think I've revealed myself to you all through my writing? Can you tell what my "issues" are? Probably, if you're paying attention. However, many people who read my stories now read this diary, where I definitely hang some of my issues out for the world to see (that's a diary's function, after all), and it may be that now that you, generic Reader, have read about my feelings on subject X, you attribute something in one of my stories to that, when that may or may not be the case at all. Yeah, I'll cop to overidentifying with Rogue, and with Scott and Logan to a lesser extent, and putting large chunks of myself into them where I feel it's suitable, but if I'm successful, you shouldn't. Those traits or experiences should seem organic and integral to the characters, rather than parts of me grafted onto them for whatever reasons. As for style and narrative voice - that's different. I do think that a person's style can tell you a lot about them as a writer. There are some people who, no matter what fandom they're in, or whose voice they're supposed to be writing in, their stories sound the same. That, imo, is a bad thing. Having a distinct style is nice, but I should be able to tell whether it's Mulder or Logan doing the narrating, you know? I mean, third limited POV is a beautiful thing, but if your Mulder sounds like your Logan sounds like your Hermione, there's trouble there, because those three characters should *not* sound alike, and the style of a story with one narrating by necessity should be different from one in which another is narrating. A lot of writers get away with this, because they don't write in numerous fandoms simultaneously, but I guarantee if you go and read the bulk of their work from various fandoms in one or two sittings, you'll see what I mean. And maybe it's just me, but I need variety. Not just in plot - hell, I can almost guarantee that I'll like the same plot over and over again (witness *my* repetitive efforts, which lie not in style but in plot and content), if it's presented differently each time, different voice, different tense, different obstacles, different endings, different characters, different fandoms. I am admittedly a sucker for 'getting them together' stories, which might also fall under 'first time' stories. Stories with lots and lots of UST and prior entanglements and realizations of feelings and big emotional declarations that end in hot smoochies. But that same vague description when applied to Xander and Willow should produce a story that is miles away from a story of the same description about Clark and Lex or Logan and Rogue or Snape and Black or CJ and Abby (and not just because one pairing is het and one is slash). Now like I said, I do think that reading someone's blog or LJ can tell you a lot about a person, as can their list or newsgroup posts. God knows, I can put together a list of issues for most of the people I've spent time with on any list or other online forum. It's part of my enjoyment of the internet - making little psych profiles of the people I come across. But good writers, through their fiction? No. Though I do worry about those of you who consistently produce dark/angsty/fucked-up-ness and call it good. Because well, 1. I worry about your mental health and what's going on in your 'real' lives to inspire that stuff, and 2. I worry about your need to feel cool or edgy by producing that stuff. I realize it's just a matter of taste, and my own preference is not for terribly or unrelentingly dark stories, nor do I enjoy torturing myself (much), at least not through the fiction I read. But still, I worry. It's the earth mother in me. Again, what pairings one chooses can tell a lot about a person, but I tend not to analyze by that, because it's usually so visceral and instinctive for me that I can barely articulate it for myself; I don't expect others to be able to do so, nor do I expect to be able to do it for others, except to believe that they're reacting in that same instinctual, visceral way, even if it's to something that leaves me indifferent or actually squicks me. Now, you can ask whether I intentionally let stuff through while I'm writing, and the answer would occasionally be yes. I do occasionally sprinkle things in that people who know me really well would catch. Or maybe I'm not as subtle as I think and everyone's caught that stuff. Actually, on numerous occasions with Rogue, it's more like a big, blinking, cerise neon sign saying, "Vic's Issues Here," but usually I'm well aware that I'm doing it. So basically, while I agree with Te that the more interesting writers will be able to write their OTP from all angles (including unhappily) well and be able to tackle multiple fandoms or multiple ships with aplomb - the ability to see through the eyes of many different (and differing) characters is the sign of an agile mind - I don't necessarily think that tells me a lot about a person, except that they're smart and talented and have the ability to see from different angles. All of which I'd say about myself, except that would be bragging. I'm also thinking about the discussion going round about online personae versus real life personae, and the use of pseuds etc., which is tangential but not unrelated to this. Maybe in the LJ in a bit... Since HaloScan appears to be down, you can comment in the LJ if you have something to share. And please, do share. ~victoria link [current mood: better] [current music: Money for Nothing - Dire Straits] [random quote: Hawaiian noises!] ~*~ 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