Kabuki Interlude No. 2

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Girl Crushes

There is a brief article on girl crushes up on Broadsheet at Salon. I think that sometimes the platonic/non-platonic line is blurrier than the author implies, though.

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In Which There Is a Crisis of Confidence at the Fortune-Cookie Factory

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Gender Rose and The Wire

There is a song by a band named James, called "Laid."

Here is a video of it.

The thing about this song is, there is a line in it, ". . . dressed me up in women's clothes, messed around with gender roles." I first heard this in middle school, and the line that I heard was ". . .messed around with Gender Rose."

Yes, Gender Rose. Sort of like Tokyo Rose in World War II, I suppose.

So anyway, today, while (ahem) wearing women's clothes, I propose to mess around with Gender Rose.

Specifically, I want to talk about The Wire, which in addition to BSG, is the TV show I've been watching recently.



I love this show, and I hate it.

I like the fact that there are interesting characters. I like the fact that it is witty in a way that much television is not.

However, I the more I see of it (I am now on the DVDs of season four) the more misgivings I have.

It started for me, with the observation that (as is common on TV) the women characters never get to talk to each other. It is conversations between men that drive this story.

The second point is specifically about the Kima Greggs character. Interesting person. I liked the conflict with her partner over being a cop vs. being a lawyer, because it paralleled the same conflict between Daniels and his wife, and in both cases this is about social class as much as it is about anything else. Good stuff.

But, often it seems like the Greggs character is written as a male character, and merely played by a woman. Yes, I get it, she's hard core. She's tough. But why does she have to be simply McNulty with a ponytail? This problem is particularly apparent in S4, where the writing really breaks down for this character, and she becomes progressively less interesting.

The show also has a problem figuring out what to do with Rhonda Pearlman (Deirdre Lovejoy, by the way, is weirdly, weirdly cute). She's with McNulty, and he's a jerk. Ok. Fine. There's a judge who thinks she's SO HOT and propositions her in French. Fine. Pattern appearing. Later, she picks up Daniels with an awful "have your cake and eat it too" line and eventually they make sweet sweet love (I am also a fan of Lance Reddick's ass, btw. Although why that scene was cut back and forth with the Dennis-practicing-boxing-alone scene I really do not know. Well, ok, I sort of know, but really. Come on.) At this point, Pearlman ceases to have a character arc of any kind, other than really wanting Daniels to end things with his wife. There is an implied thing with what it might mean for Daniels to leave his wife for a white woman, but that goes precisely nowhere.

Then there is Snoop, aka Felicia, who presents herself as a young man, but all concerned are aware she's a girl, and this is fine. Which is really interesting. She's a woman operating in a culture where the men have the power, and because she is an honorary boy, so to speak, she is accepted. She's also a cold-blooded killer, but that's a separate issue. The show suggests she likes women (she and Bunk at one point have an exchange about pussy) but we don't hear any more about that. The show sets her up as an echo of Greggs, although Greggs dresses in a more conventionally feminine way. Here's a women who likes women, she's tough, she's accepted in an overwhelmingly masculine culture - and where does it go?

It goes pretty much nowhere, is where it goes.

Then there's Carcetti's campaign manager, whose name I can't remember, who does to McNulty what McNulty (sort of) did to Pearlman, and hurts his feelings. Ouch. Then she propositions Carcetti, who would really like to accept, but ultimately decides that this would be a poor idea. Double ouch.

Then there's Beattie Russell, who goes from cute to moderately effective as a cop, and then fades demurely out of the story, only to reappear in S4, where she domesticates McNulty and provides a substitute family for him. Yay! She is way nicer than McNulty's ex-wife.

Or the stripper in S1, who was dating D'Angelo, and got contact lenses, and became an informant, and Lester really liked her and gave her a piece of doll furniture. Haven't heard anything much about her lately.

Someone suggested to me a while back that Greggs, Pearlman, Snoop and that campaign manager should go out for coffee. We laughed - what would they talk about, after all?

But that's precisely the point. They wouldn't have anything to talk about, because they are all from entirely different regions of the story. In order to put three women characters in a room together, you have to do lady-round-up among the drug dealers, the cops, the lawyers, and the Carcetti mayoral campaign.

A little disturbing, no?

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"I'm Dreaming, Aren't I . . ."

Today's story is one I enjoyed. It is about Roslin, but what drives the narrative is the intense relationship between her and Gaius Baltar. I think this is a pairing that is underused in fanfic, probably because these two characters are not friends and do not become romantically involved, and there is no hint that they might. So, the story has to depend on another type of relationship.

This is a Roslin body story in a way I talked about earlier. It addresses her illness, her will-they-won't-they relationship with Adama, and her treatment as a prisoner of the cylons on New Caprica. Also, I note with a smile, the bulky sweater makes an appearance in Part Four (hi, Bulkie!).



There are two points I want to make about this story. One, the encounter between Roslin and Baltar in Part One is a good example of using sex to develop character. Bad sex, or unsatisfying sex, is woefully underused in fanficdom. Here, the sex is not fun. It is not nice. The scene is not meant to turn us on. It is meant to do something rather different, which is to set up the love-hate Baltar develops for Roslin, and her own intense reaction to him.

Two, Roslin sees HeadSix. I liked this because it is a way of showing how well Laura Roslin understands Gaius Baltar. She sees through him, even into his hallucinations. He knows this, and that's part of the reason he wants to frack with her. He wants to take revenge. Regain control. Prove he's not what she thinks he is. Prove that Laura Roslin is wrong, and he, Gaius Baltar, is right.

There was much else I liked about this, but those were the things that jumped out at me on first reading (as I mentioned over at Survival Instinct).

However, I do have one relatively minor point of criticism about this novella. Although better by far than much of what circulates in fanficdom, the style fails, for me at least, here and there. This is just a personal nitpick, but I have always detested the word 'mewling.' It seems to have a connotation of weakness and whininess that is not what is called for in the few places that it's used here. Similarly, there are some cliches here and there, such as a character's mouth forming an 'O' of surprise. And at times, especially when describing Laura's feelings about Bill, the writing feels like something I have read before, elsewhere. For example, in part two, when L. "loses herself in him." It doesn't seem like a fresh, sharp evocation of emotion. Also, I lose track of Baltar a bit towards the end of the story. He seems to fade in importance in the narrative as the story goes on.

Which gets me to my last point, about Gaius Baltar stories. I think there is very little Baltar-centric fic out there because he's such a difficult character to make into your protagonist. We don't want to be on his side. We don't want to necessarily get into his head. So, that said, I guess my question is, what would Baltar's version of all this look like?

~*~*~*~*~*~
p.s. with regard to the review and response at Survival Instinct. I wonder just how many fanfic-obsessed academics there are out there, anyway? And, geek that I am, I wonder what the disciplinary breakdown is . . .

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Native English Speakers, A Rock, and Some Pronouns

A post from a science blogger on gender and language. The comments are worth reading.

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About A Couch

It appears there has been some business about a couch in the history study room in the library.

This is a small couch. It is a brown couch, and an old couch. It is a foul couch, at times, or so I hear. It is a couch of desperation, and a couch of loneliness. It is a couch for love, and a couch for sleep. It is a couch for the weary, and the discouraged, and the bitter. It is our couch.

And it is gone.



A friend of mine starts it off.

Dear Colleagues,

Apologies to those of you who are not habitués of the Study Room for crowding your inboxes. For those who are, it is a bleak day. They have taken our couch. While it is understood that the room is an area for work, it is also a space that sees multiple uses. The brown couch has been for several years an integral part of our working environment and it is now no more.

The brown couch was, as far as I can remember, originally outside in the hall in back of the computer cluster as a seat of respite, if you will, for tired or lost scholars. In about 2003/4 the couch was brought into the study room by some eager first years and put behind their carrels next to the window onto the square atrium. There it remained, attractively draped, for some years. Following a change of occupancy in the window-adjacent carrels, the popular will (that well known Historical Force), saw the couch moved to the center of the room, where it had become a fixture in recent times. As of earlier today, our couch is no more. It has been removed without explanation or evidence of a forthcoming replacement.

For those of you who have ever taken ease or consolation in the bleaker moments of graduate school sitting or slumping on its tenderly abrasive brown canvas, think fondly of our departed seat. We now enter a purer, braver, more focused and less (however cheaply) upholstered phase. Denizens of the study room, salute the couch!

Sentimentally,
[name deleted]

And we have a confession, from one of the abovementioned movers of the brown couch.

I who along with one [name deleted] first (so many years ago) moved and "attractively draped" the couch until the changing of the guard, do now salute that seat of so many memories.... wheresoever fate or maintenance has placed it. adieu. ..

And from a medievalist,

I never used the couch myself, but I became accustomed to the nappers that did. It reminded me of home (Boulder!) where the blanketed bums sleep on streets, plenteous.

But although the early modernists start us off, it's the modern americanists who tell it like it is.

Hey all,

[History Librarian] shared the following information about the departure of the Study Room's brown couch. She's still dead, but hopefully this detailed account of her demise will help provide some much needed closure and answer the painful question: why, God, why?

In case you're too bereaved (or lazy) to read her email, let me recap: Mom and dad sent the brown couch to go live on a farm in upstate New York, where she'll have lots of room to run around and play and enjoy the fresh air. In the meantime, they'll distract us with the promise of a newer, cleaner, and softer couch, something covered with a fabric not akin to burlap.

[name deleted]

And

1. All lies. She probably took the couch out back and shot it.

2. Regarding the impending disappearance of the "office supplies carrel": Does that mean she's after our candy bowl, too?

Gods, I hope not.

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In Which the Wind Howls

As per this discussion in the Chronicle, many of us feel strongly about the R1-or-not thing. I have spent all of my brief academic career at R1 institutions, and so I am probably not the person best positioned to comment on this topic.

However. I did get a taste of it early last spring, when I had a campus visit to a university in the midwest. Let us call this place Grim University. The first interview was over the phone, not at the AHA. I thought I had done indifferently, and wrote the whole thing off.

However, I got a call from the department chair a few months later, inviting me for a campus visit. I was excited. Campus visit! My advisor (this was pre-PhD) was doubtful. The expression on his face indicated that he didn't think much of Grim U, or the job. This was flattering, in a way.



But I went. I had never been to that part of the country before. It was cold. The wind howled. It was March. It was so cold my ears ached, and I spent much of the campus tour with my hands tucked into the sleeves of my coat, because the skin on my knuckles was getting red and chapped.

The campus was composed primarily of parking lots and brutalist architecture. Most of the students commuted from the surrounding three counties. Few lived on campus, and unlike at my other campus interview at Sweet and Charming Liberal Arts College, there were no posters taped to the hallway walls, no brightly painted banners, and no student bicycle co-op. There was no lounge in the history department, and on the microwave was taped a sign: "Please do not use the microwave when the coffee-maker is running. The fuse will blow."

Scholars at this university drove an hour and a half to the nearest large state institution when they wanted access to a library.

Two of the newest members of the department had PhDs from Harvard and Georgetown. The head of the department was similarly qualified.

As am I.

My job talk went well, although no one challenged what I said. I answered questions rather than being drawn into a discussion. When I asked various faculty members, at dinner, why they had chosen this job, I got answers that made me hesitate. "My visa status requires that I remain in the state." "It was a tenure track job." "I was hired in the 1970s, when there weren't any jobs." No one offered any of the answers answer that I had hoped for, such as "I really love the area," or "This is a great place for me to do my research" or "I love teaching, and the students here are fantastic."

In the end, I withdrew from the search. I got an email from the head of the search commitee asking why - and informing me, I have no reason to think untruthfully, that the department had already enthusiastically voted to offer me the job.

So I could have had it. Did I want it?

No. I suppose it is because I am a snob. I want the good library. I want the well-prepared students. I want a campus that hosts a political demonstration every now and again.

And now, I've got a postdoc, and my prospects on this year's job market are improved. I've got the PhD in hand, I've got some publications, and I've got experience with interviews.

However, it occurs to me that this time next year, I may well wish I had taken that job.

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Kabuki Interlude No. 1

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Comment Roundup

First – thank you! I really enjoyed reading these responses. More to come, later, when I’ve had time to digest and do some more reading.

But, briefly:

First, I take the point about hetero pairings appearing more canonical simply because they’re het – I think it’s true, that I assumed this perhaps without enough justification. And it certainly points to something that we see in sci-fi a lot, that het pairings are normal and assumed, and if there is a romantic/sexual relationship between two women, it’s often emphasized, or our attention is drawn to it (sometimes in a voyeuristic or Hey! HotSpaceLesbians! way) in a way that a relationship between a man and a woman is not.

However, I do think that for many women, kissing another woman is a very loaded thing, and I can certainly see a distinction between the character who thinks about doing this, but does not, and a different version of the same character who thinks about it – and does. Although this is perhaps more of a comment on American culture than the BSG-universe.

On a similar note, I agree that pairing Laura and Cain is a bigger challenge because of who they are than because they’re both women and one of them is (usually) assumed to prefer men. (This is why, as noted below, I would really like to read some good Laura/Gaius stories. Similar challenge.)

I like the idea of re-writing the ‘canon’ so that there is in fact more than one. There’s the text of the show, and then other canons can be built that are consistent, or not, with that one. I can even see making the argument that, in fact, the show gets it wrong here and there – the canon is uncanonical. There are, after all, a lot of inconsistencies and unanswered questions in the show as written.

And, as ever, smut is a lovely and fun way of answering some of these questions.

Pocketwitch, the Laura/Gaius pairing you mentioned had occurred to me. I agree, that would be a real challenge and if done well it could be fantastic, and could you send me a link to that story? Julie, I will take a look at your diss. I am a historian rather than a specialist in literature or media studies, so often my comments on such things are underinformed, but I looked at the table of contents and I’m intrigued. And, nnaylime – tell me when you finish that story you’re co-authoring, and I would love to see the Laura/Gaius stuff.

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Because I Love the Picture

and because I, too, stress about the details

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On Femslash

It's -- you guessed it – part of a series of BSG themed fanfic posts. (Yes, it occured to me that there was another way to set the links up.)

I read two femslash stories the other day. The first is "Things Without Names".

The second is called "Bits of String Too Small to Save"

It occured to me, reading these, that I tend to enjoy this type of story more than I do much of the material here.

And then it occured to me to wonder, why is that?



Then I had some work to do, so I ended up thinking about the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary controversy for a few hours.* Did you know, the reason Mason and Dixon were asked to do their survey of the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary line in 1763 is that the mud-wrestling match in 1685 between Charles Calvert and William Penn that was supposed to have settled the boundary question was found by a Pennsylvania court to be, unfortunately, not legally binding? True story.

But in any case, by the time I had dealt with that, I had come up with an answer to my question about femslash. I think I like it better because it requires more work than the het stuff. In fact, I would stake an arbitrary amount of money on this.

Let me elaborate. I have talked before about different types of what-if questions. There are what-ifs about things that could have happened within the canonical story, and what-ifs about things that could not.

These same categories apply to characterizations. In fanfic, there are details of character that are completely consistent with what we know, and other details that are changes, whether deliberate on the author's part or not.

In the "Pieces of String" story, the opening Kara-Sam interaction falls into the former - this sounds, to my ear at least, pretty much like the Kara and Sam we know. Ditto Kara dabbling in art.

The art, though, is what moves us into a piece of characterization that is NOT canon, which is the fact that Kara has made this particular piece of art for Laura Roslin. From here on out, we are dealing with non-canon characterization of both Kara and Laura.

This is important. Most femslash stories do this on some level. If they don't do it explicitly in the narrative, as in the "String" story, they do it in other ways. Such as one the link to which I cannot for love or money find right now, but it had a scene in it that took place on Colonial One, and we had Laura doing one of those little "hmmm" things she does (I love you, Mary McDonnell), but the context was that Helena Cain had just kissed her. Same thing, though. The story pushes us from canon to non-canon.

And to do this sort of thing well requires slightly more work than simply imagining out an encounter between Roslin and Adama because you have to tinker with the characterization in a way that is both creative and believable. You have to, say, come up with a version of Laura Roslin who could in fact be overcome with desire for Admiral Cain, but who is also recognizable as Laura Roslin.

Pretty tough, no?

What I would like to know, from any author who writes femslash (and I know youse is out there, because some of you have told me as much) is how you do this. Where does the material come from that gets added to Kara or Laura in the process of writing this type of story? Specifically, I'm curious whether you have used ideas, or story-arcs, or relationships lifted from non-BSG things you have written (fanfic or not).

This, then, is why I like femslash. Like writing scholarly monographs, or making vegan tuna salad, it's much harder than it looks.


Coming Soon: I write fakefanfic femslash! I halfway enjoyed writing it the last time, even though the result was pretty awful. But maybe I'll do better on the second round. It's like when Kara tied Laura to a tree for the first time . . .

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

*This was the controversy that led to the surveying of the Mason-Dixon line in the eighteenth century. The controversy was the result of conflicting colonial charters for Maryland and Pennsylvania.

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About Blogs

Over at Alternet, Robert Peters wonders about the future of blogging. One of the commentors makes a good point, that with blogs perhaps the problem is too many writers, and not enough readers.

Fair enough. I had the same thought as that commentor a while back, and I made a deal with myself. For every post I put up here, I will leave a comment on someone else's blog, or a review of a fanfic story. I've been pretty good about this so far - hopefully I can keep it up.

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Worth Reading

A blogger and a lot of folks in comments discuss fanfiction as a genre.

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It's All Fun And Games

This is part of an ongoing series of fanfic posts.


So, I will admit it. I have been hitting the fanfic again.

Today's theme is Laura Roslin bondage stories.

Did you know, there's a surprising amount of them out there? Some of them are weirdly charming. Yes, I said that. Note that there is a distinction between bondage and BDSM. But let us move on.



So, why do we want to tie up poor Laura and make her beg for release? (I say this with a straight face, but just barely.) How do Laura Roslin bondage stories help us to make sense of the universe?

We are the edge of something interesting, here. I think it's something about characters. In this style of fic, the characters have to be recognizable enough that we are willing to suspend our disbelief and read the story. That is, you, the writer, have to convince me, the reader, that Laura really likes it when Kara ties her to pine trees. My skepticism must be overcome.

At the same time, these are not really the characters we assume they are. The characters we are familiar with, and the ones in the bondage stories are different people, and often the difference turns on a single point of characterization. Such as, does Laura Roslin like to be sweetly tortured and subsequently brought to noisy climax by Kara Thrace? Canonically, the answer is (let us go out on a limb, here) No.

So, in a sense, we are not REALLY talking about Roslin and Kara, are we? We have reinvented them as slightly different people for a particular purpose, which in this case is writing a femslash bondage story. Why?

I think the answer lies in the sort of what-if? question that these stories are based on.

All fanfic is based on some level on a what-if question. What if Helo and Starbuck met each other in a bar before the initial Cylon attack? What if Ellen Tigh and Laura Roslin actually had a conversation about something?

However, I think what the bondage fics show is that there is a distinction between the what-if that could have happened, and the what-if that couldn't. These two what-ifs ask actually quite different types of question. This story could have happened. Unlikely, but could have. This story likely could not. The former is asking us about questions of characterization or storyline. The second is asking a bigger question. It asks, well, since we know that such things do happen in the world from time to time, why did these things NOT happen on BSG?

The snide answer to this is that BSG is not a show about bondage encounters, femslash or otherwise.

The less snide answer would involve a consideration of why sex, gender, power relations are handled as they are in television sci-fi.

Thoughts?

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More Bondage

It has just been brought to my attention that there was, once upon a time, something called the Laura Roslin Bondage Challenge.

I am in love with the world, and at peace with the universe.

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Pop Music Post

Because I have always wanted to use the phrase "Empires of Delight" in something.

It's either a really nasty bodice-ripper about a young English lady who finds romance in the arms of a Mughal prince, or a scholarly monograph about eighteenth-century consumer culture.

Or, it's this:

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The Boredom Strikes Back, or, More Smut

Utter. Fucking. Giggle-fest.

Yes.

This is my secret reason for liking femslash fanfic. Because the women on the show ACTUALLY GET TO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. Or whatever.

That is all.

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In Which I Do Not Get Body-Checked by the Organizing Committee of An Academic Conference

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the Program Committee of the Northeast Conference on British Studies, I would like to thank you for your submission and confirm your participation in the annual meeting, to take place this year on the Chestnut Hill campus of Boston College on Friday the 14th and Saturday the 15th of November. The conference will begin around 4pm on the Friday and end around 5:30pm on the Saturday. . . .

And to think we were worried about them accepting the panel proposal. Pshaw.

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Infrastructure, or Trains, Novels and Cargo Lifts

This is part of an ongoing series of BSG-themed fanfic posts.

To begin.

I read a lot of writing. It's my job. One thing students often struggle with is how to make all the parts of a piece of writing fit together, so that no part is too long, nothing is unbalanced. This is as true of fiction as it is of academic writing.

Today's BSG-themed writing slam is inspired by this story, which is about what happened after some of the events of "A Day in the Life." It is the first chapter of a longer (?) fic as yet unposted.

The first two sections of the chapter work for me. I was impressed, actually, with this fic, as I read it, because it weaves the dialog from the ep in and out with the writer's own interpolations.



However, I think the story looses its way in the third part. Some of the dialog might be re-written, for example, when Carolanne says "She'll never have you! You'll always belong to me!" Carolanne might be more subtle about how she says this, and re-wording this might make the story more powerful and tell us something more about Carolanne.

I think that revision could also improve the last section, with the conversation between Laura and Bill. Writing convincing conversation is always a challenge, and here the story fades out, for me. I think the author wants L & B to talk about that night on New Caprica, but I am not sure that those characters want to talk about it. This makes the last part of this chapter seem forced.

So, to recap, the issue for me is that there is a structure problem with this chapter. The end doesn't have the punch of the beginning.

I have seen this before in fics, where the author clearly has an idea of why this story is happening, and what it means and where it goes, but this either does not get conveyed to the reader, or it gets conveyed in a slightly clunky way, as in the last two short sections of this.

And this structure problem (when I say structure I mean, how does the end fit with the beginning? how do the internal subdivisions of the story move it forward?) is related to writing dialog, because getting the conversations in a story right will often get you where you need to go in terms of how the whole thing fits together.

Sometimes, what you need is a little scaffolding.

One thing I have found that helps, is to write the meta-narrative of your scene. So, if you have an outline of it, you can write out, this scene is about ____. It opens with this image, because ______. These two characters are here because _____. Character one wants ______. Character two wants_______. Character one says [insert dialog], because she wants _____ and she wants character two to understand ______.

And so on, through the scene.

Here is an example I'm working on from a non-BSG story. The set up is a telephone conversation between a young woman, Christine, and her step-father, Frank. Christine is in London, Frank is in Seattle. My notes in the brackets are the meta-narrative of the whole thing. They may not make sense in and of themselves, but I hope they illustrate what I mean. 'Stage business' means that I will insert a description, or note other details in the scene, both to reinforce what I want to say with the dialoge, and to break up the conversation so as to indicate where the pauses are. So:

-Christine gets back to the hostel, is monkeying with the rigged-up reading lap above her bunk, and gets a call from frank. [has to rummage in back for phone. [the random conversation with other roommate. Can I ask how old you are? Twenty-nine. I would have guessed younger. Yes, says Christine, and pulls the curtain shut] Christine pushed open the window and leaned out over the street. “Hi, Frank.”
“Christine. Good. Everything going well?”
“No problems in sight.” Christine slid one foot out of a pink flip-flop and scratched the back of her right ankle with her left toe. [a warm breeze from the narrow street. IT’s getting dark]
“You’re fine for money?”
“Did I tell you, the dollars don’t work here? It’s the weirdest thing.”
“You’re fine for money, Christine?”
[Christine sighed and reached one hand out into the warm empty alleyway, to feel the breeze on her palm. A narrow slice of sunlight fell across her hand, her watch, three bracelets, painted wooden beads, slightly grubby fingernails. A few streets away, traffic. Someone walks by down below and she pulls her hand back in] “Yes. Look. Don’t worry about it, really. How’s Angie?”
Frank accepted the change of subject [in a way that he would not have ten years before] “She’s fine. Do you need anything? She mentioned she wanted to send you a birthday present.”
Christine sat down on the edge of her bunk. It was the lower of the two [red bunk beds, in the corner, against the window. She had put up a string and a curtain for privacy. The bunk creaks. Across the room, there is some stage business] [ten years ago, she would have lied, clammed up] “Nothing I can think of right now. Tell her thanks, though.”
“Are you sure?” [frank is still in a good mood.]
“Well – ” [Christine smiles. Frank didn’t push her about money; she’s prepared to be nice.] “I could use another t-shirt.” [Angela had gotten into shirt painting, design, rips and stencils and things. She refuses to use a computer for this]
“I’ll let her know.” [Frank is smiling.]
“Black, if she’s got one.” [Christine pulled out the pink elastic that had held her ponytail. Frank had come to her ceremony when she got her PhD. That was when she had hugged him for the first time. Before turning to private practice, Frank had been an academic psychologist. He likes hearing about academia] “I ran into one of my esteemed colleages at the library today. Or rather, I saw one of my esteemed colleagues at the library today.” [She stretched out on the bunk and rests the arches of her bare feet against the bars at the end.] “You know how I told you once, this profession is full of socially awkward people?”
“You also told me you were one of them, which I find hard to believe.” [there is a sound as Frank does something in the background; he’s at his desk]
[Christine smiles] “Well, you know me. Fuck the truth if the line is good, right?”
[ten years ago, he would have said ‘language, Christine.’ Now, he is merely abruptly out of the funny mood and moves on to business.] “I need you to do something for me, Christine.”
“What?” [irritation. With Frank, she has to be a lady. The old frank is back. The old Christine is back. Way back when, what she resented was being an instrument in the Grand Frank Plan, the tidying up of Sarah, the disiciplining of Chrissie, the production of Angie.]
“Do you remember my friend Tom Nguyen?”
[here it comes] “Vaguely.”
“His son Van is doing a semester at [university]. He’s never been overseas before, and when I mentioned you were in London, he asked me whether you might be able to met Vanny at the airport. I said that would be fine. He’ll be in on Thursday, in the morning.”
[This is SO typical a frank thing] “So I’m going to the airport on Thursday.”
[this is where it goes wrong. Frank has gone into managing mode again. Christine pushes back- but she agrees. Fuck you Frank.]
“I’ll cover your subway fare if it’s a problem, Christine.”
[Christine is feeling about sixteen again. It might very well be a problem, and he knows it, and is more than willing to send her the money. Again, fuck you, Frank]. “What time.”
“Six forty-five. It’ll be a flight from JFK.”
“What does he look like?”
“He dresses like Angela. Shoulder-length hair. Tom said he just got a tattoo.”
[Stage business] “Does he have my phone number?”
“I’ll give your number to Tom.”
“Fine.” Christine checked her watch. “Look, Frank, I should go. Anything else?”
[some more stage business] “No.” [Frank knows she’s mad, and they’re back into locking horns again] “I appreciate this, Christine.”
“And what is Tom going to do for you, now?”
“I’ll send you Van’s phone number, and Tom’s.”
[Fine.] “Fine. I’ll see him on Thursday. Six-forty five.”
“Take care of yourself, Christine.” [Frank hangs up]
[Christine goes to take a shower]

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Backstory Extravaganza, or, How Elizabeth Tudor Got Her Groove Back

This did not start out as a BSG fanfic blog, but it looks like that’s where it’s headed, at least for the time being. So this is part of an ongoing series of BSG-themed fanfic posts.

This is fine, although now I will REALLY have to maintain my cover. So, before I begin, here’s some cover.

1. My undergraduate institution, Snide University, is located in either Massachusetts or North Carolina.

2. My undergraduate degree is in something called “history and literature.”

3. Statement number ten is true if statement number six is true, but otherwise, both statement number seven and statement number five are false.

4. I have published two scholarly articles. Or maybe three. The second one is NOT in the William and Mary Quarterly.

5. David Armitage is the King of the Squirrel People.

6. Revising one’s PhD thesis for publication really sucks. In terms of work, not in terms of payoff. In terms of payoff, personal and interpretive, it bends other theses in half and crushes them like little aluminum cans.

7. The internet is a series of tubes.

8. I am from an area of the country that is not Michigan, and is probably not either Arkansas or Florida. It might be California, but only if statement number two is false, and statement number seven is true.

9. Statement number one is definitely not false.

10. Jonathan Edwards, of Great Awakening fame, ran an Indian mission in Stockbridge Massachusetts, the scene of the Arlo Guthrie song, “Alice’s Restaurant.”

Now. To the point.

Today, we’re talking about Helo, and we’re talking about hot lady on lady action in space.


I have been reading stories about alternative backstories for various characters.

In a way, this stuff is like historical fiction, which is sort of the fanfic version of history. I used to read history fanfic as a girl in middle school (do you remember 1992? Do you remember putting pony beads in your hair, and on the laces of your hightop Reeboks? How about hyper-color shirts, and bangs with hairspray?) Do you wish Elizabeth I of England had fucked the hell out of the Earl of Leicester? [I’m sorry, that transition was a little rough. A single parenthesis can be a weighty thing] Or, what about Elizabeth at fourteen, shown here. Do you find her “achingly vulnerable” and prime heroine material? David Starkey does, it says so in the introduction to his book. But I digress.

I remember wanting to rewrite history when I was that age. I wanted the back story to be different. Remember, I was 13 or so, but I wanted Liz and the Earl to have fallen in love as teenagers and, yeah, secretly done each other in say, 1552. Because the Earl was hot. But whatever.

My point is, the altered backstory is an interesting thing, whether you’re into English history or not.

So, in both this and this we have backstory slightly different from what we are led to believe in the miniseries. At least, no one says anything in the mini about Starbuck and Helo’s first meeting, or what Sharon had to do with any of it. This is fine, because as it’s done in the story, it works. Or, rather, there is no reason to think it doesn’t.

The point is not only to tell this story, but to add resonance or emotional weight to the main narrative, which I think is the goal of a lot of fanfic. We have a storyline in the show that is based on scripts, and based on acting, and based on our own interpretation of that acting. So there are three or four layers of work here – writers, actors, viewers – and at each stage, any given line, or scene, can be understood to mean something slightly different. Sometimes the show makes a mistake, and something rings false. So, we can write stories to explain it. There are whole characters that fall into this category, I think.

The layers of writing, acting, and interpreting can also work at cross purposes. A well-written scene can be played counter to the writers’ intentions, or a certain moment of writing and/or acting can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and these ways can be more or less interesting (remember that hug Starbuck gave Laura way back when? Oh, yes, we remember. If this isn’t enough, google Kara/Laura BSG femslash. Party!) We can also re-write the story from a distance. We can say – well, you know that one incident in this episode? It looks like it means THIS but it actually means THAT, and I’ll show you why.

And this is interesting, and fun, and good. And sometimes we get the cubist version of this, in which four or five different potential backstories work at once.

But back to Helo and his past.

Some literary theorists point out that we make a mistake when we imagine that characters have a span of existence that reaches before and after the text of the story. They argue that to imagine fictional characters as existing separately from the text, is to do violence to the coherence of the novel, or story, or whatever.

In a certain sense, I can see the point. At the same time, this is bollocks.

So, what is the point here? The point here is about fanfic, and it isn’t. It is about history, and it isn’t. It’s this. When I write a book of history, I am gathering up available information, and I am presenting an interpretation. I mean, I was not anywhere near, say, Charles County, Maryland, in 1676, but this doesn’t prevent me from having a considered opinion as to what was going on, and setting out that opinion in prose.

Likewise, I do not know what was going on with Helo, or Roslin, or Admiral Cain, or Billy, before the beginning of the narrative, but that does not stop me (or anyone else) from offering an interpretation based on available information. For a fanfic to work, it has to fit with what we already know, right? There has to be some connection with the “history” offered in the show. I mean, a fic in which the prez falls for Tigh (either one) rather than Adama would not work (this is not to be construed as a dare. Or if it is, you totally have to let me read it). The fic has to mesh, on some level, with available evidence.

And just as the lit crits would say that the characters don’t exist in any real way outside of the text, and that we are doing things we are unaware of doing when we write stories as if they were [if one is a literary critic, other people are always doing things they are unaware of doing, often several at a time] I could make the claim that historical work is the same thing. The people I am writing about professionally, the inhabitants of Maryland and Britain between 1630 and 1690, would have no fucking clue what to think of what I have to say about them. They are dead. They don’t exist. And yet, here I am, bringing them back to life, and saying things about them. And critics can say, yes, that makes sense as an interpretation, or no, it doesn’t make sense. There’s evidence, or there isn’t.

But it appears that on some level, I too am writing fanfic. Fuck.

NB: post written while drunk.

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This Week in Space, or Have We Negotiated the Boundaries of the Transgressive Yet?

Once again, I find myself drinking coffee and thinking about sex in space.

I read a story today, and then later second by the same author.

These two stories are both about Helo, who I think on the series is underused as a character. These fics got me to thinking. This is probably an obvious point, but one thing I have noticed about fanfic is that writers use sex to think about character development. I mean this in a good way. If you set up an encounter between characters, you have to figure out why and how they're going to do this. There has to be a good reason, or else it's nothing but sock-puppet-fucking. So, sex can be a way of drawing the reader in to the story and making the narrative dramatic/compelling enough that the psychology of the characters is revealed.

This is what I liked about story one, noted above. This is a story about three characters, not just one fuck. The changes in perspective from scene to scene clue you in to this. The details are sharp (Helo plus lollipop = dreamy. But, what flavor is the lollipop?) and the dialogue moves. Similarly, story two is about (mainly) one character, not just five fucks. Also, it has Ellen Tigh in it. Bonus points for Ellen Tigh.*



So, this means that there may be a point to stories about bondage, of which there are an impressive amount out there in the world of the internet. We are talking about power, and power relations are interesting, even though not every bondage story goes where I, as a reader, would necessarily want to be. I will not go further with this, because really, I do not want any neurons in my brain to wire me up ANY connection between Edward James Olmos and BDSM. I have reached my limit, there.

It means that there is a point to stories that try out an idea even if this particular story does not quite work, for me at least, in terms of characterization. Actually, many of the stories on this site are interesting not because they are all great works of literature, but because, like this one they make the point that the piece of characterization they're suggesting IS a path not taken - and it pushes the question of why not. So we have a whole sub-genre of "fucks that didn't happen even in fanfic-dom," which is also striking.

So, what I wonder, is whether short stories about sexual encounters are not merely a step in a larger process? If you can write all the fucks that take place in a novel, and write them convincingly and true to character, have you not mapped yourself out a plan for the rest of the book? I mean, you have to get your characters to fuck A, and then B, and then C, and knowing the why/how/what of A B and C tells you a lot.

We all know that there is smut that makes you giggle because it's clever, and smut that goes precisely nowhere because it isn't.

I think there is also some raunch out there that is more than it appears, because it is a step in a process of writing that can go further than the boundaries of fanfic.

_____________

NB: On the subject of boundaries. In the world of fanfic, crossover is my safe word. When we get there, it ends.

*There should be a fanfic game. Like:
1. Story has Ellen Tigh. Plus one point.

2. Story has Roslin/Adama getting it on in a raptor. Minus one point, unless it's mind-blowingly well-written.

3. Story has the phrase "his arm snaked around her waist." Minus like a billion points.

4. Story has Saul Tigh. Plus three points.

5. Story has bondage, and a pun on Tigh's name. Minus six points.

6. Story has old people getting it on exactly like young people. Verisimilitude penalty: minus four points.

7. Story involves mongolian clusterfuck in CIC. Plus three points, but only if it's convincing.

8. Story involves Roslin getting pregnant. Minus ten points, because this is, like totally derivative.

9. Story involves Lee and does not make us cringe and squirm. Plus fifteen points for doing what the writers of the show could not.

10. Story involves sweet and tender love story between Roslin and Billy. Plus two points for going there, but only because someone had to.

. . . and so on.

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We're not sluts! We promise!

I got a disturbing email from some powers that be this morning. It was not intended to be disturbing, but, unfortunately, I was disturbed. So there you are.

It was part of a longer email about healthcare at Bleak University, and how much it costs. I won't link to it, because I desire neither to blow my cover, nor to piss off my colleagues, who, in all fairness, are doing their best to address a less-than-perfect situation, vis a vis the university's health care plan.

The passage in question is as follows.

To follow-up on our conversation in late spring about the changes to birth control costs, we write to ask that the University consider providing subsidies for birth control prescriptions. We understand that [Bleak U] can no longer receive reduced pricing for these contraceptives because of the recent changes to the Fedeteral Deficit Reduction Act. Although there is some relief through the Student Health Plan’s Medco Prescription Benefit, the situation is far from ideal: For many students, the pill used to cost $6/pack; it now costs $5-40/pack and has a $100 deductible. And for students who use alternatives to the pill (e.g., a ring), the price hike is also severe. According to [Student Health Center], close to 500 female students are affected by this change. The change specifically disadvantages women who are sensitive to hormone dosage and cannot risk switching to a generic brand. Students recently reminded us that this issue is not simply one of access to contraception, but also of general women’s health: A subset of women are put on birth control as preventative measures (for conditions like endometriosis) or to control their mentrual cycles. Finally, 50-60% of undergraduate students are not on SHP, making them ineligible for the Medco benefits. Taken together, these facts not only put a new medical burden on women, but may also cause students to make less-than-ideal health choices based on cost.

We remind you, that it is just not louche women wanting to have sex. It is about Medical Necessity!!!

And again, this time a quote from an anonymous student:

“I was put on birth control several years ago as a preventative measure for a condition known as endometriosis...Birth control has been shown to prevent worsening of the condition and even to reverse damage. Hopefully, when I decide to have children I will not have any problems. However, I have to remain on the treatment until that time. The market price of birth control, even generic birth control, is quite a hardship on a student’s income."

And another,

“For myself and for many other women ...the birth control pill primarily serves medical rather than contraceptive needs...Five years ago, my gynecologist told me, 'I would prescribe this for you even if you were a nun.'"

Lest anyone should think that women might want birth control simply so we don't get ourselves knocked up. Because god forbid, we wouldn't want to think about our TAs and research assistants getting it on? Icky, icky, icky . . . .

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Academic Personae, or, I Buy Stuff

I have been busy inventing myself this afternoon. Teaching requires new clothes (note: this is a reason to be suspicious of it, is it not?) and also the occasional piece of vain ornamentation.

So, I bought jewelry. If you're a woman in academia and you aren't wearing a large amount of clunky silver jewelry, you're letting the side down. (In addition, if you are wearing eyeliner, founndation, lipstick, mascara and your nails are painted, you are letting the side down. The side is also vulnerable to high heels, an absence of Dansko clogs, and too-tight office-girl black slacks.)

My string of amber-colored glass beads broke last week, so I had to replace it. What I got, at a consignment store here in Poshville (did I mention that I work at Bleak University, Poshville Campus? It means I get to choose from three different high end wine shops when my colleagues and I decide to get drunk) was a string of stone beads, little spherical polished ones in gray-green, purple, brown and cream. One silver and amber bracelet and one cheap-New-Mexican-souvenir silver braclet with a chunk of jade. I am set. Undergraduates of Bleak University, hear me jangle! Also, I gave my Danskos a once-over with some saddle soap.

As was pointed out to me recently, being a woman under 30 means that sometimes, the undergraduates think they can push you around. Or, they expect you to be nice (what does that mean, anyway?) and if you fail to be nice, they get mad, and they try to push you around.

Yes, I am terminally insecure. Bite me. Ok?

In any case, I have found that dressing a little older than my age sometimes helps. So I have a loose drapey patchwork velvet thing I wear over my black t-shirt to class occasionally. This seems to do the trick. Ditto baggy linen trousers. Oh, yeah - and the clogs.

Then again, if I dress older than my age, they might think I'm 35 instead of 28. The question is, do I care, and if so, why?

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New Horizons in Pedagogy

A friend sent a link to this today. It's about how be a tough grader and ward off grade-grubbers. Good stuff.

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Erotica in Space

The Battlestar Galactica fan-fic obsession continues. I continue to be impressed with the level of effort put into a lot of this stuff. I am occasionally impressed by the writing. More often, though, the writing is bad enough that it's a distraction. So, what I'm going to talk about is dirty words, and dirty stories, and the Professional Study of History. Trust me, it goes somewhere.


Part of the problem, I think, is vocabulary. This is an issue in particular when it comes to stories about sex - and there are a lot of those. I've read a few. Many are surprisingly boring, despite being graphic. I mean, there are only so many ways to fuck, right? If the sex isn't telling me something I didn't know about the characters in the story, or doesn't push me to think about writing, or language, or sex, in ways I hadn't before, it's not clear to me why I should read it.

But back to the vocabulary issue. So many of the words that we use to refer to bodies, or sex, are slang or colloquialism (cunt, pussy, clit, dick, cock, fuck, come, and so on) and the other available terms (vagina, penis, copulate, cunnilingus) are Latin-derived, and sound cold and formal. People writing fics tend to use words in the former category. Often, though, this sounds out of place. I mean, "Laura Roslin" and "pussy" do not belong in the same sentence. (Actually, I have never been a fan of "pussy" as a term. Cunt is better, I think. But whatever.)

I think the word choices often distract the reader because the writer wants to be clear about who is doing precisely what to whom, and these are the available terms. So they go into the story - but they don't quite fit the tone of the story, perhaps, and so they're more jarring than they ought to be. I suppose it's a comment on the state of the English language, that it's easy to sound extremely colloquial, and it's easy to sound extremely clinical, but it's really and truly hard to hit that middle ground where the writing draws you in and gets you going, but you're not thinking - OMG, would this character's thoughts really sound so much like conversation in a middle-school locker room? Of a Catholic girls' school? In 1995? Or, if the admiral is fantasizing about going down on the prez, is that really the phrase he'd use?

This gets me to the second point I want to make, that sometimes the word choices jump out because these are words that describe body parts and actions, and the writer has gotten hung up on body parts and actions, or the mechanics of Teh Sex Act(s). Partially, this may be an effect of the difference between thinking about sex and writing about it. My guess is that generally people do not put into words, in their heads, every desire - we think in terms of images, or smells, or sounds, or sensations. But in order to put these thoughts into a story - they have to become words. And this is hard, and the risk of sounding stilted, or out of character, or hitting the wrong tone for your story, or simply sounding silly is -- let us admit it -- very high.

What to do?

I think some of the best writing about sex that I've read has been graphic without being focused on mechanics. Maybe for readers who have never had sex, the mechanics are the most interesting part. But for those of us who have, I don't think that's really the issue. Or it is, but there should be more to it than that. If we're reading erotica, it needs to tell us more than Various Ways Humans Do It. It should tell us why they're doing it. Love? Anger? Revenge? Simple desire to get off? How is the situation different before and after the fuck - and why?

I had a history seminar once, in which we discussed the "so what?" question. That is, why is it important that you've written this and not something else? Why should the reader read it rather than a similar story about Admiral Cain, or a similar article about bastard feudalism?

At the risk of breaking the limb I am about to go out on (take that, Syntax Gods!) I think academic writing and internet-based fanfic have, or should have, a lot in common. There should be a point to it, for one thing. In history, we talk about literature gaps - questions or issues or problems no one has addressed before. Or, answers to important questions that have turned out to be wrong, and need revision. Ditto stories. Why do we need your story? So what? What gap in the narrative are you filling in? what alternate version of reality does your story explore?

If you know the answers to these questions, moreover, it makes it easier to get the tone of your story right, and to choose the right word (back to dirty words again!) for what you want a particular act, or moment, or phrase, in your story to do for the work as a whole. In other words, if you really know why they're fucking, you're going to know whether "cunt" is the word of the day. Or not.



btw: Greta has some great posts about sex writing. Better than mine.

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There's something I have to tell you, Bill . . . Or, More About Fanfic

Again, this begins with me admitting something. Now and then, I likes me some smut. After an afternoon of discussion sections about post-colonial South America (NB: I work on the early British empire, my historical expertise ends roughly around 1760, and I have read nothing about this subject other than what the students have read. This makes discussion section fun, because I am not hampered by extraneous information) the prospect of returning to my office and reading short stories about people getting it on in space looks better and better.

However, there is a recurrent theme to the fanfic that gives me pause. It is not the usual fanfic objections, like poor characterization or bad writing. It is what happens to the female body when fans begin to fantasize, and it happens even when the writing is good. Maybe even especially when the writing is good.

Let us call this the Roslin's Bulky Sweater Effect.



I call it the RBSE, because I have run into two Battlestar Galactica fanfic stories that seem to take off from the fact that in the episode of BSG when the Cylons discovered and invaded New Caprica, there is a shot of Laura Roslin wearing a bulky sweater.

The idea of a woman with an elegant body wearing a bulky sweater seems, for many people, to beg a question. What is she hiding?

So far, I have seen two answers to this: pregancy, and having been beaten, brutally, by Cylons.

The first is an idea that appears in a surprising amount of Roslin fanfic, and comes up even outside Bulky Sweater contexts. I have seen at least one sweet and well-intentioned rendition of this (entitled "If Not, Winter", and available here) in which the author does a clever end-run around the fact of Roslin's age. There are other stories involving Roslin unexpectedly becoming pregnant, with the outcome varying depending on the mood and purpose of the story.

The second story, about Roslin being beaten by Cylons during interrogation on New Caprica, is being posted in sections like many fanfics, and the author is still working on it. He/she should finish, because I really want to know how it ends.

I read what the author has up so far, and I want to see where he/she goes with the sexual aspect of the violence. Sex is there, no question, as an exhausted Roslin reluctantly tells Adama about what had happened to her, and shows the bruises, the cuts and marks left from the ordeal. It's not written as a story primarily about sex, or primarily intended to titillate, but the fact that this is a story of things happening to Laura Roslin's body, and part of what moves the story forward is Roslin showing progressively more of her body to Adama. (This is not intended as a criticism of the story, btw. It's what really struck me about it, in fact.)

So, we have Roslin pregnant, we have Roslin beaten up. We also have, in the show itself, the slow deterioration of Roslin's body as a major story arc.

Where does this go? Why are stories relating to Roslin's physical body so compelling?

It remainds me of the X-Files, where again, it's Scully having cancer, Scully becoming pregnant, Scully being physically abducted that drive many of the big story arcs.

I don't think this is simply a "women get objectified" issue. I mean, women get objectified. Duh. I've had my 28-year-old ass whistled at enough times to know that. Women also objectify other women, and men too. Both in reality, and in fiction. I admit to wondering about various combinations of characters in my own stories and what would happen if they were overcome by raunchy thoughts, and playing the scenario out in my head, purely for my own gratification (it is not lost on me that this would be writing fanfic about my own fic. It is a form of mental masturbation, and let's just leave it alone, for now)

I think it's something else. Why are scenarios of invasion, or threats to human integrity, or speculations about the nature of existence, or thoughts about why a bruise could be sexy, or hopes for the future, played out via things happening to female bodies? Does a woman's body carry emotional resonance in the way a man's doesn't? If so, why? Would BSG as we know it work if Laura Roslin was Lawrence Roslin?

I don't know. But I'm probably going to read further fanfic, raunch included, and possibly I will find out.

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Classical Music Drinking Games

This is how I spend some of my weekends . . .

1. Donizetti, Bellini or Rossini. Take a drink every time someone says “O ciel!” or mentions fate. Either ‘fato’ or ‘sorte’ is fine.

2. Andrew Manze. Whenever he should use vibrato, take a drink.

3. Beethoven. Whenever he has a theme in 2/4 or 4/4 backed up by a harmony in triple meter, start drinking. Don’t stop till he does.

4. Wagner. Drink whenever something particularly German occurs.

5. Maria Callas (any recording). One shot whenever you wish you were listening to Joan Sutherland. Two shots if you consider Beverly Sills. Half a shot when the terrible sonics begin to detract from the experience.

6. Bach. Drink during fugues, and only fugues.

7. Rossini’s Barber of Seville OR Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Drink whenever anyone says ‘Figaro’.

8. Bruckner. Just drink. It’ll make it easier.

9. Schoenberg. You guessed it – every twelfth tone.

10. Brahms. Drink whenever you are overcome with late-Romantic longing. If you begin to entertain inappropriate thoughts about Clara Schumann, stop immediately.

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On FanFic

So, I got a little bored yesterday afternoon. I read about all the news I felt like reading (usually, there is about 45 minutes to an hour's worth of worthwhile news coverage out there, and after that -- well, how many times can you REALLY reload TPM?) and the revision of Chapter Ten was not calling. I mean, I like Maryland, I like 1676, I would not personally like to have to deal with John Coode, but he's, you know, all right, and I always enjoy it when Charles Calvert makes a fool of himself, but really - it just wasn't on.

So.

I looked for some spoilers for tonight's Battlestar Galactica. I freely admit it, I love this show. I don't have a TV, so I got hooked when a friend lent me the DVDs. It's science fiction - but with characters! and acting! And I am somewhat obsessed with it at the moment (my bet for final cylon: Laura Roslin)

I am also a fan of Television Without Pity. I'm a lurker, not a poster, but sometimes the comments are worthwhile. People notice things about the eps that I hadn't, or say things I don't agree with. And there have been instances when I have preferred Jacob's retelling of an episode to what I actually saw on the screen.

I had not, previously to yesterday, looked at the fanfic thread. Abandon hope all ye who enter here, you know, that sort of thing. I was embarassed to consider it.

But as I said, I had the boredom yesterday, so I did. And (I admit it, I had Word open with a chapter up so I could fast-tab-switch-hide-the-BSG if anyone put his or her head into my office) I clicked on some things.

I was afraid. How bad was this going to be? I mean, really, how bad?

Better than I thought, actually.



To a certain extent, I want more for the writers who write fanfic. I want them to try harder and do something better, and more difficult, and worthwhile. After all, the characters are set up, the situations, the connotations, references, all the resonance, the emotional weight - that's all handed to you. You don't have to come up with why we care what happens to Kara Thrace. Or whatever. So, you can be lazy. You can be sloppy. People will give you the benefit of the doubt.

And often, what you get reflects this.

This is not to say I can't see the point. People want the spaces filled in. They want to know what DID happen between X and Y down on New Caprica? Why did Cally decide the army was a whiz-bang brilliant idea, when she really wanted to be a dentist? What the hell kind of a name is Seelix? There was one story, where I read it and I knew precisely why the author had written it. I had seen the same scene, and had the same thought.

Or, they want to speculate. What would happen if Lee was gay? What would happen to the fleet if the president and the admiral got together? What sort of religion is this human polytheism, anyway?

But again, it ends up being derivative, it ends up being shlocky, or poorly written. I saw some turns of phrase in there that made me wince, because I have written those very same turns of phrase when I was writing bad fantasy novels at the age of thirteen. NB, folks: no one's arm ever EVER "snakes" around someone's waist. Ever.

But. To return to my point, it was better than I expected. Some of it made me laugh (Cain and Roslin have a torrid affair? This is good stuff) and occasionally there was a bang-on piece of characterization - a writer had hit on something the show had hinted at, deliberately or not, and run with it.

I spent about an hour reading around in this stuff. Stories about families, stories about sex (lots of stories about sex), slash stories, femslash stories, stories about politics, stories about machines and infrastructure, even stories about labor unions in space.

And I am left with a question I am still thinking about. I grok this stuff, right? Some of it isn't bad, it's fun to read, it passes the time. But in the end, I'm left with the impression that, well, this doesn't GO anywhere. All that effort, and it vanishes into the air. Do we really care about fanfic written three years ago about the backstory of Tom Zarek? No, usually, we don't.

But I think the audience for fanfic, and the eternal production of it, gets at something interesting about writing. Writing is about writing. (Yes, I know, tautology gets us precisely nowhere. But bear with me). It is about the moment of production of text, and the revision of text, when you are not your self, you are what is on that page, or that screen, and what is in your head. Writing takes you out of yourself, and you fall into that state of work/play that is separate from your ordinary self, and the best thing in the world. Fanfic emphasizes precisely this because it is ephemeral. You write it, and you put it out there, people read it, they respond, and their responses take you back into your state of thinking simply about what you've written. There is only the writing, and the communication, and the mental jump back to the world of your story when you think, and play it out in your head again. And then maybe you start over.

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Music I Can't Get Out Of My Head

So, the earworm of the day is Husker Du's "Green Eyes." This is an improvement on yesterday, when it was the title music to "Battlestar Galactica."

I have decided, on that note, to write a science fiction version of my dissertation, entitled "Planting Tobacco in Outer Space." It will be more interesting by far than it sounds, and there will be space fights, lace cravats, murder, mayhem, and a rag-tag fleet of colonists in search of cheap labor and better soil. A little like colonial America, but with explosions, and robots.

NB: the actual title of the dissertation is NOT "Planting Tobacco in Outer Space." My dissertation is actually titled something else. It is about Maryland. It is beautiful.

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