Collective Bargaining in Outer Space

On a Whim, This Blog Has Decided to Move To LiveJournal

2008-07-20T18:42:00.003-04:00

It can be found here.

There may be some other stuff mixed in with the fanfic posts, but I'll try to make it clear with tags, and in the titles of the posts, what is what, so you don't have to wade through Part Infinitum of the Adventures of Charlotte, Halo and the Valley as they fight the good fight on behalf of the Colonial History Workshop. Unless you want to, that is.

(makes 'rock on' gesture)

Nietzsche Was Right About That "Ewige Wiederkunft" Thingy

2008-07-20T16:51:00.008-04:00

There is a Roslin-baby-meme out there, and it likes the smell of our brains, I think. Because here it is again, but with a little twist. Lee Adama, now I have another reason to wish you did not exist . . . .

In other news, I will soon have something constructive to say, I promise.

Brought To You By The Timex Social Club

2008-07-19T13:51:00.002-04:00

Heads up. There is a BSG rumor challenge.

Hopefully (hint, hint, to anyone who may be reading this) there will soon be stories there . . .

To get you all going, I offer this:

The Squick and the Dead

2008-07-16T20:26:00.008-04:00

A muscular and well-oiled hoplite in my phalanx of fanfic.

Fanfic has led me to learn some new words. We have had squee. We have also had squim. (I will not write an entire post on squim, though. There are limits.)

Another word I have learned about is squick.

In several previous posts, I have discussed some things that are a little bit icky. Squick is a version of icky, but squick is much milder as a term. Some things that make me go squick will not make others go squick. And the reverse. Some of us like being squicked, a little.

The Smoking Threesome makes a lot of people squick. (Yes. Some day I will drop this. But not today.)

This threesome makes some people squick, and others not. Personally, it is the Tigh/Roslin component here that makes me squick. Others squick at Tigh/Adama, or the entire package.

There is a bit in this story that makes me squick. It is the part where the violence turns into the love. Minor squick for me, because although this idea rubs me the wrong way, it is possible and totally kosher to write stories where such things happen.

Also, as aside, I am not sure whether this falls into the squick category, but I came across the best raunch sentence ever in fanfic today. "His cock [came] to a screeching halt inside her." Found here. This is otherwise a perfectly ok story. But the screeching cock really got me. I mean, I've been with men and I can tell you that has never happened in my experience. Hot damn.

Squick can be a sign that a story is doing something interesting. I squicked a little at this. The story is about Cally, and it is, at least in part, dealing with the contempt many fans (and some writers) have for that character. My squick was a squick of recognition, of the fact that Cally is interesting precisely because she gets jerked around by the story, and never gets any revenge. Cally almost wants the chief to beat her up so that she knows he loves her, Cally cannot remember if anyone helped her escape from the cylons, and Cally gets airlocked. She is easy to dislike. She is almost squick personified, and this is why there ought to be more Cally stories.

Which leads me to think that squick, in general, is a sign that the reader's buttons are being pushed. Some boundary has been crossed. This can be in a bad way, or in an interesting way, or in a funny way. I mean, in truth, Tigh and Roslin frakking in an airlock is actually fairly harmless, as a concept.

But other boundaries, like the ones about violence and love, or contempt, need to be handled with thought, or the squick merely squicks, and does not edify. This was my problem with the handling of rape or suspected rape in the story mentioned here. That story squicked me, big-time, partially because I think the squick aspect of it was not a conscious authorial decision.

But, to make up for using the word "edify" in the previous paragraph, I will now bring this post to a halt with the extremely juvenile obvservation that the phrase "Screeching PleasureCock of Ultimate Satisfaction" has just entered my head and will not leave.

Again, hot damn.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names, or We Love Dana Scully

2008-07-16T12:11:00.004-04:00

Or, I do, at least. There is a new X-Files movie coming out later this week. I intend to see it, although I admit I worry it won't be as good as I want it to be.

I came across this post on Feministing today. My experience was similar to that writer's. The X-Files appeared on TV when I was 14, and it ended my senior year of college. I grew up watching that show, and I totally wanted to be Scully when I grew up. Minus the abducted-by-aliens bit, and the infertility bit, and the cancer bit.

Actually, now that I consider it, my attachment to the Scully character is like my attachment to the Roslin character. I love the fact that they exist, I would not want to live either of their lives, and now and again the respective narratives in which they are enmeshed do things that make me go squick. Yes, I learned a new word via posting about fanfic. Squick. Squick. Squick.

I talked about the parallels between these two ages ago, and I won't go into it again. I am not the only person to whom this has occurred, either. Again, my failure to take notes kicks my ass, and I can't find the place I saw this, but someone had done a play by play comparison of the two characters. Totally worked.

On the subject of character pairings, I read some Scully slash recently. Scully/Monica, specifically. For whatever reason, it didn't grab me. Might have been the story, might have been the weather, might have been the fact that I was mostly thinking about Maryland that day and dissertation revision is not conducive to losing oneself in worlds of imagination. Charles Calvert is just not a turn-on, on many, many levels.

Or, it might have been my own personal relationship to the X-Files narrative. I absorbed that show in my mid to late teens (I didn't watch it much during college, and returned only in the last season, to see the end) and at that point in my life, it had not occurred to me that I could find other girls hot. There was no element of desire in my fangirldom. For whatever reason, the 'wow, hot' part of my brain and the 'Scully is awesome' part of my brain are non-overlapping components of a Venn diagram. Roslin, as dedicated readers may have guessed, is a different case.

But anyway. This post is verging into squickdom.

The X-Files also coincided with my growth as a feminist. I had read The Feminine Mystique and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex at thirteen or fourteen, and my up-bringing was very much influenced by the second-wave feminism of the 1970s. Which was a great thing for me. But I had the fortune, or misfortune, never to run into any serious difficulties due to gender while I was growing up. My feminism came a little too easily.

But in college, for the first time in my life, I had one of those moments. A tenured professor at my undergraduate alma mater, Snide University, laughed at something I said one day during a discussion of my plans for graduate school, and told me, "you're too pretty to be a history graduate student." The fuck you that I did not utter that day still trembles on my lips whenever I think about that.

It was after this, and a few other such incidents, that I realized why Scully was such a kick-ass character.

So, rock on, Starbuck.

On Suckers

2008-07-14T20:15:00.008-04:00

I have had the great good fortune to be offered, and to accept, a postdoc at the institution that granted me my PhD. This means that I did not have to move last fall. This also means that I maintain ties to the Bleak University Department of History.

Octopus like, those ties are now attaching their purple and many-suckered arms to my person, and the suction of those little purple suckers calls forth my deep, deep capacity for snark.

Let us begin with the Colonial History Workshop. Two of my graduate school colleagues, who I will term Halo (because of his golden curls) and the Valley (because it's a transparent play on his name) have run the CHW for the last few years. So this year, I am up to help out. I volunteered, as a matter of fact, partly because I felt guilty, and partly because I am a sucker.

This, I think, was a mistake. For one thing, in order to arrange the talk I have to arrange this week, I have to know whether the Program in American Studies has scheduled an event for the afternoon of the eighteenth of November. I do not know whether the Program in American Studies has scheduled an event for the afternoon of the eighteenth of November, because I am not a mentalist, and because their secretary is on vacation and is not answering my emails.

This, I should add, is only the beginning of the business. The rest is not worth discussing. Let me merely say that when an esteemed member of my dissertation committee passed me in the hallway today, and said, "Have you heard back from Professor [name deleted], Charlotte?" (she always calls me Charlotte. Charlie is a boy's name, I think is the reason, and this is confusing) I almost let loose on a long, bracelet-jangling rant about co-sponsorings, the English department, and certain persons I would like to flay. But I didn't. I was close, though.

Halo and the Valley, if I do not sleep this term, if the CHW continues to interfere with my visions and revisions, if the CHW in malicious combination with British Studies (let us not begin on British Studies just yet) deprives me of solitude and a chance to read Battlestar Galactica raunch, I will place you, Halo and the Valley, in separate burlap sacks and I will beat you with a copy of something by Bernard Bailyn. Something heavy.

Have either of you read The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson? I have.

And as I said, we had better not begin on British Studies. British Studies is a poorly organized, beer-drenched sinkhole which, on its better days, offers a relatively convincing impersonation of an intellectual community. British Studies is riven with faction. British Studies suffers from failures of discipline. British Studies has difficulty reaching a consensus on Ireland. British Studies is whistling Dixie. British Studies, like Archbishop Laud, desperately wants to go down on the Duke of Buckingham, but says so only in Latin, in a private journal. British Studies spits into the wind.

And yes, I just proofread and submitted the British Studies funding application for this year. I also wrote the description of us for the department website, because, due mainly to louche administrative practices, we have never had one before.

As I said, I am a sucker.

News and Rumor

2008-07-14T12:45:00.010-04:00

Yet another ship in the fanfic convoy that is my blog.

This story made me laugh, because it is a story about fanfic. In this story, rumors spread about Adama and Roslin. They are catalogued by Billy, and Roslin and Adama get together and read them.

And some of the rumors are very raunchy, and some of the rumors make no sense, and some of the rumors are a little bit disturbing, and some of the rumors . . .

You get the idea. Or, at least, this is the idea that I got. It made me smile, in any case.

I will admit, I liked this in part because a large chunk of my dissertation is about news and rumor as a political force. And my project does with news and rumor in Maryland in the 1670s and 1680s pretty much what Billy does with news and rumor in the fleet in this story, although with a different purpose in mind.

And no, my dissertation does not end with Charles Calvert pulling a muscle due to getting it on too enthusiastically with Louis XIV, the pope, and the Five Nations of the Iroquois. I thought about it, though.

Happy Bastille Day!

2008-07-14T10:50:00.008-04:00

I have been told that in Philadelphia, they re-enact the storming of the Bastille every 14 July, and last year, the actors rained Twinkies down upon the assembled crowd. Apparently, if tossed with enough force, the little packets explode upon impact.

Smutscapade

2008-07-12T14:11:00.004-04:00

Part of that infernal series. And yes, I was listening to a Janet Jackson video on YouTube when I came up with the title.

The university at which I teach has a well stocked library, and yesterday I withdrew several books. Two were fantasy novels by Gene Wolfe, one was about the development of the public sphere in early modern England, and one was a collection of erotic stories edited by a woman named Susie Bright. It had a bright pink cover, and on the cover was a curvy lady wearing nothing but black stockings and one strategically placed hand.

Stay with me, here.

I am writing about this for several reasons. I have a point to make about genre conventions, and I have a point to make about library shelves. I will make these points in reverse order.

First, although the bright pink book was in the PS section (Library of Congress style) along with all the other modern American literature, it was surrounded by a little nimbus of other books containing raunchy stories. This book was not, in other words, classified by author alone, or even by the fact that it was an anthology or collection. The raunch aspect had marked it off and caused it to be placed in a particular spot.

This is common. Things to which the label 'erotica' sticks, for whatever reason, tend to end up in the same place, however dissimilar they may otherwise be.

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially given that the three novellas contained in this book were merely that - novellas. They had a fair amount of sex in them, but I didn't get the impression that I had fallen down some pink-rimmed rabbit hole of transgression. The last of the three stories, in particular, was more about South African politics than it was about raunch.

In a certain sense, the cataloging of smut by the Bleak University Library is parallel to the ratings writers often use to tag their stories, such as K, T, MA, NC-17, and so on. We have a lingering sense that if something contains smut, it ought to have a little warning-label on it. Fine. I really don't think myself that dirty stories are dangerous, but tags merely provide information, and hurt no one.

But the interesting thing about the way fanficdom operates is that the K stories and the NC-17 stories are mixed promiscuously together. Check the three most recent stories over on Survival Instinct and you're liable to get a fluff story about pink gel-pens, a weirdly contrived romantic interlude with some mild groping, and a full-on three-way involving Doc Cottle and a lot of lube. (I'm sorry. That story is still in my head. It will be gone soon, I promise.)

Or, hit The Lady's In Charge, and you might get Laura/Three bondage using a compass and some torn stockings, a little Tory/Laura angst interlude that anyone can enjoy, or one of Trialia's evocative little five-liners that says rather more than it appears to. Ditto over at LiveJournal, where the romance and the raunch and the deer and the antelope all play together. I am thinking in particular of our friends at bondage_rz, where the last story I read careened wildly from supperraunch to supersweet, and was entertaining as all hell. That is not a ship that I usually sail on, but I'll watch the regatta every now and again.

So, fanficdom is actively engaged, whether intentionally or not, in breaking down the line between the smut and the not-smut. You can even make the argument that fanfic smut does this by its very existence. After all, writing and reading raunch encounters is a way of nudging the canon and saying - this happened, too. Pocketwitch's untitled Laura/Kara series, links to which can be found here, and that chaste hug Kara gave the prez so long ago are part of the same text.

Which means that maybe, someday, collections of erotic novellas can be shelved alongside everything else, where they belong.

A New Way To Find This Blog

2008-07-11T20:16:00.001-04:00

Google "Tom Zarek Love Phalanx," with the quotation marks.

Single hit.

Is this evidence of having accomplished something?

More Dead Presidents

2008-07-11T15:09:00.016-04:00

Part of the eternal return of the fanfic posts.

I wish this had been up a few days ago when I was talking about character death. This story appeared today. It's got both Roslin's death and some sex in it, and the title of the single chapter is "Her Life Was a Story." Which is striking. Because it is, and fanfic often both does and does not acknowledge this. It is a weirdly apt illustration of the point I was trying to make the other day about stories, sex, death and endings.

Especially given the references in this story to Much Ado About Nothing, another story which has a highly gendered sex-related ending, in which Benedick silences Beatrice with a kiss, after which she vanishes from the text. Sex effectively kills the character. And ends the story. (How's that for a wild flight of literary analysis? I haven't thought about that play in ages.)

Also, the baldness thing is linked to the sex rather than being in opposition to it. Because "bald [and] nude", her body is better appreciated. This comes with a heavy portion of male gaze (the story is making the point that she is attractive to Adama, which in a certain sense is just the "she gets her hair back" thing turned inside out) but it's also both unusual and believable.

Anyhow, I wish I'd been able to put it in the original post.

On Essays

2008-07-10T21:02:00.010-04:00

Yesterday, I donated to Greta Christina's Blog, which is having a pledge drive.

What I like about Greta's blog is that her posts have structure. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A question is set up, and an answer is offered. They set out from somewhere, and they arrive somewhere. They are essays.

It is only recently that I have learned to appreciate the essay as a literary form. Growing up, I always associated them with schoolwork. And in academia, short pieces are called articles or papers. Rarely essays.

I think the distinction is worthwhile, because most academic articles or papers are not essays. A lot of them require an enormous amount of background to understand, and some can be opaque or jargon-laden. Sometimes you have to know who the scholar is out to get in order to fully grasp the argument, and sometimes he or she does not tell you. There is such a thing as a passive-aggressive footnote. I have seen it done.

Good conference papers often approach essays. My favorite of the conference papers I have given makes motions in this direction. I won't link to it, because the audience for reasonably well-crafted essays on anti-Catholicism in seventeenth-century Maryland is, shall we say, small. And it has my full name on it, which is not to the point.

My favorite essayists are Mark Twain and Virginia Woolf. Twain makes me laugh, and Woolf makes me smile. I like in particular the clarity of Woolf's style. Her Common Reader essays are the way literary criticism really should be, even if she does have some irritating ideas about Americans (second volume is here). And old Twain is the Grandmaster of Snark. His critique of James Fenimore Cooper is brilliant. And if you have ever studied German, read this.

But to return to my point. I think blogging may offer an opportunity for a literary form that has almost no commercial niche. I mean, what are most substantive blog posts other than essays? There will always be rants, and brief updates, and video-posts, and posts that are links followed by a single snide remark. I have posted many such posts myself. But the format is basically an essay-format.

Which means that we are all in good, if intimidating, company.

For A Variety Of Reasons, I Would Never Have Thought Of This

2008-07-09T20:24:00.029-04:00

Jump in the line, fanfic freaks.

So, today's fanfic is about a three-way. I came across it by accident, because I was browsing tags at Survival Instinct, and I came across the threesome tag. Being my smutty-minded self, and seeing as how it was either that or William Penn and the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute, I decided that Battlestar Galactica threesome smut beats seventeenth-century boundary disputes. It is that sort of a day.

As noted in the previous post, my initial reaction to this story was surprise. As I read on, I was a little baffled, and there were some parts I had trouble getting through.

Partly, it was an issue of word choice. This story has a smut vocabulary problem, as discussed here. I will admit, squim is not a word I often encounter. I thought from the usage here that it was equivalent to cunt, but Urban Dictionary says different. Either way, for me at least, this strikes a false note.

At first, I wondered if the story was intended humorously, but I concluded that it isn't. I read another story by the same writer, which seems to flesh out the concept a little more. [Courtesy statement: I should add, I told the author of story number one that it had gotten my attention, and she referred me to the second one. This post is me working through my reaction to these two stories, which, truly, did grab me. They are unusual and they are squicky, in a good way. If the author asked me for a detailed critique of the stories, I would make the same points as I do here, but I would do it in a more seminar/workshop-appropriate form.]

This second story is a personal-relationships-explored- by-means-of-romance/sex story. It is sweet. I like the idea of Adama being tender with a man. It's nice. And I will admit, if I happen to come across some Adama/Cottle slash, I will smile. Gruff men doing gruff things, gruffly. The world needs more of it.

But I am not being entirely honest, here. My first reaction to story number one was less mature than I like to admit. It was a combination of laughter and oh, no, they're not going to . . . really?. . .this is so out of character, I wonder if he's going to - oh fuck, they went there. Fuck. Ew. Is my door closed?

And so on. For one thing, anal sex and rimming are not my cup of tea. (Show of hands. Who was expecting that sentence?) This is merely a personal quirk, however.

I think what bothered me about the story was not the sex in and of itself, because, well, God knows I've read enough smut that I am rarely shocked by raunch alone. Testicle-licking, even lots of it, does not make me blush.

I think the problem was that this story pushed the limits of my willingness to suspend disbelief, that quality so necessary in a reader. I can be convinced that Kara and Laura go hunting zombies, and then fuck enthusiastically in an airlock afterwards. My disbelief is light and aetherial; it is easily suspended. Similarly, I can believe that Laura could and very well might seduce Kathryn Janeway, or that a Sam/Leoben/Lee three-way is within the realm of the possible. Likewise, I have no trouble with story number two, noted above.

But story number one, I can't do. I think the difficulty here is that whole non-canon characterization thing. Departures from the way the characters are presented on the show, in terms of who they might sleep with, or things that might have happened to them, are fine, if they are convincing. Indeed, femslash has gotten into my head to the point where I really don't think of that whole Kara/Laura thing as particularly uncanonical at all. I am capable of having my mind changed.

However, this story does not change my mind. I can believe in the Adama/Cottle/Roslin threesome. Really, I can. I don't necessarily want to watch, but I can consider the possibility. This story, though, does not convince me of it.

I think the trouble here comes from the language the author has adopted to talk about sex. I have talked before about the tone and vocabulary problem in writing smut. What is happening in this story is that the language the author has chosen to use comes with a lot of conventions about what ought to be going on when those words are employed. When you say "hot cum" you bring in a certain set of expectations.

The result of this is that the conventions attached to the vocabulary obliterate the characters and run away with the story, or at least the sex part of the story. The beginning and the end are fairly ordinary, in terms of prose style, which makes me think all the the more that it is the question of how to write sex that has tripped up this author.

On the other hand, it may be satire, an attempt at total and utter reductio ad absurdum of all fanfic raunch, ever. I truly do not know.

Oh, and by the way. Sequim, pronounced "Squim" is also a small town in Washington State. Go figure.

In Which Certain Sub-Genres of Fanfic Take Subtle Swipes At Certain Other Sub-Genres

2008-07-09T13:49:00.016-04:00

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into this. But I quote. "He was the one she wanted . . . not the other guy, Adama."

Take that, Survival Instinct. The Tom Zarek Love Phalanx totally has your number.

Oh, and I mentioned that in addition to Smut, Angst, Drama, BDSM and the rest, there ought to be a Creativity Prize tag, or possibly a For A Variety Of Reasons, I Never Would Have Thought Of That tag. Here's why. Yowza.

Killing Me Softly (Yes, Virginia, There Is A Pun Intended)

2008-07-08T12:12:00.025-04:00

Part of a series on BSG fanfic.

Today, I am going to talk about how Laura Roslin makes her exit from the universe.

Not all fictional characters die. Really, they don't. The idea that they do is part of a fallacy I brought up once before, but did not pursue, due mostly to inebriation. But this is a significant point. Not all characters die. In fact, the vast majority of them do not.

Which means that when a character does snuff it, it is usually fairly important.

In a certain sense, Laura Roslin's story is all about how she dies. This is dramatic, but I think it's a problem. It has a lingering aroma of the many, many stories out there in the world in which a female character's death resolves some tension in the narrative about power, knowledge or sex.

There are a lot of stories in which powerful women die. Queens, for example, tend to meet nasty ends. Dido ends up on that pyre after Aeneas sails away. Cleopatra goes hunting for snakes. And it's not just the queens, either. Women who know things also tend to die. Cassandra went splat outside the walls of Troy. Hypatia, poor clever soul, got flayed by a Christian mob in the streets of Alexandria.

And then women who commit sexual indiscretions also die. In Bleak House, poor Lady Dedlock expires because her husband forgave her for an affair and a child that she had before they ever even met, and Dickens feared his readers' minds would blown by this if he didn't kill her off.

Oh, and remember poor Anna Karenina and that train?

The nunnery is another version of this. In Verdi's Don Carlos, Princess Eboli, who truly has game, ends up taking the veil. In Dickens's David Copperfield, Little Emily is forced by the narrative to accept a life of eternal chastity because of a single youthful indescrection. And, more than that, she forgets how to speak all those foreign languages she learned! Or, in Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Cecile is consigned to nunhood at the end. (And the Marquise de Merteuil is uglified by smallpox. This is a theme I've seen in many French novels, of the adventuresses getting the smallpox at the end. Zola does it to Nana, and Balzac hits Madame Marnette with a similarly nasty disease at the end of Cousin Bette). And, a universe away from French novels, don't get me started on what happens to Susan in The Chronicles of Narnia. A little bit of lipstick, one episode of flirtation with one of C. S. Lewis's scary cartoon Muslims (Prince Rabadash), and you're banished forever from the happy land of the talking lion . . .

Then, there is the theme of sickness, or deathly illness, allowing female characters to achieve insight, but cutting them off from personal relations. Helen Burns in Jane Eyre is one example I can think of at the moment. Or Lise, in The Brothers Karamazov, whose illness leads her into some weird things. Knowing things, in many pre-modern and some modern minds, is related to sex. Women who have sex may know too much, or women who know too much miss out on the sex. This is related to all that hand-wringing, mine included, about Roslin's wig.

(Methodology note: I am committed to pulling all non-fanfic material for these posts entirely out of my head. I looked up the spelling on Liaisons Dangereuses because I can't spell French, but that's all. So if I get something wrong, let me know.)

So, there are stories in which powerful women die, there are stories in which sick women achieve great insight at the expense of personal relationships, and there are stories in which women's deaths are closely tied to ideas about sex.

Laura Roslin's story, as fanficdom writes it, negotiates with all these themes. Sometimes, it is on a very crude level. One thing I hate about a lot of Roslin stories, is that the tension is set up as, "is her body sick and she can't fuck, or is she better, and she can?" Annoying as hell, this. Oh, and can we please not fetishize the sick female body any more? I've been to that party, and the music was terrible.

Often, though, it's more complex. With Roslin, the connection between sex and death is not the punishment theme, or (usually) the "can we fuck her or not" theme. It's a little bit different.

One place to start is here, with a story called "Five Deaths."

This is an exploration of five ways in which Roslin's life might have ended. She could have been Adama's wife, and died in the cylon attack. She could have been assassinated. She could have died on New Caprica. She could have died, and been cloned, and used as a weapon. She could have died of cancer in a very close-to-canon way.

How Roslin dies in these various sub-narratives determines her character arc retroactively. What is the point of telling this woman's story? "Five deaths" offers five different answers to this question. It's a good story.

But I want to go back to the sex and death theme. This is important.

Both sex and death are methods of story resolution. They are both endings. The metaphorical linking of orgasm with death goes back a long, long way. I've seen it in Shakespeare, and no, I cannot instance a particular play at this point. I've seen it in otherwise coy and chaste Romantic poets. (Yes, dying on someone's lap means what you think it means.)

Someone over at Survival Instinct actually went there a while back. Again, I curse my own sloth - I did not write down the title or author of this story. The quote was in a raunch context, and it was like "you're killing me, Bill" or something like that, there was an implication that Roslin's death was somehow imminent, and the characters were keenly -- shall we say, sweetly -- aware of the play on words.

Survival Instinct does not ask authors to tag their stories for more than the basics (so, in addition to PWP, Smut, Angst, Drama, Ficlets, and so on, we do NOT have, say, Heteronormativity, Bad Puns, Dancing Tongues, Fire Imagery for Orgasms, Nibbling and Biting, Really Clever, Well Written, I Don't Think So, WTF, or any other potentially useful markers.) So I couldn't find that story again.

They do, however, have a 'Character Death' tag, which is nifty. Although sometimes you do not get, ah, quite what you might expect.

But anyway, death and sex. Or, death and orgasm. Here, the connection between sex and death is explicit as all fuck. Then, there is sex and the end of the world.

This sort of thing goes back to the Greeks, I think. In the Iliad, there is a lot of death in battle, and a theme that comes up over and over that young men who die in battle never marry. Death is a sort of dark substitute for marriage and sex.

And, as in some ancient mythology, there is sometimes an afterlife for Roslin.

Here, Tory kills Roslin (sex and death again) and then when she herself dies, she meets Roslin again, who turns out to be the Queen of the Cylons. No, I am not making this up. Yes, it is awesome.

Here, Billy returns from the beyond to comfort Laura as she dies.

And more of ditto here.

I will not instance that Evil Dead Galactica story here, which I found by searching for 'Character Death' at The Lady's In Charge, because although it has life after death in it, Laura lives. Spectacularly. Let us move on.

These stories do with death what a lot of fic does with sex. It is there as a story-ender, as a type of narrative completion, but it is implied that the story goes on. Most romance stories imply a happily-ever-after after the sex or the marriage. Similarly, this type of story implies, if not a happily-ever-after, at least an ever-after. We get to kill Laura without really killing her.

But there are stories in which Roslin really and truly dies. More recent ones have this happening with the explosion of the base-star she was on in The Hub, as here and again here. In these stories, death is really the end, in the story and for the character. Significantly, this is death as a result of politics. Not cancer. In a certain sense, it is more satisfying than the cancery deaths, because it is not about the mysterious and vulnerable female body. Roslin dies the way any male space-hero might die, by going down with the ship.

Along similar lines there is this, in which Roslin decides that a suicide mission is better than a lingering death. Moreover, she instructs Adama that should he see her again, he will have to kill her, as she will be not herself, but a cylon copy. This story explicitly rejects the cancer death for an active death which the character chooses herself.

Which gets me to my last story, in which Roslin dies at her own hand, and takes only herself with her. This is the only example I have found of this, but there may be others. Roslin takes her own life. This is interesting, because in a certain sense it is a swipe at the entire arc of the show, which has made a point of toying with killing her, and then not, and taking the decisions about her own life out of her hands. This is Roslin's revenge on the writers, I think.

So, where does this leave us?

One, death stories and fuck stories are closely related. Sex and death are both endings, and can be very interesting ones. This idea has a long, long cultural pedigree. Which indicates the extent to which fanfic is a literary genre that is fooling around (sometimes without its writers realizing it) with a lot of other literary genres. It plays with some very big conceptual toys.

Two, BSG-fanfic both is and is not post-gender. We do have the stories in which Roslin's death is a death any hero might have. On the other hand, we have that suicide-mission story in which it is made very clear that the blaze-of-glory demise is explicitly engaging with the death-by-cancer demise. Roslin the leader never quite gets away from being Roslin the woman.

And, we have the idea pushed by the canon itself, that Roslin herself is an abberation in terms of power-holding. She comes into power by accident, and she is going to die, likely to be replaced by that square-jawed boy wonder, Lee Adama. Things will return to normal, in other words.

If Laura was Lawrence, I think, Roslin would probably die rather differently.

Kabuki Interlude No. 3 (Still Life)

2008-07-07T20:37:00.005-04:00

Comment Roundup

2008-07-07T20:07:00.006-04:00

I'll do this in historical order (my favorite kind).

Nnaylime left a comment to the wigs post that I responded to way back then, but when I was sitting at my desk today staring out of the window, it occurred to me that I am not done with the question she brought up about the how/why of that character's death, both in terms of what fandom thinks about it, and what would make a good ending for the story. So I will have to go dig up some character death fanfic.

It has also been pointed out to me at several junctures that part of the reason smut is fun is that it is hot. No argument from me on that one. However, smut is even hotter if you can tie it to an argument and make it plead for - oh, well, you know. We've been there. But yes. Hotness is good ;) Actually, I think the weird thing about so much BSG-related raunch is that it is not hot. Possibly this is too self-relevatory, and probably it is at this point fairly obvious, but I really can't muster much enthusiasm for Lee/Kara raunch. Or Athena-related raunch. Ditto Cylon raunch. Hm. Cylon Raunch . . . sounds like a western-themed PWP database. You know, with hats, and mechanical bison.

Finally, I think there is a BSG/Law and Order crossover that will soon require my attention.

Oh, and that thing about The Wire. Drat. I was hoping for better things from S5. But, does Pearlman continue to be weirdly, weirdly cute? (This thing that I have for that character disturbs me, a little). Does Daniels continue to have a beautiful, beautiful ass? If so, there may be compensations. I wait, and curse Netflix for their sloth.

On Squee

2008-07-06T18:33:00.025-04:00

I have been, as noted earlier, indulging in red and blue pimpernallings over at LiveJournal, and I came across an interesting statement in comments.

One commentor noted, laughing, that if a particular story had not been so silly, or clever, that he/she "would have died of squee." This made me smile too, not just because it was funny, but also because I'd never seen squee used as a noun before.

It got me to thinking.

We are all familiar with squee.

Those of us who read Survival Instinct are VERY familiar with squee.

Indeed, I would hazard a guess that the servers over at that site run almost entirely on squee. A little ethanol, maybe, and some unresolved sexual tension, and a generous portion of raunch, but mostly squee.

But there is more to say about squee than that, I think.

First, I should say that squee in its hardest and most head-banging form is usually a little too sweet for my palate. For example, there is this story, which hits every squee button known to woman. This, I think, is the Ur-Squee. This is the sort of place squee can take you if you give it the car keys. Whether you want to go on that trip or not is up to you.

However, I do see the point of squee. Squee is emotional payoff. When used judiciously, it can really work. This, after all, is the point of the ending of the "The Hub" episode.

Interestingly, smut does not seem to produce squee.

Squee and smut are closely related, I admit. Often, squee stories contain smut. Certainly squee and smut are both versions of the same desire for storyarc resolution. They go to a lot of the same parties.

They are, though, fairly distinct. A lot of smut is clearly not intended to provoke squee, and the most squeesome narratives usually treat sex humorously, and sometimes immaturely.

Slash fiction, whether it's manslash or femslash, also seems to fall outside of the squee category. Possibly because a lot of it is raunch, but possibly not. I think if I had to go out on a limb here (I have noticed, looking back over some of my earlier posts, that I appear to spend much of my time up in trees) I would say that most of the squee-making stories are resolutions of tensions set up by the canon. Slash is about setting up your own tensions, or picking up on tensions that may be in the shows, but aren't acknowledged by the canon in any obvious way.

Squee, in contrast, or at least the desire to produce/experience it, is the result of being toyed with by the canon story, usually in a fairly obvious way. The Roslin/Adama romance is a classic example of this, as is the Kara/Lee/Dualla/Sam/God Knows Who Else Polygon of Love. Loads of squee to be found about both of these. Fans want these romances acknowledged, and they want them wrapped up in a gratifying way.

Squee, then, is the enemy of dramatic tension. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Tensions have to be resolved, or why read the story? And sometimes the canon refuses to resolve them, or does so unsatisfactorily.

But there is, as you would expect, a down side. Squee provides the emotional payoff that the show so often withholds, but only at the risk of ending the story. Which we do not necessarily want. Sometimes, it is nice to be tied to a pine tree and forced to plead for your climax. This is why I liked the fact that the show danced with the Roslin/Adama thing for so long without actually going there.

Bondage encounters aside, this means that squee is in fact a vital part of the storytelling process. You want the impulse-to-squee to be there, because squee in fanfic is a sign of a healthy and interesting narrative in the canon, but at the same time, the squee has to be kept in the fanfic arena, until the end of the story itself - because squee is a sign that something has ended.

Tricky Linguistics, Or, We're Talking About Things Ringing False in Our Ears

2008-07-05T13:26:00.007-04:00

Because Stephen Fry is brilliant.

LiveJournaling, Or, Sundry Paraphernal Things

2008-07-04T21:11:00.016-04:00

First, a quotation from John Barth's The Sotweed Factor, which is a historical novel set in Maryland around 1695 and is, like, the best thing ever. Here, Ebenezer and Henry discuss types of rhyme and meter, and Ebenezer suggests that there are some words in English for which it is impossible to find a rhyme . . .

Ebenezer replied, "[The couplet was finished by] Sam Butler in this wise -- observe the art, now, the collision:

Then did Sir Knight Abandon Dwelling
And out he rode a Colonelling"

"Ah, stay!" cried Burlinghame. "This is too much! A Co-lo-nelling! Tis a fabrication -- aye, a Chimaera! Co-lo-nelling, is't! Why did not Mister Butler, if he was so enamored of his unnatural word, call it kernelling, as't should be called, and rhyme from there?"

"Why not indeed? What would you rhyme with kernalling, Henry?"

"Tis naught of a chore to me," Burlingame scoffed. "To rhyme with kernalling -- Well, kernalling--" he hesitated.

"You see," smiled Ebenezer . . "Yield now, there is no rhyme for kernalling."

"I yield," Burlingame said with apparent humility. "I can get me the first line --Then went Sir Knight a kernalling-- but can't
rhyme the infernal thing."

The two travelers exchanged glances.

"Out upon't," Ebenezer muttered, "the lesson's done."

But Burlingame was delighted to see his unintentional coup de maitre; he went on to declaim theatrically from his horse:

"Then went Sir Knight a kernalling
Pursuing all infernal things
Inflam'd by hope's eternal springs
Through Winterings and Vernallings
(As testify his Journallings
And similar diurnallings,
Not mentioning Nocturnallings) . . ."

"Desist!" Ebenezer commanded. "Spin me no more of this doggerel, Henry, lest I heave my burden upon the highway!"

"Forgive me," Burlingame laughed. "I was inspired."

"You were baiting me," the Laureate said indignantly. "Be not puffed up o'er such a trifling achievement . .. "

"Ha! Oh! Ha!" Burlingame cried with sudden glee. "I have hatched more! I'God, they crowd my fancy like the shoats to Portia's nipples!"

Now, Lend me, muse, supernal wings
To sing Sir Knight's Hibernallings
His doublings and his Ternallings
His Forwardings and Sternallings
To sing of his Hesternallings
And also hodiernallings
Internal and External things,
Both brief and diuturnal things
And even sempiternal things
His dark and his lucernal things
Maternal and Paternallings
Sororal and Fraternal Things
His blue and red pimpernallings
And sundry paraphernal things --"

"Stop!" cried Ebenezer. "I'll hear no more!"

So. This is a post about (ahem) LiveJournalling.

If anyone wishes to critique/snark at/flame/etc. prose that I have written, a sample may be found here. It is not fanfiction. Rather, it is a fairly silly fantasy novel set in an alternate ninteenth-century universe. I was toying around with what I know of ninteenth-century America, seventeenth-century America, and ninteenth-century England. Also, it is a version of the Pocahontas story.

I am not a brilliant prose stylist, but I can set up an entertaining story. There are no explosions, but there are steamboats, imperialists, Puritans and snide references to Harvard University.

That is all.

In Which Gaius Baltar and Agent Mulder Arrive At Opposite Sides of A Mirror

2008-07-04T14:17:00.017-04:00

So, I have gotten sucked into reading crossover stories.

This made me smile.

Then, there was this, which hits all the right buttons, and in the right order. I always enjoy finding confirmation that the crack in my head is also in other people's heads. This is reassuring.

Then, there are those crossover stories that don't quite work. These come in several kinds. There is the well-intentioned vaguely sweet romance, the angstfest (I once saw a story about Agent Doggett and a pregnant Agent Scully aboard the Galactica, which fell into the angst-fest category but was so truly weird that I still don't know what to think) the "Oh My" story (otherwise known as PWP), the attempted epic with bad dialog, the pointless inter-canon space fight, and the sometimes smutty and sometimes not mongolian clusterfuck of crackfannery, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. (Agent Scully and A.D.A. Pearlman, please get out of that rack and go home, now. This is over.)

And yes, I like saying "mongolian clusterfuck." Like the dissertation advisor from whom I picked up this phrase, along with much of my historical methodology, I enjoy swearing. (Have you ever heard "tinned pilchard", "mongolian clusterfuck" and the word "eschatological" used within four minutes of one another, by the same person? I have. It's eye-opening. Also, my advisor uses "butch" when he means "macho." This is fun too. As in, "the Duke of Buckingham was trying to look butch when he organized the disastrous military expedition to the Ile de Re in 1627." Eighteen months and one PhD later, I'm still figuring that one out. Scholars of gender and sexuality in early modern England, where are you?)

However, mongolian clusterfuck or no, I am left with a question. Where does the line lie here between the merely entertainingly silly, and the serious? Because some of it is meant seriously.

First, there has to be a reason for the cross. In this West Wing/BSG crossover there is a point to the exercise. The story is about law and politics, specifically the definition of a person, about which question both shows have something to say. Also, there is sex in it.

The inclusion of smut does something interesting in this story. In addition to illustrating power relations, and serving as a commentary on violence, pain (not so far from pleasure) and coersion, the fact that we have the smut mingled in with the rest can be read as a signal about genre. It tells us that this is a particular type of story, and that the text is aware of the fun, on some level, of simply making The West Wing and Battlestar Galactica collide. It's a way of answering the "BSG and The West Wing? But that makes no sense" reaction on the part of some readers. The sex works as a reference to other more purely raunchy genres of fanfic and reminds the reader that this story exists in a relationship with those stories too, and is not simply a story about human rights or law.

So in that story, there is a point, and it works. In other cases, though, the point doesn't work. I'm still making up my mind about this one. Perhaps it is not necessary for me to say this, but I have a tendency to over-read things, occasionally. The following may be an over-reading.

This story, a Voyager/BSG crossover, is going for a commentary on the reality of the world, and it uses the Star Trek holodeck-out-of-control story to do it. This has been done many times before. It's a standard Trek story. A character on the holodeck becomes self-aware, and starts playing games with the 'real' characters. I recall Captain Picard being taken hostage by a holographic Dr. Moriarty at one point. The holographic doctor on Voyager is a slightly different version of this idea. Then there was the holodeck-addicted Lt. Barclay, who was one of my favorite characters except for the fact that he failed to see that Deanna Troi was monumentally, monumentally annoying. I wonder, as an aside, why on such TNG episodes, it is always the men who get into trouble with holograms? Is fantasy particularly dangerous for male characters in stories?

These stories are so common in Trekdom, I think, because they push, over and over, sometimes hamhandedly, a basic sci-fi question, which is about what relation the narrative of the show bears to the narrative of the world we are all experiencing. The whole 'reality of the world' thing. What is the relationship of text to reader? What purpose is this story supposed to serve, if it never could have happened? What sort of relationships should we have with fictional people in alternate realities?

This story asks not only about the relationship of text to reader, but also of one text to another. BSG is the 'not real' and Voyager is the 'real.' Or maybe the other way round or neither, depending on how you want to read this story.

Also, there is smut. I wonder, does smut in crossovers always serve that non-smut purpose mentioned above, of indicating that the story is aware of its own potential weirdness/silliness? I really don't know. (But I do know that Kathryn Janeway just got a lot more interesting, as far as I'm concerned. And Laura . . .veal . . .you're killing this vegan critic here. Really, you are.)

All this aside, though this story was not as interesting as I wanted it to be. Most of the fun I had with it came from trying to force it into the analytical shape just above.

I think this is because of a common stumbling block in crossovers. Sometimes the game aspect of it runs too far ahead of the story aspect. I appreciate the game and silliness aspect of it, but there are a lot of silly stories out there that would be even sillier, and acres more clever and funny, had the authors taken a little more time with them. For example, the parts of the two or more worlds that are colliding that don't fit or match up - either there should be an attempt to deal with this, or re-write one or more worlds, or the obvious non-fit should do something for the story. I don't think simply saying "of course it doesn't match up, that's the point, you're just supposed to be baffled and charmed by the incongruity" really addresses this issue, either.

But to lighten the mood a little, I will now list my top three crossover fic proposals.

Mulder and Scully investigate that murder in Twin Peaks, Washington. Mulder and Agent Cooper get along really well, but Scully hates the guy.

Gaius Baltar and Lt. Daniels from The Wire switch bodies. Hot!

Jimi Hendrix is discovered aboard the Galactica midway through S1. He moves to New Caprica when everyone settles there, and he and Sam and Lee get high together and start a band, called Kara Thrace's Special Destiny. Leoben wants to join but is excluded on grounds of not being able to play drums.

Anyone else?

On Independency

2008-07-04T11:05:00.001-04:00

Because I couldn't find a 1776-related song that referenced Maryland . . . .

And a little more Virginian goodness . . .

In Which My Safeword Evaporates

2008-07-03T13:44:00.005-04:00

Ok, I totally take back what I said ages ago about crossover stories being past my limits. I read this and it made me laugh. Even though I have never watched The West Wing.

Now, will someone write me a BSG/The Wire crossover? Please? I want Jimmy McNulty to get bossed around by Adama. Gruffly. And with tank tops.

Yes, I have a job.

On Reading

2008-07-03T12:35:00.008-04:00

About fan fic as ever, but with a few other things thrown in for fun.

I am not the first person to say this, but I will say it again because it is true. Reading takes effort. I don't mean simply that some things are hard to get through (I'm looking at you, Michel Foucault) or that at times one has to fight that terrible sense that in reading what one happens to be reading one is in fact wasting one's life (I confess, I got through about three pages of The Da Vinci Code. Then I stopped).

What I mean is that there is a difference between reading purely for pleasure, and reading with the knowledge that one is going to be obliged to say something about the text afterwards. I have always had some difficulty with the latter. I'm like that character in Edith Wharton's story, "Xingu" who feels that really, reading the book is enough and it is somewhat insulting and rather a bother to be required to have an opinion about it as well.

I have fought this as part of my professional development, and I'm a little bit better at it now than I was five years ago.

I have fought it in particular as a teaching assistant and seminar leader, because in those capacities I have had to read and comment on a lot of writing.

The first time I had to comment on student papers as a teaching assistant (about three years ago) I was truly awful at it. I would give students comments like "the structure of this paper needs work" or "the organization is good, but the thesis is murky." I have been accused, justly, of being phenomenally unhelpful as a commentor.

But I think I've improved. One thing that I knew from the start was that you absolutely must make the comments about the essay and not about the author. That is easy, although sometimes finding ways to phrase criticism diplomatically is hard.

Another thing that I've learned is that you can never be too specific. You have to instance particular passages, phrases, themes, key words, images, whatever. Specificity is the golden door to the nirvana of helpfulness.

One other trick I've picked up is to read everything twice, but differently each time. That is, I read the text once, quickly, and jot down big points (usually related to themes, ideas, large-scale structure, etc.) that occur to me. And then I read it again, for details, and take notes. This is where I end up giving comments like "I don't follow the transition between paragraph three and paragraph four" or "the essay brings up gender as a key theme in paragraph one, but the analysis of power relations in Stafford County on pp. 3-5 doesn't address this theme, even though this section looks to me like a discussion of displays of masculinity."

(I will admit, I really have to work hard sometimes to avoid just writing "NO" in big letters in the margin. But this is when I get things like "Since the dawn of time, man has struggled to separate church and state." I think I can offer this as a general rule. If you ever see a sentence in an academic essay that begins "since the dawn of time, man has . . . ." the rest of that sentence will be wrong. Sometimes the rest of the essay will be just fine, because the author has used the 'dawn of time thing' just to get him/herself started, and actually does have a solid point to make. But the sentence attached to the 'dawn of time' thing will invariably have picked up the gangrene of anachronism and will have to be sliced out and removed if the essay is to survive.)

I have discovered, as I noted in a previous post, that taking notes as you read is a really, really good idea. My mind is more like a sieve than a steel trap, and things tend to fall out of it if I'm not careful. Failure to take notes will always come back to bite you in the ass. Always.

So. I will now attempt to put my money where my mouth is, and offer an extremely brief analysis of two stories, taken from The Lady's In Charge. I have skewed the sample by picking things that are intended seriously, not just the good old fun crackfic). Also, I made myself read and write each review in less than ten minutes, because I need to edit a syllabus this afternoon.

Story number one, by projectjulie.
Reading one: This story is structured well. It is written as a series of brief scenes, each of which changes in some way the relationships between the characters.

Reading two: The imagery is good - the orange works as a way of tying the thing together. However, I am not as convinced by the "I sing of Artemis . . . grevious shafts" passage in the final scene. It is intended to stand out, because of the poetry of the language, and length of it. It's also intended to explain what K. means to L., or the meaning of the arrow quest for these two characters (and for the larger story), but I am not sure it works, coming from that character. It seems a little too prominently placed. But then again, it is followed by K. saying "oh frak" and L. laughing, so it seems the characters have a sense of the odd weight of this passage as well. This made me smile.

Story number two , by orbythesea.

Reading one: The story moves from the very specific (flowers, rising bread, heels of shoes, opera) to the very general (all has happened before, all will happen again). This mirrors the point of the story, which is that L. moves from being angry or regrettting the particular things that she has lost or will lose in her own individual life to considering her own growing sense that the issue is bigger than that, that she has a purpose that does not depend on the meaning (or the end) of her particular individual self.

Reading two: Again, counting the specific (shoes, sopranos) to counting the ideal or the abstract (blessings). Richard disappears from the list, and is replaced by Billy and Elosha, and the idea of cancer as a gift - the meaning of L's body as she understands it has changed? I am also struck (and relieved) by the fact that Adama is not in this story. I think this makes total sense, because adding him in would have entirely blown the Richard to Billy/Elosha progrsesion of relationships, which is central here. I wonder, though, was L. ever as certain about her purpose as she seems to be in the last paragraph here?

Ok. Time's up - back to that syllabus.

In Which Academics Indulge in Passive-Aggressive Youtubery

2008-07-02T19:55:00.006-04:00

I belong to a summer book club. We are all colonial americanists, and we read a book every two weeks or so, and then get together at someone's house to discuss it. (Next time is at my house! Yay! Must remember to do dishes.)

We had a meeting this afternoon. Afterwards, one of our number, who never says anything if he can merely imply it instead, sent me the following video, with helpful transcription underneath. The original email referenced my (well-known? I guess it must be) love of 80s new wave.

I am still not sure what to think about this. Is something going to happen tomorrow? Are we low on gold, cotton and pearls? Are we indeed drowning in the oceans of history?

Possibly I am going to pay for this . . .

We're setting sail to the place on the map
from which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
by the light of the crosses that burned.
Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
and the gold and the cotton and pearls
It's the place where they keep all the darkness you need.
You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby.

You will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow

Save me. Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools. No, no
Oh, save me. Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools
I want to run and hide right now

Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
or drowning in the oceans of history
Traveling the world, you're in search of no good
but I'm sure you'll build your Sodom like you knew you would
Using all the good people for your galley slaves
as you're little boat struggles through the warning waves, but you don't pay

You will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow . . .

Total Power Trip

2008-07-02T13:09:00.004-04:00

I just ordered the books for my courses this fall.

I love doing this.

I will make you read things, little freshmen . . . yes, I will make you read many, many things . . .

Bulkie Strikes Back

2008-07-02T10:33:00.007-04:00

Argh. Here we fracking go again.

I am starting to see that sweater in my sleep. It's everywhere. It's out to get me.

I will now issue a Bulky Sweater Challenge. If anyone can find me a Roslin babyfic, or a Roslin-gets-the-crap-kicked-out-of-her fic that takes place on New Caprica and does NOT reference that sweater, I will award a prize, to be determined by me.

Academic Publishing Smackdown, Or, I am Put Off

2008-07-02T10:09:00.003-04:00

From the editors of a prestigious academic journal, who have had my article since April . . .

Dear [name deleted]:

I'm very sorry the review of your submission has taken so long. I was slow out of the starting blocks, and the referees have delayed things further.

I sent your piece out to four scholars with the relevant expertise. One turned in his or her report. Another gave me an assessment verbally but I'm still waiting for a written report. I'm also still waiting for reports from two other referees. All of the readers have received reminders.

This is my last day before going on leave for a year. I have discussed your file with my replacement, [name deleted]. He will work to get at least two more reports, and get you a decision in July.

Again, I regret this long delay.

Sincerely,
[name deleted]

The pace of scholarship is truly glacial.

But on the bright side, the history librarian here has finally, finally taken note of the couch situation.

A couple of additional notes: I have had some old furniture taken out of the room, and am looking into finding something nicer. I’m not sure what is possible pending the [library] renovation, but would welcome suggestions – I hear, for instance, that some of you miss the brown couch. I am also hoping to find a few more decent office chairs, since we have more carrels than chairs at the moment.

Indeed.

On Wigs

2008-07-01T12:35:00.013-04:00

Part of the Tango Fanfique.

This post is about the wig. You know the wig I'm talking about.

Many people have mixed feelings about the wig. On the one hand, it needs to be there for verisimilitude. Cancer patients lose their hair. Laura Roslin cannot be an exception, or the story loses something.

On the other hand, the wig is, at best, a necessary evil. We did not start watching BSG or writing about it on account of the wig. No one is cheering for the wig (I think).

In fanfic, the wig is dealt with in a variety of ways. Here it is acknowledged, accepted, and shown not to be a problem either for the story or the characters. This is good.

(By the way, you would not believe how much smut I had to read to find this particular story again. I read it a few weeks ago, and I remembered the wig, but I could not remember the author or the title. Argh. I need to start taking notes or something.)

Then, there are the many, many stories where Laura gets better, and her hair grows back. These are legion, and easy to find.

Some writers ignore the wig thing entirely. I have some sympathy with this. Despite my reaction at the first glimpse of Bald Laura, which was that, wow, that woman is beautiful even without hair, I think I would still rather she had her hair back.

It bothers me that I have this reaction. Both parts of it, in fact.

Partly this is a femininity thing. We want a sympathetic female character to be beautiful, and this (I will go out on an old-fashioned heteronormative limb here) involves having hair.

But there are exceptions.

There is Ripley, in Aliens III (I think it was the third one) where she is in the prison colony, and her head is shaved. Ripley is meant to be powerful as much as sexy, and the shaved head indicates that she means business, that the story is about transcending the dark and the terrifying, even if you are killed in the process.

There is also Ambassador Delenn. I followed Babylon 5 for a while in high school, and if memory serves, the Delenn character, an alien, was bald early on, and then underwent a transformation under circumstances I cannot at this point recall, from which she emerged with hair.

And then, to move entirely off the topic of science fiction, there is that Cate Blanchette movie about Queen Elizabeth I, which begins with martyrs getting their heads shaved and ends with Liz cutting off her hair and donning a wig and white paint.

There is a pattern here. Baldness, for women characters at least, is often a sign of transcendence, of being more than human, or operating in a realm in which personal relationships are not the point. It can also signal a woman's connection to the divine, the alien, and the strange.

I think Roslin losing her hair is a version of this idea.

I also think that this why a lot of people are uncomfortable with Bald Laura and why in a huge amount of romance or relationship-focused fanfic, all that lovely hair grows back. It is telling that in the story linked to above, where the wig/baldness is confronted and accepted by the story and the characters, a little bit of Laura's hair has grown back. It is a story, after all, set right after an acknowledgment of good old-fashioned love. Bringing Laura's hair back signals that she has returned to the realm of the personal, the human and the familiar.

Whether she ought to be there, or ought to stay there, is another question.

Kabuki Interlude No. 2

2008-06-30T21:35:00.001-04:00

Girl Crushes

2008-06-30T12:13:00.002-04:00

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.

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

2008-06-30T09:40:00.003-04:00

Gender Rose and The Wire

2008-06-29T13:53:00.019-04:00

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?

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

2008-06-29T12:42:00.007-04:00

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 . . .

Native English Speakers, A Rock, and Some Pronouns

2008-06-28T20:07:00.004-04:00

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

About A Couch

2008-06-27T11:23:00.011-04:00

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.

In Which the Wind Howls

2008-06-27T10:45:00.012-04:00

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.

Kabuki Interlude No. 1

2008-06-27T10:26:00.000-04:00

Comment Roundup

2008-06-27T09:48:00.002-04:00

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.

Because I Love the Picture

2008-06-26T15:35:00.002-04:00

and because I, too, stress about the details

On Femslash

2008-06-26T12:51:00.012-04:00

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.

About Blogs

2008-06-26T12:14:00.004-04:00

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.

Worth Reading

2008-06-26T11:50:00.002-04:00

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

It's All Fun And Games

2008-06-25T12:06:00.015-04:00

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?

More Bondage

2008-06-24T21:56:00.002-04:00

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.

Pop Music Post

2008-06-24T18:47:00.004-04:00

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:

The Boredom Strikes Back, or, More Smut

2008-06-24T17:08:00.003-04:00

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.

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

2008-06-23T12:45:00.004-04:00

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.

Infrastructure, or Trains, Novels and Cargo Lifts

2008-06-22T11:41:00.016-04:00

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]

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

2008-06-21T22:04:00.014-04:00

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.

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

2008-06-21T15:50:00.017-04:00

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.

We're not sluts! We promise!

2008-06-20T09:47:00.001-04:00

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 . . . .

Academic Personae, or, I Buy Stuff

2008-06-19T10:12:00.000-04:00

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?

New Horizons in Pedagogy

2008-06-17T19:59:00.000-04:00

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

Erotica in Space

2008-06-17T11:28:00.004-04:00

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.

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

2008-06-16T11:50:00.005-04:00

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.

Classical Music Drinking Games

2008-06-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

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.

On FanFic

2008-06-13T12:03:00.003-04:00

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.

Music I Can't Get Out Of My Head

2008-06-08T16:29:00.000-04:00

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.