Monthly Archives: August 2009

So my post scheduling isn’t working lately, and until I figure out what’s messing it up I probably won’t be on my usual schedule. Plus, this morning I received some really disturbing news from The Best Boss Ever, which has me really nervy and worried, but I’m not going to blog about it because, while I may not be the smartest geek in the world, I know better than to blog publicly about work.  I won’t blog about work since I have The Best Boss Ever and don’t want to endanger that.

Good bosses are hard to come by.  Let’s just say that if there’s someone you haven’t hugged lately and you need to, do so. They might be taken from you at a moment’s notice.

And in the middle of all of this nerve-wracking news I get a tweet that says that Disney has bought out Marvel comics.

What?!?!

I had to stop a moment and sit down.  My beloved Marvel comics. Purchased. By Disney. The producers of elephants in tutus.  It naturally wasn’t long before the idea of Wolverine dressed as a Disney princess drifted across the Twitter airwaves. (Gee, thanks for that image, @furiey and @knightless...Damn you, tweeple. Damn you. That is so wrong.)

My first initial reaction to this news was utmost horror, but looking at it logically I have to admit that this doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.  Disney did the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, after all, and while none of the sequels had all of the charm of the first, they were in no way horrible. Although, I do still wonder how Johnny Depp still manages to be sexy when he’s filthy and his teeth look to be rotting out.

This purchase means money.  Money that Marvel needs in a time where all print media, comics included, is losing readership left and right. A few blockbuster films might help that and encourage people to at least check out the comics, but Disney has an unparalleled ability to market licensed characters in the form of just about any purchasable item you can think of, and that could just be the thing to help Marvel along.

Provided, of course, that it’s done the right way.

I am more than a bit worried for Marvel’s more mature and independent-minded properties.  Will they have to deal with the bowdlerizing influence of Disney? Will Disney try to make Marvel’s comic books into comics just for kids? – The potential is definitely there with some lines for censorship to remove all meaning from the stories.  Take the increasingly apparent parallels between the struggles for mutant rights in X-men and the struggles for gay rights and civil rights in politics today.  Will those political ideas that give the X-men comics so much meaning to so many people be expunged from the books?

I hope that Disney’s controlling influence in that manner will be light to non-existent.  As much as Marvel may need this new partnership, I would hate to see it destroy the quality of content that I have come to expect from them.  I’ve always been a devoted Marvel fan, and I hope that I can continue to be so.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Disney acquires Marvel (tvsquad.com)
• Disney announces Marvel Entertainment acquisition (destructoid.com)
• Disney to Buy Marvel for $4 Billion (wired.com)

RPGs (either pen-and-paper or online) and fanfiction are hardly the greatest sources of literature available, and have suitable reputations among the literary establishment for being exactly the opposite.  You can easily find some of the worst writing you have ever seen among either community, and without much effort.  The vast majority of role-playing stories, forum roleplay, or fanfiction writing tends to be written by young adolescents playing at writing stories.

There is of course some excellent fanfiction to be found, and a number of authors such as Cassandra Clare and Naomi Novik began as fanfiction writers.  I’m sure there are more that just don’t admit to it. I’ve written my own share of fanfiction here and there and actively roleplay on a number of games.

I’ve always thought that both have a great potential for being good educational resources for aspiring writers: both as a way to practice by dabbling in a universe not your own and without pressure, and as examples of what not to do.

So here’s a few lessons taken from these incredibly humble proving grounds:

• The Character’s the Thing:
  • While a decent plot is essential, a good character is what people will remember first and foremost, and really good characters can keep readers interested even at points when the plot itself may be a bit weak. Good, believable, multi-dimensional characters, much more than plot, can be the foundation-stone of your story and can hold it up on their shoulders when it gets weak.
  • Avoid the dreaded and despised Mary Sue!  A Mary Sue (or sometimes Gary Stu/Marty Stu for male characters) is usually a self-insertion, but a self-insertion of the way the writer wishes he or she really was. Perfect, popular, loved by all of the other characters in the story, capable of solving every problem, and with no faults whatsoever.  Where a good character can carry a weak story, the Mary Sue will send even good stories crashing to the ground.
    • Self insertions can work, if the character is believable and three-dimensional and realistic, but it is generally not advised in any situation.
• There Are No New Stories, only New Tellings of Old Ones:
  • Your characters won’t be the first to fall in love, go to school, have sex.  They won’t be the first to find themselves in the middle of a war, to fight an evil tyrant of whatever mundane or fantastic abilities, or be the first heroes to ever save a life.  Some of the best stories are where the author finds the common thread at the center of those old and over-used plots and twists it. (An excellent example of this is the TV series Dexter, which takes the now cliche and over-done forensic detective series and turns the hero scientist into a serial killer.)
• Sometimes the bad criticism is the best kind:
  • As flattering as it is to get a hundred “OMG I LOVE THIS FIC!” type reviews, they don’t really tell you a whole lot about how you actually did or how good your writing is.   Embrace the bad reviews.  Love them. Whatever you do, don’t ignore them!  Even the most malicious may have at its core some good suggestions for how you may become a better writer.  At the very least, you can use these reviews as an impetus to keep writing and keep getting better to prove that reviewer wrong.

You can learn as much (and possibly more) about writing from reading bad fiction as from reading masterpieces.  Unfortunately, fanfiction, in particular, tends to raise the ire of publishers (less so with most actual authors) due to intellectual property issues.  The fanficcers are generally doing it as a way to dabble in the worlds that they had grown to love and to keep that all-too special magic of a good story  going just a little bit longer, and never get any money from it, but publishers see plagiarists and imitation is only a sincere form of flattery when you’re not going to get sued for it.

I would love to see fanfiction used as a tool in the classroom, as a way to encourage creativity and a way to practice writing skills.  I think it could be a wonderful resource, even if using it just to compare the good writers with the bad and what makes each work or not work.  When a young writer can identify what doesn’t work in someone else’s writing, they’re one step closer to fixing what doesn’t work in their own.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Fanspeak: The Lingo of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fandom (oup.com)
• Where No Man has Gone Before (Newsweek)

It’s just over a week to DragonCon, and I will be liveblogging the Con via my twitter feed as well as blog posts here.  I’m still working on getting up the schedule of the events we’re going to attend as the DragonCon schedule still isn’t final, but as of right now, the schedule we’ll be using as a guideline looks something like this (of course, whether we actually make it to everything is very iffy. Things marked with ♣ are our “Definite, don’t Miss” events.):

DragonCon Schedule:

• Friday, September 4:
  • Arrival and Registration sometime Friday Morning
  • ♣ 2:30-3:30 PM:  Panel with Dwight Schultz and Dirk Benedict (Yay, A-Team!)
  • 4:00 PM: Tom Felton Panel
• Saturday, September 5:
  • ♣ 10:00 AM: DragonCon Parade – Expect lots of Pictures!
  • 11:30 AM: Browncoats Redemption Panel – About the fan-produced movie coming out soon.
  • 1:00 PM: The Signal LIVE! – The best Whedonverse Podcast, casting live from DragonCon.
  • ♣ 4:00 PM: Leonard Nimoy Panel on the Trek-track.
  • ♣ 8:30 PM: DragonCon Night at the Georgia Aquarium
• Sunday, September 6:
  • 11:30 AM:  Adam Savage – Stealth Science and Critical Thought aka How to Teach Science by Blowing Stuff Up
  • 1:00 PM: Patrick Stewart Panel on the Trek-Track
    • Eeeee!  Patrick Stewart Panel starts during the Adam Savage Panel! However will we Choose!?!?
  • 2:30 PM: Lou Ferrigno
  • 7:00 PM: Terminated: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
• Monday, September 7:
  • 10:00 AM: The Guild Q&A with Felicia Day
  • Home again, home again….

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rosemary’s Dragon*Con Appearances (visionaryliving.com)
• 2009 Parsec Awards Nominations Open (wired.com)
• Liam Neeson to star in The ATeam remake (telegraph.co.uk)

I love costuming, and I love events where people go in costume as much for the fact that they give me an excuse to wear my costumes as for the events themselves. It’s like make-believe for grown-ups (or at least, people who look like grown-ups).

There’s always that moment of anxiety before an event, though, where you’re sitting there with the most fundimental question of all.  “What will I wear?”

Well, some events are easy, because they have a distinct setting. A LARP, for example, might be set in a particular type of world, and you may already have an idea of what race or class you might want to play in that LARP.  A Renaissance Faire also lends a certain framework around which to decide your costume, because it has to be contemporary with the time period in which the Faire is set.  An event like a science fiction convention (DragonCon, for instance) can be more difficult, because it’s rather an “anything goes” sort of event.  For deciding for that, I tend to go with my favorite fandom which is most highly represented among the guests each year, or with some style I feel most comfortable with.

You also have to take into consideration whether or not you can sew (or have a handy seamstress-on-demand willing to do your bidding).  If you can sew, and sew well, your costume is really only limited by your fabric budget and how much time you’ve got to actually make your wondrous creation.  If you can’t sew and don’t have someone to sew for you, well, you’re probably going to have to buy your costume, and finding the resources for buying a costume that doesn’t, you know, look costumey (non-flammable nylon, anyone?) can be difficult.

The Aether Emporium Wiki has an excellent list of resource links for the less needle-and-thread-inclined among us, as well as some great places to get patterns.  Though it’s primarily geared toward steampunk related costumes, many of the resources can also be used for a western look, historically accurate Victorian costumes, gothic, or even some Renaissance wear.

For women, some items of costumery are generally best custom made if you can afford them or make them yourself, particularly lingerie type elements and corsetry.  A well made and well fitted corset is extremely comfortable, but get one that doesn’t fit your measurements and you’ll be spending your time in that costume extremely uncomfortably.  A badly fitted corset, drawn up too tight, can also cause internal injuries if you’re not careful, so this is one of those things that is really worth the money, as expensive as they can be.

As usual, costuming can be a lot easier for men than for women.  Pants are pretty much pants, all the way through the ages, and you’d be amazed at what you can do with a nicely tailored pair of black pants and a frilly white shirt – both of which are easily found in department stores.  All you’d really have trouble finding is a coat, if you wanted to wear one, or some props.  And when in doubt, no man can go wrong with a t-shirt, a pair of boots, and a kilt for comfort and to attract the eye of the ladies. (In doubt as to whether kilts on men are manly and/or sexy?  Oh, baby, you have no idea…I am firmly of the belief that every man should own a kilt.)

It seems a common thing among my fellow bordering-on-thirty or thirty-something female friends.  Family events, coming across an old acquaintance somewhere, etc. are met with dread, not because they do not wish to see these people, but because of the questions.

Because it never fails that, within the first few moments of reunion, they will be asked: “Are you married yet?” or “Any marriage plans in your future?” or “When do you think you’ll be getting married?”

It really is as if the general thought is that the only thing there is for a woman to do once she has finished her schooling  is to find a husband.  Because we all know that women of around 25-30 years old want nothing more than to get married and start popping babies out.

This is such an archaic and chauvinistic point of view that it rather infuriates me.  It’s as if, the moment you get done with college, there’s an expiration date set into your forehead, and if you get too near 30 without having secured that husband, you’re about to go sour.

What about being responsible?  Making sure that you’re able to support a family, deal with the stress of a marriage (much less the stress of being a parent)?  This entire point of view seems to ignore the fact that the general trend these days is toward marrying later, having children even later.  That these marriages, where the people involved have settled into their adulthood and accepted their responsibilities and firmly provided for their future tend to be more successful?

The fact that I have been in a long-term relationship with a wonderful man and that we still, after 12 years, are not married, seems to really bother people.  Somehow it doesn’t seem to compute that we can be happy and not be married.  That I, as a woman, can be happy not having had a full compliment of kids already.

Folks, there’s life out there to be lived before I want to have to deal with the stresses and responsibilities and financial burdens inherent in having a family.  Things I want to do and see and be.

I’m sure there are as many reasons that women are waiting longer now as there are women to wait, but there is no expiration date, even the biological clock these days seems to run slower and slower.  Give us our time and know that when or if we’re ready, that’s when it’ll be.  Until then, stop asking. We’ll tell you, if you need to know.

Related articles by Zemanta

• When, and when not, to get married (counselingonlinesite.com)
• The case against having kids