Friday, July 06, 2001

Okay, I've found that I have a lot to say about some things... So some of these posts will be longwinded, disjointed, and basically all out of order. I blame my recent absorbtion by Robin Hobb's Assassin series (more in a sec).
Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:25 PM |

The Assassin series, comprised of Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest, are fairly good books. The premise is sound, the characters are okay, and the pacing is fair. There are some nice slashy overtones, if you like that sort of thing; grand moments of triumph and fascinating snippets of man-animal interaction.

Personally, I'd really have rather read about five thousand fewer pages to get to the climax of the story. Or have those five thousand pages devoted to Nighteyes and Fool. I've noticed that I just don't -want- backstory in a sequal or the third book of a trilogy or series. Yes, I -know- that such-and-such a thing happened, I just read about it. Can we -skip- it? I don't want to hear about that again. No, I remember that.

This is particularly glaring in Death's Head by Mel Keegan. It's an okay book, reading an awful lot like fanfic for something. Good story, well-realized far-future setting, good pacing, interesting characters. But the guy (girl? I don't know.) takes every single opportunity that presents itself to beat the reader over the head with the fact that A) they're in love, and have been for ages despite regs B) one of 'em's gonna die no matter what and C) the healthy one's gonna do whatever it takes to stop that from happening. Thanks, but for the eightieth time this chapter: I. Bloody. Well. Know.

And now I'm doing it.

Sorry.

So. The Assassin trilogy was good, but I'd buy it at a used bookstore if I were going to buy it again. And to me, the last quarter of the third book was the best of all the parts, but not -quite- worth wading through all the angst and mystery and misery that came before.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 1:57 PM |

I've let 'em simmer, and all I've managed are a few disjointed chunks which you can read here. Of course, it doesn't help that I haven't plugged my ZipDrive back in and gone looking for the few chunks of the Skwerp that I have... And sometimes it's harder to start from scratch than to just pick up from 'When We Last Left Our Heroes, They Were...'

Which reminds me that I need to do more research, 'cause I canNOT remember -when- the war was. Besides 'sometime in the 30's' or 'between the I and II wars', that is.

It's just gonna be slow for a while. On the other hand, I -do- have some Cid-bits that need transcribing.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:01 PM |

Bwahaha... I know what the mailserver geeks at my ISP like! This was at the top of a forwarded message to me:

Received: by sephiroth (mbox csqfavrt)

and I've seen 'by kitsune', too.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:03 PM |

Y'know, it's a sad sad day when your own beloved OS screws you over for being poor and/or cheap and behind the times. *Grumbles and goes back to searching for the disk with QT 4.0 on it*

Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:04 PM |

"I've been thinking..."
"A dangerous pastime!"
"I know."

...about I-Love-You = Complete and Utter Monogamy/Loyalty, and the bad points of (slash/yaoi) fanfic in general.

The following blither was prodded by two sources: Sus's rant about Yaoi fandom, and Sabina's rant about fandom in general. (BTW, Reesa, Sus's blog is under her name.)

The following is not intended to be a defense of anyone but myself, nor is it intended to add my voice to the apparent chorus of 'anyone that does the following is stupid and unworthy of my time'*. You'll see why.

*: I get this impression from a lot of 'You know what I hate? I hate...'-type rants. Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's really there. I don't know. *Shrug*

--------

Maybe the reason for ILY=CaUM is twofold: firstly, there are very few people in the world that can devote themselves utterly to another person, to the point where they would never _dream_ of finding another human being as remotely attractive or sexually stimulating. However, -many- _many_ people -want- that kind of faithfulness, and if they can't get it IRL, they sure as hell can in fic of whatever stripe they choose.

Hell, I know that a lot of the recurring themes in my _own_ fics are due to the 'what I can't have IRL, I will make -damn- sure my characters get' school of writing. Maybe it's not the best way to run a railroad, but few of them have complained.

Secondly, and this is tied to 'why are women that catch their male SO's so shrewish about the whole thing' question, it may stem from the fact that the women are either A) squeamish about the material being viewed or B) Highly uncomfortable with the thought of fantasizing about someone else while in a committed relationship. Or there's always a possible C: that the person fantasized about is someone they're not at all comfortable about associating with sex.

I could -never- masturbate to fantasies of Mme. Jean. No matter how badly I want to neck with her instead of watching DBZ, I'm not gonna go home and jerk off thinking about her because it would just be WRONG. The idea alone makes me squirm, and -not- in a good way. I can't tell you -why- I feel it's wrong, other than it would -feel-, to _me_, like some kind of violation of our friendship.

I don't really want to associate, say, Harrison Ford with sex, either. Partly because I, like millions of people, still pretty much see him as Indiana Jones, who pretty much has sex offscreen. (I think. I haven't watched ...And The Holy Grail for ages.) And partly because, well... It's -Harrison Ford-. I _really_ don't want to look at him and have only carnal thoughts come to the fore.

As for the comitted-relationship thing... For some people, it feels like a violation of whatever promises they've made, either to themselves or one another, to even -think- about another person.

--

Lack of PolyAmory in 'fics quite probably stems from a lack of models of PA IRL.

Sad but true: With the exception of Trigun, I have never yet seen a single mention of PA in anime (and even then I have no idea as to -how- polyamoristic the thoughts were, so I could be wrong). I've only seen one mention of it in a live-action film, about a painter, and I only read about it in the review. I have no idea if it was a successful relationship.

People will probably write nice little fics about Trowa and Wu Fei sharing Quatre when they start finding examples of it in more mainstream areas of their lives. I mean, unless you -know- people in that situation, where are you going to find it on mainstream TV or in mainstream fiction?

And that segues quite nicely into:

Wedding Bells!

Utter and complete monogamy. To the point of getting married. Yeah, I'm guilty of this, to an extent -- Konamasi and most of the rest of the galaxy recognizes gay marriage.

Why did I choose to allow this funky little quirk? Because it doesn't exist universally in the world _I_ currently inhabit. Nor does insurance coverage for 'domestic partners', etc. It's more of that 'I don't have it so my Cs will' thing.

And the idea, the central point that the idea of two people in a relationship often gets boiled down to, is one of the main points of stories we grow up on.

Girl meets Boy. Girl and Boy fall in Love. Boy must overcome obstacle in the path of marrying Girl. Girl and Boy Marry. Girl and Boy now live Happily Ever After.

The marriage part is held to be the denouemont of the story in the Disney Versions of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. It was even the motivating plot-point of Shrek.

The point is, most little kids grow up hearing '...they married right away. And then they lived, Happily Ever After.' Boys tend to seem to forget about that part; girls seem to internalize it and believe that -that- is how the story goes.

If you're incredibly lucky, yes, it is. If you're not, then you end up just like everyone else: disillusioned and trying to figure out how the -hell- it is that stories like that manage to continue to exist, poisoning the minds of impressionable young children. Forget sanitizing the violent parts, what we need are fairytales about -after- the dragon dies and the rice is thrown.

Er.... That was a rather long-winded way of saying that 'Disney did it first, and two and a half generations have been spoon-fed the idea that Marriage is the be-all end-all of any relationship'.

Again, I am guilty of this sort of thing, but I have better reasons -- some of 'em were grasping at straws of stability (which could be another reason for writing that way: They -love- one another, right? They'll love one another -for-ever-! So let's get 'em hitched.'); some of 'em -can't- even if they -really- wanted to; some of 'em were surprised that they'd managed to even -have- the relationship in the first place that they figured maybe they -ought- to make it formal. (Ten points apiece if you can name all three pairings; sixty points if you get 'em all on the first try.)

Also: in a lot of sub/social -cultures, you -have- to be married before you can sleep together. Writing slash/yaoi tends to cure you of this little moral quirk, if it hasn't already been cured by something else. (i.e. for -me-, it was realizing that my aunt and uncle were living/sleeping together for -ages- before they got married, and my grandparents didn't disown her/them.)

--

The Amazing Disappearing Lube

-I- just forget to mention it. And it's kind of silly to assume that if I didn't say it, they didn't use it... -Particularly- for Ko/Meyers in the bus station**. I'm willing to let/bet others* forget, too. People that have no clue that lube is _necessary_? Well, I don't know about them. Perhaps they just need a quick trip to Minotaur's page.

* Others being people like Reesa, Scrubby, Torch, Mad Poetess, etc... Y'know, the -good- authors.

** And who says that (gay) guys don't 'always' carry lube and condoms Just In Case? Y'never know, after all.

--

First Time Penetration:

I hate not knowing things.

A lot of my Cs do, too.

Ergo, I always try to make sure that _SOME_one has either A) had some experience, even if it -does- screw up my continuity or B) read a -lot-. Vic had done both, and I'm willing to bet that Marc had read about it and/or tried a little of it on his own. I'm not going to ask right this second.

And to me, penetration is less about arousal (the 'wanting to be filled' idea) than it is about completion and closeness. I don't know about anyone else, but I figure that if I'm close enough to you emotionally/mentally to tell you I love you, it's not too big a step to get to the sex.

And that's probably pretty true for a lot of people, as well. Fanfic writers that decide ILY+ILY=Sex are probably operating on this principle. Maybe it's not terribly realistic -- it's related to the fairytales, 'cause after ILY comes Marriage, after Marriage comes the Honeymoon, during the HM there's sex -- but it's what a lot of people grew up with and are programmed to recognize. And, in the case of slash/yaoi, have to skip the Marriage and go straight to the sex. This doesn't appear to be a hardship for most people.

And this is another thing I'm guilty of, one of a long list of many. But sometimes, it was necessary -- I don't think Vic is the kind of guy that can go for the physical before the emotional/mental. And Marc wouldn't have pushed for the physical before Vic was ready, and besides -that-, he confessed his love right up front. In the sense that it was a number of -months- before Vic responded in kind, and longer after that that they -finally- did it.

*Blinkblink* I just remembered something that my music teacher once said. My choir was rehearsing 'When I Fall In Love', and she said something to the effect of being sure that we girls gave our hearts first, before we gave our bodies. So there's another facet of it: ILY is 'supposed' to come before we do.

Or did I already make that point? *Snerk* *Ahem* ANYhow. Moving On.

Which takes us over to Bishoujo Bishounen Vs. Plain Ol' Shounen, or, The Feminization of Males.

I wanted to say 'Blair Sandburg', but I thiiiiiink Adoratrice already used that one.

Anyhow! I don't know that I've -read- much in the way of overfeminized male characters (with the quite possible exception of Beej, but then... I was young! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it- er, sorry. Lost Ark Moment over.), so I really can't say much about it other than guys are mysterious creatures.

It's -hard- to get into their shoes, let alone their skulls, and so sometimes one can't help but take their own reaction (paroxysms of grief, orgasms that start in the center of the body, watching Sleepless In Seattle and eating a half-gallon of rocky road...) and graft it onto their guy. Unless, of course, they're writing Trigun fic, in which case weeping and doughnuts are -not- necessarily a poor choice of reaction.

Again, guilty party here. *Waves* I'd like to say, though, that I believe I've outgrown that phase. Er, that, and I _really_ don't think I could write a weepy and petulant Jim Ellison. Petulant, yeah, because -everyone- can whine like a two-year-old under the right circumstances, but not weepy. He was incredibly panicky and upset during The Fountain Incident, but he wasn't sitting on the sidelines, bawling his eyes out. I dunno about Blair, though.

Anime characters are tricky, in that some of them tend to burst into tears at the drop of a hat. And in the case of -some- characters (Nuriko, Kurama), they -look- so much like girls that sometimes it may be hard to remember they -aren't-.

Kenshin is -very- delicate-looking, but he's got a tenor voice (okay, second tenor, but hey, so does Quatre.), and a decidedly -male- torso. His mode of dress helps with that -- loose/open yukata (I thiiiiiiiiink...) show off shoulders and chest much more distinctly than formal kimono or (for lack of an official term) practice yukata. (Is Kaoru's practice clothing considered gi? 'Cause that's about the only time she wears hakama, other than for doing yard/house work...)

And speaking of yukata, kimono, and words... Fanboy Japanese.

I wish I could remember where I read that term, because I love it. Here's yet another confession: I speak Fanboy Japanese.

Why do I use it in my stories? Well... Because it's the language in which my source material was developed. Because I _like_ learning languages, and I like to show off the fact that I -know- something. I can say 'Toshokan wa doko desu ka?', though I cannot understand the answer to save my life. Because it -does- make me part of an elite clique, as someone used as an argument -against- using FJ in a 'fic.

There is nothing shameful about learning a new language. It's not necessarily difficult, or expensive. My library lets people check out language tape/book sets, for two weeks, for free. Used book stores carry all manner of travel-phrase books and dictionaries, often for quite a bit less than big chains. There's nothing wrong with taking time out of your day to -look- through the books, to find out if their phonetic pronunciation guide is something you can wrap your mind and your tongue around.

Learning new stuff is -good- for you. It keeps your brain limber, and it's thought that people who continue to learn as they get older are less likely to develop senile dementia.

So anyhow. Yeah, I use it, because I have it; because I know it; because I can. And I make no apologies for it.

Although... I'm not so keen on the words 'seme' and 'uke' and the strict adherence of the Cs to the roles defined that way. Someone was explaining the whole mathematical symbolism of yaoi pairings, and said something about whoever's name was first was the top and the next was the bottom, at least with an x. Hence the -reason- for defining oneself as a 1x2 fan or a 2x1 fan.

Personally? What the hell difference does it make? Last I knew, multiplication gives the same product regardless of who's on top (great. Will I ever be able to do math with a straight face? No, no I won't.)... I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than it seems a little -inane- to take labeling _that_ far.

Unless of course it's a very Japanese convention, in which case it rather makes sense... They're a great people for ritual.

---

And speaking of ritual... Preparation and Other Things.

One finger, two fingers, three fingers, dick. Pretty straightforward, and after the thirty-seventh lovingly-rendered, highly-detailed version, they all. Look. The. Same.

It's important, yes, probably on par with lube, though Sources Say that stretching is not always -needed-.

Just sort of general fooling about in that region... Well, see? I'm not all that comfortable writing about it in a somewhat clinical fashion, let alone in the heat of passion. Or as foreplay. Or as general play. With the exception of a few of my original characters, none of them _want_ to -talk- about that. And the characters I write fanfic for? I don't -know- them well enough, right now. And sometimes, it's just not something _I_ want to be privy to, actually.

Why? I don't know, yet. My gut reaction is 'it's icky!' which is -silly-, considering what simple vanilla hetsex involves. It's not the act itself I find distasteful, it's the idea of, say, rimming, for no other reason than the anus is the exit of the alimentary canal, and therefore home to zillions of bacteria and other fun organisms. My problem, I believe, is that I have too -much- imagination...

---

So. There it is. My great big ranty essay-thing on why I do what I do, even if it's things that drive others crazy. It's a two-way street, y'know. *Small grin*

Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:05 PM |

Elfwood, Zone 47, and the Wyvern's Library are down. Why? Because there was some jerk who thought the best way to make their annoyance with the rules known was to 'joke' about killing the rules committee.

Yeah, I don't exactly adhere to the rules all the time, either, but then again, I'm in gallery 50 of over 800. I really don't think that anyone is going to take the time to go through every _SINGLE_ gallery looking for violations.

What constitutes 'fanart'? Is my Sailor Hubie picture fanart because I dressed him up like Sailor Moon? I _hate_ the show. It's a parody. In America, we have 'fair use' exceptions to the copyright law, which means that if I wanna draw a parody, I can. If I wanna write a parody of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, I can.

No, no one has to be happy about it, and I certainly wouldn't appreciate or enjoy being told that Sailor Hubie had to come down because it qualified as 'fanart'. It -isn't-, in my mind, because I don't like the show. It's not a picture of an original character for the show, it's a picture of an original character dressed in the distinctive and silly style of a popular shoujo anime.

I'd understand the picture of Cid with the HellMouth U sweatshirt having to come down, though... Collegiate sweatshirts aren't exactly a prehistoric find.

And none of my stuff is futuristic enough to get into Zone 47, I don't think. I don't draw guns, space ships, or cybernetic organisms.

Of course, I don't really draw swords, bows, armor, or wizardly powers, either. A lot of times, when I go to scan things, I try to figure out if they're appropriate for Elfwood. Most of the time, they aren't. And sometimes, I insist on putting them up anyhow. Why? Well... Partly because I don't think that I'll get caught, and partly because last time I checked, the rules were really really vague. How futuristic is futuristic? Is a hand-cranked crossbow? A spiky hairdo? Body piercing, tattoos? Boots? Bondage pants? T-shirts and jeans?

What about furries? Technically, they're fantastic creatures -- half-man, half-beast. Hence Hubie's presence in my gallery. How about vampires? Do they have to be the vampire legends that developed in ancient times, before the advent of the tale of Bathory and Vlad The Impaler? Do they have to run around in capes and breeches and surcoats; cavort with bats?

Mmph. Never mind. All this is doing is proving that once again, I cannot categorize anything I do. What is your job title? I dunno. What kind of fiction do you write? I dunno. What sort of art do you draw? Besides doodling? I dunno.

I wish 4:30 would hurry up and get here. I wanna see Big O.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:07 PM |

Sunday, July 01, 2001

Put up a new piece over on the MiST page, with Mercy, Grace, Marc and Finch doing the riffing again. You'll see why when you get there. The odd thing about this one is that Marc and Finch seem to get along pretty well...

Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:01 PM |

Trigger Happy Virii -- Hard to read, but they have a Nightmare Before Christmas layout and are FF/Jpop fans. *Blink* Must be my new talent manifesting: instead of RGGs, I get nihonophiles. Heh.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:02 PM |

Finally fixed the link for Small Fires. I forgot to capitalize the 'f' in the URL. *Rolls eyes*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 9:44 PM |