beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Am reading a long thing about how historical fact and the stories that get told don't match up in very many places
http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

which linked to another thing I'll read in a bit
http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/psa-your-default-narrative-settings-are-not-apolitical/

both are about how women actually did exist in history. women did all the things. but the stories that we're soaking in try and tell us different.


A lot of it is also about the difference between casual perception and actually counting. ( Read more... )

We need better stories, and I think getting stubborn about parity is baseline necessity towards that.
Thinking of what all them women should do really ought to diversify the storylines, as long as they exist in the first place.

sometimes I get bored and try and find clothes for my characters.
this sometimes involves using the dollmaker sites, but other times I'll browse catalogues.
I have a whole folder full of things from goth websites that'll do for my dystopic futures, including some very sharp pseudo militaria that'll suit for uniforms for starfleets.

it'd be fun to do this sort of thing as a collaborative challenge, but DW isn't really the platform for pictures. I don't know where is because I'm rarely in a picture mood.

it's weird thinking about how much detail we can get out of small changes in costume. like today I'm looking at workwear websites, checking out tunics. The distinctions between a chef's tunic and a dentist's are small yet easily read. http://www.matrixuniforms.co.uk/index.php was where I was looking. they've got some tunics in the Beauty section that'll do lovely for SF uniforms. http://www.matrixuniforms.co.uk/Beauty.51/Ladies_Beauty_Tunics.146/ , particularly http://www.matrixuniforms.co.uk/Beauty.51/Ladies_Beauty_Tunics.146/Jasmine_Long_Sleeve_Tunic__BZ35_.1129.html . The Gents versions don't have half the variety though, and you can't make them match. *sulks*

Other clothes it's more fun to wonder who exactly would wear those. Voluntarily. I do have a character who'd love the Unisex Harlequin pants but ze also wears a patchwork tale coat and makes a living out of being the centre of attention. There's matching hats and neckerchiefs. I have visions of rooms full of chefs wearing these things and just wonder what they'd be cooking.

I reckon I can make my post apocalyptic people wear this stuff because if it's polyester then it'll be around forever. Non-biodegradable. They'd have to grow their own cotton or wool or whatever, but some of these synthetics they could dig out of landfills in later centuries and just scrub up a bit. If it was a sudden apocalypse there'd be warehouses full of such things. Future people wearing a lot of cheap supermarket uniforms because those things will never rot isn't a vision I've read elsewhere, but really, it makes sense.

Really, what is it that makes a bold trim healthcare tunic visually distinct from the tunics of other disciplines? Or the other sorts that are less scifi on account of having collars. I don't understand collars. I mean, why? I know some of them are for ties, but we're back to why very swiftly. If they function as slings or garottes then that at least makes some sense but mostly they just sit there or possibly flash and sing christmas tunes. How many futures still wear ties? But if they don't wear ties, that's a whole source of subtle coding gone.

Humans. We make signals out of all sorts. Considering it's all basically variations on being the monkey with the brightest backside it's ridiculously complex.

The fun with the sci fi challenge is to retain as much of the complexity we've already learned to read as possible, whilst making it recognisably SF. Doing fancy design stuff that you'd have to get a costume department to sew up is one way to do that, but having to buy all the parts from high street stores would be another. I keep seeing stuff that strikes me as perfect for B7 cosplay without technically being something ever seen on B7. So the trick to SF costuming would be to take the easily available but combine it in a way you get a coherent look that is just unfamiliar enough.

And then preferably do it in a mix and match way that works for multiple extras, in a slightly more nuanced way for guest characters, and in ways with depth and range for the core characters.

Costume design is hard, and I don't think I'd get the hang of it even if I studied more.
Is fun though.

Sometimes I miss when all the web had to be text only.

I get nostalgic for when fancy gifs with four whole frames were something you had to seriously consider the load times on. Sure, you ended up with pages full of blinky shit and dancing monkeys that nobody needed, but there was sort of general agreement nobody needed them, and you didn't get all the conversation happening in the middle of them.

... tumblr is blinky shit central and I cannot be having with it. If I had the brain spare for that much movement I'd be watching a video.

And speaking of videos, why so many untranscribed videos? Sometimes people are saying like three paragraphs of thing, but because they're neurotypical socials or whatever they think it's important to have facial expressions with it, so they pour it into this multi channel input form with visuals and sounds and movement and no freaking subtitles when really it'd work as plain text.

I miss plain text being the universal default. I mean, okay, people are doing lovely beautiful things with the art forms the net can now carry, but... *big sigh*

Every increase in complexity, every time visuals got easier, or could move now, or sound got simple, or everyone assumed they're pouring it all in broadband so let's pour it all in at once... it just takes things further away from usable for me. I mean there's newspaper websites now that regularly put interesting stuff in their podcast or video sections and not in that strange boring medium that you might associate with newspapers, the written word. I want data! In forms I can handle! And in more useful forms anyway. Video and sound is slow, you can't skim read it, why does anyone want to present data in such a form? Be social in it, yeah, I suppose, but present information? You can't skip back up the page to double check something. You can't fit more than a single moment on the screen at once. Why do they want that?

And I know that visually impaired people are probably going 'hey, sound on the internet! woohoo!' but that's just one of the awkward things about accessability, needs clash. Except screen readers can handle plain text too now so it seems like the most accessable version to me.

And I know it looks like I'm just being whiny, and I know there's a lot more of the web now so you can argue there's at least as much plain text space as there ever was, but it used to be the whole conversation was in text and now it is at best sprawled out between text and a bunch of blinky *rudeword* gifs on a different service where I can't see how they have conversations anyway because really comment threads are kind of useful why don't we stick with the site that has them? ... and yeah, this complain can read like an extended *shakes fist at tumblr*, but that's just a symptom. There's a ton of sites where I click a link and find whatever the hell they wanted me to read is in a form I just can't be having with today. Not to mention it gunks up my computer. Not everyone has a cutting edge bit of equipment, mine is the one I got on a grant for doing my degree with seven years ago. Lovely thing, I hope it keeps working.

Anyway.

I'm lucky, when I have my brain in and a bit of spare energy, I can access whatever. Sound, video, text, I've got the sensory equipment for all of it. I just find it distracting, exhausting, and a bit of a pain really. I've tried with tumblr but there's nothing fun about the experience. It's like trying to do meta with a strobe light in your face. I'm always at the disco at cons but I'm there to dance, trying to talk in there is pretty pointless.

What I miss is when the level playing field, the tech everyone was using, was something that worked really well for me. And I'm not asking everyone to go backwards, clearly they were waiting for all these other channels, fair enough for them. But it leaves me ever closer to the same position socialising online that I am in 3D spaces: sitting in the corner, trying to sort data fast enough to keep up with even one conversation, drowned out by all the other signals and noise.

Sad face. Woe. Sulk.


... which is a bit pointless as a sulk really, because it's not like I'm much good socialising in either space, I can never think of anything to say. Different problem, kind of a bigger one.


Also, march of tech has its own antidotes. I have buttons to zap colors and readability. I can get rid of all the blinky and make things black on white :-D
... except then I can't see what people were trying to convey, because blinky is the message nowadays.
So, sometimes, I miss it.

I read a Britpick meta about getting degrees, which was called University Education. I realised my education was an exception to basically ever part.

I study at College, not University. ( Read more... )

Er, I started off talking about Me At University, and have ended up with the educational equivalent of What's It All About Anyway, Really, When You Get Right Down To It?.
( Read more... )

Okay then, I have a goal for the next... rest of my life: Actually start writing the things that will change the world again. Design some utopias and put them out there. Write the SF that extrapolates into the near future and see how we cope. Write the fantasy that I'm fairly convinced is what Sufficiently Advanced Technology is going to make of the future if we don't kill ourselves first. Or possibly even if we do. Just, in general, write. Make the heroes we want to see. Stop complaining and start trying to change things.

Well, complain in a different form, that'll be a big part of it.

But write.



and maybe if the scripts seem workable the new models of funding and production will provide a venue for finished work, even if I can't fit in the old boxes.




... next I need to decide what to write first. starting with which bit of F&SF I'll be playing in.


... also to learn how to ignore that I'm not, in fact, very good at it at all.
everyone's rubbish to start with. I might have 70 years to practice.
Write.

Okay, there's other stuff in there, but I keep poking River's story a lot.
... despite choosing to focus on the one episode where she appears mostly as a very small baby. :eyeroll:

So: there must be meta around about River Song. And arguments. And wank.
And it has now become relevant to my degree to wade into that lot and see what people think of her and why they've got a problem with her.

... I'm probably going to regret this.

Anyone know where to find some good arguments about River?
Good in any sense you like, good as in convincing or good as in they've been rolling on for years now and show no signs of stopping.

I know what I think about her after reading all these theory books, but I'd like to see what other people think, and there's a weird shortage of academic essays about women in Doctor Who.



... if anyone knows any academic essays about women in Doctor Who, please to link those too, for they are very relevant.




Today I am not having a tantrum yet. Is good.
... #xfingers#


Now I must go and think of an introduction to explain why I am writing about these things that is not 'the Doctor told me to' because academic discourse doesn't think that's a proper good reason.
(I know proper good reasons but I've got to go line them up and write them down)

Been reading a lot about gender and action heroes and also Doctor Who and how they designed identification figures for a loyalty program for a family audience.

One of the essays suggests that companions are identification figures for children because of the screaming bits. The parts where they're powerless are parts children can identify with. And then the parts where they're having adventures in time and space are the attractive fantasy parts.

So I was thinking, there's a lot of grump about screaming women that need rescuing. It is sometimes even well aimed grump. It's annoying when the only thing women do is scream and need rescuing. But I hadn't thought before about the powerless parts being about making them someone to identify with. Cause we all start out screaming. If it was powerless = women identify I'd be annoyed and it would be a stupid idea. But it's the child part. Every kid knows the monsters are real because every kid starts out stranded ignorant among giants, totally dependent on others for rescue. Everyone can understand that bit.

So I reckon it's only a problem if one person only gets that bit. Because then there's no attractive fantasy, or no role model to look at it from another point of view. The planning thingies for inventing Doctor Who point out that children aren't interested in the adventures of kids the same age or younger, but they don't say why that I recall. I speculate they're interested in people who can do more than them. Because once you know monsters exist, you want to know how monsters can be defeated.

Yelling for help is one pretty good way when you're a kid. Again, it's annoying if one person yells and someone else comes to help every single time. And it's annoying if it's always women screaming. But I've been grumpy previously about the screams-and-dies combination so popular in movies. And before the credits in certain TV shows. Screaming should be socially useful, serving as an alert to others who can help or protect themselves according to their resources. And in Doctor Who it does work that way. Yelling 'Doctor' happens a lot - a lot a lot - but it has the cardinal virtue of actually working. Yell for help, get help. Get by with a little help from your friends.

It's like how the Doctor consistently reckons running, fear, even being a coward, as good things. Because then you haven't slaughtered billions, and fear keeps you fast so you have a better chance of surviving. It's very anti action movie in that respect. Run away and figure things out, do lots of talking, bring friends along because they keep things interesting but also because then they protect you while you figure things out.

So being powerless and screaming aren't necessarily annoying, because they have their place. It's just they tend to be unbalanced, especially because gender. There are imbalances of knowledge and power, and since the Doctor is a bloke who knows everything and can do almost everything, it tends to be the blokes who are ahead on points. Which is why we need a female Doctor as soon as possible. A female person of color Doctor. Because otherwise this imbalance is built in. But the other way to balance things out is to introduce someone who knows things, sometimes more than the Doctor, and can do things, sometimes more than the Doctor, and is not a white bloke.

Hello River Song.

It was annoying she was black that one time because she was also kind of evil and criminal and stuff. She turned white for her redemption arc. That's a bit of a problem. But it's kind of cool that River was black that one time because (a) Time Lords can just change, it's a silly category for Time Lords, the Doctor could be black later (which I think he said in a Sarah Jane Adventures bit but can't remember for sure) and (b) River is cooler than the Doctor and River was black and is a woman.

River isn't always cooler than the Doctor, they take turns. And they rescue each other. And when the Doctor rescues River it's generally because she's whistled him up like a cab, so he's part of her plan.

I like it.

So, why, if these are to me the important parts of River Song, did I say I would write about A Good Man Goes to War?
... because there's Rory and nursing stuff in there that's easier to get at than anything Rory related elsewhere. Though I did just get four pages of notes out of rewatching Vampires of Venice when I only have that notepad to keep track of who screams for help, who rescues who, and what cool stuff does Amy get to do. Because again I picked a bad episode for Amy getting to do cool stuff.

River is older looking than the others except for when she's the same age or a baby. As identification strategies go this is afaik unique. She's a one person team TARDIS.

Team TARDIS has changed a lot since the beginning though. The different ages were meant to be three different age bands for three different segments of the audience, like grandparent, parent, child, but a teenager because of that children don't like younger children bit. The teenager kept getting older, the Doctor kept getting younger, and now instead of being someone's Grandfather he's usually being referred to as a parent, were you a dad, I could be your dad, no you look about nine, or calling him Uncle Doctor. They all got closer together. It's like there's only one interesting age now.

I want to fix it back to being lots of ages because I find people younger than me increasingly less interesting (sorry). Which is what the first inventing them people thought was true about audiences. So it's probably not just me.
Also it's depressing when only people younger than me get to have interesting stuff happen to them.

But you can tell more stories with more variety of people.

But they've managed to have the oldest, the couple in the middle, and the baby, while at the same time making everyone kind of the same, and making the baby also be the one who knows most and bosses everyone around.

... I think I've seen a diagram of that family in some self help books...





I need to turn my random meanderings into something worth handing in for a progression point, and I have a week to do it.
... I really, really miss that semester I was ill. I'd quite like that much extra time back now. But even then I'd be coming up on the first progression point and I'd still have a bunch of nothing so basically I'm just being a bit rubbish.



Also I forgot breakfast today and only turned my computer on to check the date for sell bys purposes so I'll go see to that now.

Reading fic about (former?) assassins has some major problems.
Like, finding stories that send assets out to eliminate America's enemies and think that's A-okay and shiny.
Killing people? Not a good thing. Sneaking around killing people without even trials or any of that useful civilisation stuff? Very not a good thing. Even when the people doing it are very cute.

Also, torture doesn't work.
Seriously, it doesn't work, the argument doesn't have to get as far as ethical issues on that one, because it doesn't fucking work. It is not an effective means of data gathering. It's an echo chamber, torturers just hurt people until they tell them what they want to hear, all their hopes and fears amplified. Human history has proved this over and over and over.

Torture is what the bad guys do because they don't care about truth. They don't care about truth so they can just use fear as a means to power and hurt whoever seems handy just to encourage the others. That's what makes them bad guys.

Some people are writing about bad guys in good guy uniforms, and yet still cheering them on.



How do I write stories effective enough to counter that bullshit?

The simple stories with the bad guy and the winning are so much easier to sell.



When the bad guys do torture and assassination and use fear then that's why the good guys rise up and do rebellion and stuff. Because when the powerful set themselves up as the thing to be feared they set themselves up as the major problem of their own people, and then boom, their turn to be targets. The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers.

Why think that works different with a different flag on it?



But in fiction it does. Good guys get tortured? They hold out grimly and await rescue, never giving anything away. Possibly they lie and fool their captors. Bad guys get tortured? They fold. Instantly. And say true things.
Fiction is telling very big lies.


Don't know how to fix this one.
Can avoid doing it myself, but don't know how to convince people of true things.

Why do they like the lies anyway?

I'm having a problem with writing. Sort of in general, in that words are not hitting the page at all at all, but also in specific. I'm having a problem with bad guys, because I can't think of any.

Bad guys seem like a lie.

I mean, Stargate sets up these galaxy spanning civilisations that exist for the sole purpose of being so evil we can cheer when they get blown up. Even if logically that was genocide. They're exterminated? Well they were evil! Cheer now!

And it's not even that I cannot cheer. It's that I cheer, and then feel really awful about it and obsess on it later. Because (in universe) that was a whole civilisation, a culture, a set of minds that couldn't have been made anywhere else. That was a whole lot of lives. Easy to destroy, but impossible to bring back. (Yes, some of them are like yoyos, that too is part of the problem, it's morally bankrupt to erase ones consequences so damn often.)

Movies are the worst, because they're meant to resolve things in one easy step. Bad guy exists? Bad guy go boom.

Television has room to do more complex things, but, on the whole, doesn't.

Babylon 5 went there big time, spent years making things twisty complicated. Who were the bad guys on B5? The Shadows? Even they had their reasons, they were the careful what you wish for guys, they were trying so hard to help everyone be strong. Everyone that survived, obviously. The Shadows were a problem, but they weren't bad guys in the same sense, they were hanging around trying to help, just really really messed up about it.

So when I write, I want to make complex epics where everyone has their motives and together they have to find common ground and resolve things peacefully, because hitting things until they fall down never actually works.

The trouble is I only really know how to do plots where there's a bad thing and then it gets killed.

I feel like I'm not a good enough writer to think things up I can agree with.



I have a bunch of bunnies for ghost stories. I like ghost stories, because blowing shit up is the start of your problems, as it should be. They're all about how history never goes away, how memory shapes the survivors and their world.
( Read more... )

I also have a pretty tight plot that is about vampires ( Read more... )

Basically I can see exactly how it goes, but it's too creepy in the mundane ways for me to spend that long in it to write it.

*shakes off that idea*


I have one whole episode idea for that Rhodri in space thing I'd fully intended to spend my summer doing before I spent my summer doing sod all. Maaaaaaybe two episodes. But not, unfortunately, three. Characters, yes, what happens to them in a general sense, sure, but a plot to take me through a bunch of scenes in a row and create drama? Apparently not.


The one with the possessing entity computer programs has three quest arcs, one to get into the city and get some anti agathics, one to realise they can never produce more of those drugs without micro gravity facilities so they have to get back into orbit, and one to reconnect with scattered humanity once they're in space with the drugs to survive the journey times again. I'm pretty sure I could write the city quest one. Except what I could write so far is look how shiny smart this guy is, as he conquers all before him. Not exactly a lot of complexity or, well, reasons to bother reading it. He wants to go, he goes, he wins, he goes home with the girl. As a movie it's still too shallow.

The bad guys in that one are easy though, because they're computer programs that decide that flesh is a lot more fun, so they wants to take it over and do all the things in it. Sensation without sticking around for the consequences. Sex tourism in suburban brains. They make perfect sense, and they're only doing to others what was done to them, since computers are used for all kinds of adventures now. Ethical subroutine fail due to no empathy and lack of understanding there's no backups, no save points, no reset. Completely different mode of being, makes difficulties for each other.
But only the humans can be actually killed.
And the computers are killing them.
So there we have a Bad Guy side. But the ways to be good guys can't include random large scale violence. For the same reason that the war against Skynet cannot be won even without time travel stuff, because you cannot eradicate the backups thoroughly enough that the other side will ever be dead.

The only way that 'verse can work is through enlightenment. You can never kill all the demons, so you have to turn them into angels.



The epic fantasy from the other day is hardest. I mean, if you really seriously ethically refuse to write Evil Orcs who are Evil because Evil, then you don't have anything that makes it funny when people have a killing competition. It's just grotesque. And then your epic heroes are killing people and killing a lot of them.
It makes it easier to write about assassins, because at least they're more targeted.
If there aren't any bad guys, if there's actually two kingdoms full of actual people, then 'heroics' is messy and brutal and nasty.

Making it a story about someone negotiating peace would be much better.


Also, you cannot Mount Doom anything real. People know how to make things again. And they were never just following the one evil mind in the first place, due to that free will thing where people just decide to be killers for reasons that seem good and sufficient at the time.


So I'm fed up with the 'and they were all blown up' ending.

And I don't think I know how to write the one where everyone gets enlightened instead.

I am reading a 'turned into a dog' story.
Fuzzy amusement seemed like the thing for the day.
But I find myself getting wound up instead.

Everyone is treating him like a dog.
He's even getting wound up that everyone is treating him like a dog.
Even the one person who can translate for him is treating him like a dog.

This is Avengers fic, so Thor has the Allspeak and it should be simples, but thus far he's only used it to confirm this dog is in fact their team mate.
But then the story doesn't do anything with the others reacting.

They are in a house with a JARVIS. JARVIS could certainly open doors, but could also learn consistent vocalisations or body language and act as another translator, plus would have no particular preconceptions about how to treat a dog. JARVIS should be the most awesome assistant a newly disabled person could wish for. Well, JARVIS plus some bots to do the lifting parts.

Because I keep reading it as new disability. He has lost speech and hands and a lot of mobility, plus his senses have gone different, like color blind and new priorities. These are all components with available assistive tech. Stark should be building switches and arranging interfaces that let him keep doing as much of his usual as possible. And, granted, building weapon systems that can be operated by a puppy might be considered somewhere between insane and a bit of a problem should any other dogs access them, but biometric locks are no biggie around that much high tech. And even if they don't feel like doing the serious stuff, can you imagine new puppy Avengers trying to use the Wii? They would totally try. If Avengers games night are hilarious, add being dog shaped and you have whole new levels of amusing.

But no, the dog dude is getting incredibly bored because everyone treats him like a dog.

How does that even make sense?

At the very least, set up some audio books, make big buttons on an e reader, either prop it where he can read it or set it to speaking or just get JARVIS to read stuff out. It's not hard. No hands does not mean no working.

... and I'm not criticising the story, someone wants to write a story about snuggling up with the team in fur form, that's fine, that's their thing.

But I apparently cannot unwind to the story's level.

I just... It's not even just this. So often one of these magic things happens, like when Spike was a ghost, and I just get so frustrated, because disability doesn't mean stopping.
Even though I know the writer clearly wouldn't have thought of it in terms of disability.

Once you do though, apparently it needs an off switch.

Having read a ton of fanfic (all the fanfic) I have read a really really lot of fanfic featuring Darcy and Coulson. And the thing is, neither Darcy nor Coulson are what you could call a fully rounded out character in the source canon. In the movies, Darcy has an iPod, Coulson has a fanboy crush, that's... pretty much it. And yet, all the fanfic. These two all over it.
I noticed I was almost embarrassed to read Darcy fic because college student who gets to be best friends with the superhero is, you know, my awesome insomnia daydream me. Hi, MarySue of snark and attainable weaponry.
Coulson though, he's SHIELD, so he seems more superhero world already. But I seen comments saying they can't see the point of him because he's just another dude in a suit. And, yes, that's the point of him. Do you know how many dudes in a suit there are? Fanboy dudes in a suit even. With huge fanboy crushes on Captain America. This is a man who has epic superpower of paperwork management, being really trustworthy, and again attainable weaponry. Also persistence and being unflappable. Office workers of the world unite, you know?
And, yes, there's the short thing where he kicks all the arse as well, but that makes it the fun kind of dream.
So there they are, these people that at least look ordinary next to all the flashy superhero types, and here we are writing all the fic about them.
And while the audience can identify with them enough they're arguably a self insert Mary Sue, they're not distorting the whole story around themselves so they're not the arrgh arrgh make it stop kind. In canon.
I think the writers made some characters that fully attained their function, there.
So, the writers are winning.

The trouble with me and writing is I find the inventing things stage interesting and the writing stories part hard work. I suspect this is common. Plus by the time I've invented a world in sufficient detail to know how the plots would work out, I know how the plots would work out. I mean, why explore more?
:eyeroll:

All of which is to say that despite me not having writ a single episode with Rhodri et al, after filling a folder full of world notes, I have another ever so slightly different world springing to mind.

I was thinking that my assorted insomniac mary sue adventures have departed from their madly crossed over canon sources to the point I could just slip the last few ties and have basically a whole new epic science fiction adventure. Which, granted, would be a tad bit familiar in places, but, genre.

But if I put it that way, nobody would ever read it.

Yet if it's all about awesome women running interstellar empires and kicking lots of arse, with bonus epic romances, some of them between expressive scientists and stoic military types, that's like a grab bag of everything cool.

All the women looking like clones of me would be somewhat of a problem for the cool factor though.

( Read more... )

Would be an easy way to populate a 'verse though. Take all the spaceship shows and give them different planets, see how their politics crunches together. All those ready made characters and that political variety, even if you only bring the humans. And then what I would do is different again, so my people would be in the middle, clearly being right.
Or, you know, not, and then readers would still be interested because they could cheer the other teams.

Writing it as a crossover... it kind of happens sometimes, but it's always x visits y's world, small team stuff. There's never just, the Tau'ri discover the Federation, politics ensues. I mean, in Stargate there are so many planets and galaxies of humans, there's no particular reason to not just do that. Granted the history of the Federation would involve parallels of epic scope right up until the 1960s, but go lalala about that a very little and you've just got another set of neighbours. If the Earth all these space heroics start from is just one in a vast set of planets where people looked at the ground and named it Earth then everything fits like kaleidoscopes. And it's suddenly less obvious who The Good Guys are.

That could be interesting.

But now I should do essays.

Okay, so I wrote a comment on someone's entry and then realised once again I'm so lurky on other people's blogs I'd just be popping up out of nowhere to tell them a really long comment on how, er, wrong they were, and so I hid again.

But I can post on my own place.

So: they couldn't think of a superhero plot because comics are just someone kicking someone else's arse.

Which strikes me as kind of like saying dance is just people moving their arms and legs around. I mean, yes, but...


I don't know as I think of comics plots being about the arse kicking.

They're sort of about a hero's relationship to power and to other powerful people.

( Read more... )

Movie plots are kind of about power, but really substantially about being a teenager and relationships to your parental types.

( Read more... )

I still haven't seen Avengers. I'm an essay, a research proposal, and an annotated bibliography away from seeing Avengers. I should be doing that instead of movie plots.

BUT anyways...

Saying the plot is all kicking someone is kind of missing the why of kicking, which is probably why boring. It's always about illuminating the hero, their moral choices, and their relationships.

( Read more... )

The fight sequence is how they work out their problems, but there's a really varied ton of problems they could have in the first place.



Also? See previous post Tell us not that monsters exist but that they can be beaten

It's not just why are they fighting, it's why do we need them to?
And why do we need to read it?


And there's a Joss interview that I'd go look for but I'd bump into a bunch of Avenger's spoilers
he says something about the moment, for him, is all about where someone stands up and realises they have power

Because we all need that one, that clear moment where you see the problem, see the solution, and see that you can actually get it done.

And, yes, as a genre feature, that involves kicking, usually while wearing spandex.
But that's what makes it mythology, and not a day at the office... though come to think a bunch of it makes mythology *of* the day at the office. See: Daily Planet, etc.

There's the moment we take the camouflage off and turn out to be something more, the moment we take a step and fly, the moment we face our fears.

On the outside, okay, someone kicks someone's arse... but the outside is not the story.

So there's a bazillion comics plots.

I think I have just realised one reason that I can watch Doctor Who and stay watching Doctor Who for a very long time.

I was trying to think of a theme group to watch Doctor Who in. Like, vampire shows are a theme. Spaceship shows are a theme. Military shows. But Doctor Who is either none of the themes or all of them.

Like, you can pick episodes that are military spaceships (half of UNIT era), or vampire spaceships (that one where the ship was a stake), or probably military vampire spaceships (Fenris? it wasn't very spaceship though.) If you feel like a themed viewing you can pick Evil Robot Doubles and watch a whole bunch of them. Or you can watch them in order and have All The Themes Ever.

So there is nothing quite like Doctor Who, but Doctor Who is like all the things. Only with extra added goodness. Usually in the form of intelligent women who help save the Doctor and the worlds.

Is there anything else that is like that? Not necessarily like Doctor Who, but like All The Themes?
Stargate had a go. Hence 200 episodes.



If I was going to do something useful for my dissertation I could watch a bunch of Doctor Who and count who is in it.
... why is it I forgot that making anything For College makes it automatically a bunch less fun?
:eyeroll: