(no subject)

Ladyhawke would be better with different music, imho.

The first fight sceen is a great example of telling character through fights. Phillipe and Navarre on the same ground against the same opponents. Phillipe sees everything as a way to run or hide, up and over or down and crawling, hides under blankets, tries to be tricksy. He injures one by accident and says sorry! But Navarre, same set, sees everything as a weapon. He stays on the horizontal, normal floor, but he grabs up things Phillipe wouldn't even notice and exploits their offensive potential. He knocks a man into the fire, sets him aflame, but then has a quiet emotional moment over the body of a fallen comrade. While the man in the background is screaming.

Lovely few moments to tell you about the both of them.

Fight scenes should never be filler. And they should never be generic. A well designed fight could only be those characters in that place at that time, and tells you much about them all.

posting this where I can grab it from college to print

Bibliography

(2001) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Script Book: Season 2, v. 1. Pocket Books

Alsop, Rachel (2002) Theorizing Gender. Polity Press

Buchanan-Brown, John (2004) The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Penguin Books Ltd

Gibbs, John (2001) Mise-en-Scene: Film Style and Interpretation (Short Cuts S.). Wallflower Press

Jowett, Lorna (2005) Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan. Wesleyan University Press

Haralambos, Michael (2004) Sociology Themes and Perspectives. 6th Ed. Collins Educational

Matthews, Boris (1993) The Herder Dictionary of Symbols. Chiron Publications (1993)

Street, Sarah (2001) Costume and Cinema: Dress Codes in Popular Film (Short Cuts S.). Wallflower Press

Strinati, Dominic (2004) An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. Routledge




librarything.com is not quite as useful as I had hoped, for I could not simply make the page make it write everything down correctly formatted. But it is very useful, for I only had to cut and paste and trim to get a list.

for some reason bibliography and references are the hardest part for my brain to do. I think it routinely files the serial numbers off thoughts and tucks them away in a kind of hypertext by topic web. Names and origins don't seem so relevant.

Though I can remember Butler and gender as performance, because I kind of stuck it on to the Buffy episode Halloween when I first heard of it, so I know where it's filed.

/weird


(essay hand in tomorrow, no printer at home, must remember to print things in library before class)

Cultural Studies essay, Buffy's pink dress

Again, posting this so I can grab it to print at college.

While constructive criticism would usually be welcome, I'm fully aware this essay is rather rubbish. Its main virtue is it has the required number of words in the right week to get handed in. I'm not even sure I'm using any of those words correctly, but they are written now and therefore greatly decrease my chances of failing utterly. I'm an idiot and didn't ever talk to the tutor or remember to start the actual essay part of the study unit until this week. So by now it's pretty much past saving, and all crit will do to me is make me hide under the duvet, which is pretty much what got me in the mess in the first place.

Yet I post it public cause I'll have to get it from the not-mine computer.

( Read more... )

(no subject)

In a comments thread on a page about the Great Fanfic Debate, a writer said fanfic isn't usually very good, "because the characters didn't translate well when written by someone who wasn't carrying all that backstory in their heads."


I'm still poking at this thought to make it make sense, so I post it here rather than as a direct reply, but...

Backstory is irrelevant.
Unless the reader can see it, and would therefore be carrying it in their head when they go to write.


While an author might know that, for instance, when Giles was 27 he had a brief and hot love affair with a rock star, and while this might be very important to Giles, it is utterly irrelevant to the reader unless and until it comes up in the course of the story.

Same with any world building stuff. If the story doesn't say something is/isn't possible, if it doesn't even imply it, then it isn't relevant one way or the other.

What goes in to thinking up a story is not necessarily what goes *in* to the story, what is there once it is baked and presented to the world. And a reader can only go by what is in that finished version.

So fanfic writers can carry around all the *relevant* backstory, because it was there in the source text. Anything not in that text isn't relevant at all, and in fact in cases I'm familiar with is subject to change without notice anyway (eg Spike's background).

Characters might not match the author's vision, but that too is somewhat irrelevant. They can match what the author has presented.

Sometimes I think 'having the backstory' is detrimental to some texts. Because the author knows what is going on, they can sometimes forget to tell the rest of us. Or they can build from things they hadn't actually stated. Rather like Riley and the picnic.



I'm still having this thought. I post this and go read more of the comment thread.
This is what I'm talking about, and it is full of interesting and brilliance. Like the comment about Jesus as a Mary Sue - an author insert :)

(no subject)

Question: Is there Buffy fandom that isn't on LiveJournal?

I mean, by hanging out on LJ only all the time, am I missing fic?
I know I'm missing conversations, but my conversation time is happily full as is.
But the fic thing bugs me.

I went nomail on the few mailing lists I tried because the ones that were specific enough were empty, and the ones that were full were almost always empty of things I read. Not enough Giles. Too much het. The usual. But did I miss great works of art in the data flood?


/random anxiety

(no subject)

I'm mousing around, following links, and I found one to a Famous Published Author that has rules about what fanfic can be written. Which sounds cool for a start, for they are cool with fanfic being written. But the way I read it, it kind of boils down to, 'write whatever you like, as long as it isn't queer'. I'm not quite sure, for the phrasing is odd/ambiguous, so I won't link, while I await clarification.

But I'm also reading a discussion where people come up with the point of view that the originator of a 'verse *should* have control over what is written in it.

Which... seems reasonable, right up until it meets politics.

Writing is political. Its a great big message. Its about making meanings out of stuff. If the official work shuts out particular meanings, 'should' that be allowed?

When I read fans getting all blah about slash, it don't bother me any, that's their personal taste, they can have that opinion. If anyone says slash shouldn't be written, then slashers just go play somewhere else, their own mailing lists or whatever. The opinion bothers me, but it isn't particularly relevant to me.

If the people who hold the rights to a 'verse are all slash=bad?
My first impulse is to start a ficathon.
Even though possible consequences would include legal letters.

Sure, it can be said that slashers could go play in a different sandbox. Write about a different 'verse. But why *should* they? The only reason that comes out is that someone, somewhere, is making the value judgement that queer is wrong. And bugger that.

*waves a little flag* (which is pretty colors anyways)



... yeah, I realise this particular discussion is a merry go round and has spun many times before. But this is my today thought.

Stories change people. Change their opinions. Some opinions I've got a particular interest in changing, but preaching won't do it, so, stories.