My just woke up thoughts about labels

So metafandom is full of a bazillion posts about warnings, saying stuff like every time I see the warning debate come round again, that's what it always seems to boil down to: readers don't have enough time to sift through all the fic that doesn't have warnings, they don't have enough patience to do that

to which I reply, back up one statement - don't have the time

How many thousands of fanfics are there in your corner of fandom? Very very many I suspect. Counting Ethan stories only, and god knows Ethan is a very minor bit of Buffy fandom, I got 270 stories on web pages and 358 LJ memories, not to mention the uncatalogued stuff I trawled through from Google searching for it. If you get those 600 stories one at a time over years, they might not feel like much. If you start out as a new reader? Where do you start?

(Of Old Mystics or Tea and Biscuits if you like long, because *very* long, but for short... waaaaaay many.)

If you pick up a book


.... oh my *god* there's a Spider crawling up my curtain, and yes it gets a capital letter, for it is as big as my fucking *hand* I swear!
okay, the palm part of my hand only, maybe.
... oh my god, it must have been under my computer desk to get to the curtain.
It is *huge*. I didn't know the UK did Spiders that bit! Well, okay, that one that one time, but... Wah!

...yes, that was a real and unscheduled interruption.
But I am Writer, so I turn it into metaphor!

You read a fic, and every now and then you get OHMYGODSPIDER!

But one has only so much adrenaline to go around, so it would really be nice to be spider free, should one wish to avoid them.

No I'm not saying put arachnophobe warnings on fic, I'm saying that some things make you interrupt a happy little bit of reading to go WAH and really, life is too short, you know? For Spiders on the curtain one cannot be warned for, and for such things I save up my brave.

... now I'll have to actually find it and get it out the window.
Or move out. I like that plan. Er, sort of. Well, no, because my TV is being delievered here, so I kind of have to live here... *sigh*

ANYways, my actual point pre SPIDER was,

270 stories in the database
and one of them is *foul*
out of character partner betrayal torture rape and death fic that some... I have a rude word for them, but someone with a weird sense of what the categories mean posted it to a Giles/Ethan archive.
Ethan ends up sliced to bitses by insane!Giles.

I have not read this story in a long while. I do not intend to ever read this story again. If I had my way, I would never have read it in the first place. I wanted the brain bleach something severe after I read that rubbish. I definitely wanted my time back.

I only read it in the first place because it had been labelled in a way that appealed to me and presented in a context that suggested it was a thing I would like. The google stories were neither, and nobody's fault but mine, which is why I'm keeping it down to the database ones only. But those google search fics are a good example of the contrary condition, stories without context or labels. Google for "Ethan Rayne" and right now you get 35,600 pages. I think it used to be more. If all of those were fics, how on earth would you find the time? And though they are not all fics, how is it that we know that?

Context and labels.

Warnings are just another way to sift something worth our time from the overwhelming multiplicity of the modern media.

Don't want to help people do that?
=
Don't want to attract readers who will actually like your story.

randomly

someone telling everyone what everyone 'really means' is really obnoxious
especially when they clearly contradict what people are actually saying

its that whole marxism and false consciousness grrr all over again, only without the logic or research

(no subject)

If I wanted to find out about colleges and universities in London in the 1970s, especially student's experience of them and if there was shouty protest stuff going on, how could I phrase that search?

I keep on getting swamped by present day recruiting pages, which isn't what I'm after at all.

Yes, it is research for Ripper, as usual. Ethan had to be doing something before he did dark magic. I don't know what, but I'd like him to be in London for different reasons than Ripper, therefore not running away. And if I'm going to use all that neo-Marxist and postmodernist stuff for him, maybe he learned it at college.



Writing contains much detail.
and at least 90% of all research doesn't go anywhere

Peter Wingfield on Holby City

Having just checked my email I find from the PWFC

Peter Wingfield is going to be on the BBC on Holby City as a new Surgical Consultant, beginning August 15th. His contract runs for at least one year with the possibility of renewal. The show runs 52 weeks a year and airs on BBC 1 at 8 pm on Tuesday nights.

Yaay for him! Regular work, yaays!

but... I can't watch medical drama. I mean, it isn't quite as bad as serial killers... no, actually, it probably is. I haven't voluntarily watched medical drama for way longer than I haven't watched serial killers. Actually, I think last time I did I was following an actor from one of my fandoms. Trouble is I end up with a head full of nightmare.

This is why I watch F&SF - I'm really, really unlikely to ever meet a vampire, and if I do I know how to deal. Medical stuff? Always around, very tricky to deal. *sigh*

so I kind of sulk.
but also yaay for him.

spectacle vs heart

there was this weird thing on ITV just now about a time travelling dinosaur hunter, trying to grab living dinos to bring back to the future (nowish). It pretends to be a documentary, 'Prehistoric Park'. It... kind of makes me *facepalm* in many different ways at once. It isn't that dinosaur hunting would be a boring topic for a TV series, is just... they're pretending like its educational? And to keep the dramatic tension going for the whole episode, he spent a whole episode being wrong a lot, or doing stupid plans that didn't work at all. I guess this can teach valuable lessons like 'don't bait the t-rex' but... sheesh...


On UKTVHistory Bill Oddie was researching his family tree, for a show called "Who Do You Think You Are", finding out things about his mother he never knew before, and finding he would have had a sister if she had lived more than 5 days. I was flipping back and forth between the two shows, and it just showed up how empty the expensive one was.

Tiny little documentary, human stories covering the history of mental health in the post war years, and the impact of the industrial revolution on one family of weavers who ended up working in cotton mills.
Huge great expensive mockumentary? Playing silly buggers with computer graphics, basically. Daft.


Is why I want to write ghost stories, not bug hunts.

Highlander: Raven: Actually turns into Highlander worth watching.

... which is rather a surprise.

I watched a bunch of episodes and wrote a bunch of reviews on the laptop, for the weather here can't decide if it will storm or not and I've been keeping the computer off a lot.

Opinions evolve as I watch the Paris episodes.

Highlander: Raven: Rogue
( Read more... )

Highlander Raven Inferno
( Read more... )

Highlander: Raven: The Frame ( Read more... )

Basically this ep was okay. I'm liking the series fine now. It doesn't suck half as bad as I heard. The first few episodes did, but now it seems to have a groove on.

#xfingers#


Highlander: Raven: Love & Death ( Read more... )

Interesting story. I quite like the series lately.



Highlander: Raven: Thick as Thieves

Now this is Highlander. ( Read more... )

I *like* this. This is *Highlander*. Discussion with swords.