(no subject)

I read thru metafandom a thingy about calling stories that focus on two gay-identified men in a relationship as “M/M,” rather than “gay fiction,”
It had a point. I read the point. I'm not sure that specific objection proves the point.

Fanfic uses headers. There's a line that fits in the subject line, and there's a bunch of lines in a post that describe the story. Headers are often standardised. Within fandom as a whole they vary vastly, but with particular lists or comms they tend to follow a pattern. The idea of them is to tell you what's in the story so you can see if you want to read it.

M/M is header data, often in the one-line bit that goes in the subject line. Stories can be M/M, M/F, F/F. You could call that gay, het, lesbian. But stories can also be M/M/M, and that too would be gay, but you'd lose data to label it that way. And it can also be M/M/F or M/F/F or M/M/M/F/F or, you know, all those others. It's a scaleable labelling convention. As such it is very handy.

And it's not quite broken by needing more initials for genders, as long as someone notes somewhere what E or H or O or whatever stands for in the context.

Mostly though I see stories with Name/Othername labels instead of M/M. Unless it's Canon/Original, where mostly you'll get Jack/M rather than Jack/some dude you never heard of.


All that up there is not to do with the point the other thing was having. It's just got it's own point, with nice handy logic.

One of the reasons I like fanfic is the header labelling system, with logic. Trying to dig through a couple thousand books I inherited and figure out what's in them just from the backs of the books... oh so not easy. Same with trying to buy stuff at Amazon. Adding headers for print books would simple things up rather.


... huh, now there's a project ...

(no subject)

I've been watching songvids from Buffy and Angel, and it's just reminding me how powerful those stories are. Half the time I'll be peering through fuzzy or stripy tiny little files (because they're old vids and they don't look right no more) but the stories are still so clear. One or two shots and the whole thing just floods back in heartbreaking detail.
... I'd almost managed to forget how many characters end up dead. There's a *lot* of those.
(I think maybe I discover a reason I'm in more of a Doctor Who mood lately - lots and lots of dead dudes, but only people we just met. Except for Adric. I can handle that one. I think in general I have had enough of death.)
And not just the deaths, their whole story arc. It's like watching them fall and knowing it's going to hurt when the ground hits. Only then they hit a lot of stuff on the way down, so it's more like finding there's always more down.

I want to pick up the whole lot of them and hug them and just hand them a nice safe job they can achieve and live with and stuff.

Buffy was marginally less depressing, but even so... Everyone went through hell.


Which, you know, the point.


But I'll be over here, watching my kids show... About a guy who loses his entire planet and doesn't even have a species any more and is going to outlive everyone ever and loses everyone he loves.
Dear god, there's a shortage of cheerful once you start looking at this hero stuff.


Maybe to watch fraggles? Fraggles have much less bad stuff happen to them. I think.
*sigh*


I guess the difference between the kids show and the adult one is generally on the kids show the good guys win eventually. On the other one there may or may not *be* good guys, let alone that winning thing.

Me want kids show now pls.

(no subject)

I finished watching all my stored up Buffy and Angel songvids
plus some related clips and interviews and stuff
so then I watched Halloween.
I've seen that episode a bazillion times, yet I still find new stuff to notice in it.
Today: Willow's backpack has rainbows. Rainbow straps. In season 2 this is merely amusing coincidence and just because she likes rainbows and not a pride thing at all. Unless you want to call it a Secret Clue, and then it gets more amusing because there's also Pirate!Larry in this one and his secret is rainbow related.
... it's too much of a stretch to be an actual clue, but it's enough connection to make me grin.


Mostly I am tired. I have been up since yesterday. My headphones hurt my ears and the only reason I don't have new ones yet is there's too many kidns to choose from. And I'm lurching between lalala and randomly tearful. It's very annoying.

Also I have bad hair. This is because I had a bath, I know, but I have puffball hair of doom and it has like an inch of brown at the roots and all the red/purple layer fallen out and gone a sort of tired ginger. This is not birthday hair. I have until Thursday to get decent birthday hair, but I usually make appointments like two weeks in advance so I don't know as that works. And also I have a thing on Wednesday. And it takes a whole morning to do my hair.

Meh.


I realise it could be worse. Many people have lack of hair problems. But I have hair that attempts to look like a rockhopper penguin met a goth dandelion, and that's just not helpful either.



Ethan Rayne: Still hot. And interesting. And, okay, kind of sad and tacky if you want to read him that way, but he's more fun as one of his cooler versions.
Plus that Janus spell is just *neat*.
:-)