(no subject)

I have finished reading the 5 books of 'Vatta's War' by Elizabeth Moon.
I likes them a lot.
Not quite as much as some of the Serrano books, and I'm not sure why.

I like the assumptions in the world view. Mostly people aren't white. If there's white people around sometimes it gets mentioned, and sometimes it doesn't come up for ages. Racism is this weird minority thing isolated worlds do.
Sexism is almost as weird. Women and men do jobs. Including be Admirals and spies and merchants and all sorts. But then there's some about fashion and marriage and the way if any character is being expected to stay home and play parent they'll be a woman. Vaguely depressing.
It's a world where modifications on the basic human form run to tentacles and... well, actually, mostly tentacles, but doing different things. Oh, and some horns. But basically, lots of ways to modify people. But there's still your basic men and women setup, and women have babies the old fashioned way. And then there's random violence to baby in the middle of one book. Did not like that.
It mixes a bunch of different civilisations and setups together. Lots of different customs. Sometimes for the pointing and laughing at, but then they bite.

The bad guys are always just... bad. Selfish, stupid, wrong. Usually poorly trained. Doing things for profit that undercut their chances of survival. And when someone is kidnapped and tortured and told X ordered it then it turns out that X did indeed order it. But whenever someone says the good guys did something then it is one of the small list of things they did not in fact do. The list of things they did do never gets as far as court. It's a bit annoying, really. I mean one guy gets executed for being rude to a judge, rather than tried and convicted on any piracy and smuggling related charges. It's like if they're doing things the good guys don't approve of then they're necessarily also going to be rude and stupid. Even if they hadn't been in the previous books and had been fooling people for decades.

Bit blah, really. It's way more fun when the bad guys are as skilled as the good guys. Matching skilled good guys against clumsy self taught stupid bad guys who try and overwhelm with numbers... yeah, okay, whatever. We know skill wins over strength. How about skill winning against skill?

Things I do like: Multiple protagonists plaited together, relationships that both twist up and hold things together and propel the story along, lots of different ways of being right. Like the military is right from a military point of view, but making a mess from the merchant point of view, and merchants are clearly right from a supply and trade point of view, and so on. And the principal protagonist, the one we meet first and follow longest, she makes some reasonable mistakes and learns from them and gets advice and doesn't always take it and so on. Not a Mary Sue, even ignoring the thing where she winds people up. Someone who learns from a combination of training and experience, not screwing up the same way twice, and just about barely surviving. That's proper.



I need to get stuck in and write something. I don't know if I want to write fanfic. I mean, I do, I have a bunch of Torchwood stories and a season of Doctor Who. Torchwood stories would focus on Ianto and, don't ask me why, Mickey... so I want to wait until there's some actual women in that story. I think my interest is distracted by the way that Gwen and Martha are happily cosily paired off, and only possibly interested in the guy that it would be boring for them to hook up with. I want to use Owen, he was all spiky and Oweny in the middle of the story and could twist things up nicely. I can twist them with Ianto and Mickey in ways I want to use, but those stories would involve Gwen and Martha in ways that aren't so much my thing. Could work if I poked it though. And Jack, of course, is in the middle there having everything revolve around either him or his absence. Got plenty good story.

With two weeks of season left, it does not seem like the time to start Big Ambitious Story. Since I'm trying to make things canon compliant.

I really want to write for TV. Like, a lot. There's stories they're not telling and I wants to.

But I also could tell them with my own characters and my own setups. And then I could send them in to places I know that read such things. I can write TW or DW only for a fanfic audience. I know there's a way to get to actually write for them, but (a) wouldn't know how and (b) know what's happening next year is all sorted already without me so it's probably not a useful time.

I wants to invent new companion for Doctor Who. Is someone who has not been on TV before. This may well mean is someone who would not work on TV, but I won't know until I poke the stories a lot more. In my head, they work. In my head, many things work. I mean, in my head, I'm dating a great many of the characters on a great many TV shows, but, you know, outside my head reality remains uncompliant.


I'm kind of bored. I mean, I like the TV I'm getting, but I want to be *making*. So really I just should.

I keep finding myself in another week without having done so though.