Random Things on a Saturday

[jbs_teeth]

1) I was reading an article on animal sentience in an old (March 2008) issue of National Geographic, and I still find it extraordinary that science needs to be convinced of this. Observation alone is not science -- I understand that -- and proof is something different altogether, as is anthropomorphising. BUT.

Well, of course, "but." I know Petey

Comments

[demotu]

It does sound grand! I keep throwing around these ideas of collaborative writing with other people - I think it's a natural sort of development when you're writing and learning how to use those tools in a community, to want to pool them - though I don't know if any of them will work out. definehome and I have a secret idea that must wait until we're done our respective projects, but it's so enormous in scope we might never get to it. But it would be cool, especially as I think our writing styles... sort of even each other out. It'd take a hell of a lot of work to keep them even, probably way more rewriting than I'm used to, but it'd still be fun. And we're both pretty thick-skinned.

Second City Torchwood is really good then? I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe when it gets recced at TWH I'll wander over to it. I read Disinterred last night and it freaked me out, but it was also really fabulous. I honestly have a list of at least ten authors in this fandom who I think are beyond brilliant and will read anything by them, and that keeps me

[jbs_teeth]

You know, the thing about SCT and EvS Presents DW isn't that the plot is so great (there's really no plot -- or lots of tiny plots, depending on how you look at it), or even that the writing is great (sam's prose itself is not exceptional, per se) but rather that the whole thing is so smart that it blows you away. The meta of it, the surrealism, the originality of thought, is truly unbelievable.

You know I like to read the comments, and someone else was talking about the series as Revolutionary, and it's not an exaggeration. I think what he's getting at is the work is truly transformative, taking one thing and making it something else.

I was saying to Lifty last weekend that I loved the book Wicked for a million reasons (the prose is dense and poetically elaborate, which you'll recognize as things I love) but partly because it was the book that made me realize that I just DIG the idea of fictionalizing the fictional (of the mythical and pedagogical and icongraphical), and that's where Sam is going to the nth degree with that series

[marginaliana]

Just throwing my two cents in, but I agree that Second City Torchwood isn't so much good as it is unbelievably clever. It's more about fandom (in general) than it is about the show, and Sam really knows fandom. I don't think the characterization of the fictional characters is particularly interesting, but the characterization of fandom is spot on.

I agree with you about the natural impulse towards collaborative writing. Fandom is inherently a community, I think.

[jbs_teeth]

I had to quote some of this to Sam during the interview, so thanks for being that girl, again.

[kel_reiley]

sounds like a GREAT idea
and i'd totally be in (if you'd have me) just as soon as i finish pieces (which, at this rate, might be before next century)

[jbs_teeth]

You and me both, sister.

Of course you can play.

[invisible_lift]

Ooh, Canterbury Tales? Mmm. You know what's even better? The Decameron.

I think I love the fandom and the show in different ways. Fandom has an advantage in that the show gives us our baseline, and a narrative and so on, but then we grab it and digest it and go crazy with it and expand on it. We're wildly flexible, unconstrained, and able to create so much more material without worrying about budget or bigwigs and TV rating schemes, etc. We're able to be the risk takers

[jbs_teeth]

Don't get cocky, Preener McPreenerson. You still owe me porn for approval.

*loves and hugs on the Lifty*

[invisible_lift]

Lifty wuvs you, too. :D

[marginaliana]

I know what you mean about preferring fandom to the canon. I feel that way about most of the fandoms I've been in. Yeah, I love the source material - I wouldn't be in fandom otherwise - but I love seeing the variety of creativity that so many different voices can bring to it more than anything.

[kalichan]

Behind the curve here, but this was so interesting, I had to jump in! I've been thinking about this in fandom a lot; both the ones I've been deeply involved/invested in before - Buffy, and Potterverse, I ended in preferring fic to canon - in part because there was so much literary and stylish stuff by some spectacular authors, but also because my search for the fic was motivated by dissatisfaction with canon (more so with HP than with Buffy; with HP I began to actively DISlike canon, while with Buffy, love usually outweighed disappointment.)

On the other hand, in Torchwood/Who I'm still very much in the throes of love, but, I also think, it's different to start out in a fandom as a writer already. I'm finding my fannishness here as a writer first, and only then as a reader; usually it's very much the other way around for me. Do you find your fannish experience as a writer different from yours as a reader of other people's production?

[jbs_teeth]

(GUH... kali, this is incredibly long and strange answer. Don't feel like you need to respond -- it's just something I've been wanting to get off my chest