sundries

[rm]

At 6am, well, 6:20, I finally heard the ringtone on g-chat and Patty and I had a half-asleep vid date. Then it was off to 2-day film school. I'm just home, and ladyofthelog is over and we're cleaning the house, but I'm having introvert time by writing this post.

2-Day Film School is awesome. Exhausting. Somewhat bizarre. Occasionally frustrating, but super good. I'm definitely getting the answers I needed in terms of technical elements and budgeting and that's awesome. And it's making me consider plans, both in terms of treatments I've been kicking around on my own and with others, and in terms of "well if I want to make a film, how do I do that?"

Also a plus, somewhat surprisingly, is the deep cynicism of the dude teaching the class. Whereas the the Luhrmann thing was like "just do what you want and sometimes it will be a devastating experience and sometimes it will be awesome" this dude is like "fuck you, fuck art, this is how you make money, don't fucking waste your time making shorts, make schlock for this much, and then this much and then this much and then 'lo you will have a budget to do what you want." The benefit of this approach even if it doesn't really mesh with my sort of "all things are possible" call to arms bullshit, is it makes me not feel the near moral obligation to Make Things Right Now, which is good, since I'm plenty in the throes of multiple projects right now (D&J! D&J!), and therefore I should only be nosing around at such endeavors and scheduling them for Time Other.

Funniest thing that's easy to explain right now: You're the producer/director on a 3-week indie film shoot. The first week = fun! The second week = zombie exhaustion! Third week = everyone hates you. Then it's over, you pass out, wake up four days later, find out your cast had a party without you. How do you avoid this? 2 week film shoot! I'm still laughing.

It's been a while since I've talked about financial crisis suicides. But it seems one of Bernie Madoff's sons has killed himself. Awful.

Julian Assange's blog from back in 2006/7. It's... well, it's a lot of things. Less charming than I'd expected. Just as "I'm a dude on the Internet who knows more than you" as I expected. It's fascinating, unsettling and unremarkable all at once.

West Point runs a football to Philadelphia. I normally know about things like this, but this one was news to me. Next year they are running all the way to DC.

So Kali and I aren't at a point where we can give you a full narrative summary, but I have to share this bit of hilarity. We're working on a chapter and Cecilia is needled by her fiance and her sister about how they used to burn her dolls to torture her (book is about the fall of empire and colonialism and inbred nobles and magic and the whole bit, so yes, of course everyone's known everyone their whole lives) when she was a child. And then we were talking about it, even though it won't ever appear in the book and I said, "And I can hear Cissy saying, sobbing, 'You have to cut their heads off first or else it hurts them!'" Cissy seems really sweet but is creepy. So yeah, it's like that.

Hey, Sherlock fandom, unironically warning for "Light M/M boy kissing" isn't just offensive, it's a boggling, irritating, weird redundant thingy. Don't.

Did we all hear that two new Torchwood audio plays (audio books? something?) are coming out on CD in March that are set pre-CoE? I loved CoE, and I'm also ecstatic about this. Got it through the Starz Torchwood twitter account.

I have gluten-free red velvet cupcakes and you don't.

Things that ladyofthelog and I have discovered that have exploded in the kitchen at some point: grains of some sort, sugar, a box of chai tea, green food coloring. Yay! ETA: Also, spiders, spiders living in Spider Lothlorien. Yeah, my Saturday night is great.

Comments

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

One of the mods is the major reason why I don't even lurk at sherlockbbc anymore, after she* interrupted an interesting and civil discussion on a mod-approved post to complain that the topic was overdone. I was thisclose to pointing out that Who fandom has been discussing the same topics for 47 years so maybe it was premature to be fed up in a mere few months over a discussion point in a fandom with antecedents stretching back over a century... but she had already started threatening with the banhammer.

Speaking of lurking, I'm terrible about reading fic and not commenting, so let me take the belated opportunity to say I'm a fan of your writing. I hope Amanda gets more adventures, particularly. I like the dynamic of her and little Sherlock.


*I'm assuming the gender. I'm also assuming that this may be a reason why a competitor to sherlockbbc just went live.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[rm.livejournal.com]

What's the competing community?

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

221b_baker_str "This community is here as a place for fans of this show to gather and do whatever it is that they do to express themselves as fans. When it comes to posting, we are fairly lenient and open. Our intention is to be diverse and provide a place for just about anything that you enjoy doing as a fan." It opened about three days ago.

As fun as the fanart, fic, vids, etc., are, if anyone ever finds a discussion-only comm for Sherlock or Sherlock Holmes, I would LOVE to know about it. Sometimes I just want to discuss aspergers or Mike Stamford's changing interpretations.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'd start one if I thought I had the time to feed and care for it.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Come January would be when I could even begin to consider the concept, but I wouldn't do it without a couple of mods in with me - preferably ones who aren't lurkers!

It's a bit scary that I've gone from "Yeah, it would be nice but" to "this is what would make it happen" in about 5 minutes...

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'd love it to be something that encompassed all Holmesianness, from ACD onwards.

YES, YES, YES! First of all, there are plenty of people who want to talk about *their* favorite version, and the more members, the more likely it will survive. Second and selfishly, I enjoy the discussions that pull in aspects from different versions a bit more.

Oh, golly. I'm out and about and unreliably away from the primary computer until January 3. But then...

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I think we are.

Let's see if we can get a couple more people in (I'm batting my eyes at in this thread) and once we've got a group we can email back and forth figuring out names and policies and things so that we can be ready to launch on the 6th.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I doubt anyone who identified as male would include the self-descriptor "total tomboy" in their lj profile (I assume we are referring to the same person?).

What was the allegedly overdone topic?

Thanks for the kind word about the fic. I see the Amanda series as potentially going up in five year increments, without prejudice to the possibility of going back in and filling in a few details.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

(I assume we are referring to the same person?).

I wouldn't know; that would involve going back to the discussion I was at and finding the one you mentioned to compare... and I'm lazy. Seems a safe bet, though; the evidence points to a single mod who's more interested in Being The Mod than being a fellow fan with mod privileges.

What was the allegedly overdone topic?

"I'm a high-functioning sociopath" - is he or isn't he, and if he isn't, what is he? It *has* been discussed before, but seems to me that if people still want to discuss it - and it was thread of decent size - then have at. Especially as this time there were plenty of references back to original canon, which IMO added a new dimension.

without prejudice to the possibility of going back in and filling in a few details

It's the dynamic of watching little Sherlock develop into the Sherlock we met that I could eat with a spoon all day - I adore seeing the genesis of his bent brilliance. I'm not finding a lot of stories like those, but I may not be looking in the right places.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Well, I read "high functioning sociopath" as being him grabbing a label for himself to prevent the act of being labelled by others ie it's fairly central in my concepts of him as a bullied child adopting bullied child coping strategies which I could happily discuss all day and which certainly is one of the things going on in the babysitter series. I think anyone trying to close down that sort of discussion is being a complete idiot but I've experienced similar things on other lists - the Lord Peter yahoogroup is a bit prone to it - where someone seems to have difficulties with a discussion developing organically rather than being forcibly herded in one direction.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I read "high functioning sociopath" as being him grabbing a label for himself

Agreed - he seems to have just come out with that to freak Anderson out, IMO. It's one of the reasons why I have trouble with the "Holmes as actual psychotic" stories.

On the other hand, Sherlock doesn't appear to be neurotypical either, and there are aspects of the original Sherlock Holmes that can be argued that he's aping socially acceptable behavior rather than actually understanding how and why society works the way it works. (It can be equally argued that he knows perfectly well, he just doesn't *care,* which is a different issue.) So there's a wealth of stuff to play with and discuss.

I'd love a more in-depth discussion of Sherlock as a bullied child, because he's certainly a bullied adult; we watch it over and over and aside from the lashout at Sally, he takes it with surprising meekness. Obviously he simply accepts being treated in that manner as one of the annoying facts about the world, and he doesn't appear to know the difference between being bullied and affectionately teased.

(How far rm wants this to go here, I don't know, but I'd discuss it all day m'self! I could pop open a post at my place, or I've got a DW account to comment at yours.)

Or perhaps after the holidays I should actually look for people to help me try to start that Sherlock/Sherlock Holmes discussion-only comm and cross my fingers that it wouldn't die on the vine. Wanna mod a comm?

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

If you want to friend my DW using your lj open ID I'll put you on my Sherlock filters, and if I'm not the person to mod the comm, you should find some like-minded individuals over there (I'm slightly wary of pure discussion comms because I express ideas more clearly in fiction than in essay form, and the potential for misunderstanding and subsequent grief is less as a result).

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

If you want to friend my DW using your lj open ID

*is sadly ignorant of how to do this* I will when I figure out how!

While I look forward to more of your fic, I think the comm is going to happen and you'll be welcome there when it opens. (note to self; figure out how to open a comm to OpenID posting) Hopefully there will not be misunderstandings and grief, that wouldn't be the point!

There have been one or two fics that spawned reaction discussions on SherlockBBC - maybe it'll work out that way! Because I really would love to pursue the whole Sherlock as a bullied child thread.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

To follow someone on DW with OpenID you go to their DW a/c, try to comment, when asked to log-on to comment because they have disabled anon commenting, choose "Log on with OpenID" and type in, say, neadods.livejournal.com after the prompt and carry out the captcha. At the top of the screen it ought to offer you the option to follow said DW journal, so click on that. That ought to send a message to me inviting me to reciprocate, which I will (I can't work out how to do it the other way round, though).

There will, I suspect, always be misunderstandings, but with mods holding a light rein it may mean people work past them rather than come up against them and turn away (on both sides) baffled.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm trying that now and crossing my fingers. I tried and I'm confusing the system because I also have a DW account. So let's try putting that on the filter, if you're willing, and I'll set it to email me when you post.

A couple of experienced mods have raised their hands to join us, people I know to be level-headed in a different, often hot-headed fandom, so I'm hoping the meta comm will be a go and provide a service to Holmesian fandom. To be honest, I'm really quite surprised that a fandom this old (Holmes, not Sherlock) doesn't have something like it already.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

wow... glad i'm not getting into sherlock fandom then

i'd like to find a good rec comm or fic rec list somewhere, though, b/c i'm too lazy to go look through all the comms and even delicious tags

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I occasionally do recs at my LJ based on what hits holmesian_news, as do others. But there doesn't appear to be a fic rec list. I wish there was!

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

ooh *heads on over to your journal*

the problem is, i haven't found THE fic for me, yet - you know, the one that just makes me go 'yes, this exactly!' and i think it's probably b/c not many are written from sherlock's POV and when they are, he doesn't sound right to me...

i know john is supposed to be the audience's way into sherlock's world, but he's not the one i... i don't want to say 'identify with' but something along those lines - i understand the world from sherlock's POV moreso than from john's (uh, not that i'm a genius or anything, b/c i am not)

maybe i'm just too picky :(

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Warning; my signal-ton-noise is extraordinarily variable. My recs are all here, but it sounds like I may not be reccing what you're looking for; I lean more toward John stories. wordstrings' Sherlock POV stuff is generally acclaimed and it is brilliantly written... but you have to believe that Sherlock is actually psychotic, which I don't.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

yeah, i tried a couple of wordstrings fic rec'd by several ppl and... it didn't work for me :(

this one i read recently: http://archiveofourown.org/works/133861 is john POV and very much isn't my personal sherlock interpretation, but it was SO GOOD and it still worked perfectly for me - more like this would be good

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

That is a good one! But I don't know of more like it.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

*sigh* it's a one in a million fic
i'd better bookmark it this time so i don't have to keep scrolling back though my history to find it!

i think i may be a case of 'the fic i want will not exist until i write it myself!'

BUT I DON'T WANT TO

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[rm.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing about the wordstrings story, which I like very very much (but not as much as the Whore of Babylon fic I recced). Er.... Sherlock doesn't seem psychotic to me in it. Really weird, definitely a bit not good, also neurologically atypical. But I'm not as off put as I think I'm supposed to be.

Re: Sherlock batty warning conventions

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Sherlock doesn't seem psychotic to me in it.

Not in Death and Resurrection of the English Language, but in the next one or the one after (I'm losing track of the names of the stories in order of the cycle) wordstrings take on Sherlock goes darker and far further out of control than I think of the guy on screen as being. (I'd cite the scene, but I don't want to spoil folks who haven't read the stories yet.)

But I'm not as off put as I think I'm supposed to be

This is where I say YMMV and one fan's meat is another fan's poison and other cliches. We're each bringing not only our own experiences, but our own limits (not limitations, but the "thou shall not pass/thou might negotiate" limits) to it, and those are as personal as taste; what freaks one person out the next won't even blink at.