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Jul. 13th, 2008
sundries: household and fannish
Jul. 13th, 2008 11:10 am- While I did not get as much done as I wanted to yesterday, I got what I did get done better than I expected to. However, it's a cruel world that only has ice water in the pipers after you've made the bathroom sparkle!
- We've reached the point where my dry cleaner knows my name. My dry cleaner knowing my name means I bring in too much dry cleaning. It's like your drug dealer asking you how your kids are. The familiarity of the relationship is a DANGER SIGN. But I own a lot of silk and I love my shirts coming out just perfect, although we do need to have a discussion about more starch.
- Kali and I are working on our next piece following A Strange Fashion.../Dear Captain... (also I owe several people in those threads longer responses to insightful comments -- probably tonight -- I'm look at you![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
demotu) but right now I feel frustrated by it. It is more logistically complex than the other two (more characters) and I can tell that the editing process is going to be much more intensive on this one than the other two. But, I'm hoping it will, in the end, turn out like, for those of you who read our HP work, the garden party in Descensus, which was thought was AWFUL when we were writing it and pulled togther beautifully. Also we've sort of figured out a trajectory for these, and we think it's a seven=ish story arc.
- I need to write some Annie. I love Jack/Ianto but there's something poinsonous in the analyzing it unto splinters way that I write them. It's tiriing to be around. This fandom forces me to take a lot of long walks. Some of you know that I teach in both fannish and non-fannish capacities classes on using acting iprov to improve your writing. This fandom is probably the best fannish example I've had in my own work of myself using that process in an internal way, and because of the sort of performer I am, the only way to get the poison back out after putting it in to get the writing down is go for Very Long Walks.
- Fewer Very Long Walks are necessary when Patty's home, so aside from missing her. Grounding, hello!
- Off to do some work before Bastille Day thing.
- Finally finished watching Doctor Who, series 2 last night. OMG, so mono no aware excellent and now having seen it instead of just having read about it, I get why so many people were disatisified with the end of Series 4. Without discussion spoilers for either, I must take a moment to say that I love love love Doctor Who and Torchwood so much because whatever else is going on in them, they are about endurance. They are about the idea that at some point in our lives the happiest moment of them will have already happened. In the real world, we never know that moment, but DW/TW characters -- at least the human/normal lifespan ones do know when that moment happens, and then have to learn to live and find meaning in the face of that, while the longer-lifed characters have to endurance -- as we do out here in the real world -- the fact that they might never know when that moment is and hold it tight and remember it perfectly. I love that so much of DW/TW is about our weaknesses and enduring in the face of them while also being structured so that we get to identify with what are, effectively, superheroes. For a show that can be so relentlessly, brutally sad, it is also a very sweet thing.
- Have finally discovered where the wank lives in this fandom, and it's actually sort of interesting as it's got so much to do both with fan culture and the boundaries of performers and how everything gets wonky when those boundaries aren't where people have come to expect them to be. It's all the sort of thing I'd prefer to read and not comment on other than to say public life and fatnasy life are by nature complicated and performers get paid to play across them and no matter how much being fannish can also seem like playing acoss the same ideas (because it is), shit is always different when it's your job. I'm actually not even sure what my point is other than, hey, this fandom gives us weird parameters and the only behavior you can really police is your own. HP wank felt funnier and more harmless because it was/is so non-reality based (oh, poor astralplane!Snape got his feelings hurt -- I mean seriously, who gives a shit if fans are being inappropriate at that point? And it's not like it's rational to sit around debating if atralplane!Snape behaved appropriately although I'm sure someone did somewhere).
- Actually, I can sum up the above. Dear Everyone, sometimes boundaries are sexy.
- Righto. Bet I have hot water now.
- We've reached the point where my dry cleaner knows my name. My dry cleaner knowing my name means I bring in too much dry cleaning. It's like your drug dealer asking you how your kids are. The familiarity of the relationship is a DANGER SIGN. But I own a lot of silk and I love my shirts coming out just perfect, although we do need to have a discussion about more starch.
- Kali and I are working on our next piece following A Strange Fashion.../Dear Captain... (also I owe several people in those threads longer responses to insightful comments -- probably tonight -- I'm look at you
demotu) but right now I feel frustrated by it. It is more logistically complex than the other two (more characters) and I can tell that the editing process is going to be much more intensive on this one than the other two. But, I'm hoping it will, in the end, turn out like, for those of you who read our HP work, the garden party in Descensus, which was thought was AWFUL when we were writing it and pulled togther beautifully. Also we've sort of figured out a trajectory for these, and we think it's a seven=ish story arc.- I need to write some Annie. I love Jack/Ianto but there's something poinsonous in the analyzing it unto splinters way that I write them. It's tiriing to be around. This fandom forces me to take a lot of long walks. Some of you know that I teach in both fannish and non-fannish capacities classes on using acting iprov to improve your writing. This fandom is probably the best fannish example I've had in my own work of myself using that process in an internal way, and because of the sort of performer I am, the only way to get the poison back out after putting it in to get the writing down is go for Very Long Walks.
- Fewer Very Long Walks are necessary when Patty's home, so aside from missing her. Grounding, hello!
- Off to do some work before Bastille Day thing.
- Finally finished watching Doctor Who, series 2 last night. OMG, so mono no aware excellent and now having seen it instead of just having read about it, I get why so many people were disatisified with the end of Series 4. Without discussion spoilers for either, I must take a moment to say that I love love love Doctor Who and Torchwood so much because whatever else is going on in them, they are about endurance. They are about the idea that at some point in our lives the happiest moment of them will have already happened. In the real world, we never know that moment, but DW/TW characters -- at least the human/normal lifespan ones do know when that moment happens, and then have to learn to live and find meaning in the face of that, while the longer-lifed characters have to endurance -- as we do out here in the real world -- the fact that they might never know when that moment is and hold it tight and remember it perfectly. I love that so much of DW/TW is about our weaknesses and enduring in the face of them while also being structured so that we get to identify with what are, effectively, superheroes. For a show that can be so relentlessly, brutally sad, it is also a very sweet thing.
- Have finally discovered where the wank lives in this fandom, and it's actually sort of interesting as it's got so much to do both with fan culture and the boundaries of performers and how everything gets wonky when those boundaries aren't where people have come to expect them to be. It's all the sort of thing I'd prefer to read and not comment on other than to say public life and fatnasy life are by nature complicated and performers get paid to play across them and no matter how much being fannish can also seem like playing acoss the same ideas (because it is), shit is always different when it's your job. I'm actually not even sure what my point is other than, hey, this fandom gives us weird parameters and the only behavior you can really police is your own. HP wank felt funnier and more harmless because it was/is so non-reality based (oh, poor astralplane!Snape got his feelings hurt -- I mean seriously, who gives a shit if fans are being inappropriate at that point? And it's not like it's rational to sit around debating if atralplane!Snape behaved appropriately although I'm sure someone did somewhere).
- Actually, I can sum up the above. Dear Everyone, sometimes boundaries are sexy.
- Righto. Bet I have hot water now.
Today was a day that went exactly as planned except not at all.
The train was a mix of screaming racist crazywomen talking to themselves about Angelina Jolie and Sharon Stone while mariachi bands jostled for position. The Bastille Day thing was crowded and cramped beyond all (dance floor? what dance floor?) although I can't say enough good things about Michael Aranella & His Dreamland Orchestra.
We escaped for awhile to another nearby street fair where we ate spectacular streak frittes outside and then went back for some more of that fabulous music.
Which is where things went from sort of ridiculous to WHUT?!?
I'm peripherally aware of a dude sitting near where we are standing. He seems sane and not homeless, but he's still in a dirty t-shirt and shorts and it just unkempt and smug about it. I don't think of it beyond taking in the scene -- there's Aranella and his winking charm, the band, two brave couples dancing, lots of kids, scary Bacardi girls, entitled Brooklynites who think "excuse me" means "I'm going to intentionally walk right into you now eventhough I could theoretically swerve and not do so" etc etc.
And then I can feel someone looking at us.
It's Mr. Unkempt.
His gaze wanders over me ever so briefly. I'm in boy clothes, covered up, not of interest, and then he gets to Kali. His eyes slide up down and up again. And then he asks her if she dances.
"Oh, no!" she says with a laugh.
He frowns and grudingly turns to me. "Do you know how to dance?" he asks.
"This isn't really my era," I say.
"Well, can you count to four?"
Such questions are never, ever a good sign.
"Not today," I say with a smile and lean over to Kali to whisper "we are not the lesbians you're looking for," because really, dude? Are you serious? I've never seen a guy ask two different women to dance with such contempt before in my life.
And then he fucking reaches for Kali, like it's time to see if the meat is tender or something.
"Hey!" I say and reflexivingput my hand on his chest so that doesn't happen. Which is fucking stupid, because if you don't want the creepy guy touching you, you also don't really want to be touching the creepy guy, right? "She said no."
"But she can dance!"
"She can also be a lot meaner than me. Step off."
Luckily, I like to think it was the presence of disapproving people with babies, he slunk back into his chair, but he was still sort of salivating and our feet hurt so we bagged the whole thing to take another unbelieveably fucked up train ride back into Manhattan and look things up for fics in travel guides. At which point I completely cracked Kali up by sniping at her to just use the damn index when she was fishing for the table of contents.
Anyway. Those of you who were sad to miss today's thing? You missed NOTHING other than some cracktastic weirdness and small children eating mussels and harassing dogs.
The train was a mix of screaming racist crazywomen talking to themselves about Angelina Jolie and Sharon Stone while mariachi bands jostled for position. The Bastille Day thing was crowded and cramped beyond all (dance floor? what dance floor?) although I can't say enough good things about Michael Aranella & His Dreamland Orchestra.
We escaped for awhile to another nearby street fair where we ate spectacular streak frittes outside and then went back for some more of that fabulous music.
Which is where things went from sort of ridiculous to WHUT?!?
I'm peripherally aware of a dude sitting near where we are standing. He seems sane and not homeless, but he's still in a dirty t-shirt and shorts and it just unkempt and smug about it. I don't think of it beyond taking in the scene -- there's Aranella and his winking charm, the band, two brave couples dancing, lots of kids, scary Bacardi girls, entitled Brooklynites who think "excuse me" means "I'm going to intentionally walk right into you now eventhough I could theoretically swerve and not do so" etc etc.
And then I can feel someone looking at us.
It's Mr. Unkempt.
His gaze wanders over me ever so briefly. I'm in boy clothes, covered up, not of interest, and then he gets to Kali. His eyes slide up down and up again. And then he asks her if she dances.
"Oh, no!" she says with a laugh.
He frowns and grudingly turns to me. "Do you know how to dance?" he asks.
"This isn't really my era," I say.
"Well, can you count to four?"
Such questions are never, ever a good sign.
"Not today," I say with a smile and lean over to Kali to whisper "we are not the lesbians you're looking for," because really, dude? Are you serious? I've never seen a guy ask two different women to dance with such contempt before in my life.
And then he fucking reaches for Kali, like it's time to see if the meat is tender or something.
"Hey!" I say and reflexivingput my hand on his chest so that doesn't happen. Which is fucking stupid, because if you don't want the creepy guy touching you, you also don't really want to be touching the creepy guy, right? "She said no."
"But she can dance!"
"She can also be a lot meaner than me. Step off."
Luckily, I like to think it was the presence of disapproving people with babies, he slunk back into his chair, but he was still sort of salivating and our feet hurt so we bagged the whole thing to take another unbelieveably fucked up train ride back into Manhattan and look things up for fics in travel guides. At which point I completely cracked Kali up by sniping at her to just use the damn index when she was fishing for the table of contents.
Anyway. Those of you who were sad to miss today's thing? You missed NOTHING other than some cracktastic weirdness and small children eating mussels and harassing dogs.