Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Tiger link of the day: I suppose it has to be OK (John Gruber)

I was chatting with someone recently about people who don’t believe in the muse. I have a muse, though I haven’t seen him/her (she has several incarnations) lately, so of course I believe. I think there are three types of disbelievers:

1. Muse Atheists: those who have never experienced the muse and dismiss everyone else’s experience, from Homer to Shakespeare to fanficcers. This type lacks imagination, so they’re unlikely to get far writing science fiction. We can dismiss their opinions out of hand as they have ours.
2. Muse Agnostics: those who have no muse themselves but are willing to concede that other people may have the muse. I include in this category anyone who dislikes the term “muse” itself, but will tolerate talk of the unconscious or other kinds of muse-like inspiration. So they’re not so bad once you get to know them.
3. Moms Against the Muse: those who campaign against the muse not because they disbelieve (though they probably do) but because they think the muse is bad for you, little ficcer. Hair will grow on your palms and you’ll never get anything written, just because you believe the evidence of your own creative experience. There’s a lot of this kind of mommery in writing circles; it’s not confined to the muse by any means. Mom-types can be helpful when they’re preaching at you about plot or manuscript format, but when they tell you they know the contents of your skull better that you do yourself, little ficcer, it’s best to just nod and smile.

Do people use the muse as an excuse not to write? Sure they do. People use anything and everything as an excuse not to write, but that doesn’t mean that jobs, movies, sleep, real life, computer games, depression, spouses, and children don’t exist, or are bad for you, little ficcer.

On the contrary, jobs, movies, sleep, real life, computer games, depression, and children rarely encourage a person to write. Only spouses and muses are encouraging, and of the two only the muse provides actual joy in the writing process. It’s the last thing writers should be preaching against. Some people seem to think writing doesn’t count unless you’re suffering and sweating blood while you do it, so maybe Masochists are the fourth type of muse abusers.

If you haven’t gotten your fill of Enterprise-bashing, Haasim Mahanaim takes a final swipe at the show we loved to hate. He says:

Science fiction film and television typically does not aspire to be intelligent, instead there’s an entirely different mentality for sci-fi unlike any other genre. With science fiction there seems to be a campiness that is always present, permission to be goofy and immature.

I think he needs to watch BSG, but beyond that, camp is in the eye of the beholder. While I appreciate the classic camp of Trek, I think it was a symptom of the medium rather than of a different mentality. Rock creatures just don’t come off as well as cowboys on the small screen–but technology is catching up fast.

Invention of the day: Sleeptracker watch (via GeekPress)

I saw at Slashdot and SciFi Wire that the latest Doctor has quit Dr. Who only one episode into the season, citing fear of typecasting. I have to wonder what he was thinking when he signed up to be the longest-running science fiction character in TV history…

Seema pointed me towards this tiff in a teapot over snarking at Star Wars. In the comments I found my all-time favorite quote about fandom (by okoge):

Isn’t getting personally offended so often exhausting for you?

That just about sums it all up.

Jolene Blalock never fails to entertain, at least off the set:

[…] asked about the series finale, written by longtime executive producers Rick Berman & Brannon Braga, Blalock said, “I don’t know where to begin with that one…the final episode is…appalling.”

The ellipses apparently represent stammering rather than genuine elisions. Read all about it at TrekToday.

Voting closes soon in the Sam and Jack awards and nominations open soon afterwards for the Stargate Fan Awards. That’s the same as the Stargate SG-1 Fan Awards for you old-timers, but Atlantis is now included so they dropped the SG-1.

ENT link of the day: Tachyon TV on the cancellation.

Slashdot is having a field day with the Save Enterprise rallies.

I’m ignoring the “Threads” threads, but not the SamAndJack Fanfiction Awards. I have one month to read and vote, and then maybe I’ll skim some ASC categories. Or not.

Thanks to Rocky for sparing me the effort I might have made if I still cared enough to write a post-mortem on Trek. I agree with her and disagree with Kelly Chambliss on most of their points. Since disagreements are always more interesting, I’ll run through those:

The alleged external problems:

1. UPN was no worse for VOY and ENT than syndication was for TNG and DS9.
2. Stargate, Atlantis, and BSG have all run on Friday nights without suffering any. Friday is no longer the kiss of death for a show, except by way of heavy competition.
3. Yes, there are too many choices, but the problem for ENT wasn’t the range of sci-fi per se, but that there were too many better choices.
4. For a company that doesn’t know its traditional audience, Paramount has certainly managed to recycle the traditional material often enough. The little ratings ploys (Seven Huge Hooters Save the Franchise and her Slinky Vulcan Successor) haven’t done that much to damage the ratings. ENT wasn’t so much misdirected as boring.

The alleged internal problems:

1. It’s hard for me to comment on a show that proved too boring to watch, but ENT was never enough of a throwback to TOS for me. The humans were whiny and oppressed, not God’s gift to the universe like Kirk or Picard.
2. Yes, the characters were bland, predictable, and unmemorable, but that doesn’t distinguish ENT from the more memorable TNG.
3. VOY and SG have thrived on throwback sexuality–I’m thinking J/C and Sam/Jack, especially, but the overall nothing-happens approach to sex works just fine for sf shows. As in #4 above, I don’t think the attempt to add sexual tension hurt (or helped) ENT to any significant degree.

The allegedly good stuff:

1. Season-long arcs are a bad idea. If anyone had been interested in the occasional ENT episode, this (and the rumor of Nazis) was sure to scare them off. DS9 was a great show, but it was not popular as Trek series go; going the way of DS9 was not going to save ENT, not without writers to support an entirely different approach to plotting. And anyway, it was too late to go from an episodic show to a more arc-based show–they’d just disappoint the fans who’d stuck around without convincing the rest of us who’d fled screaming to come back.
2. Again, it was too little, too late for ENT to go for continuity. The people who cared were too turned off by the character assassination of the entire Vulcan race. Technically, the last-season push was one to cash in on canon references, rather than to bring ENT in line with Trek continuity. Only the Big Reset Button in the Sky could fix ENT continuity at this stage.

Well, that went on a bit longer than expected. I hope it doesn’t fool anyone into thinking I care…