Peeve of the Day: fanfic writers who choose their plots specifically to irritate readers into sending feedback. I don’t appreciate being manipulated. If you’d just write a good story, people would send feedback… Well, ok, they don’t, so maybe this sort of behavior is justified. But it’s still an offense against the muse.
And sold! to the gentleman from the South Shore. Yes, folks, it looks like I’m about to be a full-fledged wage-slave. I’ve never had a real job before - I’ve always been self-employed or temporarily employed or employed part-time or paid to go to school (all of those being scams on the employer’s or contractor’s or university’s end to avoid the expense of benefits, not to mention a market-level salary). Don’t get me started on wage-slavery, though - the bitter maggot saga would pale by comparison.
So I was faced with the unfamiliar task of writing an acceptance letter. I found some helpful advice at WriteExpress. Anyway, that’s why I’ve been blogging so much - I have the week off before I start work.
Speaking of letters, I got a pleasant little note from the Postmaster General of the United States this weekend, warning me about anthrax without once using the word anthrax. It’s already been targeted by comedians and wags for the immortal line, “Don’t shake it, bump it, or sniff it.” Oh, and I’m on high alert (again? still?) for goodness-knows-what impending terrorist attack, and my poor mayor has been wrangling with the Coast Guard and the federal government over the right of large, potentially explosive natural-gas tankers to pass through Boston Harbor. Much as I’d like to side with the mayor, it is practically winter already, and many Bostonians use natural gas for heat.
Maybe they can burn stacks of pleasant little postcards from the Postmaster General instead.
Kristin from the C/7 list read my Mamma Mia! blog entry and asked for more information. My answer seems to have satisfied her, so I’ll put it here, too:
All I knew when I walked in was that it was a heartwarming musical about a wedding, featuring ABBA songs. That was enough for me, but then I’m a sucker for musicals, cheesy 70’s music, and filk. I’m reluctant to give away the plot, since I think I enjoyed it more for having no clue what was going to happen.
She concluded that “it’s a standard musical except it uses ABBA songs rather than songs written by Gershwin, Hammerstein or Lloyd Webber.” That is correct, if somewhat understated. Now run, do not walk, to the Winter Garden Theatre to see it.
Bitter maggot warning - peruse at your own risk
Five days.
I’ve been on the [name censored] list for five days and I’ve already been trolled. I was supposed to be lurking - I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved, but I just can’t help it. Put me in a room with a bitter old voy queen and blood is gonna flow.
Sorry, but I saw the first season of Voyager. It was not Shakespeare. I saw the seventh season. It was not an ensemble show. It was Star Trek, people - the worthy heir to “Spock’s Brain”, with Tuvok as Uhura, Neelix as Yeoman Rand, Chakotay as Sulu, and Harry as Chekov.
FYI, when I say something, you can just assume it’s my opinion. (You’re not going to get anyone else’s opinion out of me, not even if it’s your Virtual Season and you think Janeway is a psychopath and Owen Paris is a cuddly old teddy-bear.) You don’t have to say it’s my opinion, as though that were a defense of your own untenable arguments. People will know it was my opinion when they see you limping away, leaving that trail of blood.
The ironic part is that it was the same troll (or one of them) who stirred up the bitter maggots a week back, which led to Liz’s original bitter maggot blog, then to the whole bitter maggot saga, and, like a bad VOY time travel paradox (and they were all bad), back in a circle to this current bitter blog entry.
Bitter maggot mode off - italics mode off
The point of this blog was not to make myself (more) enemies. I get along with other New Englanders, really I do. And Australians, apparently.
My apologies to Liz for filling her logs while trying to link her permalinks. There’s been an addition to the bitter maggot saga, namely, Liz is born again. As long as I’m stealing Liz’s content, I may as well steal the links, too: I adored the bitter old fic queen monologue. My last bitter maggot statement should be in just that form. Stay tuned…
Thanks to Phil Ringnalda in the blogger discussion forum, the little link problem has been clarified. Basically, the only thing I can do is what I did. He’s also responsible for the new, clean archive listing to your left. You can get the javascript for your archive template from Phil’s page on the subject.
I was too busy permalinking yesterday to talk about my moving songfic experience earlier in the day. I took my mom to see Mamma Mia! at the Colonial Theater here in Boston. It was…indescribable. I think only fanfic writers can truly appreciate the skill required to fit a story to the music. There’s nothing like it, except, of course, The ABBA by monkee.
Mamma Mia! is going to Broadway next. If you’re in NYC, run, do not walk, to see it.
I’ve figured out blog linking. (Yes, I clicked on the little [link] on Liz’s page and it turned out to be a little link, like my byline times are.) So, the bitter maggot saga goes like this:
Actually, I’m still trying to figure out this blog linking thing, since something strange is happening here at blogspot, that wouldn’t be happening if I had a site I could ftp to. Speaking of sites, I should go check if Crosswinds has risen from the dead yet.
If you’ve come from Liz’s blog (where it’s already tomorrow), the original bitter maggot blog is a few days back, on October 23rd. There’s some way to link directly to it, which I’ll figure out later. Today’s blog is on a similar theme.
And if you’re interested in dark and a/u Voyager stories, come join visdark on Yahoogroups.
I’m still midnight blogging. Pay no attention to blogger - I’m on my free hour of daylight-unsavings time. I was finally admitted to the playground at EnterpriseAndBeyond. I’m still afraid of getting involved in ENT, but I wanted to see the inspiration behind the bitter maggot blog. It took a bit of hunting in the archives–for some reason no one used the subject line bitter maggot–but I think I found the core of the issue.
No, I’m not going to rehash it. There are so many problems with fandom that the particulars don’t really matter anymore. Just as it doesn’t matter exactly why, when I take out DQ Babes in the Mirror-Mirror Universe and think of all the ways I could improve the story, I don’t fix it. Or rather, I don’t take it out in the first place.
If fanfic is a hobby, it should be more fun and less power-trips and clique-blowouts. If it’s a calling, then it should be more respectable, instead of a matter for jokes like that Back To The Future fanfic link someone posted to ASC. If it’s work, then I ought to own what I write, instead of living in Paramount’s legal penumbra. If fanfic writers are better than pay-per-fic hacks, why do people go on reading pay-per-fic instead?
I repeat, this is not a bitter maggot post. I’m just thinking aloud, trying to understand why I hardly write fanfic anymore, and trying to have something to say to Michael when I tell him I can’t write for his project. The reason, I think, is that it is his. I cannot share B’Elanna the Muse, not with him, not with jetcers, not with virtual seasons–not even with the Great Bird of the Galaxy, sometimes.
B’Elanna has always gotten me into trouble, for not writing kissyface, for writing canon instead of J/C, for writing Trek instead of the X-Files. I have to conclude that the people who complain about B’Elanna don’t have the muse. Anyone who asks why you can’t just fix it or toss something out of character into your story because it fits their arc knows not the muse. It’s one thing to be a hack if it means putting food on the table, but to be a hack for no reason, just to satisfy a clique of virtual people, is a betrayal of the muse.
It’s never wise to betray a god, not even an illusory one.
Puppy: off Word of the day: apoptosis
It’s the time slip, so I had to write. I finished Foundation - I’m still amazed at what writers used to get away with. I don’t think I’m up for the rest of the series. Whatever Asimov I read in my youth I shall henceforth consider enough. I also finished Wyrms by Orson Scott Card, which was not a bad book. He claims to have written fantasy, but if this mixture of science fiction and mythology is what he was talking about, then I don’t believe him. The standard fantasy parts - the fight in the forest, the boat ride down the river, the quest in general - were unimpressive in and of themselves. Without the science and mythology, the book would not have held up to the end. The beginning was rather promising, but the characters and the fantasy world seemed to grow less complex as the story moved on. That might not have been the muse flagging; maybe it was just me flagging. Yet Tolkien’s world never lost substance, no matter where the individual characters travelled.
Maybe it’s just too late to be critiquing books - just one more, then. Parable of the Talents disappointed me. The structure, that of an angry daughter’s commentary on her mother’s journals, just took away from the main story. I wasn’t dismayed when I reached the familiar ‘there’s no room in this book for an ending’ point, because I know Octavia Butler doesn’t end her books, she just stops. No problem. But it was a problem, because she tried to end it in the usual ‘no room’ way - a flash-forward into a future where the current difficulties have already been solved. I suspect authors do this when they don’t know how to fill in those missing months or years. So the issue of how Earthseed was finally spread was just skipped over. If Nancy Kress had done it, I would have supposed that she could never in a million years describe the spread of a religion. The truly disappointing part is that Octavia Bulter could have described it; she may be the only person in sf who could, but she could and she didn’t. Why not? She’s not lazy - usually her elisions are far better timed that this one. Also, I found the study guide at the end of the trade paperback edition of Parable of the Talents a bit much. Remind me never to do that.