lunabee34

1. All grades have been turned in, and my duties for this semester conclude! Yay! I was more magnanimous than I usually am, too. I don't know if I should feel good or bad about that. LOL

2. My endoscopy is tomorrow morning, and I am getting really nervous. I know intellectually that it is a very minor procedure that will be fine, but anesthesia really wigs me out as does the thought of something going down my throat. I am so glad the girls don't have to have this done; I would be a basket case worrying about them.

3. We've been watching The Man in the High Castle, which I've enjoyed so far, except that in the second episode we get ( SPOILERS )

4. I am taking Emma out of school on Thursday to see Civil War. I am sitting on my hands not to click on any of your reviews. I can't wait!

5. I've been re-reading a lot of Steve/Tony MCU fics that I had previously recced (once I emerged from the Darcy Lewis rabbit-hole I spent the past month happily traversing). One big series I really enjoyed on the first read does not hold up for me although Devildoll's Semaphore is as delightful now as it was on the first read (I do so love me a well-executed OC, especially when that OC is an octogenarian who can drink Thor under the table.). It's always so interesting to me to go back and read fic that I enjoyed in the early days of a fandom, say the first sixth months to a year, and see if it still holds up for me and why.

karmageddon asked me to talk about what books kids should read at what ages. ELementary school must-reads, Middle school must reads. How/what to teach kids about literature.

This is a very timely topic as Josh and I have been pondering recently how to handle this very issue with Emma.

I suppose I should begin with a brief discussion of my own childhood as a reader. Even though I grew up in the pre-Internet era and my choices for reading material were confined to actual, physical books, I had access to a wide variety of books, and my reading was rarely curtailed. My house was full of hundreds of books, and I had access to them all. I had free rein of the school library, and I was allowed to buy whatever I wanted at the bookstore (Oh, Walden Books, you died such a sad death decades ago) without Mom even checking to see what I'd bought. Only once did my parents try to curtail what I read. My mother had a collection of more than 100 romance novels, and we're not talking Harlequins here. These were sexually explicit, epic tomes of historical romantic fiction. Once she realized I was reading these books, she tried to keep me from them (but I'd already pretty much read them all at that point) with limited success.

I would like for Emma to have that same lack of restriction, and I truly don't think there is anything that she *shouldn't* read. There are no books that we have hidden anywhere. They're all out in the open, and she could technically take any of them without telling us and I probably wouldn't know she was reading it unless she told me. I think Josh did put the only copy of Playboy we own (mmmmmmm, Charisma Carpenter) in our bedroom at one point, but it was on the shelf for years before he did that, and I put it back when I realized what he'd done.

I only have two concerns with what Emma reads. The first is that I don't want her to scare herself and inconvenience me by having nightmares/being scared of the dark, to be a blunt and selfish parent. LOL In the past few months, she's expressed a lot of interest in reading Stephen King, and I'm hesitant to let her read something that turns me into a whimpering ninny. I told her she could read The Langoliers and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but she hasn't taken me up on it yet. She wants to read Skeleton Crew instead, of course. LOL

The second is that I don't want her to read something she's not ready for. We like angst and violence and dystopias, Josh and I, and I don't want her get fixated on something that she's not ready to think about yet. As smart and precocious as she is, Emma is still very much a child by her own choice. Even while many of those around her are hurtling headlong as fast as they can into what passes for adulthood to 11 year olds, Emma fiercely clings to childhood. She's not boycrazy; she doesn't want to read about sex or really even see kissing on TV. So far, other than the King, she hasn't asked to read anything I'd feel uncomfortable letting her read, so that hasn't become an issue yet.

As far as teaching kids about literature goes, I think the three most important things that parents can do at home is to read themselves in front of their children, read aloud to their children, and talk to their children about what the children read on their own. The number one predictor of how students will perform in any of my classes is whether they read for pleasure. I almost never have students who don't read on their own time earn A's in my classes. It's a little scary how accurate that one predictor is. I always tell my students that if the only time they read is when they are forced to for school they should think of themselves as athletes who only practice their sport during games. It's astonishing the degree to which reading influences the quality of student writing as well. I see it with Emma. Because she reads so much, she has internalized the fundamentals of narrative structure and grammar.

In terms of must-reads, I probably would mention all the tried and true Caldecott and Newbery winners you guys already know about. Instead I will tell you about a couple of books for teensy kiddos that I really like.

First Book of Sushi by Amy Sanger Wilson is fantastic. The art is great (lots of red, black and white), and I love the text. This author has done a whole line of board books about cuisine from different cultures. I also really like Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes. It's a kitty! In lovely black and white.

So, as you all know, I'm a NOTPer. I don't ship in the classical sense of the word. I am interested in lots of different pairings, and if a writer can sell it (no matter how unconventional the pairing may be), I will totally buy it with glee. I also enjoy writing rare pairs; so, for instance, in SGA, I'm just as likely to write Bates/Kavanagh as I am John/Rodney and to read Teyla/Sora as John/Elizabeth.

All this lead-up to say that I just realized I do kinda ship within the canonicity of the show. Oh, this wine makes the talking to be hard. LOL Let me give you some examples. When I watch episodes of SPN, I think Sam and Dean are totally straight. I don't really see canonical evidence to the contrary, and while I am sitting on my couch watching the show, I am rooting for Dean to figure out some way to be with Lisa and wishing Sam could have totally hot demony sex with Ruby again. But when I read and write fic for the show, I pair the two of them all over the place: with each other, with Castiel, with Ash (heee!). Or take NCIS. While watching the show, I am all about the Tony/Ziva. Love it. I have a hard time shipping Gibbs with anybody. He seems pretty much asexual to me; I think he gave up on that part of his life when his wife died, and any hints that canon gives us for relationships with him are all straight. But I can totally dig some Tony/Gibbs or Tony/Tim or Tony/Abby or whatever. Spander is another good example. I cut my fannish teeth on Spike/Xander, and I adore the pairing, but to me it makes absolutely no sense from a canonical standpoint. Or Harry/Draco. At any given point, I am more likely to be reading a Harry/Draco fic than anything else there is to read, and yet I never ever would have pegged that to be the dominant pairing of the fandom after finishing the series.

Does anybody else do this? Have kind of a disconnect between what seems plausible to you while watching the show or reading the book and what you want to read/write for fanfic? One set of ships for consuming the media and other set of ships for behaving fannishly about them?

(Caveats: Obviously subtext exists to some degree for all the pairings I've mentioned (even if it's just one arch look in one episode and a half season spent sharing a basement sullenly) and YMMV on that; not raining on anybody's subtext parade here. Also not saying that an unconventional ship can't be canonically compatible; in fact, that's the kind I like to read and write the most.)

the_emu has a fascinating post about writing HERE. the_emu is currently serially posting a story; the story is complete, but ze's using the interim between chapters to tweak and edit the unposted portions of the story in response to audience feedback.

This post got me to thinking about serial writing and posting of fic.

The very first fanfic I wrote was a Big Bang length Spike/Xander that I wrote out longhand on legal pads, typed up, edited, and then thought—How do I go about getting this onto the internet with all the other fanfic? LOL I posted the whole thing to a Yahoo listserv, met a handful of people who introduced me to livejournal, and set up shop over here.

The first thing I noticed on lj circa 2005 was that everyone seemed to be posting long fic serially—a part each week or each day or sometimes according to no discernable schedule at all. And so when I started my next long fic, I wrote and posted it serially as well.

After I’d posted a few chapters, I definitely could see the draw of posting a story this way. Posting serially generates a lot of energy and excitement for both reader and writer.

( cut for length )

So now I want to know what you think. How do you feel about serial writing and posting of fic as a writer, as a reader, or as both? What are the pros and cons? Have you done it yourself, and if so, how did that experience compare to posting a fully edited story? Talk to me about writing!

[Poll #1578098]

ETA: I had this whole post to go with this poll and then I accidentally hit return before I could insert that text. *headdesk* So, you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on reccing--what makes a good one, how important they are to your fannish experience, what irritates you about reccing, and what you'd like to see more of in rec posts.

So I just finished The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith (which I highly reccommend; it's a well told story) and I've caught up on fannish gossip with Sue and I'm thinking about reading some Snape fic, but before I do, I wanna talk to you guys. I miss y'all. I'm making myself crazy with this reading regimen. Like scary crazy. I'm a have the vapors eeeeeny second now.

So here is a talking point, gentle flist:

What keeps you reading a piece of fanfic despite a horrific abuse of the rules of punctuation and grammar or rampant OOC-ness or weepy!Ron who weeps and weeps all over the place? What sorts of things in fic keep you reading when you'd have backbuttoned out of another story? In other words, what are your bulletproof fanfic kinks (and I'm defining kink here as that which you can't resist, which satisfies you deeply, which you are drawn to, which gets you off in some way (not necessarily a sexual one))? What are your narrative kinks (ex. mpreg, epigraphs, lots of dialogue, aliens made them do it), your character kinks (ex. Inara has a secret, Giles is a closet fan of Blakes 7, Sam is jealous of Dean), your fanon kinks (ex. Buffy smells like vanilla, Xander's parents are abusive)?

I have a question.

A few days ago, I read the delightfully funny The Awful Truth by blade_girl. The rec in which I found the story states: I rec this one with a caveat to slash fans - as a fan of both slash and gen, I must tell you this story contains apparently slashy elements, but is ultimately gen (regardless of the author's notes); and may prove unsatisfying to a slasher. That being said, I find it a plausible, positive, and touching take on the characters and their friendship.) I found this description intriguing and it was pretty much the impetus for me reading the story. The notes for the story itself state: A slash story AND a gen story at the same time. I can’t explain that without giving away the ending, so I ask you to read regardless of your preference. Both the writer of this story and at least one reader of the story (and I assume probably more) seem to think that labeling this fic as slash is problematic.

So my question is the following: what makes a slash fic?

( SPOILERS for The Awful Truth )

ADMIN ANN: I am no longer checking my yahoo email regularly. Your best bet to reach me is through my aol account (same screenname as, well, everything). Terribly sorry, executrix; I know you must think I've been ignoring you and heartily apologize and shall email forthwith.

:)

So, I've been retagging my rec entries and re-reading a few things here and there along the way and while I was looking over some entries from the first few months of my fannish days, something god-awful happened.

I realized that a lot of what I used to read and thoroughly enjoy is fairly bad writing. This is not to say that everything I read in those early days was crap (there's the timeless excellence of a tabaqui or yin_again or wesleysgirl mixed in there among the drivel), but a surprising amount of it is.

I re-read something this morning that I had thought in the early months of 2005 to be edgy and novel and glorious that now appears to me as very silly and ridiculous. There's pretty much zero motivation for the characters to behave the way they do and Xander's stare is recounted in an ever-increasingly poetic list of candy-related adjectives (his limpid pools of Toblerone indeed) and the fanon--it is thick. To be clear, this is not bad fic. It is not horrifically written by any means and it was well-received when posted and while I find the characterization a little lacking, neither Xander or Spike behave wildly out of character; however, overall, this story is nothing that I would currently rec.

I think the reason for my change of heart is partly because what now I clearly see as a cliche fic wasn't apparently so in those beginning days of fandom. Because I was new and hadn't read thirteen million basement fics, I had no idea this particular example was just perpetuating (or ye gods, maybe even *starting*) all the fanon associated with that kind of story. And I also think I didn't know what I wanted fanfic to *do* for me. I didn't know yet that I was gonna be so fond of canon plausibility or that I would eventually favor the very explainy first time fic over the established relationship PWP every time. I didn't realize that I would ever be so interested in peripheral characters or *mothers* (dude, how many mom fics have I written? LOL) I didn't realize that I wanted fic to give me a new lens through which to look at canon and go, "OMG. *That's* what they were doing during the commercial break. HOLY SHIT."

I wonder if this is the normal trajectory for current fans, or does this radical taste change make me fairly unique? I mean, after all, it isn't as if my profic reading tastes have really changed over the past fifteen years. The books on my highschool rec list (not that I made those in my diaries or nothing) still make it onto this year's edition.

Del.icio.us has not changed the way I internet overmuch. I don't have an account myself and I don't use the site to find fic that other people have bookmarked that I might like to read.

But I do check del.icio.us on a regular basis for my own screen name. Oh, yes. That's right. I said it. LOL I wanna see who's saving my fic to their accounts.

In this way I learned that while very few people commented on my SPN/SGA crossover (that I'd labored over for months and am inordinately proud of), a handful who didn't comment at all saved the fic to their del.icio.us accounts. This made me very happy and feel good about continuing to write fic in that universe. Del.icio.us was also the straw that broke the camel's back in regards to my recent layout change. I'd been planning to change it for awhile and then when I del.icio.us-ed myself today, I saw that someone had left me a note telling me they liked the story they'd saved but couldn't find the comment button on my journal to leave feedback. LOL

So, my question to you is--Am I the only person who does this? Am I the lone egomaniac on the flist or are you guys checking yourselves out too?

So, is there a huge disconnect between the kinds of stories you fantasize for your favorite characters and the kinds of stories you actually write for them? Because the answer for me is YES! Even if I have fantasized a story in excrutiating detail (which is how I fantasize--excrutiatingly. My fantasies come equipped with bathroom breaks for all and long expositiony bits that explain what everyone had for dinner and just how long that drive from Cheyenne Mt. to the HoJo is), I most likely will not write that story down for public consumption. I tend to actually write stories that interest me on an intellectual level rather than a sexual one. I want to *read* stories that are like the ones I fantasize, but I don't often write them.

Here's an example.

( In which Lorraine wears her shamed, yet turned on face )

I would read the hell out of this story and feedback it and rec it on my journal and love it and name it George. But I have no compulsion to write it. I think that's because the act of writing de-eroticizes the scenario for me. It turns it from this situation that I think is hot into SOMETHING I AM TRYING TO GET RIGHT. You know what I mean? I want the characterization to be spot on and the dialogue to ring true and the language to be interesting and vital in the pieces I write. Translating something that turns me on into a product that I want to share with you guys takes me out of my comfort zone in terms of writing.

What about y'all? Am I alone in this?

ETA: I almost never get turned on or scared or saddened by the things I write. It's almost as if they don't affect me on an emotional level at all. (The only exception being "Thanatopsis" for which I bawled during the entire four hour period of time it took me to write it). I get the feeling this makes me a weirdo.

Also, where is all the Sheppard/Caldwell? *whines*