caffeine diary

I am reading Jane's blog, which contains some advice for thinking of possible plots for specs: "Play around with this for a while. Make Adama betray the fleet. Make Coach Taylor (Friday Night Lights) hit a teenaged player. Make Vanessa Williams comfort Ugly Betty. Make House believe a patient when no one else does."

"Huh," I thought, "that last one is a really neat idea. I bet Jane would be a good fanfic writer."

ayup.

When CJ, like, bends down -- like to pick up the phone, or something? -- she looks just slightly off-balance, slightly akimbo, and it's just so lovely, because it's everything about her, her height and her vulnerability and her awkwardness and her grace. It really delights me, and makes me love her even more. Because, you know, I didn't love her enough before.

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What do people think about Jane Espenson's blog entry from Monday [link]? She essentially says that there are TV shows that are story-driven (Law and Order), ones that are character-driven (I read everything as character-driven, so I'm bad at distinguishing these kinds of shows) and then a third class -- shows that are "idea-driven," by which she mostly means skiffy. The examples she gave included Twilight Zone, which is this sort of TV in its purest form -- wee little stories that are not about the characters at all but neat -- sometimes evocative -- morals wrapped up in a yummy sci-fi wrapper.

I first off am not a genre-fan per se, so I always feel like I'm speaking from the outside in these discussions. I love many sci-fi and fantasy works (it says so in my userinfo!) but I am, nearly almost always, in it for the characters rather than any particular speculative elements. I find the idea of world-building really fascinating, but when it comes to particulars, my brain doesn't really function the right way. (In a similar way, I really, really love the idea of fans who work out the schematics of spaceships and so forth, but have no interest in doing that kind of play myself.)

One of the things I love about speculative fiction is the way it allows creators to play with metaphor -- the way being a mutant is like being a gifted teenager AND like being Jewish AND like being gay AND like being disabled, and yet at the same time it is none of these things. And being a Slayer, or being a vampire, or being an alien, or exploring alien cultures, again, they play as metaphors and they also play as reality in their respective 'verses. But what Jane is talking about is not metaphor so much as allegory, which is not something I'm so interested in.

Anyhow, in my limited reading and viewing of sci-fi and fantasy, I very rarely say, "Gosh, this would be great, except the characters are all flat and the theme is being delivered with an anvil." (I think mostly what I think is, "This would be really great if there was less action-adventure and more ship.")

I'm going back to watching West Wing, now, which is all about how pretty CJ's hands are.

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Yay, the end of "The Midterms" is really great and makes me happy. In involves ( Read more... )

I almost deleted the whole bit about Jane's blog out of fear that I would offend someone or my words would not make sense. I think that what with being blocked on writing fiction, scared of writing meta, and about to have a nervous breakdown in my meatbrain, this is a great time to be starting grad school two weeks from today, now yesterday. Yes.

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Maybe we could play that meme where you request a rant about something?