thedeadlyhook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedeadlyhook) wrote2006-07-31 10:43 am
thedeadlyhook) wrote2006-07-31 10:43 am
When Work Isn't Eating My Brain...
...I swear there will be more updates. Sometime soon. Hopefully on the wonderfulness that was Writercon, before all those good vibes fade, before I forget who all I actually talked to, and how fun they were, and all the neat things that were said. On the workshops I went to, and the things I learned about the writing process from listening to the Badfic panel (lesson the first: some fics really can't be fixed by editing, which I don't think I wouldn've realized otherwise), and things I learned about how I write... or rather, how I think (the senses are the catalyst - everything spirals outward from there). On my dizzying questions about the Keeper of the Winds book included in our con packet - as in, huh? That wasn't written by an attendee, was it, or edited by the GOH Tor editor? And whose idea was it to write it in first person past tense, yet not as a diary or memoir? Concrit, I would offer, but for now, without knowing, I'll keep my mouth shut.
A slew of belated birthdays - damn you, LJ, for hiding the birthdays on people's profile pages!
Some of you I've "known" on LJ for awhile, some I've only just met at Writercon, or listened to in a crowd and thought you sounded damn cool - either way, the happiest of happies to you all.
A random list of recs of things I wish I had more time to talk about than I do.
I am currently loving the works of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spuffyduds and nwhepcat, both of which are new to me. Again, praise be to Writercon for expanding my horizons.
Amazing Screw-On Head and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace: Okay, the first, the Mike "Hellboy" Mignola animated piece, is sort of a one-shot, so here's to me hoping we get more. Eventually. But of what we got, at least I will always have Emperor Zombie. Who was awesome. And Darkplace just killed me with hilarity - you don't often see a "style" parody like that shown in the States, with that dry, Brit-humor vein of poking fun at something by taking it utterly seriously and amping up the caricacture level just a little. The female psychic in particular is such a feature of a specific strain of British horror/sci-fi, the Nigel Kneale school of Quatermass and The Stone Tape that I laughed out loud the moment she started talking. I REALLY hope we get a lot more of this.
herself_nyc has a new fic underway at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
herself_nyc_fic that's B/S/A, which is fabulous, as usual, painful and spot-on, and I'm really trying not to let it throw me into that pit of despair where that little interior voice whispers why do you even bother trying to write, with stuff like this around? Sigh... Please go read. You'll really start to believe that B/S/A may indeed by the only real way to go with these three.
Who Wants To Be a Superhero?: I wasn't sure at all about this one - the previews made it look like a freakshow, and in its starting moments, it sort of was... but then Stan "The Man" Lee starts to guide these aspiring reality-show heroes through their paces and lectures them about superhero ethics, which about put me over the moon. "Superheroes don't kill people!" Stan proclaims. "They save people!" And over and over, the message gets hammered in - it's not just dressing up in tights that's important, it's being a hero, living up to that. Stan dresses down contestants for being too obsessed with money (first person kicked off the team - a guy who was already planning on making a mint from his own merchandising), for being too violent, for being too frivolous and flirty. Heroing is SERIOUS!
And it really gave me a warm feeling, I swear, the way all these costumed people, who had been treating the whole exercise like a joke up until that first dressing-down, suddenly got a look on their face like they'd been slapped with a wet fish. You could practically see the wheels turning: Stan Lee doesn't think I have the right stuff to be a hero. STAN LEE thinks I suck, OMG, and then trying to rise up and above it. The first challenge, a trick exercise supposedly about changing one's costume quickly and unobstrusively in public, but really a test to see if the contestants would notice a little girl crying "help me!" actually brought tears to my eyes. (And whoo-baby, I have to say, that sequence did indeed reinforce every uncomfortable stereotype about women being more aware of emotional landscapes than men - proportionally, three women stopped for the little girl versus only one man.)
I'll be watching this one. You bet I will. Stan may actually make heroes out of these people yet. Because it's not about the power, not really.
A slew of belated birthdays - damn you, LJ, for hiding the birthdays on people's profile pages!
Some of you I've "known" on LJ for awhile, some I've only just met at Writercon, or listened to in a crowd and thought you sounded damn cool - either way, the happiest of happies to you all.
A random list of recs of things I wish I had more time to talk about than I do.
I am currently loving the works of
spuffyduds and nwhepcat, both of which are new to me. Again, praise be to Writercon for expanding my horizons. Amazing Screw-On Head and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace: Okay, the first, the Mike "Hellboy" Mignola animated piece, is sort of a one-shot, so here's to me hoping we get more. Eventually. But of what we got, at least I will always have Emperor Zombie. Who was awesome. And Darkplace just killed me with hilarity - you don't often see a "style" parody like that shown in the States, with that dry, Brit-humor vein of poking fun at something by taking it utterly seriously and amping up the caricacture level just a little. The female psychic in particular is such a feature of a specific strain of British horror/sci-fi, the Nigel Kneale school of Quatermass and The Stone Tape that I laughed out loud the moment she started talking. I REALLY hope we get a lot more of this.
herself_nyc has a new fic underway at herself_nyc_fic that's B/S/A, which is fabulous, as usual, painful and spot-on, and I'm really trying not to let it throw me into that pit of despair where that little interior voice whispers why do you even bother trying to write, with stuff like this around? Sigh... Please go read. You'll really start to believe that B/S/A may indeed by the only real way to go with these three.Who Wants To Be a Superhero?: I wasn't sure at all about this one - the previews made it look like a freakshow, and in its starting moments, it sort of was... but then Stan "The Man" Lee starts to guide these aspiring reality-show heroes through their paces and lectures them about superhero ethics, which about put me over the moon. "Superheroes don't kill people!" Stan proclaims. "They save people!" And over and over, the message gets hammered in - it's not just dressing up in tights that's important, it's being a hero, living up to that. Stan dresses down contestants for being too obsessed with money (first person kicked off the team - a guy who was already planning on making a mint from his own merchandising), for being too violent, for being too frivolous and flirty. Heroing is SERIOUS!
And it really gave me a warm feeling, I swear, the way all these costumed people, who had been treating the whole exercise like a joke up until that first dressing-down, suddenly got a look on their face like they'd been slapped with a wet fish. You could practically see the wheels turning: Stan Lee doesn't think I have the right stuff to be a hero. STAN LEE thinks I suck, OMG, and then trying to rise up and above it. The first challenge, a trick exercise supposedly about changing one's costume quickly and unobstrusively in public, but really a test to see if the contestants would notice a little girl crying "help me!" actually brought tears to my eyes. (And whoo-baby, I have to say, that sequence did indeed reinforce every uncomfortable stereotype about women being more aware of emotional landscapes than men - proportionally, three women stopped for the little girl versus only one man.)
I'll be watching this one. You bet I will. Stan may actually make heroes out of these people yet. Because it's not about the power, not really.
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And, no. (as in "Hell no!") Keeper of the Winds is not one of our authors. In fact there was quite a bitching session about the sheer awfulness of it with Anna G. during one of the breaks. Turns out the author is actually a man. A very creepy and disturbed man at that.
So please...
::waves hand::
Have at it! The snark almost writes itself, doesn't it?
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I may have to write a full-length review. The snark really does write itself.
I really wish we could've had more than three days. There were so many people I never really got the chance to talk to as much as I would've liked, and it's such a different proposition, going back to LJ. Getting to know people online, rewarding as it is, is a longer, slower process. With more arguments and less dancing. : )
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"Time for some Feedback!" Works on the villains and the ladies, I'll bet.
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I'm getting a grudging sense of respect for Monkey Woman. She changed her costume in a tree. That's pretty cool. And when Stan gave her the stern talk, she looked like she was gonna cry.
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