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So, just some random thoughts swirling around in my head that have been induced by NaNo this year.

( Romantic Fiction Experiments, Oh My! )

( Wherein I recap the Mary Sue debate and get snarky. Surprise! )

Moff's Law.
Be prepared to see me invoke this Law nearly as often as I go on about Bechdel Tests.

Fandom slashocalyspe '10. Slash is not inherently superior to het. Het is not inherently superior to slash. They both have serious hangups (mostly the same exact ones, manifesting in different ways. Coincidence? I think not.) Het does not equal backwards hard-wired sexism, and slash does not equal forward-thinking enlightenment. Dichotomies are not your friend. That is all.

supplyship's birthday! Happy day to you, my dear. Sorry I do not come with fic. My muse is on holiday. Or possibly she has learned to ignore me. I fear this does not bode well.

Kathy Griffin's "Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir". Just when I thought I couldn't love you more, Kathy.

Big Kahuna Reef. What? I'm addicted.

Nicky Parsons. I may have purchased all three of the Bourne movies. I blame you, beanpot.

Bones. (No explanation needed, surely?)

I've been doing a bit of reading in the area of sizism and fat rights lately. Not that it's an easy topic to crack into as very little scholarship has been done, unlike feminism, gay rights, and civil rights. I've been trying to track down one scholarly article for months now (Mev Miller's 'Fat Politics: The Bottom Line is Women's Power' from Melpomene, if anyone happens to have a copy when the multi-million volume research library has failed me). There is also the fabulous 'Killing Us Softly,' 'Still Killing Us Softly,' and 'Beyond Killing Us Softly' by Jean Kilbourne, which deal with imagery of women in advertising. Here's a link to an introduction to her third installment of Killing Us Softly.

It blows my mind how common and socially acceptable it is to be sizist, to treat people as a faceless group of, not people, but things. The news, advertising, even TV shows constantly point a finger and teach us "thin=healthy" and "fat=unhealthy". Thinner = better. Well, you know what? Shut the hell up. How confused and messed up is a culture who consider women the size of concentration camp victims to be beautiful? That makes  women think they need to have major plastic surgery just to feel normal or healthy? And fat women? What instant assumptions have media, government, and news taught you to think about them? What? They automatically aren't active people? They automatically eat too much? And it's just EVERYWHERE. And no one seems to think there is anything wrong with this sort of stereotyping and bigotry. It absolutely blows my mind. And. Pisses. Me. Off.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching Survivor. I've seen almost every season. I love it when the underdog pulls off an upset, I love seeing how people deal with each other in these incredible situations. It's like one giant sociological experiment and it fascinates me.

( Survivor: Somoa )

Watch this clip from last week's show. Even if you don't watch Survivor. It's fascinating and horrifying and just...argh. Notice not only Ben's complete ignorance of (or refusal to acknowledge) his racism, but also the way he treats the blond girl sitting between them. The way she cowers under his onslaught as he calls her a "good girl" with manners who knows when to say "yes, sir". Dear. God. And the absolute worst part is his complete ignorance of what he's doing. His COMPLETE lack of remorse or understanding. The mind boggles.



All I have to say is well done, Jaison. You kept your head, you made your point clear as hell, and didn't lower to Ben's level of six-year-old pissing contest. Thank you for saying what needed to be said.

( Spoiler for last week's ep.... )

You know who just never gets enough credit? Betas. Those generous people who take time out of their own writing and jobs and families and responsibilities to help you make your story better. I have been blessed with a fabulous collection of betas and I am sure I don’t tell them how essential they are to me nearly enough. (Doubly so for those poor wretches who put up with my WIPs and escalating word counts and general woobie!Annerb behavior. ;)

But here, for your amusement, enjoyment, torture…a glimpse into the process that is beta and revision. Dedicated to all the betas with much love from me! Oh, writing. What a twisty, twisty hobby you are.

( And Ode to Betas... )
+++

Let’s hear it for the betas!

For anyone not reading the Kung Fu Monkey blog, you might be interested in this snippet from the latest post. A fan asked:

"@619: I personally HATE fanfic so I was wondering..... 1)How do YOU feel about fan fiction? 2)Does it irk you that so many people "borrow" your characters and use them in their own crappy stories? 3)Do you think of fanfic as a form of flattery? 4)Do the other writers and the actors feel the same way?"

John Rogers' answer is interesting, particularly since he has made little to no effort to hide his awareness of online fandom in general.

( Copied and pasted so you don't have to dig through the long post... )

Interesting. At once sort of very common sense, but also sort of...snide about us people wasting our time and over-inflating ourselves instead of actually doing something real (and up, apparently). But the core is really here: We write for different reasons. Very much yes. Some might argue fanfic, writing done for nothing more than personal pleasure, might be more pure because of lack of interest in profit, etc. Or I could just be over-rationalizing. Heh. Because if there is one thing true of fanfic vs. original writing, it's that there is little to no risk in fanfic writing, where silence is often the most harsh criticism you will hear. And even then, no one begrudges your right to post whatever you want.

"I think one of the greatest mistakes we ever made was to develop a system of categorization that divided fic between stories that have a "pairing" and those that do not."  by suaine 

( Wherein I ramble about Gen vs. Ship as problematic categories... )
Thoughts?