It's How We Do
Some very belated meme-age:
Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
And ohvienna gave me Repo!, fanfiction, BSG, Lost, and archeology.
Repo!:
Ah, good plan to ask me about my current fandom obsession when I'm right in the grips of it? Hee. I'll try not to go on for eleventy-billion years, I swear.
Okay. So. Once upon a time, there was this bizarre awesome little insta cult classic movie called Repo! The Genetic Opera. It almost did not get made, because it was a show about a distopian future where massive organ failures have led to people needing so many transplants that the transplant company now offers financing plans, only if you default on your organs they send someone to reposess them, IE they kill you, and this is why it's called "Repo", as in "Repo Man", and it's also a black comedy and twisted as fuck and, oh, did I mention, it's a rock opera? Yeah, that last point was about where they kept losing the studio.
But anyway, the two men who had created it and the would-be director, Guy Who Produced Three of the Saw Movies, loved it so much they would not let it go. And finally, the studio said yes, but only with the greatest reluctance: they gave them only 8 million dollars to make the movie which, apparantly, is about half of what they give a low budget film, and such a small window of time to film it in that they ended up with a manic filming schedule where they were working on as many as three scenes a day, which again, I hear apparantly, is effin' insane. But the three men were determined to get this movie made, for they loved it so very much, and they were very blessed to have a crew and cast that were willing to pull out all the stops and really not get paid very much who loved it just as much as they did: That Chick From Spy Kids (Alexa Vega), That Guy From All The Horror Films I've Never Seen (Bill Moseley), That Guy From Some Gangster Movies Who Can Apparantly Also Sing Opera (Paul Sorvino), PARIS FREAKIN' HILTON, That Guy Who's In One Of Those Bands Where They Cover The Stage In Blood Every Night (Nivek Ogre), That Lady Who Is The Most Popular Soprano Ever (Sarah Brightman), and, oh yeah, GILES FROM BUFFY (Anthony Stewart Head). Let's just say there's a reason this movie is right near the top of the "What The Hell, Casting Agency" page on TV Tropes.
But even then, once the movie was made, it almost never saw the light of day. For the critics and the test screening audience were confused and frightened and possibly a little disgusted by it, and the studio wished upon it the dreaded fate that is Sent Straight To Video. But the three men who had worked so very hard stood up and went, "Wait! Give us one more chance! Guys?" And so they took the very limited number of copies of the film that were even made and went on the road, traveling along with the film that they had made so they could advertise and encourage, and getting the actors into it where they could, and using that most mighty weapon of all, the Internet.
And lo and behold, little by little did their following grow. And soon there were people who would literall come from miles (or states) around to see it, and they would wear costumes and bake cookies shaped like Zydrate and spend every last penny of their money on merchandising, all to show how much they loved this movie too. And it was good.
And, um, this movie may or may not be the reason Dr. Boyfriend and I started dating? Because it was after seeing Repo! and spending so much time hanging out to gab about it together that really gave us a chance to connect?
And, really, at the end of the day, what I love most about Repo! is that it can be whatever you want it to be. If you go to see it, and you have fun, and you'd like to take it as the goofiest sort of crack, then that's exactly what it is. If you go to see it, and you become fascinated with this strange little world and these twisted fucks of characters, and want to read deeper into them past the curtain to find the nuances and the psyches that lie beneath, and try to make the movie into this epic story of layers, guess what? It is exactly that too.
fanfiction:
I write, therefore I am. Uh...yeah. It really doesn't get much more simple than that.
No, really: back as far as I can remember, I've been taking other people's stories, things I've read or watched or heard, and twisting them into new ideas. And typically, I've made the heroes into douches and given the bad guys a happy ending.
I've fleshed out the details of my playbook a bit more as time's gone on, but if I was to be honest, I guess most of it still all really boils down to that. Because am I just that flavor of weirdo, I suppose.
Writing is my necessary form of personal expression. It's how I make a little hole in my brain where my soul can pour out so it doesn't overflow and drown me. My entire life could be going to crap, but I'll still be happy as long as I'm writing. I never feel as blank as when the pages in front of me are exactly that. I never feel as frustrated as when there's a dam in my head or my heart and there's no way for the fucking voices to get out.
I'm a student, a woman, a daughter, a girlfriend, an employee and a friend. But I am a writer first.
Fanfic is its own special breed of writing, because in a way it's easier: you're taking someone else's toys and someone else's sandbox and then just making up your own adventure. But at the exact same time it can be so much harder, because if you're doing it right, you're playing by someone else's rules. The toys can't just be painted a different color because you want them to be. The sandbox can't get any bigger than it already is. You have to take the toolbox you're given and nothing else to make the story go where you want to. And half the time, you end up letting the characters take you for a ride instead of you driving them - that's what writing, especially fanfic, is really about for me, by the way: character. It's not about the plot...it's about how Character X gets from emotional point A to emotional point B, and what has to happen to them along the way to make this work.
And before you even ask, yes, I've considered and even attempted writing my own stories. Well, my own ideas suck. Even when they manage to be fairly compelling, I always lose interest. In the end, I'm happiest when I'm sitting in someone else's sandbox with borrowed toys and time, trying to figure out new ways to bend the rules.
BSG:
Oh, Battlestar Galactica. Where would I be without you?
Battlestar Galactica is the Big Damn Show that's set in space and where people fly spaceships and fight robots that is really not a sci-fi show at all. It's a drama about character and what makes people people and how they change in ways both beautiful and horrifying and why they hate and why they fall in love and how sometimes they can't stop doing either of those no matter how much they want to. It's about what it's like to live on even after everything you've ever known is fucking gone.
It's the show where if you sat watching season one you would assume someone is on so much crack if they told you what would be going down by season three. It's the show where you forget they don't bleed real blood, and cry real tears, and if a character is around for more than one episode you'll come to know and love them somehow, even if they never get a real name. It's a show where I go from being angry at everybody and ready to hug them all from one week to a next. It's a show that is emotionally exhausting.
I don't know anything about what it feels like to be a soldier, a confused machine, a traitor, a leader, a self-hating creature, a victim, a spouse, a parent, a survivor, a murderer, or a person who lives every day with either the knowledge or the fear that someday soon, they are going to die.
But sometimes I feel like Battlestar Galactica has taught me the truth of exactly what it feels like.
It is a show that I watch that caused me to, one day in the middle of season 3.5, turn to my best friend and say: "You know, sometimes I honestly forget that these aren't real people. It's gotten to the point where I just plain forget there isn't some magic camera out there in another universe, recording all of this for us to see. I forget that it's a show."
And she knew exactly what I meant, because she watches it too.
Lost:
Lost will always hold a special place in my heart as being the fandom that really introduced me to fandom.
You know, it's where I really started getting my LJ feet wet. Where I wrote and commented on and talked about fanfic, and downloaded the mixes and watched the vids and weighed in on the meta, and laughed at the wank, and joined in the snark, and shook my head at the real life woes attached that weighed us down.
It's where I met a lot of cool and lovely people who I still try to keep tabs on today. Hi! *waves*
And yeah, I have to admit, I don't really care all that much about the show any more. The first season will probably always be one of the best things I've ever seen, and the characters are still characters I love (well, most of them)...but the story itself has long degraded to a point where I'm still hanging around only because I've gotten this far and I really can't stop until I see how it ends.
Until that time, I'm still along for the ride. I still think about the characters, and I make my little jokes, but I've long learned that laughing is the only way to keep from tearing my hair out in frustration.
I still consider myself a fan. And if you disagree, well, that's your right. Everyone's got their own definition.
When it's over, I'll be content and leave it at that. But it ain't over quite yet...and for better or worse, yes, I'm still ridin' this ride.
archaeology:
Lara Croft is not a real archaeologist. She's a pot hunter, a looter and a destroyer of artifacts.
She hunts for treasures with little regard for the meaning or history behind them. And in her quest to find the biggest shinies, she often wrecks tragic amounts of damage on the very sites she "excavates", destroying any hope for real scholars to use what precious little they have to go on to unlock the past.
Lara Croft is exactly the kind of person real archaeologists are taught to hate, and in a lot of places what she does is not only frowned upon but highly illegal.
She does, however, travel the world, have a lot of cool moves, a smoking body and some very big guns. So it's kind of hard to be too mad at her for making archaeology look badass by her actions. After all, she's fictional.
In real life, archaeologists need to specialize in a field - pick a culture, a time period...hell, sometimes a very specific specification. Like, "I specialize in ancient tablets of political records from Greece during approximately the last century BC". At a full-funded and generously staffed dig, you will have a Bone Guy, a Pottery Guy, a Lithics Guy, a Textiles Guy, and...yadda yadda yadda. This on top of whoever's the lucky bastard that gets to supervize, and the untold number of trowel monkeys (usually grad students or volunteers) you've got in there digging trenches and sifting the dirt.
And, oh yeah, it's really not all that glamorous. It's hard, there's heavy lifting and cramping joints, and very often you will dig all day in the sun or the cold or the rain and find nothing at all. Or occasionaly, you'll find a lot but never what you're looking for, and may find yourself saying the phrase "Oh fuck, not another piece of human bone."
Archaeology is also what I've thought I might like to do with my life since junior high, have known I wanted to do with my life for most of high school, have drove myself nuts sweating through stupid fucking math and science classes for in all four years of college, and am willing to put in the yet uncounted additional years' worth of time, sanity and money for in graduate school. Because I want my PhD, and my worn-in trowel, and to spend the rest of my life on my knees in the dirt looking for something that might never be found...answers.
Lara Croft is standing on my desk next to my laptop. I look at her on those rare occasions when I have cause to wonder to whyself, "Why?"
She never says anything back, though. She just gives me that look like, "Bitch, you already know."
Stupid fucking smartass know-it-all Lara Croft.
Oh, and by the way? We don't dig up DINOSAUR BONES, either.
Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
And ohvienna gave me Repo!, fanfiction, BSG, Lost, and archeology.
Repo!:
Ah, good plan to ask me about my current fandom obsession when I'm right in the grips of it? Hee. I'll try not to go on for eleventy-billion years, I swear.
Okay. So. Once upon a time, there was this bizarre awesome little insta cult classic movie called Repo! The Genetic Opera. It almost did not get made, because it was a show about a distopian future where massive organ failures have led to people needing so many transplants that the transplant company now offers financing plans, only if you default on your organs they send someone to reposess them, IE they kill you, and this is why it's called "Repo", as in "Repo Man", and it's also a black comedy and twisted as fuck and, oh, did I mention, it's a rock opera? Yeah, that last point was about where they kept losing the studio.
But anyway, the two men who had created it and the would-be director, Guy Who Produced Three of the Saw Movies, loved it so much they would not let it go. And finally, the studio said yes, but only with the greatest reluctance: they gave them only 8 million dollars to make the movie which, apparantly, is about half of what they give a low budget film, and such a small window of time to film it in that they ended up with a manic filming schedule where they were working on as many as three scenes a day, which again, I hear apparantly, is effin' insane. But the three men were determined to get this movie made, for they loved it so very much, and they were very blessed to have a crew and cast that were willing to pull out all the stops and really not get paid very much who loved it just as much as they did: That Chick From Spy Kids (Alexa Vega), That Guy From All The Horror Films I've Never Seen (Bill Moseley), That Guy From Some Gangster Movies Who Can Apparantly Also Sing Opera (Paul Sorvino), PARIS FREAKIN' HILTON, That Guy Who's In One Of Those Bands Where They Cover The Stage In Blood Every Night (Nivek Ogre), That Lady Who Is The Most Popular Soprano Ever (Sarah Brightman), and, oh yeah, GILES FROM BUFFY (Anthony Stewart Head). Let's just say there's a reason this movie is right near the top of the "What The Hell, Casting Agency" page on TV Tropes.
But even then, once the movie was made, it almost never saw the light of day. For the critics and the test screening audience were confused and frightened and possibly a little disgusted by it, and the studio wished upon it the dreaded fate that is Sent Straight To Video. But the three men who had worked so very hard stood up and went, "Wait! Give us one more chance! Guys?" And so they took the very limited number of copies of the film that were even made and went on the road, traveling along with the film that they had made so they could advertise and encourage, and getting the actors into it where they could, and using that most mighty weapon of all, the Internet.
And lo and behold, little by little did their following grow. And soon there were people who would literall come from miles (or states) around to see it, and they would wear costumes and bake cookies shaped like Zydrate and spend every last penny of their money on merchandising, all to show how much they loved this movie too. And it was good.
And, um, this movie may or may not be the reason Dr. Boyfriend and I started dating? Because it was after seeing Repo! and spending so much time hanging out to gab about it together that really gave us a chance to connect?
And, really, at the end of the day, what I love most about Repo! is that it can be whatever you want it to be. If you go to see it, and you have fun, and you'd like to take it as the goofiest sort of crack, then that's exactly what it is. If you go to see it, and you become fascinated with this strange little world and these twisted fucks of characters, and want to read deeper into them past the curtain to find the nuances and the psyches that lie beneath, and try to make the movie into this epic story of layers, guess what? It is exactly that too.
fanfiction:
I write, therefore I am. Uh...yeah. It really doesn't get much more simple than that.
No, really: back as far as I can remember, I've been taking other people's stories, things I've read or watched or heard, and twisting them into new ideas. And typically, I've made the heroes into douches and given the bad guys a happy ending.
I've fleshed out the details of my playbook a bit more as time's gone on, but if I was to be honest, I guess most of it still all really boils down to that. Because am I just that flavor of weirdo, I suppose.
Writing is my necessary form of personal expression. It's how I make a little hole in my brain where my soul can pour out so it doesn't overflow and drown me. My entire life could be going to crap, but I'll still be happy as long as I'm writing. I never feel as blank as when the pages in front of me are exactly that. I never feel as frustrated as when there's a dam in my head or my heart and there's no way for the fucking voices to get out.
I'm a student, a woman, a daughter, a girlfriend, an employee and a friend. But I am a writer first.
Fanfic is its own special breed of writing, because in a way it's easier: you're taking someone else's toys and someone else's sandbox and then just making up your own adventure. But at the exact same time it can be so much harder, because if you're doing it right, you're playing by someone else's rules. The toys can't just be painted a different color because you want them to be. The sandbox can't get any bigger than it already is. You have to take the toolbox you're given and nothing else to make the story go where you want to. And half the time, you end up letting the characters take you for a ride instead of you driving them - that's what writing, especially fanfic, is really about for me, by the way: character. It's not about the plot...it's about how Character X gets from emotional point A to emotional point B, and what has to happen to them along the way to make this work.
And before you even ask, yes, I've considered and even attempted writing my own stories. Well, my own ideas suck. Even when they manage to be fairly compelling, I always lose interest. In the end, I'm happiest when I'm sitting in someone else's sandbox with borrowed toys and time, trying to figure out new ways to bend the rules.
BSG:
Oh, Battlestar Galactica. Where would I be without you?
Battlestar Galactica is the Big Damn Show that's set in space and where people fly spaceships and fight robots that is really not a sci-fi show at all. It's a drama about character and what makes people people and how they change in ways both beautiful and horrifying and why they hate and why they fall in love and how sometimes they can't stop doing either of those no matter how much they want to. It's about what it's like to live on even after everything you've ever known is fucking gone.
It's the show where if you sat watching season one you would assume someone is on so much crack if they told you what would be going down by season three. It's the show where you forget they don't bleed real blood, and cry real tears, and if a character is around for more than one episode you'll come to know and love them somehow, even if they never get a real name. It's a show where I go from being angry at everybody and ready to hug them all from one week to a next. It's a show that is emotionally exhausting.
I don't know anything about what it feels like to be a soldier, a confused machine, a traitor, a leader, a self-hating creature, a victim, a spouse, a parent, a survivor, a murderer, or a person who lives every day with either the knowledge or the fear that someday soon, they are going to die.
But sometimes I feel like Battlestar Galactica has taught me the truth of exactly what it feels like.
It is a show that I watch that caused me to, one day in the middle of season 3.5, turn to my best friend and say: "You know, sometimes I honestly forget that these aren't real people. It's gotten to the point where I just plain forget there isn't some magic camera out there in another universe, recording all of this for us to see. I forget that it's a show."
And she knew exactly what I meant, because she watches it too.
Lost:
Lost will always hold a special place in my heart as being the fandom that really introduced me to fandom.
You know, it's where I really started getting my LJ feet wet. Where I wrote and commented on and talked about fanfic, and downloaded the mixes and watched the vids and weighed in on the meta, and laughed at the wank, and joined in the snark, and shook my head at the real life woes attached that weighed us down.
It's where I met a lot of cool and lovely people who I still try to keep tabs on today. Hi! *waves*
And yeah, I have to admit, I don't really care all that much about the show any more. The first season will probably always be one of the best things I've ever seen, and the characters are still characters I love (well, most of them)...but the story itself has long degraded to a point where I'm still hanging around only because I've gotten this far and I really can't stop until I see how it ends.
Until that time, I'm still along for the ride. I still think about the characters, and I make my little jokes, but I've long learned that laughing is the only way to keep from tearing my hair out in frustration.
I still consider myself a fan. And if you disagree, well, that's your right. Everyone's got their own definition.
When it's over, I'll be content and leave it at that. But it ain't over quite yet...and for better or worse, yes, I'm still ridin' this ride.
archaeology:
Lara Croft is not a real archaeologist. She's a pot hunter, a looter and a destroyer of artifacts.
She hunts for treasures with little regard for the meaning or history behind them. And in her quest to find the biggest shinies, she often wrecks tragic amounts of damage on the very sites she "excavates", destroying any hope for real scholars to use what precious little they have to go on to unlock the past.
Lara Croft is exactly the kind of person real archaeologists are taught to hate, and in a lot of places what she does is not only frowned upon but highly illegal.
She does, however, travel the world, have a lot of cool moves, a smoking body and some very big guns. So it's kind of hard to be too mad at her for making archaeology look badass by her actions. After all, she's fictional.
In real life, archaeologists need to specialize in a field - pick a culture, a time period...hell, sometimes a very specific specification. Like, "I specialize in ancient tablets of political records from Greece during approximately the last century BC". At a full-funded and generously staffed dig, you will have a Bone Guy, a Pottery Guy, a Lithics Guy, a Textiles Guy, and...yadda yadda yadda. This on top of whoever's the lucky bastard that gets to supervize, and the untold number of trowel monkeys (usually grad students or volunteers) you've got in there digging trenches and sifting the dirt.
And, oh yeah, it's really not all that glamorous. It's hard, there's heavy lifting and cramping joints, and very often you will dig all day in the sun or the cold or the rain and find nothing at all. Or occasionaly, you'll find a lot but never what you're looking for, and may find yourself saying the phrase "Oh fuck, not another piece of human bone."
Archaeology is also what I've thought I might like to do with my life since junior high, have known I wanted to do with my life for most of high school, have drove myself nuts sweating through stupid fucking math and science classes for in all four years of college, and am willing to put in the yet uncounted additional years' worth of time, sanity and money for in graduate school. Because I want my PhD, and my worn-in trowel, and to spend the rest of my life on my knees in the dirt looking for something that might never be found...answers.
Lara Croft is standing on my desk next to my laptop. I look at her on those rare occasions when I have cause to wonder to whyself, "Why?"
She never says anything back, though. She just gives me that look like, "Bitch, you already know."
Stupid fucking smartass know-it-all Lara Croft.
Oh, and by the way? We don't dig up DINOSAUR BONES, either.