Random Things on a Saturday

[jbs_teeth]

1) I was reading an article on animal sentience in an old (March 2008) issue of National Geographic, and I still find it extraordinary that science needs to be convinced of this. Observation alone is not science -- I understand that -- and proof is something different altogether, as is anthropomorphising. BUT.

Well, of course, "but." I know Petey

Comments

[demotu]

It does sound grand! I keep throwing around these ideas of collaborative writing with other people - I think it's a natural sort of development when you're writing and learning how to use those tools in a community, to want to pool them - though I don't know if any of them will work out. definehome and I have a secret idea that must wait until we're done our respective projects, but it's so enormous in scope we might never get to it. But it would be cool, especially as I think our writing styles... sort of even each other out. It'd take a hell of a lot of work to keep them even, probably way more rewriting than I'm used to, but it'd still be fun. And we're both pretty thick-skinned.

Second City Torchwood is really good then? I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe when it gets recced at TWH I'll wander over to it. I read Disinterred last night and it freaked me out, but it was also really fabulous. I honestly have a list of at least ten authors in this fandom who I think are beyond brilliant and will read anything by them, and that keeps me pretty damn happy. And then there are another ten or so who are - more like me - well worth reading and on the same sort of learning journey I am, and that's so fabulous because that's where most of the discussion happens.

I, too, like the fandom better than the show. I love the show for visualizing it and giving me the inspiration, but it's the fandom that really gives me joy.

Anyway, that was a totally stream-of-consciousness response to your post. About the bird - I've seen things on bird's intelligence before, too, like with the knowing the difference between colour and shape and whatnot, and it is so amazing. I've owned a few budgies - not the smartest of birds, except that they are really lovely and sociable and quite remarkable pets compared to, oh, a hamster or something else that size.

[jbs_teeth]

You know, the thing about SCT and EvS Presents DW isn't that the plot is so great (there's really no plot -- or lots of tiny plots, depending on how you look at it), or even that the writing is great (sam's prose itself is not exceptional, per se) but rather that the whole thing is so smart that it blows you away. The meta of it, the surrealism, the originality of thought, is truly unbelievable.

You know I like to read the comments, and someone else was talking about the series as Revolutionary, and it's not an exaggeration. I think what he's getting at is the work is truly transformative, taking one thing and making it something else.

I was saying to Lifty last weekend that I loved the book Wicked for a million reasons (the prose is dense and poetically elaborate, which you'll recognize as things I love) but partly because it was the book that made me realize that I just DIG the idea of fictionalizing the fictional (of the mythical and pedagogical and icongraphical), and that's where Sam is going to the nth degree with that series.

Oops! So late now!

[marginaliana]

Just throwing my two cents in, but I agree that Second City Torchwood isn't so much good as it is unbelievably clever. It's more about fandom (in general) than it is about the show, and Sam really knows fandom. I don't think the characterization of the fictional characters is particularly interesting, but the characterization of fandom is spot on.

I agree with you about the natural impulse towards collaborative writing. Fandom is inherently a community, I think.

[jbs_teeth]

I had to quote some of this to Sam during the interview, so thanks for being that girl, again.