Love Meme: Day Four
Man, I need to step this thing up a bit. July is going to be over in a flash, and...well, I'll still pimp my f-list, but I do need to make some quick progress on this meme. So today is a two-for-one! You get some fannish love, and then I talk about how much my RL pal byzantium_dei rules! Everyone wins! (Except those who hate the exclamation mark. Those people lose, and lose badly.)
I met pearl_O at the Muskrat Jamboree. And when I say, "Met" I mean I sat next to her on the bed in someone's hotel room (j_s_cavalcante's?) and struggled to think of something to say. I wanted to talk to her about her amazing fanfiction or tell her how much I admire her enthusiasm for dS and Fraser and Ray and Dief. And, god, her meta. You've all read her list of personal fanon, right? It made me insanely happy, and I wanted to write a thousand stories about Vecchio as she describes him. Instead I had another Bacardi Tropical Smoothie cooler (omphale23 is not the only person who was wicked fucking classy at MJ!) and totally failed to talk to her. This will be corrected at the con in 2009, as I will pull Pearl aside and tell her the following:
1. Her due South stories are poetry. Porny, porny poetry. I always feel enormously satisfied after reading one of her fics, and it doesn't matter if it was three hundred or three thousand words long. She stitches everything together so that you can't see the seams. Her writing always seems effortless, and she is a master at manipulating form to serve function. I love her more experimental stuff (like A is for Apple and A Strange But True Story) because these fics explore the relationship between time and plot in complex and interesting ways. Everything is non-linear, and yet everything happens along a clear narrative trajectory. I struggle to incorporate flashbacks and doing anything more complicated than A leads to B leads to C in my own work, but Pearl makes flash-fowards and flashbacks and integrated narrative POV changes look easy. I think her work should be studied.
2. She is a model at how to keep the love alive. Seriously, she and china_shop are real inspirations, because I do not know how they have continued to be so totally and completely in love with due South and the 6degrees stuff for so many years. There are still a lot of older fans around (*waves to aukestrel*) but it seems like China and Pearl still retain all their enthusiasm from that first flush we all went through. I would like to study Pearl and see if her love can somehow be bottled and sold to prevent people *cough jamethiel_bane cough* from burning out or being lured away to other fandoms*
3. She is beautiful. A beautiful person, a beautiful writer, and a beautiful soul. And now I'm sure she's thoroughly embarrassed so I'll stop and open up the floor. Tell me why you love Pearl!
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byzantium_dei is a RL friend, and I originally met her through scarfe. They hung together in high school back in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, and when scarfe moved away to go to college in northern BC (WTF, scarfe?) he communicated with a lot of his old friends online. Because they kept in touch I had the great pleasure of meeting Byz at a couple social events. Having graduated from the University of Victoria, she now lives in Deadmonton with her beloved boyfriend, goes to church, cooks, frets about her job, and writes lovely comments in my LJ. I wish I'd gotten to know her a bit better (I think we've only met a handful of times) but she's terrific, warm, and very funny. I can see why she's one of scarfe's oldest friends, and I hope we'll keep communicating for a long while.
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*Whew* Two more down, and only...nine to go. Nine? I thought more people had signed up. Don't you guys want to be loved?
*"Other fandoms" being yaoi and bandslash. Screw that noise!
I met pearl_O at the Muskrat Jamboree. And when I say, "Met" I mean I sat next to her on the bed in someone's hotel room (j_s_cavalcante's?) and struggled to think of something to say. I wanted to talk to her about her amazing fanfiction or tell her how much I admire her enthusiasm for dS and Fraser and Ray and Dief. And, god, her meta. You've all read her list of personal fanon, right? It made me insanely happy, and I wanted to write a thousand stories about Vecchio as she describes him. Instead I had another Bacardi Tropical Smoothie cooler (omphale23 is not the only person who was wicked fucking classy at MJ!) and totally failed to talk to her. This will be corrected at the con in 2009, as I will pull Pearl aside and tell her the following:
1. Her due South stories are poetry. Porny, porny poetry. I always feel enormously satisfied after reading one of her fics, and it doesn't matter if it was three hundred or three thousand words long. She stitches everything together so that you can't see the seams. Her writing always seems effortless, and she is a master at manipulating form to serve function. I love her more experimental stuff (like A is for Apple and A Strange But True Story) because these fics explore the relationship between time and plot in complex and interesting ways. Everything is non-linear, and yet everything happens along a clear narrative trajectory. I struggle to incorporate flashbacks and doing anything more complicated than A leads to B leads to C in my own work, but Pearl makes flash-fowards and flashbacks and integrated narrative POV changes look easy. I think her work should be studied.
2. She is a model at how to keep the love alive. Seriously, she and china_shop are real inspirations, because I do not know how they have continued to be so totally and completely in love with due South and the 6degrees stuff for so many years. There are still a lot of older fans around (*waves to aukestrel*) but it seems like China and Pearl still retain all their enthusiasm from that first flush we all went through. I would like to study Pearl and see if her love can somehow be bottled and sold to prevent people *cough jamethiel_bane cough* from burning out or being lured away to other fandoms*
3. She is beautiful. A beautiful person, a beautiful writer, and a beautiful soul. And now I'm sure she's thoroughly embarrassed so I'll stop and open up the floor. Tell me why you love Pearl!
-------------------
byzantium_dei is a RL friend, and I originally met her through scarfe. They hung together in high school back in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, and when scarfe moved away to go to college in northern BC (WTF, scarfe?) he communicated with a lot of his old friends online. Because they kept in touch I had the great pleasure of meeting Byz at a couple social events. Having graduated from the University of Victoria, she now lives in Deadmonton with her beloved boyfriend, goes to church, cooks, frets about her job, and writes lovely comments in my LJ. I wish I'd gotten to know her a bit better (I think we've only met a handful of times) but she's terrific, warm, and very funny. I can see why she's one of scarfe's oldest friends, and I hope we'll keep communicating for a long while.
--------------------------
*Whew* Two more down, and only...nine to go. Nine? I thought more people had signed up. Don't you guys want to be loved?
*"Other fandoms" being yaoi and bandslash. Screw that noise!