Sweeping Out the Tumbleweeds
There's nothing like revisiting a blog that you've let languish for several years, is there? I'm not sure why I stopped posting over here, but I'm going to go ahead and upload some of my more recent fics, just to get things all in the same place.
(And hey - 2006 me had the foresight to save some works in progress on the private setting over here, which 2016 me thought had been lost forever when my old computer died. Thanks, 2006 me!)
I've mostly been writing in the PLL fandom and posting over on AO3. I really like how clean their site is, and the way that the comment features work, allowing you to actually have dialogue with readers about a particular story or the show or fandom in general. One of my friends who I met through a story that I wrote over there suggested that I get a tumblr also, so I have a blog over there now as well. That's cool for community as well, although my impression is that it's a bit better for sharing thoughts and funny meme posts about the show than for fics.
I've really fallen for PLL as a show - I think I love it more than I've loved any show since Buffy went off the air. I mean, I watch a lot of television, and I've certainly been invested in other shows. Battlestar Galactica was engrossing for most of its run. The first season of Veronica Mars had an outstanding mystery and terrific characterization. I drank tea and watched Downton Abbey every week that it was on. Mad Men was exquisite all the way through.
So why does Pretty Little Liars have my heart in a way that those shows don't? Maybe because the core relationship between the girls is so strong, and so central. It's similar to Buffy in having female relationships at the core of what the show is, and what it's trying to do. And its use of metaphor is similar too - although while Buffy mainly played with the premise of how horrific it is to be in high school, to be different, to grow up - PLL's primary metaphors are about what it's like to find your way as a young woman in a world where the patriarchy and rape culture are lurking outside every window.
It also has a lesbian character as part of the main cast, but Emily Fields in Rosewood manages to have a zillion more girlfriends than Willow in Sunnydale. (Or Brazil or wherever, now that the Hellmouth is closed.) The way that PLL, in its early days, handled Emily's coming out, and the way that it has typically treated queer women was remarkable. It frequently had characters who were previously presented to the audience as interested in relationships with men (Jenna, Alison) and created very natural and nuanced stories that then showed them in relationships with women.
There are a lot of caveats, of course - Emily's girlfriends never got as much screen time or physical affection as the terrible male partners of the other girls. And the show killed off two queer women of color in Maya and Shana, which I won't bother trying to defend as it is indefensible. And then, THEN, the show made the Big Bad a transwoman solely for the sake of an OMG plot twist and killed her off to kickstart their next murder mystery. Again, there are no excuses to be offered for this, because there are none that would be acceptable or would undo the damage this kind of thing puts out into the world.
It was actually after the Charlotte is A reveal that I really got into writing fanfic for the show - I think out of a motivation to see if the apple cart could still be set to rights. Or to recapture the things that I loved about the show and use fics to try and salvage them from the wreck of a once-beloved fictional universe. And I still do love the universe and the characters, despite the irresponsible and hurtful decisions that the show runners keep making. There's one season left, and I'm going to watch until the end. (I seriously considered giving up after 6a, and I still worry whether continuing to watch makes me morally complicit in their treatment of Charlotte. But then I decided that creating different narratives for the show was the best way that I could try to right that wrong. It's not much, but it's something. And it leads into the idea that has me getting this blog back up and out of hibernation.
I'm thinking of organizing a fic challenge, and there's surprisingly little info that I've found on how to do that, what it's like, what are the difficulties vs rewards of it, etc. So I'm reactivating over here to keep a running log/record of the process. More on that later, but for now, I'm off to find and post my recent stuff.
(And hey - 2006 me had the foresight to save some works in progress on the private setting over here, which 2016 me thought had been lost forever when my old computer died. Thanks, 2006 me!)
I've mostly been writing in the PLL fandom and posting over on AO3. I really like how clean their site is, and the way that the comment features work, allowing you to actually have dialogue with readers about a particular story or the show or fandom in general. One of my friends who I met through a story that I wrote over there suggested that I get a tumblr also, so I have a blog over there now as well. That's cool for community as well, although my impression is that it's a bit better for sharing thoughts and funny meme posts about the show than for fics.
I've really fallen for PLL as a show - I think I love it more than I've loved any show since Buffy went off the air. I mean, I watch a lot of television, and I've certainly been invested in other shows. Battlestar Galactica was engrossing for most of its run. The first season of Veronica Mars had an outstanding mystery and terrific characterization. I drank tea and watched Downton Abbey every week that it was on. Mad Men was exquisite all the way through.
So why does Pretty Little Liars have my heart in a way that those shows don't? Maybe because the core relationship between the girls is so strong, and so central. It's similar to Buffy in having female relationships at the core of what the show is, and what it's trying to do. And its use of metaphor is similar too - although while Buffy mainly played with the premise of how horrific it is to be in high school, to be different, to grow up - PLL's primary metaphors are about what it's like to find your way as a young woman in a world where the patriarchy and rape culture are lurking outside every window.
It also has a lesbian character as part of the main cast, but Emily Fields in Rosewood manages to have a zillion more girlfriends than Willow in Sunnydale. (Or Brazil or wherever, now that the Hellmouth is closed.) The way that PLL, in its early days, handled Emily's coming out, and the way that it has typically treated queer women was remarkable. It frequently had characters who were previously presented to the audience as interested in relationships with men (Jenna, Alison) and created very natural and nuanced stories that then showed them in relationships with women.
There are a lot of caveats, of course - Emily's girlfriends never got as much screen time or physical affection as the terrible male partners of the other girls. And the show killed off two queer women of color in Maya and Shana, which I won't bother trying to defend as it is indefensible. And then, THEN, the show made the Big Bad a transwoman solely for the sake of an OMG plot twist and killed her off to kickstart their next murder mystery. Again, there are no excuses to be offered for this, because there are none that would be acceptable or would undo the damage this kind of thing puts out into the world.
It was actually after the Charlotte is A reveal that I really got into writing fanfic for the show - I think out of a motivation to see if the apple cart could still be set to rights. Or to recapture the things that I loved about the show and use fics to try and salvage them from the wreck of a once-beloved fictional universe. And I still do love the universe and the characters, despite the irresponsible and hurtful decisions that the show runners keep making. There's one season left, and I'm going to watch until the end. (I seriously considered giving up after 6a, and I still worry whether continuing to watch makes me morally complicit in their treatment of Charlotte. But then I decided that creating different narratives for the show was the best way that I could try to right that wrong. It's not much, but it's something. And it leads into the idea that has me getting this blog back up and out of hibernation.
I'm thinking of organizing a fic challenge, and there's surprisingly little info that I've found on how to do that, what it's like, what are the difficulties vs rewards of it, etc. So I'm reactivating over here to keep a running log/record of the process. More on that later, but for now, I'm off to find and post my recent stuff.