why I keep making_light on my blogroll

[melannen]

So I got linked to The Ball of Kerrimuir, fandom edition¹, which led by logical steps to Avram Grumer's Denvention sketchnotes², which of course led me to Raiders of the Lost Basement³, which referenced Ah, Sweet Idiocy!⁴, which took me along the primrose path to Mike Resnick's overview of published fan histories, which has me once again wanting to actually work on codifying the history of 21st century fanficdom into something narrative-like and zine-ish⁵. With lots and lots of cross-references to kerfuffles in fandoms of the past, for maximum schadenfreude. ⁶ What do you think -- too soon?

Anyway, there was this meme going around about your five fannish crushes, and why they would never work? Here's mine! Only, bonus: I don't give you the names of the characters, you have to *guess*! (It's made easier by the fact that there are at least three correct answers to each of these...)


1.He would miss all the signals, and put out awkward, vaguely asexual body language. I would miss all the signals and put out awkward, vaguely asexual body language. Then one of us would spook, we'd break up without ever actually communicating, and avoid each other assiduously until at least one of us was safely in a relationship or otherwise unattainable.

2. I would pick up on his issues with women and sex within about two minutes of meeting him and put out "no touchee!" body language so strong he would be unable to even think about sex within half a mile of me.
2a. And he would respond to the no-sex-please body language by openly pining after me for several years until he finally admitted he doesn't like girls.

3. He's a hunter of the night who unrepentantly preys on the weak. I'm a defenseless mortal girl who likes wandering back roads in the wee hours of the morning. *Clearly* a match made in heaven.

4. He's a sworn celibate and we both respect his oath. And neither of us is romance-focused enough to pull off a credible Abelard and Heloise impression.

5. As far as I can tell, his people have no females. Or they are indistinguishable from the males. Either way, I am femmy enough that he would probably not know what to do with me.

1. "Agent Scully she was there / Standin’ on her head / Provin’ tae a’ the boys an’ girls / Her hair is really red." - alas, the contributions by the Making Light commenters aren't really up to their usual standard. This is not the first time I have been tempted to write up a "Scansion for the completely deaf idiot" guide. (The Master could help with the rhythm!) It's not that hard, folks.

2. I want to get good enough at sketching to do sketch-notes. I have a couple of pre-photography "sketch your vacation" how-to guides, I just haven't *read* them yet.

Also, I really, really want to get to a Worldcon. Because, Worldcon. Anybody up for a roadtrip to Quebec next summer?...

3. The first thing that's going on my new wishlist once Librarything gets collections!!! will be The Book of Lies. Well, no, the first-first thing will be The Book of the Damned. *Then* The Book of Lies. Also, why have I never attempted automatic writing? This seems like the sort of thing I would have tried. Maybe ten-years-ago me and I can work on that, too.

4. At some point, I swear, I will make it to a library that has full Merry's Museum archives on microfilm and write up Algebra for fandom_wank. Algebra *needs* to be on fandom_wank.

5. By the way, I'm totally going to be working on that psi-fi space opera thingy again for NaNo this year. Because I want to write it, dammit, and I've never really stopped thinking about it since two years ago. So, yeah. Space opera, dammit! Novel-ish-thing!

6. So, a part of me wants to say that a modern fandom history needs to be hypertext web-2.0 with hyperlinks and community authorship and stuff. Another part of me, though, really likes reading long memoirs and historical recreations. I think there really is a need for history-qua-history - a wiki is never going to be more than primary sources once removed; I want my story told with analysis and correlation and storycraft and blatant personal bias; good old dead-white-guy methods, yo!

Comments

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

Ooh! I know! I know! .. They're ALL Stephen Colbert.

:D

[melannen [journalfen.net]]

I am trying to figure out how you could possibly read 3-5 as referring to Stephen, and it is *not working*.

(Character!Stephen and Tek both file under 2, though, yes. Character!Stephen under 2a...)

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

You can't see "Stephen" as a hunter of the night, preying on the weak?? HE CAN.

.. anyway, I told Mom I'd be there noonish on Saturday. D'you want me to swing by your place first, if I can remember how to get there?

[melannen [journalfen.net]]

He *could*.

I can also see priestkink!AU, where suprisingly-well-adjusted-priest!Stephen is deeply disturbed by the fact that not only is attracted to a man, but a married Jewish man. And nobody can figure out exactly why Jon is spending so much time hanging around Father Colbert's church anyway. (Somebody should write that. It needs written. And Jon in it should be much more observant, too. I can just see him giving the Dvar at a Conservative shul after spending all week shooting the breeze with Father Stephen.)

And I can see the SF AU where Stephen was raised on an isolationist, crackpot religious colony with no women where they reproduce by cloning, and when suave space pirate Samantha Bee and her crew of Amazons swoop in and kidnap him and Jason Jones and Steve Carell, he refuses to believe that she's not male, because this Stephen *really* doesn't see gender. (I visualize Steve defeating them all with the power of gross-out humor.)

...however, none of those involve anything that's *inherent to the character*. I've read all of those stories with Rodney McKay in them, f'heck's sake. (Well, not the last one. But I'm kind of suprised I haven't read the last one in SGA.)

Sure! If you want. If not I can catch a ride to Mom's one way or another. (But there are kitties here...)

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

nnnnnnggg, priestkink!AU NEEDS to exist! (You should watch Chocolat sometime, if only because it has an awesome priest and johnny depp.)

...k then, I guess I'll come by your place. Remind me to call mom if I get there much after noon, though. Are you planning to spend saturday night at mom's?

[melannen [journalfen.net]]

Probably? Dunno. Still have to get in touch with Becky.

[melannen [journalfen.net]]

Oh, and bring the broken hard drive(s) and I'll bring my Puppy disk and we can mess around. (Or, y'know, if I end up being the one going back with you, I'll bring it.)

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

Yay! If we get it working, you have the ability to burn stuff to DVD through puppy? Or however that would work?

.. however, I remembered that I still have the 80G external that Ellen gave me years ago. (which still works, grr.) So I have been re-pirating DW/TW/SJA. :D (Plus Five. Yay, Five.) haven't burn much of it to DVD yet though b/c i'm using my desktop for torrents and it has no DVD burner. (I should try to get wireless networking working again. That might actually solve a lot of my issues, if I can keep an external attached to the desktop and access it wirelessly. Blah.) And there's plenty of other stuff on the external that I should burn off ...

[melannen [journalfen.net]]

If you have DVD burner, and if Puppy works with the DVD burner (I haven't tried that yet, and hardware is sometimes a crapshoot with linux) you can. Puppy loads entirely into ram in order to run, so you can take the CD out and use the drive for other stuff.

Assuming the fix Bowie made to my laptop is a real fix, we will have a DVD burner we can mess with it with, but I have heard that Puppy sometimes has issues w/laptop hardware, so we may end up using Mom's.

[melannen [journalfen.net]]

Also, if you feel like having real fun, we can spend Saturday afternoon trying to get the linux box and the mac box on the wireless network here...

(Windows networking with all windows shouldn't be that hard; I've set it up several places now.)

Also, I has DVD burner but no burnable DVDs, so you might want to make sure you have those, too.

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

I just messed with it, and the troubleshooter tool said the computer's name was a duplicate on the network. Which makes ZERO SENSE, but changing the name made networking function, so. My laptop is now loki instead of gunnlod. Fits its personality better these days anyway. *burns entire GIS project and lots of DW to DVD*

Shall bring DVDs! Might not bring my laptop, unless you think I should? .. anyway Mom's puter has a DVD burner, yes?

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

OBTW: http://www.cafepress.com/obsessiondesign/4461269

[stellar_dust [journalfen.net]]

Oh, if you do come back with me there is possibility of (1) lunch with Anna on Monday and (2) NVCC Historic Preservation open house on Tuesday, if you're interested! (Dr. Clark will probably be there, and there is a guest speaker and crudites.)