Sam's Backup Page

SO! I HAVE ARRIVED.

I always experience a significant amount of terror right before I travel alone -- it got so bad when I was going to Boston that I almost didn't go -- but I'm accustomed to it now and I just ignore the shakes and get on the train and I always have an awesome time once I'm underway.

Riding the train from Chicago to anywhere in Indiana is apparently a pretty bare-bones proposition. There's no first class (which I usually take, it's worth the extra $10) and no snack car, so I was glad I packed dinner. Well, "dinner"; a bottle of water, a Clif bar, and a Snickers bar.

I'll spare you the tribulations I had getting to my housing, but I will say that the Lafayette Amtrak Station is not designed to facilitate a cohesive traffic stream after dark. I got lost in the station. I did, however, finally get where I was going and I got a pretty good night's sleep, though this morning I couldn't figure out how to work the shower spigot and my shower was cooooooold. Still, woke me up.

On the train yesterday I was reading Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy Of Influence: A Plagiarism", which was an article published in Harper's a few years ago and which someone told me I ought to read. Back then Harper's didn't have an accessible online archive, and if you've ever tried to get a Harper's out of a library archive, as opposed to a Harper's Bazaar, it's...difficult. So I never got to read it.

Anyway, happily, a few weeks ago Kate_Nepveu linked to it in a post about fanfic, and it really is a fascinating read on the subject of the relationship between corporate ownership and cultural commons. There are a few rough patches where I don't think Lethem quite got where he was intending to go, but overall it's a great essay.

It did get me thinking about fanfic in a slightly more abstracted way, and about why this current debate over it really enrages me so much. I don't normally weigh in on wanky matters, so to get me to make a statement about it, it must really have got under my skin. Now I think I know why.

( Extribulum and fear. )

So, that's the eventual coherent statement I have: fanfic is inherently valuable as, if nothing else, a document of response to the originating media. To decry the thing is to decry merely the symbol of something you can never control. Stripped to its bones, there's no point in fighting an author about it, because they aren't acting from a place of rationality but one of fear, and fear makes people both incoherent and mean.

See, the thing is, you don't have to fight on behalf of fanfic -- just by thinking independently and having an opinion, you've already won. Which is kind of awesome, really. So the decision you're faced with is not whether to fight about it, but whether to respect an author's foolish, fearful wish and not post it, or publish and be damned.

Given I've already violated the spirit of the wish by having an opinion, I choose damnation every time, myself.

(This is the shit I come up with on trains. Jesus I love trains.)

Okay, let's see if I can get through this without looking like a dumbass.

There was a -- well, quite a sad fandom!secret about me yesterday, and it sort of opened a floodgate and this came out. It's a lot of ideas I've been having for a long time, tied up together. I want to stress this -- it's not a direct reaction to the secret, it was just inspired by it. I'm not angry at the OP; in fact I feel a lot of sympathy for the OP, and rather apologetic, because I may not have hurt them but I have let them down.

So let's talk about me, and fanfic, and fandom, and novels.

LOL SPOILERS FOR DEATHLY HALLOWS AND TORCHWOOD S3.

( I can keep rhythm with no metronome... )

A QUICKIE BEFORE TOMORROW

THE CHILDREN OF EARTH DRINKING GAME!

( Do a shot! )

NUNC EST BIBENDUM* guys.

* Loosely translated as "Now we drink", more accurately as "Now we MUST drink." OH THOSE ROMANS.

So, I rewatched Firefly.

You can blame tychoish who gave it to me and hija_paloma who helped me snark it. And there was so. Much. Snark.

After I'd seen the epsiodes and the film and thought about it a bit, I wrote a rather long post about Firefly, and then I read it over and realised I could never post it because:

1. You, my cafe, are lovely and rational and thinky, and I adore you, but not everyone in fandom is thus, and throwing a bomb into the middle of fandom is guaranteed to bring out the CRAZY.
2. The post discussed Firefly partially in terms of race, gender, and sexuality fail, and as a straight white male that's not really something I'm sure I am qualified to talk about competently. Also I called it shallow, and I'm a Doctor Who/Torchwood fan, so I have no real room to throw stones.
3. I really don't care about Firefly meta. I had a lot to say about Firefly, but I'm not very interested in discussing it any further. That makes it sound like I can't or don't want to defend my views, which isn't true; I'm just not interested in addressing eight jillion objections to what I say, and I'm pretty sure that's what I'd get.
3a. Apparently it stung a lot of nerves when I posted my 200-whatever things about SGA, and I'm not here to harsh anyone's groove. SGA-fen, please accept a belated apology; I was trying to amuse, but apparently I was failing. You saved Firefly fen from a similar annoyance.

So instead of the critical essay I wrote about what Firefly is and what Firefly could or should have been, I would like to give you the good parts version.

ETA FOR CLARITY: No, really. I saw the film! I saw the film. :D

( More Firefly than you ever thought you'd get outta me! )

BossBoss just heard about Tennant leaving Doctor Who.

BossBoss: DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS?
Sam: Uh. Yeah. Sorry?
BossBoss: I thought he had run out of lives!
Sam: He's got a few more. The show's not being cancelled, far as I know.
BossBoss: Who's replacing him?
Sam: They don't know yet. There are some front-runne --
BossBoss: Can you print out some articles for me?
Sam: Uh. About the casting possibilities?
BossBoss: When you have time.

My boss is the ultradork and I'm getting paid to research Doctor Who casting spoilers.

You know not that he's a chauvinist or anything but he's a little bit old school about Doctor Who and I suspect he would yell loudly if it were suggested to him that a woman might play the next Doctor. Professionalism is knowing when to edit the information appropriately. *edits*

Sam: *reads fanfic*
Interesting fanfic: *is interesting*
Mediocre fanfic: *is mediocre*
Brilliant fanfic: *is brilliant*
Incredibly Offensive Badly Written Rape Fantasy fanfic: O HAI THERE.

It's my own fault for not reading headers -- I was linked from a fanfic roundup, as usual, so the header wasn't visible immediately, and I don't normally read them anyway. For serious, though, that was messed up. I'm not against noncon or dubcon (don't read them, don't like them, but whatever feeds your pterodactyl) but I'll make an exception for that one.

Right now, Torchwood fandom on the whole seems to be thunderously silent as regards the fic, because we're pretty nonwanky most of the time -- Who fandom eats all the Torchwood wank alive.

But I couldn't resist posting here just so I can say, when and if wank breaks out, CALLED IT.

AHAHAAHAH I just found and reposted my "Predictions for HBP".

Of six predictions I made, five of them came true to a greater or lesser amounts, though some not until Deathly Hallows. And to be fair some were pretty safe. I predicted:

( Spoilers for HBP and DH )

Okay, so, I have no idea what will happen if I cross the proton beams, but everything's plugged in.

The TV and antenna work. I can view, at least, what's going on with the DVD Recorder when I change input modes on the TV; conveniently enough, the Recorder has jacks for the Wii, which the TV doesn't, so I go to the Recorder input mode if I want to play Wii, too. And I can plug the laptop into the front of the DVD Recorder with the S-video cable, so that I can dub from laptop to DVD. Or I can plug the laptop into the TV and enhance my screen size (kinky). And the Wii is interfacing well with my wireless modem.

If I turn everything on at once, maybe it'll be like VR.5 and I will actually invent virtual reality. I could try to dub something from YouTube to DVD and suddenly find myself in YouTube.

Or, the flat will be able to travel in time and space (which I am pretty sure it can do if I can just find the right levers).

*pause*

We're gonna need a bigger boat power strip.

I HAVE...

A THEORY!

It is about Doctor Who. Yeah yeah, the rest of you can scroll onwards.

So. Classic Doctor Who canon states -- hardcore Whovians can probably tell me which episode and/or which Doctor -- that Time Lords are woven on genetic looms. (LOOOOOOMS). However, many New Whovians treat this as a joke the Doctor pulled on one of his Companions, because:

1. The faintly obnoxious Eighth Doctor film states that the Doctor is half-human.
2. New Who has implied that if Time Lords don't exist as infants they at least exist as children; the Doctor is told he had a Very Lonely Childhood and also we see wee!Master going MAD at the age of eight.
3. At least some genetic contribution is probably going on, 'cause the first Doctor has a granddaughter and the tenth Doctor mentions not only being a parent but also a sibling.

But what if ALL THESE THINGS are possible and also Darwin got involved?

You'd get this:

( Sam's Unified Theory Of Everything (Having To Do With The Doctor And Sex) (spoilers for Journey's End) )

Someone made a brilliant photoshop of the Tenth Doctor and all his Companions. I captioned it. Because I am evil.