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1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt · 2 years ago

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100% correct, @winntir !

This should be well known Star Trek fandom history, but like just about any fandom in the past, whatever women or queer people valued within the fandom was treated as lesser than, less cool, embarrassing.

And they still do this.

Think about how disco music as a genre was treated (predominantly made by women, POC and LGBT), how Beatles fans were treated, how girls who are fans of boybands like NSYNC or now BTS get made fun of even now by grown men for having a hobby or interest.

Look at all the hate that romance/rom com gets as a genre for being "predictable and trite" when the highly favoured "action" genre is every bit as trite and predictable but far more popular and widely accepted by men, so somehow it's "better" than romance even though you know what's going to happen before you walk in. Ain't no way Vin Diesel ain't saving the day, surviving to the end, and getting the girl in The Fast and Furious 492. But that's "cool", and romance is "predictable". Sure.

I think the fact that the vast majority of the insulted/made fun of fanbases throughout history are consistently women and queer people shouldn't be ignored. We should be taking long, hard looks at that.

In fact, the bulk of TOS viewers in the 60s WERE WOMEN and back then they treated Trekkies as if being a Trek fan was in the same vein of judgement to some that folks treat furries like now. And I really don't doubt that this had a lot to do with the huge female and queer fanbase in Trek and the content they made.

Trek got huge in syndication in the 70s after the fan organized conventions that started just to sell unofficial, fanmade K/S zines. But nobody talks about where fan conventions started or why, because that history is "embarrassing" because it entails women and queer people making erotica -- by the way, porn fully existed for straight men at that time and nobody was out here judging men for their dirty magazines, they were making pop culture movies like Porky and songs about centerfold beauties because objectifying women was "cool and accepted" -- but nobody was making porn for women or queer people, and when they DID make their own, they got vehemently judged and ostracized for it. Some women got divorced when their husbands found their K/S stories. But men could look at girlie mags and porn all they wanted and that was "cool", but if queer people or women did it they were "perverts/weird".

Seeing a pattern here?

Post TMP you saw basically only dudes at the conventions BC a lot of women and queer people had been shooed or chased out of the fandom for their "embarrassing, disgusting, gay" erotica fanzines.

Conventions literally started predominantly due to K/S fans organizing themselves to sell and trade their zines, and then once those fans had successfully campaigned and organized to make their cons official, they got kicked out of the official cons they literally CREATED to begin with for being "pervy and weird" for making K/S fanzines . . . All while they were selling things like ladies of Star Trek calendars out front and calling us inappropriate.

This fact has always made me angry, because without those women and queer fans circulating those zines, conventions never would have even happened. There likely wouldn't have been a Trek revival or TMP. But women were always repressed, and queer people were always repressed but ESPECIALLY SO in the late 70s and 80s during the AIDS crisis.

Throughout history, women and queer people's contributions to fandom and popular culture should be well known, but it isnt.

It was constantly swept under the rug because it was considered "lesser than" or embarrassing, like just about anything else women or queer people popularly enjoy.

I remember some folks used to hate to see us coming in cons and thought we were the reason Star Trek was considered "not cool" or "embarrassing" as slash shippers, our zines being hidden in back rooms BC Paramount producers were vehemently anti LGBT and so many fans followed suit with that attitude back then. They didn't even realize the people they subjugated and judged were the ones they had to thank for conventions and the Trek revival.

I don't want people to forget this, even if it isn't the happiest or squeakiest mark on our fandom history.

Look at attitudes towards the new Dr. Who, The Last of Us, etc. People still hate on romance when it's no more or less trite than action. Even still today, women and queer people have to deal with being treated as less valuable or "embarrassments" when it comes to fandom, especially young girls getting bullied by old men over things like boybands.

I don't want us to forget that this has been a thing for a very long time, and if you are a young woman or queer person who loves something, don't let them chase you away. Don't let them shut you out or shut you up. If they try to take away your right to be creative and express yourself, find other means to do it.

But don't be silent.

And don't let yourself get treated like your contributions or interests are less than and get discouraged.

If our fandom of women and queer folks had stayed silent back in the 70s when EVERYONE was harshly judging them, we might never have gotten the return of Star Trek after TOS.

No TNG, no DS9, VOY, ENT, DISCO, PIC, TLD, PRO -- none of it would have happened if those K/S fans didn't organize themselves to the level that they did: in garages in homes, then hotel rooms, then hotel convention rooms, just to trade their K/S fics and zines. Because those are the fans that birthed the concept of a Star Trek convention, ANY fan convention started with those Trek fans, and Star Trek conventions are the reason that Star Trek returned in TMP.

K/S shippers, predominantly women and queer folks, saved Star Trek. So the next time you enjoy an episode of DS9, TNG, or any content after TOS, remember there's some K/S shipping Trek mom or closeted queer person to thank for it even getting to exist.

Today on popping the corn and feeding the children, what do you folks think of this discussion? :)

I'm always curious to hear what other Trek fans, especially queer Trek fans, think about our place in Trek history and how we fare as the queer participants within our fandom. What have your experiences been like?

Overwhelmingly I've found a great reception and a welcoming attitude, but I admit that has increased considerably since the 90s. However, there are still some Trek fans who seem to be vehemently in denial about queer history in Star Trek, or the fact that anyone who has worked on Trek has pro-LGBT attitudes. This always surprises me considering some of the blatant queer content we have already seen in Star Trek such as the Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn kiss.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion that followed and seeing the overwhelming outpouring of support coming from Star Trek fans in response to this thread.

Here was my two cents contribution:

"No, what they said was factual.

Have you forgotten Nichelle Nichols was indeed an African American woman in the core seven bridge crew back in 1966?

Or the fact that Gene Roddenberry went out of his way to write The Motion Picture Novel, creating the term "T'hy'la: friend, brother, lover" so that fans could choose which interpretations of Kirk and Spock they saw fit? He also embraced K/S fans and hired a number of them to write the earliest Star Trek novels, including the very first official one (The New Voyages Vol. 1 & 2) which included slash fiction as well as Gene's approval/forward in the books.

In case anyone has forgotten, here's a little bit of background on Gene Roddenberry and his perspectives on queerness in Star Trek.

He admitted that in his early life he was very affected by how society and culture treated the LGBT community, and that he too found himself subjugating and judging others for that lifestyle because it was what people did at that time. As he got older and had more life experience, he began working with a number of queer artists in Hollywood -- and through TOS, a number of queer individuals began asking questions about Kirk and Spock.

Instead of vehemently shutting down this perspective, Roddenberry was intrigued, and saw potential to tap into a large audience (LGBT) that most others didn't want to go near or acknowledge publicity-wise. He saw it as an opportunity to expand the fanbase while also pushing yet another envelope.

But with the heat already on the show for what they'd already pushed, he found he was often stuck between what he'd like to do and what production would let him get away with. There are a number of Kirk and Spock scenes in scripts that got cut out for leaning a little too obviously romantic. Tiny trickles of that content still made it in were infamous moments like the backrub scene in Shore Leave. Even the 2009 movie had a K/S moment while Spock Prime and Kelvin Spock talked that was written and filmed that was cut out of the final product.

Queer subtext and coding has always been relentlessly weeded away at with an excuse ready to go for why they always try to cut us out, but we all know it's because they are scared of the homophobic backlash and ratings hits. Look how violently homophobes went after the gay romance episode of The Last of Us **just this year**. This has always been our reality, so for someone like Roddenberry to make efforts in the 70s? That was massive.

But Gene as well as the queer/slash Trek community managed to accomplish some things in the 70s which I'm surprised more folks don't talk about or give much credit.

In the same TMP novel which features "T'hy'la" and the famous footnote, Gene cleverly wrote Kirk with a bisexual/pansexual lens: Kirk describes himself as *preferring* women but being open to "physical love in **any** of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms." (Direct quote from Genes book). Basically, Captain Kirk was DTF with whoever if there was a connection, which was a very progressive take for a character in a novel written in 1979, but made sense for the future which would have a lot less hang ups about sex and love compared to our current rather puritan/conservative society.

I also prefer women, but I married a man. Shout out to Gene Roddenberry for giving us a seat at the table back in the 70's when folks *still* try to insist there is no place for K/S or queer concepts in Trek, because he made efforts -- however small -- to employ queer people and show queer perspectives. According to David Gerrold, LGBT+ representation was a big thing that Gene personally pushed for in TNG and wanted various depictions of love/couples in the Risa scenes, to name one example.

In the 70s, fanzines led to meetings and swapped fanmade magazines, which got so big that they needed hotel centers, then convention centers, then one day the TOS cast came to one and what we know as modern fan conventions were born -- inspiring even George Lucas who attended Trek conventions in the 70s and saw how popular Trek was in syndication; it was a great climate to launch his Space Opera. Star Wars then became so huge that we got TMP.

But none of that would have happened without the level of organization, passion, and creativity that those fans poured into Star Trek and their characters after it got cancelled and went into syndication.

Without queer folks we wouldn't have George Takei, Theodore Sturgeon who gave us Tribbles, Bill Theiss and his amazing TOS costumes, Mike Minor's art direction, Merritt Butrick, David Gerrold (writer for TOS, TAS, TNG) to name a few of many queer contributors to Trek that Roddenberry respected and tried to go to bat for wherever he could in a climate that was absolutely impossible to gain an inch in.

At a time during the 70s and 80s when so many people resented and feared the queer community and wanted us to disappear, especially in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic which many homophobes claimed was "God's punishment to the gay community" or "Gods's answer" to our "hedonism", thinking we'd gotten our just desserts and should just disappear . . .

During that time, Gene Roddenberry gave us queer folks a place to say: "You know what? Sure. Write your stories. TV says you guys shouldn't exist, they pull books with queer people off the shelves and burn them. Laws exist specifically to forbid you guys from loving each other, and call you mentally ill. You can't even hold hands in public. But I'm going to validate you guys and invite you to write novels or work for me, try to see what we can get by production, and allow you to see yourselves in my characters if you want to. There's a place for you in our fandom."

He gave us bi/pan Kirk, he gave us K/S is open to interpretation. In Phase 2 Kirk's surviving nephew Peter, son of his brother Sam from Operation: Annihilate!, was going to be written as gay and living on the Enterprise with his partner -- that also got chopped and reworked into a script that wouldn't get used until decades later. That was huge at a time that being queer was officially listed as a mental illness, and villainized due to the AIDS crisis.

So before you try to dismiss or tell K/S + queer Trek fans whether or not they deserve a seat at the table, remember that Gene Roddenberry was among the **first** to pull that seat out for us in a climate that was ruthlessly against LGBT+ folks." -- 1Shirt2ShirtRedShirtDeadShirt

P.S: Have some cute bisexual/pansexual K/S pride gifs. :) Pride month is a hop, skip and a jump away.

LLAP!🖖💚

#1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt #star trek #lgbtq+#gene roddenberry #spirk #james t kirk #spock #garashir #elim garak #julian bashir #deep space nine #star trek the original series #winntir

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rawsanma · 3 years ago

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In Memoriam of "Shin Evangelion: Curse"

*The following article contains a full spoiler for "Evangelion 3.0+1.0".*

I sat together with a person who was not in birth when EOE was released, and after watching the film we talked a bit and thought about the people who passed away without ever seeing this. I understand that fans from the old series and those who came from the new series may have very different perceptions of Shin-Eva. So I'd like to first correct a few things I said in my first impressions.

It may be somewhere between an honorable movie and a mediocre movie in general, but as Evangelion, it's garbage.

After about halfway through the two hours and thirty-five minutes, I started to look at my watch again and again. The double ending, which is both a personal novel and a product, was a fleeting fantasy, and the two songs "One Last Kiss" and "beautiful world (da capo ver.)" were not used effectively in relation to the story, only being played in the staff roll.

When I saw the first 10 minutes of the movie that was released last year, I thought that perhaps Paris was chosen as the setting for the story of "humanity fighting together in the face of destruction" or "the expansion of the Eva world (not G Gundam, but G Eva!)", but that was not the case at all. He just wanted to depict the battle using the Eiffel Tower as a FATALITY,　I realized that he hadn't made a single millimeter of progress since when he asked Hayao Miyazaki if I could film only this action scene of Her Highness Kushana in the re-animation of Nausicaa, he was scolded, "That's why you're no good!"

At the beginning of the film, they try to carefully describe the things behind the scenes that were not told in Eva Q. The third Ayanami like the TV version is the main character, and they go on and on about living in the countryside, copying "My Neighbor Totoro". The large family of our parent's home that we go back to during the summer vacation is presented as an image of happiness in life and a decent human being. It is also connected to Gendou's narrative during the Human Instrumentality Project but isn't it too Showa-era and too simple a solution? I am interested in how the young fans who are children of nuclear families who left their large families in the countryside and moved to the city saw the too sudden depiction of "life in the countryside". It was almost a gag to see Ayanami walking around in a plug suit which is a sexual orientation that has manifested itself after Space Battleship Yamato, in the images of pre and post-war farming villages depicted by recent NHK morning dramas. The director, influenced by his wife, must have been immersed in the LOHAS and vegan lifestyle as a fashion statement, which is only possible because he is an urbanite with too much stuff and too much money. As for this theme, it has already been presented in the watermelon field scene in the second film, and it is merely a re-presentation of the same theme in a diluted form.

I've pointed out before that Eva Q is "a crack in reality because of the loss of reality to rely on. "It's rude not to eat what you're served!", Shinji was scolded by Touji's father, who looked like a subversion of Hayao Miyazaki's work (Gedo Senki!). I have a simple question, how can the interior of a house become so old and wretched after only 14 years? How can a community of people of all ages be formed in just 14 years?　There was a line that implied that Touji had killed someone for the village, and it is possible that the director had extremely beautified the "Showa era" as a sanctuary where people who are hurt and regret their committing murder during the war as a soldier live nearby, and when he opened the last drawer after using up all the materials, he found the image of the original landscape of his childhood.

Misato and Kaji's child, which is only described for a few minutes, is also abrupt, and I don't feel that it is more than a plot device for the purpose of staging the reconciliation with Shinji later on. Some people seem to be moved by the fact that "behind Misato's cold attitude towards Shinji in Q, there was such a conflict in her mind," but it's the opposite. All the answers are just excuses after wasting nine years of work. Even if the wounds healed and treated with a gentle "I'm sorry," after being beaten severely by a raging DV husband, the fact of the beating would not disappear, and the wife would feel nothing but fear at the sudden change in her husband. To a situation that he had set to minus 100, he spent 2 hours and 35 minutes gradually pouring water drawn from other places and past works to bring it back to zero...I've never seen such a horrible match pump. Well, now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking that I've seen this before.

The relationship between Eva Q and Shin Eva is very similar to the relationship between "The Last Jedi" and "The rise of Skywalker" in Star Wars. In a self-absorbed rampage of conjecture that did not listen to the opinions of others, the historical stage of the series that had been built up was turned into a mess, and then the destroyed story was carefully built up again from the ground using unnecessary length, and only the shape of the story was created to end it without being disgraceful, and every scene that tries to make things more exciting is a copy of past work. As for Star Wars, since 8 and 9 were directed by different directors, I was able to settle my feelings of resentment towards Ryan and gratitude towards Abrams, respectively, but as for Evangelion, the director looks like a child who has been proud to clean up his own mess and have his female cronies praise and pat him on the head. Moreover, what kind of sympathy do you expect when you are told to "I'll make amends" for the mere act of wiping your ass after defecating, in a cool, Showa-era chivalrous tone?

In this film, as a recovery from Q and a summary of new Eva, there are elements throughout the story that critics can easily relate to the old Eva. “Oh, I can talk about this in connection with that!” This is what gives them a good impression and it has nothing to do with how the old fans perceive it. The director seems to have a dedicated person in charge of communicating and negotiating with the outside, but now he wants the critics to communicate with the fans about Shin-Eva. As long as he doesn't speak for himself, he can correct their interpretations later based on the "misunderstandings" of the people in between himself and his fans. This is a very Japanese-style system of surmising feelings, a system of authority that is formed when only a limited number of cronies are informed of the true intentions of the president. If I talk about it in too much detail, right-winged Yakuza will show up very soon, so to make it short, it is an indigenous control structure unique to Japan that originated from the "Mikado behind the bamboo blind". This time the director was very conscious of that, and I was able to see that Eva, who was a challenger, has become an authority that does not tolerate any criticism.

And what fan from the past could enjoy watching the endless battle scenes after Shinji returns to Wunder in the middle of the film? One after another, the sister ships of Wunder appear--there's almost no difference in appearance, but Ritsuko is able to guess their names the moment they appear. Right after the line "I'm pretty sure there's a fourth ship," the fourth ship comes crashing upon them from underneath, with no intention other than to make us laugh, right? As well as the repeated tenseless bombardment fight with no description of damage no matter how many artillery shells are hit, and it's quite painful being poured Asuka and Mari's Me-Strong Battles which are already enough by the time of Q, continuously down my throat like a goose with a funnel in its mouth. There's no way to synchronize my feelings with the screen, and it just creates an atmosphere as if the story is going on with the unattractive super-robot action that I pointed out in Q. It's no use pointing out, but the repair and supply problems of Wille side in a world where the industry has been destroyed were shown in the farming village part, though it was inadequate. But those of NERV side, an organization of only a man and an old man, was completely thrown away.

The last part of the story about the Human Instrumentality Project is like a fanzine where Gendou, Asuka, Kaworu, and Rei are lined up in a row and complemented in turn and then dismissed, whereas EOE was a total complement through Shinji. The director has tried to upgrade his framework by borrowing them from EOE and has failed miserably. Someone who has created works by putting his emotion and flair into a copy has dabbled in copying his own work. As a result, he had to confront his own sensibilities from when he was young and had to compare the old and the new by his old audience. Frankly speaking, only the techniques have been traced, the sound and the screen have become gorgeous, but the emotion and the sense have deteriorated. The face of the giant Ayanami that was replaced with a live-action one -- probably based on the face acting of Shinji's voice actor, and the "untested ordeal" of her tweet means this -- appears in the background like a gold folding screen in the high sand at a Japanese wedding reception. You're getting tired of all this, and you're not making it seriously, are you? The battle between Eva Unit01 and Eva Unit13 in Tokyo-III, which I expressed my anxiety about before the film's release, is a scene where the company's CG team can't produce what the director expects and he is so frustrated that he has the same mindset as in the final two episodes of the TV version, "I'd rather get a minus than a red", and after that, it became like a gag scene, including Eva fights in Misato's apartment and Shinji's school classroom, as if he was staged them in desperation. The side-shooting screenshot of the little Wunder charging at the head of the giant Ayanami is a picture of ”Cho Aniki (Japanese STG)” itself, and it's also meant to be funny, right? It's a series of loose, sloppy, and tenseless scenes that can't be compared to EOE.

What the hell have the CG team been doing for the past nine years, getting paid with no progress and making Eva look like an outdated piece of crap? Didn't anyone have the chivalrous spirit of the Showa era like "Don't embarrass our boss!"? Don't be so relieved when you get the green light! The director has just given up on you! There were a few scenes where the person at the top of the editing and collage, who has been making the coolest pictures, was not given as much good material as he used to be and seemed to make desperate staging in a way that he would never have given the green light in the past. It's been more than 10 years since Xapa was established, but I guess they don't have enough talent to meet the director's vision. Perhaps because of this, the conclusion of the film is exactly the same as the old one, that the director has no choice but to use his personal feelings to finish Eva, but the film ends up being a self-imitation of "Sincerely Yours". It is sad to see a person who "surpasses the original by putting his heart and soul into the copy" start to copy his own past works on the big screen of the theater, because he has become a big name in the animation world after reaching the age of 60, and there are no others left to be copied. However, right after "Komm, süsser Tod" started playing in the old movie, the scene where the titles of each episode and the reverse side of Cels were played in succession was projected on the wall of the studio using a projector -- the title of the new movie was added. It made me mad and thought, "Don't touch my EOE with the dirty hands of the merchant. I'll kill you."

The last things that the man who "transfers his own life onto films" presented in his costly self-published private novel were a naked confession of his own mental history up to the point where he met his wife, which he temporarily entrusted to Gendou, and the words "I think I loved you" and "I loved you" exchanged between himself and the former lover who could not be together and themselves who had separate spouses, just a reckoning of the muddled love affair that existed behind the scenes of EOE. I half-jokingly said that the distance between the director and Asuka's voice actor was important for the end of Eva, but it turned out to be true in a different way. During the recording session, Asuka's voice actor was told by the director, "I'm glad Miyamura is Asuka," which sent chills down my spine as it conveyed the horror of a creator who doesn't hide everything about his life and relationships and uses them to create his works.

In the scene where Shinji says "I liked you too" to the adult Asuka, who is wearing a tight latex suit and drawn in a more realistic character design (making us aware of the cosplay by Asuka's voice actor), while she is lying on the EOE beach, I thought "You guys should do this in a coffee shop or something between recording sessions! Don't make us watch middle-aged man and woman having unpleasant conversations on the big screen of the theater!", I almost screamed out. I think that's the scary part, the director's one-sided love for Asuka's voice actor is falsified by having the character say that she liked him, as if it was a mutual love. The director's statement at the beginning of the pamphlet says that he started working on the sequel right after Evangelion 2.0 without hesitation, using the worldview of "Q". I'm not trying to quote the line "You can change the reality you don't like by getting on Eva.", but it's not as if he's trying to cover up the fact, but he really believes that using his strong imagery, and it made me feel a bit chilly that there was no one around to correct his misconceptions.

At the end of Human Instrumentality Project, I wondered if the fact that a senior member of the movie industry had praised the shooting of EOE by flipping Cels over as a "tremendous deconstruction" was still fresh in his mind. This time, too, it was postponed after postponement, and even though the makings have been done in time, he showed the other side of the production with line drawings and roughs. The reason it was so innovative was that it was the first time anyone had tried it then, and now, 25 years later, it's just a rut. It's disgusting that everyone is praising the master's strange drawing habit and saying, "Oh yeah, that's it, that's it." As I've said before, it's like "defecating in a sixty-nine," which was successful because the first partner happened to be a scatologist. The expression of EOE was sharp and ”Rock’n’‐roll”, but Shin-Eva's "fun of anime images" has gone into the realm of traditional art, like slow "Gagaku".

The director hadn't decided who Mari Makinami was for a long time -- he was so indifferent to her that he threw the actor's acting plan to a sub-director -- but with Shin-Eva, he's changed her into an equal to Moyoco Anno, his wife. In other words, the flashy battle in the middle of the film, which is unimportant to many viewers, is revealed to have been a very pleasant pretend play for the director, in which he has his former love and his current wife fight on his favorite robots. Once again, we are shown the director's so-what-attitude, which has not progressed even a millimeter since "I'm an asshole," and which he can complete his work only by masturbation. So it's no wonder that they couldn't depict the extremely simple catharsis of Shinji's great success with Eva Unit01, which is what most of the old fans want. Because a robot with a pathetic old man on board can't get an erection due to impotence, let alone masturbation!　Oops, excuse me, sir.

And as I said before, it's time to realize that the English language has become so popular in Japan that it's become lame. You use Infinity, Another, Additional, Advanced, Commodity, and Imaginary, just because it sounds cool to you, right?　Everyone criticized the naming "Final Impact", but I never thought I'd see the time when I'd faint from the lack of taste and coolness in Evangelion, such as Another Impact, Additional Impact.

And the ending, with the wedding report in a live-action aerial shot of the director's hometown, newbie fans are screaming that it is like, "They're doing a very positive version of the old "Return to Reality!". But I felt it was too empty and cynical because it was intended to be read that way by the director. It depicts only the elation of marriage, and the pain of getting along with a partner and his or her family with different values is cut off (well, maybe Q was expressing the hardship of married life......). But isn't the emotional weight of a marriage report much higher when you meet your partner's parents?　The fact that he ended the movie by showing his own hometown instead of his wife's hometown leaves me with the impression that he's definitively an egotistical geek through and through. "You may have graduated from a good university and are making good money in the city, but if you're not married and don't have children, aren't you somehow humanly flawed?" After 25 years, Evangelion, which was such a forward-thinking Sci-Fi, is now completely in sync with the earthly ethics of Showa-era's farmers and farm horses. "I got married and it saved my life. I don't know about you, but why don't you try?" You can think what you want, but if you want to convey it as a message of salvation, you have to express it in the content of your work, not in your own talk.

I've been married for 20 years, I have two children, both of whom are about to reach the age of adulthood, I've paid off the mortgage on my home, and I'm finally at the end of raising my children, but all of that is just an outer shell of a social skin that has nothing to do with my true nature or where my soul is! There's no connection between what kind of life an individual lives in the real world and the Sci-Fi sense of wonder, in fact, there shouldn't be any connection! If you're a science fiction fan, take a page from the great Arthur C. Clarke! I was a nerd with a negative value of 100, but when I got married, I gradually poured the "common-sense values" of the Showa era into myself, and now I'm a true man with no negative value? Don't write such pathetic fiction proudly! Listen, what you presented to the audience at the end was the same thing that someone would say to you, "You seedless stallion!" It's the same kind of unethical and vulgar message that you shouldn't be giving! The old Eva became a classic of Japanimation, and no one was able to properly scold you, or you keep away those who tried, and the result of this is directly reflected in the ending of Shin Eva!　You've reached your 60th birthday and you only have such poor social common sense, damn it!

I'm sorry, I was so excited that I lost my control a little bit, just a little bit. I think the director is relying a little too much on his wife, who is ultimately a stranger on, to be his laison d'etre (lol). If they were to break up in the future, it would certainly be the soil for the next Eva, the content and development of which is completely predictable, but that is no longer my concern. I wonder if his wife doesn't like the fact that he's mentally dependent on her like this, and that it's being shown on screens all over the country. If it were me, I'd be furious, but since she's a creator, I guess she understands how he feels. Ignoring the other person's feelings and continuing to force what he believes to be love on her, thinking that it will make her happy, seems to me that there has been no progress at all since the way he treated his girlfriend 25 years ago. The person I want to hear from the most right now is not the self-proclaimed Eva fans who are looking at each other from the side and giving positive feedback in celebration of the final episode, but his wife. If the director had a child, he would not have been able to distinguish between his own ego and that of the child, and would have doted on his child, making a documentary film about his or her growth, but would most likely have turned into a controlling and poisonous parent in his or her adolescence. And he animated his feelings for his child who was rebelling against him, without the child's permission, considering it as a one-sided redemption for the child, and the child who was exposed to the whole country about their home life would have distanced from his father more and more.

In the end, Evangelion did not become a product like Gundam, but rather a robot animation that was the director's weird personal novel. The repeated use of the word "job" in the film has stuck in my mind, but in order for the studio to survive, it had to make Evangelion a product in this new series, and I'm sure that was the initial motivation behind the production of these new films. Your real "job" was to make Evangelion the same as Gundam, to protect the people who came to you because they loved Evangelion. Years from now, I can see a future where Xapa will be like Ghibli, behead the staff and continue as a copyright management company. The director, who didn't want to be embarrassed as a creator by a new challenge adopted the safe way -- I can't believe that I have to use the word "safe" for Evangelion -- to end the new series that relied on EOE only for himself, not for the future of the people who came to admire him. That's what Shin Evangelion is all about.

The good part? The fact that he didn't bring Shin Ultraman trailer at the end of the film makes me think he has grown up a bit. If you're declaring "Farewell, All Evangelions" with the intention of hurting, disappointing, and disinterested old fans like me, then your malice is unfathomable, and that's quite a feat. Brilliantly, your intentions have permanently killed a part of me that used to be an Eva fan.

As horrifying as it is to imagine, it must have crossed the director's mind to reschedule the film and set a new release date for March 11. The only reason he didn't do so is not that he has grown up to be a sensible adult, but rather because the idea of linking Evangelion 3.0 with the Great East Japan Earthquake was a fact that is too painful for him to make it public.

Ten years ago today, many lives were lost and Evangelion was destroyed.

This fact will never disappear, no matter how much the director denies and covers up with the "true" history. If there is any mission left for me as a fan, it is to continue to pass on this fact to future generations as a storyteller. It is a huge loss for Japanese fiction that the end of the great Evangelion has become a self-recovery work of the great failure of the reboot affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, and that the potential of the great Evangelion has been consumed by the self-defense of someone who cannot admit his own mistakes, and I sincerely regret it. Shin Evangelion will be forever cursed by the dead, who yearn to see the sequel of Evangelion 2.0, and the living, who yearn to see the sequel of Evangelion 2.0.

This curse will be completed when it spreads, arrives, and is burned by the powers that be as a false history. I pray that my thoughts will reach him!

#evangelion 3.0+1.0

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kvetchlandia · 4 years ago

Photo

Richard Meltzer Lester Bangs Passed Out on Meltzer’s “Highly Uncomfortable Living Rm. Chair,” 104 Perry St., Apt. 4, West Village, New York City 1972

On December 14th, this December 14th, Lester Conway Bangs, while probably not the greatest writer of his generation, arguably its most vital so far to die, would have been 36. Haunted and driven by demons, so- called, a cheerless many of whom/what/ which — or their kindred ilk — he directly sought, found cum stumbled upon, or was inadvertently ensnared by on the demon picnic grounds of Rock and Roll, he never made it to 34.

Following the lead of a handful of babes in the rock-critical woods, one of which I'll admit (if sometimes reluctantly) to having been. Bangs at the dawn of the seventies played as prominent a role as anyone in both expanding the expressive boundaries of rockwriting as a form and giving it a voice that played the newer, more mannered and cautious, mass-market rockmags like Rolling Stone and Creem — the latter of which he even edited for awhile — as on the dime as it had played the catch-as-catch-can, limited-edition fanzines whence it came. Though he also served as the burgeoning genre’s most prolific scribbler, a mission he sustained with relative ease for the bulk of his days, it is to the man’s lasting credit that he rarely delivered copy on anyone’s dotted line. In fact, he probably “got away with more’’ in major- publication print than all his rockwrite brethren combined, conceivably (however) because it merely simplified matters to have a single Designated Outlaw, one entrusted with a blanche enough carte — and unmonitored options galore — to spike with “authenticity ’’ a rock-media stew of bogus Freedom and ersatz Candor.

Retrospectively cliched or not, there was an existential purity to the sheer commitment evinced by Lester’s prolonged wallow in (and about) the rock- and-roll Thing-in-itself. It was, in many ways, the critical headbang to end all critical headbangs; it would be hard to even imagine, for instance, a professional art-film bozo, a jock-sniffing sports jerk, or a food-review lunatic more uninsulatedy gung-ho vis-a-vis x — either as primary experience or typewrite wankery. His patented shameless multipage gush, coupled with an unswerving advocacy of certain conspicuously over- the-top rock genera (Velvet Underground offshoots; Heavy Metal; Punk Rock), made him a must-read favorite with both cognoscenti and dipshits alike, and he came as close to encountering idolatry per se as any non-musician in R&R. A good deal of which — natch —could not help hitting the self-consciousness fan, but while a man’s life was ultimately undone in the process (“I’m Lester — buy me a drink! ’’), the integrity of his art/craft was essentially unaffected. For, while he might have been a tad too glib-messianic those last couple years, he was by no stretch of things an opportunist, never really giving a hoot for what in squaresville would be known as a career. (Or, perhaps, unlike his role model Kerouac, he simply didn’t live long enough for that, too, to be strenuously tested.)

In any event: dead, cremated, literal ashes. California born (Escondido ’48), bred (El Cajon, ages 9-23), and traveled (I first hung with him in San Francisco, last in L.A.), Lester bought the big one on the opposite coast — his final home, the fabled Apple — April 30/82, ostensibly from a hefty pull of darvon employed, in lieu of aspirin, to placate the flu. Since his death, variously interpreted as a mile-radius teardrop’s once-in-a- lifetime terminal burst, a joke and a half on both himself and his precious chosen whole damn Thing, and — by occasional uncouth louts — the final glorious triumph of his excess, the spectrum of Bangs-in-ongoing-print has dwindled from monochromatic /sparse to colorless/ nonexistent. Of the two books in his name which appeared during his lifetime, quasi-coffeetable numbers on Blondie and Rod Stewart, neither a particularly representative Lestorian effort (or even particularly good: the former admittedly hacked out “in two days on speed,’’ and looking it, i. e., ad hoc and forced; the latter disowned as a clumsy, if innocent, foray into “writing as whoring’’), both are either out of print — officially — or on the back burner of barely having ever been in same, at least as regards this coast, where I’ve yet to see either in bookstore one. Nor have two posthumous whatsems. Rock Gomorrah, cowritten (early ’82) with L.A.’s Michael Ochs, and a projected collection of unpublished fragments scrounged from Bangs’s apartment a day or two after his death, gotten more than inches off the publishing ground — the former for reasons which if herein revealed would get me sued but good, the latter because, in the words of editor Greil Marcus, “the stuff is less tractable than I thought at less than 5000 words or so.’’ Also stalled, and/or abandoned (and/ or nonspecific pipedreams to begin with) : all known plans to reissue out-of- print Live Wire LP Jook Savages on the Brazos, recorded, Austin, TX, Dec. ’80, by Lester Bangs & the Delinquents, lyrics and vocals by guess who. In fact, the only anything by L. C. Bangs readily available where availables are sold is his liner copy for The Fugs Greatest Hits Vol. I, released by PVC/Adelphi some months after he’d croaked, for which he (or rather his atoms) later copped a Grammy nomination, and for which, reliable word has it, he never was paid.

Well, I’ve been proven wrong; it hasn’t been easy recollecting Lester in even half a toto in so much tranquility. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea back when obits were appearing left & right and at least two- thirds of ’em smacked of revisionism at its well-intentioned worst; having ridden the range with the guy, having been as intimate with his daytime/nighttime revealed essence — I would bet my boots — as anyone in or out of various possible beds with him, I had fiery goddam galaxies to say in his behalf that were simply not being said, at least not in print by his designated peers; and, although my no longer living in New York couldn’t help but delay my shot, remote and after-the-fact seemed like the ticket, y’know anyway, for some major necessary rerevision.

But here it is two, two and a half years gone & more, and whuddaya know if all the raw goddam pain (at the loss of, yes, a brother) and jagged fucking anger (at a waste of life, life-force, and relative inconsequential like “talent” and “genius”), an unbeatable duo which for weeks, weeks, months gave the Lester totality so cosmic a shape, scale and intensity, have by their own inevitable burnout given way to the contemplation of standard-issue mere data, of the skeletal remains of a larger-than-life life which have come to make sense (or not) in too neat, too linear, a manner. Well — hey — fuggit: Even if grocery lists, chalk diagrams and hokey storytellin’ are the forms ongoing life-as-life has imposed on the mission, there’s still a heap of essential Lester information that could use, uh, exposure to printed-page light.

What too many write-biz intimates sought to do in the wake of his death was debunk the Lester Legend (solely) by reciting evidence that his bark was worse than his bite. While I’m sure he’d have “wanted it done” (i.e., have the saga-as- litany scraped of treacherous barnacles, or at least of their treacherous vogue), I can’t imagine the projected post-life intent of such a wish as in any way entailing cosmetic overhaul, especially in the service of moral/experiential object lessonhood. Lester’s day-to-day transaction with post-adolescent life-as- dealt was — let’s be conservative — 94 % anything but pretty. If he’d have wanted his entire whatsis to serve up viable scenarios for intimates and non-intimates alike (gee, would the Pope prefer to be Catholic?), there’s no way the deal’d come out even provisionally Lester-functional without interested non-intimates having retroactive access to as hefty an eyeful of the not-so-pretty — in all its hideous, non-Clearasiled blah blah blah — as intimates galore regularly managed to cop and, in their various personal ways, have already learned from. To deglorify an earlier incarnation of shit (which the man himself was clearly hellbent on doing in his waning days on earth) you’ve got to at least speak its name — loudly! — for the whole entire planet: c’mon now, one & all. A solemn responsibility (I call it) which, credibly/incredibly, the smelly sumbitch’s closest associates have, to this day, all but refused to consider.

To wit: For every time anyone saw the defanged, declawed Lester teddy bear rear its cuddly li’l head (see obits 2, 3, 5 & 7) the man was uncountable times the asshole, the buffoon, the sodden tyrant; been those things myself — in semi-prior lifetimes — so I know. Back in ’73, for inst, the soon-to-be-dead Lillian Roxon gushed shameless love for the s.o.b., in New York on Creem business, ordering up a Lester button and leaving it in his hotel box; response to this purest of offerings was “What’s that fat cunt want from me?” About a year later I get this call from Nick Tosches requesting that I please take Lester, who’d shown up at his door on acid, “off my hands”; took him to a party at John Wilcock’s place, during which he verbally brutalized Wilcock’s wife (in green Fingernails) for being a “hooker,” snapped at an affable Ed Sanders for being “the only alkie in the counter-culture,” and had nothing more to say to Les Levine’s Asian girlfriend (wife?) than “Yoko is a lousy gook”; further into the night, at Vincent’s Clam Bar in Little Italy, he literally bellowed ( more than twice), “There’s a lotta tackin’ wops in this joint.” And how can I forget the way he treated me and Nick, his closest approximate friends f'r crying out loud, as our wonderful editor while at Creem? He’d call us each up at 3 a.m. to urgently solicit various (rather specific) reams of pap, needed via Special D toot sweet; we’d climb outta bed, peck away bleary-eyed to whack out the closest possible takes on what he’d claimed he wanted, whereupon he’d reject ’em with a vengeance (“I won’t print beatnik shit”), then run thoroughly like-minded i. somethings — under his own byline — or with our words, usually verbatim, laced throughout. Just a few “examples,” dunno if they sound like big stuff or small, in any event typical Lester, with plenty, plenty more where they came from — y’know times n-plus-many.

In spite of such anticommunal upchuck, or quite possibly because of it — post-adolescent of a post-summer-of-love feather & all that — I did have deep affection for the bastard during my final years in New York; he could really piss me off (and I, I’m assuming, him) but bygones were always eventually ditto. In those days I generally shared his affection for The Edge, and might even’ve gone extreme slightly ahead of him; in January ’72, this is true, he actually dubbed me “the Neal Cassady of rock and roll.” But by fall ’75, when I split New York to at least simulate an escape from the Frantic and Hyper (and he subsequently arrived, ostensibly to embrace same), I was feeling the first stirrings of apprehension re my own prolonged massive intake of Edge Substances (emotional, cultural, but above all chemical) and was on the verge of an early series of attempts to, y’know, cut down, to maybe get off my collision course with all sorts of walls, both metaphoric and real. Lester, meantime, seemed on a rapid upswing in the intake dept.; what had so far served as mere horizon or frame for his trip, or at most been its semi-essential fuel, was now lunging headlong for the foreground of his life ... or should we call it the twin foregrounds (life as Mythic Construct; life as physical/emotional/cultural Hard Mundane Reality).

Hey, the guy was beginning to scare me. Certainly as an advanced — or rapidly advancing — version of what I no longer wanted to be and could (possibly) imagine once again becoming, but more as this vivid, palpable spectre of specialized human decomp not just out there but right there: a pal & a buddy headed (willy nilly?) for the sewer. From late ’75 immediately onward, on those unlikely occasions when separate coasts — underscored by far fewer rockwrite junkets — any longer allowed for it, I was usually unable to handle being in the same room with him, knowing I’d have to witness whole new increments of what could really no longer be passed off as anything but (gosh) misery and (dig it) horror. Where in the earlier ’70s it was almost cute — once in a while — the way Lester would stumble into classic self- directed drunk jokes (like the time he called me from the Detroit airport to tell me he was headed for an Alice Cooper show in London, presumably England, only he’d drunkenly got it wrong and was on his way to London, Ontario), there was this half-week in ’79, for inst, during which he hung out at Michael Ochs’s house in Venice with no daily design but to get skid-row-calibre gone and stay there, that was just fucking grim. Looking an unhealthy as I’d ever seen him, basic shit-warmed over with an ngly bump on his forehead (which he claimed he was “treating with Romilar”), he refused to eat without an Occasion. When, one evening, Michael and I pretty much dragged him to a Mexican restaurant, he refused to actually step inside until he’d fortified himself with the cottons from six Benzedrex inhalers — the local pharmacist was out of Romilar — busted open on the sidewalk with a shoe.

Washing down their remnants with a Dos Equis as his enchilada sat there staring at him, he quoted (or claimed he was quoting) Sid Vicious: “Food is boring.”

So, inevitably, when Billy Altman rang me up from N.Y.Clearly on a California morn, to let me hear it straight from a friend — “instead of from a creep” — my immediate response to no more Lester, steps ahead of all the pain & anger & whut, was holy fucking shit, the fucker finally did it; it’d been in the real-world cards for long-long times for Lester to cease to be. Though even on his gonest days he was no way a classic cornball suicide-romantic — heck, I don’t really think he was all that clinically suicidal (big-sleep fantasies never overtly/covertly lured him, not even metaphorically, from the darkest sub-basement of his World of Dread; nor was Danger, though he often nonstop lived it, itself the merest tickle of a ripple of a thrill for him, a context before the fact) — he’d sure staged more corny, frightful dress rehearsals than Jim Jones plus Judy Garland (squared) for simply ending up dead.

Biggest of which I ever saw was January ’81. I’m at Nick’s place in New York, en route back to L. A. from Montreal, when who should pay a surprise visite but Mr. Bangs, cassette in hand. It’s a tape of these tracks recorded during an Austin romp I’d heard about second or third hand (he’d planned to “live there forever,” it was said, ’til a night in the local drunk tank — on top of who knows what else — totally changed his mind), and in the course of the next 12-15 hours he played it, for us and at us, many times. Also during this stretch, after boasting, rather proudly, that he no longer drank, he managed to ingest at least 36 cough- suppressant tablets (three 12-packs of Ornical — we weren’t always watching) washed down with sizable slugs of bourbon, as there was nothing else but water to wash ’em down with.

All stages of this ordeal, in which Nick and I were little more than foils for surge upon surge of what we’d come to regard as typical Lestorian bathos, were hardly bearable in the state we were in (after far too many “nights with Lester,” going back to the days when we even could dig it, we’d opted for a change to take this one straight), but the morning-after phase was literally one for the books. On the umpteenth playback of what was soon to hit the racks as the Jook Savages LP, Lester insisted that one particular vocal was pure Richard Hell (in Lester’s cosmos an a priori yay); my dogtired no-big-deal of a response was it sounded existentially neater than that, more on the order of Tom Verlaine (a Lester nuh-nuh-no). Suddenly hair-trigger sensitive — in a performance-trigger vein — he tapdanced back with “Then I might as well go sell shoes in El Cajon.” Next cut he compared himself to somebody (very contempo) else, prompting me to comment, for non-pejorative, sleep- denied better or worse, that his vocals (across the board; in general) had the same basic flavor as those on such country-western parodies as Sanders' Truckstop or the Statler Brothers’ Johnny Mack Brown High School LP. Affecting grievous offense, as if any of his b.s. actually mattered (the Lester of ’73/’74 — in any chemical state — would merely’ve giggled), he took things up a full notch of indignant/sarcastic: “Well I guess I’m just no fucking good. ”

But he wouldn’t stop playing the crap, not with every cut looming as a supercharged occasion for kneejerk call- and-response, a challenge for him to goad Nick and/or me into goading him, in turn, into mock-self-deprecatory one-liners ad nauseum — a dress rehearsal, as it were — his puke-stained sweater seemed appropriate — for his triumphant appearance on Johnny Carson, which he had no doubt the worldwide success of his Blondie book would imminently require . . . along with a shot of his mug, cleanshaven, on the cover of People (over which he whined “fear” of besmirched personal image).

Ultimately Nick and I, weary of further compliance in so shoddy an interpersonal number, old buddy or not (and/or old bud in particular), found ourselves laughing in his face; enough was enough, and the sight of this bumbling mammal going gaga for an audience of two-who-knew- better was kind of otherworldly amusing. The object of our yuks, however, took it as us laughing with him: Great Moments in Standup/Audience Rapport! Swollen with illusory (or whatever) whacked-out self, Lester then proceeded to announce his program: (1) to save Rock & Roll; (2) to become president (presumably Oi the U.S. of A.); (3) to move to England and in turn save their Rock & Roll. As mere dipshit goals, nos. 1 and 3 meant topically little to either of us — geez, we’d all but buried the Anglo-Am mainstream as even an idle, y’know, sometime hobby or whatnot — but (2) hit us firmly, instantaneously, in the breastplate.

Lester’s neurons, no recent model of health to begin with, had made the short-circuit of Lester Bangs . . . [tenor saxophonist] Lester Young . . . (latter's nickname] Pres . . . Pres/U.S.A. per se!!!

Guffaw, guffaw — we guffawed — though I guess we could've gasped (or shuddered). Then: a heavy silence, as cosmic (or whatever) as it was awkward, filled presently by the man himself:

"Hey! I'm gonna buy some import albums! I'll get a whore I know to lend me her charge card! Cab fare too!" And he was off; no amiable nudging, no “Get the fuck out of here" could take the place of timeless vinyl hunger. Gone at last — and we gave him (in all solemn, empirical, non-jive reckoning) six months to live.

But of course he fooled us, by (nearly) a whole damn calendar year. Surprise, surprise: but an even bigger surprise was the extent to which he managed to actually turn things around — well, almost — during that extra annum, especially during its. and his. final months. Not only was he still among the living, not only did he no longer seem conspicuously earmarked for premature exit — the Lester with whom I spent a rather refreshing week in February '82 gave every indication of having already gone beyond mere survival (as an issue) and appeared, astonishingly, to be thriving on the theme.

In L.A. following his mother's eventually fatal stroke and staying with his 56-year-old half-brother in Studio City, he accompanied me one night to a low-stakes poker game attended by members of the Blasters, the perfect setup, you’d figure, for Lester to revert to type. But no, he just minimally fun-&- games'ed it like anyone else — no lookin' for opportunities to “be Lester," no showing off for rock-roll peers either verbally or intakewise. no diving for the evening's jugular and letting 'er rip — and after two beers (!). without so much as a grimace, he declared he’d had enough. Postgame he engaged Phil Alvin in a lively musical dialogue, but at no point did fightin' words fill the air, or were axes even poised for grinding. The pair agreed to exchange tapes — a wholesome friendship in the making — and next day Lester complained (true, true) that reefer had been smoked.

As the week wore on in consistent, low- key fashion. I was struck by the fuckload of inner capacities the guy was perceptibly calling on, left, right and center, to extend his defiance of Death to the domain of just plain living, capacities I hadn't caught sensory evidence of — all previously told — for more than 11 minutes total. A far cry from anything as cheaply benign as, let's say, more frequent eruptions of "Lester washes the dishes" (see obit 04), what I got to witness was kind of on the order of a whole new Lester, one who'd finally found a non-lethal, functionally less jagged (though in no way “benign") rhythm for his life. Engaging him in tight quarters with more open-heartedness per se than I*m sure I’d ever mustered (sharing an Edge does not always make for brotherhood-by-numbers. let alone by pure, unedited inclination), I willingly submitted to his rap/rant and bought its tenor if not its verbatim transcript; by the time he returned to New York, his mother still hanging on. I’d seen and heard a New Lester series pilot that could credibly have played — prime time — on the Pro- Life Network.

For starters, he’d learned to slow down, to proceed apace through a given experience without easy reliance on everpopular on-off switches. He'd gotten far more selective about the company he kept, seeking out, for the first time in his known adult life, social interactions stressing soulwarming interpersonal comfort over thrash-trigger me-you tribulation. A good deal less insistent upon strapping each day to an emotional chopping block (as recalled, for inst, in that old chestnut of his, “I need to be in love!"), he'd begun to let his life embrace emotional motifs of greater duration and resiliency. And. as stuff like this fed back to his theoretic apparatus, even Lester's ideas (as stated) began to display an unexpected day-to-day congruity; no longer, it seemed, would he write an anti-racist wowser for the Village Voice in one breath and scream, "Fuckin’ niggers!” at Village Oldies the next. Lester-as-flux had had its thoroughly engaging run. and for this to give way to a “maturer” unpredictability was not the worst of possible outcomes.

Even the drastic reduction in Lester’s intake of physical poisons bore little trace of on-the-wagon-or-bust — y'know, as if any day, minute, second the tension of it all would cause him to snap right back with equal vengeance — particularly with its status as but part of a whole-body package that included both eating at regular intervals and a radical olfactory modification: He now took baths. (One afternoon in ’74 Nick and I met Lester at some ritzy midtown hotel. Though he’d been in the room all of an hour, the smell was like a dog had died there, and been left to rot, weeks or months before. Consequently, we vetoed his offer to call down for drinks on Creem’s tab, suggesting, to his consternation, that any dump of a bar would be more, uh, whatever. Many of his heterosex liaisons had foundered on the rocks of precisely this issue.)

In terms of cultural orientation, no longer was he monomanically enslaved to rock & roll (-or-perish). For virtually the first time since the sixties he didn’t need, burningly, brand new Big Beat LP’s in his mail slot each (and every) day; the state of the Art, wobbling on a multi-year terminal gimp, no longer served as his external psychic barometer, his armband of first-person pride (or shame); having finally produced Music of his own, to severe personal specifications (regardless of the giggles it inspired in jerks like me), he no longer needed to prove anything with it or through it. Crucially, though some would probably like to deny it. he no longer saw Rock’em-Sock'em as a viable metaphor for his (or any, kindred or otherwise) state of being, viewing it as the all too easy — and ultimately, revoltingly, unsatisfactory — crystallization of (mega-numerous) blank and scattered lives. Lester's break with rock-roll mythos as his be-all/end-all of etc., which I have no doubt (had he lived) he’d've sooner rather than later made official, was as profound, and profoundly moving, as his break with the Myth of Lester. As one committed jackass who’d made the same painful transition — goodbye, Rock-Automated Self! — I knew how tough a bond the chronically intermingled personal/cultural can be to crack (and my heart went right out to him).

It also warmed my cockles, considering his record in the mere civility dept., to see him relate (graciously) to his half- brother’s wife, this unaffectedly pretty 21- year-old rural Mexican the macho blusterer, a stuntman by trade, had recently acquired, maritally, while on location Down South. Though she knew pun near zero English, my first sight of her she was watching some random English-language crap, while hubby rested for a shoot of the Fall Guy series, on the tiny TV in her fussy suburban kitchen; materially cozy for the first time in her life, she seemed lonely, disoriented, far from home. Silent and solemn, she visibly stiffened — shyly? menially? — at the intrusion of Lester, my girlfriend Irene and me. only to be put at ease by Lester introducing us, without missing a beat, as, well, friends of the family. Like it mattered to him that she feel like family — and thus shared in all aspects of etc. — and for a moment the loneliness left her face; she smiled broadly, shook (or at least took) our hands, went back to her tube.

But what came off as so genuine when he was dealing with his family, his friends, kind of sputtered into the ether when he tried to branch it to the family of Man. Whenever he got to talkin' Hard Humanism, which had all the earmarks of being his preoccupation of (Rock- replacement) record, he’d make these broad, lecture-ish, relatively flavorless statements which often didn't wash.

Never wholly credible 'cause once again he seemed to be performing — without booze/etc. but surely with a script — he’d say thus & such about human courage and folly that not only had an artificial ring, it tended to run in direct opposition to what had clearly been his experience. Even his word choice sounded stilted, alien, not his own; when he spoke of "women" he could easily have been reading straight from a column in Cosmo.

A lot of which suggested a Lester so hellbent on being a good boy once and for all that to merely work overtime cleaning up his own act was scarcely sufficient; he had to render a transpersonal commentary that made his good intentions “universal,” even if the topical universality he’d taken an option on was simply the first he found it comfortable song-&-dancing a provisional connection to. There were moments when his bill of particulars made me uneasy, realizing that to intellectually challenge any of this would be like kicking mud on some kid’s newest/truest pastime, 'specially when it was one so socially redeeming, so non- self-destructive. one which, for all intents and purposes, I basically shared with him anyway. What really counted was the miracle of Rock Tough Guy #1, after 15 years of rocknroll plug-in and little else, during which he'd come to thread that needle upside down (and asleep), to the point (even) of smugness, flipness, pomposity, out on a goddam limb over something else: a neophyte at last! (I could dig it.)

Anyway, finally, on the last night of Lester's stay — which worked out as our last time together, period — we did something we’d previously never found the appropriate nexus for: trading rants (in earnest) with blank tapes a-rolling.

For something like five-six hours we went apeshit re such topics as: the sellouts & prejudices of mutual colleagues; novels and novelists; New York as (quite possibly) the coldest outpost on Emotional Earth; the usual standard rockish garbidge (plus some un- and some non-). We also hit on shrinks-we- have-known, with Lester's rap on this rooty-toot of a subject being the single one, from the four-and-a-half hours I’ve so far transcribed, which most tellingly nutshells the excruciating self- examination he had to've undertaken — and undergone — just to be sitting around discoursing as fluidly as he was, to’ve transcended whatever the fuck en route thereto:

“Like I went to a psychoanalyst, one in New York and one in Detroit, for a total of, I dunno, three-and-a-half years. I finally concluded, I mean yeah I’m insane, I’ve got my problems, my sicknesses are fucking me, yeah, I’m sure they both probably helped me, y’know, I know the last guy in New York, it's like everybody I know was totally appalled by my drinking and drugging, well like you, right, and everybody else had the same reaction, y’know, except my shrink. He’d say, ‘No, that's alright.’ I went out to this, he had a country retreat, a whole bunch of us would go out there on weekends. And the first time I went there like I got drunk on Friday night, and Saturday morning I got up and washed down a bottle of Romilar with a bottle of beer while sitting on a slick rock by the stream. I got this great idea for something I wanted to write, I stood up on the rock in boots like these and whoosh, went like that and smashed, see it, the scar on my nose? That's how I got it, smashed my face open.

“And he thought my druggin' and drinkin' was great, y'know? He said, in fact he kind of told me I'd be not as great of a writer if I gave all this stuff up. And I said, 'Yeah, but look at all these people, they rot away, they end up like self- parodies like Kerouac and Burroughs and all that sort of shit.' And he said. 'No. no, not everybody's like that.' I said, How could I someday be 55 years old and have to take a handful of speed to sit down at the typewriter?' Well he said, 'People do it. heh heh heh!' Well both my shrinks, especially this guy, they had real great humanist compassion and empathy and all that, but I know what both of 'em did, and in the long run in essence they were no good for me, because they were getting off on me being there. It’s like they’re so bored, one housewife alter another, 'I don’t love my husband, I don't know why.’ Then they get someone like you or I that's actually interesting, that has ideas, and so it's fun time for 'em. I mean if I hadda follow this guy’s advice I’d be dead, uh, pretty soon.”

Hmm: one effing eery end-of-quote as, alas, all is now dust — reactively acquired caution or no. Possibly possibly possibly, any tonnage of prudence would inevitably have proven insufficient for the autopilot courses he was still, evidently, all too capable of flying. Or, reversing horses and carts, maybe his tortured shell was already jus’ too beat-to-shit, with even a radical lessening in his scale of abuse being too little — archetypally — too late. And then there’s this pharmacological biz about purified cells succumbing to doses they’d have been more than up for when poison was all they knew. (And can we ignore the Wrath of Influenza?)

Even if, to some bitter-enders, his death remains as shrouded in formal “mystery” as those of Eric Dolphy and Warren G. Harding, all-of-the-above can't help but provide a not-unlikely profile of how Lester came to die. Throw in a few more mainline Causalities (cultural: rock-roll glut, esp. coupled w/ too literal an intoxication with Kerouac, Celine, et al; primalpsychological: a childhood more woeful than most, his Jehovah's Witness mom — pushing 50 when she had him — mind-setting, almost singlehandedly. a chronic “inability to cope"; geographic: the Apple, even when it wasn't absolute Edge Central, affording him. given his makeup, scant opportunity for inner peace) and you'd easily have an explanation that 'd hold up in a court of his cronies/cohorts/camp followers.

But if Lester was the pawn, victim, and (indeed) fellow traveler of such easy- Aristotelian a-implies-b, he was also, in those last fitful months, a scatterer of all such shit to the winds, a man who showed his true destiny muscle by throwing all the elements out of on-the-head mythopoetic sync just when they threatened, conspiratorily, to reduce him to merely another Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Mr. Kerouac. Screamingly, courageously, he committed himself, as wholly (really) as possible, to a counter-causal gameplan which even if flawed — and accidents, y’know, happen — did actually manage to defuse (at least where I live & breathe) the mythic oompah of any time-delayed rat-trap he may subsequently (or previously) have fallen in. If there's anything almost pleasing about the timing, the anti-drama, of Lester's death, it's the monumental Mythic Disjuncture factors he'd set in motion were thereby — implicitly, explicitly — to forever effect.

LESTER’S (WRITERLY) LEGACY — “One of rock’s most colorful characters, Bangs made his reputation as a pugnacious, participatory journalist who was not above picking fights with rock stars in pursuit of a good interview." So wrote one voice of prevailing wisdom, Patrick Goldstein, in the May 9/82 L.A. Times; nothing — latter part — could be farther from the truth. If Lester (the writer) more than once battled Lou Reed into (and beyond) the wee hours of etc., it was not to get a story, it was to live a story: to encounter all the rock-related being his writerly credentials (as a wedge) were able to afford him (as a person)'. Nor was he in any way enthralled by the sickening spectacle of stars being stars; artists, maybe, but stars, fug 'em. When he as mere citizen found himself face-to-face with the pose, pretense, and professional guardedness of such gaudy, extraneous creatures, Lester could not (for the life of him) deal with such crap but to cut right through and speak, directly, to the mere citizen in them, or (failing that) force the situation into functional self-destruct — before the fact of anything so dispassionate as actually “writing it up."

That his eventual write-ups tended to display utter contempt for the entire food chain of music-corporate life, often biting, intentionally, a grimy hand that could not’ve been more willing — his mighty Credentials & all — to feed him, heck, fatten him, was but half the take-no-shit of Lester's essential statement as a writer de rock; forcefeeding the stuff, his stuff, the stuff-as-writ, to the only marginally less corporate (or grimy) running dogs of rockwrite publishing was at least as pugnacious a gesture of this-is-what-I-am/this-is-what-I-do/take-it-or-be-fucked. Since the extent of his success in shoving it down so many otherwise unyielding editorial throats may have had less to do with his willful intent than theirs — camouflage, for inst, for their being life-deep in major-label record company pockets — its significance at this juncture is, at most, merely ironic; the reciprocal influence, in any event, of his ease at getting published upon subsequent moments of raw critical-expressive spew was procedurally nil. In fact, what may most enduringly matter about Lester's approach to his chosen profession, way ahead of dandy journalistic touchstones — "courage," “integrity,” “pride in craft" — that he ate for breakfast like so much broken glass (but which, really, you can still get from Nat Hentoff and Howard Cosell), is the “anti-professional," forcibly non-dehumanized square-one struggle he by design submitted to — and could not. with any kernel of his humanity, avoid - in order to pump out critical prose of any scale of note. (Pugnacity with form; with ritual creative context; even — especially — with roleplaying writerly/critical self.)

That he was ofttimes a great writer/critic, so-called, was but icing on the cake. That scant few others, on the hottest days of their lives, have even approached him — or particularly cared to, considering the requisite gravity and passion of the chore he’d set — probably says as much about their investment in lesser quals of cake as it does about the relative inadequacy of their writerly follow-through. Rockwriting is, and nearly always has been, the trade of simps, wimps, displaced machos, brats and saps; of, in Lester's own words, “ass-kissers of the ruling class”; of fuddy-duddy archivists with cobwebs on their specs; of pathetic idealizers of a lost youth no one has ever (even approximately) experienced or possessed; of sycophantic apologists for chi-chi trends, musical and extramusical alike, without which (so they've always claimed) “rock is dead”; of binary yes/no cheeses with the cognitive wherewithal of vinyl, shrinkwrap, the physical column- inch. Rockwritin' Lester, like anyone else in the trade, was certainly each of these things from time to time, though (probably) none of 'em, singly or in tandem, for longer than the odd off review. Sadly, though his untradelike comportment surely tantalized mere tradefolk while he lived — at least in terms of Style — and even begat a not-half-bad (early-’70s) clone in “Metal Mike" Saunders, his actual abiding sway among such clowns, beyond the occasional liftable riff, was — as it continues to be — infinitesimal.

Finally: the twin silly questions (1) where a still-living Lester might hypothetically've taken it (i.e., beyond the rockwrite fishpond) and (2) what such imaginary newstuff could/would conceivably’ve meant to his basic audience. Second one first. Okay, that Lester's rockstuff generally read so hot as personal testimony is one thing; for it to have been perceived by so many as being eminently, genuinely about something — something rather specific, in fact something "rear’ — is something else. When you get down to it, the gospel of Lester's radical about-ness rested largely on a big hunk of readerly illusion, the illusion of a functional one-on-one between the guy’s fertile imaginings and the psychic infrastructure of rock & roll as dealt; there could be harsh discordance, of course, but as long as a firm relationship could (for whatever readerly vested interest) be consistently inferred between Lester’s mindgames and rock’s g-g-games per se, you at least had the stamp of a viable — if totally simulated — one-on-one. But, really/truly, while Lester’s psychic playground may surely have been one drastically twisted maze, its actual correspondence (sympathetic, hostile, whatever) to rock's own labyrinth, one so airtight and dank as to make his seem like wide open etc., was far too often naught but a matter of readerly convenience. Everyone loves a cipher, a living/ breathing anagram or two. even some — hey — with flaws more rampant than Lester’s, but for the man’s writerly service to’ve been gauged (almost solely) vis-a-vis his reliability as a stand-in cipher-of- x, y’know for readerfolk too lame — or lazy — to suss out x themselves, is the real tragedy of the trip, particularly when the first-&-final glue of most folks’ attachment to his writing was never much more than their own desperate attachment to an x they could, and should, have been accessing more independently (and less desperately) to begin with.

So, anyway, here's the rub. Had Lester lived long enough to both sever his own desperate rock connection — officially, in sheets read by his fuckheaded fans, simply by writing other stuff — and, furthermore, to back it up with an equally official rejection of the Fount of Neurosis from which he'd sung its tune (and they'd listened), it ain't really much of a longshot to imagine him losing a huge percent of the fuckheads — certainly the most gung-ho among 'em — in, well, no time flat. And, c’mon, how much of an immediate, uh, new audience was he likely to yank in writing up (as he insisted he would) such transcendently pivotal mere-humanistic trifles as the dearth of love (as we know it) in scene X or Y . . . how this set of new-age culture jerks uses that set of new-age culture jerks as props in regards to bluh . . . New York editors who pull rank (pshaw!) along collegiate lines [a hard-hitting exposé] . . . or, I dunno, something about shams and follies in clothes and/or grooming?

Plus, well, though, um — (even if) — then again: Aside from loss of ad hominem authority due to the fickle scumbait nature of the pop-world Beast, aside from the fact that many of his generic partisans would prob'ly now be targeted, topically and even personally, in scathing printed-page rants, aside from the limited run such goulash (Sensitive Ties His Laces, w/ Brass Knucks & Footnotes) has ever had — hey — can ever/will ever have . . . aside, aside, aside — the most glaring fact fact is how few times, as of his death, he'd as yet even aspired to the heights (or whats) or non- rock journalism. Four-five-six, some number like that, in the Voice and wherever else, all of ’em still pretty much rockwriterly appendices to the rockwrite “adventure," meaning he had a good ways to go before he'd’ve got the wings/chops/ legs for a total-pulp plunge (or at least a regular shift) at full oldtime capacity (but with newtime thrust and content). Which would’ve been no fall from grace no matter how you scope it — give the boy time (for fuck sake) to stumble and bumble and get it right — but how would any possible Lester have dealt with a (previously amenable) shithook book co. like Delilah telling him not now, sonny when he handed ’em a ream of copy on (let’s imagine) friends who’re fuckups? Personal persona limelight Lester had learned to live without — but writeperson limelight? (It would not’ve been easy.)

Okay, he's dead. All this brand new grief and hardship never befell him; never will. But words on pages remain: What is their lot? Lester's standard fare was so paradigmatically “of the moment" that he was the rockmag shootist. But books of the stuff? Nah; it’s kind of nebulous how even his best mag outings will wear when inevitably (??) anthologized. For someone so public in his orientation, both as input and output, he was — don't laugh or even smirk — one of rock’s more precious and fragile "private moments.” Private moments you can always document — coercively, of course — but try and play ’em back and. well . . . we'll all see, I reckon.

LESTER LEAPS IN — Y’all know all by now how Lester leapt out of New York; lemme just finish with how he leapt in. His first night in town, just a visit, fall "72, he stayed with me and my girlfriend Roni, West Village, 104 Perry St., apt. 4. Arriving semi-direct from JFK, he split pretty quick for the nearest grocer, returning with three six-packs of Colt 45. What he did for the next day and a half — all he did — was wade through 18 big ones, half quarts, as follows: start can, drink fast, get tired; fall out, dropping remainder; awaken following can’s impact with floor; stagger to fridge for fresh one; repeat cycle. What he mumbled or muttered during any of the 18 pre-fallout phases I simply do not recall.

So like hey y’know wo hey hey wo-wo hey, OLD SPORT: love ya, hope I didn’t cramp yer style, g’bye.

--Richard Meltzer, “Lester Bangs Recollected in Tranquility” Dec. 6, 1984

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years ago

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January 3: Writing Resolutions

Okay, taking a break from rambling about Star Trek (...on tumblr, still talking about it on skype lol) to try to give some sort of order to my writing life in 2021.

I’ve had these ideas in mind for a while, but I’ve been trying to put them into words and put them in order.

I know I want to go back to writing more (and reading more) this year. But I also know that life is going to be just as hard as last year, probably for a while, and that my work schedule is not going to be conducive to me having a lot of time and energy to be creative.

I also know that I’ve been unhappy with my creative life for a while, for other reasons: my sense that engagement with my work is down; my lack of interest in the source material; my perception that the general tide of popular fandom stuff is...not wherever I am, I’ll just put it that way. So it’s hard to even convince myself that I should be here at all (I mean, in t100 fandom).

I ask why I don’t quit and it’s because of a sense of obligation to, and continued interest in, my WIPs and my unwritten ideas, plus a dash of ‘too scared to seriously write Star Trek again.’ That’s basically it. I can continue to support my fandom friends by reading and commenting and promoting their work, so that I know people around these parts doesn’t matter much to me re: my own output.

So, here are roughly my thoughts on where I want my writing to go now.

(Goals and Resolutions below.)

Goals:

To write regularly (at least every weekend) in order to keep my creative brain active, and for my own enjoyment.

To be organized with my projects, but not to set deadlines or put pressure on myself to write faster or more.

To finish things for the sake of finishing them, and for no other reason.

To separate myself as much as possible from fandom validation like comments.

To be okay with throwing out drafts, writing stuff I don’t like, experimenting and seeing some experiments not work, and possibly even with throwing some old WIPs in the abandoned pile.

Resolutions:

Take on as few events as possible. As of right now, I’m committed to 2 projects. One is the BBB, which I might drop out of as a writer--I really don’t know. I’m still at a point where I could drop and not hurt anyone else, which is the important thing. The other I have to keep working on. I’m open to participating in rounds of Troped, but not as much to rounds that require sign ups before hand (for example, if another version of Madness happens this year). I didn’t sign up for BJJ, which took a lot of self control, but I have no regrets about it. I am currently leaning against applying for This Simple Fanzine.

Perceive (and speak of) this year as a hiatus. I’m not going to go so far as to ‘retire’ from writing or from posting or from T100. I’m not on an official hiatus. You will see things from me. But my default is “I’m not really going to post much this year” so everything you DO see on tumblr or AO3 is a deviation from the norm rather than an expectation.

Re-organize my writing projects. My current organizational tool is Notion, which is probably better than the documents I was using before but... I’m not actually that fond of it, tbh. It works for other things but not for my writing. I don’t know if that’s the platform or me or both. I have some ideas for how to re-conceive it to be more helpful, including subdividing projects into scenes, arranging the columns as a timeline, changing the default views and metadata fields, separating fandoms from each other, and pulling out projects that are only ideas, not yet started. But we’ll see how that goes.

Start a second system for ideas. I know I can’t continue to treat “fic that’s half written” the same as “hey I had this random thought.” Properly categorizing different types of projects has always been a major difficulty for me. Does an idea suddenly become so much more important because there’s an outline or a few hundred words written for it? Does an idea become more important simply by virtue of time? I’m still not sure what’s going to end up counting as a “pure idea” or “plot bunny” versus “story” or “work in progress” but I do know I need some kind of new level or organization, some kind of strict (if inevitably semi-arbitrary) dividing line.

Return to free writes. I almost entirely stopped doing this after I finished my rare pair project last year. I think this was partially about burn out and partially about my new work schedule, and I admit it can be hard to come up with a whole new idea on the fly. But I also think I need to carve out that sort of space for myself: where there really aren’t any consequences, I don’t care about plot or even characterization, I don’t care if the idea is complete, I don’t care about editing, etc., etc., etc. I’m still on the fence on where I’ll get the inspiration. I might make a generator or open my inbox to requests more often.

Finish those WIPs. Some way or another. I have too many and I feel like they’re a burden on me. I hope to actually finish, as in complete according to the original idea and then post, as many as possible. But “finishing” for current purposes can also mean “cutting out bits and reconfiguring them into something else.” It can mean “throwing them in the abandoned pile.” In some cases it might even mean acknowledging that the story in question isn’t even a WIP--it’s an idea, and maybe one I don’t care about anymore.

Be forgiving. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it.

I think that’s it.. I’ve also been considering trying to put myself out there as more of a cheerleader to other people, but I’m not sure how. Like, I want my inbox to be open to writers who just want to rant or be proud of their work or throw around ideas, even, but I don’t know how to... market myself that way, especially without sounding arrogant lol. I don’t claim to have qualifications, I just want to be supportive and I want to feel excited about stuff I am not personally writing!

#the year 2021 #2021: writing thoughts #my cheerleader role is the one i'm most excited about for bbb #not that i have any idea how that will work #i'm not tagging this any particular way and i do not expect anyone to care.... but also do feel free to interact with this post

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jozstankovich · 6 years ago

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2018; the good and the bad

@fiftyshadesofdes has been urging me to make a post about my year and I’ve been wanting to write something for a while now, but was struggling with what to say. However after @glitchedmirrors‘s recent post (which covers some of what I’m going to talk about) I think I’m ready to say my piece.

Under a cut for length...

2018 has been a year of ups and downs for me. At the beginning of the year I got back into playing Mystic Messenger and rejoined the fandom making fan art and eventually posting some of my fan fiction. I think this year has been one of my most prolific yet in terms of the amount of works I’ve created and I’ve been able to track my progress and see a marked improvement in my art over the course of the year, which feels pretty good. I never imagined the amount of followers I would accumulate because of my fanworks and I was really lucky to make many new friends, a few of which I talk to every day, in addition to meeting my amazing girlfriend.

I also took a huge step forward and created merch of my art for the first time, which was something I’d been wanting to do and that was great as well.

However with the great also came the not so great. Toward the middle of the year I applied for and was rejected from several zines which made me doubt myself and my art a lot. Then I was invited to a project as a guest artist, which after all those rejections felt absolutely amazing. I felt wanted and was so excited to finally contribute to something.

The project however was riddled with drama from start to finish and caused a great deal of anxiety for me. While I’m glad to have my art and writing published in print and for the proceeds to go to charity the experience overall left a sour taste in my mouth and I seriously doubt I am going to be applying for anymore fanzines in the near future.

Most of what made the experience so toxic was a person I came into contact with from the fandom that I now wish that I had never interacted with at all. This individual copied my oc, lied to me, manipulated me, obsessively stalked my blog & the blogs of those who were close to me, treated my friends like shit, and then badmouthed me to others when I became so uncomfortable that I had to block her just to get away. (All of this, of course under the guise of “admiring me”, and I seriously worry about her doing this with other artists.) Not only this, but she was for a time the head of the project I worked on. By the end of it there was only one mod that I trusted and was very worried that my work would be tampered with somehow or that I wouldn’t get credited;;;

Even after blocking this person from all my accounts I kid you not, I still have so much anxiety related to her that just a mention of her user name on a reblog on my dash is enough to trigger me and I had to unfollow a handful of people that I admired because they interacted with her often. It may sound foolish I guess, but after that I felt anxious even being on tumblr, much less part of the fandom and I seriously considered not returning at all (especially after the blow I took from the nsfw ban).

All of that stress coupled with stress from my personal life and the worry of being forgotten because I wasn’t producing any art for a while burnt me out further and I am just now starting to feel the motivation to draw again.

I’m hoping that finally talking about what happened will help me get past these terrible feelings I’ve been keeping pent up for months now. I want to create more, but I’m tired of hiding, chasing recognition, and over all trying to be someone I’m not.

So this year I want to go back to doing the things that make me happy and excited to create. I’m going to surround myself with good people and focus on what interests me: unapologetically drawing my ocs more, continuing to draw my Choi boys, and also branching out to some new characters from other media I enjoy. I want to open my Patreon soon, add more merch to my shop, design new dakis, and hopefully print my own art book/zine. I’d also like to get back to writing my mysme long fic that I haven’t touched for ages.

Finally thank you to all of you that have stuck with me this year whether you’re a new follower/mutual/friend or one of those that still supports me despite no longer being active in the same fandom, you guys are a big part of what keep me going. Also a huge thank you to those of you that have listened to me rant, cry, and talk about what’s been going on, y’all are my rock and I appreciate it so much.

Let’s make this year a better one yet! Like The Mountain Goats’ song ‘The Year’ says “I am gunna make it through this year if it kills me.” Well, I made it through last year and I’ll do it again this year.

#jawztalks #update #mini-rant

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clowngremlin · 6 years ago

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got an anon message that reminded me of my good things list....i have been really busy making art lately so i havent done one in a bit so it’s time!!! under the cut because it’s long!!!

i’ll start from monday:

-saw one of my best friends who i hadnt seen for two weeks because she has been really sick!!

-went to the lgbt youth group where we chatted and i worked on my comic for my mcr fanzine!!

-made some new friends at a job interview!!

-had a very tasty bagel!!! it had fancy cream cheese :3c

tuesday:

-finished my comic for my mcr fanzine....it’s not the only thing for the zine im making so it will be a lil while longer before i post it!!

-did another comic that i still need to post that i am very proud of!!

-someone said something really nice to me about my comic i posted

-saw my psych and he and i had a good talk about maybe seeing if i can get into the film industry with my skills which is something i had never thought of before.....in my city it’s a huge industry so it’s something to look into!!

-had a meeting with a lady about my academic withdrawal....she said my case is really strong and they will most likely grant me academic exception so i wont fail!!!

wednesday:

-my sister came over!!! it was nice to see her!!

-my sister and i shared a fancy muffin....it was a strawberry cheesecake muffin and extremely tasty :3c

-went out for dinner with hope!!! we went to one of my favorite restaurants!!! it’s a vegan Vietnamese place that has the best sauce for the salad rolls!!!

-saw a different pal when i was out with hope and it was nice to see them!! i hadnt seen them for a while so it was good to catch up!!

-got starbucks with hope as well and that was nice!!

-wore an excellent outfit that consisted of a black and white striped long sleeved shirt, my black overalls, fishnet stockings underneath the overalls because they have rips in them so u can see the fishnet and it looks Cool, my slime green and purple creepers, my funky sunglasses one of my friends gave me for my birthday, and my bright green fishnet fingerless gloves!!

-did a drawing i was really proud of AND a comic!! i havent posted the comic yet either...i should be posted my comics more often lol.....anyways the drawing got a lot of likes on instagram and i was very happy :>

thursday:

-stayed home for most of the day, working on my various comics and drawings and spending time with eli

-went down town to go to the comic book store to get the newest umbrella academy hotel oblivion comic, ended up getting it AND a twd comics t shirt....it has rick, negan, michonne and carl on it and i was really stoked to find it because it was the last one AND it was $10....over half off.....i had seen it a while ago at the comic book store and never bought it because shirts there are expensive so im pretty pleased

-also went to lush down town, got one of those naked cleansing bars....had a lil dance party with the workers.....it was nice!!!

-got a tea at david’s tea....i am a bit :/ about supporting david’s tea because i used to work at one and they treated me like shit at the end, but i just wont support the one i used to work at, and i also wont buy anything but teas of the day because they’re cheaper lol. anyways i got a grapefruit tea and it was tasty!!

-lots of people told me they liked my pins!!!

-did even more work on my drawings and comics when i got home

-went to bed before 3:00 am!!

-one of the youths from the trans support group i go to bought a garf plushie and asked me if i wanted it???? it was so nice of them ;_;

friday:

it was really nice and sunny

-saw the best shirts at the thrift store but i didnt buy them and im really sad about it but it’s for the best because i need to save money but it sent me into a depressive spiral and it was really upsetting and i got a stress head ache thinking about having to find a new job and felt really sick

-had a nice walk with eli to help me calm down after the anxiety attack i had over trying to find a job....saw many excellent dogs that eli loves to go and visit with!!!

-this dog gets their own point because they are special....i saw a little white Pomeranian wearing CLOTHING!!! they were wearing like a little funky jacket/suit and SHOES!!! it was the best

-multiple friends sent me the garfield phone mystery news article.....this is more of a theme for the over all week because i’ve had someone send it to me at least once a day for the past couple of days, but i love and appreciate it regardless because it means that my friends pay attention to my interests and things i like!!!

-ate 2 meals, babey!!! i goofed breakfast, but i had both a lunch and a dinner and i ate it all and didnt use behaviors afterwards!!

-worked on my art some more!!

-looked at the classes im going to register for in the summer semester....im taking an art history, illustration class and an animation class....the animation class is stop motion and so im excited :3c

#the wretched gremlin strikes again #spencer's good things list

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erdariel · 4 years ago

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I suppose I might as well put in my own thoughts, too, though I doubt I’ll say anything that hasn’t already been said.

First of all, anon, I feel ya. Just about the only fandom I’m actively in that I got into while it (or in case of big franchises, the part of it I’m personally into) was/is still airing is Doctor Who. And, okay, I was into Sherlock for a bit there, after s3 but before s4, but the fandom’s interest was kind of waning by then already, I’d say, and s4 did nothing to help that, so it hardly counts. But other than that, my fandoms are pretty much ones I’ve gotten into long after the stuff was made. Plus Good Omens, which I first read long after the book was published but years before the show, so that’s a case of its own, the fandom’s kinda grown since, but at the time of joining I never thought that’d happen. Some others of my fandoms are big ones that have been around for decades and don’t seem to be going anywhere, like Star Trek or Middle-Earth. Others are smaller, some still decent-sized, and some... some are truly small. And what I want to talk about is one of those.

Robin of Sherwood. The tv show aired in the 80s, and was decently popular back then. Not on the level of like, Star Trek or something, of course, but popular enough. There were fanzines for it, and conventions, I think on both sides of the Atlantic. That was back then. Me? I was born well over a decade after the show ended. I got into it a few years back - mom got the DVDs to rewatch it since she’d liked it as a kid, I watched with her, found I liked it. So, off I went, in search of other fans. First thing for a kid like me, check the tumblr tag. Found barely anything, and half of what I found were mistagged posts related to other versions of Robin Hood, all of those more popular and more recent. Ao3? As of the time of writing, has 241 works of the fandom (two of which are mine). If I exclude crossovers and things written in languages other than English, result drops to 131. Several works in the tag are archived from other platforms or old fanzines, rather than being written and posted on Ao3 by fans who are still active today.

Anyway, this is... well, it doesn’t feel encouraging, but occasionally I get ideas for fanfics. Sometimes I even get around to writing them. Another fun little problem with Robin of Sherwood, the fandom seems to favour multi-chapter fics where I generally write oneshots. So, not great odds for getting a lot of hits to the fics.

But if I happen to write something about Robin of Sherwood, I post it on Ao3 anyway. It can often take days for the fic to even get any hits, let alone kudos. Comments are a rare treat. And I won’t lie, it feels bad. I say I write for myself, and I do! I wouldn’t be writing a fandom this small at all, if it wasn’t for myself. It still doesn’t feel nice, to spend hours and hours trying to write something (that still never ends up being as good written down as it was in your head!) and post it somewhere like “Hey look what I did! I had an idea I really liked and I wrote a story out of it!” and have absolutely no one care, as far as you can tell.

But! For all that comments aren’t something you get a lot of, the few I’ve gotten for my Robin of Sherwood fics have generally contained something along the lines of “Oh a new story for this fandom I like, oh my god it hasn’t been forgotten, I’m so happy you like it too!”, just... people being really really happy that there’s anyone else around, that there’s someone still writing fic for it.

And even if it’s just a few people. Even if it’s just a single person leaving a comment on a fic, and maybe one or two more leaving kudos but saying nothing. I know I made that one person, those few people, happy, for just a bit.

And mind you, this is for a fandom of a tv show that aired its last season 34 years ago. If you find yourself in a fandom where the last book was only just published, or the last season only just ended, there’s still going to be plenty of fans around! And they’ll certainly be happy to see new faces around!

There’s not much anything that’s so old and so obscure there’d be absolutely no one else interested in it. Some things may be bigger, some smaller, but let me tell you a secret: the smaller the thing is, the happier people will actually be to see you in there! Smallest fandoms are in my experience often the nicest and more devoted ones. The big ones, they’re like this big hall filled to the brim with people, a concert or something. If you don’t go there together with friends, it’ll really take an effort to find anyone to hang out with, to get to know properly, because they probably already have their own groups. The smaller ones on the other hand are like a room with a handful of people in them, walking around, chatting a bit with everyone, even if they have some people they’re closer to than the rest. They’ll notice you walking in, and will probably be happy to get to know you, and talk to you a bit, so it’s much less of an effort getting to know people and making friends.

i think this mainly comes from my own general anxiety, but how do you cope with irrational fears that you aren't in a fandom at its peak? i always get into fandoms jusstttt after a show has ended and i end up feeling like i'm late to the party. it doesn't help that i'm a slow writer, which frustrates me sometimes especially when it feels like there's a time limit for when ppl might be interested in reading my fics. thanks!

If a show like Star Trek: The Original Series, which went off the air in 1969, still has an active fandom then I figure there’ll always be people around to see my work.

True, there won’t be as many people as there were when the fandom was at its peak, but I don’t personally create stuff because I want it to be seen by the maximum number of people. I create stuff because it’s something I’m interested in and creating it makes me happy.

More people reading your fic or seeing your art or watching your videos doesn’t make them better. Their value is inherent. Their worth never changes. The things you create are important because you made them. ❤

What about the rest of you? How do you deal with the fear that your work will never be seen?

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rahirah · 7 years ago

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Long ramble about personal fannish history of no interest to anyone except perhaps @fontfolly , who was There. I mainly wrote this down to get it out of my system, and to put it down somewhere before I forget it all completely.

A few years before getting involved in Buffy fandom, I was involved in another fandom, where I was part of a writer's group for an ongoing shared world. I really loved working with the group, and I really loved the world we created. One of the other people in the group was someone I considered a good friend. She was one of the founders and was an extremely prolific writer. She controlled several important characters which held positions of power within the fictional universe, introduced many of the major storylines that affected everyone's characters, and wrote the story arc which was the major plot lynchpin for the entire series. She was also the editor of the fanzine.

Some years into the project, Founder #1 stepped down as editor, ostensibly to work on original fiction, and passed the editorship on to Founder #2. However, because Founder #2 was reluctant to say no to a friend and fellow founder, Founder #1 kept control of her powerful characters, and got special treatment when it came to getting storylines approved.

Founder #3 was the zine's treasurer, and he got similar special treatment, even though he was far less prolific, and in fact finished only... one or two short stories in the entire time I was with the project? He was also forced to step down as treasurer after several failures to send people the fanzines they'd ordered. This behavior on his part, and Founder #2's reluctance to censure him in any way, stirred up a lot of bad blood among the rank and file members of the project, which would become important later.

Founder #4 was an artist, and her professional career was taking off at about this time. She really didn't have time to contribute much, but she had a sentimental fondness for the project and didn't want to give up HER powerful characters. She had vision problems and didn't like writing or responding to letters, which were our main form of communication at the time, until I set up an email server for the project through my work. (At the time, I was working at a place which didn't mind if you did things like that.) She liked email even less. If you wanted to contact her with any hope of a quick response, you had to phone her, and hope she'd have time to talk to you, (which she often didn't, because art career) and tough luck for the people like me who hated making phone calls to relative strangers.

In the early days, Founders #1 and #3 kept in regular contact with #4 by phone. However, as time went on, Founder #1 (and to a lesser extent Founder #3) dropped out of contact with the friends she used to write and phone, communicating only with those of us on the email server. She stopped responding to requests for character Oks and plot consultations. She also stopped work on the main story arc, complaining that so many other members had written stories around it, and added so many subplots and sequels and spin-offs, that she'd lost any desire to finish it. Instead, she got involved in creating yet another monster plotline with Founder #3, set several decades in the future of the original story, which would have major (and often unpleasant) repercussions for everyone else's characters.

Since other people riffing on your stories is the whole point of a shared world, I thought this was very unreasonable of her. The group, by this time, had a lot more members in it who weren't personal friends of the founders, and many of them were chafing at the fact that the main storyline was apparently a perpetual WIP. At one point, I offered to finish it for her, just to get them off our backs, of course giving her full veto/approval/rewrite power over anything I produced. She refused.

Things continued in this vein for awhile, with more and more members getting annoyed at #1 and #3, and annoyed at #2 for enabling them. #1's old friends were hurt and angry that she'd stopped talking to them and stopped collaborating with them. In the absence of communication from #1 and #3, one of the newer members of the project cozied up to #4, becoming her liaison to the rest of the project members, and becoming the power behind the throne (literally, as one of #4's characters was the ruler). This newer member was one of the people who'd been screwed over by #3 when he was the treasurer, so she hated him, and set out to amass as much power as possible by making alliances with other newer members and convincing them to have their characters oppose things that the characters of #1 and #3 were doing. (I suspect that what she really wanted was to oust #1 and #3 from the project entirely, but things never got that far.) And the new Monster Plotline that #1 and #3 had concocted was making everyone angry, as it basically involved some of their villain characters running roughshod over everyone else.

Through all of this, I was desperately trying to play peacemaker among all these factions. Back in the real world, I was having huge problems at work, chronic health issues, a major creative slump, and going through a very rough patch in my relationship with my then-girlfriend-now-wife. This project had been my retreat from all that, and I wanted to keep it that way – but it was quickly becoming as stressful as everything else in my life.

At some point in here, Founder #1 told the small group of people with whom she was still communicating that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that was why she had stopped talking to most of her old friends. She was in a depressive phase. I tried to convince her that she should at least tell those old friends what was going on, but she refused, and told me that (and I'm paraphrasing some here, but not much) she had a chronic, incurable disease, and no matter how much therapy and medication she got, she was always going to be at the mercy of her biochemistry, so she couldn't be held responsible for making people hurt or angry. ��Furthermore, this same disease meant that she didn't have the emotional energy to make apologies or amends. Instead, she strongly implied, it was my responsibility as the Neurotypical Friend to intercede on her behalf with the people who were hurt and angry, and prevent any consequences of her actions (or lack thereof) from coming home to roost. Nor could I take any hurt or offence myself if I wanted to consider myself a real friend.

(For the next several years, I tried to do exactly that. Needless to say, I failed.)

After #1 revealed this, #3 decided that he was going to give his favorite character a Cool New Backstory: all her villainous deeds were because she had bipolar depression AND her cold, demanding mother had pushed her into Rebellion!

Now, you gotta understand that Favorite Character was already roundly hated by almost everyone (both writers and characters) except #1 and #2. Mainly, this was because #3 seemed incapable of writing her without applying a +10 Cloak of One-Upsmanship. Most of us were writing power fantasy characters of one sort or another, but Favorite was incredibly irritating because #3 fondly imagined she was not just a good fighter and a powerful magic user, but a brilliant strategist, a cunning tactician, and a wildly charismatic leader fully capable of forging a new nation on her own. And was totally incapable of WRITING her as anything more than an egotistical and/or self-pitying bully. Because he got preferential treatment from #2, #3 had been able to foist several Favorite Character Is Better Than You plotlines of the group as a whole, which had not endeared either him or Favorite Character to anyone. His new character concept would have been a hard enough sell under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, he failed to consult the person who controlled his character's mother, and she was not at all happy to be informed that her character was now a terrible mother – AND she was the best friend of Power Behind the Throne. They pushed back, and hard.

So #1 undertook to write a story about Favorite Character and one of her own characters which would convince everyone that Favorite Character and the plotline everyone hated were both awesome. She not only undertook to write the story, she sneered at people on the public email list who'd been complaining about edits, saying that she'd post it for everyone to take a crack at beta reading it, because she was a Real Writer who could take it. I had deep reservations abut this, but I couldn't stop her. And she WAS a good writer, and she DID know how to take critique. Or she used to. So she wrote it, and posted it. It was... not good. It wasn't terrible. But it was far from her best work, and it did not in any way sell a skeptical, much less a hostile, reader on the idea that Favorite Character had redeeming qualities. It was critiqued. Roundly, and deservedly. And #1 had a full-blown screaming meltdown.

Things went downhill after that. Later, #1 said that she reacted badly to critique of Favorite Character because #3 had given Favorite Character the same emotional issue she had. So if people hated Favorite Character, then they hated all people with mental/emotional disorders in general, and her in particular. Critique of Favorite Character was a personal attack on her. And instead of recognizing that as an emotional reaction which she shouldn't treat as gospel truth (even if she couldn't help feeling it), she doubled down on it. #1 became grimly determined to promote Favorite Character as the greatest thing since sliced bread, with #3's enthusiastic support, writing her into more and more of the Monster Plotline.

I tried, and tried, and tried to get #1 and #3 to see things from the perspective of the people who were angry at them, and vice versa. I had so many Fraught Conversations – over email, on the phone, via letter. I'd go to bed emotionally exhausted and wake up rehearsing arguments. #2 genuinely liked Favorite Character, and didn't really understand why everyone else hated her so much, and never liked conflict anyway. She couldn't say no to #3 and #1, though she knew she really ought to. She started to fade out, and eventually handed over the editorship to me.

So I was left with a project which had ground to a halt, immobilized by feuds and bitterness, and far too many friendships which had been irreparably tarnished by the same. (Believe me, this account doesn't cover half of what was going on.) For another year or two I tried my damnedest to get everyone to work together, because I really did love the project. I made a lot of mistakes, and had blind spots and indulgences of my own, and in the end, I realized that this thing I loved was killing me. I announced my own resignation, killed off or gave away all my characters, handed the reins over to someone else, and escaped to Buffy fandom. Within a year of my leaving, the project collapsed.

Flash forward to S6. I was seeing a lot of meta and discussion to the effect that Buffy wasn't responsible for her actions, because she was depressed. She was in a bad place. Besides, Spike was evil, and he deserved to be treated badly. He probably enjoyed it. Regardless, Buffy shouldn't have to apologize for anything she'd done. The authors identified with Buffy because they were depressed too, and if you criticized Buffy in anyway, you were making a personal attack on them.

I'd read this stuff, and I'd find myself shaking with fury. Literally, physically shaking. I eventually realized that it was because the fans' justification of Buffy treating Spike like crap was reminding me of #3's justifications of Favorite Character treating everyone like crap, and even more, of #1's justification for treating the other members of the project like crap and treating Favorite Character as her personal avatar. She was depressed. She couldn't help it. She never has to apologize for anything. She can destroy everything you love, and you've just gotta take it. You never get to be angry at her; you just have to suck everything up, you stupid <s>neurotypical</s> vampire; you can never understand her pain because <s>you're not chronically depressed</s> you don't have a soul, and your pain doesn't matter.

I recognize that this is an emotional reaction on my part. (And it's faded over the years, thankfully.) But it shows how one's personal baggage affects one's perceptions in new situations. Buffy's a character I loved before S6, and I've very slowly come around to loving her again, but S6 had some unexpected parallels with a previous bad experience – not even so much the story itself, but the fannish reaction to it – which turned me off of her, at least in canon. I'm grateful that I was still able to love her in fanfic, and that kept me around until I was able to love her in canon again – both because she changed, and because I have.

It hasn't been as easy for me to forgive #1. We're still in sporadic contact, but I don't really keep up with her or her life any longer. I don't wish her any ill, but I don't want to get sucked into her orbit again, either, because I don't think she ever realized how badly she... well, used me. And I suspect that if I tried to explain it, she'd be angry and offended, because She Was Depressed, It Wasn't Her Fault. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. But I do miss the project we worked on, sometimes. Just the other day I caught myself mulling over some of the dropped plotlines, pondering ways they might work out. And regardless of the rest, I can be grateful to #1, #2, #3, and #4 for creating it.

#personal

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acehotel · 7 years ago

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INTERVIEW: Matthew Higgs with Justin Strauss

Matthew Higgs trucks in ideas. He is a curator, DJ, artist, producer, writer, critic and national treasure who’s also kind and well-spoken, known in wide circles for his unflinching support of art and artists and his uncanny ability to find the good work that’s being made. Though coming of age in Manchester, Higgs lives in New York now where he’s the director of White Columns — New York City’s oldest alternative non-profit arts space that, through brave exhibitions, creates an experimental place for ideas to fester and bloom. In this day, we are so thankful for such a thing. Higgs sat down with Ace friend and NY legend Justin Strauss to talk about fanzines, producing the first nationally-advertised New Order concert, and the generosity of sharing ideas.

Justin Strauss: Hi Matthew. What was it like growing up near Manchester in the 70s and 80s?

Matthew Higgs: I was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, which is just across the Pennines from Manchester, but I grew up in the Northwest of England in the late 70s and early 1980s. In 1979, I would've been 14. I was a little too young to have had any kind of meaningful relationship with punk, but I was aware of it. What interested me most at the time was what came immediately after punk, so 1978, 1979, 1980: what we now call post-punk, or new wave. It was the beginning of the independent music scene. So, as a 13- or 14-year old I would devour the weekly music press, and at the time there were three weekly newspapers dedicated to music, that were all interesting in their own ways.

JS: NME and Sounds?

MH: NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. They were quite different from each other, and trying to understand, as a teenager, what made them different was interesting too. I became especially interested in the bands that came after punk, and in particular the bands that came from the North of England. Each city had its own distinct scene, even its own ‘sound’. Liverpool and Manchester, which were less than an hour apart from each other, had their own distinctive scenes, their own distinctive ‘sound’. The same with Sheffield, and Leeds, and further north in Scotland with Fast Records in Edinburgh, and a little later the Postcard label in Glasgow. It was just an amazing time for music and independent labels. And as a teenager, like many people at the time, I tried to find a platform for my unformed adolescent ideas , so aged 14 I started to write and publish a music fanzine.

JS: Was there a band that galvanized your interest at that age? For me, when I saw the Beatles when I was 7, that was it. From that moment on, I just knew that nothing would be the same and music would be my path.

MH: The first band that really interested me was the Buzzcocks, and they still interest me to this day. The first run of records they made remain extraordinary. They also set the stage for my subsequent interest in what was happening in Manchester. So I quickly moved from the higher-profile Buzzcocks and Magazine, to bands like The Fall and Joy Division, both of which I first saw live in 1979.

JS: I remember getting a copy of the Buzzcocks “Spiral Scratch” when it first came out, and it was just an amazing record.

MH: Clearly it wasn't the first independently released record, but it acted as a catalyst for the whole DIY and indepedeent label explosion in the UK at that time. The Buzzcocks and Howard Devoto and Pete Shelly were clearly interested in things outside of ‘punk’, art, literature, and more experimental music such as Can. Through following certain bands, and reading about their interests, these other cultural worlds started to come into focus. So music became a form of cultural education for me and stimulated my nascent interest in art.

JS: Living in New York around that time, I was obsessed with all of it. To get NME and Sounds. I would drive in from Long Island to go to a newsstand on Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street that got it first, every week, on Thursdays I think. I was obsessed with the music, and wanting to know where everything came from, and the history. I would just sit in my room and read these papers, and magazines, and devour all the information and obsess over the records.

MH: For me, as a young person at that time — I would have been 14 or 15 when I was writing my fanzine — it was a question of how does one go beyond being a fan, and how does one get closer to the thing that you're interested in? And then beyond that, how does one get involved with the thing that you're interested in? I think it was sort of those kind of thoughts that led me to start writing a fanzine.

JS: What was the name of it?

MH: It was called “Photophobia”, which was the title of a song on Cabaret Voltaire's first album. But before that, I had written another fanzine, which was called “Eat And Digest” (which included an interview with the Swell Maps). I made the whole issue and laid it all out, and took it to my local photocopy place. Photocopying was pretty rare at the time, and it was quite expensive, and I asked the guy how much it would cost me to print 100 copies, and he said it would be like 100 pounds. About a pound a copy! Which would have been insanely expensive at the time. So, I just walked home with my complete fanzine, and put it to one side, and regrouped. Eventually, I discovered a cheaper community-based printer in Manchester, so I started my second attempt at a fanzine, which was “Photophobia”, which retailed for 20p.

JS: And at 14 years old would you just write to these bands like, "Hey, I'm just starting a fanzine," and they would be happy to participate?

MH: Oh, yeah. I was clearly a naïve teenager. And I was also pretty shy, so the fanzine allowed me to have conversations with people including bands and record labels. One of the extraordinary things at the time was just the degree of access you had to people, which I think was a part of the whole ethos and transparency of the DIY music scene. And, for the most part, the bands I was interested in were in their late teens or very early 20s, so they weren’t that much older than me, even though a few years at that age is a big difference. But it definitely felt like there was a sense of community, ot sorts. Or at least the idea that everybody was in it together. But I’m still surprised that bands were tolerant of my teenage inquiries. One of the first bands I interviewed was The Cure, in late '79 when I would have been 14, and I can still clearly remember them being unbelievably nice to me! Eventually other people strated to contribute to the fanzine so it became more than just my voice. I wasn’t able to travel much at that time — due to my age — but through the fanzine I would correspond with people from across the UK, then Europe and beyond. So, all of a sudden, as a teenager in the late 70s, growing up in a small town in the North of England, my world got a little bit bigger. My frame of reference got a little big bigger too. More than 30 years later (i just turned 53) it is easy to relate this teenage experience to my subsequent interest in art and working with artists — which also came out of a similar set of ideas and a similar sense of community.

JS: Did you have a lot of friends who were of this similar mind at the time?

MH: Only a few. I had four or five close friends in my hometown and we were all interested in music, playing in bands and so on.

JS: How did you distribute the fanzine? Did you sell it to the local record shops? Was it something people subscribed to?

MH: Local record stores would carry it. Record stores in Manchester would carry it. Rough Trade carried it. I would sell them at gigs. That was a nice hands-on approach, where you're trying to convince someone to spend 20p on this thing you've made. I think by the final issue it was selling around 300 copies a time.

JS: That’s pretty impressive.

MH: It was a modest enterprise! For me it was probably more important as a catalyst for other ideas and conversations. Around that time — 1980/1981 — when I was 15/16 I started a little cassette label, and I also started organized a few gigs in a community center in my hometown. I organized New Order's first nationally advertised concert in January 1981, shortly after I had turned 16. All of these things were simply geared towards trying to make something happen. I think that's what I've always been most interested in, in the idea that somebody would go to all this trouble to make something happen, to create situations that other people could enjoy and participate in: to create a social situation. I had the same feeling later when I started going to clubs, I was always fascinated by the generosity involved in people creating platforms for other people’s ideas.

JS: So, you're 16 years old, and you'd seen Joy Division, and you'd seen many shows of theirs, and you became friends with them?

MH: We definitely got to know them as well as 14 year-olds could! My school friend Rex Sargeant (who was 13 at the time we met them) would remain close with them, and would eventually produce records for people including The Fall. We would watch Joy Division rehearse on Sunday afternoons, in their rehearsal space in Little Peter Street, the one depicted in Kevin Cummins’ famous photos of the band. They were incredibly nice to us, and it seemed to me that they were very interested in their relationship with their audience. I was, and remain, impressed with the degree of self-determination that Joy Division — and later New Order — had as a group. The way they worked with Factory Records, the way that they refused to do large tours, the way they did everything on their own terms, the way they collaborated with Peter Saville on how their records looked, etc. It struck me — as a young person — that you could actually do things on your own terms, and be successful, and retain your integrity. It was a very powerful and tangible example of that. Similarly, the way they treated us and their fans was pretty exemplary.

Joy Division by Kevin Cummins

JS: And the connection between the art and the music, which is something that always fascinates and interests me. Did you meet Peter Saville then who did their artwork ... was he a local guy as well?

MH: Peter studied in Manchester, but he left Manchester for London at the end of the 1970s and started working for Virgin/Dindisc, and other record companies . So I didn't meet him at the time. But, I met Tony Wilson, who ran Factory Records, and a lot of the bands that recorded for Factory Records, interested me a great deal: A Certain Ratio and especially the Durutti Column.

Peter Saville’s design for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures

JS: Section 25?

MH: I loved Section 25! I still do. I interviewed them for my fanzine in early 1980s when they supported Joy Division at Preston Warehouse. My fanzine was titled after a song by Cabaret Voltaire, but at the time — aged 14 — I didn’t know what Cabaret Voltaire was. But I eventually found out. And of course, Malcolm Mclaren and Tony Wilson would make references to the Situationist International, which I also knew nothing about, but through these ‘clues’ I started to get more interested in art and the 20th Century avant-gardes. Someone like Linder Sterling from Ludus was also an important reference point for me ...

JS: She did art for the Buzzcocks.

MH: … and Magazine. The way that she presented her band Ludus, and her work with collage. So by '81 or '82 I'm starting to become as interested in art and visual culture as I was in music.

JS: More than music?

MH: I think so. I definitely remember my interests shifting.

JS: I remember seeing New Order and, I think Quando Quango in 1983, at Paradise Garage, when they came over, which was quite something. Were you aware of the scene in New York at that time?

MH: Only through what we could read in the British music and style press, as I would have been too young to visit New York and it was way too expensive to travel back then. In a way I was also too young to visit London much, as I didn’t know anyone there and no one I knew in the early 1980s would have, or could have afforded to, stay in a hotel aged 17 or 18. Obviously some of the music being made in New York made its way over, and some of it would eventually find domestic release in the UK, but at the time I couldn't afford to buy imports.

JS: Did you go to the Hacienda at that time?

MH: The Hacienda was a bit later. It opened in '82 when I would have been 17. We went a few times in the early days, mostly to see bands. I remember everyone, myself included, was very impressed with the space — Ben Kelly’s architecture - there really was nothing like it in the the UK at the time. I went to art school in Newcastle between 1984 and 1987, and we would go to The Hacienda when we were home for the holidays. Around the time House music was starting to get played in UK clubs, and in Manchester and at The Hacienda in particular. But when I was younger the American bands that interested me most would have been The Talking Heads and Devo. I saw Devo on that second UK tour. I remember that they showed their short films before they came on, which left a lasting impression - not just the films but the idea of showing films in a concert setting. I hadn’t experienced that before.

The Hacienda, designed by Ben Kelley

JS: In New York, in the late 60s, Andy Warhol was doing that with the Velvet Underground at the Dome, projecting his films behind them, designing their record covers. I loved that coming together of the art world and the music world. And the downtown scene in New York in the 80s with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf and Andy Warhol.

MH: I think something probably like that — albeit a British version — probably existed in London, around people like Derek Jarman and then later Throbbing Gristle etc., i.e. that intersection between art, music and other cultural spheres, but I certainly hadn’t experienced anything like that as a 15 year old. But, clearly those connections — between art , design and music etc. — existed, because people like Peter Saville or Linder Sterling were already exploring those ideas in their work. Music was, for me and many other people that I know, a kind of ‘gateway drug’ into art. I’ve never actually met anybody that got into art through going to galleries. Everybody I knew got into art through music.

JS: And, did you study art at school?

MH: II went to art school in 1984 as an undergrad. I went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic, which is in the northeast of England. I think my interest in art school wasn't necessarily to do with becoming an artist per se, I was probably more interested in the legacy of the relationship between art school in the UK and music. And how, art school, at least at that time in the mid-80s, still seemed like a fairly ‘open’ or elastic place space, to spend three years without worrying about the outcome. It is worth stating that education was free at the time!

JS: Were your parents supportive of all this?

MH: My mother certainly was. My father had less interest in my interest in art. My sister became an architect and I went to art school. My mother was very supportive of us in whatever our independent paths might be. In the early 80s, before I went to college, as my interest in art was developing my interest in music shifted too, I was basically only listening to dance music, of one kind or another.

JS: And that came through going to the Hacienda?

MH: It pre-dates that, but The Hacienda —and Manchester more generally — played an important role. My interest in dance music came through post-punk, Public Image Ltd., early New Order, A Certain Ratio, the Bristol scene, The Pop Group, Maximum Joy, etc. A lot of the music I gravitated to around ‘80-’82 was essentially coming out of reggae and dub. A Certain Ratio often had a DJ as their support who would play current early 80s dance music before they took the stage. The pre- House era, circa '84–’86, when I was at college, was a great time for underground and mainstream club music, which was constantly in transition. There were good clubs at the time in Newcastle playing all kinds of dance music, Rockshots in particular on Tuesday and Thursday nights (the rest of the week was mostly Hi-NRG!) I started a weekly club night in Newcastle called ‘Fever’ with my art school friend Matt Rice, which ran for a year or so on Wednesday nights and the highlight was when our club chart got printed in the NME! I still have the clipping somewhere.

JS: Do you remember what was on that chart?

MH: It would have been c. 1986-87 and we were playing a mix of rare groove, Hip Hop, Go-Go (which was huge in the UK), and early house. We played everything — as most clubs did at that time — probably influenced by the approach of London clubs and warehouse parties. Things hadn’t become musically segregated yet: i.e. only House, or only Hip Hop, etc.

JS: That was happening in New York as well. In places like Mudd Club, Area and Danceteria. Everything was just new music and we just played it.

MH: Same in the more interesting clubs in the UK. Later in the 1980s you started to see the separation of musical genres, and the social aspect of clubbing becoming more ‘tribal’, more codified and based around specific genres, or micro-genres of music. I became less interested in going out in the late 80s when the club scene started to fragment and become more specific muiscally.

JS: And how long did you DJ for?

MH: Our night didn’t last long. Just over a year or so. We did it for fun and as a way to make some money to buy records! Newcastle was a very cheap place to live. My rent for my room in a house was 4.50 pounds a week! The money we made at ‘Fever’ - which wasn’t much - still allowed us to buy the latest releases and the occasional import from Hitsville USA, which was the best dance music and only import store in town. That’s where I saw import House 12”s for the first time.

JS: And at this time, you're kind of getting more into the art world. What was steering you more towards that?

MH: There were two art-related magazines that I read as a teenager in the late '70s and into early '80s: ZG magazine, which was edited by Rosetta Brooks, which made amazing connections between what was happening between New York and London at that time. It would include things like an article by Dan Graham writing about Malcolm McLaren and Bow Wow Wow. So through ZG I could start to make connections between art and music that I think would otherwise have eluded me. There was another great magazine around this time called Performance Magazine, which covered the UK performance scene, which at the time was very active and important. But they also covered free and experimental music, and visual art alongside figures like William Burroughs and Laurie Anderson. It was an education. One that really expanded my knowledge and interest in art. By the late '80s, after art school, I was definitely looking at and thinking about art more than music, but I was still buying the NME every week. So I was still following whatever was coming out but not with the same kind of focus. In late '87, I moved to London, but I didn’t really know what to do with my interest in art. I certainly hadn’t thought about a career in the art world, and didn’t know anyone who worked in the art world. The British art scene was very small in the 1980s. After a few years in London, after looking at a lot of new art, and thinking about what I wanted to do I started a modest independent publishing project in 1993, called Imprint 93, where I collaborated with artists on publishing artworks and projects that I would then distribute by mail.

JS: And, it was a magazine?

MH: It was different things inc. artist’s books, pamphlets, cassettes, multiples etc. I made about 60 projects between ‘93 and ‘99 with different artists. It was really a way for me to create a kind of ‘space’ for myself to work in. It wasn't a physical space, like a gallery, but more like a ‘platform’ that allowed me to work in a fluid way with artists - and mostly artists of my generation.

JS: New artists?

MH: For the most part. I published early projects by artists including Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton, Martin Creed, Ceal Floyer, Jeremy Deller, and Chris Ofili, among many others. In a way, Imprint 93 mirrored the logic of my teenage fanzine and cassette label from the late '70s and early '80s: applying similar same strategies to thinking about art and artists.

JS: You would show this somewhere, have exhibits?

MH: They were sent unsolicited to people via the mail. You couldn't request or ask for them. They were sent, anonymously, to a mailing list of around 100 to 150 people each time we did a project. The reason they were mailed was I saw them almost as a ‘gift’, a kind of “thank you” note, to other people that I felt were doing something interesting. I put the mailing list together with each artist I worked with, so each mailing list was somewhat different. Some people received them all, but most people would only have received a small number of them. I really didn't want them to circulate in the economy of commerce, partly because I had bought so many amazing books and records in the UK equivalent of the ‘dollar bin’. I always thought that it would be the worst day in your life, to walk into a record or book store and to see your own work in the ‘dollar bin’: that idea of success being determined by the market. So the idea was to allow them to circulate more freely, outside of the realm of commerce, and to see what happens.

JS: But, now they must be worth quite a bit?

MH: They are now collectible. You see individual titles that I published occasionally on book-sellers lists or at the annual NY Art Book Fair. I think an almost complete set of the Imprint 93 projects recently sold for something like $10,000. I was always interested in how ostensibly ‘democratically’ distributed things — zines, flyers, other kinds of printed ephemera etc. —over time accrue ‘value,’ culturally and economically.

JS: How long did that project last?

MH: Six or seven years years, by which time I'd sort of moved on and was doing other things. I was mostly working as an independent curator in London throughout the second half of the '90s, and I'd also started to teach, eventually working simultaneously at Goldsmiths College, the Royal College of Art, and Chelsea School of Art.

JS: When was the first time you came to New York?

MH: Not until the early 1990s to visit my friend Gavin Brown, who I was at art school with in Newcastle. We used to make paintings together. He moved here in 1988 to study on the Whitney Program. It was still relatively expensive to fly to America at that time, very few people I knew in the UK had been.

JS: Yeah, to travel. It was a big deal to go anywhere. What was your impression at that time?

MH: The art market had crashed in the late 80s, so a lot of that excess had gotten shook out. It was a time when a younger generation of artists and curators were starting to create a context for themselves. The same thing was happening in the UK too. It was a generational thing, and that interested me. There were interesting connections between some of the things that Gavin and his friends were doing in New York and some of the things that me and my friends in London were doing.

JS: When did you decide that you were going to move to New York?

MH: I didn't move to the US until 2001. Initially to San Francisco, where I worked as the curator at the Wattis Institute, which was the gallery for the California College of the Arts, CCA. We were there till the end of 2004. I really enjoyed my time in the Bay Area. It was also the first full-time job I’d ever had in the art world and also my first regular paycheck! (I was in my late 30s by this time.) And then I moved to New York in the end of 2004 to become the director of White Columns.

JS: When did you become aware of White Columns?

MH: I knew about White Columns from the 1980s - but only from a distance. My first visit would have been in the early 1990s when the gallery was on Christopher Street. I’d always been interested in the history of the so-called ‘alternative art spaces’ in New York.

JS: How do you find new artists?

MH: Primarily in conversations with other artists. That's always been the case. And also by looking at a lot of art, visiting galleries and artist-run spaces, and doing studio visits. White Columns also has open submission policy, our online registry, which anyone can apply to. So we get to the work of hundreds of artists that way too. Art comes from all over. I’m especially interested in the work of self-taught artists and artists who have unconventional backgrounds or training — people who came to art from different routes. At White Columns we hope to reflect something of the complexity of art, to acknowledge the idea that not all art comes from the same place, that not all art is made for the same reason, and that not all artists’ intentions or motivations are the same.

JS: And, when you think about New York, there was this period where it was Warhol, then Keith Haring, Basquiat, becoming so huge, does that still happen? Is there still that underground thing, that can bubble up?

MH: I think it is harder now - simply because the cost of living here now is increasingly prohibitive.

JS: Because, I don't find that connection so much if at all anymore. You go out to a club, it's just nothing to do with anything. It was like, The Mudd Club was a space where music, and art and all that, was kind of living harmoniously, and feeding off each other's creativity. I knew Keith, he had a cheap flat on Broome Street. No one can do that anymore.

MH: There are less rough edges or loose threads. Obviously the pressures of making a living, paying exorbitant rents, and having less free time here inevitably affects the art (and the music) produced in New York at any given time. Its probably why Berlin, for example, has such a great electronic music scene - as the artists-musicians have the resources, time and space to develop their work. So we have to work with the situation we have and the circumstances we find ourselves in. At White Columns we still primarily work with artists who have yet to benefit from any kind of critical, curatorial or commercial support. We operate in the spaces in-between the commercial art world and the institutional art world. What I always loved about New York was that there were so many great organizations committed to working in these ‘in-between’ spaces: places like Anthology Film Archives, Printed Matter, Participant Inc., The Kitchen, and many others, all committed to creating idiosyncratic platforms for artists. So I remain optimistic - despite the challenges of working here!

JS: And people were saying, when Donald Trump was elected President, that these times are when the art becomes underground, when all that bubbles up, and everyone's super creative and trying to find their way to express their dissatisfaction. We shall see I guess. How is the gallery funded?

MH: White Columns is a not-for-profit and its funded through grants, individual donations, support from foundations, our annual fundraiser, and the editions we make with artists. We start every year with $0 as we don’t have an endowment. In 2020 we’ll celebrate our 50th anniversary.

JS: Have you found that process more difficult in these times?

MH: It's always been difficult to raise money! It hasn't got more or less difficult, it just remains the same! Partly because we are not working with established or known artists. So for the most part we're asking people to put their faith in the organization and its mission: which is to support largely untested ideas. We're interested in artist’s ideas before consensus forms around them, and ultimately there's a relatively small audience for that. It's the same in the field of, say, experimental poetry, dance, music, film or theater. Our hope is that we can create an engaged audience for the ideas that we can support, and that subsequent opportunities will happen for those artists. So one of the interesting things for White Columns to think about is how can we present a program to the public that feels idiosyncratic, that feels distinct, that is somehow fundamentally different to the other things you can encounter elsewhere in the city. I think that's the challenge. I believe that you can do it, and you just have to look harder, and also look elsewhere.

JS: Judging by your Instagram account, and your posts of many of your favorite records, you seem to have reconnected with music?

MH: I'm probably having a mid-life crisis. I'm 53 years old now, and I have something like 8,000 records, maybe more. I still love music. It seems almost endlessly fascinating. You can never know enough, and you can never know everything about it. It seems to be in a constant process of revealing itself. And records, for me, represent the best ‘value’. For $10 or $20 you can own something extraordinary, that will outlast you. It can give you a lifetime of pleasure and inspiration. I read a lot of novels — costing almost $30 new — but after I’ve read them I rarely, if ever, revisit them, so I take them to the Housing Works bookstore instead. I still buy 20 or more records every month, and still mostly music that was — in one way or another — intended to be danced to, so the majority of my collection is disco, 1980s house, Italo, post-punk, and a lot of early 20th century disco edits. Social music: music to be listened to in company with other people.

JS: You did start a club night here, which I was lucky enough to play one. What was the idea behind it?

MH: I did that with Spencer Sweeney at Santos Party House, we only did a few nights. Santos, I think, was modeled on the idea of the earlier 80s downtown clubs, like the Mudd Club.

IJS: That’s how i felt when i first walked in there as well.

MH: The idea that the art, music and fashion crowds would all mix. Santos was a great space, in a great location, and had a totally amazing sound system. We had some great guest including you, Eric Duncan, and Joakim amongst others. It was fun whilst it lasted!

JS: And, do you see White Columns bridging that gap of music and art?

MH: Probably not! I’m not sure those connections exist now in the same way they did in the early 1980s in New York. We have a record label called The Sound of White Columns, named for the great 70s soul and disco label The Sound of Philadelphia. We release records by artist-musicians and artist-performers. It’s vinyl only and we made about 15 records to date with people like Meredith Monk, Kim Gordon, Billy Childish and Malcolm Mooney, among others.

JS: You were involved, recently, in an exhibit in Manchester?

MH: I co-curated an exhibition with Jon Savage and Johan Kugelberg called “True Faith” that looked at the cultural legacy of Joy Division and New Order. It was at the Manchester Art Gallery this summer. They had over 100,000 visitors! It wasn't really an exhibition about the groups per se, it was more about how the band’s ideas and work has informed and influenced the work of other artists. The designer Peter Saville was central to the exhibition because his contribution was probably as important as the music that Joy Division and then New Order made.

JS: Do you still listen to your Joy Division and New Order records?

MH: All the time. If you're ever bored, just listen to ‘Closer’ or ‘Power Corruption and Lies’ - it is hard to figure out how they created such extraordinary, visceral and original music. It still stands up. It still sounds relevant. The soundtrack to my life!

#yes #nyc #interview #just talk #justin strauss #matthew higgs #white columns #art #new order #music #DJ #artist

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bewarethewolfarmy · 8 years ago

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(While I totes don’t do anything else, enjoy the paper I wrote for my history class about fanfiction XD

A Poet In Whom Live All The Poets of the Past

In Virginia Woolf's “Letter to a Young Poet” she advises a young poet on being a poet; she says how all poets before and after exist within in, and that they help to move his pen, to write. In this he is ancient, and in this all creativity is a spring from which poets, all writers, drive from. So then what would her opinion of fan fiction be, the writing of stories, and poems, based on others' works? Why then does the common consensus seem to be that the drawing off of others works seem to come off as a bad thing? Fan fiction is not a bad thing innately, yet it is believed to be. Whether it is arguments about its legality, it's usefulness, or it's actual content, fan fiction has the misfortune of being given a reputation for being “bad.” Yet it has always existed; whether Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or a theater company's production of Shakespeare, the world builds it's tales on the backs of old. The continuation of it by writers today should not be an issue worth arguing but it is and so it shall be. Fan fiction does little harm and indeed instead it helps writers. It fosters ability and language skills and despite fears of copyright infringement and the content of their stories, it does not harm those whom they are based on nor readers and writers of the stories thus it should be applauded and treated with the respect it deserves as a writing style

First though there is an important question to answer: what is the subject known as fanfiction? From the perspective of a writer of fanfiction the definition would be “a piece of written prose or poetry which borrows from and is influenced by a previous work or individual”; fanfiction is something that is born from not both media such as movies and tv shows but also from real life people, thus the existence of the controversial but still fanfiction genre known as RPF or Real Person Fiction. In a more professional side, on page 20 of the online edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction “fan fiction” is defined as “amateur science fiction and fantasy fiction; fiction that uses characters or a fictional universe originally created by a professional author or for a television show, movie, etc. Also a work of such fiction” emphasizing an existence in primarily science fiction and fantasy; “fan fiction” in this form has been in use since at least 1939 where it appeared in Le Zombie, though it's shorthand name “fanfic” according to Oxford did not appear in published form until 1976 almost forty years later, undermining the popular belief that fanfiction itself is a new form. Before the age of internet, fans would publish their works in anthologies and fan-made publications known commonly as fanzines; dating back to the 1930s with the creation of The Comet in May of 1930, the existence of fanzines, primarily for fans to share among each other, allowed for the propagation of mostly non fiction letters and discussions. But the existence of fanzines such as Spockanalia, the first documented Star Trek fanzine, allowed for the spreading of fan written stories, making for some of the earliest examples of what we call fanfiction today. As the World Wide Web took hold, the sharing of fanfiction became easier, with the advent of specialized sites used for housing fanfics of specific media, ranging from Lumos for the Harry Potter community to Anne's Story Page for Titanic. Nowadays the primary sources of fanfiction in the general community are down to a handful of major sites: Archive of Our Archive, abbreviated as AO3, and Fanfiction.net, FF.net, are of the current main sites but many writers of fanfiction also use sites such as Mediaminer.org and the social platforming sites Tumblr and Facebook to post their works as well. On those dedicated sites such as AO3 and FF.net, the stories are always separated out the same as any published work, by genres such as romance or humor, as well as by their specific fandom, such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

As a form born in the shadows then, to people who were simply writing what interested them using stories they knew, what is benefit in making it respected and more mainstream? Well, one is the creative aspect. The creation of new stories is not a spontaneous thing; before a human may learn how to form their own sentences, they have to mimic the words spoken around them by others. It is only by taking those pieces that they can begin to form something else; similarly a writer using old media to create something else is a stepping stone to creating their own works. Authors such as Meg Cabot, RJ Anderson, Cassandra Clare, and E. L. James have all admitted to having written fanfiction in the past; Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods and The Graveyard Book, notes on his official Tumblr that “...it’s a good place to write while you’ve still got training wheels on - someone else’s character or worlds...” and in an article on The Bustle, Emma Lord says of fanfiction that “Fan fiction, for many people, is just a gateway drug to all other fiction writing.” This also counts as an educational use, helping students of creative writing and English in general to feel more comfortable in writing outside of a strictly academic environment, as explored in both “Going Public” an article by Jayne Lammers and Valerie Marsh, and “Literacy Engagement Through Online and Offline Communities Outside School: English Language Learners’ Development as Readers and Writers” by Guofang Li. Marsh and Lammers' subject “Laurie” says how “ 'the problem with [school] writing… is it wasn't storytelling at all. It was just regurgitation of facts or it was analysis of stories that were already there' “ and Li writes of a subject “Yina” that “ when I ﬁrst interviewed Yina at the beginning of ﬁfth grade, she expressed frustration and lack of conﬁdence in English” (p. 314, Li) but how after two years, in which Yina has involved herself in fanfiction and fandom in general that “Yina’s volumes of sophisticated writing of different genres suggest that she had become an accomplished writer in English” (p. 314, Li). Lammers and Marsh's paper also goes into the societal use of fanfiction, noting how “Reviews both compliment Laura's writing and also provide confirmation that Laura reached a fellow audience member—an experience Laura describes as 'meaningful.'...she derives a level of satisfaction from knowing her work was read by a social other—someone who shares her passion for Wicked”. In Angela Thomas' paper “Fan fiction online: Engagement, critical response and affective play through writing”, she states “The range of practices...is quite astonishing: collaborative writing of fan ﬁction, the teaching of...the intricate details and specialised knowledge of the ﬁeld....and dealing with management issues related to a 200 member community. For a group of predominantly 13–17 year olds, the level of writing, discussion and negotiation involved in these practices is remarkably sophisticated.” (p. 229, Thomas).

What then are the arguments against fanfiction? The major one is that of copyright; many authors, including Anne Rice, Orson Scott Card and Diana Gabaldon, have famously spoken out against fanfiction, feeling it is “illegal” and “infringes upon their copyright.” The problem with that is difficulty of arguing for copyright; to copyright something an expectation must be met that “the material is original, fixed in a tangible medium of expression, and owes its origin to an author.” (p. 201, Chatelain), which is difficult to prove with writing being inspired by other works often. In the case of The Wind Done Gone, a published work by Alice Randall based on and parodying Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell , though lower courts allowed for the blocking of the publishing of the book, the federal appeals court ultimately overturned the ruling and the estate of Mitchell ended up dropping the case and settling outside of court. In addition the existence of the Fair Use Doctrine, Section 107 of the Copyright Law, allows for the use of copyrighted work under certain circumstances, notably nonprofit. But fanfiction writers are not often looking for money when they write; as mentioned in previous paragraphs fanfiction is more a stepping stone, hobby or educational tool than anything else. As Emma Lord mentioned in another article “6 Things Everyone Who Enjoys Fan Fiction Has Heard Before, And Is Totally Over”, “people who write fan fiction don't do it for the money. We do it for the community, and for the chance to connect with writers and readers...”.

Another argument is the content of fanfiction. It is often denounced as lazy writing, often by authors such as George R R Martin who dislikes the useage of the word to what is done now with fanfiction. The discussion of fanfiction in public is something that the writers then dread; “And even though I was only 11, I still had the common sense to keep my mouth shut about it” says Emma Lord in “6 Things”. “ The idea of children using existing characters in their ﬁction writing was deﬁnitely considered bad practice” (p. 229, Thomas) is one point on it, “Anonymity affords Laura the opportunity to take risks with her writing in the fanfiction context without fear of failure or personal judgment” (Lammers and Marsh) is another. In addition is the stigma of it all being about smut, stories in which the main focus is on sex; the issue with this is the statistics. As of May 12th 2017 there are 143,086 fanfictions under the Harry Potter tag on AO3; of them 41,636 are rated “Teen and Up”, 39,765 are “General” in other words safe for children to read, 27,683 are “Explicit”, 25,272 are “Mature” and 8,762 are “Not Rated”; the majority of fics, 55.5%, are notably not Mature or Explicit which would include sex or other graphic materials. Over 84% of the fanfictions for Power Rangers is Teen or General and it is almost 59% for Angel: the Series fanfictions. While this can fluctuate between sites and between fandoms, Twilight for instance only has 40%, it is arguable that fanfiction is much more than public opinion might state.

So again, would Virgina Woolf mind fanfiction? One might say no, that by drawing upon the works of our writing ancestors, we are simply fulfilling the state of being the poet within whom lives all others. In addition there is an argument that can be made that perhaps putting effort into protecting fanfiction is unnecessary; with the protection of the Fair Use Doctrine, and many authors either condoning or simply turning their eyes from fanfiction of their work, fanfiction can appear be not be in danger. But it is not so simple as to say that fanfiction should be protected. It needs also to be embraced, in recognition as the tool for writing and for writers themselves that it is; whether because it helps a person learning a new language, or assists in socializing, or even just allows a would-be writer to grow without judgement, fan fiction writing should be given at least the respect of other writing conventions.

Bibliography:

Chatelain, Michelle. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Copyright Law: Fan Fiction, Derivative Works, and the Fair Use Doctrine." Tulane Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property, vol. 15, Fall2012, pp. 199-217. EBSCOhost, offcampus.lib.washington.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=84608741&site=ehost-live.

This paper explores the legal standing of fanfiction. The author starts off with an explanation of fanfiction but then goes on to explain how fanfiction is protected under the Fair Use Doctrine. The part that interested me the most was near the beginning where she discusses copyright and talks about phonebooks which allowed for a reasonable introduction into how fanfiction fits into copyright laws. It also makes mention of the fact that fanfiction and parody are what is called “transformative works” as well as the existence of the Organization for Transformative Works which runs Archive of Our Own and acts to protect fanfiction writers from legal battles.

Christian, Kaelyn. "Fan Fiction and the Fair Use Doctrine." Serials Librarian, vol. 65, no. 3-4, Nov. 2013, pp. 277-285. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/0361526X.2013.838726.

Similar to the previous one, this article also explores the connection between the Fair Use doctrine and fanfiction. This one though is the one that goes into the The Wind Done Gone case and what happened, giving us one of the few examples of actual published fanfiction going up against it's source material and why fanfiction is still legal. The fact that the Wind Done Gone was allowed to be published despite it's nature as a fanfiction of Gone with the Wind is important to writing.

Gaiman, Neil. "Neil Gaiman's opinion on fanfiction." Neil Gaiman. Tumblr, 24 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 May 2017.

This is the Tumblr blog for Neil Gaiman, author of the Graveyard Book and the Sandman series. As a well-known and well-liked author, his work have been subjected to interpretation and fanfiction as well as fanart. Thus his opinion on fanfiction is important; the fact he acknowledges it as something that should be best used to grow and not simply an end result of writing works to show why fanfiction is not harmful and is indeed beneficial. I like the humorous way he talks about it as well and the fact that while writing is his livelihood and he has every right to react like some others, being more defensive over his work, he treats his fans with the respect and trust enough to let them write and respect his livelihood at the same time.

Lammers J.C. & Marsh V.L. (2015). Going Public: An Adolescent's Networked Writing on Fanfiction.net. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(3), 277–285. doi: 10.1002/jaal.416

I originally choose this article with my outline for the paper so it was the first article I found connected to fanfiction. It goes into the social and educational uses of fanfiction, specifically on how it helped the paper's subject “Laura” with writing. I like that it goes into how important anonymity can be to a fanfiction writer and how vital it is to have the community aspect of fanfiction writing for growth of self confidence. It pairs well with the Guofang Li paper to create an image of fanfiction that goes beyond its hobby status and to a practice that is worth encouraging in young writers so they can better stretch their creative wings.

Li, Guofang. "Literacy Engagement through Online and Offline Communities outside School: English Language Learners' Development as Readers and Writers." Theory into Practice, vol. 51, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 312-318. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00405841.2012.726061.

I choose this article because of its engagement with English as a Second Language students. My thoughts were that ESL students might find fanfiction useful for the development of language skills and the social connection; the article verified my beliefs I think. Like the Marsh paper, this one also focused on subjects, specifically “Yina”, and their development over time which helped to show how writing over time had assisted her instead of simply conjecture. Paired with the Marsh and Lammers writing, it explores how teachers can better help students to be able to feel comfortable writing as well as better develop their skills both in writing and social aspects.

Lord, Emma. "6 Things Everyone Who Enjoys Fan Fiction Has Heard Before, And Is Totally Over." Bustle. Bustle, 17 Nov. 2014. Web. 13 May 2017.

This is an article off of Bustle that I found while looking up information on how fanfiction is generally viewed. Written by a fanfic writer herself, it explores some of the common misconceptions and ideas of fanfiction that the public has. It is not entirely scientific but for a subject that is largely based on societal opinions and uses, and since it is written by someone who is indeed a part of the thing I'm discussing, it helps to clarify opinions on the matter. Most notably the idea that we as writers are not in it for money and we are not simply writing smut, nor are devoid of original ideas just because we choose to write based on others works.

Lord, Emma. "13 Things Fan Fiction Writers Are Very Tired Of Explaining." Bustle. Bustle, 08 Apr. 2016. Web. 13 May 2017.

An article by the same person who did “6 Things”, this one elaborates on the ideas of the first one, going more into what fanfiction writers themselves are like, not simply what our work is like. One notable thing is that she points out that people make fun of fanfiction with the belief that we're not the same as other people or other writers and won't be hurt by the insults. This being a misconception I've experienced myself with my friends I feel it is important to remember considering it's attachment to the idea that if you write fanfiction, you don't talk about it to others unless you know they are trustworthy. Another thing that did not get into the paper proper but that I see is the idea that fanfiction is based on our own feelings when it isn't always true; smut can be written by asexuals and abuse can be written by people who are entirely against abuse. Emma Lord notes that all writers involve some part of their desires in their stories but it is not the main reasoning behind writing.

Martin, George R R. "Someone Is Angry On the Internet." Not A Blog. N.p., 7 May 2010. Web. 13 May 2017.

I needed an argument against fanfiction and I knew that some authors dislike it: looking up who I found this, the writer of A Song of Ice and Fire's official blog. It's an interesting piece where he talks about how bad fanfiction is and why it shouldn't be done, based on how he thinks fanfiction has become something terrible based on what he used to write and how it apparently hurt others. The biggest issue I have with it is that it does make erroneous claims, such as that H. P. Lovecraft died poor because he allowed fanfiction and that the fanfiction GRRM himself admits to writing which didn't use the same characters from media but did use ideas and assumingly settings was better than fanfiction that uses characters from media. Still he does a good job of at least attempting a civil tone about the whole situation I think.

Ohnotheydidnt, and Goofusgallant. "Book Post: How authors feel about fan-fiction." Book Post: How authors feel about fan-fiction - Oh No They Didn't! N.p., 19 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 May 2017.

This is primarily a list and short summary of a group of authors thoughts on fanfiction. It includes JD Salinger who never dealt with fanfiction proper but did get angry over a proposed sequel of his book The Catcher in the Rye, as well as those more in favor like JK Rowling. One thing I found important that they included was the fact about some writers seeing it only about the money; while Anne Rice and GRRM mention how they are protective of their works because of wanting to be the only ones to use them, Orson Scott Card according to the post flatly says that it's about the money for him which is a valid reason. It's also funny Charlie Stross' opinion who supposedly compared himself to a dragon when it comes to fanfiction.

Prucher, Jeff. Brave New Words : The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford ; New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Online.

This was included for the definition of fanfiction and because it's an official dictionary. I was actually surprised to find an Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, and one that included “fan fic” and “fan fiction” as actual definitions. It makes sense the definition is based on sci-fi and fantasy stories considering its placement but the definition is better I feel than some other places that emphasize the internet as a portion of how fanfiction exists, as well as actually gives examples of when fanfiction was used as a term in previous publications.

Rice, Anne. "IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM ANNE ON "FAN FICTION"." Anne Rice the Official Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2017.

As with the GRRM post, this was included primarily as a comparison against fanfiction. The important portion of the post, on Anne Rice's official page, is small, not much more than a few lines, but it is infamous within the fanfiction community for cementing the idea that she is against what we do. She's civil about it but there is little in the post on what exactly drives her to be upset over fan writings outside of her work being copyrighted.

Thomas, Angela. "Fan Fiction Online: Engagement, Critical Response and Affective Play through Writing." Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, vol. 29, no. 3, Oct. 2006, pp. 226-239. EBSCOhost, offcampus.lib.washington.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=22317451&site=ehost-live.

This one I liked for going not only into how fanfiction helps writing and how writers learn from reviews and connect through them, but also how fanfiction communities grow. The example of Middle Earth Insanity is just one of many where a group of writers and fans worked together to make a coherent community where they could all talk and enjoy themselves without worry of being judged or having to look through multiple other works to see what they most wanted. It also includes the existence of fanfictions close relative, “roleplaying” where multiple writers work together to create one story, and multiple fascets of how to write. Like other articles on fanfiction it focuses on one subject, Tina this time, and what her thoughts and experiences are but the act of having a literacy study helps in a subject that is about writing.

Woolf, Virginia. Letter to a Young Poet. N.p.: Private, 1932. Fadedpages.com. Web. 12 May 2017. <http://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20120709>.

This is the online version of the letter which I took the title of this paper from. I had heard about it during a lecture in my literature class and that line specifically made me think of fanfiction and how it is the work of those building off of others. I thought it fascinating to think of fanfiction writers as simply having within them the souls of those who wrote before and will write after so I wanted to include it; in addition as I put in my own definition of fanfiction, while the most common form is prose, there is still many fanfictions that are written in the form of poetry and I myself use the hybrid form of prose poetry, or poetic prose, to write. I think thinking of not only authors but poets in terms of how fan made works exist and evolve is important to the narrative.

#complete with annotated bibliography #fanfiction #fanfic #fan fiction #fan fic

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ciathyzareposts · 6 years ago

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Missed Classic: Borrowed Time – Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

It seems like only two days ago that we started our look at Borrowed Time, the first game by Subway Software and a fun diversion as I prepare for Batman Returns. This is the first adventure game created by “The Game Doctor”, William Kunkel, during a brief period where he transitioned from game journalist to game designer. We left off last week after an extended chase sequence as my character, the hardboiled detective Sam Hawlow, survived an attempt on his life.

The plot thickens right away. As soon as I step out of the bar where I had fled, my assistant Iris finds me. Someone has kidnapped my ex-wife Rita; Iris recommends that I search Rita’s apartment for clues. I learned a few minutes earlier that Rita was on good terms with one of the thugs, Fred Mongo, so I do not understand why she was kidnapped. Was she double-crossed? Is this a setup intended to lure me to my death? Was she so upset about the unpaid alimony that she would seek out the mob, only to end up in over her head? I’ll have to play some more to find out. Although my character should know where her apartment is located, I will need to explore the city to find it. Let’s see what we see!

The dogs kids love to bite!

Rather than give you the usual boring play-by-play, let’s cut to the chase and I’ll summarize each area as I found it. The streets are in a grid so explaining the layout isn’t so bad:

First Avenue, running west to east, is where my office and the bar are located. Walking down the street to the west, I discover Hawkey’s newsstand, a vendor selling hotdogs, and a shack at the end of the road. Hawkey insults his own newspaper and won’t sell me any of them. In contrast, the hotdog stand is happy to sell me a weiner, but we eat it immediately rather than stashing it in inventory for later use. I’ll return to the shack in a bit. The hotel that I raced through at the beginning of the game has been closed due to “vandals”, but my office is still open. Shame there’s nothing new there.

The next street to the south is Sixth Avenue, so thank heavens for narrative compression. From east to west, that street features a police station, a park, Bruce Light’s house, a Medical Office, and a pile of trash at the end of the street. The park consists of two rooms: a statue of George Washington and a shed with a combination lock on it. I’ll be on the lookout for a combo. The trash at the end of the street hides a bone, which I pocket in true adventure style. Bruce’s house can’t be explored without a search warrant, but we catch a glimpse of some pill bottles on his table.

Not completely animated, but these scenes give the impression of a living city.

To the north of First is Polk Street, a residential area. I find a house guarded by a “bruiser”, Rita’s apartment, the offices of a company named “G&W”, and a parking lot. There’s a brief scene the first time you arrive at the guarded house: a woman goes, but comes out quickly flanked by a couple of goons before they all get into a cab. I don’t recognize her or the thugs so I have no idea if this scene is significant.

The only location not on those three east-west streets is a post office, tucked away between First and Sixth. The post office has a long hallway of locked PO boxes which seems promising. My bet is that I will find a key to one of them later.

I had to work all of that out over several restores. There seems to be an internal timer where if you don’t trigger some action to advance the plot every few turns, the mob catches up to you and eventually kills you. This gives the game a constant forward pressure, but it makes exploring difficult and is unfair to someone just trying to get the lay of the land. Before long, I got into the habit of saving whenever I think I found a clue, then using that to iterate until I find the next one. I use that trick to also ensure that I move from clue to clue as efficiently as possible, just in case there is an overall timer too.

Not the Kidnap Victim We Were Looking For

While I explore, I stumble onto some situations that warrant further investigation. The first of these is at the shack on First Avenue. Fred Mogo steps out just as I arrive, but hails a cab and speeds away before he sees me. The door to the shack is locked, but a little bit of shoulder-pressure knocks it down easily enough. Inside is the tied up figure of Mavis Brown, the barmaid who gave me advice then ran at the beginning of the game.

I admit that I had a complete “blue screen” moment when I arrived. Had I won the game already? Did I find my kidnapped wife without even trying? No! My ex-wife’s name is Rita Sweeny. Mavis Brown was also kidnapped, although we didn’t learn that until we found her here. Checking out the place, I also discover a white tube and a novel, Babes and Bullets by Bob Tucker. I free Mavis and she tells me that she was kidnapped because she was seen talking to Doris Maglam. Who is that? Doris had told Mavis that Fred has to see someone about a car, but why that information is so sensitive as to warrant a kidnapping is unknown. She believes that Fred thinks she knows more than she does. It sounds like I’ll need to see Doris myself. The tube contains medication for Fred from Dr. Lafferty, but it’s not clear what the medication is for. The novel doesn’t seem important, but Fred was using a receipt from Stiles Safe Park– including a license plate number– as a bookmark. Is this the car that Fred is interested in? Mavis heads out in a few turns and I follow suit.

Let’s pause a second to talk about Bob Tucker. Unless I miss my mark, this is a reference to a famous fanzine and science fiction author from the 1930s through the early 2000s. “Bob” Tucker was a pen name used by Wilson Tucker while writing fandom materials starting in the 1930s. I have tracked down twenty novels and many short stories that Tucker sold starting in 1941, but no “Babes and Bullets”. Given Kunkel’s deep experience with fan magazines and fandom communities, I would not be surprised to learn that this was a “deep cut” and that Tucker really did have a self-published story or novella by that name, even in 1934. Even if not, it’s a nice homage.

I head to the police station to tell them to arrest Fred, but they tell me that they need to catch him red handed. I saw him leave the scene of the crime. There is a witness who would testify that he locked her up, plus we found prescription medication in his name at the scene of the crime. What more could they possibly need? I resolve to ask at the doctor’s office next.

HIPAA Violation

With a map of the area, finding finding the doctor’s office is no sweat. I head inside and am confronted by a nurse. She asks if I am a patient and I honestly answer “no”. She asks me to sit in the waiting area… and I wait and wait and wait. I eventually restore and tell her “yes” instead. She then immediately leads me into a consultation room. I search it to find some bandages in the desk, but what’s more important is what I see through an open doorway into an examination room: Fred Mongo is here, being treated by the doctor for something; I can see the doctor bandaging his hands. This must relate somehow to the prescription that I found in the shack, although I am not sure how yet. If I try to confront Mongo or even stay too long in the consultation room, some goons ambush me and drop me unconscious back into the street. Any further attempts to get into the office results in the receptionist threatening to call the cops on me. I hope I found everything I needed.

Next door to the doctor’s office is Bruce Light’s house– I know this from the description but I have no idea who he is. He lets me in when I knock and I am shocked to discover dozens of pill bottles out in view on his front table. He blocks any attempt to go further into his house without a search warrant. I’m not sure how or if it connects to Fred’s doctor issues, but he seems like he’s up to something. I’ll come back later.

Visiting the Ex

Getting into Rita’s apartment is easy if you apply a little bit of force: we have to break down the door. Immediately after entering, someone attacks me from behind and I am knocked unconscious. When I wake up, I am dangling from the ceiling pipes with my hands tied above me. There’s not much exploring that I can do in this situation, but luckily a nearly table contains some matches and a candle. Using absolutely superhuman feats of skill, I am able to pick up both with my feet and toss them up to my tied hands. It seems impossible, and the game text plays off the silliness of completing this action. With the matches, it is easy work to light the candle to burn the rope that holds my hands to the bar. I drop to the floor unharmed and continue investigating.

My first observation is that everything is covered with dust. Either Rita doesn’t actually live here or she doesn’t clean much. I search the kitchen and come up with my next clue: a receipt for some burn salve. It costs exactly the same about as the white tube says on the label so they must be one and the same. That answers a few questions but opens a few more: Rita must have been helping Fred Mongo. After he burned his hands, he sought medical treatment and needed Rita to help him buy or apply the salve. Was he at the doctor getting his bandages replaced? Fred and Rita must be in cahoots– but why? And how did Fred burn his hands?

This is the point in the game where the inventory limit is starting to matter. We are able to hold eight items, two of which must be our wallet and gun. That leaves six slots but my hands are already full. I drop the glass shard so that I can pick up the receipt; I doubt I will need that again.

I wish I had found these earlier…

Case Files

Although my screenshots are of the Amiga version, up to this point I had been playing the DOS version. Realizing how much nicer the Amiga was, I figured out FS-UAE and downloaded the correct disk image. In the process, I end up playing over the whole start again and producing the lovely screenshots that you see above.

But in the second pass, I find a major missing font of knowledge, right at the start of the game: my case files. In your office, you can browse your records to get a list of open and recently closed cases. They shed a ton of light on what is going on in the game, so much so that I am surprised that I worked out as much as I did without them.

They are:

Case #1 – We are investigating Fred Mogo for the arson of Acme Paper. We’ve seen Fred twice now, first when we saw him leave the shed where Mavis was being held and then in the doctor’s office. The burn salve that we found (and connected to my ex-wife, Rita) must be to help him heal from wounds that he received during that attack.

Case #2 – We investigated F. Nagler for his political activities at the request of his employer. We found him innocent, but I’m not sure what kind of “political activities” he could have been involved in. Unionizing? Gosh, is he a socialist?

Case #3 – We investigated missing money at the Dublin Rose bar next door, discovering that Ms. Athlea was nicking from her employer to buy a sports car.

Case #4 – I am helping the FBI gather evidence against “Boss” Farnham. They are 90% sure that he is a mob boss, but need help to pin it on him. Doesn’t a nickname like “Boss” give it away?

Case #5 – G&W Inc. hired me to track down an embezzling employee. I worked out that it was Jim Schuman, but they demote rather than fire him. Case closed, even if that was a terrible decision on their part.

Case #6 – Morris Motors hired me to investigate Doris Maglam who was 60 days late for her car payment. We found her and the car was repossessed, now sitting at Stiles Park. Doris is who Mavis was talking to when Fred nabbed her; he seems to be interested in this car and I should find that parking lot.

Case #7 – We are investigating R. M. Donald, a “burger bandit” who is on the run. I’m sure he’d eat like a burger king, if he just went in (and out) of a Wendy’s. Robble, robble!

Of those, we know that we are dealing with #1, #4, and #6. I’m not really sure how pertinent any of the others are, but #7 is clearly just a fast food joke.

Duking It Out in the Parking Lot

When you arrive at the parking lot for the first time, there is a scene where Jake, the parking attendant, and Fred Mongo are arguing. Jake refuses to release a DeSoto to Fred because it’s been repossessed. My guess is that he left something in the car that he doesn’t want anyone to find, possibly pointing to his arson case. If I come back later, the argument is over and Fred is gone. At that point, I try to show Jake the receipt to find the car, or just to search around and see if I can find it myself, but neither does anything.

But here is where I get stuck. I can find nothing new to do. I cannot get past the thug into the townhouse, find a key to the safe deposit box, or anything else. I resolve to take a hint: I need to break up the argument.

I have to restore to catch the argument in progress, but that is not too big of a deal. If I flash my gun at Fred and Jake, they stop fighting. Jake tells me that Fred was trying to take burned gloves and three cans of lighter fluid from the impounded car including. Aha! That is proof that Fred was involved in the arson. A turn or two later, Jake calls the police and they tell me that I have to show them evidence. When I show them the burn cream, the receipt, the lighter fluid, and the gloves– one at a time– they tell me that they are interested but there isn’t enough evidence. When I show the last item, they are satisfied and arrest Mr. Mongo for arson.On his way to the big house, Fred rats out his former boss Farnham. He says that he hid a key in Rita’s apartment that opens box 999 at the post office. He says that there is enough evidence there to send Farnham away for good.

Seeing Fred taken away in handcuffs is oddly satisfying.

The Chase II: More Chasing

Searching Rita’s again, I find a key hidden behind the stove. Fetching it is more difficult than it looks since I burn my hands and drop everything. I need to apply the bandages before I can gather up my things and continue.

Using the key at the post office, I am surprised to only discover a poem: “In the country, in the city, under the father’s eye, dig six feet and you’ll have all that money can buy.” It’s not a particularly good poem, but it does have the number 6316 written on the back. What could that be used for? The shed! I head to the shed in the park next and try that combination on the lock. It works! Unfortunately, that only contains a shovel. But “under the father’s eye” is pretty clearly a reference to the George Washington statue so I go there to dig. I discover a suitcase!

Founding father!

Unfortunately, thugs emerge from all directions. I don’t have time to do anything except run; any other action kills me. I head north and find thugs coming from up the street. The only safe direction I can go is west but when I arrive at the end of the street (where I found the bone earlier), I am killed when I turn north. It takes more than a minute to realize that I can “hide” in the trash. Inside is a very angry dog, but he calms down when I return his bone. Leaving the pile too quickly gets me killed, but I can head east once the thugs pass.

The way east leads to the police station and that is where I head next. I tell them to arrest Farnham based on the evidence in the case and they take me to his headquarters. I hand over the suitcase as well as the folder describing embezzlement that is contained inside, but they are not enough. The police accuse me of sending them on a wild goose chase. Farnham stays a free man and I’m stuck.

Alas, I was unable to arrest him this time.

Taking a Hint

After thrashing about a bit and remembering that I’m supposed to be playing Batman Returns, I give up and consult a walkthrough. It’s not as satisfying, but it does get me to the end. I am satisfied that I came close to solving the game, but I needed two more bits of evidence to send Farnham up the creek.

The first thing I didn’t do properly was handle the thugs in the bar. They scared Mavis out and into the street where she was picked up by Fred, but I would not have thought to threaten them with my gun… twice… to learn where Lebock’s hideout is and how to get in. I wasn’t even thinking about Lebock. My only note on him is that he is “Farnham’s man” and that he was last seen with Rita and Fred. After the second threat, they tell me that the password is “tinplayer”. I head up to the building guarded by the bruiser to try it out.

This leads me into another “escape” puzzle. When I arrive at Lebock’s place, he is sitting in a chair by the fire. He kicks me out immediately unless I run east into his dining room. There, I can grab a candlestick and use it to knock out the thugs that are following me. I can then proceed further east and out the back door to emerge at the street. Any deviation gets me shot. All good so far? No. I missed some evidence! What I needed to do was immediately lock the door. Somehow, I don’t get shot or kicked out and Lebock acts defensive. That gives me time to search the fireplace for a piece of partly-burned paper documenting his wrong-doings and then I flee east as before.

The second bit that I missed was due to a mapping error. There were rooms west of the parking lot and that lead to the mob headquarters and another house. If you visit Farnham without the police, you can watch him say “hiyo” to his dogs to calm then. He won’t help me because he’s a mob boss and I’m a detective, but the “hiyo” is what I needed to get past a group of vicious dogs guarding the other house. Inside, I find Rita and Mr. Wainwright which is doubly impressive because I didn’t realize he was kidnapped or know who he is at all. If I talk to him after the rescue, he hands over an audit report that proves money laundering. I take all that evidence to the police (with the rest that I had found earlier) and I win! Farnham is going to jail for a long time.

Time played: 4 hrs 00 min

Nothing but the best minimum-security prison for you!

Final Rating

That was fun, if not particularly long. I’m used to the deep writing and twists and turns of an Infocom adventure and this wasn’t quite that. It reminds me of Scott Adams-style adventures like the Questprobe ones that I played, but more sophisticated in its approach to storytelling. There is a very rough sophistication here that I can’t put my finger on but which demonstrates a promise for future games. Let’s see how the score comes out.

Puzzles and Solvability – Overall not bad, if a bit unfair at times. The highlight (of a sort) is the three chase puzzles where you have to escape from thugs. While it was a rough way to begin, it was more fun than challenging. I only struggled with the second chase at Lebock’s place because I would not have thought that locking the door would have stopped him from killing me. Beyond that, identifying what evidence you needed for the police was nice and the little riddle with the poem was cute, if not particularly difficult. Having to flash around your gun to get people to listen to you fooled me twice– I just don’t think of that sort of thing. My score: 4.

Interface and Inventory – You know, I want to give a nice score here because the game looks polished… but it’s really not. The mouse is available but pretty much useless. The noun and verb lists do not update throughout the adventure and seem to be broken. The game is worse off for having those useless panes taking up so much space. Add to that a strict inventory limit which played off poorly with the timing-based puzzles and I just consider this a well-intentioned failure. Better than Curse of Enchantia though, right? My score: 2.

My completed map of the game.

Story and Setting – The game drops you into a world with a lot of names quickly, but once you work out how to read your case files it gets easier to understand how everyone connects. Solving one unrelated kidnapping while you are researching a second really threw me off in terms of what was going on. On the bright side, all of the cases led together back to the mob and the ending scene specifically calls out that you stripped Farnham’s allies one by one before taking him on. I was going to go lower, but I like the effort that went into creating the interlocking cases. My score: 6.

Sound and Graphics – The animation touches are nice and the images are fantastic… on the Amiga. Some of the scenes seemed a bit repetitive, but nowhere near the image reuse that we’ve seen with similar games in the past. This is nice as far as illustrated text adventures go. My score: 4.

Environment and Atmosphere – The chase sequence gave us a tense beginning to a game that never ceases pushing you forward. While I do not always like that from a puzzle standpoint, I do from an atmosphere one. The city itself was well-designed, if not that large, but the naming of the streets gave you the impression of someplace bigger. Nicely done. My score: 4.

Dialog and Acting – The text used in the game was limited, but what was there was fine. I wish that there had been more attempt to clarify who all of the names were that got thrown around at the beginning. My score: 3.

Add it all up: (4+2+6+4+4+3)/.6 = 38 points!

Looking over my scores, that puts it right around Spiderman and Hook and that feels about right. It was a bit of a transition game from text adventure to illustrated ones, plus the first game by a fledgling design house. It was an enjoyable few hours and I have no complaints.

Up next will be our regularly scheduled program: Batman Returns (1992). My copy of the game (and instruction manual) have finally arrived. Tune in next week: Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-borrowed-time-won-and-final-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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