#maybe I shouldn’t have spent the day bouncing around between writing 8 different scenes

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

I want to go to bed. But my brain is telling me to keep writing but when I ask it what to write it’s like lol girl you figure it out.

[frontporchlit]

The MFA for the Emotionally Stunted by Robert

We came to an MFA creative writing program. We eat food, and read books, and attend classes to learn things, and secretly hope to publish something and win accolades and fame and fortune, before our Panoptical doubt sounds the alarm and rushes in riot-gear clad. We attend the cool readings of visiting writers. We smoke cigarettes, which according to science, activates the writer gene in our DNA. We struggle and struggle to write human characters.

By “we,” I mean me and the baby in my stomach. But not in a pregnancy way. I’m a guy. I have balls. The baby is also a guy, but really, he’s just a small dick motherfucker. I mean, look at that little baby dick. I’m laughing.

I only include him in the we because he goes everywhere with me. He just bounces around in my gut, as we ride the bus, buy milk, go to coffee shops. I feel I should explain the bouncing verb—I’m not an idiot with no conception of human anatomy; I understand human midsections are full of organs and blood and digesting shit and the whole 37 yards, or whatever our 8th grade science teacher told us, of coiled up small intestine—so I get that the kid wouldn’t literally be bouncing around in there; he’d be drowning, and clawing at my liver, and trying to poke a hole in my lung to put his little mouth against to breathe. I’m laughing. But anyway, I say bouncing because in my visual representation of my guts, I imagine a dark pit: it’s part prison (my ribs as a cage), and part cave (I fancy the imaginary floor of my pit gut as nature-ish, with dead leaves, dust, maybe the skeleton of a dead squirrel, etc.). The kid has room to move is what I’m saying.

But I’m also saying he doesn’t move, at least of his own volition, for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve been beating the shit out of him for as long as I can remember. Not because he’s a bad dude or anything—rather, when I was a kid, I thought he was pretty awesome; we were pretty tight. I couldn’t even tell the difference between him and me. If we’re talking pronouns, him and me was probably just I. But as I got older, I learned there was supposed to be a we—I saw other guys beating their babies down into their guts, and I was like oh, guess that’s how it’s done, and I started beating mine. Since I spent so much time depicting the gut pit, I’m probably obligated to depict how the violence works (and you’re a real sick fuck for expecting that from me)—essentially, the brain secretes an ooze from the stem that drips down the nasal cavity, coagulates in the squeezing tight throat, gains size and speed at the chest, and runs four taut knuckles straight at the small, scared, upturned face…no, no, I won’t be describing that after all (if you’re disappointed, you need Jesus).

[SCENE OF VIOLENCE]

I learned, I would say in adolescence, that you are supposed to cripple the little bitch, but you shouldn’t kill him. When you kill him, he decomposes worse than roadkill and mucks up all the plumbing (back to the more anatomically correct conceptualization). Most guys usually try to drown the putrid carcass with alcohol (I mean it makes a kind of sense, right?). Or they just take to beating someone else. Usually once you kill the kid, you’re on a timer until you kill yourself. I don’t recommend it.

Secondly, I keep him asleep. You can beat him into submission, but he will still catch a mood occasionally and start screaming and screaming, and that’s never fun. I went to cut out his tongue one day, and shit, he’s a little goddamn savage. A lullaby of grinding my teeth and clenching my fists accompanied with steady rolling melodies of seething anger usually keeps him quiet. Because as we all know, the world, or is it society? or is it family? or is it friendship? or is it romance? is essentially an airplane, and no one wants to hear your baby cry on an airplane.

Except in an MFA program. (And we’re back, I hope you can forgive the digression.) The MFA is all about the baby. Or maybe that’s wrong. The MFA is all about people who seem to have actually raised the baby, became the baby, but, you know, like the adult-version of the baby. We walk into class and see other baby-saturated adults doing cool things like talking about their feelings and encouraging each other. Suffice it to say: some weird ass shit. Which is all well and good as a tourist, but the thing about MFA programs is they’re full of sharers: you have a turn.

And so, I’m up for workshop and I’m sitting with my laptop trying to think of a story. I look to the baby for help: Hey! I need you right now—but as usual when I’m writing, he runs feral, smearing himself in intestinal oils, slippery as a greased pig. I grab at him, chase him, catch his ankle before he squirms away, lose him entirely and hear only his mocking laughter, until I finally pin him down. I cut off one of his fingers and leave him to howl and kick. I fingerpaint the story.

When workshop begins, they start with a round of compliments. The round lasts 1 minute and 47 seconds. Long enough for the baby to flush pink and crawl inside my head, nestling warm, and to look out my eyes, little mouth pressed so close it fogs the pupils, trying to see other children like him in their faces. The round ends.  

The workshop is unimpressed.

“It needs more paint.” — I throw him from my brain.

“Deeper color here.” — I shove him back down into the pit of my gut.

“Another stroke here.” — I grab his shoulders and shake him and blame him.

“This character just doesn’t feel human to me yet.”

Next time I’ll cut his arm off.

[omniversalobservations]

Warehouse 13 (August 2010)

"13.1" is the seventeenth episode overall and the fifth episode of the second season of Warehouse 13, airing on the Syfy Channel on 3 August 2010. It is the first part of a crossover event with Syfy's other hit show, Eureka. The second part was a Eureka episode, entitled Crossing Over, aired three days later on 6 August 2010.

Synopsis Douglas Fargo, a member of Global Dynamics, travels from Eureka to Warehouse 13 to assist them with a computer system update. However, when a sentient computer virus is unleashed, the team is trapped when the Warehouse goes into lockdown.

Source: Warehouse 13 Wiki

So, now we’ve seen what the first crossover between Syfy shows that aren’t called Stargate looks like, and it has to be said, I kind of liked it. Maybe it’s because I’m a comic fan and therefore shared universes and crossovers and cameos and everything like that is like catnip to me, but watching characters from Eureka and Warehouse 13 wander into each other’s worlds with last week’s episodes of their respective series made me want to see more of this Syfy-verse, and sooner rather than later, if possible. But here’re 13 (late, sorry) thoughts about “13.1” and “Crossing Over.”

1. When In Doubt, Do Shows About Your Show. Both episodes were oddly insular, in one way or another. If I had to compare them, I’d say that I preferred Eureka‘s insularity, where the episode was used to continue plot threads from the season so far, as opposed to Warehouse 13‘s more obvious episode, which seemed much more about the show’s uber-mythology.

2. That’s A Kinda Terrible Retirement Package, Right There. I have to wonder if pointing out the unfortunate fates of former Warehouse agents is intentional foreshadowing for something down the line, or just a generic “Things are unlikely to turn out well for our heroes” thing, if one somewhat mitigated by Hugo ending the episode apparently intact and headed off to Eureka (And, yes, it was sad that he didn’t appear at all in the Eureka ep that followed, even as a cameo). Are Pete and Myka going to snap/die/head to the dark side? Myka is kind of high-strung, I could see her losing it…

3. Which Show Showed Off Better? The point of the crossover, of course, was in part to get new viewers into both shows, which means creating episodes that introduced the series and made sure people would come back for more. For my money, Eureka‘s episode was a better showcase for the series as a whole, but the character work in Warehouse 13 seemed stronger, at least when it came to Pete (Who seemed especially funny this week, or was it just me?), Artie and Claudia. Poor Myka, again, seemed to get left behind. I think she’s got cause for turning evil, really.

4. Which Show Handled The Guest Better? This time, it’s Warehouse 13. Don’t get me wrong; Claudia seemed like a good fit in Eureka, but she also didn’t really seem entirely like Claudia, for some reason – In part because she seemed like a generic guest-star whose purpose was to walk on, give exposition and then be led off by Henry for a lot of the show, and in part because she just seemed too confident and self-assured, especially around Fargo (Remember the Claudia of two weeks ago who freaked out over liking Todd?) – whereas W13‘s Fargo seemed spot-on, personalitywise. Which leads me to…

5. Continuity Is A Bitch (1). Am I the only person who thought that it was weird that Fargo, who’s now the head of Global Dynamics, was the person who went to Warehouse 13 to install a new computer system? Shouldn’t he have… you know, someone to do that for him? I wondered if there’d already been a draft of the script done before the new Eureka status quo had been finalized.

6. Continuity Is A Bitch (2). When Claudia saw Fargo’s life thanks to the zoetrope in W13, why didn’t she seem surprised that he’d actually come from what’s essentially an alternate timeline? Which reminds me…

7. Does This Mean That Warehouse 13‘s Continuity Might Be Changed Now, Too? Or has it always existed in Eureka‘s new timeline? This is where shared universes get confusing.

8. Which Show Pandered The Most? Well, that one is obvious; Warehouse 13. Lightsabers, you guys? Really? Lightsabers? I thought we were the ones doing the Star Wars thing right now. (Okay, I admit it: I loved the lightsabers. Eureka is plenty geeky – especially with their choice of guest-stars, which almost always brings a smile to my face – but W13 has taken to really reveling in its geek this season, and I kind of love that about the show. My only real complaint about the lightsabers is that, come on: You know that Pete would be really upset when he heard about that later. I wish we could’ve seen that.)

9. It’s The Little Things That Matter. I might not have thought Eureka‘s Claudia was exactly the same Claudia as Warehouse 13‘s, but I did appreciate that she spent her guest-spot calling Fargo “Doug,” thereby showing that she had a different/more respectful relationship with him than everyone else on the show; it was a tiny little thing, but I really loved it. Not so much her calling him “the Fargonator,” but kudos for the shoutout to the season premiere, if nothing else.

10. Science In Eureka Can Be Really Dangerous. Now, maybe I missed something, but was there any testing of the advanced Warehouse goo before they started pumping into James Callis’ bloodstream? Isn’t the goo supposed to be at least kind of toxic in Warehouse terms?I mean, I guess it tied the episode to W13 slightly more, but that scene seemed kind of odd; as much as I’m glad that Callis’ time-tossed scientist Charles Grant is sticking around, even with that accent, I’d have rather it was all a nanobot save in the end. Too picky?

11. Seriously, How Old Is Claudia? Hey! Missy making out with Fargo! Didn’t the show just establish that you were a teenager, like, a week or so ago? Isn’t Fargo somewhere in his early-to-mid twenties? I’m no prude, but I’m surprised this hook-up seemed to happen without commentary, considering how much was made of Claudia and Todd just a week earlier. Also:

12. What The Hell, Todd? Seriously, dude, if your dumping of Claudia wasn’t set up for something later, then that was really bad writing that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense – especially considering how quickly Claudia had seemed to bounce back by Eureka‘s episode. I’m holding out hopes that Todd will turn out to be HG Wells’ grandson or something, and it’ll all make sense down the road.

13. Match-Ups I Want To See In The Future I’d be very happy if this ended up being an annual thing, a la DC’s Justice League/Justice Society crossovers. Maybe next year, it could be a true crossover, with a story beginning in one and concluding in the other, and with more characters jumping between shows? If nothing else, I’d love to see Myka deal with Deputy Andy – and who wouldn’t be into watching CCH Pounder be charmed by Vincent’s culinary skills? Only, next year? Bring Haven to the party, please; Emily Rose deserves better than weirdly-paced episodes that always seem to need dubbed exposition at the end to tie up loose ends.

Source: Time