#rewatching the movies and re-reading the books has made that fucking clear

[atlasshrugd]

katniss everdeen suffered more than jesus

[cherryblossomshadow]

Not to be controversial, but if the only interesting thing in the book(movie/TV show etc.) is the plot twists, and the book(movie/TV show etc.) is ruined by knowing what happens, the book(movie/TV show etc.) is probably not that great to begin with. (comment courtesy of @black-rose-writings)

.

If you don't re-read books then how can you experience the joy of going "oh fuck" as you find every bit of foreshadowing, every dropped hint? How can you appreciate the work that went into setting up the big reveal if you don't view it all over again with foreknowledge? My favourite books are the ones better on the re-read. Plus like, sometimes I just enjoy a story, knowing the ending doesn't stop me enjoying the build up. And even if it's not that special joy of finding something in the first ten pages that sets up the ending, like, knowing what's going to happen can actually make it more exciting. (comment courtesy of @hedge-rambles)

.

Also sometimes you need the comfort of knowing what happens, the familiarity is the point. Or perhaps the first read meant that you retained the basic story but the re-read gave you insights that you just couldn't have had the first time. Or the book hasn't changed but you have and your take away from it is something so profoundly different that you can't believe you didn't see it before, but how could you without the context of your experiences? I love re-reading books. (comment courtesy of @bumblebeesofttoy)

I am a much different person that I was just, what, five years ago? So yeah, revisiting media and seeing how my interaction with it has changed is really fun. Something something viewing the self through the interaction with something else

.

YOU know what happens. I’VE already forgotten as soon as i close the book (comment courtesy of @wolphinmaybe)

relatable. mind like a sieve

.

me rereading that one fanfic that literally made me want to keep living lol (comment courtesy of @mylabyrinthworld)

I love rereading fanfic, and it feels extra special to reread the fics that have impacted my life or my self-perception in a major way

.

I feel exactly the same! My favorite thing to do is to pick one of my favorite characters and then re-read a bunch of the canon and a bunch of fanfiction. I especially like re-reading the canon out of order, so it's like I'm time traveling through canon with my favorite character! .... is that just me? ... I also enjoy re-reading my own fanfiction. Especially if it's something I wrote, say, ten years ago. It feels like time travel. (comment courtesy of @andtheny)

I also think its really fun to read my own fanfiction! Like, wow, I sure said a thing back then

.

#I cannot reread or rewatch anything unless I have someone with me to share the experience with. I just can't do it otherwise, I get annoyed, my brain really doesn't like it, no matter how much I like a book it just always gets annoyed, so usually I have to forget first as no one I know would like to be read to. (comment courtesy of @sleet-cat)

.

i personally can't reread a book until I've sufficiently forgotten the details of the plot. if I know exactly what happens next, I'll never finish the book because I'm bored while reading it. I don't know if this is normal but when I'm bored, I don't push through, I avoid the source of boredom by finding something more entertaining to fill my time. for example, if I'm bored in class, I'll end up shutting down and losing more instruction because my attention must be kept without losing it or I can't restart paying attention. (comment courtesy of @calechipconecrimes)

Relatable. For better or for worse, tho, my memory is substantially worse than it used to be so, uh, that's no longer a high bar to clear 😅

People who don't re-read books are so funny to me. "I know what happens"..?? Gurl I know what pizza tastes like, still gonna eat another one. I know what a rainbow looks like, you think that'll stop me running outside, camera in hand, to see the next one?

[duhragonball]

I think I’m just gonna ramble a bit-- nothing earthshaking-- so here’s a nice, unrelated picture of Cooler to set that up.

I managed to get through Camp Nano in April with about an hour to spare.  I’m still frustrated with my pacing, because I’ve gotten pretty good at finishing the November writing goals with time to spare, but I always end up falling behind on the shorter goals I try to do during the rest of the year.   July is up next, so I’m kind of hoping I can turn this around by then.  

April was difficult all over, so I’m trying to use May to chill the fuck out.    Somehow I find that hard to do.  Like if I’m relaxing, I just get bored or feel unproductive.  That’s one reason I’m writing this post.    I just want to get some thoughts out of my head so I can move on.

For whatever reason, I got sucked into watching YouTube videos about the Nostalgia Critic and his various blunders from 2012 to present.   That sounds pretty sad now that I write it out, because I never followed the guy that closely, so I keep forgetting the hellacious filming schedule discussed in the Change the Channel movement happened years earlier, and the movies themselves were ridiculed as debacles, so it’s not just one bad year, more like nine or ten.   Anyway, watching all of this has given me some stuff to think about.  

I think I first heard about the NC when he started doing that “feud” with the Angry Video Game Nerd.   They did some videos together teasing a crossover, and then they finally went through with it, and it wasn’t terrible, but I had no idea who the other guy was.    It was like Batman teaming up with some indie comics character you never heard of.  Batman doesn’t need the rub.   From the beginning, I got the sense that Nostalgia Critic was the one driving this concept.  Once I heard about Channel Awesome and all these YouTube reviewers crossing over with each other, I was sure of it.  

Looking back on it all, I get the sense that NC has never really had much of a creative agenda.   His early work involved “reviewing” movies by playing long clips of them to recap the plot, and then making some snarky commentary.  Not the worst format, except he kept getting copyright strikes from YouTube, which was why he started his own website to host his videos.  Over the years, it feels like people have begun to recognize the flaw in that format.  Past a point, you’re not really “reviewing” anything.  It’s more like an MST3K style thing, only shorter and less authorized.  

Years ago, I used to read this site called “The Agony Booth”, which sort of did the same thing but in text.   Before YouTube really got going, the only way to lambast a movie or TV episode properly was to meticulously describe it in prose, with the occasional screenshot here and there.   Nostalgia Critic probably represents a point where people realized they could do the same thing in video form, except it starts to cross the line from commentary to something else.   Siskel and Ebert never did a blow-by-blow synopsis of a movie.    Reviewers like the Agony Booth crew did, because they were often discussing old material, and couldn’t show it to you or assume that you had seen it yourself.   A lot of NC’s early stuff was the same deal, where he’d recall something from his childhood and rewatch it to see how it holds up in the present.  So I’m sure a lot of his content covered old, out-of-circulation things.   But he’d do more recent stuff too, and the attitude surrounding YouTube at the time was that you could pretty much do whatever you wanted as long as you kept it under ten minutes. 

Anyway, the Channel Awesome thing looked like an alliance of similar YouTube reviewers, and they kept appearing in each other’s stuff, and then they did the anniversary movies, which were basically “mega crossovers” with all of them appearing together in the same... story, I guess?   At the time, I wrote the whole thing of as a masturbatory power fantasy.   Comic books did crossovers like these all the time, and YouTube seemed to have hundreds of “reviewers” and “personalities” who would put on silly costumes and carry toy weapons like they were about to fight Thanos instead of discussing the ALF cartoon.   The second Channel Awesome movie was about high fantasy tropes, and the third one was a space opera, so that seemed to support my assumption.

From watching all these videos about the movies, though, it looks more like each one was mostly about the Nostalgia Critic talking all his “friends” into another one of his kooky schemes, and they all just sort of go along with it, even though they know him to be a self-centered jerk.   Then the third one ends with NC quantum-leaping out of the story itself and meeting Doug Walker, the guy who writes and plays the character.   They try to sell the audience on the idea that NC had some sort of character development across the three movies, and he decides to sacrifice himself to save the day or something.   This was touted as the finale for the character.   Except it turned out later that Doug Walker wasn’t just playing a self-centered jerk, he really was a self-centered jerk, because he treated the others like crap during the filming and didn’t tell any of them that he was killing off their website’s top draw.

That leads into Demo Reel, the series Doug Walker introduced to fill the void.   From what I’ve seen, it sure looked like he wanted/expected this to be a big hit, and he killed off his biggest meal ticket to make this happen.  But everyone hated it.  I think the pilot episode asks the question “What is Demo Reel?” about three times.   Each time, the answer makes less and less sense.   “Demo Reel��� the show is about a studio named “Demo Reel”, run by Donnie DuPre, a self-centered jerk who seems to think there’s big money to be made in plagiarizing movies.   The whole thing is just a flimsy plot device to explain why Doug Walker and two other actors would bother making a no-budget parody/re-telling of three Batman movies smooshed together.   There’s no real-world or fictional reason for three people to do this, it’s just that Doug Walker wanted to make a YouTube video about Batman, but he didn’t want to use the NC format, and he couldn’t just talk over a Batman movie without getting in trouble with Warner Bros.   And I guess just... dressing up like Batman and making jokes needs some sort of context, so that’s where the Demo Reel concept comes in. 

What really annoys me is that Demo Reel has this “mockumentary” thing going on at the same time, so you end up watching their parody movie and the scenes where they make the parody movie, and you get these interview segments where they talk about talking about making the parody movie.   It’s like “The Office” except every character is completely delusional.   They’ve all convinced themselves that this is a really good idea, and I guess the joke is that this is a really stupid job and they must be pretty stupid to work at it.   

No one knows where Demo Reel was originally headed, because it was so reviled by the audience that it got cancelled in five episodes, ending with the revelation that Donnie DuPre was the Nostalgia Critic all along, in some sort of amnesiac state.    Or maybe that was the plan all along, I’m not sure which scenario would be dumber, honestly.   New Coke was a sincere effort to phase out the original Coca-Cola formula, but it was such a failure that everyone thinks it was a brilliant ploy to make consumers appreciate the original.   So who knows?

Anyway, this started the next phase of NC, where he would just remake scenes of whatever movie he’s covering that week, a la Demo Reel.    I don’t know if that’s just a strategy to avoid YouTube copyright strikes, or a stubborn refusal to give up the core concept of Demo Reel, or what.  Then he got around to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, and everyone crapped on that, big time.   I haven’t seen the original movie or his “review”, but from what I gathered, Doug

a) basically did a shot-for-shot remake of the movie, only shorter and cheaper.

b) spent the whole video lambasting the movie and the band for making it.

c) offered his parody songs for sale on iTunes, calling them a “love letter to Pink Floyd.”

The big question is: Why did he put so much work into making the thing when he had so little to actually say about it?   There’s no clear opinion expressed about the movie, even though the video is supposed to be a “review”.   He kind of acts like he thought “The Wall” was okay, but the parody lyrics read like the awkward part of a celebrity roast.   Why go to all this trouble unless you really love or absolutely despise “The Wall”? 

Eventually, I started to figure out that this guy really just doesn’t have much to say.   He wants to make videos, make movies, make reviews, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any real opinion or thought that he wants to express.   I was watching him freak out over the credit card scene from “Batman and Robin” and thought “Are you that upset over Batman having a credit card?”   That’s not even in the top twenty dumbest things in that movie.   Sure, it’s worth a snide remark, but not much more than that.  But he’s “doing a character”, and the NC’s whole schtick is to flip out over stuff like that.  

Except it’s not a character, because NC is just Doug Walker wearing a stupid hat, right?  In the movies, NC’s whole persona is that he’s a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army, and the real Doug Walker was doing the exact same thing off-camera.    Donnie DuPre was another “character”, wearing a different hat, only whoops, he’s the Nostalgia Critic too.   And even if he wasn’t the same guy, his persona was... you guessed it, a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army.  

There was this whole era on YouTube where it seemed like all these “content creators” were trying to adopt silly gimmicks.    I’m guessing the Angry Video Game Nerd started the trend, because he dressed up in a white button-down shirt with a pocket protector and glasses.   He looked like a stereotypical nerd, you see.  And he’d drink a particular kind of beer, and lose his temper and set Nintendo cartridges on fire, because AVGN was a character.   You watch James Rolfe being himself and he’s a whole other person, always smiling and talking about horror movies and filmmaking, because that’s what the real guy is about.   There’s a separation there.  

I think that was the disconnect.   A lot of these YouTubers saw James Rolfe playing the Nerd and just assumed the secret was to rant and rave about some topic, and he used a Nintendo Zapper to shoot a pickle monster once, so dressing up like a Power Ranger in a trenchcoat didn’t seem like a bridge too far.  Well, no not if you’re trying to make a movie or tell a story.  If all you want to do is talk about Star Wars, you should probably keep it simple.  I think one of the consequences of Nostalgia Critic’s fall from grace is that modern YouTubers are more grounded.   I’ve watched a lot of Jenny Nicholson videos and she’s pretty funny and animated, but she’s not trying to be a charicture of herself.  She’s just this lady sitting on her bed surrounded by porg dolls.  It works a lot better.   

I used to watch the Game Overthinker unironically.   Does anyone remember Moviebob?  Well once upon a time he wasn’t completely bonkers.   The GO series was reasonably well done and uncomplicated... until the dude started appearing on camera and introducing “characters” and storylines that killed whatever point he was trying to make in his video essays.   Then I started watching him ironically, and then I sort of stopped caring about him altogether, and then he pissed away whatever goodwill he had.   I can’t help but feel like he might have been better off just staying behind the camera, or if he had to be on-screen, just sit on a bed with a bunch of Mario dolls or whatever. 

The fad of YouTube personality as wannabe superhero got me thinking of the whole “Mary Sue” and “self-insert” thing.   They’re really poorly defined terms, and they’ve been overused in so many unfair criticisms that I don’t think they make much sense anymore.    When I first got into fanfic, I saw a lot of people simply writing themselves into their stories.   That’s what a self-insert was.    You literally inserted yourself in the story so you could tell Wolverine to his face that his haircut looks stupid, or whatever you wanted to say to him.    I always found this idea infuriating, because I know who Wolverine is, but this other guy telling him off is a complete stranger, and why should I care about him?   Why should Wolverine care? 

One response to that problem would be to present your self-insert like a bigger deal than you are.   You could put yourself in this story and not only talk to Wolverine, but give yourself an elaborate backstory, where you’re a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and you and Logan go way back, etc., etc.   But that’s a tricky proposition, because if you’re doing it right, you’re just inventing a new character with the same name as you.    Or you can overdo it and make the character too big a deal, at the risk of outshining the other characters.    The Mary Sue concept originated from this, with Star Trek fanzines getting all these story submissions about young, super-talented ensigns who join the crew and immediately win over Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. 

The dirty little secret of character creation is that every character you write is a self-insert or an author surrogate, to some degree.   You can have one that’s meant to be your alter ego, the one who’s based on you and tends to react the way you would in a similar situation.  But you’re writing all the other characters too, and deciding what they think and say and do, so to a certain point they also think a lot like you do, whether you meant for them to or not.  The trick is not to be super-blatant about it, or to revel in the creative freedom to break the fourth wall.   Readers hate that stuff, because they don’t know you well enough to get the joke.   

That’s the advice I’ve always had at the ready in case anyone ever asked me.   But, watching all this stuff about the Nostalgia Critic has made me realize that it applies from the other direction.    It’s very easy to say you’ve created a character, distinct from yourself, only for it to turn out to be more of a reflection of you than you intended.   I can’t tell if Doug Walker is self-aware or not, but it seems like the joke with all his “characters” is that they’re extremely selfish and shallow, and yet he seems to also be selfish and shallow.  So is he aware of this, and he’s trying to exaggerate his flaws for his characters?  Or does he just not realize that he’s telling on himself every time he plays these roles?   Or does he think everyone is selfish and shallow, and that this is just boilerplate information, like blinking and wearing shoes?

I’ll pick on myself, because it’s handier to do so.   I’ve made a bunch of original characters over the years, some that were supporting players, and others who were designed to be big deals.    One of my villains was this bitter misanthrope, and eventually I realized that I was a lot more like him than the outgoing group of buddies that he was trying to oppose.    That hit me and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with that ever since.  

I wrote a butler in my Hellsing fic, basically an anti-Walter based on Marcus Brody from the Indiana Jones movies.   He was clueless and couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and he was really old, so he told the vampires that if he ever had a heart attack and dropped dead on the job that they shouldn’t pass up the free meal.   Is that me in there?   I tend to think a lot about the world moving on without me, and my own obsolescence.   I just didn’t think I was tapping into that when I wrote the character.   I wouldn’t even bring it up, except I liked writing the guy so much, and that’s the main thing I remember about him.  

A lot of my villains in Luffa are representations of things that I’d like to see punched, because Luffa is an unapologetic Mary Sue Self Insert.    I made her all these other things that I’m not: brave, a woman of color, a good cook, a charismatic lover.   But fuck that, this was all just a ploy to keep people from noticing any resemblance to me and my imaginary punching agenda.   But the villains hold all these shitty attitudes and shitty behaviors, things which I consider to be wrong but sometimes catch myself turning a blind eye to.   Jealousy, greed, fear, resentment, and so on.  

You end up putting a lot of yourself into your writing, there’s really no way to avoid it.  The only real trick is to disguise it a bit so it looks like a story instead of just an essay or an autobiography.   I think that’s where some of the YouTube personalities got it wrong, because they would try to tell a story AND write an essay at the the same time, and that’s tough to pull off.   One of the big things that came out of that whole Channel Awesome document was this problematic scene in “To Boldly Flee” where Linkara has been replaced by a cyborg duplicate, and he converts Lindsey Ellis into a cyborg, and someone hears all these suggestive noises and thinks they’re having rough sex.   It’s awkward anyway you slice it, but it gets even worse because it’s basically the real Linkara and Lindsey Ellis.    Their “characters” are so poorly distinguished from the real people that there’s no other way to describe it.  

Also, one of the most salient points I picked up from watching all these commentary videos is that real people can’t have character arcs.   You can’t just stick Filmdude and Captain Snark and Filmdudette and Movie Sniffer and The Comics Complainer all into the same scene and expect anything important to happen to any of them.   They can’t learn anything or grow in any appreciable way during the story, because they’re real and the story is fictional.  The only “character” to their roles are the bit where they review pop culture stuff, which might as well be non-fictional, so why bother?  Even if I’m wrong, and there really is a more complete fictionalized version of everybody in the Channel Awesome Trilogy, the waters are so muddied that you can’t make sense of it. 

And that’s the real danger of leaning too hard into putting a 1:1 replica of yourself into your stories.  Stephen King can be a bus driver in one of his movies, and Stan Lee can be a bus driver in Avengers 3, but if Stan Lee just started kicking the shit out of Ultron it’d be confusing, especially for people who didn’t know who he was.  And if Joss Whedon started kicking the shit out of Ultron, it’d be even worse, because he’s not as well-known as Stan Lee.   You’re better off making up a guy like Thor or the Hulk who can do it for you, and then putting just enough of yourself into those characters that you won’t get caught.  

At least, that’s how I see it.  

[bughead-fic-request]

I would like to thank @leaalda for making these amazing banners.

This is an effort to spread the word about all fan fiction writers in our little fandom. If you would like to be featured or nominate a writer, please contact me. Please reblog this post if you can and check out some of @cooperjones2020 work!

1. First things first, if someone wanted to read your stories where can they find them.

I post all of them on AO3 as well as on tumblr @cooperjones2020 under the tag #mine and on my master list. (also fyi it’s a sideblog, so if you ever get a reply from @acitrusmoon, that’s also me!)

2. Tell us a little about yourself.

I’ve tipped the scale into second half of my 20’s. I’m currently doing my master’s in English lit, focusing on early modern drama and cultural studies. Canada is the third country I’ve lived in. I’ve been in four separate countries within a 24-hour timespan on two separate occasions. I prefer children’s toothbrushes to adult ones. I made my parents let me drop out of preschool when I was four because they wouldn’t give me orange juice.

3. What do you never leave home without?

Nothing. I leave with the absolute bare minimum I can get away with. So 99% of the time I have my phone, but even that’s not a sure thing. If I can stick a card or some cash in my bra so I don’t have to carry a purse or wallet, I’m doing it. If I do have a bag, I definitely have my giant reusable water bottle and a book with me.

4. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Early bird. I’ve hit the level of adulthood where I wake up at like 6:30 sans alarm. And I have no excuse. I don’t have to be at work til 10.

5. If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?

I’ve been thinking about this question and I can’t come up with anything other than HP. I basically learned to read off those books and grew up alongside them. That fictional world is so embedded with my real one, it would be a disservice to pick something else.

6. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met.

In general, I have no interest in meeting famous people, so I think the most famous person I’ve ever actually met was Roger Ebert at an ice cream shop in Michigan when I was 8. But I’ve been adjacent to famous people. I saw Josh Radnor in my college bookstore, I’ve emailed with John Green, and Chicago Fire used to film in my old apartment in Chicago before it became my apartment. They would still shut our street down to do external shots, and NBC paid my landlord not to gut the apartment when he rehabbed it, in case they needed to use it again.

Does Walk the Moon count as famous now? I’ve met Nick Petricca at parties (figure out what Josh Radnor, John Green, and Nick Petricca have in common, and you’ll learn something else about me).

7. What are some of your favorite movies/TV?

I’m the worst with “favorite” type questions because I change my mind all the time when my attention wanders. So TV shows I’ve loved a long time and will continue to rewatch ad infinitum: Gilmore Girls, Charmed, Boy Meets World. I don’t really re-watch movies, which is my general bar for loving something. I recently saw The Third Man and it blew my mind, so much so that it made it into chapter 5 of “Nobodies Nobody Knows.”

(but also I haven’t had consistent access to a television since 2006 because I went to boarding school for nerds, so I’m out of touch with a lot what’s been on unless I’ve been able to find it on the internet and binge watch it)

8. What are some of your favorite bands/musicians?

Again, I don’t know if I have anyone I would say is a favorite above all the music I like. I cycle through songs I get obsessed with for a week or two. The Spotify playlist I’m currently listening to on repeat includes Halsey, Imagine Dragons, Walk the Moon, Regina Spektor, Lorde, Cigarettes After Sex, Ed Sheeran, Adele, X Embassadors, and Sia. But it’s also my Bughead writing playlist. I’d really like to see Maren Morris in concert.

9. Favorite Books?

I could fill a library with my favorite books. The books that have been most foundational to me as a person were probably HP and the Anne of Green Gables series. The books/authors I loved enough to ship to Canada, which really just means I like rereading them, include Emily Dickinson, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, Junot Diaz, Harper Lee, Milan Kundera, Diana Gabaldon, Deborah Harkness, and a little bit of Nora Roberts and Andrew Greeley for variety. But actually the hardest part of moving back to America will be having to round up all my books and get them to my new place of residence.

10. Favorite Food?

Soup. Which is really a non-answer because there’s infinite varieties.

11. Biggest pet peeve?

People who are passive aggressive and manipulative.

12. What did you want to be when you were little? What do you want to be now?

I went through an intense phase of wanting to be a flight attendant for a while. I was pretty sure I wanted to do a PhD, but the first year of my masters has taught me that I do not want to do that. So now, I have no idea. Something that involving writing and editing as part of its daily tasks. I did some freelancing for SparkNotes earlier this summer and they had a full-time opening that would have been perfect for me if it were a year from now. Before coming back to school, I worked for a tutoring company creating curriculum materials and overseeing/developing tutors.

13. What are your biggest fears? Do you have any strange fears?

The stereotypical things I’m afraid of are heights and clowns. I’m also afraid of bridges and really uncomfortable on escalators, though that’s gotten better. I’m a big believer in facing your fears, so one time I forced myself to do a high ropes course at a team-building retreat and I literally had a panic attack forty feet up in the air.

14. When you are on your deathbed what would be the one you’d regret not doing?

I think I’ll regret the times I’ve said no to things because I was afraid.

Okay… lets talk about your writing!

15. Which is your favorite of the fics you've written for the Bughead fandom?

The one I’m enjoying writing the most/is coming the easiest is ”Second City.” I also really love ”Marked” because it’s the one that got me into the fandom and because it challenged me to go out of my comfort zone.

16. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

“What’s Past is Prologue” because the plot structure is so weird, so I wind up feeling like I’m just hitting the same note over and over.

17. How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? Do you people watch? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?

I haven’t written enough fics to have a developed answer to this. “Marked” and “WPIP” came about because of a conversation @jandjsalmon was having that I lurked on. “Second City” came about because I love post-break up/the characters are now in their 20s fics, and I was homesick (hence the setting). Also, with all the discourse around how healthy and communicative Betty and Jug are, I was wondering what would be a convincing enough circumstance to cause them to break up, and how would they find their way back to each other. As far as individual ideas within the fics themselves, I do, as mentioned, have a writing playlist, but I don’t listen to it while actually writing. Just while I’m doing things around the house or walking to school, which is when I brainstorm. I often have to stop walking and move out of the way so I can type ideas into the notes on my phone. A lot of times, I’ll just get a half a line or sentence that sounds nice and then I’ll have to figure out how to work it in later.

18. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?

I haven’t been doing this long enough to be able to answer this question with any level of confidence. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve really wanted to write and been unable to, at least as far as fic goes. I have a lot of half-planned ideas for original stories that refuse to come out how I want them to.

19. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

The next chapter of WPIP because I don’t think it’s doing anything beyond serving as a vehicle to the chapter after it. But I recently had an idea of something to add to it which might help.

20. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

I love chapter 5 of “Second City.” I’m genuinely happy about every scene in it, especially the flashback. I also really like the end of chapter 8, parts of chapter 10 and pretty much all of chapter 11. More than plot points/chapters, I tend to love little details or turns of phrase, like the crown scar from “Marked,” or Jughead in a “this is what a feminist looks like” t shirt, or lines like “It hurts. She knows it shouldn’t. She knows it makes sense. But it does. Because it sounds like ‘I don’t think about you’” from “Second City.”

21.Favorite character to write?

Betty because I overly identify with her. In “Second City,” I’ve found Alice and Veronica particularly easy to write in the little they’ve appeared thus far. Like, their voices have been very clear. But watch, I’ve probably just jinxed myself.

22. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written?

I don’t know if I have a favorite, and I use too much dialogue to go back through it all. I try really hard to make it sound realistic. I’m particularly proud of the ending dialogue of chapter 9 of “Second City,” basically everything from after they go back into the spare bedroom.

Also, spoiler: “You harassed Sheriff Keller. You questioned FP. What’s next, Betty? Were you going to interrogate Jellybean?” Betty feels heat suffuse her face. “Oh, you thought I wouldn’t know about that, huh?”

“I did see JB,” she mumbles.

“Fuck, I knew she was lying.”

23. Best comment/review you’ve ever received?

I don’t want to call out anyone in particular because I love and appreciate every single one and I spend way too much time staring at my email waiting for comment notifications. I particularly enjoy when people point out a specific line or plot point that resonated with them, or when they say something rung particularly true to character. I also love when people will talk to me in the comments, because I reply to everyone and literary analysis is my jam.

24. How do you handle bad reviews or comments?

I’ve never had any! I’m not a big enough deal for that.

25. If you could change anything in any of your stories, what would it be?

I would have written more of “WPIP” before posting it because that was my first attempt at anything multi-chapter and I didn’t know what I was doing. I still don’t, but I’ve gotten slightly better at masking it.

26. What is your favorite story you’ve ever written? Any fandom?

Fandom-wise, I’ve only written for Bughead. “Second City”/the “Who Sings Heartache to Sleep” universe is (clearly) my favorite. I actually enjoy rereading old chapters, which is not a place I’ve been with my own writing in ages and ages.

27. What are you reading right now? Both fan fiction and general fiction?

I’m working on my master’s thesis proposal, so I’m doing a lot of reading about early modern theatre, seventeenth century midwifery manuals, and feminist theory. I’m also running a reading group on film noir, so I’ve read several of those this summer. I reread The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the sixth time, but it was for a student I tutor. I’m looking forward to reading a romance novel, probably Nora Roberts, when I visit my parents in a few weeks.

For fic, I’m subscribed to so so many and am behind on most of them. The ones I’ll drop everything to read as soon as I see the notification include anything by @lessoleilscouchants or @sylwrites, Summer Storm by @lazydaizies, Interbellum by @wolfofansbach, Serpent and the Swan by @jugandbettsdetectiveagency, Hearts in Velvet by @raptorlily, Carry On by @soulsofstarsliveinyourveins, Wicked Games by @ariquitecontrary, He Was Gone by @bettyluvsjuggie, What Fools These Mortals Be by @gellbellshead …gah, I know there are more. Those are ones that have either updated recently or that I’ve thought about recently for some reason or another.

28. Do you have an advice for writers that want to get into this fandom but might be scared?

Please please do it. I cannot emphasize enough how welcoming people are. I literally inserted myself in someone else’s conversation like a total creep and it’s the best thing I’ve done in months. I’ve never done anything like that before and definitely wouldn’t be able to in non-internet life. Think about if positions were reversed and you were the one already established in the fandom, how would you react to someone wanting to be your friend? You’d be pretty darn excited. That’s how I feel every day with all of you and I just want to spread the love.

And for writing specifically, and this is cliché advice but, you won’t get better unless you let other people read your work. And letting other people in and letting them be excited (because they will be) will make you so much more confident and motivated.

For real, though, while the last year of my life has been super rewarding personally and I’m happy, it’s also been one of the hardest and loneliest years of my life. And the hits just keep on coming. And you all have made the last month, at least, a lot easier.

[ashroadtrek-blog]

Shore Leave

Air Date: December 29, 1966

Writer: Theodore Sturgeon

Director: Robert Sparr

Shore Leave is an interesting episode, an entertaining episode, but is it a good episode? I don’t know. There’s a long sequence of fisticuffs between Captain Kirk and the facsimile of an Academy bully, a knight is shot with a six-shooter, a tiger and a samurai - plenty of action, not much brains. 

We open with an unexplored planet - and for once it’s not a desert! Well, okay, it’s southern California desert to be fair. 

Then again, there is a distinct difference between the original and remastered versions...

So we meet Yeoman Rand’s replacement, Yeoman Barrows, in the opener. Kirk is short with her (as usual), she starts massaging his back and he changes his tune...until he realizes it isn’t Spock doing it. 

No wonder people got gay vibes from them...

Spock says that after what the ship and its crew has been through in the last three months, they need some relaxation (not Spock though - wasting energy is highly illogical.)

So this episode takes place in February of 2267. Looking at my source, some of the episodes that took place in the three months prior to this one include Court Martial, The Menagerie, Dagger of the Mind, and The Conscience of the King, with nothing notable occuring in December but Charlie X having taken place in November and The Naked Time having occurred in October; though Balance of Terror was the previous episode, it actually took place in December of 2265.

These people need a break.

(When this season is done I intend to compile a chronological order of episodes.)

Sulu and Bones check out the planet, and Bones runs into a man in a rabbit costume, followed shortly after by Alice.

His reaction is about the same as mine would be - “did I just see that? Does this planet have vaporized LDS in the atmosphere?”

Never take too much LDS

Kirk thinks Bones is joking about the rabbit - wait a minute, Spock is there, and his mom used to read him Alice in Wonderland...

Shhh! Soft reboot!

Spock confronts Kirk about him needing a vacation by reversing the psychology - Kirk demands this crewman who is under all sorts of pressure and overwork get down to the planet and enjoy himself right this minute now that’s an ORDER! Spock gives him the name of the crewman...well played, Spock. Well played. 

So then there’s a menacing shot of a gun under a hinged rock. I’m sure that’ll never show up again. 

It does. In fact, Kirk later uses it to blow away a knight that kills Bones.

So why isn’t it called Sulu’s Gun?

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."— Trope Namer Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)

Ironic that the first actual gun that counts as a Chekhov’s Gun in Star Trek appears 14 episodes before a character named Chekhov does. 

We’re given a few shots of a couple of crewmen throughout the episode, token lower deck redshirt-tier characters who are named but barely characterized and only shown because we know they aren’t going to kill Kirk, Sulu, Bones, or Barrows. Hell, they didn’t even Yar Yeoman Rand, she just stopped appearing after Balance of Terror. 

If you’re a sharp-eyed viewer like me, you’ll recognize Angela here on the right as the bride-to-be from Balance of Terror. It may strike you as odd how she’s apparently moved on again so quickly, but again, this episode takes place about 14 months later so the grieving process is likely finished. Mildly (at best) interestingly, she also appears in the final televised episode of Star Trek, Turnabout Intruder as a communications officer. Sometimes when canon isn’t as solid as you’re used to, you dig up every connection you can.

Mama Kirk has to make sure his people on the surface are safe, so he leaves Spock the keys and beams down to the planet. 

(WHERE THE HELL IS MY SHUTTLECRAFT?)

Now we get the first of several long running scenes. Seriously, there’s more running in this episode than a Tom Cruise movie, they made the cast work on this one. 

Finding the source of the gunshots, it’s Sulu with the old fashioned gun. He’s talking about it very lovingly, he even implies that he collects old weapons. Bones rolls his eyes (Bones is one of those alcoholics that thinks he’s collecting) and Kirk takes the weapon. 

I wonder why...

Then Kirk begins talking about this upperclassman at the Academy who was always pulling old-school ‘oatmeal bucket over the door’ pranks on him, some asshole named Finnegan. Bones laughs at Kirk for being a grim cadet, which fits in Gary Mitchell’s description of Lt. Kirk as a stack of books with legs; Kirk was a serious student at the Academy, and the maverick hotshot of the Kelvin films didn’t come into being until the TOS films got rolling. (I mean yeah, he did the Kobayashi Maru but it’s a streak of mischief, not a natural inclination towards it.)

Enter: Finnegan

Finnegan goads Kirk into a chase, and with information presented at the end I came to the conclusion that Kirk wants nothing more than to slingshot around the sun, go back in time, and beat the fucking shit out of Finnegan. 

He’s asking for it!

Someone who ISN’T asking for it is Yeoman Barrows, whose screams and torn uniform imply that the Don Juan she conjured up tried to rape her. I guess Sulu fought him off, but then Sulu takes off after him? I really, really try to keep Takei and Sulu separate (I am not going to talk about recent allegations regarding George Takei), but between this and his interactions with Riley in The Naked Time...I’m reading Sulu as gay. I’m not really sorry, and he is with a man in Beyond, so...

Moving on.

Kirk goes off in hot pursuit, but then he’s stopped by a flower...and Ruth!

Is this the legendary blonde scientist who Kirk almost married in his Academy days? Kirk says he hasn’t seen her in 15 years, and if he’s 2 years into his 5-year mission on the Enterprise and served in Starfleet since he was 20 or so...

Nah, I still prefer to think the unnamed woman Gary Mitchell aimed at Kirk was Carol Marcus. As I said, you dig for any threads of continuity you can.

So Kirk totally forgets Sulu, he’s almost drunk with seeing Ruth, and Spock reports he’s found evidence of stuff that’s only there to keep the plot moving. Barrows makes a big deal about how enchanting the planet is (which I find funny because I lived in SoCal and while it’s great, I wouldn’t exactly call it enchanting) down to conjuring up a laughably costume-ish medieval princess costume.

It becomes clear Bones is going to bone Barrows. 

This man may belong on Pimp Space 9...

There’s a tiger, and a samurai, and a knight, and an old fashioned fighter jet! This episode partly runs like it was written on the fly and guess what? It was! Gene kept re-writing it on set as it was being filmed. 

So the knight kills Bones, and Kirk kills the knight. Barrows goes into hysterics because she conjured the knight and Mama Kirk tells her to buck up and do her duty. He’s not gentle, but this isn’t a gentle situation. Angela dies too because of the airplane. 

We then enter a long sequence of Kirk chasing and fighting Finnegan. I got the feeling it was long because it was padding out the episode, but it is a pretty satisfying fight. Kirk keeps demanding answers, but Finnegan refuses to give them to him. Finally, Kirk puts Finnegan down. 

Spock asks if he enjoyed it. Kirk did, Spock is not convinced; Kirk kills, Spock judges. 

Another running scene where basically everything comes after them, they meet at the glade. Apparently Barrows conjured up a repaired shirt, but Kirk can’t be bothered. Some asshole alien shows up and explains everything, then tells them they aren’t ready to understand his race yet; Spock agrees (of course he does.)

Sure, you can use my planetary holodeck for all your sex and violence desires

My favorite scene is at the end, when Bones shows up alive and well with two bunnies on his arms and a story about their wondrous facilities underground. Barrows is not impressed, but given the choice between the cabaret girls and Barrows, I’d probably choose Barrows as well. 

Now I understand why they call him ‘Bones’

Kirk almost declines shore leave when Ruth reappears. When Barclay did it, it was creepy; you just don’t go LARPing your work-life fan fiction at your job after all, that’s some Dwight Schrute-level weirdness right there. But on a planet in deep space, run by some aliens who let you play with their crayons but otherwise don’t think you’re ready to hang out with them after school, well...you can do that sort of thing. Let’s hope Ruth never finds out - although I like to imagine Finnegan never moved past lieutenant and Kirk pulled strings to have him working desk duty on a Neutral Zone outpost. 

Wait...

In the end, the crew returns to the bridge after an unknown number of days on the planet to Spock’s eternal judgement. Worth it.

Rating: 3/5; Don’t Rewatch

While Shore Leave proves to be an entertaining episode, it’s a fairly shallow episode that has nothing under the surface (excellent facilities notwithstanding.)