Stuff...

[shadowkat]

Well, I set up an interview with another staffing company for
Thursday. So my week is just about complete. Hesistant to call more. Have two staffing companies at the moment. And two I've sent resumes too. Maybe I'll call two more next week? (Should
confess and state how much I despise interviewing with staffing companies...all promise, no deliverance, and they have a nasty habit of blaming the applicant for that.) Feeling edgy at the moment, afraid to hope, afraid not to. Trying to figure out what else I should do to prepare for this interview tomorrow. I need to go in with attitude. Apparently that's how Marsters got the job as Spike - he went in with the view it was his role. Attitude! It's all about attitude! (Except she thinks, I did go in with attitude on other jobs and still didn't get hired...)

Some tid-bits on Moonlight Rising Con have shown up on whedonesque. These support my gut reactions to GiTR which was that JM was doing GiTR for pretty much the same reasons we write fanfic. It's his hobby. He has no delusions that he can *really* sing or have a career as a musician. He states clearly at the con that after two years of voice lessons he still can't cut it and he can barely play guitare. He doesn't feel the same level of confidence singing in a band that he does performing as an actor. I got that watching him on stage.
Also? Apparently he's gotten funding to film Macbeth, and may do a Spike TV movie in the near future.

Feeling a little leery of the S6 ATS fanfic initiatives out there - particularly regarding the character of Spike. I admit, Spike is tough. I haven't tried to write the character since my Fanged Four outing. Not sure I trust myself to write for either Spike or Angel. You have to make sure you keep up the duality - self-loathing/bravada/swagger/poet. And you have to be careful not to make him a "bad" poet, Spike doesn't consider himself a bad poet necessarily and no one is necessarily bad. Don't let your own issues get in the way of character. If you want a *really* good fanfic character sketch on Spike - try the "Lydia's Thesis" that a group of academic writers wrote a year ago. Another writer who has done a good job with showing the duality of good and bad in William is Peasant and herselfnyc - on the Buggered website. (Yes, there's lots of NC-17 content, but if you check out AllAboutSpike.com you can find stuff that isn't. Lydia's Thesis has no NC-17 content that I am aware of.) In their fics - there's that obsessiveness in his character - Spike obsesses over things. He isn't a planner. He goes with his gut. Emotion, raw. He is impulsive. That's why he can't be the leader - he doesn't strategize, he just does. Unlike Angel, Spike likes people, likes to be around them socializing. He has no problems with women - Spike isn't William who couldn't get a girl. This guy gets girl's just by winking at them. Unlike Angel, Spike loves food, is a sensationalist. HE enjoys feeling things. He likes to let it all hang out. He will and does put his foot in his mouth. And he likes women with power.

The danger many people make is thinking Spike was like Andrew or Warren as William. Do not make the mistake of drawing too close a line between other characters. Also don't write for a character that you are biased against, the reader will sense it. Ugh. Enuf of this crap, I got work to do. I'm sure no one cares what I think about all of this. Besides I said I was moving away from it...Damn! All edgy regarding other things going on this week. Damn - I wish someone would just hire me already, being at home hunting work and worrying about it is driving me crazy!


Okay off to hunt more stuff on Liberty Mutual and check job want ads...much fun.

Comments

Re: oh, please...like it'll make any difference

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Face it, you writers are screwed either way.

LOL! Too right! But I think we can take it. After all, I managed to anger both Spike lovers and Spike haters in the past.

Heh. Nautibitz gives some excellent advice regarding the writing of fanfic in her livejournal - "if you project your own neuroses onto the characters in your fic, just be prepared/and not surprised when others blast you for it".

I'd worry more about achieving some semblance of agreement amongst yourselves before worrying about an audience. Fanfic readers are a fickle bunch. If they like it and see a resemblance to their vision of the character, their own fantasy, or something that fascinates them in the fic represented - they'll read. If not? They won't.

The trick regarding fanfic writing is to remember that your audience is faceless and transisent(sp?), not to mention fickle. They also come to the fic with very strong ideas regarding the characters you are writing about. Ideas bordering on obsessive in some cases. Otherwise they wouldn't bother reading fanfic to begin with. It's not like writing a tv show or novel with your own characters created by you - you are playing with characters created by someone else and that have a built in audience. That audience comes to your fic with certain preconceptions they might not have if you were writing your own characters.

Example of one reader: I will not read a fanfic that has Spike painted as a narcissist wandering about abusing women and making obnoxious comments as thorn in Angel's side while Angel is being broodingly heroic and struggling with his dark side yet oh so tolerant and romantic. That wouldn't interest me. It has been written and there are people who enjoy that type of fic. But I wouldn't waste a minute reading it, even if it was written by my best friend. Why? Because it doesn't have anything in it that intrigues me - something that pulls. I'm far more interested in how the character struggles against their internal demons and obsessions. And how they fail or pull out of that.

Re: oh, please...like it'll make any difference

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

I knew it would be difficult, to understand where ME has been and guess where they would go, while not letting my own biases influence me. And I very much want a product as much like the show as possible, to me there's no point in doing it if we don't. But mainly I hope we're entertaining, that people have as much fun reading our work as I do reading cjl's, Rochefort's, HonorH's, and so on. I don't read fanfic (no, really!) and I expect many people won't read this.

Yes, the first step is finding agreement amoung ourselves-and the second is that we all agree to go by the production committee's final say in plot and character. It's tricky. I hope we can manage it, and make a story that we're proud of.

Re: oh, please...like it'll make any difference

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I hope we're entertaining, that people have as much fun reading our work as I do reading cjl's, Rochefort's, HonorH's, and so on. I don't read fanfic (no, really!) and I expect many people won't read this.

Yes, you do. HonorH, cjl and Rochefort's fiction was all
fanfiction. No different than anything else out there.

Re: oh, please...like it'll make any difference

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

I have nothing against fanfic. (And I don't mean that in a some-of-my-best-friends-are-fanfic way.) Heck, I'm writing it. I read the fic of people I know because I enjoy their other writings. I hope others will do the same.