This and that and the other thing..

[shadowkat]

1. Amazed I made it to work today without a)getting killed by a bus, or reaming said bus with my cane, b)getting knocked over by several pedestrains, not giving in to the temptation to trip said pedestrains with cane, c) injuring hip attempting to sit on train next to annoying woman who felt the need to take up six seats...and not clobbering said woman with cane. And who says life is not an obstacle course?

2. Ah, the bowling match above my head has stopped finally. They must be taking a lunch break.

3. Lost rocked last night. (Well it did if you ignore the whole island storyline which has become incredibly convoluted.) The Lock story though - highly satisfying. Particularly the small bits with Ben in them. The Sawyer story thread...was okay. May or may not write a review. selenak
already has in case you are interested. The other thing that rocked was Big Bang Theory - which made me giggle throughout, I think it was re-run.

4. Was reading that fic Imitation of A Man last night - yeah, I know, still.
Don't ask me why, but there's something about it I must find compelling. It is well written in places. And the feminization of Spike and masculation of Buffy that I find fascinating, particularly since I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the writer appears to be unaware of it. Spike's clearly in the traditional female role here (not traditional in the sense of cooking, etc - but in how relationships are traditionally presented in literature and media) while Buffy's in the traditional male. (Generally speaking in most novels and media - men usually aren't in talking about their feelings, while women are. Men more action oriented, women more into talking/communicating. As evidenced by 85% of the tv shows currently on the air.) Anyhow when my Kindle couldn't access basic web last night to get the next chapter, I found myself scrolling through the comments to amuse myself. And one of the author (darkapple)'s comments truly befuddled me. A true WTF moment. The author stated and I'm doing this from memory, so wording may be slightly off - "what I love most about Spike is he brings no baggage to his love, his love is so pure, so absolute, there's no baggage, just pure love". Uhm okay. What??? Seriously - WTF??? There are days in which I feel as if we are on separate planets or dimensions in our interpretations/communications. Can writers be this unaware of what they are doing? I'm guessing so. Or maybe I'm just misreading the thing? Both are equally possible.

5. Definitely have a stress fracture. Doc seems to think it was caused by my massive hike home from church - which was you know, 40 blocks. 40 blocks is the equivalent of a half a mile maybe a mile. Hardly massive. The man clearly drives everywhere. With any luck will get a boot by the end of the week or weekend at the latest.

Comments

[rahirah]

Though it does leave me to wonder how far a character actually can change.

I'm not sure it's really a matter of the characters changing or not, per se. I think it's simply that the longer you write a character, the more it becomes yours. If you're writing a long series, inevitably, the action is going to diverge from canon, and once it does, what happens next will depend more and more upon the themes and tropes that you find important and satisfying to write about. If someone likes writing about how we are all essentially alone, then they're going to make story decisions that tend to leave their protagonist alienated and lonely even when surrounded by friends. If someone likes writing about father/son relationships, then they're going to make story decisions that put their characters into those relationships, either literally or metaphorically. And so on. The longer you write a story, the more it becomes about what's important to you, and the less it becomes about what's important to Joss Whedon.

(And I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Canon is important to me as background - if I were writing a story set in new York, I'd research New York. If I'm writing something set in the Buffyverse, I research the Buffyverse, and where research fails try to make my extrapolations 'fit.' But I don't want to re-tell Joss's stories. What would be the point? Joss already told them.)


ETA: Although I think that the way experience changes our basic traits can produce enormous differences in the way we react to new experiences. I've got one WIP where I'm writing half a dozen alternate universe versions of Buffy - one close to comics canon, one who is working for Wolfram & Hart, one who's a vampire, one who caught the helicopter and married Riley, one who's living with Angel in a post-apocalyptic world, and so on. They're all Buffy, but their experiences have been very different. It's really interesting playing with the commonalities and the differences.