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shadowkatHome again, after a slow day at work. Couldn't focus. Been having issues focusing on things lately.
Brain dead from work I think. Momster is highly recommending the Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo novels and films, because they have a kickass heroine that I will adore. (In case you haven't figured out by now? I have a weakness for kickass heroines).
After reading flist, I think I may be done with the Buffy comics. And more than likely will be done with comics altogether after issue 8 of the Spike comics. Which is of the good, since I think the industry is fading or transferring to the net. Many comic book distributors have already closed their doors, and the remaining ones aren't getting the business they once did. Plus, the better and far more innovative comics are online one's right now. The ability to publish and massively share content without a third party involved is somewhat freeing and exciting. The role of the publisher has changed in the last thirty years. They no longer really appear to edit or beta works - in many cases authors and writers get their editorial support from freelancers or outside sources, or do it themselves (if you've read Stephen King, Anne Rice or Joss Whedon's latest efforts you know whereof I speak), with their editors basically acting as marketing reps or in the case of Whedon, a freelance writer. When this happens - you go to the net to find interesting tales - to the many frustrated writers and artists who are creating things between work hours and other chores. In the past ten years I've read more entertaining and vastly more creative stories in fanfic, free online, than I have on bookshelves or in comics. The publisher and their marketing interests have to a degree begun to get in the way of the writer and the story, hacking away at it to promote what they believe the mass market will buy, looking for copycats of best-selling products or works that can be marketed in multiple ways. It's no accident that some of the best writers I've read recently are not published, except online. But it says a great deal about an industry that is too busy looking at the bottom line, to take necessary risks for art.
Too often going for the big names, celebrities, who have little or no true skill at weaving a tale.
Or in some cases no knowledge of the verse or story in which they've decided to try their hand at writing, outside of a rough cheat sheet provided by a marketing rep. Which is why I don't read serial novels by many different writers or will read any longer comic books by many different writers.
I need cohesion in my stories. One writer, one artist, one vision. It's a thing. Collaborative writing works best - I think in the tv medium, not the comic or book one - mostly due to how the work is done. They all meet in a room together, forced to interact with actors, producers, etc - who are privey to what came before and what came after. For example - BTVS - Drew Goddard got the job writing a spec script for Six Feet Under, and proved he was a huge fan of Buffy, he remembered details from each season that writers would been there all six seasons had forgotten. Same with the others - each was well versed in the tale. Word has it that before getting a role on Star Gate SG1 - Ben Browder, who would go on to write for the series - watched all the seasons back to back marathon style.
Same with James Marsters - who watched the first Season of Buffy before he got the role of Spike.
But this is not the case it seems with writers in the comic book and novel world - there's no time, they don't immerse themselves in the verse first - and instead write it based on well whatever outline they are given. Willingham did not watch all of Angel or any of Buffy before writing his portion of the Angel series and it showed. Many of the less successful writers on the Marvel comics did not read the comics that came before - when they got hired to write for Marvel. I think Chris Claremont was possibly the only one who did and it showed. Comics like soap operas are notorious for hiring writers who do not read what came before and jump in with little to no prep time. Ask any long time X-men or Soap fan, and they will tell you how many times they jumped ship because the writers took the characters and story in a direction that just made no sense. They either took a character who originally was morally grey and somewhat redeemed and made them evil and hateful - just to do a plot they liked (this has been done so many times I've lost count and every time they do it - I get annoyed, and end up quitting the show or story. As I will most likely do now with the Buffy comics. I think logically folks, if the story isn't working for me, if the characters are out of character, I'm gone. You ain't getting me back. And unfortunately this happens with long-running serials. Stories that don't end and keep going and going and going like an energizer bunny on steroids. And it is admittedly my frustration with a form that I happen to insanely love (note I said insanely, because it often frustrates me.).
Serial story-telling is best done with one writer or a team of writers - who have a character book, detailed, and precise, much like you would do with a role-playing game. That said, what I love most about the art-form is often it's lack of rules. A sense that anything goes. That writers can play with multiple what-if scenarios. Taking a character every direction imaginable. I love that free-wheeling form of creativity while I am simultaneously frustrated with it.
The problem with serial story-telling in this day and age is well what is also insanely great about it - the internet. The internet provides the writer with a means of connecting with his or her fans or more directly the fans of the story they are creating or writing for. This can be problematic, as I'm sure many of you have witnessed. In the case of Joss Whedon - who has found a fan page with his name attached and often, disturbingly so, uses it as a personal blog - it can also be destructive.
Granted it is wonderful to have the give and take with fellow fans. And what fan doesn't squee when they discover the writer they adore is reading their take on his story, their review, or even their comment...assuming of course he has, there's no way of knowing on whedonesque. But on the other hand...there's a danger of becoming a bit too cocky, too...into yourself. Staring in a mirror where people worship you. Likewise...there's the problem that Aaron Sorkin famously encountered and then wrote about in The West Wing - about fans not liking his work, or disagreeing with him. He notoriously jumped on a fansite and argued with them ( a no-no, that never ends well as more than one writer can attest - Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, JK Rowling, Bill Willingham, Stephen King, Ursula Le Quin, Brian Lynch amongst them.) The temptation to lurk on boards to see what someone thinks of what you wrote is understandable. Who amongst us hasn't done that either with a long meta or a fanfic? The greater temptation to engage even more so. After all in the book Julie and Julia - that's exactly what the author did - she blogged about her cooking then squeed when she got 100s of comments. OR cried and raged when people didn't like her or her writing. I remember reading a lengthy thread with Anne Rice - where the author is going after fans of her work, fans who writing horrific reviews of it. And I've certainly read more than one published writer blog about bad reviews and comments in those bad reviews that made them literally see red.
Let's face it, the internet is the wild west for a writer. Writer's are gunslingers here. Slinging words as opposed to guns, admittedly. It's crack. Addictive and fun. There's even a new term - anti-social social butterfly - an individual who amasses hundreds of friends on the internet, but not so much outside of it - where they can be aggressive and honest and open and well dance in words and fight in words. If you love to write or have a way with words - the net is your wonderland, your free-for-all.
And no writer is happier here than those who lurk on the fringes of success, who are our genre writers, either in tv, comics (most notably comics - since it's the lowest paying and the least acknowledged or respected of the writing mediums, next to fanfic), and nitch genre novelists (specifically sci-fantasy and romance...not sure Westerns are done much anymore). It's here that they and well we...see our fans, feel our success, obtain our rewards, find a way to deal with the frustration of not accomplishing our dream to be a published novelist, an emmy award winning tv writer or oscar winning film writer...the net is home to the disenfranchised critics as well.
And boy do we fight with one another. Because we are also a sensitive and critical bunch, we writers.
An oxymoron if there ever was one. I keep thinking - if you don't like a writer - why read them or read about them? Curiousity. Most likely. The net...is a boom of information...anything goes.
And it is difficult I think to filter it. To ignore.
I kept reading the Buffy comics long past the time I lost interest in the story, because of the people online who were reading them and reading my reviews of them, my comments regarding them.
I felt more people were interested in my take on the comics than in me or anything else I wrote about. So I kept reading to give myself something to write about to connect to them. And their opinions of the books influenced mine well as much as mine influenced theirs. This was true of the fandom as well. I think I would have lost interest in Buffy long ago, if it weren't for the fandom, and that interaction - the writing of fic and meta and stories back and forth...which elongated my stay in it, because that's what I fell in love with - it wasn't Whedon or Whedon's tale so much, as it was the fans...those folks online, you, who had similar interests and outlooks to my own. As one friend stated once upon a time...she'd miss the fanboard interactions far more than the show. We wanted the show to last forever...so we'd have the board forever.
The ability to share art, writing, imaginative expression with people over a world and a half away instantly...was beyond imagining when I was in my 20s. It's a gift. An amazing and at times dangerous gift. It takes the third party distributor out of the mix. It's why copyright has become such an issue lately and so many people want to control the net. We can share music,tv shows, movies, comics, books, our own and others with each other quickly and easily. We don't need the distributor any more.
Often we do it for free. How many people have actually forked over cash for a comic book? How many download comics, movies, tv shows, or music for free? And how many of us create vids, comic books, fan art, stories, illustrated novels, etc - on blogs or via lj for free or for payment without a publisher involved? One of my lj friends is posting an original, and illustrated science-fiction novel on her lj. It's amazing. Another has posted for donations and even won the Hugo for a YA novel that she posted completely online. No publisher involved, well not until much later.
The wild west indeed. Fraught with peaks and valleys, gunslingers and schoolteachers attempting somewhat belatedly to educate and civilize us all.
Off to the bathroom and to make dinner now. Thinking Chicken Tereyaki.
Brain dead from work I think. Momster is highly recommending the Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo novels and films, because they have a kickass heroine that I will adore. (In case you haven't figured out by now? I have a weakness for kickass heroines).
After reading flist, I think I may be done with the Buffy comics. And more than likely will be done with comics altogether after issue 8 of the Spike comics. Which is of the good, since I think the industry is fading or transferring to the net. Many comic book distributors have already closed their doors, and the remaining ones aren't getting the business they once did. Plus, the better and far more innovative comics are online one's right now. The ability to publish and massively share content without a third party involved is somewhat freeing and exciting. The role of the publisher has changed in the last thirty years. They no longer really appear to edit or beta works - in many cases authors and writers get their editorial support from freelancers or outside sources, or do it themselves (if you've read Stephen King, Anne Rice or Joss Whedon's latest efforts you know whereof I speak), with their editors basically acting as marketing reps or in the case of Whedon, a freelance writer. When this happens - you go to the net to find interesting tales - to the many frustrated writers and artists who are creating things between work hours and other chores. In the past ten years I've read more entertaining and vastly more creative stories in fanfic, free online, than I have on bookshelves or in comics. The publisher and their marketing interests have to a degree begun to get in the way of the writer and the story, hacking away at it to promote what they believe the mass market will buy, looking for copycats of best-selling products or works that can be marketed in multiple ways. It's no accident that some of the best writers I've read recently are not published, except online. But it says a great deal about an industry that is too busy looking at the bottom line, to take necessary risks for art.
Too often going for the big names, celebrities, who have little or no true skill at weaving a tale.
Or in some cases no knowledge of the verse or story in which they've decided to try their hand at writing, outside of a rough cheat sheet provided by a marketing rep. Which is why I don't read serial novels by many different writers or will read any longer comic books by many different writers.
I need cohesion in my stories. One writer, one artist, one vision. It's a thing. Collaborative writing works best - I think in the tv medium, not the comic or book one - mostly due to how the work is done. They all meet in a room together, forced to interact with actors, producers, etc - who are privey to what came before and what came after. For example - BTVS - Drew Goddard got the job writing a spec script for Six Feet Under, and proved he was a huge fan of Buffy, he remembered details from each season that writers would been there all six seasons had forgotten. Same with the others - each was well versed in the tale. Word has it that before getting a role on Star Gate SG1 - Ben Browder, who would go on to write for the series - watched all the seasons back to back marathon style.
Same with James Marsters - who watched the first Season of Buffy before he got the role of Spike.
But this is not the case it seems with writers in the comic book and novel world - there's no time, they don't immerse themselves in the verse first - and instead write it based on well whatever outline they are given. Willingham did not watch all of Angel or any of Buffy before writing his portion of the Angel series and it showed. Many of the less successful writers on the Marvel comics did not read the comics that came before - when they got hired to write for Marvel. I think Chris Claremont was possibly the only one who did and it showed. Comics like soap operas are notorious for hiring writers who do not read what came before and jump in with little to no prep time. Ask any long time X-men or Soap fan, and they will tell you how many times they jumped ship because the writers took the characters and story in a direction that just made no sense. They either took a character who originally was morally grey and somewhat redeemed and made them evil and hateful - just to do a plot they liked (this has been done so many times I've lost count and every time they do it - I get annoyed, and end up quitting the show or story. As I will most likely do now with the Buffy comics. I think logically folks, if the story isn't working for me, if the characters are out of character, I'm gone. You ain't getting me back. And unfortunately this happens with long-running serials. Stories that don't end and keep going and going and going like an energizer bunny on steroids. And it is admittedly my frustration with a form that I happen to insanely love (note I said insanely, because it often frustrates me.).
Serial story-telling is best done with one writer or a team of writers - who have a character book, detailed, and precise, much like you would do with a role-playing game. That said, what I love most about the art-form is often it's lack of rules. A sense that anything goes. That writers can play with multiple what-if scenarios. Taking a character every direction imaginable. I love that free-wheeling form of creativity while I am simultaneously frustrated with it.
The problem with serial story-telling in this day and age is well what is also insanely great about it - the internet. The internet provides the writer with a means of connecting with his or her fans or more directly the fans of the story they are creating or writing for. This can be problematic, as I'm sure many of you have witnessed. In the case of Joss Whedon - who has found a fan page with his name attached and often, disturbingly so, uses it as a personal blog - it can also be destructive.
Granted it is wonderful to have the give and take with fellow fans. And what fan doesn't squee when they discover the writer they adore is reading their take on his story, their review, or even their comment...assuming of course he has, there's no way of knowing on whedonesque. But on the other hand...there's a danger of becoming a bit too cocky, too...into yourself. Staring in a mirror where people worship you. Likewise...there's the problem that Aaron Sorkin famously encountered and then wrote about in The West Wing - about fans not liking his work, or disagreeing with him. He notoriously jumped on a fansite and argued with them ( a no-no, that never ends well as more than one writer can attest - Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, JK Rowling, Bill Willingham, Stephen King, Ursula Le Quin, Brian Lynch amongst them.) The temptation to lurk on boards to see what someone thinks of what you wrote is understandable. Who amongst us hasn't done that either with a long meta or a fanfic? The greater temptation to engage even more so. After all in the book Julie and Julia - that's exactly what the author did - she blogged about her cooking then squeed when she got 100s of comments. OR cried and raged when people didn't like her or her writing. I remember reading a lengthy thread with Anne Rice - where the author is going after fans of her work, fans who writing horrific reviews of it. And I've certainly read more than one published writer blog about bad reviews and comments in those bad reviews that made them literally see red.
Let's face it, the internet is the wild west for a writer. Writer's are gunslingers here. Slinging words as opposed to guns, admittedly. It's crack. Addictive and fun. There's even a new term - anti-social social butterfly - an individual who amasses hundreds of friends on the internet, but not so much outside of it - where they can be aggressive and honest and open and well dance in words and fight in words. If you love to write or have a way with words - the net is your wonderland, your free-for-all.
And no writer is happier here than those who lurk on the fringes of success, who are our genre writers, either in tv, comics (most notably comics - since it's the lowest paying and the least acknowledged or respected of the writing mediums, next to fanfic), and nitch genre novelists (specifically sci-fantasy and romance...not sure Westerns are done much anymore). It's here that they and well we...see our fans, feel our success, obtain our rewards, find a way to deal with the frustration of not accomplishing our dream to be a published novelist, an emmy award winning tv writer or oscar winning film writer...the net is home to the disenfranchised critics as well.
And boy do we fight with one another. Because we are also a sensitive and critical bunch, we writers.
An oxymoron if there ever was one. I keep thinking - if you don't like a writer - why read them or read about them? Curiousity. Most likely. The net...is a boom of information...anything goes.
And it is difficult I think to filter it. To ignore.
I kept reading the Buffy comics long past the time I lost interest in the story, because of the people online who were reading them and reading my reviews of them, my comments regarding them.
I felt more people were interested in my take on the comics than in me or anything else I wrote about. So I kept reading to give myself something to write about to connect to them. And their opinions of the books influenced mine well as much as mine influenced theirs. This was true of the fandom as well. I think I would have lost interest in Buffy long ago, if it weren't for the fandom, and that interaction - the writing of fic and meta and stories back and forth...which elongated my stay in it, because that's what I fell in love with - it wasn't Whedon or Whedon's tale so much, as it was the fans...those folks online, you, who had similar interests and outlooks to my own. As one friend stated once upon a time...she'd miss the fanboard interactions far more than the show. We wanted the show to last forever...so we'd have the board forever.
The ability to share art, writing, imaginative expression with people over a world and a half away instantly...was beyond imagining when I was in my 20s. It's a gift. An amazing and at times dangerous gift. It takes the third party distributor out of the mix. It's why copyright has become such an issue lately and so many people want to control the net. We can share music,tv shows, movies, comics, books, our own and others with each other quickly and easily. We don't need the distributor any more.
Often we do it for free. How many people have actually forked over cash for a comic book? How many download comics, movies, tv shows, or music for free? And how many of us create vids, comic books, fan art, stories, illustrated novels, etc - on blogs or via lj for free or for payment without a publisher involved? One of my lj friends is posting an original, and illustrated science-fiction novel on her lj. It's amazing. Another has posted for donations and even won the Hugo for a YA novel that she posted completely online. No publisher involved, well not until much later.
The wild west indeed. Fraught with peaks and valleys, gunslingers and schoolteachers attempting somewhat belatedly to educate and civilize us all.
Off to the bathroom and to make dinner now. Thinking Chicken Tereyaki.