bITS 'N CHUNKS
Ia everyone,
Here on GlobalComment this week I'm thinking out loud about something that really grinds my gears and touches my heart at the same time, and that'ssss....inclusivity! Please give it a read. Obviously that post is about media specifically, but let me tell you all...why I chose now and that topic. First off, as much as it seems we're taking two steps forward and five steps back, we really are getting there. I feel confident about it for once. But here's why I'm pushing: I am so sick of this shit. I've had a few incidents this year where I've seen people flip out over being asked to do the bare minimum, e s p e c i a l l y when it comes to issues facing folx with disabilities and matters of gender. I remember thinking to myself, "y'all seriously only do this when someone asks for an image description." The cry for intersectional feminism and progressiveness has become, "get your SHIT together already." I'm tired of seeing progressive groups turn to casual transphobia, transmisogyny, and ableism. That fails. The old media is starting to lap some of y'all and that's embarrassing. No one is out here about to do your emotional AND physical labor anymore. I'm not asking you to be inclusive, I'm telling you. Stop fan casting Idris Elba in to everything, hold your problematic faves accountable, start casting a more inclusive pool of actors because they're out there and if you don't see them find them, stop piggybacking off existing labor and calling it solidarity, and generally roll up ya sleeves and be better in 2018.
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Is what Antoine Doinel exclaims when his parents discover his shrine to Honore de Balzac in The 400 Blows. I think about that scene a lot when I think about what my writing templates are. Doinel ends up kind of sort of not really but really on purpose plagiarizing Balzac. But before that it's clear Doinel at least idolizes Balzac. You can interpret that scene however but to me Antoine was using Balzac as a sort of palimpsest. I had a conversation a few years ago in which I was finally able to articulate the concept of a "template" (not a concept I made up, by the way, just something I hadn't realized) to another writer. We were talking about -- wait for it -- fanfiction and what made our fics so unique. I had bowed out of the conversation because at least at the time I wasn't really writing fic anymore, or much of anything. But I had a Pepperidge Farms Back In My Day moment in which I revealed what I felt like I brought to the table. I remember his attitude was "I can write coherently" and I couldn't deny that argument because this was during the days where fic posted online was still kind of a joke. Depending on your scene you were either in it for the ludicrous porn, Chris Claremont was writing your comic series, or your show got canceled before the end of the season. And that's to say nothing of the big lumbering fandom giants like Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files, DC & Marvel, and so on. The serious stuff was circulated in fanzines and only big authors with awards to their names had websites and webrings. So when he said that I was like, "mmhmm." Then I revealed something I was proud of and something of folly about my writing evolution, that my writing was often long and elaborate and extra melodramatic because that was what my template called for. "What do you mean 'template'?" Then I finally managed to articulate it: I was copying! No, wait, I was copying a format but almost to the depths of self-parody. I think we all do that, because who teaches you how to write before you learn how to write? Whatever you're reading. It just so happens that by then I was already reading Greek tragedies, Christian apologetics texts (more on that later), Russian literature, and Roman biographies and philosophical texts. I was all over the place with my clever Classical Literature references in my anime stories. What’s my favorite template? A mixture of Ancient Greek and modern Russian. Both of these taught me that I prefer psychological human drama and flawed beings. That's probably why I can't really do action scenes to this day. Russian lit taught me how to do a dark, brooding anti-hero without making them overly cynical and dark for the sake of being dark. From Ancient Greek (and later modern Greek) writing I discovered how to do believable dialogue against supernatural forces since in plays and poems, characters were often talking directly to the gods (or beings thought of as gods). I learned the cycles of plot development and probably most importantly the meaning of catharsis. But uh, I read the Iliad twice and still can't do a decent horse battle. Sigh. At some point I discovered the line between clever, intelligence, and pretention and realized I'd gone off the deep end, but by then I had stopped writing. But back to the whole template thing, because that's what my belly was full off that's what I spewed out. Like I said, it's not bad. It has a time and a place. I think of dense texts like The Name of the Rose where a little research and assumption of the audience is very rewarding. I still use templates, I just understand writing better now and I quite honestly enjoy postmodernism. A few things I'm proud of is my work was certainly unique and memorable. Somehow I never ended up on anyone's MST hit list and I'm kind of appalled. I told y'all I didn't mind making a spectacle of myself, see above. Anyway. Thanks to many years of data entry & not properly taking care of my hands even before then, I have the grip of a child and the hand strength of an even weaker child. In other words, bullshit. Yes, it's joint pain and it's actually not that bad and fixable, but it's made me pretty possessive with what I spend my time doing. If I don't hold something heavy for you I'm not trying to be rude but likely I literally cannot. It doesn't take very much humidity for me to go from Feelin' Fine to Charlie Horse in Every Finger. Naturally, you can imagine how this has affected my writing choices. I noticed over time I cut down on a lot of purple prose not just because my preferences changed but also I was eager to get to the damn point before my hands started swelling up. This was back when I was doing half/half paper writing and digital; then I switched to all digital and the habit carried over. I find myself over embellishing a lot because I feel bad that I can't do long stretches of inventive writing anymore. I take frequent breaks to do some thumb exercises. The pain and frustration of my lack of mobility in my hands and fingers crops up quite a bit as a theme for me too. Pain just kind of pisses me off. I love the feel of writing on notebook paper and filling up a big journal or five subject college rule with my tiny ass cursive and ludicrous stories to type up later. I love being able to get my ideas down immediately. But as I work in increasingly secure & paper free places, that becomes less of a reality for me. And I was spending more time rotating my wrists and rubbing them than scribbling. So after a while I was told about Evernote. I think I've detailed my relationship with Evernote. But anyway, being able to write on my phone was great. It was essentially the same thing as paper for me and I could use a stylus on my tablet. I got pretty good with my thumbs. Until I wore my thumbs down by typing on decidedly un-ergonomic tablets and phones not suited for that purpose. Not very punk. So I've still been largely computer writing when I can but I would like to get back to pen and paper because I still feel like it just worked for me, despite its inconveniences. They do make writing tools and aids for people like me that have a hard time. And, a lot of the options aren't terribly expensive either. The one I'm most interested in is the ring pen model, which takes a different approach to finding ways to shove the barrel of the pen or body of the pencil against soft fleshy parts that probably already hurt. Sitting versus standing is a big part of it, too. Surprising no one, from working at office jobs with often inconsiderate and uncomfortable chairs (and only doing so much to remedy it myself), my back and legs aren't in too good condition these days either. The main appeal of paper & pen writing is I could comfortably lay down and still do a little work. Mobile writing is the same way, but not quite as comfortable or flexible. You might wonder, why not try out the voice to text software? I do use those but not for complete writing, not even for drafts really. If it's accessible for you I do recommend trying it. But as for me, I'm like two notches below Truman Capote and I do not like the sound of my own voice even in my own head, so I would just rather not. My template for titling thing probably comes from cryptic anime OVA titles from the late-80s/early-90s and industrial music. Not lurid because a lot of them were pretty self-explanatory (although yes some look like straight giallo titles), but some of the more "poetic" translations of titles not easily rendered into English. Nowadays when it's like that, we just call them by their Japanese title. But back then, boy did we try it. Come on, how many of y'all thought that man's name was actually Tenchi Muyo?
Manga and video games got this a lot too. I didn’t really get the art of titling even when I started writing my own things, I kind of got that they had to be descriptive of what was going on in the story but I had no template for it. I wasn't sure how to render it. When I looked at the writers I loved, especially in the fantasy genre, I wasn't sure how as to pick their minds on why they came up with The Hellbound Heart and not Hellraiser for example. So I had a lot of pedestrian and cliché story titles that weren't really evocative of what was going on. When I started reading doujinshi I kind of got a template. Now, mind you most of the doujinshi I read was pornographic in nature so the titles were an indicator of what kind of porn you were getting into. Some were Japanese, some were translated to English or another language I could reasonably understand. But I got it. Titles like Lascivious Mother told you exactly what was going on, who the main character was, and something about them. It reminded me of the quaint old timey titles you'd see on 15th-18th century literature which basically told you the whole story on two lines. So I started doing that in so many words. I also learned about parody titles and as I wrote mostly comedy at the time, that worked out fantastic. I got cryptic sometimes too. I learned how to use SEO and clickbait to ensure my stories never made it to general search but at least a handful of people would read them. Titling didn't finally click for me until I was writing and reading essays in high school. I learned how to summarize my own subject matter and describe it in so many words so that it looked inviting but kind of standard to protocol. Nothing too wild. I was introduced to the concept of using a quote from yourself or another author that invoked the subject at hand. My favorite part of the story is the reveal of the title - what it really meant this whole time, what it related to. Blogging also helped a lot. People don't have a lot of time to spare and blogging will make you frank. As I'm often inspired by movies and music, one thing I did to differentiate my professional writing from my fannish stuff was use movie quotes and snippets of song lyrics. I tried not to be terribly obvious about it. I still do this to an extent I just don't rely on it as hardcore as a I used to. I got a lot of hits with Duran Duran… When I switched over to short stories permanently (seemingly), my titles got about as abbreviated as the content. Usually now it's reduced to the antagonist, a main character, whatever is at stake, a location, or something just plain ol' cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and interesting. That’s where I draw my titling inspiration from these days. I've been trying to broaden myself out lately because titling is still one of those things that is innate for me, so I've been checking out this, this, and this. (PDF) Welcome to Halloween everyone!
Now, somewhat ironically I can't stand fall -- I hate being cold, I'm sleepy all the time because DST has me fucked up, the trees and most of the flowers are dead, and I live in an area that doesn't even get snow so there's really nothing worth my while until spring gets here. Ahh, spring... Well, anyway, for the upcoming spooky months I figured it was time to finally get back to what this site's all about -- writing! Yes, I've been posting about writing and some clips of projects in the works or dead things I'm tryna necromance, but it's time to but the "author" back in author. I'm not saying these are good stories or anything I'm just saying there will be some. In addition to my regular degular posts, by the time you read this I will hopefully be done with my self imposed 12 Day flash fiction challenge. I'll talk more about my struggles with that as they go up. Oh! And Halloween themed DIYs. Make skull bows with me! Ooh-ooh, and more lifestyle blogging as I attempt to get out of the house and do things like a normal peoples do. And at some point I'll be discussing influential occult/mystic/esoteric literature! Some of those may be NSFW/NSFL but I'll warn y'all ahead of time. I think that's about it for now...anything else will be a surprise! |
Ia! If you've come this far, you're either looking for weird or you know you've found it... TRESPASSING
September 2018
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