beer_good_foamy

From slaymesoftly:

1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter. (If you don't want a letter but feel like commenting anyway, feel free.)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.

I got B! So, five off the top of my head:

( Vague spoilers for BtVS, Twin Peaks, The Wire, Foucault's Pendulum, Dr Horrible )

If season 4 of Buffy has taught us one thing, it's to run the other way when someone starts a monologue with "I've been thinking."

I've been thinking about how some fanfic writers somehow manage to create entire 'verses of their own. They start off from some point in canon, and then build one huge story from there that may or may not be told linearly, but where everything has continuity and is (more or less) internally consistent. I have a ton of respect for people who manage that; I never could. My stories are usually short, a jumble of brief standalone wouldn'titbecoolifs that aren't supposed to go together at all.

And yet when I look at them with a bit of distance, it's odd how many of them seem to form little 'verses after all - where, even if they're supposed to work as standalones, you can still read them in sequence and have them provide context for each other. And so, I give you, My Hypothetical and Mostly Accidental 'Verses, with links to relevant fics and drabbles arranged in more or less the order in which they happen.

( Long list of fics and self-congratulatory meta )

There are a few others I could piece together, of course; there's the little Faith/Willow story I've touched upon once or twice, there's the everything-went-to-hell-after-NFA-verse, there's the metaverse where every fourth wall is broken regularly, and there's still a ton of truly standalone stories... But the point, if there is one: I think context matters, especially in fanfic, and especially when it comes to drabbles and ficlets. A lot of what I write runs on my interpretation of what happened in canon and what it meant, or my interpretation of what happened after the cameras stopped rolling. Take Stylish, Yet Affordable, for instance; on its own, it's just a nice little drabble about Buffy getting some recognition; setting it in the middle of s6, with Buffy struggling with both bills and depression, it hopefully takes on a slightly different taste. After Work becomes a different drabble if I claim it's explicitly part of a larger story in which they end up getting married. Special Delivery is silly slapstick until you remember what he did right after. Mission Accomplished, with its talk about how this is the way things have always been and always will be, can be a very different fic depending on your opinion of seasons 6 and 7; whether it's about Giles trying to live with never changing the status quo, or if it's the question to which "Chosen" is the answer. Etc. Stories take place within vectors, depending on which aspects of them you emphasize, and in any source story with enough depth, there's no limit to the amount of stories you can tell even without changing what actually happened on screen. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

There's more thoughts to be had here, I think, but that's for another day.

First of all, I just discovered that I won some stuff at wicked_awards! Check out all the winners here - I'm proud to be in such illustrous company.

( Banners! )

Also... I hesitate to call this meta since I'm not exactly sure if it's fully thought through, but what the hell. So I'm watching Buffy s6 and I'm reading N. Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman (which is interesting, especially if you're into cyborgs and Neal Stephenson and perception of reality and the nature of humanity as encoded information and so forth, but very heavy on theory). Anyway, I stumble onto this section on entropy which got me thinking.

Things Fall Apart. The Centre Cannot Hold. Should It?

( Season 6 is the season with no Big Bad, no huge arc, no outside disturbance, all conflicts turned inwards... And so on. Thoughts on 'Entropy', entropy, storytelling, and also there's a song at the end. )

I'm currently rewatching s4 of Buffy and I just got to "Beer Bad". And since it's one of my favourite comedy episodes (to nobody's surprise) I thought I'd take this opportunity to jot down some possibly slightly serious thoughts (and a poll!). Let me just get a beer...

*pop*

( Want beer. Like beer. Beer good. )

[Poll #1599026]

So I'm snowed in and watching the winter olympics and reading my flist at the same time and the thought struck me:

Let's say all the Buffyverse people (well, the ones who are still alive) were also snowed in and lounging in front of a sports channel. Which disciplines would they be watching?

( Olympic spirit > evil spirits )

ETA: D'oh! Forgot Andrew and Connor for some reason. Added them.

Having seen Tennant in Hamlet and read Bill Bryson's Shakespeare (both of which were excellent) lately, I just thought I'd write down some thoughts on the use of Shakespeare in the Buffyverse. Quite a few thoughts. This gets long, and covers spoilers for all of the Jossverse and Shakespeareverse (as if anyone doesn't know how his plays end).

Joss likes Shakespeare. This would be obvious even if we didn't know that he, for instance, used to hold Shakespeare readings at his house for the Buffy cast; there's quite a lot of allusions to Shakespeare in his stories, both explicit and implicit ones. This obviously won't be a complete list of all parallels between Shakespeare and Whedon, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone points out that Joss references a bunch of plays I don't even mention here. ( Lay on, Macduff! And damn'd be he who first cries 'Hold! Enough!' )

Alright folks, it's confession time. Ready?

I like "Buffy vs Dracula." I think it might even be the best season opener the show ever did.

There, I said it. Phew. Feels like a weight off my chest.

So anyway, I've had a bunch of thoughts on it knocking around in my head for some time, so given the latest developments of the comics I thought I might as well rewatch the episode and philosophise on them.

( Minor comics spoilers, but mostly about the episode, the TV show, and vampire lore as a whole )

So... "Season 8" #12. I’m torn. It’s an issue with fun, snappy dialogue, one huge ”Oh my god” moment (and for once, it actually is a pretty big one) that could very well set up some important future storylines, and a – so far – pretty boring A-plot with holes big enough for a bat to fly through. A really large bat. I’m guessing most of the debate around it – certainly most of what’s come so far – will surround THAT scene, so we’ll start there...

( Teal deer, monkeys and pigs; it’s a regular zoo in here. )

Growing up in public with your pants on

You know, I miss Dawn Summers.

I know I probably lost a couple of readers right there; Dawn isn’t everyone’s favourite character. But still, I really liked her; she’s bubbly, she’s a bit of a klutz, she’s smarter than people give her credit for, she’s a bit selfish but even at her normal size she’s got a heart as big as a whale. She grew into an extraordinary young woman on the show and it’s a pity that she hasn’t been seen in the comics.

( What? More whining? Well... yes, but I hope there's a point and some tiny bit of character study here. S8 spoilers, of course. )

Yeah, OK, NaNoWriMo is dead in the water. So I might as well post some s8 speculations. Bear with me, because this gets a bit cracky, but... what the hell, it's s8; I'm not sure there's such a thing as "too cracky."

Spoilers for 8.08, the cover for 8.11, and various small tidbits

( Lookie lookie )