fell asleep with stains

Well, well. It looks as though Dear Cousin, my writing project with sanau_du is developing a plot. I am intrigued and a little intimidated!

Dear Cousin is the story of two young girls, one alive and one recently dead, who write correspond through letters about their daily lives. sanau_du writes Emma Hall, who trudges through a world of grief and mundanity. I write Ilyana Wolfe, who dines with hobgoblins and borrows books from banshees.

It is a writing experiment in which we collaborated on a premise but no longer discuss how the story is going to develop. Either of us can say anything about our co-writer's character, and our co-writer will accept it as fact. Which means that I have no idea where sanau_du is going with her recent recurring plot elements, nor does she know what vague plans I have for mine.

It is also an experiment in not having a long-term plan. I don't know how far ahead sanau_du is plotting, but what I originally wanted to do with this project was to just be able to write without thinking too hard about it or getting caught up in planning. For the stories that are my precious babes, I do think the planning is crucial, so for me, Dear Cousin is a sandbox where I try not to care too much and instead just have fun.

We're both bad at updating, but if you want to read it, the first letter is here.

Tonight, I went to see Misty Boyce, Jay Stolar, Charlene Kaye, and Alexz Johnson at Brick and Mortar Music Hall in San Francisco with sanau_du and Doc Ray. The venue was one of the smallest I'd ever been in, which was great. I love the intimacy of small venues.

We hit the merch booth before the show started. The drummer, Dave Heilman, was manning the booth, which included t-shirts, posters (designed by Charlene!), and CDs from each of the artists, as well as a Charlene Kaye tote bag with a note from Charlene stuck on it that said that anybody who bought the bag would get a doodle from Charlene of whatever they wanted. (She'd offered the same last year at Apocalyptour, which I attended with Doc Ray, but the two of us didn't want to deal with the hoards of Starkid fans at that concert, which is part of why, as much as we both like Starkid, we were so glad she was back in SF without Starkid.) Doc Ray bought a Charlene Kaye tote bag and Charlene's three albums, and I bought the tote bag, Animal Love Remixes (having previously bought Animal Love already), and Misty Boyce's For the Grace of Odd EP.

Since the four artists are all fairly unknown (though I've seen Alexz Johnson on a fanmix or two), the three of us managed to be front and center, along with group of other Charlene fans. Doc Ray ended up swing dancing with one of them for a bit as people trickled into the venue.

All four artists were amazing.

( in which Misty and Jay have the most lovely harmonies, Dave spits on us, Charlene invites us onstage to sing with her, we make an Alexz Johnson fan emotionally overwhelmed, and Charlene draws herself as the Hulk )

It was a fantastic night. (The Burger King stop we made afterward didn't hurt.) All of these artists are on Spotify, but I will link here to their official websites and, for Misty and Charlene, a couple of my favorite songs on YouTube, as well.

Misty Boyce - "Dutch Girls" & "Regrets"
Jay Stolar
Charlene Kaye - "Magnolia Wine" & "Dress and Tie" (ft. Darren Criss)
Alexz Johnson

Will hopefully update soon with a more exciting update about my Comics Studio class and the Ultimate Spider-Man comic I am trying to do, but for now, because I have blocked every other website I could possibly want to visit, I am going to liveblog revising my thesis prospectus, which is due today.

• It's 1:30 AM, and I've just started, haha. Oh God, I'm yawning. I need some caffeine.
• Have no Coca-Cola. Tea will have to do.
• *sniffs* What the hell kind of tea is this. I stole it from my dorm at Oxford. I had thought it was English Breakfast Tea, but now that I only drink EBT, I know this is absolutely not EBT. Well, I made it pretty weak. Should be okay.
• I'm writing my thesis on the relationship between the professionalization and rising prestige of gladiatorial combat and beast hunts, or venationes, in the Roman Empire, and the expression of fan culture in regards to these amphitheatral sports. Keep in mind that I know almost nothing about amphitheatral sports. I haven't even watched Gladiator all the way through.
• I also am not great at using Dreamwidth in Rich Text mode but want to be able to see my bullet points as I'm typing them.
• Procrastinating by e-mailing an Art History professor about mosaics. Reading over e-mail ten times and triple checking the spelling of his name. It's still work on my thesis!
• Sent. *freaks out* But in his e-mail address he goes by Chris instead of Christopher or C or just his surname, so that means he's cool.
• Why oh why is the Classics Library open only from 9 AM to 5 PM? Don't they know I do all my research and writing between 12 AM and 5 AM? Also, why can't undergraduates check out books from the Classics Library? I don't know whether to hate the Classics Library for all these reasons or to just be happy that I can get these books at all. (Probably the latter.)
• Meesely: "do you think doing all these readings is a waste of my time. I CAN'T TELL. TEACH ME HOW TO BE A HISTORY PERSON." Me: "yes I've done like. three readings for my roman empire class and we have two or three a week BUT I AM A BAD EXAMPLE" She & I, simultaneously: "Reilly said I should do my readings." & "i think reilly does all of them"
• Wow, I am so ashamed now of how bad a student I am. It's called prioritizing. I'm the favorite intern at both my workplaces, okay.
• My tea is cold.
• I need to clear off this table, fuck.
• Shit, my topic is vaguer in this revised prospectus than it was in the first draft. First draft thesis: "The questions I hope to explore in my thesis are whether the increased prestige of gladiators and venatores influenced and/or reflected changes in public or elite attitudes toward the stigmatized groups of people who largely made up the gladiators and venatores, and what, if any, consequences the social statuses of famous gladiators and venatores had for the established social hierarchy of the Roman world." IT WAS SO GOOD but fan culture.
• I can't believe I haven't started my annotated bibliography either. I definitely have six to eight secondary sources, but do I interact with them? Hard to say. It is now 2:32 AM.
• Meesely just pinned down my thesis for me: "The questions I hope to explore in my thesis are how Roman 'fan culture' reflected and enacted the increased prestige of gladiatores and venatores, and how this change in status influenced and/or reflected shifts in attitudes toward the stigmatized groups of people who largely made up these amphitheatral entertainers. If possible, I hope to broach the topic of the consequences the social statuses of famous gladiators and venatores had for the established social hierarchy of the Roman world."
• Damn it, I went to bed at 6:15 AM having finished the prospectus but not the annotated bibliography, and now it is noon. I had meant to spend today working on my comic project that is due tomorrow. DAMN IT. But hey the Classics Library is open now.
• Why can't I connect to the Internet on campus? Ugh, I've been having this problem for two weeks now. I should really figure out what's wrong.
• Art history professor is going to Europe for five weeks, noooo. Welp, I've got my book. Perhaps I'll see him when he ges back.
• Okay, done and sent at 5 PM. Wow, this is terrible.

Next time, on Life of a Fake History Major: Fred continues to suck.

As some of you know, I am leading a Buffy the Vampire Slayer course next semester at my university. I'm a senior at UC Berkeley, and we have a program that allows undergrads to design and facilitate pass/no pass courses. A couple of examples that will be offered next semester are Intro to Soviet Animation and The History of Queer Comics. The DeCal program also allows courses designed around television series, and my Buffy the Vampire Slayer course, which I am inheriting from this semester's fabulous facilitator who laid the very impressive groundwork for the class, is one of them.

My co-facilitator and I are currently gathering readings to go with our chosen episodes. These readings come mostly from Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association and Rhonda Wilcox's Why Buffy Matters, with a few essays from Lorna Jowett's Sex and the Slayer, James B. South's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, and Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery's Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

When we finalize our list, I'll post it on this journal, but for now, I'll recommend a few of my favorite readings that come immediately to mind. I don't agree with all of them 100%, but they make damn good cases. [edit: The descriptions below say what the essays argue, but as with all things, I recommend reading them very critically before subscribing to their interpretation.] Most of these are from Slayage, and the links are all to PDFs.

Stacey Abbott, "A Little Less Ritual and a Little More Fun: The Modern Vampire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Abbott examines the transition of depictions of vampires from a traditional, pseudo-religious representation of the “old,” as seen in the Master and his cult, to the anarchic, pop culture-referencing modern vampire that is Spike.

Michele Boyette, "The Comic Anti-Hero in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Silly Villain: Spike is for Kicks"
Boyette argues that in order for Spike to be redeemed, he had to first be comedic. In doing so, she provides a wonderful examination of the evolution of Spike's portrayal.

Kevin K. Durand, "'Are You Ready to Finish This?': The Battle Against the Patriarchal Forces of Darkness"
An essay about how Caleb is an unsubtle character but that he is a lens through which we can interpret other patriarchal, hierarchical figures, particularly the Watchers' Council and the Shadow Men, and see them as instantiations of the First.

Greg Forster, "Faith and Plato: 'You're Nothing! Disgusting, Murderous Bitch!'"
A chapter from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy. Argues that Buffy is a eudaimonist text and that this is expressed especially through the character of Faith in Season 4. Great analysis of the series' moral code.

Gert Magnusson, "Are Vampires Evil?: Categorizations of Vampires, and Angelus and Spike as the Immoral and the Amoral"
I've actually not read this yet because it came out as I was writing one of my term papers, but look at that title! We necessarily spent a lot of time this semester discussing Angelus' and Spike's morality, and I am eager to have this essay change the course of that conversation for next semester.

Em McAvan, "'I Think I'm Kinda Gay': Willow Rosenberg and the Absent/Present Bisexual in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
McEvan discusses the potential problem of bisexual erasure in the depiction of Willow's sexual orientation but does so in a way that does not discount the legitimacy of how she identifies. Also discusses how the show codes bisexuality and kink as evil.

Rhonda Wilcox, "I Think I Can Name Myself"
Chapter 3 from Why Buffy Matters, about identity formation, especially in the characters of Anya and Spike.

Rhonda Wilcox, "Fear: The Princess Screamed Once"
Chapter 9 from Why Buffy Matters that focuses on the episode "Hush." Wilcox hits a number of different topics in this chapter, including depictions of successful and unsuccessful communication in the episode and Riley Finn as a representation of the patriarchy.

Enjoy! Later on, I'll also post some of my reading responses from this semester, including responses to Durand, McEvan, and Wilcox.

Oh, dear. Ultimates. I've read the first series and two issue of the 2004 series and I am enjoying it so much. The cohesiveness of the storytelling is something that I've not gotten from Marvel so far except in Marvel 1602. It's nice. The characters are very different from their counterparts in other continuities, and they're very difficult to love given that most of them lack any redeeming qualities, but I can appreciate these grittier, nastier versions because I kind of enjoy fuckfests of terribleness. And I tend to count characters' flaws as merits anyway.

( Thoughts on the characters; spoilers )

YESSSSS. Has anybody else around here read Ults? I want to read Ultimate X-Men, as well. What else in this universe should I read?

edit: OKAY WOW I FINISHED VOLUME 2 LAST NIGHT AND UGH ALL MY FEELS. This series is seriously contending against Marvel Adventures as my favorite. I HURT.

edit2: Ugh, I hate the writer/penciller change after Ultimates 2. The art in Ultimates 3 was pretty sexist, and the story didn't go anywhere. Ultimatum is even more sexist and is just depressing. This series has turned into one misery after another, and I feel like Loeb is more concerned with racking up a body count than with actual storytelling. Why are these characters even dying. How does this serve the story. And can Finch stop drawing women in ridiculous poses. Come back to me, Millar+Hitch. Uggghhhh.

Adaptation
Watched this in my film class, and it is amazing. The backstory is that the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), was commissioned by Columbia Pictures to adapt the bestselling book The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, into a Hollywood film. The problem is that The Orchid Thief, which I am reading now, is not a novel; it's a non-fiction book about an orchid poacher, with no real plot and a sprawling structure. Finding himself unable to adapt the book in a conventional way, Kaufman wrote Adaptation, a film about a screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who is attempting to adapt The Orchid Thief. The script that he ends up writing over the course of the film is, in fact, the film Adaptation, which can itself be considered an adaptation of The Orchid Thief. On top of all that, the movie is meta on about five other levels. It is the most metafictional thing in existence, holy crap. And I love it.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Errrrgh. This is the movie of my favorite novel (also called Corelli's Mandolin in the US), by Louis de Bernieres. I watched it only so that I could use it for a paper on literary adaptation into films. Although it was very "faithful" to the novel in a lot of ways—it is structured very much the same and a lot of the scenes from the novel are reproduced with dialogue taken verbatim—in my opinion, the filmmakers pay lip service to the book without understanding it. Both of the novel's major themes are absent from the film, and many scenes seem to be included for the sake of the plot and lack the deeper significance that they hold in the novel. A large part of this is that many scenes are totally off-tone, and the tone of those scenes is ultimately more important to the novel than what occurs in them. I would have preferred a looser adaptation with a greater mind toward what the novel was actually trying to say.

Legend of Korra
I had a minor freakout today because Nick.com seemed to have temporarily taken episode three off of their site, and the only other stream I could find was extremely low quality, with the sound cutting out quite often. But the episode went back up, and although it was amusing and had some cool fight scenes, I wasn't as impressed by it as I was by the first two (which were PERFECT). Other thoughts: I was under the impression that creating lightning is difficult to learn, seeing as how Zuko, who was supposed to be a very good firebender in the first series, never managed to do it, so those workers at the power plant must be super pro. Also, I noticed that Korra, Bolin, and Mako all have eye colors to match their dominant elements! I found it kind of silly when I first noticed, but come to think of it, that was true in the first series, too. It was just less blatant because there weren't any mixed-element families.

LOST
Started watching this again. I'm up to 2x08 "Collision" now and, boy, is Ana Lucia irritating. I almost never dislike characters unless they're racist or misogynist or otherwise abhorrent in some very obvious way. Granted, this episode gave some insight into why she is the way she is, so I'm starting to appreciate her, but I would still rather not have her around. I hope her personality improves soon because she is driving me up a wall. The end of the episode nearly moved me to tears, though. I think I have a couple of ships for this show.

That, my friends, is the first appearance of Iron Man, in Tales of Suspense #39, March 1963.

Raise your hand if fat tears are rolling off your face the way they are rolling off mine.

I began reading classic Marvel a few weeks ago, after yuji gave me The Invincible Iron Man for Christmas. That book is a recent release, but it is preceded by the crossover arc Civil War. I started to read the first part of Civil War, The Amazing Spider-Man #529, but I became confused two pages into the issue about the relationships between the characters and decided to dive all the way back to 1963 instead.

I'm skipping most of the stand-alone issues and not following all of the heroes. So far, I've made it to around The Amazing Spider-Man #30, Journey into Mystery #90 (second appearance of Thor), and The Incredible Hulk #5, and I had just started Tales of Suspense #39 when I saw that abomination up top and had to share it.

Stan Lee has a sort of sarcastic sense of humor that I really like, and he seems aware that his own sensational style is ridiculous. My favorite epithet that he has used for Spidey so far is "the most dramatic superhero!" Until recently, Hulk was my favorite classic superhero for the hilarious way that he abuses Rick Jones, but then I got to page 7 of TOS#39 and Tony Stark became so unbelievably sexy that I had to change my mind.



I'm eager to see how the characters change as the decades pass, but for now, I'm enjoying the strange humor and overdramatic style of the early comics.

I played so much FF7 this weekend, but I don't actually have much to say. This entry goes up to the defeat of Diamond Weapon. Screencaps are from Caves of Narshe.

( spoilers for entire game )

This installment of "Fred Plays Final Fantasy VII" takes us from Nibelheim to the end of Disc One! Which is quite a lot. Two more party members, a date, a betrayal, Cloud losing it a few times, one less party member, tears, and a lot of foreshadowing. Screencaps are from Caves of Narshe.

( spoilers for whole game )

I'm moving through this game so quickly. Now it's 3 AM, and I didn't do any research for either of my two research papers today, but I just really want to start Disc Two. Square, why must you always ruin me. ♥

I like analyzing writing techniques. It seems to me that the best way to learn about the importance of things like theme and structure are to examine their use in the stories you admire and to figure out how they do or do not contribute to the meaning of the work or to the audience's experience. Today, I looked at uses of common thematic model in television. It was more for my own study than anything else, but I know some of you enjoy this type of metatextual discussion, and I'd like to hear other people's analyses if anyone has any. Spoilers for Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The model: The theme of the work is tied to the basic concept of the protagonist. Both the plot and the protagonist's development are influenced by the theme, and the motivations of the primary antagonist run counter to the theme.

( Example 1: Angel )

( Example 2: Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( Example 3: RTD Era Doctor Who )

( Example 4: Avatar: The Last Airbender )