Potpourri of a Dubious Scent

All right. Now can I say that my opinion has slightly changed? Let me confess: After watching S4 and the opening of S5 of Buffy, I can buy the Buffy/Giles ship. I'm not on the ship or anything; I can just buy it. It makes more sense now that I see Buffy coming into her own authority as a person.

In other news, I have added a Stories sidebar to my blog page. It's pretty much all the stories I've had anything to do with that are published on the web. Read -- enjoy -- review!

I've hit a small rough spot in my fic; a scene with my character and Willow and Tara that is going to be dicey. So I don't know how soon it will be before I post another chapter. I hope it will be by Sunday.

Blimey, I have too much to do. It's the end of the month, and here comes all sorts of trouble. Bills, work, housecleaning, writing duties I've taken on -- my car is making a frightening noise upon being started in this cold weather -- did I mention the bloody filing I have to do at work? I think I did. Breathe, Lisa. Okay.

Except that's not really what's bugging me. What's bugging me is a concatenation of three conversations that I've been a party to in the past 48 hours. The first, a blog conversation, is Rebecca's and Jemima's discussions of the nature of introversion, and how it makes high school suck for nerds. My memories of high school are suffused with a miasma of sycophantic misery and depression, which in college became a consuming need to be ecstatically welcomed by people who were already my friends.

It's such an ignominious feeling, to know that my uncontrollable impulse to bleed attention out of other people is the very thing that will drive them away. (Insert appropriate Four Loves quote here.) And it's terribly frustrating to be blindsided by that need when I know that to cure the need I must walk past it to do something material: to take initiative and let the chips of human attachment fall where they may. And yet I remain all sycophantic and Prufrocky; it never entirely goes away. (Note to self: read some more Henri Nouwen.)

The second conversation was with a friend who is going through a difficult time. I said something encouraging that came from my own experience; and though I knew that wouldn't be enough to make her discomfort go away, I was still disheartened to hear her say that she should seek out the company of another friend, who alone knew what to do. It wasn't a recrimination toward me, what she said; but it reminded me of my relative helplessness to make the truth I have into something that's of any use to anyone but myself.

The third conversation followed hard upon, and was with yet another friend who is going through a difficult time. We were discussing the Five Love Languages of Gary Chapman fame as applied to what she needed, and she asked me, "what the hell is your love language, anyway?" I said: "I think it's Words of Affirmation." "Oh." In context, it made me wonder fretfully if I appear to speak any love language at all.

I've been told numerous times, and with asperity, that my presence in people's lives is valued, welcomed, and beneficial. But it's these little clusters of disappointment that just get me down. "If you want to be loved, be lovable," and "If you want a friend, be a friend" are my twin schoolmarms, who pop up and shake their fingers at me at times like this. It only makes my pity party more loud and liable to wake the neighbors. After all, what if I have no hope of being lovable? or of being an effective friend?

I've aired this worry before, and was answered that I'm too hard on myself. So new? The thing is, I've caught myself being sycophantic again recently, toward people I know less well than the friends I live with, and I feel incredibly frustrated at the vicious cycle I'm perpetuating. I'm not meant to control how other people see me, so why should I try? And yet.

I guess the crux of the matter is, I've been educated to believe that if I want attention and affection, I have to earn it -- period. And what I put out better be damned good. Which makes me angry. Grace being a coin, I was never encouraged to study the obverse, which is that if I can't earn affection, I just as well can't unearn it.

But who wants grace, when you can have control?

I think I've discovered my Lent meditation.

Now we're getting personal.

Chapter 5

I'm happier with the title now that I've altered it slightly. And I've concocted some Angst, because it'd be a shame not to make use of Giles's state of mind in Season 5.

:)

Okay, I know now that I have three readers, so I'm going to post the next two chapters. *ignores inner homunculus screaming NO, NO! HIDE IT, HIDE IT QUICK!!*

Chapter 3
Chapter 4

When Haloscan gets its act together, puhleeeeeeze review. The only thing worse than publishing embarrassing fic is never knowing if anyone's read said embarrassing fic.

The Obscure Reference Channel's local forecast for Lisa's Buffyfic:

*muzak*

Unexpected cloudburst of Thomas Wolfe dialect in the early hours may give way to a steady rain of asides later in the day. Scattered Shakespeare showers will continue throughout the week. The Dante system has moved off, but the jet stream may bring another one along by the end of the forecast period. Mixture of Dante and Shakespeare precip may render the highways dangerous, so please keep advised before traveling. Later this evening, winds will be from the farcical with an occasional gust from Ronald Reagan, giving way later to Dunnettesque chess mists and a resultant increase in the sexual dew point. Tomorrow: a front of Spike is expected to collide with the Elisabethan air mass covering the area, resulting in mixed precip of references to Wordsworth, Patmore, and Tennyson. This will increase the Pained Giles Expression outlook for the rest of the evening, but the Spike front will move through relatively quickly, so this may cease to be a problem for traffic in the area.

This has been your local forecast, on the 8s every hour. Trust the Obscure Reference Channel for up-to-the-minute forecasts on references in your area.

*end muzak*

Okay, should anyone be interested in reading MS Buffyfic, the first few chapters on my website I have posted. */Yoda

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Need I even mention that I am a glutton for feedback?

To Add to the Growing List of Wrongnesses in this Wrong-Headed World:

Last night we went to the grocery store, and as we were passing along the cheese, yogurt, and butter case a Parkay container sticking out on a bracket said hello to me and started talking. Which of course caused me to bust a Matthew Perry move in mid-stride and shy away: "Aaaaa!" Listen, it was funny when I was four years old watching the margarine tub on TV open its lid and grunt, "Butter!"; but this is not the 70's anymore. Jessica wonders if the grocery store people are filming their customers' reactions to this little monstrosity that is trying to pass for a cute gimmick. I hope they are. And I hope they are going to put the tape on Candid Camera or some other show, because if they are sitting in the back room all disappointed and concerned that Parkay's bright idea isn't winning new customers, I will just have to...I don't know, bust another Matthew Perry move.

If people ask me (which no one has), what's so great about Byron anyway? I will point them to this.

One of my favorite lines:

Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell,
Stick to thy sonnets, man! -- at least they sell.

I can quote nearly all of "She walks in beauty" from memory, but "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" is an example of that beauty which is a joy forever, which is to say, its venom has outlasted its target.

Another immortal passage, this time from Byron's letters:

“As to ‘Don Juan'—confess—confess you dog—and be candid—that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing—it may be bawdy—but is it not good English?—it may be profligate—but is it not life, is it not the thing?—Could any man have written it—who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a postchaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a Wall? in a court carriage? in a vis-à-vis?—on a table?— and under it?”

That one Jessica has adapted for a brilliant fic, but I think she's given up on it. Too bad; Byron needs more circulation, especially in an age like this. Maybe I will put it into my own fic, which is progressing apace. So far in my fic I already have references to "Casey at the Bat", Dante, and Schrodinger, who is peeping like Waldo from numerous venues in Sunnydale, though without the stripey scarf.

Also, the Wife of Bath, Byron (how did I forget him?), Anthony Hopkins, A.S. Byatt, and Richard Adams.

There. Now you're prepped.

...Oh, hell, just roll up your sleeve for the hypodermic, we'll have to go ahead and do the subliminal tapes.

Was going to feel all sad and mopey that nobody is posting comments anymore -- doesn't anyone love me? -- but then I saw that comment-posting on Haloscan is temporarily disabled while they replace a server. Not that that is likely to stop me wibbling. See this cute little puckered lower lip?

To Borders last night, followed by a writerly jam session at "The Fox and Hound English Pub and Grille" -- which is in a strip mall no less. It was a cool place, with nice colors (deep reds and greens) and many pool tables and a quiet clientele; it just shouldn't be called an "English pub and grille." We thought we'd get a chance to make fun of it, but it turned out to be a good place for Writerly Jam Sessions, so we just made fun of the fact that it was completely misnamed. Oh, how I miss the White Lion. (Buffy [to Willow, whining]: "But the peas will be all mushy!" Giles [turning around, winsomely]: "I like mushy peas." Baaa haa ha!) Erm, scuse me.

Also have been brushing up on my British slang for the heck of it. And now I feel a mini-rant coming on which hardly deserves a bold caption, but I will give it one anyway:

On Being an Anglophile: Or, Prep for Dealing With This Blog

Knackered, bollocks, Eddie Izzard, the Lake District, John Keats, Jane Austen, Monty Python, Oxbridge, Lord Peter Wimsey, C.S. Lewis, Ceylon Blend, "coming in on the top of a bus", Gladstone, Balfour, Disraeli, Churchill, Boadicea, Stonehenge (one of the biggest henges in the world), loo jokes, Punch, 221B Baker Street, T.S. Eliot (the wannabe), Hugh Laurie, The Man Who Was Thursday, Alice in Wonderland, the Pre-Raphaelites, The Book of Common Prayer, the RAF and the Battle of Britain, Francis Crawford of Lymond, Jamie Oliver, and let us not forget Tony Head, not that I would.

There. You've been prepped.

Well, I did it. I made fudge. It's soft, but I like it soft. Also, being poor, I neglected to send out my usual sheaf of valentines to all my friends. So everybody, just consider yourself loved. Mmmm-wah.

Must take bubble bath now.

Thoughts about Mary Sue

So I'm writing Mary Sue Buffyfic, squicking myself out, and contemplating the Evolution of My Fanficcing Destiny. And this is what I come up with.

I started writing fanfic before I could, strictly speaking, write. The first fascination I had was with an LP musical story called "Nathaniel the Grublet." Did I identify with Nathaniel, the good one who learns his lesson? No! I identified with Tails, the leader of the gang of thieves. A curtain rod was my walking stick, and my imagination clothed me in the ragged tailcoat of my gallant and wicked hero. I moved from that to The Black Hole; and from that to Voltron. My sister and I made up stories together about the characters of that show, sometimes inserting ourselves as OCs. I even went so far once as to make a list of stories we'd made up and told each other over and over again, and some that really existed only in title form (such as "The Time Keith got the bwack-bwack-bwack pox"). Most of these stories were in the humor genre; we weren't ready to do angst.

Then when I got older, to satisfy my growing thirst for angst I dreamed stories about speaking with such tragic figures as Christa McAuliffe, Billy the Kid, and John F. Kennedy. I learned by trial and error to write original stories. I practiced writing, now and then, on fandoms. And then a few years ago I got online to discover a whole world of people who had been doing exactly the same thing, on any number of subjects...fics on TV shows, songs, books, movies, even real life, I discover. And I have come to draw two conclusions from this experience of fannishness.

1) It's humbling, not to say humiliating, to find out not only that one is not the only one who writes fannish stories, but that hundreds of thousands of regular people do too. And whether their writing is bad or good, the state of consciousness it all comes from tends to vary very little. And here I was congratulating myself on being fannish in a vacuum!

2) Being humbled is salutary, but it can lead to another form of pride: I miss the days in which I had no shame or self-consciousness at the idea of writing myself as a character in a fan story. It's a fan story: it's fantasizing, it's indulging your consciousness in the mythos of another person's creation, and though it may be other things as well, it's usually a vehicle for expressing your own personal life-preoccupations through characters you either identify with or want to know more about. Why be ashamed of taking it that one little step further and putting yourself into the story as an OC?

Recently Rebecca, in her "fannish" LJ, linked to someone (I forget who) who described a Mary Sue as a story in which the OC distorted the weave of the fandom's universe, obscuring or morphing the canon characters, and thereby misusing the canon's mythos altogether. (I could be remembering it wrong, so blame me if it's not right.)

But even without inserting an OC, the line between writing a brilliant story in a fandom's universe and misusing the canon's mythos is so fine that there's a battle being fought between fans on all the fandom's fronts: slash, OCs, shipping in general, angsty dark noirness....And everybody's got an ego, it's just a fact of life, so everybody on some level gets that little squick about other people's fantasies. Depending on how well the story in question is written, one can to varying degrees ignore the squick and read. I say: if you can't ignore the squick, don't read it. Life is too short. By the same token, why chafe at the false sense of shame that comes from writing something -- anything -- that, rather than being its own canon, indulges a fantasy about another? Si peccas, pecca fortiter.

So God help me, I'm writing Mary Sue Buffyfic. And squicking myself out. But I think I know wherefore the squick. And other than that, I'm having fun, so I'll plow merrily on...even if I never show my story to anyone. Ever.

A Fic That I've Decided I'm Never Going to Write:

No, unfortunately, not the Lisa/Giles shipping fic. Especially not after wiping the drool off my keyboard from this.

The fic I'm not going to write is framed as a nightmare of Snape's. It's a treatment of Euripides's Bacchae: Snape is Pentheus, Voldemort is the risen Dionysus, the Death Eaters are the Bacchae, Dumbledore is Creon, and I think Harry should be Pentheus's mother, Agava or whatever her name is. Maybe. The jury that is my brain is out on that last one.

Why am I not going to write it? Well, just look at it. There it is. Snape has a nightmare. He's Pentheus, attempting to spy on the mysteries of the Death Eaters because he wants to put a stop to them. Voldemort has come back from the undead. He wants to foil Snape's plans, and he uses his gift of illusion and Harry Potter (perhaps: jury, remember?) to do it. Geddit? Okay. That was the shortest fic ever. Fic-a-minute, that's me. Only I wish I could think of an ending that didn't vindicate Voldemort. I always felt that Dionysus was the one with the hubris, not Pentheus. Pentheus was a misogynist ass, but Dionysus was a controlling evil mastermind demanding that all recognize his deitical (is that a word?) status. Puh-leeze.

So anyway.

To round out my Byron-y month (after all, we just passed his birthday and it's coming up Valentine's), here's a quote from Don Juan:

"There is a tide in the affairs of women,/Which, taken at the flood, leads -- God knows where...."

Byron's cheery misogyny aside, I really feel that this quote captures more of human existence than Brutus's stoic musings.

Also, thanks to Anna Pickard (whose blog I have recently discovered via linkage), I have found this site, and am totally rolling! Were I not so broke, I would clean out their merchandise. Not that I'm so very cynical and pessimistic myself, but I love laughing at the shenanigans of those who are.

And I'm just in a mood. What can I say?

Doo-be doo-be doooo....

Yes, speaking of ships...well, actually I wasn't, but I am now...I have a whole bunch of random nonsense to spout.

First, thoughts about slash as prompted by recent blogly controversy. I don't usually read it -- or any fic, come to that -- unless it's bloody brilliant, and I can't think of any compelling reason to write it...except for one ship. Is it just me, or did anyone else notice that Jack Nicholson had FAR more chemistry with Greg Kinnear than with Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets? I mean, I love that movie, but I just cannot, cannot believe in the unlikely romance between Melvin and Carol. Sorry. She's like his babysitter or his special-ed teacher, or some other female authority figure who won't take his crap and who eventually helps him turn his life around, but his lover? Eurgh. It doesn't help me that I personally find Jack Nicholson creepy anyway. But honestly, watching Melvin and Simon bicker and fight over the dog and help each other out of their crises, I can't help thinking they'd make a more balanced match than Melvin and Carol. In my mind's shipping eye, I see Melvin and Carol breaking up rather quickly and Carol swooping out with the stinger, "Why don't you sleep with Simon?" Yeah, Melvin. Why not? You know you want to. But I'm not going to write that story. Why? Because I could care less about seeing any of them sexually fulfilled -- I could care less, but not much. There's a reason why that movie's called As Good As It Gets.

Second bit of random nonsense. Yes, I have added another TV show to my list, God help me: Giles the Vampire Slayer's Watcher...oops, I meant Buffy. And as with any fandom, have promptly discovered a ship I would never have come up with myself, though subsequently it appears obvious that someone would: Buffy/Giles. Oy. Oy, oy, oy vey. I do not know that I could bring myself to read even a good B/G fic; there's a wrongness to it that Harry/Hermione doesn't even begin to approach. Jessica just finished this huge B/G fic that took her like a day to read, and then described it to me, and I told her I was confirmed in my opinion that Buffy/Giles is Just Not Right. "I do, however, approve wholeheartedly of the Lisa/Giles ship," I added, and she laughed.

Which brings me to real life, and Valentine's Day. Yes, ladies and jellyspoons, it's that time of year again. I used to be cynical about it, but have now lost the will to waste my zingers on this holiday. After all, why knock a holiday that is second only to Christmas and Halloween for producing great candy? I don't count Easter candy because Easter candy is mostly gross. Once I got over my Moaning Myrtle phase, I got into the phase of giving everybody valentines instead of waiting for everybody to give them to me. In recent times, however, I have finally gotten the drift that every adult eventually gets about Valentine's Day: it's about sex. No, I mean really. Try not to be too shocked. To explain my take on this -- aspect? -- of the holiday, I'll take you back to seventh grade. My friends and I were busily accusing one another of wearing large bras and liking young X, Y, or Z. To illustrate our adventures in school, we drew cartoons depicting ourselves in various situations -- very postmodern in the way that only seventh-graders can be. In one of these cartoons, my friend Heather depicted another friend, Diann, proudly walking into school one morning with a distended belly. "That must have been some date with Darin," the cartoon-Heather said. Other romantic imbroglios were taking place in the background, and off to the side was me, sitting in a school desk with a notebook and a pencil, wearing a pair of Freudian round glasses (I didn't even wear glasses back then!), murmuring: "Yes, yes, very interesting...the male and the female have this mating dance...leading to the zygote...X and Y chromosomes..."

It sorta hurt my feelings at the time, but it's true. So I miss the forest for the trees: but the trees are darned interesting. And it hasn't cost much to play the happy vicarious observer while so many played the game and lost big. So Valentine's Day is about sex. It's also about Lisa making fudge and musing over the vicissitudes of life. Both happen pretty much every other day of the year. Except for the great candy I can buy at the grocery store.

*Macaulay Culkin* YES! Yes, yes, yes. */Macaulay Culkin*


You are George Gordon, Lord Byron! The
prototypical bad boy, you'll sleep with
anything that can give consent and maybe even a
few things that can't or won't. Your ethics
could use some work (nine year old girls?), but
outside of the sex question, you're a grand
partier and the bipolar, shady hero of your own
story. The wittiest of the Romantics, you're
mad, bad and dangerous to know. Scandalous!


Which Major Romantic Poet Would You Be (if You Were a Major Romantic Poet)?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yeah, baby. Except it's all in my head. Ego-tripping, much?

Wow, Rebecca! This one is cool!

Ottava rima? Me? That can't be right!    Too frivolous? But tut, there's no such thing! Let others ponder thoughts of wrong and right,    Or sit and think how much they love the spring; I'd rather spend my time in gleeful spite,    Or maybe laugh, or maybe sit and sing. Besides, it might be fun to be inspiring - But surely it would get so very tiring. What Poetry Form Are You?

Otherwise, I'd be blank verse. But I think this is pretty accurate. After all, it's Byron's form of choice.

A dreary poem for a dreary day:

Not Getting the Memo

Footstep, footstep, one before the next;
Walls to walls, and walls to walls again;
A glimpse of sky, a glimpse of honest text;
A glimpse of love, glasses speckled with rain.
From room to room, from word to word abstain
From solitude and from all others’ eyes;
To pages, as though pages could attain
The hard world’s labyrinthine qualities;
To confrontation with legion demands,
To reveries, and strange unpleasant dreams,
To fumbling keys in cold, wind-battered hands,
To shaping and reshaping former schemes.
One lifts a glass in toast to living—losing—
One drinks, knowing the complexity of choosing.

How I do love the sonnet. L'chaim!

Coming back from lunch today I saw an apartment complex with a sign and arrow out front saying "VACANCY". Trouble is, the arrow was pointing away from the apartments and across the street. Further trouble is, across the street is a cemetery. Right, I'm jumping right on that -- cemetery looked pretty full, and doubtless the vacancies are limited.