That Meme Thing

[alixtii]

Happy birthday to nwhepcat.

For anyone bothered by the .pdf formatting of my script "Night of the Old Ones" (Episode 1x01 of my virtual series Dark Champions), I finally figured out a way to keep the necessary formatting in HTML. You can find it here. I think it should be easier to read.

I'm working on my femslash_minis ficlet, and am hoping to finish it soon. I have lots of schoolwork I need to do this weekend too. Plus I still owe karabair the last section of Bonfire Night.

I've been meaning to do that "10 interests meme." So here it is:

LJ Interests meme results

1. canon bordello:
   You see, the fen came along and began to do things to texts that no one had done since A.C Bradley's essay "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth": they began to look at texts as sources of information about the fictional universes they described. They ironed out the contradictions, and basically began treating the worlds as if they were real. They wrote sociological essays examining JKR's wizarding world. They debated the science of Star Trek and X-Men. And they took advantage of the richness of these created worlds by creating new stories that could fit within them, not changing anything, but creating connections between little details to make it even richer and more real than it had been before.
   
   Canon is not the text.


2. dru:
   Angel did a lot of unconscionable things when he became a vampire. Drusilla was the worst. She was an obsession of his. She was pure and sweet and chaste, and he made her a vampire. But first he made her insane. Killed everybody she loved. Visited every mental torture on her he could devise.
   
   She saw the future. She was pure innocence, yet she saw what was coming, she knew what Angelus was going to do to her. She eventually fled to a convent, and on the day she took her holy orders, he turned her into a demon. The year was 1860 C.E.
   
   Or, to tell the story a different way: Joss Whedon created a lot of characters when he became producer of a TV show. Drusilla was one of the best. Played by Juliet Landau alongside James Marsters as Spike, she put on a faux British accent which I still love to hear. That voice is sex itself. The year was 1997 C.E.
   
   Then again, it might just be a part of my thing with insane women with British accents.


3. femslash:
   I've actually had a "why femslash?: the het male perspective" essay going through my mind, but there's no way I'm going to write it any time approaching soon. I tend to identify with female characters more easily than male ones, and I'm personally attracted to women, so writing femslash works for me. And writing about women loving women as a male member of a community of mostly women, well it's a wonderful opportunity to really delve into character and make it about more than just sex and pr0n. I won't makie lofty claims of transgression, but it's something that is really complex and wonderful.


4. immanuel kant:
   It was Immanuel Kant, writing in the late 16th century, who first put forward the idea that truth is dependent on the cognitive "categories" we use to understand reality. Of course Kant, in true Enlightenment form, believed that we all shared the same categories, and that properly understood Reason would guide us to answering all questions, but his self-proclaimed "Copernican Revolution" really did complete change the philosophical landscape. Kant single-handedly changed the direction of modern philosophy, and provide the necessary background allow the post-structuralist theories I hold to develop.
   
   Of course, his ethics are a little too rigid. When I was young (i.e. in high school) I had a photocopy of a picture of him (along with an esay on him from the Chronicle of Higher Education) with IDIOT and a big arrow scrawled over it. I leave it up, respecting from where I have come, but I've since changed my mind.
   

   "This domain is an island, enclosed by nature itself within unalterable limits. It is the land of truth -- enchanting name! -- surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion. Before we venture on this sea, to explore it in all directions and to obtain assurance whether there be any ground for such hopes, it will be well to begin by casting a glance upon the map of the land which we are about to leave, and to enquire, first, whether we cannot in any case be satisfied with what it contains -- are not, indeed, under compulsion to be satisfied, inasmuch as there may be no other territory upon which we can settle; and, secondly, by what title we possess even this domain, and can consider ourselves as secured against all opposing claims." -- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

5. liberal arts:
   The liberal arts started out as a contrast to the "servile" arts--i.e. the liberal arts were, then as now, those areas of learning which wouldn't get you a job when you were finished learning them. Instead, they were for the betterment of the self and the society.
   
   Today, liberal arts education is in peril as private institutions feel more and more pressure to remake themselves as pre-professional schools. The studies of ideas for their own sake, across disciplinary boundaries, is in great danger.


6. metaphor:
   Metaphor is the major thematic device of early BtVS. Cognitive linguists believe it is what make us human. I'm actually less interested in metaphor per se (A-for-B substitutions) as I am in symbols (dynamic narrative entities which can take on a multiplicity of meanings) but that's getting a bit nitpicky. Suffice it to say that metaphors enrich both life and fiction.


7. noumena:
   Kant divided the world into phenomena, the appearances which come pre-sorted through our conceptual categories, and noumena, that which exists independently of our cognition. The distinction was important, because it allowed Kant's predecessors such as Nietzsche to reject noumena completely as logically incoherent. The word noumena, after all, is a word, the result of human cognition. We can never get outside the system of our own minds.


8. religion:
   

   "First of all comes the experience of mystery, the experience of God. Only afterward does faith supervene. Faith is not primarily adhesion to a teaching that gives access to revelation and the supernatural. Then faith would be tantamount to ideology, in the sense of an idea or belief inculcated in someone from outside. This extrinsic character of so-called faith can give rise to various forms of fundamentalism and religious warfare. All groups tend to affirm their own truths to the exclusion of all others. Faith is meaningful and possesses truth only when it represents a response to an experience of God made personally and communally. Then faith is the expression of an encounter with God which embraces all existence and feeling--the heart, the intellect, and the will." -- Leonardo Boff

   Anybody care to guess my thoughts on Benedict XVI?


9. staying within canon:
   See above, "canon bordello." I rarely feel the need to go outside canon; after all, it was so good. I want more of it, new stories that fit into the old ones, without even contradictiong the minutest of details.


10. vampire slayers:
    Into each generation, a Slayer is born. Until "Chosen," that is, when the rules changed. Now, we the fanfic writers tell the continuing stories of the diverse Slayers who populate the Buffyverse, and we have a blast doing it, no?

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list. Enter someone else's LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from their interest list. Enter "nbufrlidf dknmdfn;lfgnbldskl" and your computer will explode.

Comments

[nwhepcat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the birthday wishes! It feels like a wonderful start to the next year.