the_fantastic_ms_fox | Entries tagged with writing

Story idea: "Merge"

People tele-operate robots on other planets by copying their mind, and shipping it off to, say, Mars. It then loads into a mining robot and runs it for a few months, before getting broadcast back to you and merged with your "original."

Obvious enough stuff, but what does your mind #2 get up to? Mutiny? Not wanting to come back? Realizing that your marriage isn't working and has been "playing the field" of the solar-powered-rover equivalent of swinging key parties for the last two years?

Or, to re-frame. Tell it from the perspective of mind #2. Thus avoid the trap of "protagonist = default."

Given that Mars = "Osoyoos with a lens filter" and "Rover" = "puppet," this could even be a cheap screenplay.

Crossposts: http://hundun.livejournal.com/293684.html

I've decided that I absolutely adore it when people quote me, or refer to my writing.

"And I could just respond by pointing to the excellent essay by Amy Fox in Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme but I’d rather go on engaging myself here. (If there is any hope for us all, it lies with butches like Amy Fox.)"

http://truequeerlove.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/nothing-can-be-said-of-being-butch.html

Crossposts: http://hundun.livejournal.com/291112.html

This dream synthesized:

- years of lucid practice,
- a progression on gender
-an overdue return to the sci-fi elements common to my dreams.
- some issues that have been turning over in my mind

It occurred in a late morning that followed a night of stress-related insomnia.
I feel proud to have had it.

Dreamer's commentary in red.
Waking in blue
Dream in green.

Battlestar. CnC.

Adama says something about love to the crew. "Love can bring you up; love can bring you down," or something; cliche but nuanced, complicated, contradictory.
To most of the crew anyway.

Starbuck is around, isn't she? I need to talk to her.
Steel-eyed viper jockey with a death wish and all that.

Lucidity starts...

A-shaped halls and desatch'd lighting. I must be dreaming.

...around here?

I think about it. Maybe she's so damn cranky because she's MtF. I mean. Seriously

( And I have proof )

Yes, yes. That makes sense.

That's why she's elated sometimes and cranky others.

"I remember it. It never stops hurting," she'll mutter into a bottle

Plus it's a war and trans medicine is kinda near the bottom of Dr. Cottle's priority list.

Cylons, water shortages, we can handle. Getting vag-blocked, not so much.
( Why the fixation? )

I search. A hallway begins, but ends in mirror.

( Read more... )

But it's in the way. And reflecting everything except me.
There is someone in there.

I might as well fun with it.
I submerge my my face in the quicksilver of the mirror into the big black behind it.
I feel it stretch and ripple over my mouth, and I blow bubbles.

Is there someone in there now?

( Read more... )

There she is. Or maybe she's cissexed. And she's cranky because the series is done. In the past, thank you.
She's a perfectly happy fiction that's had her run, her death, and is now being ressurrected, purposed by some wacky lucid narrator.

"Look, let's make this work"

( Read more... )

We talk. She stonewalls.

"Look: Kara get me information; I'll get you... drugs? You want drugs? Fine."

I leave. I get it. I return. She wants more.

Frazzled, I encounter another crewmember in the hall. She likes that I'm here. I think she knows that I am a stranger here. A smiling rough quickie follows.

( Read more... )

Moving on.

Finding Starbuck again.

She's messed up again. Hurting.

I don't know what I can get her so she'll talk,

to get her to move over to my side of the story.
And once there, open

( Thorough Analysis )

Crossposts: http://hundun.livejournal.com/274872.html

I rented the first six episodes of Carnivale, a series that sprang out of a double-length movie script. I thought it was a beautiful magical-realist period piece, but a bit slow.

(I also thought I have limited interest in watching yet another duo of normative dudes serve as humanity's champions, but that's another article)

HBO cancelled Carnivale after two seasons; one-third of the way through its Big Plan.

Was this a tragedy for artistic television? Yes. But whose doing?

Consider: episodes ran an average of fifty-six minutes and four million dollars. Two seasons. Twelve epsiodes each. One third of a story

So, I ask: How can you spend ninety-six million dollars, and take twenty-one hours and thirty-six minutes and only be a third of the way through a story that was originally written at three hours?

Was it tragic? Yes. But in the Greek sense: the kind that you bring on yourself.

Northamerican Anglophone television has embraced the "story arc," once the domain of soap operas, but doesn't ask how long it takes to tell a good story. So we are left with episodes of 22 or 44 minutes, in seasons that shrink only grudgingly. From 26 episodes to 22, sometimes as low as 17 for high-concept shows on major networks. Artsy channels often have 13,12 or 10.

Consider even the teeniest case: a "short" season of ten epsiodes of a "half-hour" show (acutually 22 minutes apiece). A Sitcom, most likely. Even with a one-season run, that's three hours and forty minutes. How many movies are that long?

I see this trend towards elephantine epics reflected in novels and online articles. I'm sure they're getting longer, but I don't have proof. (All this despite fears of "shrinking attention spans.") Why? Cheaper computer-controlled editing and printing, and transfinite recording online space?

Do we assume that, the more words or minutes, the more media is worth? Or, without boudaries does quality expand to fill the available space?

Not all television is like this. Rome was concise. But Internet TV, or "Streamies" usually don't fall into this trap. Why?

At present, I am editing students work as part of compiling it into a wiki on local queer history.

HOW THE HELL DID THESE ART STUDENTS GET TO THIRD-YEAR-PLUS UNIVERSITY WITHOUT KNOWING HOW TO WRITE?

HOW?

WHAT ARE WE TEACHING THEM?

I find myself stopping every few sentences to try and figure out what the hell the authour is saying. Or trying to say, and failing.

As I edit, the page count is steadily dropping. Superfluous clauses and sentences fly off into the ether, never to return.

I've been trying to cultivate a better sense of compassion of late and I'm impressed by its value. I don't mean it's ability to be all lovey and healing, but in it's more quantifiable applications. Or maybe I'm confusing it with empathy. Or maybe compassion is empathy with a little analysis and practice thrown in.

Seeing people as whole individuals with motives and stories, trying to understand them and where they're coming from, is great for:

( Read more... )

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The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

Entries tagged with writing

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A dream in synthesis

Thoughts on concision by a streamie writer

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August 2017

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