life without a plot

I'm in hibernation mode, I think, I'm so sleepy all the time. All that cold can't be good for the soul. Where's global warming when you need it? And will push-up bras ever go away again? Picked up fingerless gloves (for work, *sigh*; early 18th century building, high ceiling, impossible to heat) at H&M, though.

And I feel so very blah about writing at the moment. My mind is like... something sticky and very, very slow moving? I'm even running out of metaphors. I'll type a couple of sentences, a paragraph, and then start wondering if whatever I've written is 1) even English, and 2) worth writing about, at which point it either gets deleted, or joins the other 'unfinished'-tagged entries.


Oh, and Merlin. As long as I was watching shows on (German or Austrian) TV, I always was anything from a year to... a lot longer than that behind everyone else; spoilers? *sarcastic laughter*. In fact S2 Torchwood, S4 DW and Merlin were the first shows where I followed fandom and fanish debates, squeeing and wanking in real time. So it's still kind of weird to see the adorable slashy little show that only a handful of people were watching, but that kind of got under your skin despite yourself and then suddenly turned out out to be surprisingly good and you found yourself writing meta even when you thought you never ever would, suddenly on the way to become the Next Big Thing, and watching or not watching suddenly becoming a question of ethics and whatnot...

On that note, I think I also just realised why I'm completely unsuited for fandom. With very few exceptions canon is canon is canon in my mind, and that's what mainly interests me about a show. There is no independent version of Jack or Ianto or... say, Harry Potter, in my head that's better or deeper or more complex or more whatever-it-is-that-people-are-(allegedly)-looking-for. And if it's complexity that they want, why do they so often disregard whatever complexity is already present in the source material? Why does (e.g.) so much of the Torchwood fanfic - oh, all right, admittedly this is a bit of a wild generalisation since I have given up looking for good fanfic a while ago, so everyone please feel free to prove me wrong and point out what I've been missing - fall back on clichès and simplify rather than complexify or explore? On the whole, the more I like a show, the less I'm interested in the fanfic, and vice versa, to the point that the fandoms where I read the most fic are those where I've only seen a few episodes, or am not familiar with the source material at all.


And I simply refuse to panic or even worry about the future of livejournal at this point. Granted, economic crises and all that, but I've simply seen this whole The End Is Near! thing one time too often.


Eh. Russian homework to do, which I'm not allowed to feel blah about.

[Trying to clean up & out all my half-written lj entries before leaving for an offline holiday...]


Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles

I liked both Throne of Jade and Empire of Ivory rather less than the first volume, and I must admit I'd kind of forgotten about Black Powder War and had to check amazon (and it's a special kind of internet generated laziness that makes you go to amazon rather than five steps to your own bookshelf... *facepalm*) for the name of the fith book on the vague suspicion that there had been a fifth book, and don't remember very much about it other than thinking Stephen Maturin wouldn't have thought twice about pulling that trigger, and I doubt would even have let Jack (much less William Laurence) stop him, actually given the opportunity to shoot Napoleon.

Victory of Eagles, though, I really enjoyed and IMO is the best book of the series so far along with His Majesty's Dragon, ( ... )


On a rather different note, what I find refreshing (perhaps an unfair generalisation, but having read Victory of Eagles right after Lynn Flewelling's latest novel it really stands out) is that for an author who comes out of, and still is involved with, fandom, specifically the slash corner of it, her writing is almost completely free of fandom tropes of any kind. If there's any 'ship' dynamic at all, it was, especially in the first book, in a clever twist of things between Laurence and Temeraire, which I suspect can't be entirely coincidental with Temeraire taking Stephen Maturin's part as the outside observer who criticises the practices and absurdities of military hierarchy and human society, the advocate of democracy. Not to mention the tendril-stroking thing. *g*



Which brings me to another point... I've been wondering for a while, but most recently apropos Shadows Return, which sacrificed the comparative complexity of the earlier volumes' political plots to become one long, self-indulgent and almost entirely relationship driven hurt/comfort slave!fic that just barely skirts mpreg, with only token appearances by the minor characters (who hadn't been so minor before, either), whether it was fandom that made me look at fiction in terms of tropes and kinks, or whether the close interaction between fandom and professional authors that the internet offers makes authors more likely to... It doesn't even have to be conscious pandering to the audience, but does being so familiar with fandom and knowing exactly what will get you readers (and it's commonplace that at least in fandom even mediocre slash will get a writer more comments and publicity especially when it's the right pairing than good gen) - consciously or subconciously - influence a writer's decisions?

( ... )