erstwhile comix fiend...

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xkcd & the Wardrobe
Hey, someone else has revisionist Narnia fic on the brain!

( A prudent modern Lucy )

Crap, I seem to have been doing this wrong. Apparently I have to post on D'width to get it to show up on LJ--I was doing it backwards.

I have thought for some time that I would rather see a world that moves past wheelchairs than a world where everything is made wheelchair-accessible.

http://www.ananova.com/News/story/sm_3560585.html

OK, I just set my Dreamwidth to crosspost from LJ by default. New & different.

As for writing, well, no, I really haven't been. This is bad.

Is it bad that I read something like this, & think, "You know how to stop Raven from turning evil? Give her fishnets!"?

two lives of Donna Troy
These are inspired by John Byrne's torments of Donna Troy, in his Wonder Woman run. There were to be more, but I sort of abandoned it after these two. One is really short, & one is surprisingly long.

~ ~ ~

( the short one )

~

( the long one )

Instead of showing you my last fic, I tell you how it sucks. Is that bad?
The wee hours, Wednesday morning, when I was feeling like going to sleep, I forced myself to write. Sometimes it seems like I have to practically push myself into REM to write, although I come up with ideas when I'm awake, so maybe it's just that I fidget less when I'm half asleep.

I had this sort of goofy idea for a Wondy fic, which was supposed to demonstrate the idea of learning unfamiliar things really quickly (which I argue is the power from which many of her other abilities derive). It also used these male characters that I'd cooked up (partially) before as love interests. But it ended up making Di a little more like "V." (my uni instructor Amazon) than I like, esp. since V. has moved away from being a revised version of Di into being a new character.

I had two points I was working toward, but didn't jump ahead & write down what I had in mind for the last one, just kept going straight through--& just kept writing scenes in a sort of unplanned way. I was trying to get my word count up, since I'd not written any fic that I count for four days, & I didn't quit until I got to the final scene. After five hours, & very sleepy, I'd done 3200 words. I don't know how much my rate slowed over time.

I haven't reread it all yet. But on waking up, remembering what bugged me as I wrote it, & realizing other things, I'm kind of loathe to even put it up, even though part of me, before I finally went to sleep yesterday morning, thought I would.

( Problems )

And I'm back to bloviation not really giving me better writing. There is a reason I prefer reading shorts to novels, maybe I should try writing more sparely. Well, after November is over I can do that.

And perhaps the craziest thing is that I have all these other ideas I'm not writing; Wondy-mythos stuff that's been in my head for ages, stuff I came up with back on the first, & even something I came up with the same day as my salsa-dancing university professors drivel. I could be doing those. But the one I chose to ride for five hours was that one. Oyyyg. I've had bad fic ideas before, but rarely if ever have I spent five pages of described action on one.

Still, I'm glad I wrote it. It shows me where certain ideas don't work for Wondy, so I can close some plans. But a lot of it might work taken apart & applied to other characters. And really, the "Di" in this, or the character in my head she's meant to turn into, is another character, & I may as well let her be one.

Naturally, after all that sleep deprivation, I haven't written anything else for a day.

I was going to put the monstrosity on t'journal anyway, but right now I don't even want to reread it myself, so I'm not really crazy about inflicting it on y'all. Instead you get another artifact of sleep-deprived meandering, but one I'm actually pretty happy with. That's the next post.

CBR thoughts, various
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9960470&postcount=72
Diana right now seems to be acting like a support cast from herself. She lacks details, it seems the plot gives her the "quirks" needed for that moment. She isn't even be an active voice on her own life. Right now she looks more like a pawn and acts like a chess piece in a game done by the gods... right now the main characters and players on WW life are the gods. She is just an agent which is pushed to a side to another

This. This is the problem with being so enamored of "Tales of the Gods" that you treat Wonder Woman as just a vehicle to do "Tales of the Gods."

Something similar can happen if someone is more interested in the Amazons as a concept than in Di herself.

~ ~ ~

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9960895&postcount=75
A TPB consisting of six issues worth of story can be composed of six stand-alone issues, two 3-issue stories, a 3-issue story plus a single plus a 2-issue one, or three 2-issue stories. Perhaps readers would think they'd be getting an even better value if they got more than one story in their TPB.

But that's crazy talk!

~ ~ ~

Wonder of Wonders - 10/19 - War and Peace: Gifted
As her strength fluctuated, so did her resistance to bodily harm. She went from needing her famous "Bracelets of the Aegis" to deflect bullets, death rays and other projectiles, to being able to survive nuclear explosions, molten lava, the depths of the ocean, and the vacuum of outer space.

Am I the only person who sees no contradiction here? I think there have been two nuclear explosions of note; one she survived because of Donna Milton's secret powers, & the other is probably a case of a writer underestimating the threat of a nuclear blast in general. Molten lava is mainly dangerous from heat, & there is some implication that Di is fire-resistant (arguably part of "sisterhood with fire"). Withstanding the pressure of the ocean depths may be a specific divine gift invoked ad hoc by prayer. (Didn't WML deal with it that way?) And for someone pressure-resistant, hard vacuum (given an air supply) isn't all that rough. Human bodies don't actually pop in vacuum, probably because we're more liquid than gas--& solid on the outside. (And if she's also fire-resistant & temperature-resistant, the effects of solar radiation on her lit side might be endurable.)

So we have the long-standing idea (from Marston! It's in the Prime Minister Blizzard story, as I recall) that our bathing-suit-clad protagonist is resistant to extremes of temperature, due to some special discipline, or "mind over matter." And constant pressure, under the sea, can perhaps be dealt with similarly. None of this means she's invulnerable to acute applied force, as from a bullet or fist.

Are there irregularities? Sure. Am I going to conclude that a character not designed to be invulnerable really is invulnerable because of some writers' mistakes? Not in this case; why should I?

~ ~ ~

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9577961&postcount=3
Superman's a protector, Batman's an avenger, but Wonder Woman's an example of how anyone can stand up for themselves. Her underlying message is, "You can be like me, you can do it yourself." --Kurt Busiek

You know who he just described there? His Astro City character that's a very rough Wondy analog. And you know what, we need more characters that are almost Wondy analogs, so that we can better explore the different ideas that keep getting attached to Wondy.

A. So I didn't really write for the last four days. Oh, some crappy snippets of dialogue, but nothing that counts. Criticism/meta does not count, of course. Bad bad.

B. How do I cross-post between LJ & Dreamwidth other than cut-paste? Is there a program?

Oh, look, a meme
FIRST: If you've been tagged, you ~~must~~ may write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.
SECOND: Tag eight sexy people. ~~Don't refuse to do that like a pansy.~~

Who sleeps in bed next to you?
The cat, when I'm feeling kind and don't shut her out of my room.
[This was

nique's answer & coincidentally mine, which was why I decided to do this silly thing.]

What did you last eat?
Too much leftover Halloween Whoppers (malted milk balls, not hamburgers, though hamburgers sound good).

What kind of books do you read?
Codices, I don't run across many scrolls & I don't have a Kindle. I have read some short stories online.

If you could be anywhere right now, where would it be?
...Um,...[No, don't say that!]... skip this...

What's really creepy?
You really don't want to know. Less creepy? Possibly the answer I first wanted to put to the previous question.

Name one odd item within five feet of you.
Is a spiral bound Atlas of Cat Anatomy odd? Actually, I found something odder: It appears to be little plastic pirate in a plastic seashell with wheels on the bottom that may have been in a fast food kid's meal. I don't know, these were my cousin's things.

What's your current fandom / obsession / addiction?
Donna Troy. The John Byrne version. :nods:

What did you really want to do today that you didn't?
Write 2000 words for

666words.

What are you most excited for?
Something utterly inane, usually. Actually, no, actually writing is more of a thrill.

What websites do you always visit when you go online?
LJ is in always mode right now. Used to be sinfest.net.

What was the last thing you bought?
Photocopies.

If you could have any pet, what would it be?
Can I have a hot rock star girlfriend instead? (This was also my answer to the question I skipped.)

Your past life: Tell me about it.
Some kind of winged insect, as far as I can tell. Butterfly, maybe.

What do you want right this minute, off the top of your head?
Single payer health care. Maybe some good leather gloves for punching those who are against single payer health care, especially those who already get government care. Oh, you're worried about costs? I'll give you costs!

Where is the place you like to return to in order to calm down / relax / etc.?
In an emergency, under the viaduct.

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
Depends on the size of your tongue. I'll say 23, but they're really long licks, & you have to drink something between them.

What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?
“Oh, all right, I'll come to bed.” Other than to the insane cat. :nods:

Are there any bits of childhood that you miss?
Not having cavities.

Say something to the person who tagged you.
I feel your pain, catwise.

Tags:
bluefall (who as far as I can tell doesn't read this lj anyway)
leftarrow
kali921

...um...

...let's pretend there are as many as eight persons reading this. There you go. Consider yourself tagged if you wish, I don't care.

On Diana, the Secret ID, & Relatability
Those who demand that Wonder Woman have a secret identity, like the old days, don't bother me that much. It's just nostalgia really. But the justifications some offer smack of “false solution.”

We don't need a character with a dual identity to identify with the character. How many of us have secret dual identities ourselves? And the character is a wish-fulfillment fantasy anyway, right?

The trick, I think, is to write the character as human, rather than have her "turn into" a human.

I think Byrne showed me the way to do it. Not that the Byrne run is a masterwork of plot & script, but he pointed me in the direction I intend to take, even if he himself blew past it to have weird stories about Di turning to clay or becoming a goddess.

Diana, who I've been referring to as Diana Themyskiras, is a human being. She is a celebrity, a superhero, & a scholar. Much like the characters in Monkeyman & O'Brien--an Arthur Adams concept I seriously recommend--or a little like a more socially adjusted Reed Richards. She's not in her Wondie togs doing Justice League superhero fights all the time. She has friends, she wears civilian clothes, she eats, she hunts, she dates, she does lots of stuff. Sometimes she dismantles rampaging giant late-Atlantean robots unearthed by modern archaeologists. Occasionally she assists in negotiating with extra-terrestrial empires that are threatening to invade Earth.

She's a master linguist, a monster hand-to-hand combatant, & learned some physics-bending magic/psionics/superscience from her Amazon training. She has a vague passing familiarity with ancient Hittite, pre-Homeric proto-Hellene culture, & some other lost cultures that her people preserved memories of. She's picked up a little knowledge of modern engineering & micro-biology--a lot for a layman, not much by professional/specialist standards--as it can help her deal with weird crises.

Don't think of her superhero nature as this strange costumed identity that has nothing to do with flesh-&-blood existence. It's not Iron Man armor, or the like. Her powers are capacities that she has all the time. Meanwhile, she could be working as a university lecturer, or an advisor to Interpol, or what have you. Her costume, on the other hand, is less important, & gets pulled out where she wants a heraldic presentation, or just togs she doesn't mind getting dirty.

Being a superhero is sort of her job. Think of someone you know who's a fireman, or a physician, or even a postal worker. Are they putting out fires/seeing patients/delivering mail all the time? Of course not. But they are still recognizably that person, even if at other times they're acting more as a spouse or parent or baseball fan.

I'm going to write some stories that explain this idea.

Oh, look! Some quotes:
_
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9948684&postcount=22
I do think she lacks some relateability (not a great amount, mind you), but that mostly comes from writers not showing small moments. Things like being tired in the morning, getting her hair cut, awkward moments, being in dilemma. The list goes on.
_
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9946151&postcount=19
Back to Diana… So imagine some Sunday, Diana needs to run down to the local jungle pet store to pick up some gorilla scent masking room fresheners, she obviously isn’t going to wear the bullets and bracelets… so have her show up in normal street clothes and go shopping.

The clerks know she is wonder woman, the customers know she is wonder woman but really, its just Diana to them…

This way, she can go out on dates, she can run errands, she can do stuff that heroes need to do, but doesn’t need to wear the star spangled panties…or white super spy suit... or red cyclops eyeglasses.
_
Yeah Yeah Yeah, Uh-huh Uh-huh Uh-huh, as the boys in Z sang ("Lucky Jones," which I fanonically consider the unofficial theme song of the Wonder Girl & the Young Justice kids). Here's the thing.

Show her with Donna, doing simple homey things in the apartment. What? They don't still have the apartment? Well, wherever one of them is living now. Cooking, making jokes, talking about ~~Dick~~ guys. Also, I kind of want to bring back Di's love of appliqué stars & "Wonder Princess" outfits so Donna can mock it.

Have her babysitting some friend's kids, teaching them some kind of useful skill (sewing comes to mind, maybe for darning the darn costume?) while also singing some ancient Amazon-Hittite song & teaching them that at the same time. (By the way, comicdom needs some more supporting cast characters with kids.)

Have her drag her boyfriend off to some Latin American beach for vacation. She can get into some trouble (no, not that kind of trouble) for story purposes, but this is a good place for Al to draw her just being happy & having a good time--in a thong. (Have I mentioned that if I write the book, I want Al Rio to rotate with José Luis García-López on art? No? Well, I do.)

Oh yeah. For further disconnection from Fighting Crime & Monsters, the boyfriend can be a non-super. Not Tom Tresser or the like, but say, Clarence the mild-mannered history professor. (Although I have this lurking plotbunny that asks for her to briefly date John Henry Irons, I really don't think that tying her to one of the JLA boys works long-term.)

Also, there's a possible intersection with a different kind of fantasy than Fighting Extraterrestrials & Monsters. Di is a celebrity. She gets invited to Fashion Week, designers concoct clothes for her, she gets asked to be a guest (& unofficial additional security) at various hoity-toity events, she gets (in various ways) to manhandle rare gems & objets d'art. She also is able to jet off to obscure countries to act as an election observer, negotiator, or hostage rescue agent. Wealth! Glamour! Power! Exotica! Thrills! Much of which should be real-world based, not, you know, alien tiger-men from Stavromula Sigma fighting the Gloops of 501 Centauri for the Mha-K-Gupphen--nor another freaking "intrigue on Olympus" story.

Now, about Diana Prince as a character. It's untrue that I don't like Diana Prince. I've been working out a backstory for her. I could see making her the star of the book. But in my fan-imagining, Diana Prince is the child of Mr & Mrs Prince, & while she may have programmed to think she's Wonder Woman, that doesn't mean she's actually Diana Themyskiras. :evil grin:

Ahem. Seriously, though, my take on Wonder Woman is somewhere between Hellboy & Angelina Jolie (& the aforementioned Monkeyman & O'Brien). She's a big-time celebrity, a quasi-political figure, a sex symbol, knowledgeable on various weird things historical magical & otherwise. All of that is within the context of her being a human being, not just a cartoon or a plasticene doll painted in primary colors.

Disexuality
Inspired to write this by the CBR boards discussion of Diana's arguable bisexuality. Pretty much my take on Diana's sexuality, though I started it not convinced it works as a scene. So consider this my crap attempt at exposition, with thoughts while writing or editing interspersed in italics.

Tracy leaned in & kissed Diana.
"Oh no. This is bad," Diana said.
"You're not interested?"
"No, I'm not."

That should be the end of it, right? Hey, she's not your type, go on.

"Are you not into me, or you are into me, but something else is in the way?"
"You're not what I'm looking for. Like REALLY not." Diana looked meaningfully downward.
"Really? I'm sorry, I just assumed that Amazons were...you know."
"Lesbian by default, with no individual personalities?" Diana winked, & narrowed her eyes, in a way that somehow reassured Tracy that she wasn't trying to be mocking, just gently correcting.
"Yeah. I see what you mean. It's just, you hear of this island full of women, & you figure, um, something something..."
"There's a difference between being open to something & preferring it over the alternative."

I meant there to be another line or two here but I don't know what.

"Here's the thing. I like women. Most of my good friendships are with women. I form closer bonds with women than with men for the most part. Men are hard to get to know. Women are chicken soup for me. Men are bacon."

Yeah, Rucka, she's making carnivore metaphors, you stupid self-loathing git.

~~"And it's important to me that women stay chicken soup for me."~~

NO THAT IS A HORRIBLE SENTENCE I THOUGHT IT WAS CLEVER BUT IT MAKES DIANA AN INANE GENERALIZER ARRRGH

"Men are difficult, but they're a challenge. And if I'm in Patriarch's World but retreat to the comfort of women, then I'm a coward."
"So you're straight because you'd think less of yourself for behaving--"
"--Normally for my homeland?" Diana laughed. "Well, sort of. It's like, you grew up in Iowa & ate hamburgers & corn on the cob all your life, then you moved to Hong Kong. Would you really refuse to eat dim sum, which is the most normal thing in the world? It's not like, hey, I've got to eat thousand-year eggs, or baby octopodes--it's just regular food in a new place. And honestly, there's something about men. I didn't exactly get them for the longest time, but I always--there's this pheromone, you see, & I respond to it. So I guess I got to Hong Kong & realized I really like dim sum."
"But hamburgers & corn on the cob are still good too, right?"
Here Diana narrowed her eyes even more, & looked at her for a long time, trying to read what Tracy was thinking, until Tracy was getting very self-conscious of every tic of her face. Then Diana relaxed a bit, & said, "Is that what you want, Tracy? To be the hamburgers & corn on the cob once in a while?"
Tracy thought about it. "That would be nice, yeah."
"I'm not really...polyamorous, despite what some people seem to think." Here Diana's whole face smiled. "I do notice what people think of me, & imagine about me, & wish I were. But I'm just who I am, & a bisexual monster-slaying Amazon who likes being naked can still be a bigger prude than people in your country expect."

OK, having written this, I now feel like I should explain that I appreciate takes on Wonder Woman that are more promiscuous, polyamorous, or what have you. I'm not saying they're wrong. The above interpretation seems to fit what we've been shown so far in the comic, & it's an idea I find sympathetic enough & interesting enough to write about. Diana isn't coming from a conventional Yankee sexuality, or a traditional patriarchal sexuality; but that doesn't mean she doesn't have her own principles & traditions.

glub
Did not write yesterday, nor really get anything done I meant to. I need to remember that getting up early sometimes makes things worse.

Who else is trying to write?

I mean, I'm not even doing one continuous work, but I favor short fiction anyway. I'm just trying to get myself to write a standard number of words, in a row, per day, for the first time ever.

words
So last night I decided to write something completely different, but which had been germinating for a while, & this one section just kind of kept going, on & on as I tried to get to my intended endpoint. I think I should go back & add more, actually, but I guess it works.

Sorta caught up, then, not sure of actual word counts.

Finale of an unproduced series
The fiend who wears many faces brought low the superheroes. The Bat-Dojos & the hidden kingdoms were slaughtered to a man. The Warpies & the paranormals had their powers both twisted & amplified against them, to render them helpless. The magicians were eaten by devils.

And Tycho Baldridge, a pot-bellied couch potato from Paramus, stood up because somebody had to, recruited a ragtag bunch of fellow ordinary schlemiels, & fought back. Tycho was deconditioned, awkward, & miseducated. His previous activity to defend the world had amounted to buying a "Millenium Fish" decal for his RAV 4. He probably never had a chance, but he became a folk hero due to how long he survived. The fiend with many faces left him alive because it never saw him as a threat. But in the end, Tycho & his gang were burned alive.

And then a young Punjabi called Pooh took up the cause.

And the fiend with many faces laughed. "You won't win, you can't."

But Pooh said, "There were 6 billion of us, surely there are 5 billion left. And even if 99.9% of us are useless sacks of dung, that would leave 5 million to stand against you. It should be enough."

And the fiend with many faces threw back its head & laughed. And all its faces, 10 million persons, threw back their heads & laughed as one. Surely the evil could manipulate the indifferent to shut down the good.

But still, I believe with Pooh. 5 millions should be enough, at least for a start. Will you fight with us?

I was not aware of this when I started my "Make Wonder Woman a university instructor" idea (which none of you have seen yet, it's been in my head). I was just thinking about Holliday College, you see.

"I guess my new take is that she is a Greek history professor, a young and very bright woman having a hard time juggling her personal life with her work. In this case, of course, her real work is being an Amazon warrior."
- Deborah Joy Levine

Yeah, I finally wrote a page about my idea this Tuesday, & then today I saw that link. Oyyyy. I wasn't going to post what I have because I think it's the wrong introduction, & probably would just annoy people. But it's so tempting now!

Also, I watched Elizabeth: the Golden Age instead of writing.
I didn't get my 666 words written yesterday. Well, I didn't Monday either, but I figured 2000 words Sunday night would count for three days. And Tuesday I did manage 700 words of probably trash, so I'm not that behind.

But instead of fleshing out the stubs of ideas that I had Sunday, I tried coming up with something new: a new story, which I'm trying to synthesize without really knowing what happens yet, & I want it to be as a comic-book script. It's giving me hives. I have two potential plots, I'm thinking about page layouts, I tried to make up a new superhero(ine) & can't quite name her...some form of Talabarte, perhaps—all this nonsense I put in my own way. Maybe I should just stick with prose for this month.

This was supposed to be a story with Wonder Woman & old Justice League stealth specialist Gypsy, & it's mutated into a story about elections on a fictitious Hispanophone Caribbean island (not Santa Prisca, or whatever the fictitious Hispanophone Caribbean island that appears in a lot of DC comics is called; a new one). And I realized I couldn't name any Hispanoamerican supertypes, except for some Chicanos & Puerto Ricans in el Norte. So I decided to make one up, & decided to do a Jeanne d'Arc riff (perhaps because I've been also trying to get back into Narnia & got Elizabeth: The Golden Age from the library for inspiration or some reason, & it has Queen Bess on t' cover in armor & stuff.

Araagh. Anyone here speak Spanish? Does “Mozuela del Talabarte” make sense for a Colombiana armored hero-lady with a sort of “Maid of Lorraine” motif? Or is “mozuela” more “little girl”? Actually, her nom de guerre doesn't even have to be in Spanish. I'm just worried I'll get the name wrong somehow, y'know?

Should I scrap the Jeanne d'Arc references & just have a Latin American sentai team? That might actually be easier to design.

"Unfair competition" used to mean "competing unfairly." But does it also sometimes mean, "Being unfair by competing"?

I got this in the mail from MoveOn.org.
Heather Graham as the public option, & she makes a cute public option. I like her warmup.

I still think we should admit that some persons are going to have subsidized premiums & that we could simplify this whole process with an actual public plan, but evs.

I'm having doubts about my

666words ~~regimen~~ praxis. I can write something short & to the point, then think, "this is too short." Last night I just started riffing on a piece 'til I got it up to 700 words. And maybe it was trash anyway.

But you know something? I got a cute construction out of it. So maybe that's the trick. Bloviate out, speed write, figure you can edit it later.

Funny thing, though. I can work over a piece while I'm doing it, but once I leave a piece, set it aside, I'm pretty much done with it. I feel about editing a bit like Jack Kirby felt about inking. Except I don't really want Joe Sinnott to edit my stuff for me, either.

you often bash a character I like very much, directly or by linking to people who do,

Er, what? What characters do I bash? Writers, sure, but characters? I think I'm actually sympathetic to characters more than writers. E.g., I like Marv Wolfman's Titans characters more than I like Marv's stories.

Well, there's Cable, I hate Cable. Also Hal Jordan.

And I'm sick of characters like the Joker & Dr Psycho getting off all the time.

And I'm pretty vile to Batman.

Here's the thing though. I don't hate Wonder Woman as a character. Really. The way Marston designed the premise drives me up the wall. I think the whole franchise has been tragically mishandled for the life of its run.

But I don't think I'm bashing Diana herself. Sorry if it comes off that way.