Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I posted my fic and then wandered away, I guess?

Sorry about that.

On Tuesday, I went by myself to the fan screening of the movie Psycho-Pass: Providence at the Roseville AMC. As I said to a friend, Crunchyroll placed a surgically striking ad in a pop-up when I logged in to see if there was any anime I was interested in watching. I've been a fan of Psycho-Pass forever, but it's a weird little cyberpunk where, n some distant future, Japan has instituted something they call the Sybil System that monitors people's "crime-coefficient" (a thing that measures how likely you are to commit crimes.) You can be executed and/or imprisoned just for being "a criminal type." It's sort of like Minority Report, except in this the law enforcement agents actually employs some of these not-quite-criminal, but criminally-minded sorts to aid Investigators as "Enforcers." So, there's (for me, anyway,) this fascinating underclass of people who do the dirty work of enforcing the very system that oppresses them. I kind of love everything about it? But, for whatever reason, I can't talk a lot of my fan friends into it? So, even though I immediately bought TWO tickets to this show, I couldn't even convince my son to go with me. 

Worse, when I got there, I discovered that that particular screening was dubbed.

I try very hard not to be a snob about dubbed versus subbed. This is one of those fan wars I try to stay out of, but I definitely prefer subbed when I can get it. But, if someone tells me that they watch something dubbed that I watch subbed, I say, "Yay, we're in the same fandom!" And that's the end of it for me.

But, as I was telling another friend, this one was tough to appreciate because for whatever reason the dubbed director cast two English-speaking actors to play opposite each other who had the same vocal range, the same accent, the same clipped speaking style, and the same delivery. The scenes they were in where they were exchanging quips during a battle... I had no idea who was saying what. Yes, in English. It was a real problem for me. You're probably thinking, but Lyda, the one talking is the one moving his mouth, how hard is this for you? Well, not all scenes were "shot" where you could always see their mouths. Sometimes people were walking through dark tunnels. Sometimes there was just a lot of action. So, now you're saying, "But then how would this have been better if you had to read subtitles at the same time?" I will tell you. The Japanese voice actors for these two characters have totally different vocal ranges, speak differently (in terms of emotions), and are distinct! So, even though the subtitles don't tell you who is talking, it's actually far easier to tell speakers apart when, say, one guy is a tenor and the other an alto. 

I have had to complain to everyone I know about this because I was alone. It always kind of sucks to go to movie theaters alone. I was also masked, although given that there were four other people in the entire theater with me, I probably didn't have to be.

On Monday and Friday night I played taxi to my wife. She's on the board of The Friends of the Ramsey County Library and they had a meeting in Shoreview on Monday and then some tech training at, of all places, The Good Earth restaurant in Roseville. This used to be a relatively popular cafe/restaurant chain. The tea still remains, but the only two places left to get the vegetarian menu exist in Minnesota. But, in both cases, I was not invited to the actual meeting, not being the board member, so I spent Monday trying to find any good manga I hadn't read yet on the shelves at Shoreview, and on Friday I spent the time in a nearby Starbucks people watching and writing some snail mail letters to friends.

Wednesday night I had D&D, but I managed to fail to make cookies for them... and then subsequently failed to write up my usual letter home. As I was telling Mason later, I'm having a bit of trouble with this character? I have literally never played a woman in an RPG before and... I can't say I like it.  Beyond my very personal reasons for never having done this before, I also made some mistakes in designing this character because I forgot to factor in real life sexism? Like, I forgot that if you want to play a fun-loving, sexually adventurous, chatty (ditzy?) woman, not only will the other player's characters dismiss you as a silly little thing, but also the tenor of whole game shifts?  Suddenly a lot of the around the table jokes get more pointed about who your character might choose to sleep with and what EXACTLY they might be doing with them, etc., etc. There's always some of that stuff and so it's not necessarily even a dealbreaker for me? Still. I mean, I'm still having fun with this character and this group, but I find that I'm engaging slightly less in character moments when they come up (to be fair, my Wednesday night group is much more a "kill things and take your stuff" bunch of players, anyway?) 

I think that's my whole week? I did some writing, but not on the right things. 

 I wonder if any of my teachers would have accepted that excuse? "I'm sorry, Mrs. Johnson, Lyda can not attend school today because she lost all sense of time while immersing herself in the world of fan art and fan fic writing...." 

Yeah, so, I don't quite know what happened, but I suddenly had a keen yen for my old stomping grounds on Tumblr and the Bleach fandom. So, I went there for an hour, and like fairy land, I seem to have been redeposited back in the Real World weeks later.

The exciting news of today is that I officially accepted a pinch hit for Yuletide. 

Yay!

I adore pinch hitting. It's funny, because, even though it means that I won't receive a treat myself, I don't think I'll ever go back to officially doing the Yuletide exchange. There's just something about the whole process of pinch hitting that I love. Everything from watching the requests for pinch hits roll in to the adrenaline rush of taking the plunge and putting your name in for an assignment... it just makes me happy somehow. It's weird.

It's hilarious in its own way that I've accepted an assignment because I feel very behind on writing--letter (aka "snail mail") writing. For those of you just tuning in, one of my actual, honest-to-god hobbies is pen pal-ling. I joined the International Pen Friends some years ago and have regular pen pals around the world to whom I write personal, snail mail letters. But, I currently have a STACK of unanswered letters on the dinning room table. I'm thinking that the holiday break will be a good time to finally catch up with everyone. I think it's acceptable to send holiday cards any time before Christmas all the way through to New Years, right?

What else can I tell you?

Oh, I know! I'd wanted to give a quick recap of anime night, mostly so that I can remember what I watched.

I ended up going late and leaving early, so it wasn't the usual marathon sampling session, but we did watch another episode of ReLife and the whole of Your Name.  Your Name you may recall is something that I'd listened to on a Japanese language immersion learning podcast. It was very surreal to finally see the movie. I didn't realize the extent to which my brain had made up pictures in my head about what I thought was going on. To be extremely clear. I don't think I understood more than a half a dozen words in the entire two hour podcast (and the majority of the words I did understand consisted of "arigato" and "domo," so nothing that should have given me any hint of the story).  It makes NO SENSE, therefore, that my brain would have filled in anything in any kind of detail. However, sound effects are surprisingly contextualizing. For instance, I knew there would be a scene in an underground cave (echoing dripping sounds for the win!). I had no idea why we were there or what exactly transpired in the scene (except that something magical[??] got drunk), but it was weird to be watching the movie and KNOW that I'd "seen" this in my head before. Very weird. But, the experience also made me want to find a way to do more of this kind of passive listening/learning. To that end, I've been looking into ways to purchase Drama CDs from Japan. Because, why not, right? 

Eleanor and I are planning to try to go see Terry Garey at the nursing home again this week, probably Friday. We'd initially planned to go Monday, but, having seen her the Thursday before, I had to tell Eleanor that I just wasn't emotionally ready for it again so soon. If you've been following along with the  detailed journal on Caring Bridge, Denny does a pretty good job of explaining some of Terry's issues, but, some of what he leaves out is that memory wards are just hard. There are people there who just aren't there. You see them just staring at the walls in the dining room, not even seeming to notice the food in front of them. There are people who randomly yell or moo (seriously.) That being said, it's absolutely true that Terry needs visitors (just, you know, be prepared for the atmosphere if you come during a meal time, in particular.)

She always perks up to see people.  One of the issues Terry has been having is with getting enough to eat and, last time we were there, Denny offered everyone a cookie from the ones his family had brought and Terry ate, sort of perfunctory (perfunctorily?), to be sociable. Last time when we were there, she also was cheerfully explaining that because she was an army brat, it was easy for her to get used to this place. I suspect that was true (I know the army brat part is,) but also the sort of thing you say in front of company, even when you're bored and want to go home.

So, I don't know--I do hope people who are close and who remember Terry consider visiting. Those places are boring and dreary. My dad had to spend a serious amount of time recovering in one of them and they just kind of suck. 

It makes me think a lot about Fandom (capital-F, as in the local people who go to cons, etc., as opposed to one's small-f, fandom,) and about casual friendships. I feel like I know a lot of people, yet I'm not sure how many of them I know all that well... I mean, people I could call in an emergency, etc.  And, yet, I think I'm actually fairly well connected to actual, real people, thanks to a bunch of things like my local, in-person writers' group. I'm not sure what I want to say about this other than to repeat something Eleanor has been saying a lot: "stay socially connected." 

Anyway.

I should start plotting out a story. Plus, I have to hop up in about twenty minutes to go collect Mason from his job at the Science Museum.

I recently added my information to snickfic's "Return of the No-Frills Multifandom Friending Meme." I'm going on a following spree thanks to that, and hopefully some of those folks will follow me back. I would LOVE to be part of an active fan community here on DW, so welcome.

Alas, this particular blog isn't terribly fannish. If you scroll down it, you'll see a lot of... politics and baking. I have been separating out my fannish side to Tumblr, where I am junko and post almost exclusively about Bleach.

I also am a fic writer on AO3, where I am insanely prolific and also going by my fan name: junko. It's on AO3 where you can see more of my fandoms, besides the nearly million words I've written in Bleach fandom, I've also written in: Gangsta., Harry Potter, Free!, 月刊少女野崎くん | Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, ばらかもん | Barakamon, Munchkin Cthulu (Board Game), Psycho-Pass, Tiger & Bunny, and 弱虫ペダル | Yowamushi Pedal.

And, those are just the fandoms that I've written in.

I run a manga review site over on WordPress called: Mangakast. I review a LOT of yaoi, but my policy is actually to review literally anything that I read that qualifies as manga. So, you'll see my opinions on all of it.

I'm also an avid SF/reader and a published author, both in SF/F and paranormal romance (as Tate Hallaway.)

I just found out that AO3 has a Trick or Treat Fic Exchange. 

Every year I participate in one way or another in Yuletide, which is an annual fan fic gift exchange that was, according to Fanlore, started in 2003.  I've only been doing it for, maybe two or three years, being, as always a latecomer to fandom.

I often forget to sign-up on time, so the past couple of years I've enjoyed being what they call a "pinch hitter." Yuletide is very strict about gifts. If you're supposed to be getting one, they do NOT want you to wake up on Christmas morning with an empty in-box.  But, life happens. Sometimes someone who promised a fic literally gets in a car accident or finals week crushes them.  So, there's a hoard of volunteers, myself included, who take up the slack. A gifter is supposed to default by a certain day and the pinch hit lists start showing up in my in-box. But, batches come all the way up to the night before.  It's kind of an amazing process. I also use the pinch hit list to write what are called "treats" where you can just go ahead an write something to someone's request as an extra.  I have done this in the past for very weird fandoms, like the person who really, really wanted a Munchkin Cthulu fic (although that may actually have been assigned).

Point is, I love pinch hitting. I often write fic fast enough that getting an assignment for 2,000+ words the night before is no big deal. 

The Trick or Treat Exchange also looks fun. The requirement is tiny, 300 word minimum?  The other thing that seems to be fun about the Trick or Treat Exchange is that, unlike Yuletide, there is no popularity restriction.  (Yuletide focuses on fandoms that have less than 1000 works of fic posted on Archive of Our Own.)  So, for instance, I saw that Bleach was listed for the Trick or Treat Exchange (thanks to me, Bleach has WAY TOO MANY fics otherwise... and, I'm kidding, of course. It wasn't just me, I'm sure Bleach had over a thousand fics years and years before I joined.).  The point is, for the Trick or Treat Exchange, I could potentially ask for or write a Bleach fic.

So I am tempted. The exchange i currently open and I am considering.  I'll have to read the rules carefully to see if it's something I'm really up for.

I'm pretty sure the fans of my never ending fic soap opera would be furious to find me off writing treats for other people, when they've been so patiently waiting for an update.  

Anyway.

Happy Friday everyone.  

Catherynne M. Valente has weighed in on the Puppies and the Hugos this morning (edited to add: apparently this came out awhile ago but was being passed around FB yesterday). I haven't read all the words because I'm suffering a bit of Hugo neepery burnout. That doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about it. In fact, I'm having some thoughts about it that are probably... I'm not sure what, but no one on my "side" is talking about it as far as I can tell.

Obviously, everything about what the SP/RP did to this year's Hugo was wrong with wrong sauce. But, I've been thinking a lot about why anyone sympathize with them, ever, under any circumstances. I don't think it's as simple as a lot of people want to paint it. It's super-easy to decide the whole lot of them are racist (and in Beale/Vox's case, that's not at all unfounded.) But, if that were the only motivator, I don't see how they'd have quite as much traction. Okay, maybe I'm being naive here. Clearly race relations are broken in the US, so maybe that's enough to fuel this kind of thing... but, okay, really? I just want to talk about ANOTHER aspect.

In Larry Correia's back and forth with George R. R. Martin, Martin vehemently denies that there are 'cool kids' in SF/F. He's wrong. Because, of course there are. Whenever you get a group of people together, cliques happen. That's just the nature of humanity and group dynamics.

Correia whines a lot about feeling shut out, and, while I think it all amounts to a load of man pain, I actually sympathize with him a little, on a basic human level.

I GET feeling left out of that inner circle, particularly at somewhere as huge as a WorldCON. I spent all of 1998 Baltimore WorldCON feeling like I was forever just one step from the parties everyone was talking about the next day. You'd go to a panel the next morning and hear Gardner Dozois laughing about how Warren Lapine shot a pickle out his nose (or visa versa) and I'd think: What? Where? When? How come *I* wasn't invited!??

Baltimore, it should be noted, was particularly egregious that year because of some corkage law or other that messed up how and where alcohol could be served and so there were A LOT of rumors of "secret pro parities" where the free beer flowed freely. I was also, it turned out, just on the verge of making my first pro sale, but not there yet.*

But, this happened to me once I was established, too. In fact, the WorldCON I felt the worst at was the most recent ChiCON in 2012, when I had, what, fourteen books under my belt? I was on paneling and, therefor, very much part of the "in" crowd. I also got my very first ever invitation to a secret pro party (a party I later referred to as the f*cking boat) which was a cruise on the Chicago canals/out into Lake Michigan hosted by Random House (which was not even my publisher.) I have never felt more uncool, than I did at that WorldCON, despite everything, and it all had to do with the fact that my career was starting to sour. But, regardless, I felt left out and all the things that Correia complains about (except no one shouted at me that I was a liar and a misogynist, perhaps for obvious reasons. Though honestly? I might have believed everyone hated me, my mood was so foul. I felt very picked on during the one panel I was on, because it was about serial fiction and all my series had failed.)

Okay, so you see? We all feel this.

It's especially maddening when you're just starting out, because you finally broke in only to find that there's still barriers to being in the spotlight, and we ALL want to be in the spotlight.

Look, we're all divas. Correia is just saying out loud what lot of us feel: boo hoo, it's NOT all about me! (Pro tip: most of us don't say it out loud, because we realize how whiny and self-centered it makes us look.)

BUT... yes, okay? I actually sympathize a little with this. To say there aren't cool kid cliques is disingenuous too. There just are.

Also, this feeling of being shut out of WorldCON culture something that has happened to people on the left, too. Not that long ago (but apparently outside of the collective memory), there was a huge controversy around the London WorldCON about a cliquish inner circle of white guys (and GRRM is even pictured!)

Here's the thing I want to say about this: con culture is a thing. It's a thing everyone needs to learn how to negotiate.

I've even talked about this idea before on this blog because I came across someone on Twitter complaining about feeling left out/unwelcomed at a con. The thing I said to that person (who was decidedly on the left), is that we're all responsible for our own con experience. It's not the con's job to make you feel welcome. You have to learn the culture of cons and figure out how to fit in. Some conventions even have panels on the opening days ABOUT how to make inroads and make friends and be involved in a way that will let you leave the con feeling like you were part of it in a positive way. I was lucky because we have a lot of local cons to "practice" on, some of them are HUGE, so you can get something very akin to a WorldCON experience. I know for a fact that I bounced in and out of the first con I ever attended, which was a WisCON: 1984, when Elizabeth A. Lynn was one of the Guests of Honor.

I did that con and maybe hit an early MiniCON and thought, "Eh, not much for me here." It wasn't until much later when I was starting a writing career did I go back and really work to make in-roads by volunteering for panelling, etc.

TBF, the local fan scene is such that you did have to kind of know the right people or at least be known to them. I somehow got on Eric Heideman's radar, and that was panelling for me for life.

So, fandom as insider-y? Hella yeah.

Does it mean the Hugos are broken? I don't think so. Yeah, it's possible they've been out of touch, if only because WorldCON members are aging, etc., but as Cheryl Morgan talks about in her take on Puppygate-Winners and Losers, in many ways the Puppies have brought a renewed interest in the Hugos that you couldn't have bought and paid for, if you'd tried.




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*Out of curiosity, I went to see which WorldCONs I've attended and they are: 1998 BucCONeer (Baltimore), 2000 ChiCON (Chicago), 2004 NoreasCON (Boston), and 2012 ChiCON (Chicago).

Apparently, the latest SF/F community kerfluffle is around the fact that certain people would like to eliminate the fan writing categories for the Hugo Award. naomikritzer, who I swear knows everything about the Internet, told me about this when we hung out this afternoon, and read Elizabeth Bear's really eloquent and awesome post about it out loud to me while we ate cookies on the front porch: http://matociquala.livejournal.com/2195044.html

I'm fairly certain a person could take one look at my icon and understand where I fall on this issue. Hell, the fan category may be my ONLY HOPE for ever winning a Hugo at this point in my career. However, what I wanted to share here is about my experience with younger fans. As I noted on Bear's LJ, my fandom is young. Anime fandom just is. Most of them are at LEAST half my age. This rarely bothers me because my participation in my fandom is shielded by the Internet. I don't use my real name on AO3 and because I went to Tumblr to follow some of my AO3 friends, I use my fannish handle there too. So, no one knows I'm 46. Except when I tell them...

...or they ask.

A young lady found me on Tumblr and squeed in a private message that she'd wanted to comment on my epic ByaRen fic that I was her favorite fic author ever, but she didn't have an account on AO3. So, she was happy to see that I was on Tumblr and yay! I wrote yay! back and thanked her and we got to talking about fandoms and life and such. She asked me (this was back in June) if I was off school yet.

Hmmmm.

Conundrum.

I decided, like I do with a lot of decisions about coming out, to just go for it and tell her the truth-- that I've been out of school for SOME TIME. In fact, at 46, I was probably as old as her mother. I figured if I lost a follower because I'm too old for Tumblr, so be it.

I expected the conversation to die awkwardly and for her to quietly un-follow me.

Instead, she was... gratefully amazed to discover that she didn't have to give up fandom to grow up. That, as I told her, "Yes, my friend, you CAN grow up to be an otaku."

This is germane to the debate about the fan category because we need new blood, but they also need us I had mentors when I entered fandom. Older, grown-up, professionals who were living and leading by example... showing me that yes, some day, if I worked hard, I too could be on panels or maybe even finish a book and get it published. Because here were real people who wrote books on my book shelf. Just by existing, these mentors gave me hope. Made ME become the graying fandom that wonders where all the kids have gone....

So, yeah, we need them. But they need us too.

It's been hard to remember that it's Monday, what with boy and partner both off today. Shawn and I had plans to get over to Uncles today, but reviewing our Christmas/Solstace spending put the kibosh on that. (sads.) But, actually, it's more an issue of the things we've decided to spend our money on instead, including this fancy internets at home, a new iTouch, CSA for next year, kuk sool wan, my gym membership... so it's not like I can really complain.

Yesterday I spent the day making fun food for dinner. We had a big roast (corned beef), mashed potatoes with gravy, brocolli, and homemade kaiser buns. It was lovely, but ended up making a ton of dishes, especially since we also decided on a whim to make sand tart cookies. I just had the leftovers for lunch. Yum. Yum. Nom.

A couple of nights ago, and I don't quite remember how it started, I ended up telling Mason about an incredibly charming character that my friend and fellow writer Eleanor Arnason created for her Lydia Duluth short story series named "Three Hoots." Alas, the story "Three Hoots" appears in hasn't been published yet, but Mason has been at the coffee shop with Eleanor when she was struggling with the plot of that exact story. Anyway, it's been marvelous to hear Mason running around the house shouting, "Fierce! Fierce! Many bodies in the shadows, ready to defend!" (which is a paraphrase, but close to some of the dialogue in the story.) At any rate, I knew I had some Lydia stories arounds, so he read all of "Tomb of the Fathers" and pronounced it, "nearly as cool as Harry Potter." So, I spend a few minutes this morning searching my house of the rest of the series. I found Asimov issues that contained "Cloud Man," "Lifeline" and "Moby Quilt," but couldn't locate my copy of "Stellar Harvest" to save my soul! Hopefully, Eleanor will have an extra copy she can loan us. Mason is quite determined to read the Lydia ouevre. I'm sure he could read the other stories out of order, but he's kind of stuck on reading "Stellar Harvest" first. I couldn't find a non-pirated version of "Stellar Harvest" on-line. Am I an idiot? If you know where one is, please send me the link.

Can I say, too, how amazing it is that I can share stories with Mason that, if he has some question about, he can just ask the author? It's super-cool amazing. I don't know if he realizes *just* how super-cool amazing that is. I mean, he's growing up in a house where his ima is a published writer, so I'm sure he kind of expects that anyone can be.

But it is one of those things I always remind my students. If someone as dorky as me can get published, there's a pretty good chance you can too. Not that it's an easy road, mind. Just that it's possible.

At any rate, I've decided to try to make calzones from scratch today for dinner, so I should go check on the dough.

Isn't it funny how everyone wants to be what they aren't? Curly haired women wish they had straight hair; women with straight hair... you get the idea. So, in my deeping fandom of Ed Brubaker (writer of many comic books for Marvel, but most notably for me the current Captain America title -- go Bucky Barnes!), I checked out his MySpace. First of all, whoa doggie, that man has a lot of "friends." Secondly, he's my age (okay, a year older,) and a Scorpio like me. Third, he has unfinished novels in his sock drawer.

How hillarious.

I can't remember a time when I didn't dream of writing/drawing comic books for Marvel. When Ed and I were ten, all I did was pretend to be Marvel superheroes in my grandmother's backyard with my cousin Laun. Laun and I "wrote" (played, really, as we only rarely took the time to transcribe any of our epic adventures onto paper) hundreds of continuing storylines for the X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc. I secretly wanted nothing more than a job at Marvel Comics when I grew up.

And Ed Brubaker wants to write novels.

Let me tell you something, Ed. Look at the number of "friends" you have on MySpace and compare your tally to mine. I've written six commercially published novels. No one knows my name. Although, man, if you can do it, you could go the way of another comic book writer turned novelist, Neil Gaiman. With as many MySpace friends as you already have, I say finish up one of those beauties. You tell me what you have lanned for next month's Cap issue, and I'll get you in touch with my agent. You can realize your dream of becoming a novelist. I can help.

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Cross posted from MySpace