Day in the Life of an Idiot

I just found out from the Loft that my "Not Just the Zombie Apocalypse" class which is being offered in July is ALREADY filled. In fact, they wanted to know if I would be willing to up my registration number to 20 (initially I had capped it at 15, because 15 teenagers is a LOT.)  Whelp, now I'm going to potentially have a many as 20, because i said yes.  The only bummer about this is that I usually try to make sure that the students get a chance to have their work critiqued and 20 is going to make doing that nearly impossible. MAYBE we can figure out something. I might ask them to bring in the opening page of their work-in-progress (or make one up) so that we can do a little mentor-guided peer critique.  Finding a beta reader can be an awesome thing, so maybe if we do a couple of exercises like that, people will get a sense of how critiquing ought to work.  

Twenty students, holy crap.

Anyway, normally, right now I'd be sitting outside of Mason's school waiting to pick him up.  But today he has a late-start baseball game against his old rival, Capitol Hill.  

Mason's rivalry with Capitol Hill started in pre-K.  He had a friend in pre-K called Noah.  Noah was a lot like Mason, only... bossier. He tended to mock Mason for things like not knowing how to count after 100 or how to spell Mississippi. (Keep in mind, this is PRE-Kindergarten.  Both Mason and Noah equally qualified for gifted and talented, and Mason, like Noah, was ALREADY READING. Something neither of them would really be taught for another year or two.)  Noah ended going off to Capitol Hill, the Gifted & Talented magnet school.  We chose to keep Mason at Crossroads for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that, while Mason is gifted, he's NOT a "high achiever."  Giving Mason extra busywork results in him blowing off said busywork to read more about animals and fish that live in the twilight zone under the ocean, aka the thing HE wants to learn about at the moment. (This is, btw, still very true of Mason. He has a tendency to do what is required to get the grades and not much more. Unlike his friend Rosemary, who will voluntarily do the History Day competition, even when it's not mandatory.)  

The rivalry continues into Mason's tenure at Washington Technical, because for the longest time there were only TWO junior high school math teams in Saint Paul, Washington and, you guessed it, Capitol Hill.  Capitol Hill still having mostly gifted and talented students at this point regularly wiped the floor with Mason's team at the various math meets.  Defeat at the hands of the Capitol Hill math team is something Mason's math team has now faced for THREE YEARS IN A ROW.  (Despite Mason placing among the top scorers in the region, individually.) 

Then, out of all of the students who qualified for the state competition for the National Geographic geography bee, Mason was one... as was one kid from.... yep!... Capitol Hill. THAT GUY made it into the top ten finalists, and I have to admit that both Mason and I silently cheered when he was finally knocked out of the competition.       

So, for Mason, today's game against Capitol Hill's baseball team is very FRAUGHT.  Those guys have no idea how motivated Mason is to make a run against them.  

Should be interesting.

As long as the rain stays away....

 Mostly, Mason is everything that two "indoorsy," geeky mothers would want. He reads a lot, is a gamer, and is generally fairly nerdy, himself.

Except this one thing... his love for baseball.  

Parenting requires sacrifice and let me tell you the wind was COLD last night out at Lawson Field.  Shawn and I sat on metal bleachers and cheered on the Washington Eagles, even though they lost 5 to 8.  




Last night was also my class at the Loft, so I actually ended up having to leave Mason and his mom at the field in order to make it to class at 7:30 pm. (The game was a late start.)  But, Shawn has a Go-To card, so they hopped the bus/light rail and made it home in no time.  

Class continues to be amazing. I finally had a lecture that didn't feel entirely like babble (did Venus go direct yet??) But, whatever the reason, I was glad. We ALMOST got the timing to work out, too. I think we only overshot class by about 5 minutes, which isn't egregious, at least. I also try to be very clear that if people need to go, they should.  But, you know, Minnesotans. They'd sit there politely, make themselves late for the bus, and curse me all the way home... and I wouldn't hear about it until the evaluations.  *sigh*

I'm also volunteering to host the student reading at the Loft. I just sent out the information to my students.  Hopefully a bunch of them will sign-up or I will be STUCK WITH POETS....and I can barely think of a worse fate. (Unless they were science fiction poets. Those folks, I like.)

If was funny because normally when I ask if my student have read the assigned short story only one or two hands go up. This time, when we were dismissing, one woman said, "Wait, aren't we going to talk about the story??" It was "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" which I believe is up for BOTH the Nebula and the Hugo this year.  It's an interesting story if for no other reason than it is told in bullet points. There's been some unique (in a good way, not the Minnesotan way) formatting in this year's Nebula nominees.  Our first story was a chose-your-own adventure, the second was semi-epistolary.  Fascinating stuff.

Right, I'm off to hang out with my Wednesday writing group. See you all on the flip side.

Since I'm teaching again, I'm writing about the process of writing again.

Because my Tate Hallaway blog has been dead for some time, I directed my students to check-in over there to see what I have to say about various things. Basically, I promised them a slightly more coherent version of my lectures since I've long ago come to realize that my lecture style is best described as "organic," which can drive some folks fairly insane. I have this tendency to INTEND to talk about A, B, and C, yet actually talk about A, Z, B, Q, F, and C. I promised to remove Z, Q, and F when I write up my "notes" for them. I can't entirely say I'm 100% more successful, but forcing myself to write it down does often help keep me on track.

At any rate, if you'd like to follow along, I've got two writing-related blogs up right now:

"From Idea to Story"

"Emotion as Story"

In other news, I woke up to the sound of my child barfing. Mason's stomach is giving him trouble... maybe from the very rich Indian food we had last night. Because I'm teaching, we weren't able to go out to dinner on Shawn actual birthday night (Wednesday) so we went out last night. Our favorite place lately has been "Taste of India" in Maplewood. Mason decided to be brave and tried something new. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have agreed with him.

Poor Mason.

The only comfort to all this is that it's cold and gray outside at the moment and if there was any GOOD day to have to spend snuggled up in bed reading and recovering, this would be it. We have a couple of errands we need to do--our taxes have been done for some time and are awaiting our signatures, so I need to go collect those soon since April 15 is looming. And I had wanted to get fish for the big tank, finally. I have successfully kept our betta alive for months now, so I'm feeling confident enough to consider trying again in the tank of doom. I've been changing the water in the unoccupied tank as though there were living fish in it (so approx. once a week), so I'm figuring that whatever evil might have been lurking in there should be well and truly diluted by now. Fingers crossed, at any rate. Plus, I was thinking of NOT getting our fish from PetCo, but a decent fishery like World of Fish.

But, that certainly doesn't _have_ to be done today. Taxes is the only necessity, like so often said.

Plus, Mason can feel good about taking advantage of his spring break. We've already done a very awesome hike through Minnehaha falls.

First, because I know you've all been waiting.... the new podcast is up: Ni-ju kyu, Oetsu.  The title is my attempt at combining the number of our podcast 29 (ni-ju kyū, in Japanese) with the character Oetsu who CONSTANTLY does this kind of number rhyming thing with his name in the current chapter of Bleach.  We also review Fairy Tail, Toriko, and Ao no Exorcist (even though I wrote that one up as well.)



I have to say, for us, this podcast is pretty darned articulate, and since we forget to sing the spoiler song, there's 50% less annoying singing!

All wins, in my opinion.

I also wanted to report on my fan fic class at the Loft, which was part of the Youth/Teen Writers' Conference.  The nicest thing about the conference is that it's free, which means that attendance is huge.  There were probably about 25 teens in my class, which means there was a TON of energy.  It helped that I started class with a "what's your fandom?" question that elicited some squee when people heard their own favorites mentioned.  I also said before we started that this was a no shaming class, so you know, if you wanted to confess to still reading some One Direction bandom fic, no one was allowed to laugh TOO loudly at you.

The thing that I decided to do since everyone seemed keyed up to share was to ask them what THEIR list of fan fic pet peeves were.  I got some interesting results.

NUMBER #1: grammar/spelling errors.

So, for all you grown-ups who think that the next generation doesn't give a toss about language because they're texting all the time, you would be so very, VERY wrong. 

NUMBER #2 (and actually some other ones later could fall under this one): Tagging, Get it Right

The complaints for this one including being surprised by a fic that started out moderately dark that then took an unexpected left-turn, "Mature" rating that wasn't hot enough, and similar things.  

We did discuss how hard "tagging the dark" can be when you're posting as you write... since you might not notice how dark something is getting.  But, a lot of the answers boiled down to: get a beta reader and listen to them.  I learned that there's apparently a beta reader/writer connection place on Tumblr called "Writer's Halfway House", which among its many tips, will connect writers to beta readers.  

NUMBER #3: Self-insertion/Mary Sue.

No surprise there.  Mary Sue has been disliked since the very first fic of its kind was penned.  HOWEVER, I did point out that there's nothing wrong with Mary Sue especially when you're young and first trying things out.  My very first piece of fan fiction (which happened to be my very first piece of fiction, period) involved Han Solo rescuing me from my dreary life.  Nothing wrong with that... IF YOU TAG IT.

Which, by the way, was pretty much a solution to a lot of problems: tag, tag, TAG.

NUMBER #4: Weak endings/Didn't stick the landing.

Far more problematic, especially given the way a lot of fic gets written--which is to say, on the fly.  We talked about general strategies, especially the idea of outlining or starting with an actual point.  (Not required, of course, particularly for drabbles and such, but if you want to have a strong ending, you need a strong start.  A strong start is far more certain when you have a THING you want to say, a point, a theme, a thesis, if you will.)

NUMBER #5: OOC for no reason

If you're a fan and you're writing to other fans about beloved characters, for goodness sake try to keep the characters IN CHARACTER. This lead to a side discussion about the point of AUs.  Some people suggested that Alternate Universes were good for focusing on character, because you're taking them away from the world and it's about the core of what makes them who they are.  I suggested that this can also be the pitfall of Alternate Universes, which I tend not to like, because more often than not they feel, to me, like original fiction with the names stuck in just to trick people into reading it--but that may be harsh.  I have been burned.  But, I've also been pleasantly surprised.  One of my favorite fics is an AU involving Renji and Byakuya were it all starts as a sleazy hook-up in a bookstore's back closet and they're entirely human, living in the modern world.

NUMBER #6: Spearbearers made of cardboard/OC (original characters) who are flat

I felt particularly capable to talk about how to do original characters right because more than once I've gotten complimented on my original characters in my fan fic.  (I suppose this skill comes from inventing characters for, well, novels, but still.) The answer, in it's simplest form is: treat all your characters as human beings. No human being has only one characteristic.  We are all interesting, even the vile ones have something about them that is redeeming and charming, etc.  

NUMBER #7: Evasion of plot

I was very surprised and pleased to hear this one come up.  What is meant by "evasion of plot" is two things, 1) a tendency of fan fic writers not to go for the gold.  They'll get to what should be a very painful moment and they back away out of a desire not to hurt their babies.  But, what ends up happening is that the reader feels cheated of a bigger moment, a bigger payoff.  And, 2) the similar, if different, problem of the author being coy with information that really just needs to be said.  It's the whole 'why didn't they just say that earlier' problem.  Or it's something that the reader should have been told, but is instead held back in the wrong-headed assumption that this makes the story more dramatic.  The solution to that was: yeah, don't do that.

NUMBER #8: Fucking up the fucking

Yeah, we went there.  There were a number of very interesting complaints about sex in fan fic.  Firstly, the teens in my class do NOT want you to use inappropriate lubes. Please, people, do your research. A quote from class: "Peanut butter?  JUST NO.  So much NO." Similarly, do not break the laws of physical possibilities, which we labeled "parts doing the NO."  I recommended the classic fan fic resource: Minotaur's Sex Tips for Slash Writers.

My students also really craved sex scenes that skipped all the purple prose of "his alabaster skin" (guilty as charged!) but to the excision of actual feelings.  We discussed, actually, the similarity between writing a good fight scene and writing a good sex scene.  I told them that in a fight, what you want to concentrate on is a singular point of view and remember that a fight isn't just about  the dimensions of the instrument, what part goes where, and for how long (like sex) and that it's actually a highly emotionally charged event (like sex.)  So parts are important (like sex), but ultimately it's about feelings (like sex.)  So make sure your fight scenes aren't gratuitous either.  Make sure there's a reason for the fight and for the sex.  

Similarly, we discussed romance and how they want it to be so much more than love at first sight (which this generation firmly believes is crap.)  They also absolutely hated when a write had a gay man who spent any time wondering "when they turned into a girl."  They found this offensive on so many levels it wasn't funny.  

Foreplay was discussed as both something that could go on too long and that there sometimes wasn't nearly enough of.  So we ended up spending a lot of time discussing ways in which we could work to make the romance and sex feel REAL.  I said that, even though part of the appeal of fan fic is its fantasy element, there is some value in considering real life situations while writing about sex.  It can make sex cute, funny and resonate more deeply when you take some time to try to add the people parts of sex that make it awesome--an example I used is consider breaking up the hot and heavy action with the classic... and now the cat has wandered in and is sitting on someone's butt or staring at you from the dresser.  This makes the moment (potentially if you can pull it off) funny and real feeling.

NUMBER #9: The art of the Summary

We didn't get to this one because sex and romance ate up the majority of our class period, but people want better summaries from you, oh fan fic writers everywhere.  Please take some time to figure out how to best summarize your fic.  (This may be something that Rachel and I can spend some class time teaching because I believe it's an art that can translate to original fiction skills, as it's the same one that you use when you write synopses for agents and editors.)

Those were the major ones.  We got kind of specific, like "wanton" versus "wonton" but obviously that falls under grammar and spelling. Likewise, there were a lot of specific questions about sex, which I fielded like a pro, that ended up as part of the list which I combined into a giant #8 above.

Yeah... we had to shut the door.  No only were we screaming about lube, there was just a lot of general excitement to get to talk to someone about this sort of thing--not just the sex parts but the whole "oh and this drives me insane" thing.

So I would say the class went well.  It'll be interesting to see what the various evaluations say.

I came across something very interesting in one of the JUMPs I was reading last night. Keep in mind that both these pictures were published in English-language versions of this story. One came out in a magazine, the other was published as a Manga of the collected issues of the story that originally appeared in the magazine. Both, I believe, are owned and produced by VIZ Media in America/(possibly other English-language speaking countries.) Perhaps empty_mirrors can tell me if her Manga are different, but I suspect not.

The scene is set by the fact that our hero, who has been adventuring in the afterlife, left his physical body behind. That body has been inhabited by a subsitute soul, a character named Kon, who is immature and girl-crazy and... well, gross.

IN JUMP, when we (as readers) return to the Human World, we come across Kon this way:



The subsequent dialogue implies that Ichigo's return has woken Kon from a sexy dream about several of the female characters.

HOWEVER, IN THE MAGNA, what he's doing is a little more... explicit:

.

Here, Kon is clearly masterbating

It doesn't surprise me that a scene like that would have been modified for an American audience, but what's weird to me is that TECHNICALLY IT WASN'T. Most of the teenagers I know, read Manga collected, rather than through JUMP (particularly now that JUMP doesn't exist in paper, only electronic.)

Thinking about it, perhaps this has nothing to do with America or English-speakers being percieved as more prudish. I feel like Bakuman (the Manga from which I learned all that is "true" about Manga-writing in Japan) implies that the editors at SHONEN JUMP feel like their audience is actually fairly YOUNG boys. In Bakuman, there's a whole arguement between the manga-writer/drawer couple and their editor about whether or not a subject matter is too dark for the percieved audience for JUMP, and are offered the option of a teen version of a shonen magazine. So, perhaps what we see above actually ocurred to suit the Japanese market, where JUMP is consumed by a LOT MORE people, many of whom are actually quite young (say as young as 10).

Regardless, I find it fascinating that by the time we get to the Manga version (which, in fact, came later, chronologically,) we have Kon being much more explict. Did Kubo-sensei redraw it himself? (Having seen how censorship occurs in US comicbooks, I suspect so, and he probably had this image in reserve.) And, was he able to use the clout he gained from the popularity of the Manga to get the original placed in the collected version.

If that's how it happens, it kind of changes the perspective that things are so MUCH LOOSER in Japan than they are here. Unless of course, this was done for the English-speaking world, though, then you have to wonder why they let it go in the collected Manga when they had a covered image already redrawn that accomodated English dialogue bubbles....

It's a mystery.

In other news, I found out that my first Loft blog is due tomorrow. Today I need to figure out what I'm going to write about. If any of you have suggestions, I'll happily take them. I was currently thinking about writing about what I like to call "the secret handshake" of submissions. I wrote something similar many years ago for SF Novelists, but it may be worth revising.

Anyway, if you have anything you might be interested in hearing me expound about for 500 words or so, let me know.

I do have to laugh, though. The blog coordinator wants me to include my twitter handle. Of course I have one as Tate, but I NEVER USE IT. I have my secret twitter account, but I've been reserving that for real friends, because I want to keep my feed managable. If someone wanted to follow my life, they'd be far better off following lydamorehouse on Facebook.