Live Long and the Force Be With You...

I've had a bit of a rough end to the week this week and fallen behind in posting and such, so I'm trying to catch up this weekend. Thursday's question was from both green_wing and stageira: Star Trek or Star Wars?

Maybe I’m odd, but I never saw Star Trek and Star Wars as being two diametrically opposed forces. Back in the day, no one ever told me that I had to pick one or the other, and once I made that choice, I had to automatically hate on the other. So not having received the memo, I didn’t bother picking only one. However, if I had to pick one over the other, I’d choose Star Wars.

One of the things that appeals to me most about the Star Trek universe is all the cultures we get to visit and explore. “Alien” culture and technology and how it (and the societies that are shaped by interact with Federation culture is one of the things I like best. However, the franchise isn’t just a traveler’s journey through space. The series has always challenged and illuminated our own culture. It was often like going into outer space let us more clearly see our inner space.

While some SF is all about ideas, Star Trek was always more than that. It was about characters as well. Characters that we came to care about and identify, because of their strengths and because of their flaws. You might come to a series because of premise or ideas, but ultimately, it’s the characters that keep you coming back.

Star Wars, on the other hand, is a different sort of beast. It’s more a epic fantasy set in space instead of a pre-industrial world. As such, Star Wars is less about ideas and more about the cosmic clash of good and evil, light and darkness. It’s about the twilight that exists between them. The struggle in Star Wars is about choosing between light and dark, and this is a conflict that doesn’t have an end. We know Jedi can fall to the Sith, and that Sith can be redeemed.

Like Lucas, I’m also very much a fan of Joseph Campbell, and the narrative shape of the hero’s journey appeals to me. Greatly.

So while Star Wars might not have the best dialogue or visuals (I’m talking the original trilogy in its original form), it has swordfights and magic, it has epic battles, it has Jedi and Sith, it has striking symbols that resonate with me. It has a universe with a rich and complex history. It feels more real to me than the universe in Star Trek.

I mentioned in an earlier posts that one of the things I got myself this year was a double-bladed purple lightsaber. It’s the one you see here if you scroll down to the limited edition picture (the one with the gold accents). My first year at DragonCon, I saw the sabers and really wanted one. This year, I broke down and got it. I also got this lovely Star Wars: Frames collection. For it, Lucas went through the films frame by frame and picked out over 1000 images that he felt were particularly beautiful or evocative or s that he felt were particularly beautiful or evocative or symbolic.

Tales that Test and Twist...

i_llbedammned asked me: Do you have a favorite thing that you have written? It can be fannish or original, I'm just curious.

I honestly don’t think I do have a specific favorite thing. Sometimes it’s one of the latest things I’ve written, because those are freshest in my mind. Sometimes, I’ll go back and look at things I wrote a long time ago, and I hit something and it’s like sitting down with an old and dear friend I haven’t seen in some time.

That’s not a terribly satisfying answer, so maybe what will help instead is a bit about what things make me like something I’ve written quite a lot. When something I’m writing surprises me, when it tests my craft (in terms of structure) or when it tests my mettle (in terms of content), I tend to love it a bit more than something that comes more easily.

One thing from year before last I really felt proud of was a fairytale poem I sold to a speculative poetry journal for an issue featuring formal poetry. The poem unfolds in a series of cinquains. Linking to it is proving a little problematic, so I’m including it below the cut.


( Red )

I'm still in need of questions to answer for January, so if you want to quiz me on something fannish or otherwise, please leave a comment here.

Purist or Progressive: Perhaps a Bit of Both...

I hope I'm going to answer this one correctly. stageira asked me: Taking into consideration how much the Hobbit movies have things added or subtracted by the books and liberties taken, do you think it would have been appropriate if they had decided to change the ending?

Ummm. I’m no sure if this question is supposed to be about The Hobbit films (because we haven’t seen the ending of the series yet) or LOTR (where we have). So how about I just answer both?

Before that a disclaimer: I’m not so much of a purist that I will automatically start twitching and frothing when there is a change (addition or deletion) to a film adapted from another medium. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible to film books precisely as films. Books are too long, their pacing is too slow, too much of their action is internal. However, not all changes sit well with me.

Last night, the sis and I caught the last half of Les Miserables. We’re both fans of the play and have seen it many times in the theatre. We’re also fans of the music and can pretty much start singing along with the soundtrack. While we both had a lot of issues with the part of the film we saw (filming, singing, sound, etc), some of things that we objected to most was cutting the songs in such a way that the emotional punch of the song was diluted or removed. Those changes don’t sit well with me.

In LOTR, I didn’t mind the loss of Tom Bombadil, but I did mourn the loss of the barrow wights. I did enjoy the additional detail of Aragorn and Arwen’s relationship, but I wish it wasn’t at the expense of Eowyn and Faramir’s. In The Hobbit, I'm loving the addition of events that will eventually tie in with LOTR. I also greatly approve of the addition of Tauriel.

At the end of the LOTR films, I’m glad no scouring of the Shire was needed, that Hobbiton was able to make it through the darkness without being sullied by it. The glimpse of the fallen Shire in Galadriel’s mirror was threat enough. Plus, with the characters in the films being developed more completely than in the books, with their individual and collective losses feeling more profound, the cost of destroying the Ring is paid and then some. Narratively, it also makes the films tighter.

Now, we don’t know how The Hobbit films are going to end or what liberties PJ will take with the story. I’m guessing that we’ll end with Ian Holm’s Bilbo and Frodo to tie the end back to the beginning and to LOTR. I’m curious if all the same Dwarves will perish as do in the book. It’s a bit discouraging to think that the Dwarf characters in the party who are most developed are the ones who will die in the Battle of the Five Armies. I suppose I’d like an end that links these films to LOTR and positions them into a single, long story arc.

Fannish Influences...

afra_schatz asked me a tough question: What would you say were the three fics that you read that meant the most to you / influenced you the most as a member of fandom (as in shaped your view of a character / pairing / genre etc)?

I’ve been thinking about this question ever since afra_schatz posed it, and I’m still hard pressed to come up with a satisfying answer to it. The truth is that everything I read influences me in some way. That applies to fic, articles, stories, novels, plays. Everything is grist for the mill. Sometimes, I don’t even realize those influences until I’ve finished something and I’m editing it. Often times, it’s not even other fics but comments left on those fics (and on my own) and wank communities that really taught me what worked and didn’t work.

Looking back to my earliest days in fandom, when I was probably more influenced by what I was reading, it was people like kirby_crow, keelywolfe, caras_galadhon, azewewish, and viva_gloria who wrote fics that mattered to me. Fics I’d go back and revisit and savor. I’ve met so many other talented writers, many of whom I’m honored to have on my flist whose work I also look forward to reading whenever it pops up on my reading list.

In terms of sorts of influences, I’ve learned a lot about how playing with story structure can yield interesting results, how seeing a character differently from the standard canonical version can be exhilarating and frustrating. I’ve also learned a lot about what sorts of narratives and characters capture my own imagination most powerfully.

I hope that’s not too much of a dodge to the question, but I’ve been wracking my brain for a simple answer and rec list and failing to produce one that doesn’t include pages and pages of fics and writers.