When the family Partridge queries "I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of?"

[x_los]

The answer is this.



It reminded my of Daisy Steiner in Spaced's deep fear that mice and spiders could cross-breed into a horrible fusion species. Photoshop is the new Dr. Frankenstein, with less frame narrative and awkward nautical gay tension.

But that's not what this entry is about, my fair readers! Other than two (2) facebook messages I have to write (Andrew of the Bay Area and Phillipa of Johannesburg, YOU SHALL NOT GO UNANSWERED!), I have only one message left in my gmail inbox.

Consider that this morning there were over 350!

And yet the last message presents a special difficulty, for it is 1) six months old, and 2) from Rob 'the Defenestrator' Shearman. I have NO IDEA how he chanced across my humble fanfic blog and commented on a review of a BFA. It was not by virtue of anything I did to earn it. Rob Shearman is like Calvanist predestination: he just happens to you, it's not even about the good works.

Given that I flailed and didn't respond to him immediately and then got deathly ill, I can't just swan in all belated-like, make googly eyes, and stammer out that I want to have like a million of his babies with no regard for my personal health concerns because carrying on his family name is just that important to me. This lacks something in the way of subtlety.

Instead, I have a three step program for thanking him and saying hello without humiliating myself.

Step One: We can have lots of fun! Do not post any embarrassing fanfic for a few days. Write it after a long dry-spell, sure. Send it to beta, naturally. Just don't post the stuff. Just play it cool, boys. Real cool.
Step Two: There's so much we can do! Write up reviews of recently watched serials or the BFAs that carried me through 1,400 pages of copying for yet another deposition on loan fraud.* Sound erudite. Create the illusion that I am the sort of person who regularly says pertinent things in an amusing manner, rather than some bumbling American chick who should get back to Trek fandom where her ilk belong.
Step Three: Comment on Shearman's comment.
Step Four: Profit!


This is much like My Awesomegood Plan To Use the Neighbor's Trampoline, actually. At twenty three I am too old to request a bounce and preserve my dignity. The radio keeps speaking of a bar which is rather enthused about its Girls on Trampolines schtick, but I suspect this does not mean they will let me, as a girl, use the trampoline, or if they did that the random male patrons of the bar would not see this an a disturbing light. Thus: Doctor and Doctor Koopman's childrens' Trampoline.**

I am subtly convincing my younger siblings, who are less than enthused, that they desire nothing more in this world than to bounce on that trampoline. Eventually they will break down and ask the young Koopmans, and I, long-suffering baby-sitter, will accompany them, and even be such a good sport about this silly bouncing. Yes. Yeeeeees.***




* Seriously, if any of you are committing loan fraud, you should stop. Not so much because its illegal and less than victimless as because I'm really bored of it. I long for a medical malpractice or something, but nooo, it's doc prep fees this, forgery that, repos-ing the llama you put down as collateral without properly grooming it. Tiresome.

** Their name seems like they're the descendants of a deposed King Koopa, trying to keep a low profile. Like Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou (born in 1974), considered to be the head of the French Royal House by legitimists who consider the renunciation of Philip V of Spain as invalid. They call him Prince Louis de Bourbon, and accord him the title duc d'Anjou (Duke of Anjou). As king, he would be Louis XX of France. You know, like that. But with King Koopa.

*** Pretty much this is representative of all my plans.

Comments

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

...well, two, actually.

1) Your three-step plan does not involve underwear. There can be no profit without underwear. Every gnome knows this.

2) I have no fear of tarantulas, but a chippie with twice as many legs? DO NOT WANT. Little bastards already clean out my bird-feeders and dig up my flowerpots with just four legs.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

1. AAAAAAAHHHHH TAKE IT AWAY AAAAAAAAAAHHHH.

2. WT everloving F is going on with my flist now, that you're like the fourth person in the last two months who's had pro writers/creators/whatever commenting on their posts completely out of nowhere? And it's generally been positive feedback, or whatever, and highly gratifying in that respect, but don't they KNOW they're not supposed to follow us home? (Well, unless you write bandslash.) Don't they know that the whole Geek Hierarchy is premised on the assumption that they're not going to have time for us and our nonsense? Even if it's not nonsense in our eyes? Do we want them reading our smutty fanfic? Are we supposed to come up with better-hidden locations for our smutty fanfic so their eyes won't be offended by its presence and/or we won't be horribly embarrassed? Isn't that what we were already trying to do with the pseuds and everything before we made the mistake of having actual, like, thinky content?

Is it just that I happen to have really awesome people on my flist, or is the WORLD ABOUT TO END?

[x-los.livejournal.com]

What's the gnome thing? Also imagine the INCREDIBLE DESTRUCTIVE POWER!! of a fleet of these babies.

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

Underpants Gnomes! See especially their business plan.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Indeed, which is weird as they're essentially just: more established geeks, who wrote fic earlier, as far as franchise writing greats go. Clearly this isn't a vast, unbroachable chasm.

And I would die if anyone important ever read the smutty fanfic. Not that I think they would because why would they want to and they know better, but still. Death. Iiiiinstant, horrible death. Yes. Even if it were 'no I meant it' Cornell. ..../especially/ Cornell.

Well, the Mayan end time is nigh, isn't it?*

*Have checked, apparently 2012 is a craaazy rumor and we have '8 baktun cycles', or 'till 4772. Thanks for the heads up, Mayans.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

You'd think they'd know better, in the same way that you'd think they'd have better things to do with their time, but given the aforementioned dropping-by incidents and that thing where Stephen Fry was going "Ew, bad Fry/Laurie fic!" and the way bandslash boys get into actual arguments with fanwriters and the whole Supernatural fanfic shoutout ep and the way RaceFail authors were getting pissy at fans in the fans' own journals and just general human nature and trainwreck syndrome-style curiousity...I am not convinced that this is always the case.

I think the lines are getting redrawn, and it's kind of alarming. Possibly a good thing? But definitely alarming.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

See I kind of love it: the connectivity of the internet bridging those gaps which separate the writer from reader and made the process by which canonized art was created opaque: entirely different from what an unpublished person might create, by virtue of its remoteness and reliance on structures (agents, publishing houses) a layperson could not readily comprehend or have any contact with.

Writing appeals to me more than any other art form because, assuming a highish literacy rate, it's the one thing everyone regularly does to some degree. It required little in the way of expensive special materials, and if it's seen as a evolved speech act, it's the most democratic of any art form simply due to its availability/accessibility for writers and readers. Everyone is, to some extent, a writer. However that's always been undermined by the fact that not everyone has access to the sort of structures to make themselves known in that capacity. With the internet, though, if you can get access to type and post, you gain a touch of the legitimacy awarded to pro-authors who also use the internet to present themselves in some form. Which is so progressive!

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

Stopping in to see how you're doing. (1) That spider-squirrel is frighteningly cute. Wouldn't want it crawling on me, though. (2) You're busy --- good luck and good work on the rapid handling of the correspondence backlog. Sorry the depositions are boring. They tend to be that way. (3) Sounds like a plan re: Shearman. Good luck!

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Thanks, much better! Just friend me, silly, and I'll friend you, and it'll be eassier, I swear. :p Gaaaawd, I was so disappointed to learn that petitions are all copy-pasta and you don't get to write your own? Where's the authorship, dammit?! And that actually worked out better than expected, thanks!

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

Have just done the same. Petitions, themselves --- no. They are "boilerplate". Memorandums of Points and Authorities are where, if you have a neat case, you get to be creative and persuasive and, frankly, to play. Glad to hear the plan re: Shearman worked!

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Ah see, I haven't been assigned to any memorandums of points/authorities yet. Looking forward to that a bit now.

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

They may be called something else where you are ("briefs" is a common term in many places), but you'll know one when you see it.