The Fandoms-As-Exes Meme

Note: By fandom I mean the property itself, not the fannish communities surrounding that property.

The one who seduced you, screwed you over, broke your heart in a million pieces, and laughed about it.

Battlestar Galactica. My god, show, what the hell HAPPENED to you? What were you thinking? How could you go crazy in just that way that sucked so badly when you had SO MUCH PROMISE?

The old flame you don’t see very often any more but whom you still really enjoy getting together with for a few drinks and maybe a pleasant nostalgic romp:

Buffy. Aww, Buffy, I will always think kindly of you, despite being older and wiser now and recognizing that we’ve grown apart.

The mysterious dark one whom you used to sit up with talking until 3 AM at weird coffee houses and with whom you were quite smitten until you realized s/he really was fucking crazy:

Carnivale. That show is insane, and was from the start.

The one you spent a whole weekend in bed with and who drank up all your liquor and whom you’d still really like to get with again, although you’re relieved s/he doesn’t actually live in town:

My-HiME and My-Otome.

The steady:

Comics. Comics comics comics comics, they are my life-long fannish partner.

The alluring stranger whom you’ve flirted with at parties but have never gotten really serious with:

Hot FBI/CIA posse fandom — Criminal Minds, Fringe, all the tv shows with FBI and CIA teams doing Very Serious Work, who have very attractive and very serious women on them.

The one you hang out with and have vague fantasies about maybe having a thing with, but ultimately you’re just good buddies:

The Terminator franchise. I mean, I love the movies and T:SCC, but I just can’t get into the fandoms and the fic-writing and such. I still respect them, it’s not you it’s me.

The one your friends keep introducing you to and who seems like a hell of a cool person except it’s never really gone anywhere:

Full Metal Alchemist. I actually really do like the manga and the anime, but it’s not what I want it to be, ultimately. (I want it to be ALL Team Mustang all the time, and much much less alchemy and the Elric brothers.)

The one who’s slept with all your friends, and you keep looking at them and thinking, “How the hell did they land all these cool people?”

Canadian Six Degrees fandom. I keep WATCHING all these shows, wondering what the hell people see in them, and I got nothin’.

The one who gave you the best damned summer of your life and against whom you measure all other potential partners:

The X-Men-related comics from 1985-1989.

The one you recently met at a party and would like to get to know better:

Shadowunit.

The old flame that you wouldn’t totally object to hooking up with again for a one night romp if only they’d clean up a bit:

Dark Angel, with less of the guys and more of Max’s angst.

Your hot new flame:

Hmm, not sure I have one …

The one who stole your significant other:

I don’t know what this means …

That year-end meme that’s making the rounds

1) Was 2010 a good year for you?

Yes!

2) What was your favorite moment of the year?

This may be a recurrent theme, but getting published. My essay for Whedonistas was accepted and will be out in March 2011, I think. And my short story “No Return Address” was published by Strange Horizons in November.

3) What was your least favorite moment of the year?

Probably some of the conflicts I’ve had with my kids over their poor behavioral choices.

4) Where were you when 2010 began?

At home? At work? I don’t remember.

5) Who were you with?

I don’t remember, see #4, above.

Resistance is futile.

There’s a meme running around on LiveJournal, where people ask one questions and one answers them. So these are the questions posed to me –

1. What is the best thing for you about being a parent? The worst?

The best? That’s easy. There are these *awesome* people living with me. They are continually surprising and delightful, and watching them achieve things is the best part of my day.

The worst? My life is not autonomous. In some unavoidable ways, I kinda belong to these kids. I have made commitments to them which limit my freedoms. Now, I could blow off those commitments — I have a number of exes who would probably expect me to do so, honestly. But I haven’t so far. And, oh, it is frequently tempting. Tempting in ways small and large. I could skip out while they are in circus class and go see a movie. I could not read to them. I could stop taking them to classes. But I don’t do those things. I do the things I’ve committed to doing. I hope I continue to do so.

2. Describe the moment when you decided on your career path.

My ex was friends with a controller she’d met at The Townhouse (the gay country-western bar,) and wrangled us a tour to the center. I thought it looked interesting, and I got a copy of the study guide for the air traffic controller hiring exam. I worked my way through the study guide and practice test in a nigh-holy-fire. This, this is what I was good at. THIS is the only thing my brain is good at, besides mapping dungeons in RPGs in my head. (Well, not the only thing, but I thought so at the time.) I knew that atc was likely to be the only job that actually *used* my skills that I would encounter.

3. Tell me one thing that you refuse to regret from high school.

I can’t bring myself too regret any of it — even the appalling parts, even the obvious mistakes — because that’s just who I was. I don’t regret being me. I shake my head in dismay, I yell backwards through time at myself, but I don’t regret myself. I could wish for wisdom, I could wish to not be so vastly and consumingly self-absorbed, but the whirling highs only existed in a framework of crushing lows. I don’t have either of those, these days, and I thank heaven for that even keel. But I wouldn’t strip my former self of any of the glory, any of the eternal youth, any of the brilliant intellect and dazzling wit my friends and I possessed. We were untouchably golden and basely corrupted, we were going to save the world and we were going to kill ourselves, we were going to be utterly original just like every other teenager in history. None of us actually managed to die while we were in school; that was my goal, my standard of success when I was fifteen. Since we met that goal, I find I can’t regret any of the rest.

4. Tell me something that you’ve promised yourself you will do before you die.

I hate to phrase this in the form of a negative, but I have promised myself to not give up on getting published. Actually getting published is not entirely in my control. But I don’t want to quit.

5. What’s your favorite travel experience?

I don’t really like travelling that much. But in the nine months the ex and I lived in Costa Rica, there are a number of moments that stand out as good. Eating ceviche in a beachside cabana on Bocas del Toro, on the Caribbean coast of Panama. Hearing howler monkeys outside J.L.’s cabin. Dancing at San Jose’s gay bar on women’s night. Good stuff, good memories.

Get-to-know-you

I spotted this on my LiveJournal FList:

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

I was thinking about this at Baltimore Comic-Con. I met — in-person — four women I’ve known for quite some time. Years, in fact. The conversations I’ve had with these women have, variously, ranged from the trivial to the hilarious, the flirtatious to the argumentative. We have, some of us, told each other deeply important things. I can read the moods of my friends online with some accuracy. I know about their families, their inner thoughts.

Yet I don’t know whether they leave their shoes on inside the house, or prefer to walk around in socks. I don’t know if they rinse the dishes right away after using them, or leave them to crust in the sink. I don’t know if they drive too fast or too slow, or if they signal turns. There’s a host of information that one learns casually, easily, by dint of merely going out to lunch with a coworker, that one fails to get over the internet.

It’s a bizarre lack of intimacy, really. I was watching my friends’ faces at Comic-Con, and I realized that I can’t read their faces at all — not any better than the face of any other stranger. Yet if they made a remark to me I could deduce the feelings associated with the words. Words, words are the medium which I am accustomed to interpreting.

I’m not sure this is a problem, as the meme above presumes. It’s odd, and it can lead to mis-steps and mistaken assumptions if one is not careful. It is . . . just the way things are, for me.

But. As I do value trivial information, especially in aggregate, I throw open the meme here.

If you want to, go ahead and ask me something you don’t know because we are acquainted online, but you would know in person. I may, of course, choose to not answer if the question is too personal. And, if you could provide the answer for your question as it applies to yourself, I would appreciate it!

(I take off my shoes in the house most of the time; I drive the speed limit and I signal my turns even when no-one else is on the road; I leave the dishes to crust in the sink even though I wash the dishes and mentally curse the members of my household for not rinsing THEIR dishes right away.)

Work and music and movies

Today’s QA briefing was mixed. My center, ZMP, is doing the best in the nation at avoiding class A/B errors. However, in the past nine months we doubled the previous year’s amount of class c and proximity errors. So, if you fly through ZMP airspace you’ll be perfectly safe, though one of us may be getting into trouble behind the scenes.

I watched two music-and-dance movies over the weekend, Step Up 2 The Streets and the documentary Planet B-Boy. Both were great. I mean, listen — Step Up 2 has a simplistic plot and vague hand-waving in lieu of characterization. Also the dialog is laughable. But if you are watching this movie for those reasons, you as a viewer have erred. One watches this movie for the dancing, and that’s it. And the dancing is great. As actors the dancers cast in the film are decent. The story is set in an arts school, and I can only imagine that a number of the actors attended schools very similar, learning to act and sing and dance in the hopes of getting themselves into the Disney Talent Mill. I, personally, was watching the movie and noticing that the kids at Circus Juventas do a number of the tumbling-style moves in the film’s dancing.

Then, still in a mood for dance movies, I watched the documentary Planet B-Boy. Which was a great look at the Dance of the Year international dance competition held in Europe. Break-dancing, which most of us recall like a dim dream of the 80s, is still a live art form, still practiced, and oh my goodness, is it a joy to watch. Again I was put in mind of the performers at Circus Juventas as I watched the crews engage in acts of incredible athleticism. Awesome.

And now, a music meme:

Hit shuffle on your ipod or mp3 player and write down the first 25 songs. No cheating or skipping songs that are shameful. That is the fun! I added notes, remarks, sources, and associations.

1. “Hey Mama” by Black Eyed Peas Driving home from work late at night in the summer, banging the beat out on the steering wheel, trying to stay awake.
2. “Salio el Sol” by Don Omar Sexy songs in languages I don’t know.
3. “The Birth and Death of the Day” by Explosions in the Sky I loved the theme to Friday Night Lights, what can I say?
4. “Stronger” by Kanye West Catchy to me only because I own the Daft Punk album sampled in this.
5. “Like It or Leave It” by Aly & A.J. Aly and A.J. never fails to make me grin. I simply find them to be fun, solid musicians, and I ignore the fact that they are Christian Creationists.
6. “Figured You Out” by Nickleback The best song, ever, to describe the loathing one feels when someone is exactly as weak as you hoped they would be.
7. “Spiderwebs” by No Doubt College and summer and sitting in a friend’s car outside Little T’s restaurant smoking and singing along.
8. “Psychobabble” by Frou Frou Theatrical Muse and Rachel Grey and Mr. Sinister, and, again, people being exactly as weak as you knew they would be and oh, how we hate them for that.
9. “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge Theatrical Muse and Rachel Grey and Mr. Sinister, and, again, people being exactly as weak as you knew they would be and oh, how we hate them for that, take 2.
10. “The Moneymaker” by Rilo Kiley Is this song actually about stripping? Prostitution? I have no idea.
11. “Good Behavior” by Plumb Theatrical Muse again, Rachel Grey and Lorna Dane and Laura Kinney and the lot of them.
12. “Damaged Goods” by Gang of Four Old skool punk, mixing the break-up song with rage against the capitalist pig overlords, I love it.
13. “Television The Drug of a Nation” by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy College and the student union and chain smoking endlessly over coffee and Cokes and cards.
14. “TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY” by Justice Found out about this band due to a BBC article about the club scene in London, believe it or not.
15. “It’s So Easy” by Guns N’ Roses I have a helpless affection for Appetite for Destruction.
16. “Wreck of the Day” by Anna Nalick Not my favorite Nalick song (that would be “Breathe (2 A.M.”) but who wouldn’t prefer, sometimes, to leave the day behind in the tail-light glow?
17. “Cut” by Plumb Theatrical Muse and Rachel Grey and Lorna Dane.
18. “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie College sophomore year in the over-crowded dorm room mainlining all of Bowie’s albums, alternating with Big Black.
19. “Shoulda Known” by Atmosphere Yes, yes indeed, don’t date people who have your problems, hmm?
20. “Are You Ten Years Ago” by Tegan and Sara I still, STILL, have no idea what this song is about, but it is hypnotic.
21. “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes Every time I start humming the Battlestar Galactica version of “All Along the Watchtower,” I earworm myself with this.
22. “Hallelujah” by Paramore That’s right, Hayley, life will never get you down.
23. “Trouble” by Bitter:Sweet Aww, who wouldn’t like a little trouble, especially when it purrs like this?
24. “Tijuana Sound Machine” by Nortec Collective Presents Sent to me by Cavorter, more syncopated dance-mix beats
25. “I Live for the Day” by Lindsey Lohan Theatrical Muse, Lorna Dane and Magneto.

Conclusion? I got a lot of my favorite music from the Theatrical Muse online RPG. Also, from college.