Powerful Gay Music

Sorry about missing the last couple of Mondays. In spite of sheltering at home, there’s still a lot going on, including a new and positive, albeit heavier load at the job, and generally keeping myself and Sarah on top of our health and emotions and needs.

Also, Friday was our 17th anniversary, as I ranted at length on Twitter.

17 years is a long time, and yet it flew by. I look at Sarah and still get all twitterpated, not butterflies in my stomach nervous, but more “holy CRAP I get to hang out with this perfect person who I adore and I never have to leave her side!” It’s a heady feeling. I never get tired of walking into a room and knowing she is there. It never feels like I get tired of her, or would like a break. Even when things are tough, I could more easily quit having limbs.

But I already did this ranting on Twitter, so that’s enough for now.

Instead, have this beautiful short from YouTube. It popped up at exactly the right time, and Sarah and I both enjoyed it immensely. Sometimes the simplest stories are the ones you need, and this was precisely the fairy tale we wanted on our anniversary.

(Also, I HIGHLY suggest watching it with captions on. Thus the infinitely appropriate to Sarah and I title of this entry.)

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Art! (And Friends)

So, I think I’ve written previously about my total and complete lack of art skill. It’s not just that I can’t draw, or paint, or otherwise produce visual art. I’m also not great at envisioning it. I can imagine a scenario in a story, or characters, or abstract symbols. But creating something visually interesting and artistically coherent is just not my strength. At all.

But I love art. I love to have color around me, and images of things that make me feel. I have collected figures and pieces from every place I’ve ever traveled or lived, and I love being able to look at them or pick them up and remember what the air tasted like, or how the birds sounded, or what I learned while there. And I love art that is unconventional, art that means something to me but others would find stupid. It’s like an in-joke with myself.

The house used to be filled with art, a picture or a hanging or a carved statue every 3 feet. We kept all of it, because it all had meaning, but moving to a smaller place meant rethinking how we deal with it. Also, while you absolutely can just line the wall with paintings, it’s much more effective visually when you cluster them together in a collection.

So, on Saturday, after 6ish hours of meetings for CONvergence, a couple of friends came over to help us do just that.

Here is the result:

Can I just say? MY FRIENDS ARE AMAZING. For so many reasons. But in this case…I mean, just look at it! It’s beautiful!

I keep walking into the room and just STARING.

I love everything about it. I love the shape, I love the balance, the colors, the way not all the frames have to be black to look like they belong. I love having all the disparate pieces that add up to who I am (and who Sarah is — it’s hers too!) put together like this. And this is just one collage of the three we did!

Moving left to right, we start off with a picture of Princess Mononoke. Beautiful art we bought at CONvergence two years ago from the artist, along with the picture of Nausicaa at the other end. Next in is the newly framed picture of our art print from Beth Kinderman’s album, which arrived just in time to take its rightful place amidst the beauty. Below that is my signed picture (that I bought, did not get in person, SIGH) by the voice cast from the 2012 TMNT. I like everybody, but, let’s be honest, IT IS ALL ABOUT ROB PAULSEN VOICING DONATELLO.

Ahem.

Starting above Beth’s art are a matched pair bought at the same 2017 CONvergence from a different artist; they happen to be characters in a series she puts out, but they also pretty much stand in for Sarah and I (I’m the tiger and she is the hawk). Next to them is the framed Morpho butterfly which was a gift from a friend after I saw them in person when we were in Ecuador in 2009 and proceeded to have a series of life-changing realizations about myself.

Then we have the two big ones, the centerpiece of everything. These we also bought in Ecuador from the artist. They represent the sun god and the moon goddess and they are. Just. Perfect.

(Even if the matting in the frames is giving way — we intend to get that fixed eventually.)

Those two used to hang over our fireplace in the house, so I’ve pretty much been staring at them nonstop for a decade, and I have yet to get tired of them, of the colors, of the symbols. They’re made with banana leaves and recycled paper, if I remember correctly, and the texture is really neat up close, too. Even after all this time, they still speak to me.

Anyway.

Below the moon goddess is a set of three which goes back to 2008 in one of the apartments. All three were found online somewhere (probably a long-dead Deviantart site) and meant to represent the three of us then living together — Sarah, me, and another friend. It was our promise that we would be a home and a refuge for one another, no matter what life threw our way. The friend lived with us for a long time, even in the house for a while, and now lives just across the river from our condo. But for 11 years, we have still be home base for him and for others.

The condo really couldn’t be home if it wasn’t home for more than just Sarah and I.

Left of those is my signed picture of Leonard Nimoy as Spock. It was in one of the last batches he ever signed before he passed away, and I was lucky enough to buy it from his website just in time. That was when he was also offering to be a surrogate father or grandfather for people as well, and I got in on that, too. He also sent a free gift when he sent the picture, which I have perma-loaned to my biggest Trekkie friend so she has something of him in her house as well. I miss him in the world and his wisdom and wonderful humor, but I’m so glad to have this piece of a person who helped define me as a nerd when I was sneakily watching TV long after my parents had gone to bed.

Above is my big TMNT print, also bought at CONvergence in 2017 but not by me. That was a gift from a friend who saw it and thought I would love it. I pretty much broke down and cried when he gave it to me. I didn’t even SEE IT when I was looking for art, and it just…I…IT TURTLES OKAY!!!

Above the turtles are a pair of wolves Sarah bought for herself, also from the artist at CONvergence, but back in 2013. She says they don’t have specific meaning to her other than the fact that she also strongly identifies with wolves, but I look at them and I see her reflected too.

(Which is not to say that the rest of the art is “mine.” It’s VERY MUCH MUTUALLY SHARED. But some things, like the butterfly or Leonard Nimoy, speak more to me. These wolves speak more to her. Mostly, though, it’s both of us.)

And lastly is Nausicaa, so we have Miyazaki on either side.

It makes me SO HAPPY to have this. To see these things brought together intentionally and beautifully, a space made for all of it. And doubly, triply so because I could never have fashioned this layout on my own. I needed my friends for that.

But I never could have fashioned myself alone, either, so it all works out.

There’s more art to hang, but this will be the centerpiece of it all, and very rightly so. After all, this is who lives here, feelings and experience and knowledge of self all wrapped in one.

And also nerdity and fandom.

Because, well. What else would you expect, really?

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

HarmCon! And not quite a year late!

So, thanks to a friend with strong Google-fu, and some free software, I was actually able to get our video from HarmCon in 2017 into shape for YouTube! Truly, better late than never. Right?

Right?

We were joined on many of the songs by our friend and fellow nerd Dave Stagner, who always finds a way to make our music a hundred times better. The set list for this particular show turned out to be a mix of 3 covers, 2 of our original songs, and 8 parodies. We got a lot of laughs and commentary on the parodies, though you have to listen closely to get it all. I’m listing the songs for you here, in case you want to know:

Warrior (by the Wyrd Sisters, joined by Marina Krinsky)
Secure Yourself (by the Indigo Girls)
Phoenix Rise
Fearless (by Kat Perkins)
Sunfire/Breathless
Parody of Babylon 5 based on “Angles from Montgomery” = Aliens from Babylon
Parody of Stargate: SG1 based on: “Brown-Eyed Girl” = Brown-Eyed Goa’uld
Parody of ET based on “All By Myself” = All By My Kite
Parody of The Fifth Element based on “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” = Hit it With My Four Stones
Parody of Transformers based on “Hand in My Pocket” = Hand In Its Socket
Parody of Signs based on “The Water Is Wide” = Water, Water Everywhere and OMG It Burns
Parody of Star Trek based on “Take Me Home, Country Roads” = Insert Noun Here
Parody of Toy Story based on “Man of Constant Sorrow” = Toy of Constant Sorrow

We’re finalizing this year’s set now, to be performed a week from Friday. And now that I have new and exciting technology, I’m hoping it’s easier to get the video up sooner.

I was chatting back and forth with some of the CVG folks on Slack and a point came up about how hard it is to be creative with all the awful that’s going on in the world. What I said was this —

The shit part just leaks into everything though, doesn’t it? I’m working on my set for HarmCon and I keep looking at our songs and thinking “can we really laugh about gaming and Star Wars when insert-horrific-reality-here is going on?” And I have to keep telling myself that yes, we can and we must laugh. We can’t keep fighting for humanity, for dignity, for equality, for justice, for compassion, if we lose track of ourselves. You can’t beat back the dark without a light, and sometimes that light isn’t righteous anger, but the relief of taking one day off.

It was true last year in the summer of 2017 and it’s certainly true now. CONvergence in general has been something for me to look forward to, something for me to give time and energy and positivity when even the brightest day seemed dark. And it is silly to sing about gaming stories (we have some outrageous ones in the set and nerd jokes), but it’s also necessary. Just as it’s necessary to stop and breathe and rest between the waves of a struggle.

Not by accident, I think, this year’s set is more heavily weighted towards “our” stuff, and fewer parodies. At least for now. In a week, it might have grown a few more parodies. They’re sneaky like that.

Anyway.

Sarah and I named Candles Enough for the idea that between us, we have enough light to get us through dark times. Sometimes, that light is giggling. Sometimes it’s steady courage. Sometimes it’s just pure silliness. Sometimes it’s tried and tested in fire. But that’s who we are. That’s what we do. And this year, as much as we all need to laugh, we also need to be that boost of hope and truth. So “Jagged” is back this year, and so is “Trial by Fire” — along with new stuff written more recently.

If we can be that one candle in the dark for someone who needs it, then it’s all been worth it.

I think there’s only 4 or 5 people who ever consistently read this blog, and half of you will be at CVG this year. We can’t wait to show you what happens when you put out an open call for people’s ridiculous, silly stories. But for those of you who aren’t (yet) part of the CVG family, here’s a sample of what you’re missing.

It’s a MILLIONTH of what is good about CVG, of course. This is just our tiny, musical corner of it.

(P.S. You will NOT hear from me for at least 2 weeks. Next week and the week after will be my time to dive completely and totally, heart and soul and body and lack-of-sleep, into CONvergence. I’ll try to emerge with stories. Join us vicariously on Twitter, though. #CVG2018 is a good way to experience the fun from afar!)

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Sense8

CVG season is heating up, and most of the time I’m not running around getting a million things done and sometimes wanting to throw a cupboard-worth of plates at walls is being spent aggressively taking time for myself to balance the chaos.  This has led me to binge-watching a few new shows to keep my mind and heart occupied and chill when the world around me is descending into near madness.

When it’s all over, maybe I’ll do a post about what the actual FUCK has been going on this year.

Anyway, in the meantime, Sarah and I have chewed through the TV series Sense8.

WHICH IS AMAZING.

NO, SERIOUSLY.

Sense8 was created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski.  So, first of all, GODSDAMN THAT IS A PEDIGREE. Storytelling and representation, HERE WE GO.  It’s about a group of 8 total strangers from all over the world who find out they are linked in a “cluster” — a sharing of minds beyond telepathy and going right down to being able to step into one another when needed.  So, if one is being beat up by some bullies, the combat master can take his place in his body and defend herself. It also leads to amazing and hilarious interludes of others in the cluster popping up and having opinions where, really, they might not have been needed.

The cinematography is fucking magical, and the storytelling is superb.

Oh, and representation?  YES.

Eight very different people, four men and four women which include people of color, LGBT people, people from 7 different nations, different economic backgrounds, educational experiences, etc.  And there is intersectionality represented as well. The fluidity of the representation of identity politics really drives the central idea that we, as a people, are more alike than we are different.  That humanity is humanity.

During some truly hectic days, when sometimes my life felt too big and too hard, it was a wonderful escape to settle in and see how it would be to be living  my life and seven other lives at the same time.

I had to hide a lot because I can’t watch needles even on TV without fainting and there’s a good amount of needle-sticking that goes on.  And because of a particular interest in sex across the cluster, there wasn’t really a good representation of aexuality or gray-A characteristics, which I would have liked to see.

But overall?  Absolutely, positively worth your time.  This series made SARAH cry. REPEATEDLY. And NOTHING does that.

Also?  I loved J. Michael Straczynski from Babylon 5.  That love was very much returned with Sense8. The man is just outstanding.

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Fandom Exposition and/or Explosion

A few weeks ago, I found myself outlining to a friend exactly WHY I get so deeply into certain fandoms.  And then last week, I was again in a discussion of how I could find such merit in certain cartoons.

I figure that means it is time to put some of that here for those who are curious.  Because sometimes it’s not about the fandom itself, but what you get out of it that counts.

So here are a few of my top fandoms (in terms of what I write, not what I read necessarily) and why I have the deep love for them that I do.

And hey — the four of you, or however-many people read this blog, jump in the comments!  I want to know what aspects of these shows I’ve missed that make them worth all the love.

(Minimal spoilers ahead, I hope!)


Mighty Max =

This is one of those cartoons that got made in the 90s on a shoestring budget basically to sell toys. No, seriously. Do you know the Polly Pocket toys for girls? Well they made a boy-centric version and called it Mighty Max, and then decided to make a cartoon about it to sell the things. But I think it was that exact sort of “eh, who cares?” that gave the creators the freedom to write a truly spectacular show for its time. (It helps that the main characters were voiced by some of the true VA stars: Rob Paulsen, Tony Jay, Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, and Tim Curry.) The basic premise is that an 11-year-old kid is the destined hero who has been summoned to start kicking evil’s butt and saving the world on a weekly basis.

Max himself grows rather a lot over the course of the series’ 2 seasons. For the most part, he’s a smart-aleck of a kid, snapping off one-liners in the face of danger and avoiding his homework with alacrity. He is very much a reluctant hero, especially at the beginning, because the world-saving tends to happen right when he’s having the most fun and being a kid. But as time goes on, and as the situations get more serious, Max’s “but why do I have to be the Mighty One today?” moments become more half-hearted. At his core, however, he is a real hero, and this comes out when needed. Max is a modern-day Odysseus in the sense of being able to outwit his opponents and taunt them into making mistakes. Max can face down odds and evil-doers many times his size, shaking in his shoes, until his back is against the wall. And then he takes a breath, and fights back. The destiny he carries gives him precious few actual “powers” as it were, but it tends to work in subtle ways. For example, if he finds himself in front of an alien computer and he has to turn it off, out of a thousand buttons, he’ll hit the right one. Fate and chance tend to play on his side, especially when it matters.

He is accompanied on his journey against all things nefarious by two companions/teachers/friends. First is Norman, a mostly immortal man who is the source of many legends (Thor, Hercules, etc.) who “eats bad guys for breakfast” and is effectively the ultimate bodyguard. But Norman is not at all the meathead he appears to be at the start. He is very aware of the fact that 11-year-old Max is, in fact, the Mighty One who is going to be the greatest hero of all time, which means he is completely happy to let Max fight or make plans and doesn’t try to coddle or smother the kid. He doesn’t actually try to impede Max’s growth as a hero, or tell him that things are “too dangerous.” Because, even if they are, the dangerous things have to get done to save the world, and Max is the one to do it — with Norman at his side to back him up, of course. Additionally, he’s a very deep, very feeling character — we get several episodes about his life and his experiences through time, including the death of his father and his guilt at not being able to protect him. For all Norman looks like he could take on every linebacker on the planet at once and win, he is tender-hearted and almost gentle in disposition (when not kicking asses, obviously).

The second companion Max has on his journey is Virgil, who looks like a chicken (fowl, actually), is half Max’s size, and is tens of thousands of years old. Virgil is a Lemurian, a member of an ancient, lost civilization which set in motion a lot of the events that led to the rise of all younger peoples. Virgil has been waiting for five thousand years for Max to arise as the Mighty One so he can guide the kid in his world-saving. Virgil is complicated in other ways, some of which you have to really think about — he is the last of his people, has some of the arrogance of a puppet master (including the fact that he admits that he knows almost everything and is rarely, if ever, wrong), and he is very imperious about pretty much sending Max into whatever the hell danger is in front of them, sure that Max is “destined to win.” But, that said, Virgil’s scars run deep. Virgil has watched heroes die before, and when pressed, reveals how badly he does not want to see Max’s fate go the same way. The ultimate evil the Mighty One will face (and goes up against many times during the series) is named Skullmaster, and Virgil and Skullmaster have *history.*

One of the things that makes the show unique for its time is that it is freaking DARK. Most episodes open with somebody getting killed just off screen, but complete with screaming. Wikipedia at one point described the series as “Adventure/Horror” and there’s truth to that. Skullmaster, brilliantly voiced by Tim Curry, is one of the most outright malicious, terrifying villains ever put to screen, who regularly talks about torturing Max, or “sucking the marrow from his bones” if he catches him. He is EVIL. And there are other evils, too, some comical, some subtle, some misguided. Not everybody threatening the world means evil, or realizes they’re doing it. From aliens to ancient sorcerers to demi-gods (or actual gods) to mutants, the monsters of the week tend to be neat either by motivation or, even more often, cultural association. Because another unique aspect of the show is that as the Mighty One, Max is given the Cosmic Cap (yes, it looks like a baseball cap, and there are *reasons*) which opens portals across the planet. It allows them to make quick getaways, but it also means they spend most of their adventures in non-USA places. So some of their villains are legendary creatures from Viking lore, some are from Hindu mythology, some are something else entirely. The focus on multiculturalism and multinationalism gives the series another edge.

I first discovered the series in middle school, and it has stayed with me my entire life. Especially as a lonely kid, the idea of having two protectors/teachers/friends for life was deeply appealing. It’s not the *first* fandom I ever wrote fic in, but it is as close to my heart as anything, and it’s certainly where I have done the most growing. I have a written HUGE series based on MM, developing the mythology, the characters, the history, and it’s still coming. I’ll probably write the next novel in the series starting in January, even. I don’t think I can ever be done with Mighty Max, honestly. There’s too much of me in it. And there’s too much of it in me. And there’s SO MUCH THERE. This series goes practically everywhere, and I’ve taken it all over the place, too (I think I’ve crossed it with 3 or 4 other fandoms at this point, sometimes in big ways). And, at heart, it’s about one kid learning to find the hero inside himself, accept it, and live it with two stalwart friends at his side.

Sarah jokes that she expects I’ll die at 100 years old with my Mighty Max series still unfinished. She might well be right.

TMNT =


So, for the uninitiated, you have to understand that there are LOTS of versions of TMNT out there. Most people, when you start talking about mutant ninja turtles, think about the 80’s version of pizza-loving,G-rated dudes. But TMNT itself began as a comic published by Mirage in 1984, and was far darker than the cartoon that came out to sell toys to boys through the early 90’s. Then there’s the live-action trio of movies that came out around the same time, but which were based on the Mirage version of the universe rather than the cartoon version — which had taken some interesting liberties with the original plots and characters. There was a separate run of comics published in the 80’s and 90’s by Archie Comics and another the late 90’s by Image Comics, too, though Mirage continued publishing again in the 2000s and 2010s. (We don’t talk about the brief live-action TV series. Seriously. It is DEAD to us. Hell, it’s even dead to the creators!) Then, in 2003, the series returned as a cartoon again. It ran for 7 years and really reinvented the series for a new age of consumers right before the Mirage property was sold to Nickelodeon. Another movie came out in 2007, this one CGI. IDW Comics has a separate TMNT line running since 2011 or so as well. With the sale by Mirage, in 2012 Nickelodeon created their own version, a CGI series that only just concluded this year. (Also not gonna talk about the Michael Bay version; many TMNT fans enjoy it, but I do not.) And that’s before you get into weird alternates, like TMNT mangas (they exist) or the video games, or the daily comic strips, or TMNT the RPG.

So…basically, when you say “I like TMNT,” that’s kinda like saying “I like Star Trek.” Because you have to ask “Oh? Which one?” and “Series, or movies?” to start getting at the *which* Star Trek we’re talking about here. There is no one TMNT, even if the characters are, at their core, consistent from one to another. But the stories, plots, even backstories, vary WIDELY between versions. Some are dark as hell, others are lighthearted and cheerful. Some challenge assumptions about personhood, or morality, or honor. Others focus on jokes and puns and slapstick humor.

For me, I grew up watching the TMNT of the 80’s, the cartoon, but it always felt a little bit hollow to me. I would pretend it with my brother and other kids (Donatello was my favorite turtle, but I was a girl so I thought I had to play/had to like April best — ha! Gender norms in childhood suck!), but I just wanted…I dunno. A different story than there was. And yet, something about TMNT stuck with me into adulthood in that nostalgic way you look back at cartoons and see more than was ever there.

What I’ve learned since, of course, is that there IS more there — you just have to look at it with the discerning eye of an adult and parse out the secrets the writers hid there for you.

I didn’t even start watching the 2003 version of TMNT until more than halfway through its run. When I did…DAMN. HERE was the version I was looking for. Here were the brothers, complex and struggling and learning and awesome and overwhelmed and courageous and still so young. Here was a supporting cast of people who could be folded into more camps than “good” and “bad but not that bad.” Here were some actually badass girls. And here were some writers who really, really knew what they were doing.

(It helps that Peter Laird, one of the original creators, did consulting on it, and helped with the writing, and basically lended a hand to steer the ship and keep it from going the way of The Series That Shall Not Be Named.)

Even when it was campy, or silly, or clearly had too much 4Kids for breakfast, it still had the heart of TMNT which was what I had been looking for all along. And if you have trouble seeing it, put it this way:

Take the mutant part out of it. Think of the story in terms of characters.

An immigrant to New York loses his entire family, watches them be murdered in front of him by his Clan’s ultimate enemy. Wounded, heartsick, he goes into hiding. In the sewers, he finds four children who have been abandoned, and decides to raise them as his own. In some tellings of the story, the implication is that these children were to be his army to send against the one who killed his family — that he took them in so that they would rise up and administer his vengeance for his lost loved ones. But, over time, he became more than teacher and they more than students — they became family, and he grew to love his sons far more than he hated his enemy. He taught them the skills of his Clan, so that they could survive and protect one another, and feared for the day they might be faced with the murderer of their adopted family.

Compelling enough yet? Now add the brothers.

Leonardo is a natural leader, strong in his ninjutsu, honorable, trying to follow the ways of Bushido to the best of his ability. He is focused and observant, and loyal to a fault. He will face down literally anything to save a member of his family. He will risk anything when his family is in need. And yet, he can be haughty about being the best, or being the leader. He may doubt in himself, especially when battles go against them. And he gets frustrated being the only voice of reason sometimes when his brothers are not working with him. He feels deeply, and the burden of leadership is very, very heavy on his shoulders — because Leo knows that someday it may fall to him to make a decision that will mean one of his brothers isn’t coming home again.

Donatello is a calm and cheerful soul, loyal to the family as much as Leonardo, but entirely different in every other way. Donatello is unconditionally a genius. By the age of 15, he was building vehicles that could hover, or a computer array that could seamlessly hack the NSA. He is the team’s engineer, their scientist, and sometimes their medic. Virtually every situation that needs a resolution rotates on Donatello’s ability to outthink any problem and any opponent. In some cases, Don is the least skilled of his brothers in ninjutsu, and he is vastly more likely to solve a problem with his brain than his fists. This makes him something of an outsider amongst his brothers, their resident geek, and leaves him sometimes thinking and speaking at levels not one of them can really understand. But everything Don does is for them, from building them a lair in which to live to putting every bit of his knowledge and intelligence to work to get them out of everything they get into — no matter what.

Raphael is as hot-headed and poorly tempered as Don is calm. Raphael is a constant foil to Leo, fighting him on practically everything, sometimes just on principle. But Raph isn’t antagonistic to no reason. Raph has spent his entire life trying to prove himself worthy of the family he loves so much, and also to protect them. He is a free and independent spirit and HATES being ordered around by anyone, much less Leo whom he can take two falls out of four on his good days. Raph is also deeply, deeply afraid to lose any one of his brothers. He deals with this fear poorly, generally. He would take a bullet for any of his brothers, and regularly in battle ends up watching the others in fights so he can swoop in to help them if the get overwhelmed — most often Donatello, in fact, since Don is often trying to fight AND reprogram a computer on the fly or something. Raph burns off his endless, furious energy by punching things, or riding a motorcycle, or, sometimes, patrolling the city alone and doing a little vigilante work. Because Raph burns against injustice, and he will not stand for it. Of the four of them, Raph’s emotions tend to explode in every direction the most — when pushed to it, he feels grief profoundly, or rage engulfingly. And all those feelings, without limit, center on his family.

Michelangelo is the baby of the family — although in almost all incarnations the brothers are literally the same age because they don’t know how old they really are and the all mutated at the same time — and acts as its main source of tension-breaking and comic relief. This is as much a part of his carefree and goofy personality as it is a deliberate attempt on his part to keep the peace. The quickest way to get his three brothers aligned is to make a bad joke and gang them all up on himself, and he clearly knows it. He also loves easily, and not only his family. Of them all, he tends to be the one with a pet, or the most friends, or the greatest desire to meet and help more people in the world. Mikey pushes Raph to his limits, tests Leo’s patience, regularly breaks whatever Don builds, and “forgets” to obey his father, but he never lets them down when it matters. And all that happy-go-lucky, cheering goofiness is yet another mask for his own feelings, and his own fears. In some ways, Mikey is the most resilient of them all, because he is possessed of an endless kind of optimism — things will work out eventually, and he’ll keep helping them along until they get there. When Mikey stops kidding around, he is a terrifying force to be reckoned with, but his brothers need him to be their kidding, joking, cheerful heart, and he is happy to oblige.

Without even getting into other characters, or the plotlines, or the villains…just this is enough for me to love. The brotherhood between the four turtles, the bonds of family and honor and Clan that link them and Splinter — it is a source of endless joy and fascination for me. Most of the times I write TMNT, I’m looking at those connections, and I’m testing them. There is something about these bonds that go beyond blood (or mutagen), that go beyond Clan, that go beyond family, that connect at the place where the immortal soul latches onto fate, that I never tire of writing about, or reading about.

Most of the fandoms on this list can be characterized one way or another as “team-as-family against the world,” but it’s never more true or more acute than it is with my very-much-beloved turtles.

Gundam Wing =


This is an anime I just pretty much love for too many irrational reasons. It’s mecha! Empathy in space! The meaning of conflict! And…um. Those boys.

So, the funny thing is that the *characters* of Gundam Wing are fantastic, but the plot is…convoluted doesn’t even cover it. It takes a few watchings to pin down the exact political situation behind the events of the series, and it changes ALL THE TIME. At some point, I think there’s 5 or 6 factions in play, and some of them are aligned more than one way, and it just is a giant mess. Which is kinda the point, the whole chaos-of-war thing, but it makes for some tough watching. In short, 90% of the human race has left the Earth to live in colonies in space. The 10% who remain on Earth are the wealthy who pretty much rule everything. Conflict arises when the colonies want some actual representation in government, to say nothing of economic parity, and war breaks out. The war goes really south and a band of scientists each train a 15-year-old pilot to go to Earth as a terrorist, basically destroying the Earth’s military resources under the cover of being a high schooler. Then things get weird and the colonies turn on them and…yeah, it gets weird. Anyway, it’s the pilots themselves that draw me in.

The five pilots are very, very different from one another. Heero Yuy was raised by an assassin and conditioned to suppress almost all emotion in order to accomplish whatever mission is set him. But in spite of that, he is dedicated, insanely stubborn, and oddly sympathetic. He knows he is a killer, and he does so when required to accomplish his goals, but I don’t think he is ever okay with that fact. His heart is buried under layers, and only he knows how deep it goes.

Duo Maxwell was an orphan who survived on the streets, watched the only people who ever took him in burn to death or die of plague, and copes with it by being the wise-cracker of the group. He calls himself the “God of Death” (“Great Destroyer in the dub because *reasons*) and has a kind of manic fury to his hilarity. He has fabulous snark in the heat of battle, and walks that line between being truly friendly and fiendishly deadly with a laugh.

Trowa Barton is…really an enigma. He has no idea who he is or where he came from, and until the series begins he doesn’t even have a name of his own, going by No-Name. He was raised with a mercenary group and has spent virtually his entire life as a spy or a soldier. But once he starts connecting with people, starting with the pilots and then with a few civilians, he begins to show how very kind and protective he is. He learns that his identity is his own, as are his feelings, and decides to live based upon whatever choices he can give himself.

Quatre Raberba Winner (totally my favorite, not gonna lie) is the son of one of the wealthiest men in the world and in line to inherit a corporation that would be about 12 of the top companies in the US put together times four. He is, to a much-debated extent, an empath, reacting when he can feel the pain of others. But he is a skilled fighter regardless, controlling his emotions by sheer focus. Quatre is also the strategist and tactician of the group, able to lead effectively and come up with a battle plan that wins out even when overwhelmed. Quatre’s emotions are close to the surface, and he is gentle and affectionate and peace-loving even when he has no choice but to fight. Mostly. Except when…kinda brainwashed. Then he is TERRIFYING.

Chang WuFei is a kid who was never meant to be a pilot at all. Wufei was married by family custom at the age of 13, I think, to his arranged bride, who was chosen to be the fifth pilot sent to protect the colonies. But she was killed in battle, and Wufei took on her duty for himself, though he would be more of a scholar and wise old Chinese guy if you left him to his own devices. Wufei despises weakness because he hates himself for what happened to his wife (whom he didn’t exactly love, they barely knew one another and fought all the time), but he feels it was his fault she died anyway. He is looking for justice, and he’s going to find it by burning his way through anything in his path.

Over the course of the series, their relationships shift a lot. Some of them get on really well (there is good reason the series *almost* straight-up ships Quatre and Trowa), some of them mostly yell at each other. At first, they don’t even know there are more pilots than themselves out there fighting — as they meet and realize they have the same mission and the same goals, they shift into and out of alliances with each other. In the end, though, the five of them stand up as the last force which can stand for peace in the face of total annihilation (because it’s a Gundam trope — somebody always wants to just do away with the world eventually). And they all have to decide who they are and where they stand and what they believe. In the end, they choose life, they choose to fight for the sake of those who can’t fight for themselves, and they choose to do so together.

It’s a pretty great fandom for character speculation. I LOVE those boys. I’ve written about them A LOT and for good reason.

Leverage =


So, this was a series that ran for 5 years starting in 2008 and is pretty much perfect. It’s a series about a group of 5 thieves who band together to help people. As in — if someone can’t sue a big company because they can’t afford it, the Leverage team will run a game on the company’s CEO and ensure that the family gets a compensation package. Or if someone is conning people out of their life savings, the team will con the conmen right back and return the money. It has a lot of the same kind of humor or one-liners or pacing of a good Joss Whedon production, but on a different scale. The interesting thing is that it was timed specifically for the 2008-2009 market crash stuff, and is basically the story of honest people, who happen to be thieves, getting back at the rich fatcats hurting the middle and lower classes. The social justice is strong with this one, in the best possible way.

The team is made up of five people who have a specific skill set each:

Alec Hardison is their Hacker. He is unmatched when it comes to computers and gadgets. He is frighteningly brilliant, but he tends to get distracted. He’s also an unrepentant nerd, spouting Star Wars or Star Trek lines or whatever references to fandom he feels like. He can grift fairly well, though his accents are awful, and he sometimes tries to plan the team’s cons, but he doesn’t quite have the right perspective for it — Hardison wants so badly to make the real world as perfect as the coding he lives and breathes, and it just doesn’t work out that way. Hardison is dangerous when mad because he can ruin you six ways from Sunday, but he tends towards prankerism instead (as in, sending a thousand porn magazines to a jerk’s office rather than, say, emptying their bank accounts). Hardison has a HUUUUUGE crush on Parker.

Parker is their Thief. Parker, she has no other name, is basically a ninja thief. Parker can come and go from a bank without ever being seen, can lift items from a mark’s pocket and they won’t even know she was there, can crack any safe you put in front of her, and spends a lot of time in air ducts and dangling from rooftop harnesses. Parker is neat because she is very much neuro-atypical. She misses common social cues and doesn’t always understand people, but she isn’t autistic per se. Even Sarah isn’t quite sure how to define her. Parker is in some ways a very angry woman because she comes from a very broken background, but in other ways she is the most vulnerable of them all. Parker is ADORABLE, even though she’d stab you with a fork for saying so. She’s been alone for most of her life, and so her developing relationships with the team, particularly Hardison, are awkward and beautiful.

(Funny story. The actress who plays Parker took some pick-pocketing lessons early in the first season so she could do it correctly. Not only did she learn so well that her teacher said she could make a living just by what she could steal on the street, but some of her lifts were too invisible for the cameras to pick up and had to be reshot!)

Eliot Spencer is their Hitter. (FYI ELIOT IS MY FAVORITE) Eliot starts as a “retrieval specialist” which basically means he will take a job and get you the thing you need, probably by dispatching literally every person in between him and his target. He is a martial artist, weapons specialist, combat master, and all-around total badass. That said, he doesn’t like guns and he doesn’t kill. Eliot’s known history starts with him joining the US military at 18, becoming special forces and more, and then going to the dark side and ending up as a hitman and hired gun for some really bad people. By the time he joins the Leverage team, he is absolutely famous as being unstoppable and terrifying, a reputation he uses, but isn’t proud of. Eliot is EXTREMELY protective of the team, even early on, and he will DESTROY anyone who hurts them. While he is usually positioned for bodyguard duty, though, Eliot is a fair grifter himself, and he can also make and execute plans that work far better than Hardison’s. The reason he doesn’t, though, is never stated, but I think it’s obvious from everything else — the person who makes the plans (see Nate below) has to be willing to push the team, even endanger them, to get the job done. And that is something Eliot will not willingly do. Eliot loves this team even when he wants to strangle them all. Eliot is played by Christian Kane, which means they could do other things with the character, since he’s a frighteningly skilled human being; Eliot, therefore, can sing and play guitar (Christian Kane being a country star when he’s not acting), and can cook (which Christian Kane can also do — it’s not feigned). Eliot is the sword and shield of the team, and in some ways, its heart.

Sophie Devereaux is the team’s main Grifter. She can charm anything out of anyone, playing a dozen different roles in the span of a few minutes. She shifts her accent around to become a British Duchess, a South African diplomat, an Indian doctor, or an Aussie escort. Sophie plays a little bit the role of team mom, teaching the others, talking to them, guiding them through being part of a team or learning new skills. She is a thief in her own right, though, known worldwide for the art she has stolen that has never been recovered. This is how she met Nate — he spent a huge portion of his career chasing her. She has also, obviously, had romantic feelings for him since long before the series began, but she understands that she has to let Nate figure himself out in his own time.

(In the middle of the 2nd season, Sophie semi-left the show due to the actress’s pregnancy, so she sent in a grifter friend of hers to fulfill the role and balance out the team. Tara’s an okay character, but she’s not Sophie.)

Nate Ford is the team’s Mastermind and leader (and the one I enjoy writing the most outside of Eliot). Nate was an insurance investigator, chasing down big-ticket items and trying to recover stolen property so his company wouldn’t have to pay out the losses. In this way, he came into contact with all four of the others, hunting them over the years in different capacities. However, when the series opens, he has been reeling from a pair of double tragedies — the death of his 8-year-old son and a divorce from his wife — and has lost his job as well. Nate is magnificently intelligent, able to read a situation in seconds, perceive more than anyone not in the mold of Sherlock Holmes would see, and design sometimes elaborate plans for the team. He is the chessmaster (also literally) and he has earned the loyalty of the team because he is *just* *that* *good.* Nate can grift as well as plan, and he was raised by a thief himself so he has some slight of hand tricks as well (and sometimes he punches people, but usually only if Eliot has softened them up first). Nate is the team’s leader and dad, pushing them, supporting them, and also holding onto them for dear life because they are all he has left. Nate struggles for the first, eh, 3ish seasons with a drinking problem, going from what he calls being a “drunk honest man” to a “sober thief” to a “drunk thief.” (He also calls himself a functional alcoholic which is a joke the writers tell about one of the series creators.) Nate’s feelings for Sophie grow throughout the series, though the chemistry is there from the start, but he’s just too broken to do anything about them for a long time. Nate sometimes balances on the edge of insanity, and when that happens, it is the team who pulls him back.

The whole team has a strong family parallel going of Nate as the dad, Sophie the mom, and the other three as kids — Eliot the eldest, Nate’s right hand partner and go-to, Hardison as the middle kid looking to prove himself but also keep the peace, and Parker as the wild youngest with too much of her father’s crazy in her. The jobs they pull tend to be amazing, but it’s that team dynamic, different from TMNT but just as wonderful, that really holds me. These people would walk into hell for each other, would follow one another to the end of time, and, in some cases, would kill for each other. They are better together, and they all know it — even if they rarely want to back themselves into the corner of talking about it.

Cardcaptor Sakura and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle=

         
I’m going to talk about these together for reasons that will become obvious. I’ll start with CCS.

Basically, Cardcaptor Sakura is one of the finest magical girl animes out there. Really, it is. Yes, it’s about a cute girl with magic powers, but it’s also about a lot more than that. Sakura herself is utterly charming, and the 70 episode series is an intensely slow build of character interactions, relationships, and revelations. CCS is one of the few series I watch about once a year all the way through, and it brings me joy every single time. There are things it took me 5 watches to pick up on, tiny hints foreshadowing reveals, character quirks or throwaway lines that turned out to be literally the entire answer. But at its center is Kinomoto Sakura, a girl who found a deck of magical Cards and promptly lost them. She is charged with collecting the deck again, which means overcoming each one, because each is magical and will defend itself to keep from being caught. So, for example, the Fiery Card sets an amusement park on fire and Sakura has to defeat it. Or the Sword Card possesses one of her friends and attacks her. Sakura has been warned by the Guardian of the Cards, a little bear with wings named Keroberos, that if she does not succeed in recapturing all of the Cards, a great tragedy will befall the world. She asks Kero if that means the world will go “boom.” He responds, rather tellingly, “No, nothing like that. Depending on who you are, it might not be too bad at all. But…for someone like you, it might be more painful than the world going boom.” And he is right.

I’m not gonna spoil it, obviously. And the thing is that the Cards capturing ends around the episode 46 mark, and there are 24 more episodes after that because things are never quite over.

Sakura herself is a cheerful, brave little thing, filled with kindness and friendship and earnestness. She pretty much fills me with happy.

But the series would not be complete without Li Syaoran. Syaoran shows up in episode 8 or 9 as a transfer student from Hong Kong. He is a blood descendant of the magician who made the Cards in the first place, and he has sworn to retrieve them himself. At the beginning, he is an unmitigated jerk. No, really. He doesn’t care about Sakura, he doesn’t care that Kero has chosen Sakura to find the Cards, he doesn’t care about feelings or being kind or anything. He has been training in the traditions of his family since he could walk, is skilled with his own magic and with his swordwork, and he knows more about the Cards than Sakura — and is out to prove he is the rightful one to collect and master the Cards. But as time goes on, he slowly gets pulled into Sakura’s kindness and friendship, and he becomes protective of her, too. Even if he wants the Cards for himself, he doesn’t want anything to happen to her. And then…well…ye gods does he ever fall for her. It literally takes him 50 episodes to get there, though if you’re watching him closely you can see him starting to blush around her far sooner.

When Syaoran does fall for her, it is complete. And it is EPIC. Syaoran’s whole world becomes Sakura, and she doesn’t even know it. How they handle that, especially because Sakura spends the ENTIRE series in love with someone else, is just…well, I still cry, okay?

This show also has a lot of unusual relationships in it, too. There are implied lesbian romances (one-sided, sadly), and a canonical gay relationship which is just as beautiful as the slow burn of Syaoran’s love for Sakura. The True Love is strong in this series, and it is everywhere.

Besides being just an exquisite example of family and friends and loves, it also has this thread running through it that Sakura is brave enough not to give up, no matter how scared she is. And that, if she’s the one still trying, in the end, she’ll succeed. Several characters comment on it. “If it’s you, Sakura, it’ll be okay.” And Sakura learns for herself what she comes to call her Invincible Spell: I will definitely be all right. No matter how bad it gets, she keeps finding enough belief in herself and enough love for her friends to keep trying.

I’m still discovering how much of an effect that mentality has had on me over the years.

Of note — don’t EVER, and I mean EVER watch the American version of this show called “Cardcaptors.” It’s not just poorly dubbed. It’s not even that they changed at least one gay relationship to make them “cousins.” It’s that they decided they couldn’t air the series as it was, mostly about a girl, and so they chopped it up to manufacture episodes of greater conflict between Sakura and Syaoran for the Cards. They actually plug bits and pieces in from different episodes, even from different seasons, to try to make a totally different story. It is AWFUL. It is UNWATCHABLE.

Now, here’s where Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle comes in.

CCS is made by the manga/anime house CLAMP. Because it was SO wildly popular, they decided to do an AU of their own series and created TRC. Tsubasa takes place in a different world, but has Sakura and Syaoran and several of the other CCS characters making an appearance. But it’s a REALLY different anime.

The premise per the first 2 episodes is this: Sakura is a princess in the Kingdom of Clow. Syaoran is her childhood friend, who loves her SOOOOOOOOO much, and whom she loves in return. But before she can confess her feelings to him, and him to her, they are interrupted by basically a curse. Sakura’s soul, and her memories, are ripped from her body and cast into multiple dimensions and even through time, leaving her a dying shell. To save her, Syaoran takes her to another CLAMP character from another series (but, ultimately, the entire CLAMP universe is one long story with lots of bits and pieces spread throughout their various series) called the Dimensional Witch. The Witch can give Syaoran the ability to travel through dimensions and time to track down the pieces of Sakura’s soul, but there is a price. If he accepts this power, he surrenders his entire relationship with Sakura forever — no matter how many memories she gets back, he will never be in them. She will never remember her feelings, will have gaps and blanks and empty spaces in her mind where he should be, and all that they were for all the years they grew up together will be gone. Syaoran never even hesitates. He sacrifices every memory she’ll ever have of him and goes on the journey to save her. And, as they journey (because she has to come with in order to receive the pieces of soul as he finds them), every time she gets close to wondering what used to be between them, it is taken away again.

And Syaoran. Oh, ye gods. He loves her more than I think I’ve ever seen any character in anything ever love another. When she first looks at him and doesn’t know him, I mean, he is DESTROYED. But he never stops loving her, ever. He risks his life a million times just to call her “princess” instead of “Sakura” and to have her refer to him formally in return. He listens to her recount each new memory she gets when he finds them, only to realize she’s remembering him, but not, and he has to hold onto that for them both. He LOVES her. And it is HEARTBREAKING.

Sakura, for her part, is rather different in TRC from her CCS counterpart. For almost the first half of the first season, she has almost no personality at all, since it’s all been ripped away. The more she grows, though, and the more she regains of herself, the stronger she becomes. And, frankly, the more like her CCS self she becomes. And she, not knowing Syaoran from a stranger, falls in love with him, agonizingly slowly.

But the thing is that this journey is…not at all what it seems. There is another force at work, the one who scattered Sakura’s memories in the first place, and who is directly connected to the person who made the Cards in CCS. And he has an EEEEEvil plan. And…then it gets SUPER EXTRA COMPLICATED.

See, the thing is that the anime stops before it is resolved. Literally, the series ends, and then there’s an OVA of 3 episodes that rips apart literally *EVERYTHING* you thought you know about every single person in the cast. And then it stops. And then there’s another 2-episode OVA that picks up an arc and a half later which makes it ALL WORSE. And then the anime stops AGAIN.

To finish it, to get the actual plot wrapped up, and to have any freaking clue WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED you have to either read the manga, or let me tell it to you. Because I’ve read the manga several times, and I’ve taken several friends through this series. It takes me an hour, and that’s without the visual aids I took of critical pages from the manga. But it…uh. It makes it all several times more complex than it was, and more heart-rending. In the end, though, the central story is one of love that lasts beyond life, beyond time, beyond form. It is love willing to move every universe, no matter the consequences, to protect. It is the most intense and both soul-fulfilling and soul-killing series I’ve ever watched. Not to be undertaken lightly, but very much worth it.


So, there you are.  Some of my top fandoms, and the reasons behind them.  What did I miss?  What awesome isn’t accounted for?

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

If you need some cheering up…

Someone sent this to me last week when I needed a laugh.  You know what?  It worked.  I watched it all the way through 2 or 3 times…and I’m still giggling.

 

 

(I’ll try to do a ‘real’ update next week.  This weekend was Thanksgiving and then fighting a bad cold and then buying a car, and I’m…kinda done.  Perfect time for a happy-dancing turtle!)

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Thanksgiving!

This week is Thanksgiving for those of us who celebrate it.

Thanksgiving means all kinds of things to different people, and it has meant different things to me over the course of my lifetime.  As a child, it was a huge gathering of my paternal grandmother’s whole family, her sisters and their kids and all my cousins gathered around long tables with folding chairs and everybody bringing at least 2 more dishes than we really needed.  It meant hiding in Grammie’s back room, making houses out of boxes, or piling in with all the kids of a like age to see if ANYBODY could get past the 3rd level of Battletoads on the NES (spoiler alert — we couldn’t).  As I grew older but still lived close by, I really began to enjoy Thanksgiving with that extended family.  I started helping out with dishes more, or serving more, and I started to learn why it was interesting, not boring, when my grandmother and her sisters gathered around a table with mugs of tea just talking.  (The football watched by the men was still boring until I met Sarah and she introduced me to OSU.)

Living in Minnesota necessitated many changes on my part when it came to traditional family gatherings.  Some years, I’ve trekked back to be part of Thanksgiving, but it isn’t the same.  A lot of the relatives whose presence I most enjoyed have passed since then.  Now, the gathering, when it happens at all, is smaller, mostly populated by my generation and my nieces and nephews.  Grammie still makes the best stuffing and mashed potatoes in the family, though.

The years that I can’t or don’t go back to the land of my ancestors, however, I host Thanksgiving myself.  Now that I have a home of my own, I make a point to open it for Thanksgiving to anyone who wants that same connectedness and closeness I do.  It’s my very-firmly held belief that no one should be alone on Thanksgiving who doesn’t want to be, and that everyone should have the option of a warm, inviting, loving atmosphere in which to spend their day.

Thanksgiving is often my favorite holiday of the year because of that.  I get to open my house and invite in whoever needs or wants that shelter, that fun.  Some years we’ve had lots of people; some years we only have 4.  This year, I’m going to be hosting between 9 and 11, which is just enough to make the house seem really full (and just enough to necessitate bringing down the second table).

It’s always a big event when we host a party like this.  For Thanksgiving I almost always do turkey because, obviously, but some years I’ve added a ham as well depending on the crowd.  Last year’s turkey was ALMOST a disaster and required a 5am run to a grocery store which I never ever want to do again.  This year, with only 1 meat, I’m less likely to end up in panic-mode at 5am.  I hope.

If it DOES happen, this time I’ll take pictures.

I always brine my turkeys, which, the first year was HILARIOUS because I didn’t have a pot big enough so I, uh, kinda made one.  By taping paper bags to the outside of my pot and putting the turkey and the brine in a brining bag and kind of…propping it up in the fridge.  It DID work and it did NOT spill all over the fridge, and it was epic.  Now I have a proper brining bucket.

(I have searched for a few hours for a version of the picture of my epic paper bag brining solution and I can’t find one, unfortunately.  Otherwise I would happily provide the photographic evidence of its hilarity.)

I’ll also be doing squash and pudding, and Sarah’s handling the stuffing.  Others bring the green beans, the potatoes, and whatever else they like the best.  We’ve had everything from tempura to khir at our table, and it’s all welcome!  We set it all out along the kitchen counter like a giant buffet and leave it out all afternoon.

Because once the food has been eaten, it is time for games.  Board games, card games, pen-and-paper games — depending on the crowd, we play.  (I usually miss this part.  5am does NOT get along well with me and I end up napping most years.  Last year, post the run to the grocery store and the emergency backup plan, I napped so soundly I didn’t realize everyone else had done all my dishes for me.  My friends are AMAZING.)

Some years, we open our house again a few days after Thanksgiving to celebrate with those friends who spend their holiday with their other families.  This year, we’re a little too busy to pull that off, but we might yet have what Sarah calls Pie Night another time.  Possibly for NYE.

But the “when” isn’t really the part that matters.

The part that matters is the part where I get to sit around a table with family and friends.  Sometimes the family is related by blood/marriage, but more often, it’s those people who are family of the spirit.  The part that matters is being together, sharing food, snarking at each other, telling stories, laughing, being safe, being welcome, being wanted.  It’s no different from what I knew every year at Grammie’s house, even if I didn’t understand while I was building a train out of cardboard that *that* is what made the day so special.

Thanksgiving is when I get to spend special time with the people who make life worth everything, and when I get to remember how very, very thankful I am for every step that led me here.  For attending Carleton and meeting Sarah.  For stumbling into the TCWC and finding a choir family.  For being invited to perform at CONvergence, and then wandering up looking to volunteer, and being drawn into a community and a fellowship.

Every step, wrong or right, backwards or forwards or right off the path, has carried me until I’m standing here.  And I cannot, cannot imagine my life any differently.

So I’ll spend Thanksgiving a little teary-eyed and a little overly sentimental.  Because I am so very thankful.

Also, because of the parade.

I have THE BIGGEST CRUSH on one particular float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, folks.  No, seriously.  It’s been my favorite for as long as anyone can remember.  And I have watched the parade EVERY YEAR without fail.  When I’m not hosting, I tend to live-blog it (hosting makes me too busy, to say nothing of being high-strung, for that).  I watch it, and I laugh at the silly things, and I rag on the bad commercials, and I cheer at my favorites.

But I always start to cry when I see Tom Turkey.

I have to think that at least part of my extreme love of the parade is that it heralds a season of family and a season of humanity.  It’s the time when, for about a month, people become what they pretend to be the rest of the year.  It’s the time when we think about each other a bit more, care for the little things a bit more, notice each other more.

But there’s also an inherent value and charm to the parade itself as well. Maybe it’s that sense of commonality that I always feel, just as I did with the Olympics.  Thanksgiving morning, 3.5 million people don’t care about political parties or artificial divisions.  They just stand there on the sidelines screaming for the people who come by.  Everybody along the sidelines becomes about 10 years old, enchanted by the simple magic of giant balloons, joyful kids, and thumping music.  For that morning, in that place, people become the community they want be.  And that means something very real to me, too.

And Tom Turkey?  To me, that crazy float has become the icon for all the good things of the season.  I think he is to me what Santa Claus is to lots of kids — he’s the hero of the season, the one who makes all that goodness possible.  He brings the parade, heralding the holiday season and all the things that come alive with it.

And once I’ve seen Tom Turkey, I know everything’s going to be all right.  Even if MY turkey goes horribly awry, I’m going to be spending my day in laughter and love and welcome joy with friends and family, and no amount of disaster measures up.

But if there IS a disaster, I’ll let you know next week.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Symbiosis: My Readers and Me

This year has been a nightmare, and there’s only been a few things that have carried me through.  One is, of course, Sarah and my family and friends out here in Minnesota keeping me going.  Another is music, particularly the TCWC and Encore.  A third is CONvergence, which is now an enormous, life-affirming time-suck of working with awesome people to make sure we are providing and protecting a community and a space which is welcoming and safe and fun and kind and respectful for all, particularly those who really, really need it.

But the fourth is writing, both what I’ve been producing and what’s been going up online.

For this year’s writing, I’m a little behind on my yearly goals, I’ll be honest, but I should make the absolute minimum I require of myself.  By the end of Oct 31st, I need to finish enough to have 47 chapters/oneshots/installments to go up each week next year.  (Then I get to spend November on Yuletide and editing the original novel and adding a chapter to the work currently being posted because it needs a little more than it has.  I have no idea if I’ll write at all in December, or, if so, what.)  More on this after the end of October when I’m hopefully done.

The flip side of writing, though, the part where I wrote it last year but am unveiling it this year, that has been awesome.  I have developed a whole Monday night ritual of putting off posting the next chapter for about an hour because I get nervous, then slamming my laptop open and proceeding to agonize about authors notes and final edits before I publish the update to both fanfiction.net and AO3.  And then I respond to any outstanding comments or reviews.

Two or three years ago, I decided I would respond to comments and reviews left on my stories, and for the most part, I’ve done well.  Even a “I liked this, thanks!” gets a reply from me.  It may only be a few lines, or it may be paragraphs.  But I try very hard to respond to the people who take the time to tell me they liked my work.

(This is sometimes funny on my end, when the same person reviews 3 or 4 chapters all at once and I respond to each review one at a time, or when the reader who translates my stories into Spanish leaves a review and I have to dredge my lingering Spanish up out of my brain to respond in kind — they are very, very nice about my stumbling written Spanish and always offer me hugs.)

The current work that’s been going up since the first week of February has garnered rather a lot of commentary.  Not necessarily dozens of different people, but a group of dedicated readers who respond sometimes at length to every single chapter, sometimes leaving 2 or 3 comments just because what they have to say is longer than the review box.  These readers have made and commissioned art for me, have written their own AUs and crack!fics based off my story as it unfolds, and have tossed speculation back and forth amongst themselves about what is really happening and what I’m going to do next.

What was just my story has become a gathering place, apparently, a little ecosystem feeding off the environment I’ve set down, and growing all on its own.

So after the chapter goes up on Mondays, I tend to have several different people who deserve answers, considered responses and not just “Yay thanks!” on my part for all the effort they’re putting in.  These wonderful, enthusiastic, kind people are taking their precious time to heap love and interest and speculation and emotion on my stories.  The very least I can do is respond in kind.  So that takes far longer than actually posting the chapters themselves.

And then I end up having to yell at my phone, because it ALWAYS happens that I’ll JUST have finished clearing all my comments and reviews from the last week when I get one from somebody who just read the new chapter.  And I thought I was DONE but now I have to go back in and reply AGAIN to someone, sometimes with them having reacted with many, many exclamation points, and it is always funny.

And I can’t stop grinning until bedtime, and sometimes until I actually fall asleep.

Because this dedicated group of fans, of readers, of friends — they are reading and reviewing and I can almost feel the collective OMG of them taking in and responding to what I post each week.  And it just…it fills me up.  No matter how bad a Monday has been, I go to bed happy because I put something into the world that gave something to them, and they gave it back.

There is an Avengers fic on AO3 I really like by Scifigrl45 named “The Act of Creation Will Be Your Salvation” and that title sums me up pretty well.  Music, writing, even building a family out of friends and a convention community out of nerds — this is what I have to give the world.  I have this drive to take a piece of myself and put it into the ether to be found by anyone who needs it.  And doing so, producing writing and offering it to those who need it, or producing music, or working for CONvergence, it fills me back up again.  It is an exchange of energy and love and spirit, and it makes us all better when we share in it.

I’ve written so many stories that don’t get read by more than one or two people, but they are just as necessary because sometimes they are there for that one person who really, really needs it.  Just as there are stories I really, really needed and still need sometimes.

It is everything on those Monday nights to put my story, my heart, my gift into the world, and know that it has made a difference.  Even if for just one person or just one moment.  It is everything.

The way I understand myself, my job is to stand at the edge of shadow, to hold it back from anyone who seeks shelter behind me, and to find something to bring some light to shine forward.  Just as I was a scared kid when I first discovered fanfiction or CONvergence and, through them, managed to hang on, I know there are other scared kids out there.  So I protect them when they come to me, be it to read my stories or attend CONvergence or share Thanksgiving at my table.  I stand up against the shadow.  I keep the storm back.  And I find a flashlight or a lantern from inside myself and push that to shine into the dark.  So the next scared kid can find their way, too.

Every one of my 114 stories would be worth it, all taken together, if they gave just one person that moment of light.  And they have done far more than that.

I have received comments and reviews from people who were struggling to remember to breathe all day long, fighting depression and worse with all their flagging strength, who said they felt better for reading my stories.  I had a year-long exchange with someone who took my chapters with her to her chemo appointments, and the novels I unfolded for her helped her cope with her battle to survive.  I have formed friendships with people I’ve never met which result in much giggling — but also which open up an avenue between us so that neither of us needs to ever feel that we are truly alone in the world.

Because we aren’t.  Max and Don and Blair and Quatre and all the rest have given us to one another.

When I do someday publish something that isn’t fanfic, it’s going to be because so many people have given me so much to get here.  Because these fans, readers, reviewers, friends made me believe I had something to offer, light worth shining, and gave me their own when mine went dim.  Writing is, at its best, a symbiotic relationship between author and reader, a circle of creation and inspiration and admiration.  I would have written those 114 stories just for myself, but it makes it so much more worthwhile to know I also write them all for every single person who has ever found and read and loved them.

(And every single person who read them and loved them and needed them but never left a comment, either — I don’t have to know them to know they’re there.)

So, to you, my wonderful, inspiring, soul-affirming friends and fans and fellow fic-nerds, thank you.  Thank you for everything.  And thank you on behalf of every author who was lifted by you.  The world needs a million more of you.

And for myself, for you, because of my heart, because of yours, I will never stop telling my stories.

Which really are my stories.

But they all belong to you.

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Film and Dance

So, I’ve been watching this on YouTube about every other day since it crossed Sarah’s FaceBook feed, and every time I am still in awe.

I think, sometimes, we get caught up in the grand spectacles of special effects, CGI, and blockbuster budgets.  But sometimes a simple, beautiful, skillful dance can leave all of that stuff in the dust.

Enjoy!

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

My GPS Winning Entry!

Since the GPS competition seems to be having trouble getting the version of my story up on their site, I figured I would post it here.  I know there aren’t a whole lot of you reading this, but some of you have expressed interest in knowing exactly what story won me the contest, and I really want to see what you think of it!

So, without any further ado, here is the tale of DIOGENES THE GOAT, Scott Imes Award winner for 2017!

Continue reading “My GPS Winning Entry!”

twitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail