Sour notes

Feb. 29th, 2008 07:42 am
maudite_a_deux: (Bitches)
[personal profile] maudite_a_deux
First order of business: [livejournal.com profile] beautifulfic, I owe you an email and I haven't had the juice to type up the several pages of notes I took while waiting for an excruciatingly long print job at work. I will eventually get to it, and thank you hugely for offering to let me bounce things off you.

Next: Something else that's been jarring me lately when I read fanfic is how often I see taciturn, tough-guy characters suddenly turn around and start referring to their partner as "love" or "baby". This is not something that comes so quickly -- if ever -- in real life when you're dealing with this sort of character, particularly the strong, silent type.

Maybe I'm just projecting; while I'm not the strong, silent type, I do suffer from an excess of pride and serious intimacy issues. The point being that it takes me months, if not years, of being in a very close relationship before I'll use any kind of pet name with anybody, and even then it's not "baby" or "love" or "sweetie". (Those names are reserved for my cats, with whom I have no shame.) I call my partners by name. I'm too concerned with my dignity to say anything I consider "cutesy". Cute bugs me. I'll call people "baby" in a joking way, but it's usually dripping with sarcasm.

The point being that people like, say, Aya, Crawford, Kanda, Mori, Kyouya, Satoshi, Touya, etc., really shouldn't suddenly turn into Mr. Romance just because they had buttsecks a few times. Even getting any of these guys to admit they like someone would be a real chore. It's going to take a while before they're comfortable enough to talk about their feelings. In some cases, they may *never* actually admit to it. And that's a lot of the fun of writing characters like this.

Which is not to say none of these characters could have a romantic side. They might make romantic gestures out of the blue -- even really grand ones -- before they're able to actually come out and say how they feel. I can see Aya quietly filling a room with lit candles and flowers and then trying to act like nothing's out of the ordinary -- but I can't see him calling anyone "baby".

Anyway. Yeah. I think about this stuff way too damn much.

On that note, if anyone's looking for a beta for oneshots or shortfic, let me know. I write for a living (technical writing), and while I'm not much of a fiction writer, I can edit fiction like nobody's business. I'm very thorough, I have magic typo radar, and while I'm excellent with grammar and such, I work with the style of the writer. Flow is more important than perfect grammar. Clunky sentences are something up with which I shall not put. I'll also comment on continuity, characterization, etc. as much as seems reasonable. And! I'll be nice about it! (But not *too* nice.)

I don't have the bandwidth to take on anything too long right now, but I'll gladly do oneshots or shortfic, even if I'm not familiar with the fandom.

And lastly: Everybody but me is in love with "Bump Of Chicken", but I find them unlistenable because the lead singer is always just a tiny bit flat. I have perfect pitch, and it makes my teeth ache.

Most of the songs don't seem all that strong to me, either, but it's a little hard for me to tell when I can only listen a few seconds into the vocals. I tried, I really did. I've listened to a bunch of their songs now... 30 seconds or so of them, anyway. I just can't get through them.

You may feel free to bludgeon me now.

Date: 2008-02-29 03:55 pm (UTC)
ext_3719: (Default)
From: [identity profile] sutlers.livejournal.com
You better watch out, because I will totally take you up on that beta thing (and all my one-shots are like, "hai can we be 15,000 words nao?").

But yeah, I am totally with you on the pet names things. Hell, I can't even get my characters to say "I love you" in like, any of my fics. I could definitely see a lot of tough-guy smarmballs calling someone "baby", though. But that's because they're, you know, smarmballs. The one that really gets my goat is "lover", though. I mean, okay, you'll see people calling someone "sweetie" in real life, but "lover"? Come on. Anybody who said that to me in a non-joking, non-smarmy way would totally get a knee to the nuts. Also "my lover". It's just such an... eighteenth century thing. >_>

Also I've heard Bump of Chicken called things like, "the new Beatles" and every time I'm like, "...have you guys ever listened to the Beatles? Regularly?" No offense to them, but I kind of feel like it will be a cold day in hell before Japan pops out something that is even remotely comparable.

Date: 2008-02-29 04:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maudite-a-deux.livejournal.com
Totally take me up on it. I *love* your fics, I'd be thrilled to beta for you.

Lover -- yeah, I have never heard anyone call anyone else that, and if I did I'd probably gag. Tough-guy smarmballs -- well, yeah. I had this one friend, years ago, who used to call me "baby". He was the trashiest of white trash (a GREAT guy, mind you, but from the wrongest side of the tracks there was) and he called most of his female friends that. At first it shocked me because *nobody* had ever called me that before, but after a while I started to like it. (Most memorably, he once told me, "Come on, baby, you know the rules. You wanna *play* funky, you gotta *smell* funky." He was, you see, a guitarist who lived in a late 70s vintage Monte Carlo in the parking lot of a nightclub.)

Ah, Mike. I do wonder what ever happened to him, but it's hard to track down a homeless guy from thousands of miles away.

I'm sure there's really great Japanese stuff out there -- I love what little I've heard of Ellegarden, for instance -- but I'm only just starting to get into Japanese music and most of what I've heard is no better than most of the crap being churned out in the US these days. Which is to say, plenty of it is listenable but little of it is special.

Comparing anyone to The Beatles is just stupid anyway. It's like comparing a band to the Rolling Stones, or Beethoven, or Benny Goodman. Sometimes musicians come along who just stand head and shoulders above the rest, and it's an insult to both sides to make that comparison.

In conclusion, I would like to state for the record that I would gladly trade both legs for the ability to play guitar like Keith Richards.
Edited Date: 2008-02-29 04:12 pm (UTC)

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