Takoyaki Journals

I "liked" Doctor Who on Facebook, which means that I get constant updates and video clips of old doctors and things. Mostly I ignore them, but the other night they had one saying "Do you love Amy Pond? In the next half-season there's an episode devoted to to her backstory that will break your heart!"

In a fit of "Someone is Wrong on the Internet" I clicked on the comments to say "NO. I don't love Amy, get her the hell off the TARDIS." And as I read through the comments I saw that there were two camps. The people who hated Amy...mostly women. And the people that love Amy, mostly men. The men were baffled at the Amy Hate, and decided that we must be either die hard Doctor/Rose shippers or just jealous because Amy's pretty.

Um. NO.
HELL no.

( And here's why. Warning, as River would say...Spoilers! )

I'm still on my romance reading kick, and ran across one that was a little different, and it made me think a bit. "Forbidden Magic" by Jo Beverly was interesting because it had a Manic Pixie Dream Guy. Usually it's the heroine in a Regency Romance who's like a Disney Princess on speed. She'll be the one who is overly familiar with servants, who of course adore her. She'll put up with the deaf butler and the elderly housekeeper because they're like family. She'll have the three legged dog and keep frogs in her reticule. (Srsly, I have read like 3 books now where the heroine keeps a frog in her purse, wtf?) And the hero will be very staid and proper, but he'll learn to love her joie de vie, yadda yadda yadda.

But in this book it's the hero that has the chaotic household. The maid has one eye, the dog has a perma-snarl, the footman has a limp... there's even an inappropriate parrot. He loves the heroine's little brothers and sisters and lets them eat ices for appetizers and plays with them. And of course the heroine who's had to have everything under tight control to keep her family out of serious trouble, learns to loosen up and enjoy life.

I was amused by the Manic Pixie Dream Guy, but what kind of surprised me is that making the Girl the uptight one made her almost unlikable. I'm so used to the heroine being immediately sweet and accepting that it's a little off putting when she balks at the ex-pickpocket working as a servant for her little siblings. Which is a bad reaction on my part. I would probably balk too. But it's interesting that it's an expectation that I didn't even realize I had.

So I've been working on this a bit, though it's not as coherent as it ought to be yet. But when I was at Anime Boston, and going to all the writing panels, I was really struck by how much people wanted to talk about OCs and Mary Sues. When twigcollins and I briefly touched on it, that's when all the hands went up. And then the next day at another panel, a huge chunk of time was eaten up by discussing OCs. So obviously this is something People Want To Know About.

And so when I was in Japan and stuck in a waiting room before I was allowed to go visit a plant, and after I'd made a list of all the knitting projects I have planned, I started to write up My Thoughts on Yaoi Original Characters.

( How to Handle Original Characters in Fanfic )

So there it is. I'd like to hear your opinions on all of this. I usually figure out my own opinions to things socratically, so it would be really helpful to me too. And I'd like to hear about any good examples of OCs you know of as well. Thanks to twigcollins for inspiring this, and to flidgetjerome for going over it and reminding me of things like villains.

This year for my birthday I'm treating myself to a writing conference. A friend of mine from the Dayton group was going and said, 'come along, it will be fun and educational!' I thought to myself, 'well, I'm not working on a romance novel, though I have a few ideas kicking around in the back of my head, but it would still be a lot of fun to hang out with other writers, particularly my friend, and the workshops all look incredibly valuable no matter what genre you're writing. OK, sign me up!"

So I agreed to go, signed up, and found out that I'll actually even get to pitch to an agent.

This sent me off into another tizzy, because I'm not working on a romance. But that is not the point of this post. The point is that my friend and I were talking, and she mentioned that she's going to wear a suit to her pitch. Her day job is a lawyer, and her writing has law elements, so she's using it as another card to play in her pitch.

I joked back that I was thinking of wearing my steel-toed boots and safety glasses and pitching a novel called 'Production Line Passion.' And now I can only think of the jokes. I mean, at my old job the company motto was 'sharing the pleasure of production with our customers.'

Just think of all the possibilities!

• Everything was mass produced...except for their love.


• A Riveting story


• Sparks fly on the spot weld Line


• He'd poka-yoked his heart, but there was no countermeasure for her love

I could keep going, but I'd only get deeper into manufacturing terminology.

Last night I went to the first meeting of my new writing critique group. What a blast!! I hope I'll feel the same way next week when MY stuff gets critiqued. But I think we've got a very smart, good critique group shaping up. Not many people attended last night, but I think that the feedback was excellent. I thought it was as good as Clarion.

It was interesting having so many lawyers in the group, which really put a different spin on things. Before we got started with the critiquing there was a long discussion about copywrite and confidentiality. And after an equally involved conversation about pen names, and whether or not they're necessary. So of course I had to tell the story about O. Henry and Anne McCaffery and how my goal is to write a story about dragons giving each other the wrong gifts and no one will ever believe that my name is my real name. Honestly, the only thought I've given to pen names is for writing in different genres. 'In for a Penny' is a meringue of a fantasy, while I hope that the Victorian Hong Kong stuff will coalesce into something more of a gingerbread in density after a retooling. But, of course, as I mentioned in the group, that's really putting the cart ahead of the horse. Names can wait until I have an agent...or, like...an actual manuscript.

One of the women in the group has a tendency to read very very deeply into things. Lots of comments like "I can see a very strong sense of economic underpinnings to this story. A lot of it revolves around money and the economy," for a book which ultimately is pretty much about sentient cabbage. I can't wait to see what she makes of my brand of crack!fic. Since I'm not ready with the first bit of Penny rewrite, I'm inflicting the First Contact story on them.