The Blog to Nowhere

- I followed f_march_madness this year, and it's the first time I've actively paid attention to it, and I was very pleased to see that the the bulk of the characters that made it into the later brackets were women. This is solid proof that all of the awesome characters in TV and film are female. :-) The last two characters in the final bracket was an impossible choice: Veronica Mars vs Peggy Carter. Who do you vote for?!?!

In the end, I had to go for Peggy (sorry Veronica). But it's awesome that Veronica made it to the final bracket.

- Mark Hamill's episode of The Flash is airing this month. March 31st! Mark your calendars! They released a trailer for the rest of the season and apparently there's footage of him as the Trickster in it, but I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I don't want any spoilers. But I can't wait. I managed to watch his first Trickster episode of the 1990 The Flash and he was absolutely brilliant in it.

- I splurged and bought a replica Melinda May vest off the internet for my Melinda cosplay. It's actually not that bad. The pattern is nearly spot on and for faux leather it's not smelly at all. The leather is a bit thicker than I expected, so the vest is little heavy, but I can live with that. The only thing that seems off is the length of the vest. The hem on Melinda's touches the top of her thighs and mine ends around my hips. I have a short torso, though, so I'm glad it's not too long. The rest of the cosplay is really easy and I love it. A blue shirt with thumb holes, black pants, and black knee high boots. I found an awesome pair of boots on sale and it has the double bonus of not having zippers up the side. My calves are fat so I can't fit into high boots that do up with zippers, so it's a great find in my mind. And I can wear them to work after the comic book expo. Triple bonus! I just need to buy some S.H.I.E.L.D. shoulder patches (or make some) and I'm all good.

- Speaking of the comic book expo, I also decided to get a custom t-shirt made for when I meet Stephen Amell for his photo-op. I know, I know, I could dress normally, but I wanted to have something Arrow themed. It's not anything fancy, just me playing around in Photoshop with the filters, but I think it turned out really good:


And it took like two seconds to make at the custom t-shirt place. It's just an iron on and a fancy press that dings when it's done baking the image. I don't know why I was under the impression that it was a more involved process but it's definitely better than what I could do with some transfer paper bought at Staples or Michaels or wherever.

The "Meanwhile in the TARDIS..." scenes got me thinking: are they canon? They were written specifically for the DVDs, not any particular TV script, so they're not strictly deleted scenes. On the other hand, Steven Moffat wrote them and his word is kind of like law, canonically anyway.

This applies to all fandoms, really. All of this extra material, do we include it in official canon? Where do we draw the line?

With long running shows, it's hard. Once upon a time they had a central creator or creators, but shows pick up a lot of staff along the way. Can we accept anything, and I mean anything (an article, a post, an e-mail, etc.) from Russell or Steven Moffat as canon, for example? They're not the creator of Doctor Who but they certainly are a creator. On the other hand, you can have a show like Buffy, who has one stand-out creator. Anything Joss writes we accept as canon. Case in point, Faith's last name. I think Joss posted on Whedonesque about coming up with Lehane for a RPG and now it's canon.

I suppose, if you want it to be, any old fact or tidbit or phrase can be canonized. As fans, we all know how it goes. Everything's right until a retcon comes along. ;-)

Hee, Aaron Douglas is coming to the local comic book con in April! Now I'm totally tempted to rip-off procure The Bridge bus shelter ad near my house. I wonder if he and Tahmoh will have to share a panel? I'd die if the con offered a photo-op with the two of them.

I mentioned the same con to my co-worker today, since she recently got into Twilight, and I told her some of the actors from the movie are appearing at the con this year. I loved how her first question to me after I said actors were coming was, "Do you mean Robert Pattinson?" I tried not to laugh, not because I find Robert Pattinson funny or anything, but because my co-worker is clearly new to being obsessed over a fandom. She didn't realize you could attend conventions with the actors. It's kind of amusing. Or maybe it's only amusing to me because I've been obsessing over fandoms since, let's see, the seventh grade?

Hee, only a month until this con! The organizers could so make it an even awesomer con if they added another Whedonverse actor. Come on, how hard would it be to get Nathan Fillion to appear? He's from Alberta. It'd be like a homecoming. :-D

At my last book club, I'm not really sure how the topic was brought up, but one of my friends asked why bother to write fanfic when you can write original stuff. I'm pretty sure I was the only fanfic writer in the room, though one of the other girls does read fanfic. My friend made it sound like writing fanfic was lame or just for crazy people. The best answer I could provide without really mentioning I wrote fanfic was it gives you a nice jumping off point. You already have characters and worlds and rules set up for you; all you need to do is set up a plot and you're ready to go. If you're lazy like me, then fanfic is perfect. I can write but I don't have to create my own worlds.

But then I started to think more about this. Why write indeed? I haven't written anything original, not fanfic, since my Creative Writing class which was about two years ago. It doesn't bother me. I have no great desire to become a famous novelist so I'm content with the idea of just pounding out fanfic only a handful of people will read. Bu why delve into writing someone else's characters? Do we fanfic writers have a pathological need to make things right or to see things how we want them? Fanfic does allow you to explore areas and paths the TV show or movie or book hasn't. But if it was just about seeing a plot the fandom would never do, then wouldn't it be easier just to read fanfic?

I think that's the reason the other girl in book club reads fanfic. She's big on Harry Potter fic (particularly shipping Draco and Ginny but that's neither here nor there) and with only seven books I'm sure the fans feel a need to expand on the canon. TV shows are a different beast; if you're lucky, your chosen TV fandom has dozens of episodes to draw upon, maybe over a hundred. So why?

I can't remember why I started writing fanfic. I don't think I felt like I could write the fandom better; I was just a kid when Buffy started and I was just awed by the thought of watching a show where a girl beat up demons and vampires on a weekly basis. I think it just comes from a love of writing and a love for these fandoms. Because these worlds are smart and exciting and the characters are witty and have depth and emotions and they're worth writing stories about.

I'm sure we all have our reasons. But we're not all crackpots. :-)

Much to my amusement my friends and I ended up watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog yesterday at our monthly book club meeting (Yes, I'm in a book club; try not to faint). The girl hosting had bought, not pirated, the episodes from iTunes and had just finished watching them with some other friends that afternoon. Oddly enough, I had decided to wear my Captain Hammer t-shirt so the girl freaked out when she saw it. That eventually led into the watching since our book discussions rarely last longer than a half an hour. So four new viewers to Dr. Horrible, watching for the first time. They all enjoyed it, I'm happy to report. We couldn't stop singing "Freeze Ray" all night. Might have even convinced my friends to go as Dr. Horrible and cast for Halloween. I already own the Captain Hammer t-shirt. :-D

So there were three of us who had seen it before and we all sung along with the songs. This got me thinking. This could be the new Joss Whedon sing-along since FOX has shut down the "Once More With Feeling" sing-alongs. With no studio, the only person who would be mad would be Joss and I don't see him being angry with fans holding sing-alongs. If anything, fans could hold them and any money collected could go to Equality Now.

After we were done, I was left with this weird feeling. While I was happy that I had helped to introduce new people to Joss Whedon, I felt horribly possessive. These friends of mine have never liked the same things I have, fandom wise. None of them are big sci fi fans. So loving everything Joss has always been just a me thing. It was just plain weird to hear my friends referring to something Joss had done. In my mind, Dr. Horrible is more of an Internet thing you must watch, which makes it more accessible. It's not a TV show, something people are more likely to judge you on. So Dr. Horrible is a good way to introduce Joss to the unfamiliar and that can easily lead to some Firefly or Buffy.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Tell your friends. :-)