Nurse! Steven's out of bed again!

Okay so it's taken me two weeks to finally sit down and post my thoughts on the season finale of Doctor Who, and I'm sure by now the details of that episode have filtered out of the average fangirl's memory, so I thought I would take the opportunity too to post some of my long term thoughts and opinions on the series as a whole.

First some basic facts. I have not watched any classic Who, though I have read enough of the basic details to have a decent understanding. I am a diehard fan of the revived Doctor Who, and its two little siblings the Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood. Favourite Doctor so far is 10 because he had an excellent balance between serious emotion and side splitting comedy. Favourite companion so far is Donna, because she was funny, mature, and most importantly, did not want to bang the Doctor. Martha was fine once she got over her crush stage, and I liked that she was very independent and capable to a degree from the start, something which only grew and crystallised completely after she left the Doctor. Rose I had no problems with at the time, but I now find a little clingy and exasperating.

And then we moved into the Moffat years, and then came Amy. Oh lord how I wanted to slap her. She irritated me terribly for reasons I still cannot explain, but mostly because she was quick to drop her boyfriend, and run off with a complete stranger (time machine be damned - she still effectively walked out of her own wedding, with no idea of when she would return). Thank God they brought Rory in later on in the series (though even that was touch and go with him dying, being erased and then being plastic). I know companions often can't help developing a crush or (heaven help us) fall in love with the Doctor - I do understand that in a situation where you're being whisked off for a once in a life time opportunity to see the wonders of the universe and where your only constant companion is a madman with a box, you are bound to develop a serious attachment to that person - but the best companions are ones who grow out of their crush (the quicker the better) and use their experiences on the TARDIS to carve their own life out.

This is why I've grown to like River so much. At first I was determined not to like her, because she made my Mary-Sue senses go haywire - I now realise that this is an unfortunate side effect of her timeline. We usually meet most characters at the beginning when they're just a blob of nothing, and we watch the story gently shape them into their personality, growing on us slowly as they do. River did this in the opposite direction - she started out ready shaped and moulded into her own person, and we had to go backwards and watch her regress to her origins, which did make her come off as a bit too perfect in the beginning.

But I like her because she's a great representation of something that sci fi and fantasy generally (not always, but often especially in the past) lack - a strong female character. She doesn't need the Doctor to come and save her from the monsters, and she doesn't just stand there and shriek for help. She pulls out her gun or hallucinogenic lipstick and gets herself out of it. Okay she occasionally needs to be caught by the TARDIS when she flings herself out of airlocks and buildings, but she always knows what she's doing. Yes, she is very obsessed with the Doctor and has been from birth. But at least she's not dependant on the Doctor the way that most of his companions are. She very much has her own life.

Plus she's a nerd (archaeologist) and has awesome hair.

Anyway, onto the Moffat era as a whole. Moffat as a writer is not bad when he's writing something he is good at, like Sherlock for instance (I also make no secret of being a Sherlock fangirl). Sherlock needs complicated plots and twists to fit the tone of the story. Sherlock has always been about holding on to your understanding by a thread as the plot pulls and drags you through revelation after revelation. Its deliciously complicated and genuinely surprising.

But Doctor Who is not like Sherlock, and it is here that Moffat struggles, especially since becoming showrunner. I will never argue that he writes excellent monsters for Doctor Who (indeed like many fans I find myself surreptitiously keeping an eye on every statue as I pass it in case it comes to life and zaps me back in time) but being able to produce a good monster, and a good plot are two different things. It is on plot in Doctor Who that Moffat reminds me of a child off his ADHD medication. He continues to weave new plots and ideas into the series, without properly resolving the effects of the last one. Why did the TARDIS explode in the first place in the S5 finale? How were the Silence related exactly to the cracks in time all over the universe (people kept saying that 'through the cracks we saw Silence and the end of all things')? If 'Silence must fall when the question is asked", then why did I see no sign of any Silence at Trenzalore? And how exactly did the Great Intelligence get involved instead? Surely if the Silence's entire founding belief is that they will meet their end when the Doctor goes to Trenzalore and reveals his name, they would have at least sent a few Silents along to check it out and see just how fucked they are, even if they can't be asked to send an entire swat team for a last ditch attempt to stop it!

It seems just as we might be tying up a couple of loose plot threads, Moffat throws half a dozen more strings into the mess. And his set up really leaves a lot to be desired. Would the revelation of Mels = Melody = River have not had much more impact if we had actually met Mels before in the series as a background character? Instead she was (almost hastily like they were hoping none of us would notice) squashed into the beginning of S6E8 and hardly done justice. I get that you only have thirteen/fourteen episodes per season to resolve things, but surely it would be better to have less open plot threads, and spend and entire season properly setting up and wrapping up one or maybe two at a pace that the audience can stand, instead of trying to tie up five of them hastily in the last episode? But like a child off his medication, Moffat's attention span seems to be shorter than Amy's miniskirt.

Anyway, back to The Name of the Doctor. I have already stated my misgivings with the Silence, and the set up, and the hype over this being one of the most perilous moment's in the Doctor's life, so I'll say no more about it, other than it was a giant friggin' letdown. Vastra, Jenny and Strax always make for an appealing comedic sidekick act (with extra badassery) and I was pleased that we got to see more of them in this series. Clara's reveal as to why exactly she keeps dying was an interesting twist, and I admit, one that I did not predict, but I never really warmed to Clara as a companion, mostly because I spent most of my time yelling at the screen for the Doctor to just explain to her very simply "I AM MARRIED!".

Speaking of married, the River and Doctor farewell scene may be my favourite romance scene of 2013 - say what you will about the pairing, the scene was passionate and moving enough to reduce me to tears, and that was one of the best onscreen kisses I've seen in a long time.

Villain wise - the Great Intelligence never really felt like much of a threat to me right from the start. It felt like a one off villain, and really should have stayed that way. Trying to turn them into the series' big bad was a total flop - like the Silence suddenly went on strike and they had to recycle a villain from the Christmas special to fill the space. And while the Whispermen had potential, I can honestly say that I have no idea exactly what they do. Again, they felt like a stop gap measure because the finale had not checked all its boxes by having a freaky looking new monster in it. I get that they look creepy and are capable of murder (though was it even murder? Jenny was fine after Strax did his nurse routine) but we never see how exactly they kill or why they are a threat to a person. They just walk up to you with their teeth bared and...then what?

Its not enough to look scary - after the initial shock and creepiness, you have to give us a reason to fear you. This is true of any villain. You can't introduce a threat to the characters, and then expect them to keep being scared of it - you need to slowly reveal the true nature of the threat they present in order to expect a rational person to keep fearing them. For instance, when the Weeping Angels first appeared in Blink, we knew that the statues kept changing position, and that people kept getting sent back in time. That was the initial creepiness and fear that made your skin crawl. But as the episode progressed to about two thirds of the way in, we learned the true horror of them - that they only move when you're not looking at them, and suddenly the creepiness upgrades itself to fully fledged terror as you realise the implications that this has (the implication here being that even blinking can lead to your doom). The Whispermen never do this. They're just there, being creepy for the whole episode, and you cannot expect anyone to keep fearing that an hour later.

In my considered opinion, Moffat needs to just take a nice long sleep, and stop thinking of ideas for a little while. He instead needs to gather up all his loose plot ends, and start tying them together, because no matter how much he might be hoping, nobody has forgotten them, and they are still there. He needs to spend a season wrapping up all the threads, and giving the audience a conclusion that actually answers more questions that creates them. Maybe if he gets back to work on Sherlock for a little while, and channels some of his new ideas into that, this will actually happen. Let's give Steven a chance, but keep the straitjacket on standby just in case.

Character Spotlight: Koji Oku (Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls, Magic Monsters Dominions and Destiny)

I did say I'd do a few of these, and so here I am! These will be little insights into my OCs from fanfiction and my original work. Enjoy!

Name: Koji Oku

Story: Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls, Magic Monsters Dominions and Destiny

Age: 10

Nationality: Japanese

City of Residence: Osaka, Japan

Languages: Japanese, English

Occupation: Student (5^th Grade at Toheki Elementary School)

Religion: None

Deck Type: Pyro lockdown

Titles Held: Honshu Junior champion. Japanese runner up. East Asian runner up.

Favourite Food: Dorayaki

Favourite Drink: Coke

Duellist Biography: A relative newcomer to international tournaments, Koji began to gain fame when he was eight and became one of the youngest competitors to make it to the final of the Japanese Nationals, where he lost to Joey Wheeler in the final round. Koji first got into Duel Monsters when he was six, when it was recommended by his teacher as a way of improving his arithmetic. After a few successful card shop tournaments, he entered his first professional tournament at age eight, claiming the title of Honshu Junior champion. His favourite monster is Solar Flare Dragon. Koji wants to carry on duelling in the future, though he says if that does not happen, he would like to be a presenter on Mythbusters.

Repair

This is a locally shot music video featuring a couple of my friends. Music is good to listen to, and I am very impressed with the quality of the music video. Good job guys!

How I "Got Into" Writing

One of the questions I hear authors get asked all the time in interviews is, “how did you get into writing?”. I always wonder if authors are just as perplexed as I am when they hear this question. “Get into writing”? Writing isn’t like a musical instrument, which you actually have to pick up and learn. Writing is something we are all taught to do from about the age of three or four. And children make up their own stories way before they have learned how to correctly hold a pencil.

So I’ve never really accepted that writing and creating a story is something you have to “get into”. I see it as something every child has been doing from the minute they started dreaming. But to give a less philosophical and more definite answer, I was writing from a very young age. But when did I start writing. When did I actually think to myself ‘I can do this seriously’? I was sixteen. But the process that led up to it, began much earlier than that. It started with one fangirl who discovered through her friends that maybe she could indeed do something with her life, and not just sit, be lonely and watch movies forever.

I have no shame in admitting that I was the social outcast of my year – not the only one admittedly, but as I soon learned in school, being a social outcast yourself doesn’t make you safe from the other social outcast’s wrath (and they are no less vindictive than the popular people). Words like ‘nerd’ and ‘freak’ were normal modes of address for me, and while I bear these labels with pride now, I had less grace and even less backbone back then, and took my slated position in school very badly. My self esteem was rock bottom for most of my school career, and I was convinced that I had no talent in anything, save a rather strange ability to recite movies and tv shows almost word for word.

I’d dabbled in story writing ever since I was six – writing short ones about my teddies, and daring adventures with my friends, like any self respecting child with imagination does. But these were little projects to amuse myself, and of no value, or so I believed, to anyone.

But then I turned sixteen and something amazing happened.

I’d been loaned off my friend Tai (or as she is sometimes known, Meuble) a rather hefty wedge of paper that was titled “Harry Potter and the Something or Other” (and which I do believe I still have a copy of somewhere in my room). This rather impressive mass of pulped trees, had been written by two of Tai’s friends, who were dabbling in the art of Harry Potter self insert fanfiction.

I was completely enthralled. The concept of putting yourself in someone elses story and having your way with it had never occurred to me. My mind started ticking over ideas and possibilities. I knew I wanted to try this. But I had no idea how to go about it.

On a whim, to see if I could provide my mind with inspiration, I began compiling lists of completely random things, among my limited circle of friends. Asking them what animal they would be if they had the choice? What magical/super powers would you choose for yourself? If you could own any mode of transport, what would you pick? And suddenly, a new idea took hold. A little story, just for fun, involving me and my five best friends, and all our answers to my favourite questions.

This ‘little story’ quickly evolved into Random Scribblings of Bored Minds, a collaborative effort between all of us, that ended up spanning 88,583 words long, taking us into outer space, turning our skin yellow, violating many speeding laws, and traumatising Lord Voldemort with hugs.

And I was having the time of my life! We were our characters! We were doing things we would never be able to do in real life! We were being ourselves and getting away with it! We had a loose but definitely existent plot going on! We had a talking lyrebird and a cursed emergency water landing button! It was exhilarating!

Slowly it dawned on me, that not only was I creating something fun, but I was actually good at it. I was churning out pages like a machine, and to my untrained sixteen year old eye, they were pretty good. Certainly most of my class bullies could not do this – the only out of class writing that they participated in was sending text messages containing gratuitous use of the letters “OMG!”. Obviously now the curtain of cynicism and self editorial has fallen over me, and some parts of that story make me groan. But even now, eight years on, I still laugh at the jokes, and smile at it in the same way I would smile at a child trying to build a treehouse out of leaves and fistfuls of mud. Because it was the moment when I realised that contrary to what the rest of my year thought, I actually had some fucking talent!

And the means to develop it were only moments away.

As previously mentioned, Tai had provided me with my first introduction to the world of fanfiction. But she was not going to leave it there – oh no. This was a world I was born for, and I am eternally grateful to her for introducing me to fanfiction.net. It was my paradise. The possibilities were mindblowing. I could practise writing whatever I wanted. I could let people read it and leave comments. And most importantly – it was the internet, and I had a penname! Nobody knew it was me! I trawled for months, and then eventually worked up the courage to start posting.

Like most people joining fanfiction at that time, my big love was Harry Potter, and so unsurprisingly my first fanfiction was a Harry Potter one, and like almost every fanfiction author, I look back on it now and perform the well practised headdesk manoeuvre. But I will never delete it, because it represents the start of my serious writing (now I had deadlines to meet and fans to please as well as myself) and most importantly, is a reminder of important lessons that I learned along the way.

I did learn, and I blossomed. I taught myself about description and dialogue. I learned how useful a thesaurus was. I discovered the perils of shipping and fangirls. I figured out how to leave clues to my plot all over my story. I learned that characters have to grow and change in order to be interesting. I discovered a love of yaoi that will last a life time. Even as I finished my A-Levels, left school and headed to the big scary world of university, I never looked back. Why would I? Writing had become a friend, and a flower of self confidence that now bloomed in my hands.

University was the structuring of my talent. The rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation that I had missed out on by not doing any English related A-Levels now came back to haunt me, and I had to teach myself quickly where all those curious little marks went. Fortunately, there were Emmersonne and Yuallica, who encouraged my ideas, and would introduce me to the literary miracle of NaNoWriMo.

By the end of my first year of university, I was moving out of the Harry Potter fandom, and had been camping happily in the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom. And as the summer holidays began and I vanished off to Portugal with some friends for a holiday, I had another project in mind that was soon to become one of my proudest achievements.

If fanfiction had thrilled me, crossovers were a dimension that I completely adored. After the enjoyment I’d found in doing Random Scribblings, I knew I could be good at crossovers. Reading Harry Potter and Yu-Gi-Oh! crossovers was a thrill, but I realised very quickly that they were all exclusively about Voldemort getting his hands on Shadow Magic, in some form or another. And while there was nothing wrong with this format, I wondered to myself if I could not try something different. Of course I knew that season four of Yu-Gi-Oh! is a source of constant debate in the fandom, with some liking it, some tolerating it, and some ranking it with the same disgust that they would direct towards a corrupt politician, smothered in cocaine. I knew that some people would hate it. I knew that I was jumping on a bandwagon. But I wanted to write it, so off I went.

The results were phenomenal. I wrote almost 400,000 words, the most I’d ever dedicated to a single project. I finished it, which was an achievement that I had only been able to do a handful of times. And seeing the reviews come in was one of most rewarding experiences in the world. Yes, the sequel sat in limbo for about three years. But it is a mark of how much my crossover meant to me that I eventually did pick up the inspiration again. And the beauty of it was that after so long, watching how my writing had improved filled me with one of those cliché warm glows that everyone bangs on about.

Speaking of cliché  it would be remiss of me not to mention the Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society, the brainchild of my rather brilliant and crazy best friend, Emmersonne. You would have thought after so long I would have had my fill of self inserts. But no. This was far too good an opportunity to pass up. And as the few stories grew to over two hundred, and our number of members expanded from two to over twenty, I found my circle of friends expanding once again, and most importantly, lurking in that circle, was someone I would soon call my boyfriend.

On the writing front, the Society reminds me to lay back and enjoy the ride of writing sometimes instead of editing myself inside out. And it too was a learning curve. I found myself developing a sense of humour. Not the kind where I rattle off jokes every few minutes, but a very real and cynical type, based on the three S’s of British humour – Sarcasm, Self Depreciation, and Deadpan Snarker. Parody was taking the piss in a beautiful way – and I really really enjoyed doing it. If only I had developed that particular skill back in school...

I of course wrote other things as well in this long period of eight years. There are more unfinished stories on my computer and in my memory stick than I’d care to count. There are countless self inserts that have now been hidden away from the light of day. And deep in these folders are my impossible fantasy worlds, my sappy teenage chick lit, and my poorly written sex. There are hundreds of characters, who I still love in their own way (even the villains). Several of them have gone to sleep deep in their stories, while others come out every so often for playtime. I have an entire cast who have been rehoused in different stories four times! I have now found a world that I think works best for them, and plan to go back to it someday. I have a fanfiction that I started five years ago, and which I have now unearthed, dusted off, and decided to start slowly rewriting. I have a piece of cliché, sappy chick lit that I look at every so often, and wonder if it still has potential.

And of course, my novel sits front and centre of my non-fanfiction related stuff, currently plodding through its second draft. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I get frustrated with it. But this is a healthy relationship, (not something I just “got into” like a musical instrument), and I will see it through to the end.

Cosplay Spotlight: Riza Hawkeye (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Costume: This was my first cosplay ever, and I cannot take much credit for it. I essentially decided two weeks before my first convention that I did actually want to cosplay, and cruelly lumped the task of creating this outfit on my two best friends Mearle and Tai before jetting off to France.

We hit the charity shops for the trousers, wanting ¾ length cotton trousers that were loose enough to look like the military ones. I already owned the boots and t-shirt, and we agreed that the jacket would be too complicated and difficult. We also purchased a pair of grey trousers from the charity shop, in order to use the waistband for the cavalry skirt, and bought white cotton for the skirt itself. I then buggered off to eat crepes for a week, leaving it in the hands of my capable friends. They cut the skirt and dyed both the white cotton and trousers together in order to get matching shades of blue. The cavalry skirt was double layered in order to make it stiffer. They then made miles and miles of grey bias tape which was hand sewn (this was before we had a sewing machine to our name) to the edges, and attached the grey waistband.

Make up: Light and neutral.

Hair: Ponytail – as my hair has started to grow again and I had my short bits cut in, this hair style has got more difficult to achieve. Fortunately, Tai and I discovered the wonders of African Butterfly Clips, which are excellent at keeping long heavy hair up and out of the way with no pain (and for the purposes of this cosplay, twisting it up into a shorter ponytail).

Kitacon 2009. Photo taken by NekoFlameAlchemist.

Amecon 2010 (there was a giant FMA photoshoot at the con, but all the photos are too far away)

Amecon 2012 (those archways at Keele are the best place for dramatic cosplay shots!)

Sunnycon 2013 - with Vic Mignogna. Photo taken by Mearle.

Going Camping!

Well I wouldn't say my writers block is over yet, but I'm certainly getting giddy over something else writing related.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I take part every November in a fun little writing extravaganza called NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month if you're being posh). Its a technically insane, community driven, caffeine fuelled creative challenge designed to get you out of the planning stage and into the writing stage. In fact, it works by smashing the planning stage completely to pieces with an inflatable squeaky mallet. The idea is to write fifty thousand words in a month, quality and coherency be damned, the theory  being that by having a deadline in place, and the pressures of common sense and a restrictive plot thrown gaily to the wind, you are free to unleash the full potential of your creativity and just write. To win, you just have to hit 50k, and the shiny certificate and smug self satisfaction are all yours.

It sounds barmy and a total waste of time to most people (95% of whom I can guarantee have never tried it themselves), but in 2011 236,618 people from all over the world participated (the 2012 figures have not been posted yet) so clearly they thought there was something in it. And speaking as somebody who has participated for six years (and won five of them), and written a large bulk of her literary works in these contests, I'd say that there is definitely something in it. If I tally up roughly all my word counts for each of those six years, that's about 380,000 words - that's 380,000 words more than I would have done if I hadn't done the contests. Its a LOT of novelling!

The beauty of Nano is completely stripping away all your worries. How is this character going to evolve? How is the killer going to cover their tracks? Is the ending going to be happy or sad? Who knows?! You're writing this story as it comes to you! You're taking the journey with them! You're not God in this story - you are one of the characters. All those emotions they feel?  You're feeling them too! Plans? Who needs them?! Plans come later, after you've had a chance to meet your characters, have them get captured by aliens, meet a talking turtle, get drunk and steal some traffic cones with them!

Anyway, the point of this is that Nano is pretty awesome. Obviously it doesn't work for everyone - I know plenty of authors who can't function without a plan that has been exhaustively checked, rechecked and triple checked just in case any errors in plot have slipped in like fungus. But for people who have an idea but don't know where to begin, who are stuck in their stories and can't get out, or just want to have some pure uninhibited fun in their writing, it can quickly become one of the most helpful and enjoyable experiences in a writer's life.

The only downside to Nano that I personally have, is that its only once a year...or so I though. I'd vaguely heard about Camp NaNoWriMo on the website, but had no idea what it was. Then I looked, and realised that a pot of gold had landed in my lap. Another Nano event? Held twice a year, with flexible word goals, and allowing scripts, memoirs and blogs to be written as well as novels? Sweetness!

This is just the kickstart that my writing needs now! So off Jess and I go! Come April we will be pounding out words like women possessed, and we couldn't be happier! Want to join us? We'll save you space around the campfire! Happy novelling!

OOO

http://www.campnanowrimo.org/campers/mei1105

Throwing people off balconies

There comes a time in every writer's lives, where you bang your head against the keyboard and start rolling it around, hoping that maybe some random spark of inspiration will suddenly jump out of your brain and into the keys, like an overenthusiastic six year old trying to be an Olympic diver.

I have these regularly. And the trouble is that they're like playing a musical instrument or driving. Once you've stopped doing it for a few days, getting back into it is like shoving a boulder up a hill.

I hate moments like this. I have a chapter due out tomorrow that I know I'm not going to finish, because my characters (Bakura in particular) are being as bland as a water and cardboard sandwich, and frankly, its a duel and they are always hard to write. Life points, attack and defence points and different metaphors for people smirking are rolling around my head like my brother's Combee on pixi-stixs. My progress board on my bookshelf is staring at me with its blank white gaze, waving the words "Chapter 10 duel" tauntingly in front of my face, along with all my other bloody chapters and stories that aren't finished.

Fics for the Anti-Cliche and Mary-Sue Elimination Society are also waiting to be done, but frankly, despite my enthusiasm earlier this week, I can't get excited about my next big Society fic any longer, purely because there's another unfinished story that I'm collabing with someone, that has been sitting in the way for the past year. I can't write ahead of myself effectively. I have to have a sense of progression when I write - that the last bit is done and I can move on to the next bit, otherwise my flow is ruined. This is also why I can't chunk write. Because like most writers, I'm imperfect. I write, then I change my mind, then I redo things. Its the only way my head keeps everything straight. Doing bits and pieces out of order just confuses me, and I forget what I've changed and what I haven't. I also have another collab that I've been working on for my Oneshot a Month challenge, but that's fallen on the back burner too.

Added to which, I now have a piece of smut that I promised my boyfriend in exchange for some writing help. If I write it in this kind of mood, I'd probably end up throwing all the characters off a balcony, which last I checked, was not conducive to helping them achieve an orgasm.

And that's just the fanfiction. I'm aching to go back to my novel, or last years NaNo, or start one of the two ideas I have floating around in my head as potential Camp NaNoWriMo pieces. But I can't write feeling guilty and knowing there's all this other stuff I've got to finish first. I have to get the other projects done and out of the way before I start on anything big. Otherwise its like starting work on that essay that's due in a month, when you've got an unfinished piece of coursework due in tomorrow.

The pounding headache that I've had all day isn't helping matters either.

So instead of trying to find inspiration in some form, or power through and just accept that my writing will be crap if I'm in this mood but that its better than nothing, I'm instead bitching on my blog in an effort to prevent a layer of dust forming on it.

Is it working?

...

Hell if I know. Guess we'll find out in a day or two if I get this stupid duel up.