I feel like I'm in a swirl of feelings and circumstances that don't have a lot of room for one another. On the one hand, I am swamped in real life generally, mostly because I am finally getting opportunities to do things and saying "no" to those feels like a betrayal of the nearly forty years I spent, you know, NOT getting to do the things. (Or really, rather, building towards those things or not getting to do them enough, etc.)

So I'm working and I have friends I don't see as much as I ought and I have theater and podcast recordings and skating lessons and all that. At the same time, having attended Left Coast Sherlock Symposium and then this past weekend KiScon, I want to get caught up in fandom again and just don't know how. I don't know where it is and when I do find pockets of it they seem unsuitable or unnavigable. I want to write but I feel I have forgotten how to produce, or maybe I've forgotten how to create time in my life where production of that sort is possible.

I've also got an ex-coworker texting me her feelings about Spike since she's watching Buffy for the first time, so hello again Spike feelings.

So yeah. I still have all these thoughts and feelings flowing around and through me, and I don't know what to do with them because not only are they diffuse they are undirected and in addition, the logistics of my daily life are, you know. Compromised, time-wise.

I don't know why I'm posting all of this here, except to try to kickstart myself into figuring this out. If I want to write this fic about Kirk, I should do it. If I want to be involved in fandom, I should find it and stop whining about it not being what I want. It's just hard to know where to start when it feels like "starting over" in an arena that used to feel so organic and natural.

Well, it's only been, what? Five years?

I miss fandom. I miss discussing things I love (and don't) in a somewhat civilized way. I miss creating stuff to share. I miss all of it, and I keep trying to get onto tumblr and keep realizing it's not giving me the interaction I want.

This won't, either, but if anyone's out there listening and knows where anything's happening, would you let me know you're still alive?

I an effort to find a smaller "challenge" to get me writing, I was considering Yuletide. But now that Phantom's off the list again, I'm not sure what I have to offer! My repertoire is so limited, I wanted to have something I was solid in on my list.

In other news, I know I've been very quiet. Sort of overwhelmed by everything, and I keep meaning to catch up and to update but it's been easier to go watch movies. I hope everyone's okay and enjoying the autumn.

[Perhaps inappropriate, during the three weeks thing, but if I'm mirroring...]

By which candesgirl means "drabbles, ficlets, wordy odes to an age old past time, it's all welcome with open arms, er, legs...one arm?" Here's her master(bation) list so far, and for my own records, here are two I've written. One today, special for the party, and one long ago. Both in the voyeurism!wank subcategory.

Title: Infidel
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera (Leroux)
Rating: R
Summary: Who watches the watchers? The Persian learns something about his quarry, and himself.

Title: The Observer Effect
Pairing: Shatner/Nimoy
Rating: R
Words: ~1800
Summary: "I had always assumed that you were aware of every pair of eyes on you, that every movement was calculated."

Guys, I have a problem. It's not even an interesting/original problem. It might even be sort of shameful in its very pedestrianness. But I find myself unable to think about anything but Captain Kirk right now. The Shatner One. Which means I should probably go to sleep or something. Or stop watching two episodes a day? Never that!

So here's the thing. TOS fic has been around for a long time, as we all know. I have no idea how/where to dive into it, and I particularly want fic that's germane to the series. Not because I hate the movie but because I want, you know, the fic where Kirk takes the Venus drugs or has more adventures with evil!-or-robot!Kirk or whatever. You know. Slash is good too. Whatever.

So any of you who know what I'm saying, where do I start? I assume there are good rec lists and stuff. This isn't even nearly my first bout with Kirk-love, I've just been too intimidated before. And I'm far too intimidated to write my own fic.

Disclaimer: Yes, yes, Kirk-love is shameful and all that and I realize Spock is awesomesauce. But as I've explained before, Spock is the guy I'm used to loving. Kirk is the one that's so wholly unexpected I can't really get over it. And so need fic.

I am obsessed with Orson Welles.

This is not news to any of you, I suspect, since I talk of little else lately except for the odd foray into Peter Pan outfits. Nor do I think it will soon pass, and you will be inundated with more reviews as I attempt to watch his entire body of work. But I don't bring him up to talk about him in particular, today, but about obsession.

See, it's been ages--it feels like years--since anything's hit me this hard. When I was a teenager, and through college, certain things would grab hold of me and not let go. Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera, T.E. Lawrence, The X-Files, all of them had their day(s) and all of them were certain to elevate my heart rate on a regular basis. Under these conditions I was most likely insufferable, but I also wrote a lot. Obsession, for me, is akin to that gut-level yearning that also spurred my writing in previous years, the stories I just had to get out and would work on incessantly until they were done, thinking of little else. They were never that long, and compared to some of you my output, even at its highest, was much less. These stories were not necessarily related to my current obsession (unless it was Phantom), but the feeling was similar.

That's part of the reason that my constant rumination on Orson makes me happy--I'd missed that feeling. I've missed being absorbed by something, probably because it's one of the few situations in which I feel at all passionate. I think I'm fairly dynamic in real life. I'm not a stoic. But that's just personality, and here I'm talking about the sort of thing that dominates my thoughts and proves to me that I'm still reachable.

This is most likely a little bit unhealthy. After all, there are "better" things to be passionate about--real world situations, real people, relationships. And this sort of passion is inward-directed, reachable only by me and then constantly spilling forth whether my companion wants to hear it or not. In this instance, I am lucky in that Mr. Daroga seems to feel the same and tkp at least finds him adorable and seems to be amused by the fact of my obsession in itself. (No, he's not my type at all, physically; but as I told her last night only half-joking, I feel this is good for me and represents, er, an expansion of my taste.) But in general, unless you are part of a cult or spend a tremendous amount of time online to the exclusion of your everyday activities, fanatical obsession is a solitary thing. Even when it's shared, the peculiar overflow of excitement is difficult to confer on another, and more often than not serves more as a feedback loop for one's own obsession.

But for whatever reason, and I believe I've mentioned this before, I was nostalgic for those days of all-consuming interest. I'd thought it lost in the face of "real life": marriage, pet parenting, full-time employment and the like. I just didn't have the time or energy to obsess. I was doing more important things. Now I feel that way again, and I want to prolong it and draw it out and revel in it. Why? Is it like the person who keeps starting and leaving relationships, so they can get that new love high over and over? The objects of my obsession always stay close, even when the fire dies down. I tried to jump-start my Phantom thing again, by coming back online and getting involved. I have succeeded primarily in addiction to a cracktastic role-play forum--perhaps that's another obsession, or perhaps it just sparked this one. Perhaps it was quitting anti-depressants that did it.

Whatever the reason, what I hope is that this marks a return to some of my other pursuits--namely, obsessive writing. Back then, my stories were not brilliant, but at least I was telling them. And the compulsion to tell them overcame any laziness or fear of failure or whatever else is stopping me now. I'm not sure I should be so delighted by my own insular fannishness, but I am.

What about you? Do you have an obsessive personality? Did you once and, like me, leave it with some part of your life as you moved on? Or are you astonished that I'm even remarking upon it because it's just part of life? What have you been obsessed with? And that strange feeling--do you like it? Or is it a barrier between you and "real" life?

And isn't Orson amazing?

There's still time to get your question in!

I should have realized that I have no idea what the popular opinions are about these things.

for androidlovesong:
Doctor Who
*I adore Martha but don't hate Rose and don't understand why we all can't just get along.
*I hate Torchwood because I can't stand Barrowman's acting/delivery and because it's "adult" in the most juvenile way possible and also because no one's actions in S1 (which is all I've seen so far) are motivated by anything. This is not the good crack, kids. (Though Sarah Jane Adventures totally is!)
*I really dislike the Eighth Doctor, though I love Paul McGann in other things.
*I don't know if this is unpopular, but Lis Sladen looks better now than she did before.
*I don't watch enough Old Who anymore and am mostly working off vague memories of my childhood watching experiences. This makes me unpopular to me.


for deathmask_revel
Phantom of the Opera
*Julian Sands is hot.
*Erik/Christine should explore the deep problems of the characters and their relationship.
*ALW is a hack.
*There should be more crack!fic.
*Movie!fic is totally okay if the author deals with the characters rationally and not like the movie did (in my opinion).
*Gaston Leroux was not a genius. He wrote a book that tapped into something, which makes it interesting and important. It is not a "work of art." It's pretty awesome, though. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

for metalmyersjason:
Phantom of the Opera: Erik, Raoul, Daroga, Christine
This is a difficult category because there are so many (at least 2) camps of fandom. Most of my opinons would offend one or the other but not both.

*Erik: Would make a terrible husband and is wrong when he says that "if you loved me, I'd be as gentle as a lamb." It worked to let them go, but in the long run he's still who he is--and Christine would have learned that, had she stayed.
*Raoul: Not a fop, because the Raoul I know is brave, serious, not an inordinately snappy dresser and, most importantly, he is young. I think everything that might make Raoul unpopular could be fixed by a little maturity, which is why I don't understand Raoul bashing. We were all 20/1 once, weren't we? How rational were you?
*The Daroga: Has an uneasy relationship with his foreignness. He has rejected some aspects of his former life, but keeps the peaked cap. My daroga shaves, both as a sign of his uncertainty about his heritage and to differentiate himself from the prevailing styles of the time. His fascination with Erik contains both contempt and an unacknowledged envy that Erik has reached beyond society to do as he pleases.
*Christine: Is blonde unless there's a good reason for her not to be. She was not served well by her upbringing in Daddy Daae's fantasy world, but the story of Phantom is as much a story of her growing up as it is about anything else.


Phantom of the Paradise: Swan, Phoenix, Winslow Leach, The Juicy Fruits, Beef
I'm not sure what the prevailing opinions here are.
*Phoenix is not such an innocent; or at least, her easy defeat by Swan implies weakness of character.
*Winslow's Phantom persona is everything he wished he could be as a gawky, put upon teenager.
*Harold is my favorite Juicy Fruit ("Super Like You").
*Beef was just doing his job.


Hellboy
I have never had any exposure to this, frankly because of the name, which I find very silly.


for stefanie_bean:
Phantom of the Opera: Philippe de Chagny
Leroux goes to great pains to make us feel Philippe is a typical (almost admirable?) man of the world and takes good care of Raoul, but in his actions and expressions he seems a little rough. I'm not sure he understands Raoul at all, or knows how to help him. Philippe is one of the densest (as in, least imaginative and most wrong-headed) characters in the book, and as written (or sketched, really) I care about him very little.

That's not really an unpopular opinion, since no one expresses an opinion about Philippe. You want one?

I like Philippe from the Charles Dance miniseries. I like what they do with him. AND HIS HAIR.


for agentdanak:
X-Files: Scully
Is it "unpopular" that she's my favorite of the two? Or maybe that I don't put "ist" after one of their names? She's the one I relate to, despite the fact that when I started watching I was sort of All About Mulder's pain and hotness. Oh, but I have no interest in her as a mother, or her desire for motherhood, which may be because I have none but I also think was unecessary to the show and what I wanted from Scully's development.

And I don't care whether she dyes her hair or not.

I thought you'd be interested in reading each other's requests, so here are the answers. Anyone else?

vervassal - Christine/no one ("Think she could do it?")
( 1 )

inlaterdays - Mulder/Krycek
( 2 )

dangerousdame - Sherlock Holmes/Irene Adler ("outside the verse")
( 3 )

vampire_cookies - Buffy/Faith ("I personally find them kind of hot, but in
the grand scale of "plausibility," does it make sense to you?")
( 4 )

metalmyersjason - Erik/Nadir
( 5 )

girlflesh - Erik/V
( 6 )

I ship Doctor/Martha.

Oh my god.

It was that last two-parter that did it; she's so capable, so awesome, so in love and so bound for disappointment (again and again). Her feelings don't make her useless. I wish I could make a thoughtful review, but I don't feel like it and I just really loved it. And Martha's situation just *got* me.

I ship them in the way I shipped Mulder and Scully--I yearn for it but I don't want them together in canon, because that would probably ruin it. I'm content with fannish satisfaction of these urges. But I'm sure I never thought I'd care even that much.