entirely ruined her disposition with books

My continuing question: why why why do people do remakes of good movies? Why don't they do remakes of movies with good premises that didn't quite land?

Not that it's not a good thing when you have two good versions of a film--I, for one, think the original Parent Trap and the remake are both delightful and I am glad they both exist. But in general, it seems like it would be a better use of everyone's time and money to remake a didn't-quite-land film than one that is solid.

So! Today I would like to hear about films or TV shows you think should be remade. Not spinoffs or sequels, but a true remake. (And not something, like, Pride and Prejudice or A Christmas Carol, where various adaptations are part of the point--I'll ask about that another day. Films you think can be remade over and over.)

I'll start: Ella Enchanted. I adore that book so much and the movie is...well, I know some people enjoy it, but I think it's terrible in almost every single way. It doesn't retain anything I love about the book, which I think would make a fantastic movie if done right.


And here's one that I think works pretty well in its original form, but could be better: The Lady Vanishes. It has my favorite suspense premise of all time: While travelling in continental Europe, a rich young playgirl realizes that an elderly lady seems to have disappeared from the train, reads the IMDB summary, but that's understating it. The train has not stopped--the woman cannot possibly have gotten off. And no one else believes our playgirl heroine! She's being gaslit by everyone around her!

I loooove this premise, and there are things I really like about the original Hitchcock film, but I think it gets bogged down by a beginning that's totally unnecessary. This could be the greatest thriller of all time if it was just done right!

Now, I do not think that if Hollywood made a remake of this film right now, it would be any good. But imagine if it had been made in the era of the 90s that gave us The Fugitive and Speed and action/suspense films of that caliber. Or if it were made as a labor of love by some indie team who made sure the script was perfect? I dream of such a film.


And now I want to hear from y'all!

I was thinking earlier this week about Bones from ST: TOS and how close he comes to being a favorite character of mine. I think DeForest Kelley is great in the role, and I like a curmudgeon!

But omg, I hate how he's constantly space!racist to Spock, who is, always, my number one priority! Why??? did the writers do this??? It keeps me from loving Bones completely and it also keeps me from OT3-ing him with Spock and Kirk. I can imagine a world in which Bones is still gruff and grumpy and skeptical but not a bigot against Vulcans, and in that world, I would adore him! In that world, that OT3 would be one of my all-time ships! But we, alas, do not live in that world!

I'm also thinking of Becky Chambers, whose worldbuilding I find so very, very fun and who is a very good writer who actually writes alien main character! I feel like, on paper, she is a writer who I should absolutely adore, and yet her books are lacking something to make me love her. I told Jessica it was because they're lacking the messiness of real life, and I do think that's part of it, though there's something else I can't quite put my finger on.

So tell me about your near-misses. Is there something out there--a character, a show, a book, a ship, whatever--that you could have loved wholeheartedly if just one small thing had been done differently?

Stolen from Tumblr: Unrecommend me a book! Tell me something I definitely should not read for whatever reason!

This conversation is inspired by the fact that I got my oil changed this morning and I spent the waiting time rereading my arranged-marriage-and-also-domestic-abuse-and-sibling-solidarity fic, and you know what? It's good! I wrote it for me, because it was what I wanted to read, and I did what I wanted to with it.

I never find rereading my own fic quite as enjoyable as reading really really good fic by someone else, because I know all the beats and the reasons why and everything. But it's still so much more enjoyable than most other kinds of fic because I can cater to my own id and my own desires. Very few other writes ever write exactly what I want, you know?

In addition to my CQL fic, I really enjoy revisiting my Vast of Night fic and my Seraphina fic and my White Christmas (2011) fic and my Raven Cycle fic. I enjoy them so much every time!

Interestingly, that CQL fic and the Raven Cycle ones are two of the most popular fics I've ever written, while almost no one has ever read my Seraphina fic and yet I don't care because I love it. The White Christmas and Vast of Night ones have found a small but very enthusiastic audience, which is gratifying. I love creating stuff that other people love!

So now please tell me about a fanwork--a fic or a vid or a graphic or a piece of meta or something--that you created that you still get pleasure out of when you revisit it.

As we all know, Robin McKinley is one of my favorite writers, though she hasn't published anything in ten years. She lost her beloved husband in 2015 and then was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, so I had kind of trained myself to not expect another book from her. But I still check her blog now and then in hopes of receiving some good news. She mostly posts about her struggles with technology, what her dogs are up to, and other such domestic issues (which is fitting for a writer who has always cared more than is typical about the domestic).

But today, buried in the depths of a typical ramble post (no wonder she's one of my favorite writers--the inside of her head looks very much like the inside of mine!), she revealed that she has sent a draft of her latest book to her agent! Of course, that's a very early step in the process--if this book does get published, it'll probably not be for another year or two. But still, it's decided progress, and I am so excited! And intrigued--it's not a fantasy novel! It's set in 1969! I have no idea what it's actually about!

But as soon as it is available for pre-order, I will pre-order it. In all her years of writing, she's let me down only two times (Pegasus, which was...fine, I guess, and Dragonhaven, which I am determined to actually get into at some point but have never managed to do so).

She's one of very, very few writers who are an automatic buy for me. As I've mentioned before, I don't tend to buy books until after I read them and know that I love them and want to make them part of my collection. But I buy hers sight-unseen.

I will also buy anything Megan Whalen Turner puts out, and even though she's only published three books, Susanna Clarke has become another automatic-buy for me.

I think they're the only three, though there are a lot of writers who are automatic-put-it-on-hold-at-the-library-regardless-of-what-it's-about for me (Frances Hardinge, Barbara Hambly, Tana French, Joanna Bourne, etc.).

I would love to hear about which creators are an automatic-buy for you. Writers, of course, but if there's, say, a musical artist you feel that way about or whatever, please share that too!

Sometimes terrible people make great things. This is disconcerting! But also a part of life!

There are lots of examples. The one that comes to mind as applying to the most people is the creator of Harry Potter, who is a truly hateful and bigoted person, but who created something that brought a lot of people joy.

I'm curious about a) what creations you love from creators you hate and b) how you think about them.

There's a spectrum of feelings about the creators. For instance, I think Aaron Sorkin is an asshole and he irritates the heck out of me, but also I love The West Wing and many of the films whose screenplays he wrote. But the dissonance isn't that intense because I don't know that I think he's a bad person, just a really privileged and full of himself white dude who isn't great at looking at things from others' perspectives.

Further along the spectrum towards reprehensibility is our old friend Joss Whedon. I think he's pretty terrible! I judge him a lot for how he treated the women who worked for him! He was clearly a bad husband! But boy do I ever love Buffy Summers and her universe. He hasn't really made anything since the early 2000s that I actually care about, so it's relatively easy for me to just ignore his existence and instead continue to love Buffy and Dawn and Cordy and Dru and whoever.

On the far end of the spectrum is Orson Scott Card, who is a truly terrible and dangerous person. Wow, he's awful! And yet, he wrote Speaker for the Dead, which is a book that speaks deeply to me about empathy and our common humanity. (I also liked Ender's Game a lot as a kid, though I think I've outgrown it as an adult.) I will literally never understand how he was able to write something so deeply moving and then also be...himself. I just remind myself that sometimes the art is greater than the artist and that this is mysterious and a gift.

I'm pretty easily able to separate out of my feelings about these creators from their works. It's harder with actors, where you see their faces--for instance, I can't watch the Mia Wasikowska version of Jane Eyre no matter how beautiful it is, because I can't handle watching the face of a man who beats women. Like, no thank you!--so there are absolutely actors whose work I simply will not watch.

And I am very happy to draw a hard line for myself about not giving money to people who are terrible. I've seen several Polanski films, for instance, but always borrowed from the library. I would never, ever, ever give that many a dime. Ever. Nor would I ever pay for anything by Card. I personally feel that for art that I want to encounter but don't want to support the creator, I can just pirate the hell out of it and feel no guilt whatsoever. And if the creator is long dead, then it doesn't matter!

A more complicated question is the question of public engagement with the works of someone hateful. I find it easy to not interact with Harry Potter in any way anymore because, while I liked it, it never meant as much to me as it does to other people. But there's a lot of conversation in fandom about whether it's okay to continue to participate in Harry Potter fandom now that we know who She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named truly is.

I don't know the answer! When I hear people argue, "You shouldn't engage with Harry Potter stuff at all because doing so promotes She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's brand and gives her more power," I think, "Yeah, that seems correct." But then when other people argue, "The creation is always greater than the creator, and fans have taken this world and made it their own and that community's love and time have made it into something that cannot be tarnished by its origins," I also think, "Yeah, that seems correct." So as long as people are defending Her or giving her any money, I don't judge how people choose to engage or not with Harry Potter. I leave that to others' consciences.

I've been lucky so far in that no piece of art that is deeply a part of me has origins from the really terrible end of the spectrum, so I haven't had to really grapple with anything thorny in the way that Harry Potter or Big Bang fans have. But I know it's just a matter of time before I find out that one of my most beloved and formative pieces of art was created by someone who is actually, objectively a terrible influence on the world, so I think about it quite a lot even now.

So I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts about how they deal with these questions. Tell me about a creator you can't stand who made something you love! Tell me about how you think about that! Tell me what decisions you've made about how to engage with that kind of art! Anything at all!

Just be respectful that other people draw moral lines in different places than you do and that these things are complicated and almost never black-and-white.

I was in a discussion the other day on Mastodon with sophia_sol and some other people about language.

Soph was pointing out that they're hearing and seeing a lot of people using the pronoun "I" instead of "me" in situations like, "They gave it to Mary and I." Which is, from a prescriptivist perspective, wrong! And it sounds wrong to my ears. But I hear people using it all the time (I would say especially in the southern US), to the point that I think we're somewhere on the slope that leads to it being a widely accepted alternate use.

We ended up talking about how I am now a descriptivist (I care about how language is actually used by actual people to communicate with other actual people) and not a prescriptivist (I no longer care much about what's in the grammar books or what is technically correct), but there's a big caveat to that. What I care about is can your audience understand you? The more narrow and niche your audience is, the more out there you can be with your grammar and syntax. The wider, more diverse, and less personal your audience is, the more you need to at least try to hew towards the standard rules. So there's a huge difference in what I say to friends on Tumblr (I love to speak internet! It makes me happy!) and how I would communicate the exact same thing if I was, say, writing a letter to the editor.

Right now, we're in transition times where people still can use literally...er, literally and you can mostly tell whether someone is by tone, context, etc. We're also at the beginning of that transition period with the use of "me" in plural forms in situations like objects of prepositions, etc. People will still keep pushing back against that, but imo, once I start to notice something, it's probably too late to turn that train back around. Because of inertia, it'll keep chugging in the same direction despite all the grammarians running after it telling it to turn around. *sigh* The way words are used always trumps the way words are supposed to be used. (And of course there's loads of class and race stuff going on in all of this that makes it all complicated, but that's the subject of another post.)

Still, just because I think it's more useful to talk about what language does than what language should be doesn't mean I don't have opinions! There are language shifts that I can't do anything about, but that I still dislike. (And others that I like--I think we're finally reaching the point where the singular they is being more widely accepting, which is great since we've only been using it for centuries and centuries!)

So I was thinking about which grammar or words that have changed and which ones bother me the most. My selection for biggest loss: literally, which I see used as an intensifier ("It was literally so cold outside!" and even--in extreme cases--like, "It was literally a million degrees outside!" when they mean...figuratively) to the extent that I think the word's literal meaning is totally lost (thankfully, the adjectival form seems okay). Which I think is a big loss, because in a world of increasing lies and misinformation, we really need words that emphasize veracity and reality.

What shifts in language are you seeing? How do you feel about them?

I was talking with dollsome  yesterday about mask-wearing and general Covid anxiety, and I want to expand that conversation because I'm interested in other people's povs.

I see people (mostly my online friends tbh--I have not heard anyone say this in real life, which could just be reflective of the fact that I live in a red state or it could be that I have not signaled that I am open to hearing these things) asking, "Why is everyone acting like the pandemic is over? Why aren't they wearing masks? Why aren't they scared?"

And I think this raises an important distinction between perspectives on this topic, and I want to explore it from my own perspective.

I still wear masks in indoor public places. I put one on when I go to the grocery store, when I went to a play last month, and definitely always when I'm in an airport or plane.

But I really don't do that because I personally feel anxiety about catching Covid. I wear masks because I have seen so many immune-compromised people online essentially begging people to do so. They are still so scared and they feel like no one cares about them. And I want to make sure they live in a safer world and also I want them to know that I care about them. That is why I still wear masks.*

But if I wasn't hearing those voices? I would not be wearing one.

Because I don't feel the anxiety. I know intellectually that the pandemic is ongoing. But it feels over for me. Maybe this is just my own foolishness and immaturity. But I think it's actually because I'm not used to my safety being on the line.

I have had a myriad of tiny-to-medium-sized health concerns in my life (everything from stitches to IBS to clinical depression). I've known physical pain and discomfort and I've sure as hell known mental pain and discomfort. But never once has my life been on the line. When I worry about health concerns, I worry about pain, about it getting worse, etc. But I have never once felt the kind of existential fear that someone whose life is in jeopardy feels. I don't worry about dying.+ Nor have I felt the kind of everyday knowledge that people with chronic pain carry around where every action is freighted with consequences for the future (of the "If I do this today, I will literally not be able to get out of bed tomorrow" variety). I just don't have those experiences.

And I think most people don't. Most of us go through life taking our health more or less for granted. Now, this comes from a place of enormous privilege, I know that. Privilege that could disappear for anyone in seconds and without warning. But while you're operating within that privilege, I think it's really hard to make yourself feel the danger that a subset of the population feels daily.

I don't feel it. But I interact online with people who do feel it, and I care about them, and so I realize that my perspective is skewed. So I choose to wear a mask.

But if I weren't interacting with those people? Or if I was, but they weren't saying these things because they didn't feel they could trust me? I think I would think people who are still wearing masks who aren't immuno-compromised themselves are being alarmist and I would roll my eyes at them.

And I think that's where the majority of people are at. I think that is one of the two big reasons people (at least in the US) aren't wearing masks anymore and are acting like the pandemic is over. (The other is the politicization of the issue, and the ugly defiance that a lot of right-wing people feel about the whole topic. But left-wing people aren't wearing masks either, so it's clearly not the only factor.)

And I have to admit, there is a part of me that grumbles when I put on my mask. "What, am I going to have to do this forever? Do we all just have to do this for the rest of humanity's existence because of the people who are immuno-compromised?"

Which I realize is an ugly reaction. I'm actively fighting it. I still decide to put on the mask. But if even I, who am constantly reminded that people still want us to wear masks, still feel this way, it doesn't surprise me that other people might be even more careless or callous about the issue.



*There are exceptions to this. I think I will always wear masks for the rest of my life on planes/in airports/in public transit, because it's just so easy to catch any kind of contagion there. And I will also wear them when I personally have a cold or something that makes me all sneezy and gross, just because I don't want to give it to someone else!

+Unless I'm catastrophizing, but that's a different thing related to my anxiety/depression.

I know I've talked here before about my belief that the perfect sweet spot for a fandom is a canon that is really emotionally resonant and with good characterization, but that is...messy, in one way or another. That prompts you to fill in gaps, reconcile things, flesh things out, etc. That just begs you to leave your fingerprints all over it.

I talked then about how much of prestige television is just too good for fandom. Like, its texture is so smooth that there are no pores for my fannish feelings to cling to.

When you think of the Great Fandoms of Western Media History, aren't they all shows/books/movies that are very good but messy? Stars War and Trek, The X-Files, Buffyverse, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Supernatural, even Lord of the Rings (in its own way) are so messy compared to the kind of television that we admire and even love but that doesn't spark fandoms.

Obviously all of those fandoms are sff, so there's also the element of worldbuilding to draw a fan in, which I think is really important but not required in a canon-that-spawns-fandom. It doesn't have to be the case. Something like The West Wing got way more fannish activity than, say, The Wire or The Sopranos. And The West Wing is, objectively, much messier than the latter two.

On the back of these ponderings, I am wondering if other people find this true and, if so, what media you absolutely love but have no interest in exploring fannishly.

For instance, I love Black Sails. SO GOOD. But I have no desire to read fic for it, for some reason. I can theoretically recognize that there's plenty to be explored in fic. But I just find the show satisfying enough that I don't need anything else. (Otoh, I do love good meta for it!)

I wonder whether I also feel intimidated by the craft behind the show--is it so well done that I don't feel capable of adding to it in any way? I have to ponder this more.




So yeah: my question today is: what media do you love deeply but have no fannish (in the transformative works sense) engagement with?

I've been seeing a lot of discussion on my flist reading page about fannish exchanges and people having really terrible experiences with them and it makes me so sad! Apparently there are a bunch of people out there with really terrible behavior who are ruining exchanges for other people, enough so that fans avoid specific exchanges or even exchanges in general even though they enjoy them in theory.


I myself have never had those kinds of negative experiences with exchanges. I have often received fic that was kind of meh, but it doesn't bother me much--I am extraordinarily picky about fic anyway, so it's no surprise that sometimes people don't write stuff that knocks my socks off!--but I have always tried to be gracious when I comment: to thank them for writing for me, to find a few things in the fic that I genuinely do love. I think I have done a competent job with this. I always want to make my writer feel appreciated because I genuinely love the gift economy so much! I love that someone else loves this fandom I love enough to write for it! There's so much to celebrate even if the fic didn't work for me!

I remember when I first started participating in exchanges lo these many years ago (2009ish? Maybe?), I was disappointed in the fics I received and I was (inwardly!) like, "Exchanges are a disappointment!"

But somehow I managed to shift my focus from receiving to writing and started to view exchanges primarily as mechanisms that push me to write things I would not otherwise write. Once I started looking at it that way, all my disappointment evaporated, and I still just flat-out enjoy exchanges.


But after hearing some of y'all's experiences, I don't blame you for your negative feelings about exchanges! Y'all have dealt with some crap!


I am interested in knowing whether any of you think there are some administrative things that could cut down on this kind of bad behavior. Are there things that those running the exchange could do differently that would make a difference?

Or is this, to your mind, an entirely attitude-based problem, just a case of people being jerks? I am genuinely interested in your thoughts about this!

Alternately, you can complain here about bad exchange behavior or tell me about how much you love exchanges or a specific great experience you've had with one!


I myself love them--I just really, really love how I always end up writing something I never would have written under my own steam. I've written some of my very favorite pieces for exchanges! Even some that didn't get much attention comment-wise just make me so happy! (For instance, my Seraphina fic has never had a wide readership, but I love that fic! I'm so glad I wrote it!)