The Massie Thread

[chero]

Yeah, I know...what's this big idea of yours anyway, Kanero? You've succeeded in dragging Mace down to the galley when he's not hungry or particularly interested in joining everyone else for a celebration - you have my attention, so what's the idea?

I live on the element of surprise, Massiefan. In fact, I'm rather embarrassed that you are looking forward to the two plans I have in mind for the RPG. They probably will make you scratch your head or kick me in the groin. Either way, it depends on how both parties (Massie and Capsie) handle the situation in whether or not it is a good thing... well, for my second plan anyways. My first plan is for entertainment purposes, a "breather" from the Mapsie drama if you will.

[massiefan]

Oh, squee. Anything for a laugh. If you wanna keep your shipping plans to yourself, chero, I can respect that...

...S'gonna be bl[o]ody hard to wait, though...

[brittany]

...hmmm, I don't even know this!

[kaliszewski]

... and me? I don't know nothin' 'bout nothin'. Par for the course. Think I'll mosey over to the RPG and let Trey have his say regarding Who Shall Be the Chef Supreme....

[massiefan]

Well, Mace just requested permission to nick off, to avoid the booze and to get some sleep, so I'm hoping none of this depends on him sticking around.

Then again, Chero's in control of whether he stays or goes - she's the Captain here - so if Kaneda makes him stay, I guess he stays.

Or not. I mean, Mace has always struck me as the type of person who, when instructed to do something against their will, usually does their very best to do the complete opposite as soon as their superior's back is turned. Naturally, that wouldn't have happened on the outward journey - too much at risk - but now, with the pressure taken away...who knows? I guess there's a reason Mace left the Air Force...

[chero]

I'd prefer him to stay although it might require him to listen to Capa's announcement. On the other hand, he will witness the start of a new Kaneda... and a new Harvey. (Is that enough hints now?)

Also, in general, I think everyone should be present at the first meal after they completed the mission. Even though the outward journey should be stress-free (especially when they break through the Dead Zone), they are all still a team. Mace should respect that and continue to act like a teammate (i.e. participating in social events [that's also a polite thing to do, too]). Keep in mind that nobody knows about Mace's encounter with drinks besides Cassie. I hope you are not confusing innocent ignorance with intentional ignorance. Kaneda really wants to learn about Mace's conflict and he can't do that if Mace keeps locking everyone out. Mace right now is reminding me of the Harvey in the movie where secret emotional attachments can lead to self-destruction and jeopardy of standard mission procedure. Whether it is landing on Mars or returning to Earth, it is still a mission. Mace has eaten enough leftovers, hasn't he?

Also: whether he was recruited or if he applied to the space program, my opinion is that Mace was the best of the best (this includes discipline, loyalty, skills, etc). Any outright breaking of the rules seems OOC when it comes to Mace if this is true. In any case, Kaneda will have a speech at the end. I'd hate to alter it if Mace leaves.

[massiefan]

Well, don't worry, he's sticking around for the announcement. And I don't doubt that Mace's military discipline has slipped - he hasn't been under Air Force jurisdiction for a year and a half now. But, he still obeys orders - he came to dinner, after all.

I don't think there's much chance of Mace revealing what happened between him and Cassie to Kaneda, not yet anyway. At the moment, he's gonna try and stand back for a while, focus on his machinery, put the job first. He knows he's been putting his emotions before the job - that's the reason he got mad at his reflection in the coolant tank, and so his main task now is to get his professionalism back.

And we don't strictly know if I'm writing OOC - we never had a return journey in the film, so its harder to predict character behaviour, particularly when everyone has been influenced by so much that happened in the RPG that never happened in the movie ie Pinbacker's civility, the Capsie proposal etc.

I'll look over Mace again - at the moment, everything should be playing out ok. He's still at dinner, and he's not gonna explode during the Capsie proposal. He's keeping himself under control, and is a little unhappy at the moment because he KNOWS that his recent behaviour is far from what he thinks it should be.
I'm sure he'll get back on track - I like exploring characters in different emotional states, and this is but one of them.

Anyways, gotta go beat the crp out of my own punching bag. Laters!

[kaliszewski]

massiefan said:

Finally, as for writing a Massie fic? We went over this in the RPG. I. Can't. Write. Anything. Decent.

...Ever. That's why I join RPGs - to practise. Doesn't seem to be working, though...at least not where Mace and Cass are concerned. *makes a face at her various half-finished Massie fics that should be deleted to the devilish pit from whence they came*

A couple of shiraz-fueled thoughts:

I don't think that RPGs are the place to practice for solo writing. Granted, this is my first RPG online (I've done oral roleplays in the past), but what I'm getting from the "Sunshine" RPG is this: It's teaching me how to interact with and respond to others in writing (which is nice), and it's challenging me to write on the fly-- a sort of verbal improvisational drama (also pretty cool).

But it's not "mine." No matter how many characters I hog, no matter how verbosely I post (you know, those paragraphs that are like a gentle tap to the skull with a thirty-pound sledgehammer), it's still a group effort. Which is also fine, as far as that goes. Teamwork is good.

But in an RPG, everything is shared. Themes, plotlines, all that stuff. Solo writing is, kinda by definition and definitely by comparison, a gloriously selfish activity. When I write a fic, it's MINE. All mine. How, you might (or might not) wonder, does the Shirazzed One do it...?

1. I identify my audience. Not to sound absolutely like a comp teacher, but I always have a sense of looking someone in the eye and saying, "Let me tell you a story." when I start a fic. (Whether my intended victim-- erm, audience-- sidles away and makes a dash for the door when I'm not looking is another matter entirely.)

2. I cook up a hook. It's not enough to say "Cassie and Mace get it on." (or, of course, in my case, "Cassie and Capa get it on."). That's a function, not a story. You need a hook. Maybe because I'm shallower than I ought to admit, I tend to veer away from Big Themes for Big Themes' Sake. Life, death, sacrifice: not on their own, thanks. For me, it's all about the characters-- the themes can pop up as they will (or won't). (Hell, okay, I'll say it: I think themes are almost always incidental in fiction. "Hey, Cormac McCarthy, did you mean for The Crossing to be a profound rumination on loneliness, loss, and redemption?"/"Uh, sure, my faithful reader!" Uh huh.) Here are the five types of hooks I've used so far:

a. The mystery statement (often as plucked from midair). One little mystery statement-- "My name is Pilot"-- led to "Pod," "Flare," and "Split." Who the hell was Pilot? I just had to find out....

b. The "Oh, yeah?" "Sleepers" was a response to Pinbacker's line "Nothing survives...." "Oh, yeah, pal?" I said. "Try coc[k]roaches. Those little bastards won't even blink when the sun goes out. If they can blink, that is. You know what I mean." This led to Searle's nightmare about the human-coc[k]roach hybrids; the story grew outward from there.

c. The "What if?" What if "Aliens"-era James Cameron had written and directed the sequel to "28 Days Later"? We'd have "North Sea." What if "Red Eye" had been done as one of those cheesy ABC Movies of the Week back in the seventies, with a bonus-cheesy "Night Gallery" horror twist? Why, we'd have the creatively titled "Red Eyes."

d. The amazingly bad joke. "Finish it up, Adam and Eve. I'm on my way back from lunch." was the punchline to my Capsie gettin'-it-ON fic, "Gardening." The line came first; the story grew backward from it.

e. Misdirection. To write my Kanezon fic "Absence," I spotlighted Cassie and Capa. Their strengthening relationship contrasts with (and illustrates, almost like a photographic negative) Corazon's crumbling marriage. Like architecture, I guess, or negative shapes in art: it's all about the emptiness, the shape of the space, not the structure around it.

A cautionary statement: I won't start a story unless I know how it's gonna end. Beginnings just happen; knowing how the thing will turn out is a necessity for me. Paranoid? Possibly. Anal? Likely. But I need to know where I'm going. Story-wise, at least.

One last thing: Don't fight it. When a story pops up and demands writing-down, you'll know. 'Cause it'll feel like your head's gonna bust wide open if you DON'T write it down. That's why I can't for the life of me understand the idea behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Maybe it's because I got through college with a 1938 Royal Supreme typewriter, pens, stacks of foolscap, and about a hundred gallons of Wite-Out (with the Wite-Out highs-- and headaches-- that came with 'em), but come on: Thirty days of freewriting? Why? I mean, if there's a story in your head, you'll just start writing it, right? Whenever, wherever. Waiting for that story to come a-knocking: that's the tricky part. Be patient. When that sucker hits, it'll hit.

Yep, it'll hit. Usually when you're in the shower or five miles from the nearest writing utensil, or both. Don't sit around waiting for a story. Get out and take a walk. Take your mind off it. Then stand there and think, "CRAP. Why didn't I bring a notebook?" when the little S.O.B. catches up to you.



(Thanks for letting me rant away here, massiefan.)

[Starry_MelC]

And that my friend, is your first class of fanfic-writing by Kali. Please pass up your assignment by next lesson. Thank you...

I love the misdirection! The problem with me not being able to write a fanfic is because I have absolutely no idea where I'm going and how it's going to end. So I end up dragging soo much til I give up entirely.

"Finish it up, Adam and Eve. I'm on my way back from lunch."

Gosh, I love that quote! Very Corazon...

massiefan, I really believe you can be a GREAT massie fanfic writer!

[massiefan]

Cheers Mel, and welcome back, by the way. Glad to see you survived the year!

Thanks for the rant, kali. I actually appreciate it. My problem is that I get two pages into a story, thinking 'OMG this is pure f*cking GENIUS' and three pages later I'm rereading it going 'what the HELL was I THINKING?!?!' and, as such, deleting the whole thing.

I need more practice. If not for writing in general, then for Mace and Cassie. I can't write Cass for the life of me. If somebody put a gun to my head and demanded I write a paragraph of fiction from Cassie's POV, my brains would fly. I couldn't do it.

Anyways, I better go, I have a narrative, of all things, to write today for my first English assignment, due the first day back at school. Lovely. NOT!!!

[kaliszewski]

massiefan said:

Thanks for the rant, kali. I actually appreciate it. My problem is that I get two pages into a story, thinking 'OMG this is pure f*cking GENIUS' and three pages later I'm rereading it going 'what the HELL was I THINKING?!?!' and, as such, deleting the whole thing.

I need more practice. If not for writing in general, then for Mace and Cassie. I can't write Cass for the life of me. If somebody put a gun to my head and demanded I write a paragraph of fiction from Cassie's POV, my brains would fly. I couldn't do it.

No problem, massiefan! A couple more observations, 'cause this happens to be a very fine Serame--

With these character/actor-based stories, for me it's all about getting the person's voice in my head. Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, and Benedict Wong are easy for me to hear because our voices are very similar in range and timbre. (Cillian tends to pitch upward when he's doing an American accent, which makes it easier still.) If I'm having trouble hearing an actor (Rose Byrne, for instance ), I throw on one of his or her (non-"Sunshine") movies. (Rose's voice is higher than mine, so hearing Cassie is a little harder for me, too.)

Why not "Sunshine"? For the same reason I believe you shouldn't read prose within the genre you're trying to write. By reading outside the genre, you avoid unconsciously cribbing ideas from that genre for your own story. And you'll learn more, too.

(In any case, the first advice I ever got from my advisor in college still holds true: to improve your writing, read good writers. My advisor at St. Kate's told my freshman comp class to subscribe to The New Yorker. Twenty-five years later, I'm still subscribing to The New Yorker. Issue by issue, that magazine boasts the most consistently excellent writing staff in the business.)

As for "what the HELL was I THINKING?"-- I know I referred in my first post to identifying, first and foremost, an external audience. But keep this in mind: Your first-first audience is always YOU. If what you're writing makes you laugh, or cry, or cringe in terror, or smile, there's a very, very good chance your readers will react the same way. And sometimes, really and truly, you just have to say, "Fck 'em. This is the story I WANT TO WRITE."

Yep.

[insanity]

thanks for the subclass on fan fic writing Kali, I used some of your tips and they actually worked!

[massiefan]

Cheers Kali. The 'getting the character's voice in your head' thing is easy for me with Mace, and also when I write Hudson from Aliens. Not sure why...I write male characters better than female ones though. I must be femininely retarded or something.

Oh well. I shall continue my practising, and maybe I'll post some stuff on here in the future. Maybe...

Anywho, we should probably get back on topic before we wander into the land of How To Write Stories That Don't Suck.

Not that there's anything wrong with that; maybe we could invent a thread where everyone could post Q&A's about writing in general...hmmm...

[massiefan]

Sorry for the double post, but I needed to ask brittany something and for some reason my PM thingy isn't working.

Brittany: you know how you said you were planning to make a Massie video to 'Cold' by Crossfade, and were just waiting for the DVD to come out...

...Is there any chance you would be able to create that vid in the near future?

Just asking, not nagging...I hope...

[brittany]

massiefan said:

Brittany: you know how you said you were planning to make a Massie video to 'Cold' by Crossfade, and were just waiting for the DVD to come out...

...Is there any chance you would be able to create that vid in the near future?

Just asking, not nagging...I hope...

No, I understand Massiefan, no worries!

Hmm, let's see... I've already made 2 Massie/Capsie videos since I've had the UK DVD. I also made a general music video of all the crew members. Chero has also made a few. We will be posting them up on YouTube in the near future. We will probably post them once a week...

...thanks for asking.

As for using the Crossfade song, I have yet to do it! If you want to, feel free to go ahead and use that song for a music video. I have a couple of other songs in mind for them anyway...