A Certain Slant of Light

15. What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?

Baby’s First (posted) Fic was an Owen/Ianto Torchwood fic posted to Livejournal when I was 19. It became the first of a fic series, which ended by breaking up the main couple, as nineteen-year-old me was pretty metal.

Also the fic took place in the break between seasons 1 and 2, and of course season 2 started with Jack returning and dragging Ianto back into his arms, which sort of necessitated breaking Owen & Ianto up.


16. Do you remember your first OTP? Who was in it?

My first OTP was Veronica/Logan from Veronica Mars. People have advanced MANY cogent critiques of this pairing over the years, mostly variations of the theme that Logan is not really boyfriend material, which I can’t really argue against, but consider: do you really think Veronica is girlfriend material? Do you really? These two human trainwrecks were made for each other! Let them light up the world together and take down crime through questionably legal means.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Vintage Murder, one of Ngaio Marsh’s New Zealand-set murder mysteries. I realize she could probably only come up with so many excuses to send her Scotland Yard detective around the world to investigate murders in New Zealand, but I really think it’s too bad she didn’t set more of her mysteries in New Zealand, because they have a certain pop! that her English mysteries don’t have.

I think it’s partly lack of competition. English Golden Age mysteries are thick on the ground, but I can’t think of anyone else who wrote New Zealand Golden Age mysteries. (Admittedly, I haven’t made an exhaustive search. Or really much of a search at all. Maybe New Zealand has a secret groundswell of mystery novels of which I know nothing.)

Continuing the mystery theme, I also read the new Veronica Mars book, Mr. Kiss-and-Tell, which is about 1) investigating a rape, and 2) trying to vote the sleezy corrupt sheriff out of office. I am always a little leery of mystery novels that center around a rape, because there are so many ways that can go wrong; but I thought this one did all right. The damage is clearly fairly brutal, but none of the rapes are graphically described.

And the fight against corruption, as one would expect from Veronica Mars, is pretty excellent, although I wasn't sure about ( Spoilers )

If anyone else has read this book, I'd like to talk about some of the characterization choices for Veronica near the end; I think it is in character, but I didn't expect the book to go there, so I was rather surprised.

What I’m Reading Now

Volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago. I've just gotten through the part about the Belomar canal, which chewed up tens of thousands of prisoners in its construction... and ended up being so shallow (because the construction was pushed through so fast) that barely any boats could actually use it. Tens of thousands of prisoners, dead for nothing.

I suppose it's not really that much worse than if they died for something - they're still dead either way, after all. But somehow it's especially depressing.

What I Plan to Read Next

Guess who FINALLY got Sarah Rees Brennan’s Unmade from the library! Yes, that’s right, ME.

Day 21 - Favorite ship.

Logan/Veronica. This is the only ship I have ever written a manifesto for, because my feelings about the eternal rightness of LoVe are just that strong and will not be swayed by even articles like Femslash Friday: Veronica Mars, which builds an extremely cogent case for Veronica/Mac. I find myself agreeing with all its points - Logan really is kind of a racist jackass, and though it’s particularly pronounced in season one, but it’s not a character trait that ever exactly goes away.

But at the same time: just no. Veronica/Mac might be healthier, but when has Veronica ever valued healthy above, well, any of the other things that are important to her? Veronica and Logan share a darkness that Mac doesn’t have. I could see Logan and Veronica going all Bonnie and Clyde together; I don’t for a minute believe that Mac would agree to go Thelma and Louise with Veronica.

Which might be another point in favor of Veronica/Mac, except Veronica wouldn’t let Mac’s objections stop her anymore than she has ever listened to her father’s, even though she adores and respects him in equal measure. She would just go on her crime spree alone.

Or she would try, anyway. Until Logan showed up and was all, "You look like you could use a partner."

And this is why the movie works so well for me: no matter how bad things are between them, I absolutely believe that they would both drop everything to help each other whenever the chips are down.

Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show

How can I pick just one episode of Veronica Mars? I love them alllll (well, most of them. Certainly I can’t think of any that I would chuck out of season 1), and also everything in the show is so dependent on everything else that it’s hard to pluck just one episode out and say “This one. This is the best.”

The pilot packs a stunning amount of backstory, character detail, and sheer awesomeness into one episode, and I love it for that, but I think I would have to choose the season 1 finale as my favorite episode. It’s harder to land a good ending than a good beginning (as so many shows which start well then peter out show), and VMar’s first season finale is not merely good but practically perfect.

(I say “practically” because one could argue that Veronica ought to be more sensible, and then the climactic sequence need never have happened. But I’m not sure which show you’ve been watching if you think that “sensibly asking for help” is within Veronica’s emotional repertoire.)

The finale ties together all the different subplots of the season, offers an utterly satisfying, psychologically plausible, and yet still surprising solution to the season’s mystery - and, even as it weaves this utterly satisfying solution, preserves a certain essential bittersweetness. For all that Veronica Mars is a detective show, it is not a show about fixing things; it’s a show about learning how to live in a broken world.

There’s a tug-of-war in Veronica’s character, because part of her would like to heal, and part of her sees that as a kind of betrayal. It’s a betrayal of Lilly, because healing will mean forgetting (at least in the sense that Lilly will no longer be in the forefront of Veronica’s mind), but also in a way Veronica would be betraying herself by accepting that the world is unjust, and no. She just can’t.

I stole this 30 Day TV Meme from laurelcrowned, because the questions looked like so much fun. First up: A show that should never have been canceled.

Which is a hard question! I was woeful when Pushing Daisies got canceled, but I think Fuller wrapped up all the plot threads nicely (even if it was a bit rushed), and the show had such a delicate tonal balance that it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t have fallen to pieces if it got six seasons and a movie.

Similarly, I mourned Veronica Mars, but as much as I love it, it was an absolute mess at the end of the third season, and I strongly suspect if it got a fourth season it would have become merely a hollow shadow of my beloved show. Clearly going out at a comparatively strong moment was preferable. (Of course, it’s easier to say this now that we have the movie and the book series and both of them are full of awesome, because it’s clear that the hiatus was a creation boon.)

But there are a couple of shows that I would give my eyeteeth for at least another season. I’m still bitter about Wonderfalls’ cancellation, because it left so many unanswered questions, damnit.

And I will be forever bitter that they killed Rome, because I wanted to see the plotlines that they tried to squeeze into the last four episodes of the show unfold properly over the course of two seasons, like they were supposed to be. And it meant that Brutus’s death was nothing but a footnote, when it was originally supposed to be the season finale! I am still not happy about their casting for Brutus (couldn’t they have found someone who gave at least a faint impression of having a moral compass?), but still, he should not have been cheated out of an episode devoted to his glorious death.

( The rest of the questions in the meme )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Barbara Hambly’s Days of the Dead. Benjamin January goes to Mexico! Now that he and Rose are totally rich, I hope and expect that there will be lots more exciting traveling. MAYBE HE WILL EVEN GO TO PARIS AGAIN. Well, maybe not Paris. BUT OTHER EXCITING PLACES.

I still am not super impressed by the mystery aspect of these books - I keep reading because I like everything else so much. I’ve been trying to think if there would be another way to organize the series, something besides mysteries, but nothing is coming to me. It would probably get dull just having January wander around New Orleans (and sundry other locations) being all “Let’s explore some more of my tragically terrible yet strangely fascinating society!”

What I’m Reading Now

The Ten Thousand Dollar Tan Line, the first of Rob Thomas’s Veronica Mars novels, which pick up where the movie left off. My feeling about this book so far is “Can’t I please stay up all night reading this? Please please PLEASE, who cares that I have work at seven a.m. tomorrow!”

My superego cares, that’s who. But putting the book down was a hard-fought battle. The Veronica voice is perfect, as one would expect in a novel written by the showrunner, and I am filled with a burning desire to know the outcome of the mystery, too.

I’ve also been working my way through Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which is good but not as excellent as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. (However, it should be noted that I am generally much fonder of novels than of short stories, which probably colors my views on this matter.)

What I Plan to Read Next

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Rider on a White Horse.

Also probably John Steinbeck's The Pearl, assuming the library has it in. Also assuming that it isn't read by the same irritating person who read Steinbeck's The Red Pony, which I probably wouldn't have liked in any case (so many dead ponies!), but the obnoxious slightly nasal voice didn't help.

I find Duncan a lot more interesting on this rewatch of Veronica Mars. The first time the fact that the writers inexplicably shipped Duncan/Veronica completely soured me on his character - and I still think he’s completely wrong for Veronica - but as a character, he’s interesting and rather tragic.

I’ve read that Duncan was supposed to be the femme fatale to Veronica’s noir detective, which suggests that the writers understood the purpose of the femme fatale far less well than that of the noir detective. The femme fatale is interesting because she’s an active force in the narrative, trying to scheme her way through the story. Duncan doesn’t scheme. Duncan doesn’t do much of anything.

As Veronica says, Duncan’s greatest flaw is that he “stands idly by.” His friends are the biggest bullies at Neptune High. Duncan doesn’t join in, but he doesn’t try to restrain them (except, occasionally, when they’re picking on Veronica). It’s not because he doesn’t realize they’re wrong, and it’s not because he’s afraid they might turn on him; he just doesn’t care enough to act on his knowledge that they are wrong. It’s clear Veronica finds this character trait not so much enraging as contemptible.

Duncan’s parents have clearly concluded that the source of Duncan’s apathy is clinical depression. They seem to have embraced this diagnosis because they’ve interpreted it to excuse them from actually engaging with Duncan’s thoughts, feelings, or the family tragedy and terrible family dynamics that shape his life.

Like his grief over his sister’s brutal murder. Or his concern that he might somehow be involved because he doesn’t remember that night. Or the fact that he’s in love with a girl who might be his half sister. Or the fact that his parents barely seem to like each other, as witness his father’s long-standing affair that may have resulted in said half-sister. Or the fact that, even when discussing other topics, his parents don’t listen to him or validate his feelings.

He’s an interesting character. I think the writers just failed to realize that the wrong kind of interesting doesn’t translate into shippability.

Emma and I have finagled Rick and Caitlin - who, appallingly, have made it this far in their lives without seeing it - into watching Veronica Mars. This is GLORIOUS except for the fact that that it is difficult to restrain all my OTP feelings whenever Logan walks onscreen, because we have not yet gotten to the part where these OTP feelings make sense.

Veronica/Logan (or, as the shippers abbreviate it, LoVe. EVEN THEIR NAMES SHIP THEM IS IS CLEARLY MEANT TO BE) is the one pairing I am rabid enough about for the label “OTP” to be an accurate description of my feelings. I totally buy that Veronica was at least a little in love with Lilly. I happily read about Veronica having flings with Mac. But LoVe clearly has to be endgame.

I can’t believe that the trailers for the new Veronica Mars movie show that Veronica and Piz have been together for the intervening ten years. He’s so boring! So, so boring!

Okay, in real life, “boring” might be a better partner characteristic than “obligatory psychotic jackass” (as Veronica describes Logan in the pilot. She modifies her feelings later, but the description isn’t wrong). Although actually I think being married to/in a long-term relationship with someone who bores you to tears would be a way of dying by inches, so maybe not.

Piz is especially too boring for Veronica, who is so smart and passionately enraged by injustice, who breaks rules and sometimes ethical imperatives in her pursuit of the truth, who habitually lies even in her closest relationships and who has lost her trust for almost everyone in the world. “The people you love let you down,” Veronica tells us; it’s almost one of the first things she says. This is her basic assumption about human relationships. Veronica’s relationships are always a little messed up, because they have Veronica in them.

Actually, I could see why someone like Piz might seem attractive to Veronica, in his very boringness. It’s a way of running away from herself - of trying to repress her distrust of the world or ignore it out of existence by dating someone so inoffensive that he will act as a sort of eiderdown wrapping around her. If/when he lets her down, it won’t hurt as much, because she didn’t expect much of him, because there isn’t much of him.

Whereas with Logan, their relationship is so freighted with their history together and their own emotional problems (Logan is secretly kind of needy; Veronica is not able or willing to be vulnerable enough to meet that neediness) that it hurts like hell whenever things go wrong. Their very rapport, the fact that they understand each other in a way that other people can’t understand them, makes it worse.

But it also means that if these two crazy kids could work things out, they would be an unstoppable supernova. They might not be able to take on the world, but they could definitely take down the town of Neptune, and it would be glorious.

I've just seen Psych's homage episode to Twin Peaks. It was a very, very successful homage, judging by the fact that I now wish to watch Twin Peaks. (More than I did before, I mean. I've been curious about it, because it's often compared to Veronica Mars, which is sublime.)

Has anyone seen Twin Peaks? Is this a wish worth following up on?

RULES: Comment and I'll LJ stalk you to find THREE FANDOMS you apparently love. And then you answer these questions about them!

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

zormatoform gave me Veronica Mars, Pushing Daisies, and Torchwood.

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