We didn't come into this world

My friends, I love that you care, because I care too. But I think there’s some misunderstanding of what I was trying to say in the last post. No, for the timeline-obsessed, you are never going to jam into the puzzle every reference everyone has ever made to how old they are, or how long they’ve been practicing medicine. Certainly not if you’re taking them literally; and possibly not even if you’re taking them as kidding or speaking colloquially.

Let me quote for a minute from a response I made to a comment:

“I'm not saying there may not be continuity issues, here or elsewhere; but it's also legitimate to note that when characters speak colloquially they talk the way people talk -- they round numbers up or down, and they joke. I've never forgotten that once on the X-Files Mulder told his ex-girlfriend, "I'm cursed with a photographic memory." I assumed at the time he was saying in his smartass way that he couldn't forget the hurt she'd caused him, and I was taken aback by the number of fans who interpreted it absolutely literally and felt it was later contradicted by canon. I'm not saying that it might not have turned out to be literal; I'm just saying that when people talk, they don't speak with the exactitude of Wikipedia. Similarly, when a woman says that she's 38, one may choose to believe it or not. When the guy fixing my sink argues with me about the cause and says, "Look, lady, I've been doing this for 20 years," I don't count backwards to exactly that month 20 years before and assume that's when he got his plumbing license.

Again, I'm not saying the House timeline is free of continuity tangles. I know for a fact it's not. (And since I'm often trying to patch new and old canon together, may I say, boy do I know.) But there seems to be a certain amount of slack that's understood in real life that is not always offered to fictional characters. We actually discuss this when debating our options with lines of dialogue -- and I mean, not only writers, but actors and directors. How if a certain line were changed to something more specific it might fit better, but it would sound weird. You do the very best you can and hope that that part of the audience that's paying close attention will understand.”

So, Doris, you’re claiming it will all make sense if we just aren’t literal?

No, I have specifically not said that. I would love if it did, but it’s unlikely to ever happen. (Though I have a personal timeline that I believe actually would make sense, if you’re not absolutely literal, of House saying he’s practiced for 20 years, his present age, knowing Cuddy when she was an undergrad, etc. But it’s dependent on some things you’re probably never going to see in the show, including what I like to believe happened during “House: The Lost Years,” so let’s not pretend it’s going to solve anything.)

The post is saying something else. It’s saying – well, simply that I care, that I try, that these characters are important to me and I make a concerted effort to fit whatever I’m doing into what’s gone before. I’m saying that Matt and I pulled every reference to House and Cuddy’s shared past, had our work double-checked, argued things out with a number of people, discussed the fan Wikipedia reference where the assumption about Hopkins had been made, and even came up with internal character reasons why Michigan was first and how he got into Hopkins. (Nothing you’re ever going to see, again, but you want it to hang together in your mind if you’ve got to write it.)

So when you hear stuff that suggests people think you’ve been sitting at the keyboard eating chips and typing at random, without making the slightest effort to check canon, because clearly you don’t give a damn, you think, no, I want people to know I do care. Because I’ve never forgotten when I was a kid, watching a show called It Takes a Thief. Throughout the series, the hero would say, “I’m a thief, like my father and my grandfather before me.” Then suddenly there was an episode where a woman asked him why he became a thief, and he told a story about having been a geologist and getting into thievery almost accidentally. And this wasn’t presented as a lie. You can tell the difference; even as a kid, I could tell the difference. They expected you to accept this – for this episode. A few episodes later we’d go back to the previous story.

I’ll never forget how betrayed I felt, because I loved that series with a love only a pre-teen can feel. And I thought, “Someone had to have noticed that. If nobody else, the star must have noticed. And yet nobody fixed it. Which means… I care more than they do.” It was disillusioning and depressing.

Which is why I’m a continuity believer. I know Oscar and Felix met three different ways, but in my own little world, I work to make anything I add fit. I write 600-page science fiction novels in which I create entire universes that I try to make fully consistent. So it’s a bit disconcerting when a friend points me to things like this:

“Apparently, Doris Egan has tweeted an explanation for the confusion over the Michigan/Hopkins timeline. However if you have to do that, you've been rumbled.

I'll never understand how TV writers can get continuity wrong in this information age: they can post anonymously in fan forums and ask obsessive fans for info (because fans know their TV faves better than the show's own production team - FACT) or they can bloody Google it.

Maybe Doris Egan and/or Matt Lewis' mistake means that other House writers (and TV scriptwriters in general) will be a tad more careful in the future.”

And I think, no. You may or may not like the results, but dammit, it’s not lack of care or effort; I don't want that impression to stand. I want people to know that’s not the way I work. I believe it would be disrespectful of the love people invest in the characters.

None of this means you won't see errors in my writing, in TV or in books; it just means those errors will be there because I'm an idiot, not because I don't take my work seriously.

Discovery 27:
Why is this hippo so skeptical?


This is Wednesday, November 11, 2009!
Hare Krishnas & Yellow Sweaters
A day of loungin', nommin', and travelin'!
( Yesssssssssssssss! )

I know people for whom Friday the 13ths are actually lucky; I am not one of them. But--knock on wood--so far, things are going pretty well.

( SPARKLEMAS COMES EARLY THIS YEAR )


BREAKING NEWS: SHIRT-ALLERGIC JACOB KEN DOLL. ARE YOU FOR REAL. WHAT IS THIS. I DON'T EVEN. FUHHHHHH.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Just a quick post to answer a few questions. First: yes, House went to Michigan first. I am charmed by the idea that, like Lex Luthor of Smallville, House was thrown out of more than one school. No, this was not a bit of carelessness we’re trying to quickly retcon after the fact – note that House says “thrown out of my first med school,” implying there was more than one. Just to make sure we were in lawful territory, when we were writing this we went back and pulled every reference to House and Cuddy’s past from every episode where it was mentioned. Mind you, sometimes mistakes can creep in because writers are used to hearing ideas that never make it to script, or reading things in scripts that never make it to air, or watching episode cuts that go on to lose scenes before the audience sees them. Those things can lodge in your mind. So we were careful to get the final transcripts – and then, in one case, corrected a reference to something that changed after the final draft was written, and hadn’t been updated in script form. Recently I heard from a couple of people who referenced a tweet I’d made, in which I “tried to explain my mistake.” So, my friends, I challenge you: if anybody can point to a line of dialogue anywhere in the show where it was stated that Hopkins came first, I will take you out to lunch personally and tell you how clever you are. While I’m as amused as anyone by our occasional tumbles from the railroad of continuity, this was not one.

(I used to wonder, actually, where the whole “Hopkins was first” thing came from, till someone told me it was once on Wikipedia. In fact, the person who told me this was an assistant at House whom I’d asked to double-check my continuity accuracy, because we were being, well, careful. When I heard this, I figured that a fan somewhere made an assumption. Since we aired the episode, I’ve also heard that the Fox site might have said so as well. I can’t confirm this personally, but if so, I can only wonder whether the Fox site got it from Wikipedia (stuff like that happens) or vice versa; such is the serpent ouroborus of TV-fan interaction in these exciting times.)

As it happens, continuity is one of my personal bugaboos. When I read a script that says, for instance, that Wilson’s second wife has a dog who’s 17 years old, I completely rebuild my mental picture of how long House and Wilson have known each other, because that is the kind of girl I am. (“But, Doris, they could always have gotten the dog when he was already old.” Me, stubborn as a toddler: “No, they couldn’t, because the dialogue says they got him as a puppy.” Thus do we get the origin story in “Birthmarks.”)

In this obsessive spirit, when we first started talking about how House and Cuddy might look back at their first meeting, I originally wanted them to have entirely dueling versions of it, a kind of Rashomon meta-joke on the occasional continuity tangles a show in its sixth season can get into. But as the scene was refined, I realized it would work better for them to have more or less the same memories, but interpret them differently. I loved the idea of House in the campus bookstore, a local legend who could mercilessly analyze innocent students from their syllabi. So there’s Lisa Cuddy, at the opening of the semester, one of a line of students halfway around the block. She gets to the counter, gives the guy her list, and gets a load of unasked-for and troublingly accurate personal information along with her books. She goes away, intrigued.

For House, of course, she was one of the teeming masses of students looking for books. He doesn’t notice her till later, when he hears her arguing with the professor in endocrinology. He doesn’t remember her from the bookstore; he doesn’t even know (then) that she’s an undergrad. But he’s intrigued. He tracks her down at a campus dance. It’s their first dance together, and from his point of view, this was all his own idea. He picked her out; he pursued her.

He goes on thinking that as the next few months pass. Cuddy knows differently. One night they’re at a party given by one of their classmates, a mutual friend, and she makes her move. They spend the night together.

And then he disappears. She gets that something happened, she gets that he's not around – but not even a phone call?

So all this time, House has assumed the determination of their relationship had been in his hands; that he had planned it and courted her. Actually, it was strong-willed Lisa Cuddy who’d singled him out; Cuddy who knew what she wanted in school and (she thought) in life; Cuddy, the future endocrinologist, who talked her way into attending classes undergrads weren’t supposed to get into; Cuddy who came out of the whole thing thinking that maybe what she’d wanted this time just hadn’t wanted her back. And that’s colored her relationship with House ever since.

So House learns that their relationship didn’t begin the way he thought; and Cuddy learns that their relationship didn’t end the way she thought. There’s nothing more poignant than knowledge that comes too late. (As my favorite episode of Babylon 5 attests.) And when we were going through actual programming schedules from medical conferences, and the first one we read listed an 80s dance, it seemed serendipitous. Where better to discuss the 80s? (As someone who lived through that decade, the idea of an 80s dance always feels to me like having a party on Wednesday in honor of Tuesday. But I digress.) (I also have a compulsion to give characters "their moment," a drop of honey in the cup, particularly when they've had bad times before, or have bad times ahead. I once argued passionately on Smallville to let Clark take Chloe to the prom in season one; that poor girl had been passed over all year. The character deserved her moment!)

So. Yes. Continuity? I may not always be perfect. Sometimes, in fact, I make stupid mistakes, and the doom of television is that they never go away. But I happen to give a damn.

I just spent an hour on the phone with a reporter who wants to write an article focusing on the more disturbing aspects of New Moon, the ones that parents may not know about, and it was the best game of Horrify the Twilight Noob EVER. It may actually be the longest such game on record. She knew to ask about all the controversial points, but... not the entire width and depth of the horror, if you will. There was a lot of "Oh... wow." I apologized for going on at such length, but she did have a lot of informed questions about a number of plot elements--if nothing else, I give an interviewer plenty of material to work with. And a larger audience will now be made aware of rocking chairs. "You're probably the one who knows the most about it," she said, laughing. I... kind of don't know how to feel about that.

(I imagine it'll come out next week--probably run on the day the movie opens. I'll tell you more about who and what and where when it does. In fact, I may see if one of y'all can clip the article and send it to me or scan it. The Littlest Edward can totes scrapbook it for me.)

I was actually pretty complimentary about how the movies handle some of these elements, though. That said: while I highly doubt I would in any way be the focus of the article, this is going to be read by a wider, non-LiveJournal, probably Twilight-loving audience. They're only going to see my commentary on this specific angle, and not the more affectionate, even-handed snark. I am pretty sure that their outrage will be a complete novelty in my sheltered little corner of the internet. BRING IT. Because I totally won't read any of their responses and my journal doesn't have anonycommenting enabled. Have fun storming someone else's castle, kids!

Cleolinda Jones: Senior Sparkle Correspondent. HATERS TO THE LEFT.



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So someone else has run off and reposted my work (this time, it's Twilight in Fifteen Minutes. NO DOGPILING, Y'ALL). I don't go looking for this stuff, because honestly, if I started trying to police the internet--which I did try for a little while, back when I was first writing these things--I would never, ever get anything else done. But I feel like once you've brought it to my attention--I don't know that legally I have to do anything; this isn't an issue of trademark, which has to be defended pretty vigorously; it's a simple matter of copyright flowing from the pen, as the expression goes. I wrote this, it is verifiably mine, and I have the right to decide who does and does not get to run off with it. So morally--perhaps, more accurately, emotionally--you feel like you're not supposed to let it go.

( The problem with this one is that the girl's gotten defiant )


ETA: Okay. She's apologized. As for you guys? I have finally read most of the comments, and while I said NO DOGPILING, most of y'all were admirably civil. However?

The authors onto you, BTW: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/820888.html?#cutid1

Check out the number of commenters on that post - that's the number of people who hate you right now.

BAD FORM. You better hope I don't find out who that was.

http://twitter.com/PRguitarman/status/5604269296
http://www.prguitarman.com/index.php?id=263


I'm nowhere near that bad now, but was for a while :V

Btw my birthday is in 2 days. I'm going to be officially old :(

.

Mistaken for someone interesting, I have been interviewed at blogcritics.org. (We did it in October, so mentally replace "next month" with "this month.") In what is probably a first, I am actually asked about The Secret Life of Dolls a good bit. Also discussed: The Third Man, nineteenth-century fancrazy, and my newest "hobby."


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Okay, you know what? I've held out for nearly three and a half months now, but I am nearly at my breaking point (even though we are now in the home stretch). I am SICK of not having my own computer to work on. There are huge disadvantages to sharing a computer that you just really don't even think of until you have to do it yourself. I HATE logging out of everything every time I walk away from the computer, because the hell I'm leaving my email accounts vulnerable to prying eyes. And on your average day? I need to be logged into LJ, JournalFen, Yahoo email, Gmail (with Reader and Documents), Twitter, Delicious for bookmarks, Pandora, a couple of message boards, and my file storage account; my life would be infinitely easier if I could just stay logged in. So I HATE dumping the cache and the cookies and the browsing history and even the SEARCH history if I so much as duck out for a glass of tea, and I HAVE to do it, because you know why? You know why? Researching the @#$%*&@ e-book footnotes, that's why. If I didn't, you'd go to the Google drop-down search box and get "bella's felted womb," "dead from coke," "edward lipstick," "gq motherfucker," "total eclipse sex scene," 5000 Twilight articles, and "twincest." And there is NO WAY I am letting my family know I spent that much time looking up shit about Twilight.

I can't do a whole hell of a lot on this computer either, since it's like eight years old as it is--in excellent condition, but it's only got 30GB storage, you know? You can infer from that what the processor thingamawhatever speed must be like. It just can't do a lot. It can't handle Skype, for example. And I don't have any of my pet programs (Semagic for LJ, TweetDeck, ACDSee photo organizing, and probably a ton of others I've forgotten because IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'VE USED THEM), because the computer either can't handle a given program or it can't handle them all together. And we THOUGHT it had Photoshop, but apparently not, and while I'm pretty handy on that, I apparently am too stupid to operate MS Paint. People keep telling me how to crop and I just. can't. manage it. And then I go back to Firefox and accidentally hit "home" instead of "new tab" and I lose my entire LJ entry draft, because whenever it tries to recover a "saved" draft, it gives me the previous entry I already posted. HATRED.

And then I can't really save images (no room, plus other people looking at my shit) or watch videos (I hate being walked in on while I'm trying to watch whatever weird-ass thing someone just linked on Twitter. Mostly I just don't have time because I'm under the gun to get anything done before someone else needs the computer), assuming I could get the video to work at all. Because I physically can't get time at the computer as much as I'd like, my Google Reader news items just sit and pile up, so every morning I have "1000+," and one day I cleared 600 items and STILL had 1000+. I keep having to star things I want to go back and use in the footnotes or save pictures from, and I am TIRED OF IT.

If I didn't have the iBella--which at least has a camera, an mp3 player, and apps for Twitter, Pandora and my email that I DON'T HAVE TO LOG OUT OF--I would have gone insane by now. The day I figured out how to copy-paste links on my phone, I nearly wept for joy. Even there, I can't really answer emails or LJ comments at any length--if it's going to be a short reply, I can tap it out with a minimum of head-meeting-wall, but y'all know how wordy I am. We get to more than two sentences and I just can't manage it; I have to wait to answer until I get to the (shared) (family) computer. And then I have to log into umpteen thousand things all over again but then someone else needs the computer RIGHT NOW and I have to dump everything and hope no one noticed that I was at that moment searching "vampire sex toys." Oh, and blip.fm just doesn't work on the iPhone at all. RAAAAAAAGE.

Only one more week until [New Computer's Name] arrives. I will console myself with a peppermint chocolate chip milkshake from Chick-fil-A, I think.


ETA: THE MILKSHAKE MACHINE IS DOWN

WHY GOD WHY


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Depression, I have often said, is like an influenza of the soul. A spiritual hamthrax, if you will. I has it. Do not want.

It's actually starting to worry me a little, the intensity of this go-round--it's not the usual stone-cold ennui. Normally I'm not this bad off until after New Year's (well, except for the pity party I throw myself every year in the weeks leading up to my birthday), and, again: that's more of a seasonal apathy-funk. This involves a lot of dread and distress and, at times, actual panic involved. I have to think this is because things are just generally bad around here at the moment, and have been for a good while now. Two different family members are having job-related crises, for example. I'm having performance anxiety in terms of trying to write, I don't have a dependable place to work, I'm just generally very unhappy. But it's taking on a hysterical edge that makes me uncomfortable--I keep having urges to act out in some way. I don't mean harm myself or anyone else; I mean, like, throw a gigantic melodramatic fit du shit. I know I had that minor meltdown where I started throwing shit earlier this summer, but that is the ONLY TIME IN MY LIFE I have ever done anything like that. So I'm not used to having the urge to, like, flounce from the internet for the hell of it or something. And that's why I'm sitting here talking about it so calmly, because I feel like the only way to combat irrationality is with detachment. Take an overview of the thing, recognize what you're doing, shove it into the light of day. So... yeah.

(By the way, laptop has been ordered; money has cleared checking account. It will take about two weeks from November 3rd for Dell to build and ship it, what with the custom art and the crazy-ass 17" facial recognition screen. I don't even know. I spent a ridiculous, extravagant amount of money because I could, and it felt GOOD.)

A little Twi-spam for the hell of it, since Sparklemas is fast approaching:

( T-REX, VAMPIRES CAN HAVE KIDS AND LITTLE DINOSAUR VAMPIRES SOUNDS PRETTY CUTE TO ME )


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Collective Perceptions
The actual photos from my first gallery show!
( +21 )

So I heard this song on Pandora and the chorus got stuck in my head, so finally I went to iTunes and bought it. (By the way--if you buy a song on your phone, how do you get it over to the iTunes on your computer? Because I'd really like for the sync process to not erase it.) So I'm sort of head-tossing and shoulder-dancing along with it while I'm writing in my journal like the thirteen-year-old I so entirely am. You know, as you do. The lyrics were a bit creepy in an obsessive/submissive way-- ( ... wait )

The last week or so has been jam-packed with Do Not Want, so I'm going to link you to all of it so that everyone else, in turn, can stop sending the links to me.

Sugar Daddy Ken. This is absolutely a real Mattel product. They claim the dog's name is Sugar, and thus Ken is "Sugar's daddy," but I think we all know what's going on here. Also: They AGED the Ken's face. I didn't even know you could DO THAT.

A closer look at/review of Sparkle Ken. I think Sugar Daddy Ken might be interested in this.

The Succu-Dry. Not safe for work or, I suspect, penises. That said, the combination of wordplay and vulgarity has resulted in the most magnificent product name I have ever seen.

The Panties. Not safe for brains. Do not click this link. I am so incredibly serious. Do not click this, you have so much to live for. But I have to post it so people will stop sending it to me. Yes, it's worse than Bella's Felted Womb. It will destroy your faith in whatever deity you do or do not believe in. Let us never speak of this again.

And finally, in a revival of our beloved Uwe Boll Slot: Uwe Boll. Darfur. Actual rape victims. I don't see how this could possibly go wrong!


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Discovery 26:
This moved me to tears, be careful when you click!



End of October 2009!
This post includes food, festivities, Airbands, loungin', friends and of course HALLOWEEEEN!
Check it out, or I'll octopus you in the face.
( Come inside, child! )

The new Made of Fail episode is up!

From litlover12 , a good cause: "A friend and I are raising money to buy classic books for schools in the Philippines that lost all theirs in the typhoon. You can read about our efforts here. If you could find a way to give this a mention on your LJ, we'd be most grateful! Thanks very much."



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

http://www.prguitarman.com/index.php?id=262
http://twitter.com/PRguitarman/status/5360796043

I'm actually not very satisfied with how this comic, which I've been trying to portray into comic form for TWO YEARS, turned out. There is just so much more to the story, but explaining it all would make this like a five million panel strip. I failed to point out that I got bitched out by the manager the next day. He said there are "Judgement calls to be made", although he specifically told me if I gave out any toilet paper I'd be fired. Then there's the part where my fellow staff members trapped me in the front desk office. Hard to explain that part.

.

http://www.prguitarman.com/index.php?id=261

Received some generous gratuity from a friend to make a comic, and this is the erotic end-result. Based off a true story.