The Dotted Logline

As someone who hopes/plans to be a member of the WGA one day, I’ve been following the negotiations and the strike very closely. And the reaction of the public, which has certainly been mixed. There are plenty of wonderful articles and blogs out there about the issues (United Hollywood is a great place to start), but I thought I’d toss my hat into the ring as well.

There’s a misconception floating around that Hollywood writers all pull in six figure salaries. That seems to be one of the main arguments from people opposed to the strike, but there’s a significant flaw in the logic there; if this were the case, why would the writers put all those big bucks on indefinite hold to essentially nickel and dime the studios?

The fact is that being a working writer doesn’t always mean that you’re working. TV shows get canceled. Freelancers struggle to find gigs. Feature film projects get trapped in development hell. According to WGA reports, 46% of the current guild members in 2005 were considered unemployed. And that’s exactly why residuals are important.

If people don’t have a problem with a novelist or musician earning royalties while working on a new book or recording a new album, why are they so angry at screenwriters for needing residuals while they’re working to get their next project going? Just because television and film are collaborative arts designed to be palatable to the public doesn’t mean that the writing is any less strenuous or valuable. Those nickels and dimes the writers are fighting for can mean the difference between paying the bills and starving. Maybe not for the writers whose names you know, but those big earners are a very small minority.

And that’s the other big misconception about the strike. Writers aren’t fighting for more money. They’re fighting to keep their income from dropping off in the future. Already, there have been shows like Lost that have streamed episodes online as opposed to airing reruns on broadcast television. Writers (and actors) receive residuals for the latter but not for the former, even though both include the entire episode and paid advertisements.

The Internet is the direction the industry is going, and writers don’t want to make the same mistake they did with videotape/DVD: accepting a reduced residual rate (0.3%) on a new, unproven technology. DVD residuals, of course, are the other negotiation sticking point that has received a lot of attention in the media. And although new media is the biggest issue, the numbers related to DVD residuals are pretty painful.

* In 2006, WGA members received $56.6 million in DVD and VHS residuals. The same year, Tom Freston received a $60 million severance package when he resigned as chief of Viacom. That means that a single individual was paid $3.4 million more for leaving his job than 10,000 writers earned for the sale of their work. Figures taken from the L.A. Times.

* Pretty much anyone can go to Amazon.com and sign up for an Associate account to earn referral fees starting at 4%. That means any schmuck (and I include myself here) who can cut and paste a bit of text to a website or blog can earn more than 13 times the amount the actual screenwriter receives for the sale of a DVD. Members can now earn referrals on digital downloads, for which screenwriters currently receive nothing.

The problem is that concerns like respecting the contributions of workers and their ability to put food on the table don’t really factor into the corporate equation. It’s a numbers game, and the important thing is that bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Workers are human resources. It’s the age-old problem of the people with the money having a completely different world view than the people who do the work, and it’s exactly why unions and strikes are still relevant.

I wasn’t old enough to really care about the 1988 WGA strike and don’t really know what public opinion was like back then. However, it’s clear that technology has changed things in the last nineteen years. Thanks to the Internet, today’s audience has access to the screenwriters. Writers post to fan sites and forums. They write in personal blogs and show blogs. They connect to fans through MySpace and LiveJournal. They have fans now, fans who will follow them from project to project, who know their names. Fans who care. Fans who are angry (and if anyone is good at being angry, it’s fans.) And fans with a mission are a force to be reckoned with, especially when they get organized.

The first day of the strike, Joss Whedon devotees from the fan site Whedonesque delivered pizzas to the writers picketing Universal, including one with anchovies for Jane Espenson (yes, screenwriters have fans who are devoted enough to care about their favorite pizza topping.) Similar food deliveries from other fandom groups followed. By day four, a website had been launched to coordinate a wide range of fan efforts. It remains to be seen just how big an impact the fans’ actions will have on the strike. In all honesty, I hope negotiations resume before we’re given the opportunity to find out.

And on a personal not, since I’ve been asked this several times, I will not be scabbing. I honestly never even considered it. I have far too much respect for my fellow writers and for my own work. I have no respect for anyone who would scab knowing that it could prolong this strike and cause further hardship for thousands of people aside from the writers themselves. I want to break into the industry by honest means and have an actual career doing what I love. And I want to be paid fairly, which is exactly what the writers of today are fighting for. I can never thank them enough for what they’re doing.

They’re calling it “Deletegate” and “Strikethrough 2007″ on LiveJournal. CNET has already written about what happened, so I’m not going to bother explaining it again here.

I’m disappointed that LiveJournal/Six Apart still hasn’t seen fit to issue a statement to the thousands of upset users who are demanding one. I’m even more disappointed in their abrupt shift in their definition the more vague statements of their Terms of Service in response to the pressure of lost ad revenue. I feel for those who have lost beloved writing and gaming communities that weren’t actually in violation of the ToS. I’m heartbroken for those victims of rape and incest who lost their support group and thus contact with the people who helped them through difficult times.

But what really makes me furious is the attitude of the so-called “Warriors For Innocence” that started this while mess. Numerous people found the personal blog of the founder of the group (”suesviews2″ on Blogspot) and posted comments complaining about their methods on an entry complaining about WFI’s methods and lack of training/credentials. These people were called pedophiles by the blog owners. Especially those who mentioned being a victim of abuse. This comment (posted by one of Sue’s friends rather than Sue herself) especially upset me.

“Your attempts to rationalize LiveJournal and pedophiles as having anything even remotely connected to legitimate writing demonstrates both who and what you are. As for the victims…when, if ever, have the children of these monsters ever “described their own victimization”?”

The vehicle through which you share your writing does not define it’s legitimacy. And the inclusion of an unsavory or illegal topic in your writing does not mean that you support and promote it. Fiction has always had plenty of villains that commit unspeakable crimes. Sadly, so has the real world. There are many who write about darkness in the hopes of understanding it as a means of fighting it, not as an attempt to embrace it. It has a valid place in works of art and literature, professional and otherwise.

I’ve never been a big participant in any fandoms. Most of the time, they annoy the heck out of me. But it’s not all slashers and shippers and wank. Fandom and fanfic are extremely important to some people for reasons that have serious real world relevance. And these people have a right to speak and share, even if I find their interests annoying or even offensive. Of course, I’ve always believed in freedom from speech as well as freedom of speech. But as long as you are responsible in how you choose to speak (because freedom always entails responsibility) and I’m able to make an informed decision to avoid it if I know it will offend or me, I will defend your right to speak.

So call it “Deletegate” or “Strikethrough 2007″ or the Day that LJ Died. Sing a “Hoist The Colors” or Firefly theme parody. Make icons and banners and lolcats. Write a rant or a fic. Or better yet, tell a story that makes people laugh and think and cry and learn and grow. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that your words, your story, your life doesn’t matter.

Where to begin. Paul Cornell, a writer who (among many other things) scripted a two-parter for Series 3 of Doctor Who (which I’m waiting on pins and needles for) posted a blog about canonicity in Doctor Who, mentioning that fans of BtVS are much more willing to accept things outside of the TV show, such as the upcoming Season 8 comic (which I’m waiting on pins and needles for), as being part of the series canon. This lead to a debate of epic proportions on Whedonesque about canon vs continuity vs interpretation, if Eurasia is located on Pluto and/or evil, and if color-blind people are considered valuable members of reality. The debate is still ongoing and has prompted Paul Cornell to to issue an apology for instigating a “row” (an argument that can be traced back to someone British) and to make the strange assumption that all Joss Whedon fans like rye bread.

Since I have been in the thick of things writing some long quasi-intelligent posts (and some short, stupid, not terribly funny ones), I thought I’d try and compile my thoughts into one semi-coherent blog entry.

Canon vs. Interpretation

Pretty much every single fan in any fandom will have a slightly different view of the meaning of the events in any creative work. I’ve always been a strong believer in Reader-response theory. Authorial intent can only go so far when your work is being read by someone who brings an entirely different perspective/set of beliefs and life experiences to the table. In fact, as long as it doesn’t degenerate into nonsense like shipping wars, I’ve always loved debates about different perspectives of a creative work.

But at the same time, it does get ridiculous when people get so wrapped up in their own view of a fictional world that they’ll disregard something that is blatantly official canon just because they don’t agree with it. I think it’s fine to disagree with the direction a creator chooses to steer their creation (say, the Star Wars prequels), but if your solution is to close your eyes, plug your ears, and hum the Sesame Street theme in an attempt to pretend it doesn’t exist, you’re delving a bit too close to delusion. As much as these fictional worlds can mean to us, if we can’t accept the fact that they have flaws, we’re doing them and their creators a grave disservice.

The thing to keep in mind is that canon, as established by an authority (often the creators or owners of the property) stands separate from readers/viewers/fans. How we interpret a story can alter our view of the story, certainly, perhaps even the view of others if we can convince them to join our way of thinking, but it doesn’t alter the existence of the story itself. A reader saying “I don’t think _____ is canon” is like a person saying “Pluto really IS a planet.” They can say it all they want. The can even believe it. But they aren’t the authority that has been established to make such decisions for the general public. Canon isn’t necessarily set in stone for the rest of history, but can only be changed by those with the authoritative power to do so.

Canon vs. Continuity

Canon generally supersedes continuity (continuity in the comic book sense), since events in canon can alter the story’s continuity, not to mention the fact that different characters can have personal continuities. For example, in the first season of Angel, the events of “I Will Remember You” were erased from history by the Oracles, though Angel retained his memories of them. So they’d be part of Angel’s continuity but not Buffy’s, since for her they literally never happened.

The Buffyverse is rife with continuity changes due to timeline alterations. However, there seems to be a difference between actual changes in the timeline (the Oracles erasing a day, Anyanka creating the Wishverse, Illyria slaughtering Team Angel in her time jumps) versus perceived changes due to altered memories and such (the monks creating Dawn, Cyvus Vail changing Conner’s history.) The first case seems to result in altered continuity where events cease to exist or are relegated to an alternate universe, though some characters (especially Angel) sometimes remember that they did in fact occur at one point. The second has an odd doubling effect where the original continuity is known and understood by the characters once the truth is revealed, yet the existence of the “false” continuity still has an effect on events (Dawn knowing Angel even though she was actually created after he left town, Conner’s thankfully permanent personality change.) Although all of these events generally involve altering continuity, they only add to the canon. Nothing else in the canon is rewritten or removed.

Some might argue that retcons alter the canon, but they generally just offer a deeper truth/different perspective, which would go back to interpretation. Plus, it isn’t required for canon to have flawless continuity.

You Gave Me A Headache With That Continuity/Timeline Nonsense

Sorry. I’ve always looked at it this way. There is a universal continuity/timeline and a personal continuity/timeline. The universal timeline is a single set of linear events that is generally shown to be self-repairing (conflicting events erased or considered an “alternate universe”) with the occasional instance of circular causality (as in the first Terminator movie.) A personal timeline is also a series of linear events as seen from the perspective of any particular person.

In the real world (and in most fiction), the universal and personal timelines are identical. When you get into stories involving time travel and alternate dimensions and such, the two timelines differ. Take Angel, for example. In the episode of Angel mentioned above, the events the Oracles erased are no longer a part of the universal timeline or Buffy’s timeline, but they are still a part of Angel’s. To much of the universe, Angel may appear to be a certain age, but that doesn’t take into account the time he spent in that hell dimension, his day with Buffy, his minutes or hours timejumping with Illyria, etc. In this case, his personal timeline from his birth to the present is quite a bit longer than the universe’s for that same period of time.

This past weekend, I watched Children Of Men, one of the most powerful films I’ve seen in a long time. I also caught up on a number of Series 2 Doctor Who eps that I had missed when they aired on Sci-Fi. Despite the vast difference in tone, I found there to be an interesting resonance between the two.  And not just because of the British-ness.

The pre-apocalyptic world of Children Of Men is an example of my favorite type of speculative fiction: a high concept “what if” used as a springboard to explore human nature. What if there were no more children born to the human race? What if the last generation of humanity knew they were the last? The answer isn’t pretty. Governments and nations collapsed. Today’s Bagdad spread to every corner of the Earth. Denial, despair, death. And perhaps most frightening of all, as seen in Clive Owen’s Theo early in the film, utter apathy. It’s a good day when you don’t die. But what good is escaping the bomb when there’s nothing else left for you, for anyone? What’s the use of crying over the murder of a young man when, alive or dead, he is just the symbol of the end?

How does this dark, gritty tale relate to the continuation of a campy sci-fi TV series that features an alien ship permanently “disguised” as an outdated police call box, a terrifying alien menace that looks like a sex toy add-on, and the ultimate all-purpose sonic-powered tool good for obtaining pocket money or committing genocide? Quite simply, the new Who asks the same what if. What if you were the last?

In contrast to the old series, the current Doctor (or Doctors–we’ve already seen the Ninth and the Tenth incarnations of the character) is the lone survivor of an ancient, wise, and powerful alien race, a restless wander whose gleefully carefree mask conceals a loneliness that stretches to the farthest reaches of time and space. It’s a good day when everyone lives, but it can never erase the knowledge that countless numbers, evil or not, intended or not, have already died at your hands. What good is the power of a lonely god when it means that your mistakes have catastrophic consequences for whole races, whole planets? What good is time travel when all it does is show you an infinite variety of quiet, perfectly mundane lives, the one thing you can never have?

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.” But for human and alien alike, even the most beautiful of intangible concepts need to be embodied in something real to be more than just words. A pregnant womb contains more than the seed of survival. A Companion is more than someone to sightsee with. Whether it is an infant or a shop girl, watching someone take her first steps into a larger world that you know to be both beautiful and terrifying, realizing that you have the chance to see it all as new again through their eyes, accepting that you have a duty to guide them and protect them, that is what allows both Theo and the Doctor to go on and strive for more than simple survival. Protecting something smaller than ourselves, granting it the opportunity to blossom into something bigger than we can ever be, finding out that faith, hope, and love are still alive and well in the universe: that is the true adventure. Trigger-happy terrorists, corrupt cat nun nurses, bloody war zones, and emotionless cyborgs are just proof that wallowing selfish desires, convincing ourselves it is all for the greater good, only leads to stagnation at best, complete disaster more often. The beauty of the universe lies outside of ourselves.

So what if you were the last? What if it were the end? The answer is simple. Find a beginning.

Brickgirl & Oscar was linked on Whedonesque.com due to the current strip. While most people seemed to dig it, a small number think it’s horribly mean. Quoteth one critic, “It’s even worse that its creator is so proud of it as to post it on the internet.”

Unfortunately, Whedonesque.com has a closed membership. While I’m eligible to request a membership because a work of mine is being discussed, I haven’t heard anything back as of yet, so I figured that for now, I would write up a response here and link it to the comic’s News page:

Brickgirl & Oscar isn’t meant to be taken very seriously (at least at this point.) But since some readers have raised an issue that I feel somewhat strongly about, I’ll give a serious answer.

Yes, Oscar the Brick can be quite mean. Like all good characters, he has his flaws. And, like all good characters, both he and Alice will grow and change over the course of the comic. It’s easy to look at a character who is cruel and take it as a sign that the writer herself approves of such behavior, but as someone who was bullied herself as a child (due to her shape and size and appearance), there’s no way I would write a comic that was no more than a long-running insultfest at a poorly drawn little girl. And if I did, I would probably refrain from referencing Joss Whedon, as that is just a little too close to the type of thing he’s working against in the real world.

It isn’t a coincidence that Oscar quotes Cordelia (Graduation Day Part 2) in the last panel of this week’s strip. Much like Cordelia from BtVS and Angel, Oscar can’t be judged as a person (or brick) based only on his behavior in the first couple of episodes. Unlike Cordelia, however, Oscar is unlikely to fall in love with Broody McBrood or give birth to a glowing Gina Torres.

Plus, I thought the tagline “A webcomic about unlikely friends” indicated that Alice and Oscar might eventually become, you know, unlikely friends.

(And yes, there was a terrible typo in the comic. I woke up at 5:30 AM, upset by a rather Alanis-like use of the word “ironic,” rewrote the third panel, uploaded it while still mostly asleep, and didn’t look at it at all later in the day. In my defense, my regular copy editor didn’t catch it either. I’d fire him, but he’s my dad and he works for free.)

With all the hullabaloo over National Geographic’s announcement of the finding and translation of the long lost Gospel of Judus, I decided to give it a read this morning. Unfortunately, between the fragmentation of the document and the esoteric language that is fairly alien to someone really only familiar with the canonical Bible books (the talk of enlightened aeons only made me think of Final Fantasy X), it didn’t really impart much. Except that Jesus liked to laugh.

But from a story analysis point of view, the public focus of this gospel (that Judus was actually very close to Jesus, and Jesus was the one who planned for the betrayal) isn’t really in conflict with the accepted Gospels. Because there is no clear statement of Judus’ motivation in the current Bible and his agonized reaction after the betrayal could easily be seen as that of a man mourning rather than a man overcome with guilt.

Actually, one of my first thoughts when I heard the National Geographic radio ad was of my post about Snape in Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. Of course, I’m also the one with a Harry Potter bookmark in my Bible.

One of my most anticipated Christmas presents of 2005 was the Battlestar Galactica season one DVD set. I started watching the show (very reluctantly) about halfway through the first season. Having missed the very beginning, I was interested in seeing how the whole shebang started out.

Now I can handle marathon viewing sessions longer than most people (probably due to ten years of watching far too many addictive anime series.) And to be honest, I tend to multitask during marathons of shows that I’ve seen previously, which makes my having gotten through most of the BtVS and Angel season sets in two days much less impressive (if that sort of thing impresses you, which it really shouldn’t.)

But I’ve found I can only watch two, maybe three episodes of Battlestar Galactica at a time. It’s beautifully filmed and well acted and has (with the exception of several recent episodes) some very strong writing. But it’s SUCH a damn depressing show.

It’s not the genocide of the human race or the ongoing war or even that the older episodes are full of characters that have since died in tragic and often painful ways. It’s the fact that the majority of the tiny surviving remnant of the human race seem to be complete douchebags. All the infighting and betrayal and sheer arrogance and stupidity and utter disregard for life when it has become such a precious commodity really makes me think that the Cylons are the ones we should be cheering for. The fact that the humans are pagan followers of the Greek pantheon of gods while the Cylons believe in the more traditional (to us) Judeo-Christian-type God makes me wonder if that is what the writers are actually going for. I suppose it all depends on what the true cause of the first war really was.

As much as I was looking forward to getting these DVDs, I’m seriously considering putting the set on eBay after I finish watching it. It’s a fantastic show, but not one I see myself really digging into again.

(I almost didn’t use the word douchebag because this is a “serious” journal. But the effect was too good to pass up. Plus, I ruined the whole thing with “shebang” right off the bat.)

A friend of mine brought up the topic of Gary Oldman tonight, someone whose work I’ve long admired but whose existence has always frightened me just a little bit. See, Gary Oldman never looks the same twice. And I’m not just talking about his film roles. If you look at his public appearance photos on IMDB, he looks different in each of those too. Personally, I have no idea what Gary Oldman actually looks like.

I’ve had a theory for a while that there is no such person as Gary Oldman. Instead, there is a sort of Gary Oldman Collective, a group of talented actors who all share the name between them. If you think about it, it’s the only logical explanation. If Gary Oldman was a single person, he’d have to be a shapeshifter. And that’s not logical at all.

I finally saw American Psycho last night, which has been on my must-watch list since I discovered what a fantastic actor Christian Bale was. I must say, he blew me away far more than he did in Batman Begins. As a character, Patrick Bateman was all over the map and Bale was just spot on throughout.

As for the rest of the movie, I thought it was hysterical. Not really in a laugh out loud way, but I found myself laughing out loud anyway. The business card pissing contest, Bateman’s music diatribes, the almost date with Jean, and so much more.

One thing that really struck me was that every time Bateman went through his morning routine, he was wearing a different kind of underwear. In a society where “boxers or briefs?” holds an absurd amount of meaning, what better way to showcase a character’s indecision about who he really is and how he fits into his world by having him alternate between the two, and boxer briefs, and silk boxers?

Of course, I noticed this strictly as a party interested in the artistic choices made in the film. I was not staring at Christian Bale’s ass. Much.

I caught Toy Story 2 again today, the movie that makes all toy collectors feel incredibly guilty. In many ways, I think it is equal to or better than the original. But at the same time, there is something painful about toys contemplating their mortality, especially when the indication is that their final fate will be lying around in a junkyard somewhere with full awareness. True, they are independently mobile, but it’s a far darker destiny than that of my favorite childhood fictional toy, the Velveteen Rabbit.

Hopefully, most children don’t put quite as much thought into this or parents will never get them to give up their old toys.