Santa? Already?
I’ve been struggling recently. Far more than is actually reasonable for my dilemma, if I’m to be honest. I’m meant to be writing a story. It’s for a Secret Santa dealy, and there’s no way I’m backing out on it. Only my victim’s recipient’s request is something I’m so out of my league on.
And here’s where the crazy person in me starts to come into full bloom. I detest giving people gifts I’m not perfectly certain they’ll like. And this prompt doesn’t give me enough to be certain. So I’ve spent the last little while “researching” which really means using my less-than-advanced google-fu to try and find stories my giftee has written to get some idea of what s/he likes. Yes, Internet, I have turned into some sort of demi-stalker.
So I’m about a third of the way into this story now, and I’ve gotta admit, I kind of like it. The story, I mean. Which bodes ill. Because if I like it, there’s every chance it’s entirely wrong for the giftee.
Bugger.
TV Noir
What is it about the noir style of voiceover that makes even the most wretched thing better? I’ve tried to dissect it but came away with nothing more than the shallowest of ideas and impressions. Perhaps the cool-factor comes from the viewers’ sense that they’re privy to insider knowledge not available to the majority of the characters, making us feel smarter than the dumb slobs we’re watching. Or maybe we imagine a far more intimate understanding of the character providing the voiceover. Those two were my front-runners.
Case in point: Moonlight. I was crushed when I learned it had been cancelled. “Say it ain’t so,” I wailed, ah, silently if I’m to be honest. But still, the pain was very real to me. Then I sat down and had a think about the show. What was it I actually liked? I’m not a fan of vampire romance because I think it’s implausible. Assume, for a moment, vampires exist. They have no heartbeat, therefore no circulation. Human arousal, physical, lustful arousal, comes from the increase of blood flow to certain critical areas. No circulation = no horny vampire. That’s the practical reason.
Then I got into the characters. Every episode I watched threatened to send me over the edge. The female character was a heady combination of irredeemably stupid and self-pretty-much-everything. Self-important, self-absorbed, self-righteous, self-ish… I couldn’t stand her. As the series went on, my urge to throw things at the TV every time she was on grew stronger. In fact, if the series hadn’t ended when it did we might not even have a TV any more, just a pile of smoking, sparking TV guts.
The vampire himself was even worse. Oh, woe is me, I’ll be young forever. Poor baby. If that was such a horrible prospect we wouldn’t have a cosmetics industry. And then there was his obsession with the blonde thing which kicked off when she was, what? Five? The squick is strong in this one.
If I hated the show that much, why did I keep watching? Then I realised. It was the noir voiceover. I’m addicted to noir and it’s hard to get your noir fix without taking a trip back in time to when gumshoes sat in their smoky offices waiting for hot women in red dresses to arrive and beg for help. The indefinable cool factor of noir voiceovers sucks me in every time.
Moonlight wasn’t the only show in recent years to use the noir voiceover. Dexter is another. (Another which irks me yet I keep watching. Coincidence? I think not.) Noir seems to be making a comeback and has been brought into the 21st century. That’s kind of a good thing. I only with it wasn’t being used to carry shows which may not stand on their own.
It’s a heavy burden for a voiceover to bear. Won’t somebody, please, think of the voiceovers?
This is Why I’m the Queen
Well it’s day 1 in my new home and I’m still a gibbering wreck. The only difference I can make out is I’m a warm gibbering wreck. It’s a start.
I struggle a lot with self-confidence. Writing wasn’t my idea, you see, at least not to start off with. It actually started out as kind of a convenience thing. It sounds odd, I know. What could possibly be convenient about writing, especially for a neurotic such as myself?
Well, I can pick my own hours, and it’s a job I can still do if my crohn’s flares up.
But here’s the thing — I don’t actually like my own writing. I don’t find anything I write to be particularly clever, interesting or engaging. When I write, I feel like one of those first-round Idol competitors. You know, the ones whose loved ones should have taken aside and quietly but gently told, “uh, no, don’t do that. You’ll get shredded.”
Added to that is Sunday’s decision to start over. I still remember how hard it all was the first time and I’m starting over. You know what I want? I want to go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning to discover a fully written, fully edited, fully awesome novel has just fallen out of my ear while I slept.
Isn’t that how it’s meant to work?