The Writing Desk of Jakebe Rabbit

During the last season of Lost, I'll admit I may have been a little unbearable. It wasn't enough to watch almost every episode as it aired so I could chat about it with other fans of the show as soon as possible. It wasn't enough to make inside jokes with other Losties in mixed company, just for the perplexed look the Others would give us while we chuckled. It wasn't even enough to give my long-suffering, non-Lost-watching friends crash courses on the history of the Island and its inhabitants, doubling back over connections that turned out to be important while their eyes glazed over. None of it was enough. I had a fever, and the only cure for it was more Lost.

The worst part about my Lost fandom was that it offered me absolutely no compassion for fans of other shows that inspired equal devotion. When people drone on and on about the merits of anything form "The Wire" to "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," my reaction is anything from a mildly curious bemusement to outright annoyance. It depends on how close I am to you, how frequently you go nuts for a particular thing and just how well our tastes line up, really.

It took me a little while to draw a parallel between these people and my own Lost obsession. And in doing so I've come to the realization that my zealotry might have kept other people from trying out the show. I'm sure I'm not the only one who initially recoils when someone comes on a little too strong in selling something. "My God, it's just a TV show!" is a natural response to that kind of ecstatic devotion.

That's entirely your right, I realize now. I came to this understanding after being subjected to similar treatment by fans of two shows -- one of which I've seen and enjoy, one of which I haven't and am mystified by. I'm speaking, of course, of "Doctor Who" and "My Little Pony."

I have a number of friends who are complete Who fanatics. The show is charming, quintessentially British and -- in the hands of good writers who understand what they're working with -- incredibly engaging, whimsical, silly but exciting all at once. I have a distant fondness for the old Who serials of the 60s and 70s, and I dig the millennial reboot well enough. Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat are great writers with a wonderful eye for both the tradition of Who and the needs of the modern audience. That sweet spot makes it a really effective show. It's something written by fans, for fans, and it shows.

I haven't seen frame one of the "My Little Pony" revival, and I don't really plan on changing that. At the risk of alienating a few friends, I'm just not interested in the possibility of becoming a 'brony'. The name alone makes me want to stab people. Brony. *wince*

Don't get me wrong; I fully expect "My Little Pony" to be a surprisingly decent show. It has a fine pedigree -- the showrunners also worked on "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends," which was one of my favorite cartoons of the past five years. There's no shame in digging something outside of your demographic, and far be it from me to say otherwise. There's just something about the evangelism that seems to be a central tenet of Bronyism that leaves me cold, though. Can I just be a casual fan of the show? Can't I watch it without being pulled into the online community that's sprouted up around it? I'm not sure I could get away with that, which is too bad.

I totally realize what a hypocrite I'm being here.'m a born and bred Lostie, and I'll continue to sing its praises until the day I die. So while I'm sitting here on my high horse bashing the Whovians and Bronies, I also have to admit that I kin with you guys. We're all passionate about something that the general populace can't really wrap its brain around. We see something as beautiful and wonderful, and it touches some deep, nameless place in our hearts in a way that very few things do. Let me say, first of all, that I'm glad you've found something that does that for you, and that you have a community of people who get it. No, really. It's an awesome feeling to be a part of a group like that.

But about the fanaticism: kindly knock it the fuck off. Here's how. :D

1. Respect your neighbor's personal pop culture space.
All of us have an investment in some aspect of pop culture. For some of us it's the culture of decades gone by, and for others it's only a small part of an increasingly fragmented community. But whatever our leanings, we only have limited bandwidth for certain obsessions. Some people just don't get that into stuff, and some others already have their obsessive personalities engaged. If you unload your fandom on someone the first time and get anything less than "Absolutely that sounds awesome, when can I see this?", rein it in. It's just fine to talk about it now and then, but chances are your fifteen-minute monologue on why the latest episode/issue/chapter is the most amazing thing you've ever seen will just make your victim's eyes glaze over. Trust me. I've done this plenty of times, and I've seen it happen. Be general in your appreciation to the uninitiated. Leave it for them to discover the story if/when they want to. If you can't do that, save your fervor for fellow fans.

2. Mind the signal-to-noise ratio.
Geeks are a notoriously spoiler-averse lot. We don't like hearing about anything that even hints about ruining a surprise for us later down the road. While a lot of the really dedicated fans are pretty good about leaving out spoilers, but sometimes they can only display their pleasure by going "You know that thing, with the stuff?" or "OMGOMGOMG" and then laughing or screaming. To the uninitiated, this'll pique our curiosity for the first time, but after that it quickly gets annoying. The impulse to live-blog reactions to mind-blowing developments is totally understandable. We want to share a great moment with our tribe, even if they're spread all over the country. But before you hit 'send', consider this: how many other people are going to get exactly what you're freaking out over? I say a good rule of thumb is if it's less than half, you might want to filter it.

3. Try not to take things personally.
When you become obsessed with something, it becomes an undeniable part of you. I've had a few things that I've identified with that strongly, and it can sting when a friend dismisses it out of hand. Don't they understand how simple entertainment can sometimes transcend pop culture and become True Art? Rejection of your particular fandom can easily feel like a rejection of your ideals and choices, and that makes you want to lash out. Before you do, it's a good idea to keep things in perspective.

I love Lost, but it has its flaws. The first part of the third season contained two of the most unfortunate creative decisions in the show's history -- and that's right when most people bailed on it. Even when the show's ultimate 'meaning' began to take shape, there was plenty of fault to find in it. I still find myself defending the finale to people who claimed they wasted six years of their lives. But though the debates can become heated and frustrating, I try pretty hard to make sure I don't take it too personally. Most people attacking the show don't know how much it means to me, or they simply don't care. And why should they? It's only a TV show -- and not a great one at that.

You have to admit that even at its best, Doctor Who is a little silly. It takes a pretty big leap of faith to buy into the premise. And don't even get me started on My Little Pony. :) But most shows that inspire legions of devotees are like that -- Firefly, Twilight, movies by Darren Aronofsky -- they're kind of polarizing. And you have to allow for that opinion, even if it's presented as fact, even if it's expressed in the most assinine way possible. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

In any given week there are dozens of hours of programming littered across hundreds of channels. And that's just TV. There are hundreds of comic books and graphic novels that come out every month, a score of movies released in theatres and DVD. There are millions of books out there, countless stories, a dazzling array of activities we could be engaged in at any one time. When you stand back to think about the sheer breadth of our experience -- even in the relatively small pocket of modern entertainment -- it's staggering. My Lost fandom, your Doctor Who fandom, this other guys My Little Pony fandom, they're all droplet in a deep, vast ocean.

It's easy to lose sight of that perspective when you have something that dominates your thinking the way fandom can. But it's essential to regain it when you step out of your fandom to deal with the rest of us. If you ever hope to get other people to see what you see in it, to step through that door with you into a fully-immersed world, you have to step out of it first and meet the rest of the world in a more consensual reality. The very best stories -- and the very best tellers of that story -- grab us from where we are and take us to some place we've never been. If any of us have any chance at all of telling each other what's so great about our respective communities, we have to start with common ground.

I did not post yesterday, so I'll have to make this one fairly substantial and give you two of the things that I'm grateful for.

I'm grateful for the rain. We got a pretty good rainstorm here yesterday while we were grocery shopping, and while it wasn't the most convenient time for it, it was good to be out in. Ryan says that the reason people dislike getting wet is because they have the expectation of being dry. Get rid of the expectation, you learn to be OK with being out in the rain. I hereby submit that this is the most Zen thing he's ever said. :)

Rain on the rooftops and the sidewalks always makes me feel comfortable and mellow. I'm a lot better about being rained on, but I still think it's best to enjoy it indoors. ;) There are so many things to be done; book reading, coffee drinking, lounging, snuggling, that sort of thing. It's OK to be leisurely during a storm if you want, and here in California there really aren't that many times where it's OK to be leisurely.

I'm also grateful for music, in general. There are a lot of ways one triggers memory, but music is always one of the most powerful for me. A conversation about Garth Brooks albums puts me in a very specific headspace; being in high school, staying up late to do homework and play card games that I had invented for myself. Cold winters sleeping in a living room that was converted so that my sister could have her own bedroom, getting up early and listening to WPOC while reading some book or another. Matchbox Twenty puts me in that space between high school and college, where I was working two mall jobs and hopping onto FurryMUCK from the Towson Public Library. Third Eye Blind puts me at St. Mary's University of Maryland, walking towards poetry readings and Pagan Student Union meetings with my battered Walkman. So forth and so on. It's another particularly soothing influence on me that I'm really glad that I have in my life. Reminiscing on all of the country I used to listen to really makes me want to buy Dwight Yoakam and The Mavericks, and Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, Diamond Rio...

Maybe I should stop now while I still have a bit of musical respect left amongst my friends. :)

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better from the other day, where I was just down from...calling everything into question. It's a necessary part of the process for me, but my ego takes a few hits every time. I really shouldn't take myself as seriously as I do.

Most of my writing energy is currently being taken up by my Dungeons and Dragons game, run on every other Tuesday. It's been a blast so far; I've got a really great group that keeps me on my toes constantly, with a very wide range of interests and abilities. Right now I'm trying to fit all of the puzzle pieces together more or less, so that the characters get comfortable with each other and the players all get comfortable with me, and vice versa. Through little tests here and there, I think I'm getting a better handle on who everyone is and how they like to play. The players have been constantly surprising, which just rocks. It throws me for a loop every time, and they're not letting me get away with things they don't agree with.

The story is taken from my last D+D game in Arkansas, which did not end very well. There were a lot of things I could have done better with that one, but the main thing was making sure to pay attention to the players and why they were there. I think that, when push came to shove, my running style was just incompatible with the playing style of a few players; they were looking for a different experience from what I was giving, and I don't think I was sensitive enough to that fact. This time around I'm trying to be really careful about determining what people want, and finding ways to give it to them. I *hope* that I'm doing an all right job with it. Everyone seems to be pretty satisfied, which is the important thing.

The plot begins a bit before it did in my Arkansas game; the players are converging in the capital city of Splendor to celebrate the new floating castle constructed by the High King and Queen. They come from all different parts of the kingdom, from all walks of life; a barbarian and a dwarf from the frozen tundra of Morein, a bard seeking his fortune away from his homelands in the Duchy of Summer, a mage whose family sent him away from the southern duchy of Feingold to study magic, and an elf who comes from the lands of the Eldertree. They happen to be staying at the same inn, and through circumstances beyond their control, get roped into being dragon-dancers for the big parade.

The dragon, once it reaches the castle site, unleashes a missile at the castle instead of the fireworks display they had been told would happen, and the party finds themselves unwitting accomplices in an assassination attempt. They're now in hiding with a mage who's saved them from certain death (treason isn't to be taken lightly), but whom they don't trust at all -- especially when he gives away a secret the bard has been harboring for sometime now. This last game ended with some peace being restored with a reluctant apology, though there's still a lot of...mistrust all around. That's certainly fun, and it was oddly thrilling to watch the party unite in their hatred of this particular NPC. ;)

Anyway, they're in these strange woods where all kinds of odd things happen; a very strange wolf attacked our barbarian already, leaving the party with a deep-seated fear that he's been infected with lycanthropy. There's a wild elven child as well, ghostly dancing lights, a bear and...other things. The party has been getting information through their bard and mage about exactly what kind of woods they're dealing with, and they're a bit ill-at-ease. Another thing I really want to be sensitive about is not throwing in too much too soon; in the Arkansas game things unfolded a little too rapidly and the party got hopeless as a result, which is one of the things that lead to its dissolution. I do trust these guys to handle whatever I throw at them, but I also need to learn the value of giving them only one thing at a time.

Multiple story arcs, I've found, don't work as well in games as they do in other episodic forms of storytelling, like television. :) I thought that giving characters a "B-story" that provides clues to the over-arcing plot or a personal character arc might be a good thing to work in, but it tends to leave the party torn on which path to take and makes them feel overwhelmed. I think there's a way to have multiple things going on at once, I just need to be better at signalling what is an interesting tidbit that should be tucked away for later, and what requires immediate attention.

Though, now that I have a bit more time both at work and at home to work on writing things, I'll be trying to (finally) edit some poetry and write short stories. As usual, the less said about this, the better. Though there is an exercise up on writerrabbit that I'm kind of pleased with. Please go check it out if you've got a free moment.