Neil wrote:
All that I've read suggests that men and women both respond to dangerous lifestyles in a pretty similar way. And a way, incidentally, that is generally not reflected in fanfic - crude humour, cruder practical jokes, behaviour that in more comfortable surroundings would be taken as outright nastiness, sarcastic putdowns, emotional silence, and apparently inappropriate or tasteless responses to shocking situations (laughing at corpses, for example). These are all coping strategies developed by people who desperately need coping strategies.
While I agree, based mainly on what I've read (though going to an awful lot of HIV meetings, perhaps one meets a similar kind of stress), most of this is rarely or never seen on screen... We see sarcasm and emotional silence, but very little of the rest. Certainly less crude/tasteless than your average office, a lot less language too. (In fact, one of the obvious differentiating factors between my 'real Tavia MS' and the B7 characters in my piece is the swearwords-to-content ratio.)
Tavia
PS The repetition of food in Patricia Cornwell is almost certainly (IMO) coincidental, everything in those novels repeats, as one realises if one reads several of them back to back.
Tavia said:
Certainly less crude/tasteless than your average office, a lot less language too.
But then, how crude, tasteless and blasphemous could a BBC show have been in those days? (
PS The repetition of food in Patricia Cornwell is almost certainly (IMO) coincidental, everything in those novels repeats, as one realises if one reads several of them back to back.
Not to mention the number of things in B7 that repeat, and no doubt for the same reason (the time paradox that makes time shorter between the time one realizes there is a deadline, and the deadline, than between signing the contract and becoming aware of the deadline).
-(Y) Who, oddly enough, has failed to finish the thrilling article on the Qualified Terminable Interest in Property trust device that is due tomorrow....
From: Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net
Tavia said:
Certainly less crude/tasteless than your average office, a lot less language too.
But then, how crude, tasteless and blasphemous could a BBC show have been in those days?
A fan story is not a BBC production. It can be as crude, tasteless and blasphemous as the writer is prepared to make it.
Though I wouldn't go as far as to say that a story has to be any or all of those things. For some interpretations it would be very appropriate, for others entirely out of place. A decent writer should be able to allude to such things without getting gratuitously explicit (but then decent writing is all about alluding to things that aren't actually written down in words).
Neil
Tavia Chalcraft wrote:
PS The repetition of food in Patricia Cornwell is almost certainly (IMO) coincidental, everything in those novels repeats, as one realises if one reads several of them back to back.
Exactly. But what turned me off the series is that Scarpetta is the most blatant Mary Sue I've ever run across in professionally published fiction. She the world's best County Medical Officer (or whatever her title is), fine. She is always under attack by evil, incompetent, politically maneuvering opponents who resent her, whom she invariably outwits. Okay, part of the genre.
But.
She's also an ex-lawyer, and was top of the line at that, um, okay. She used to work with the FBI and CIA as an expert on terrorist psychology. hmm. She's an expert scuba diver and used to give lessons in it. She's a pilot. She has super-refined taste on home decorating and cars and clothes and possessions of all sorts. Despite the overwhelming hours she puts in (leaving her with no time to devote to them) she is involved in a long term relationship with a top FBI guy who is insane about her AND she has a long-term would-be lover/friend in a local police chief.
The last straw for me came about 1/3 of the way into the book about the drowned scuba diver. She goes out to an underwater crime scene late one wintery afternoon, bravely overcomes some male chauvinist piggery from police/navy divers, dives down to recover the body, immediately perceives it was murder and educates the others on why. Then she goes home, only to suffer an intruder/surveillance attempt on her home.
And then she sets out to make lasagna for her niece and the police chief and maybe some others, all the while thinking smugly about how SOME women would use these events as an excuse to call things off, or need comfort, or even stoop to ordering in...but not her! *She* would *never* offer her guests anything less than a gourmet delight constructed with her own two hands from her own special recipe....
Ptui.
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)
Susan Beth said:
Exactly. But what turned me off the series is that Scarpetta is the most blatant Mary Sue I've ever run across in professionally published fiction.
I really dislike both Scarpetta and the series, yet for some insane reason I keep reading them--in fact I have the latest one out from the library.
she is involved in a long term relationship with a top FBI guy who is insane about her AND she has a long-term would-be lover/friend in a local police chief.
But, in all fairness, Marino is such a complete slob that it would be like Egrorian walking three steps behind Jenna with a bouquet.
-(Y)
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Dana Shilling -
Neil Faulkner -
Susan Beth -
Tavia Chalcraft