(no subject)

[shapinglight]

I'm still off work, though feeling quite a bit better, and have been trying to work on my story for noel_of_spike. A simple tale, I told myself, not much more than a PWP, and about time I got back to what I used to think of as my OTP.

More within, with brief spoilers for True Blood season 1 ep 4.



However, it's turning out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be (doesn't it always?). I think I'm just, plain running out of cunning plans to get Angel and Spike into bed together. So far, it's taken them 7 pages and their motivation (or Angel's anyway) is totally shot given the timeframe. I think I'll just have to write the sex scene and then twist the story around it.

Speaking of which, it's a fanfic cliche, but a true one, that sex scenes get harder and harder to write as you go along. Okay, so you start off rather pleased with yourself that you've managed to write one at all. Then you get your confidence and write lots of them. Then you begin to get a bit blase. And finally you get to the point where you skip the sex scenes in other people's fics to read the 'good' bits, having started off (not always but sometimes) coming from the complete opposite direction. And occasionally along the way you have a 'wobble' when you decide that the sex scenes you wrote and that people said were 'hot' were nothing of the kind and they were just being nice to you.

Mind you, that happens about fanfic writing in general, not just sex scenes.

So anyway, yes, Angel and Spike shall have sex this Christmas in my story (unless they just go off the idea and decide to have a nice mug of cocoa instead), but hopefully there will be a little more to it too.

Watched ep 4 of True Blood season 1 last night - the one where the famous Eric finally appears. I thought this was the best episode yet, with the rather slapstick (possibly not the best word in the circumstances) comedy of what happened to poor old Jason (the faux labour scene in the hospital was hilarious), the turns from various odd locals, including William Sanderson as the sheriff (he doesn't seem to have changed much since Bladerunner), the scenes in the vampire bar and Bill's thralling of the policeman.

I'm still getting a Twilight-y vibe off Bill and Sookie (only mitigated by the fact that Sookie is considerably less annoying than Bella and at least seems to have a sense of humour, and at least Bill doesn't bloody sparkle), but found Bill slightly less boring in this episode. As for Eric, though the actor does nothing for me (a bit too Aryan superman for my taste), I like the character and the whole vampire bar set-up, which sort of suggests that True Bloodverse vampires are omnisexual etc etc. The hierarchical nature of their society as portrayed in what I've seen so far (the older you are, the more powerful you are is how it comes across) doesn't thrill me, though. I do wonder why this is such a cliche of vampire stories, even when the source material isn't much concerned with vampires at all. For instance, Buffyverse fanfic centring around the vampire characters has more or less had to create their society from scratch since Joss himself was never interested in it, and the same hierarchical pattern according to age occurs a lot in that. Is it just because of the Master (and Kakistos a little), because there are other old vampires in the Buffyverse who don't seem to command much respect?

Finally, I still sometimes find myself thinking it's weird how much I love the Buffyverse given that I don't actually like vampire stories and never usually read/watch them. You could say, I suppose, that this is because BtVS isn't actually about vampires, but then the problem for me remains that, apart from Buffy herself, I like the vampire characters best.

Odd. And even odder that without BtVS, which isn't about vampires, but in which I like the vampire characters best, I would never even have thought of watching True Blood, because it's about vampires and I'm not interested in them.

Comments

[twilightofmagic.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you're feeling a bit better. I'm puzzling over strange body flush feelings and general offness. Hoping it's not the beginning of something. I suppose if it is, it'll make itself known fairly quickly from what I hear. What strikes me every time I see the actor who plays Bill in an interview, he is so much better looking and attractive than the way he appears on TB. Same with the Eric actor who does indeed look like a viking. William Sanderson is such an interesting actor. Apparently he's tremendously well thought of in the industry. I think I learned that from commentary on the Deadwood DVD. He certainly has never been out of work. Good luck with the sex scenes. I used to tear my hair out trying to write them eventually. Actually started to look at how other people I admired as writers did them. Part of my problem was that I was too literal and ran out of ways to describe thrusting and coming. I think I started to avoid the sex scenes before the end and sometimes just ended stories before the actual sex which is a bit of a cheat, or I would regard it as a cheat as a reader.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I've grown to accept Sookie for what she is. I watched all of Season 1 True Blood in a marathon weekend of mass viewing and there was a stretch there where she was doing a tap dance on my last nerve with her being so completely wrapped up in her life and blind to everyone else's. I think this was partially a by product of watching it all back to back to back. Stepping back and going through the next season far more slowly, I've more or less settled in on thinking that Sookie actually believes what she preaches. Sure, she can be blindly self-involved, but she does actually have a good heart. She at least intends to do right by people even if she has a tendency to be blinded to everyone's troubles but her own. If she is smacked up side the head with someone's problems she does actually care. She's flawed but I can handle that.

Poor Bill. I think you've basically got his number. His personality is never going to set the world on fire. If he weren't a vampire, he'd mostly be just boring. I find he works best when they up the incongruity, such as his owning a Wii and in the stuff that comes up with a character that won't be introduced for a while.

And bless Jason for being dumb as a post. Seriously, however stupid you think he is now, he will get much more stupid... and that's actually a good thing. He does some awesomely stupid shit. May he never develop more than a double-digit IQ.

I can never bring myself to say that True Blood is a 'good show' because I don't actually believe that it is. But it does work overtime trying to be entertaining and frequently succeeds at that... if not at any loftier goal.

[whichclothes.livejournal.com]

Now, who would have thought it would be so hard to get Spike and Angel into bed together? ;-)

Glad you're feeling better--I ended up skipping work today and spending most of the day in bed with something vaguely flu-like. I'm not miserable yet, and I'm hoping lots of rest will make it go away instead of getting worse.

[shapinglight]

I'm puzzling over strange body flush feelings and general offness. Hoping it's not the beginning of something. I suppose if it is, it'll make itself known fairly quickly from what I hear

Yes, probably. I hope it turns out to be nothing. Also, I don't think I can have had swine flu after all, just some low level virus, as I'm pretty much better now apart from a niggly cough.

What strikes me every time I see the actor who plays Bill in an interview, he is so much better looking and attractive than the way he appears on TB

They do seem to have made him look as unattractive as they possibly could. I wonder why? And it doesn't surprise me to read that William Sanderson is never out of work. He pops up all over the place. He was even in Babylon 5.

Re: the sex scene, I try to avoid too much detail these days, partly because I'm afraid of getting it wrong and making a fool of myself, but mainly because I long since decided that less is more. Even the best writers (and I'm thinking of one in particular, though naming no names) can end up coming across like a sex education manual.

I suppose there might have been a time when I regarded ending the fic before the sex scene as a cheat, but not any more.

[shapinglight]

Must admit that I do look forward to True Blood every week and was hoping that at some point it would live up to the promise of that amazing title sequence. I'm sorry to hear that you don't think it's a good show after two whole seasons. :( Is it the subject matter, the characters, the lack of anything 'deeper' or what is it that makes you feel that way?

[shapinglight]

Now, who would have thought it would be so hard to get Spike and Angel into bed together? ;-)

I know. It's weird. They just don't want to go, for some reason.

I hope you feel better soon too.

[acacia5.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you're feeling a bit better.

I love Christmas anyway, but a new Spangel fic from you makes me look forward to it even more, and I'm sure that you will find a way to stop the boys fighting the inevitable:)

[shapinglight]

I hope so. Dunno what their problem is really. Possibly the timeframe I've chosen.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's a little too crack-addled and disposable to be truly 'good.' (Though a lot of people adore Season 2.)

With Buffy or Mad Men you can actually try to ponder the symbolism of things or the deeper, slightly hidden, meaning. True Blood is never subtle. Forget the earth tones or the hints of color, they like to liberally apply whore red. It embraces the OTT, and that is both what is good and what is bad with the series.. On the occasions when it's Jason suiting up with a shotgun like Rambo while wearing antlers and proclaiming himself "The God Who Comes," it's totally worth it. As far as I'm concerned Jason and Andy can go bumbling around trying to play idiot-savant heroes as much as they want because it's freaking hilarious. On the other hand, it's also the show that made orgies boring. I'm talking full-blown, Caligula-like orgies became so redundant that after a while you're going, damn, another orgy?

There are characters worth rooting for -- love LaFayette, Sam, Hoyte, Jessica (I suppose. It's according to what they decide to do with her in Season 3). Any irritation I felt with Sookie and Bill has long since faded away because they've settled into being flawed but good-intentioned. I still find their 'romance' on the dull side, but the characters are, in the end, likable enough. I really liked Tara's plot in season 1 but in Season 2 I think they let it go off the rails. That said, I don't think she's ruined or anything. I just hope she gets something more constructive in Season 3. And, while Jason's Season 1 plot has some things of interest in it with the whole 'V' thing, I enjoy him better when they embrace the full-on stupid.

...and, reading this, it's strange. In a show about vampires, most of my favorite characters aren't the vampires. Still, on True Blood the humans can be every bit as messed up and evil as the vampires (which is what I actually liked about Jason's 'V' plot in Season 1. Exactly which species is the parasite there?)

But "True Blood" mostly is what it is. It's OTT, garish, and often a lot like crack-fic. But it is fun. So bring on the vampire queens obsessed with Yahtzee, a drunken deputy running around saying (truthfully) "there's an orgy! With black eyes! And a pig!" while having no one believe him, and all the other assorted craziness. It's okay for some shows just to be junk food. They don't all have to be artistically 'good'. Just entertaining. :)

[shapinglight]

Well, that cheers me up no end. I do like shows that give me something to chew on, but I can cope with 'entertainment only' fodder too, as long as it's reasonably well written and the dialogue/acting isn't too clunky, which is certainly not the problem with True Blood. It may not be The Wire but it has still reeks of HBO-style class.

And I hope you're right about Tara. As far as I've got (which is admittedly not that far), she's my favourite character by a long way, though I love Lafayette too.

ETA: should add that for me the whole show has the gloss of the exotic, but you live in the South. Are there aspects of the show that make you wince, the way the Hollywood version of Britain and the Brits usually makes me wince?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

LOL! Please, don't take any of it as remotely resembling the real South. (I still laugh at how offended Stoney321 was over the pecan pie they have at one point in Season 1. Whatever the hell that was, it was not a pecan pie!) And I complained once that virtually all the characters live in hovels. Oh, and the accents are terrible. But I suppose that's what you get with a New Zealander, a Brit, and an Australian as your lead actors playing Southerners. (That's also the reason for all those Bill icons wandering around with the caption "Suhcky is Mahn!" Heh. Even Southerners mock Bill's accent). However, it's difficult to truly be offended by something so broad. It's the "True Blood" alt_verse, not reality. It's its own stylized world.

And Tara is one of my favorite characters as well. Most of my issues with her Season 2 plot were centered on timing. The Suzanne plot seemed to run too long, requiring Tara to be passive to facilitate it, and resulting in her being victimized too much for my taste. I don't consider her to have been damaged by the plot in a writing sense. She's still totally viable as a character and still sympathetic. She's just had a rough year and will have issues to deal with in Season 3. I just hope that both she (and Lafayette for that matter) get to be a bit more empowered next season. They've been pretty heavy into the suffering and vicitimization. There needs to be some counterbalance. I expect Lafayette to be fine when the next season starts as he worked through the bulk of the aftermath of the crap done to him during this last season. Tara, however, got the final gut-punch in the finale, so I'm expecting her to have issues when Season 3 starts. I do hope that we're allowed to see them both get their mojo back. (And it's impossible to tell from the books as the series departs rather substantially from the books even as it keeps some of the book plots. Both characters -- and Bill for that matter -- are and will be far more prominent in the TV series than they are in the books. I don't think some of the TV characters even exist in the books.)

ETA: And if there were any request I could make to True Blood it would be to please, please spare us any other Bill flashback sequences. Bill/Lorena =/= Angel/Darla or Angel/Spike or Spike/Dru. They can, however, feel free to flashback to Eric/Godric whenever they please.

[shapinglight]

It's the "True Blood" alt_verse, not reality. It's its own stylized world.

I suppose that works pretty well - particularly as half the cast are vampires. :)

I hope you're right about Tara. She's such a good character. It would be a shame for that to be spoilt.