Cabbages and babble and shit.

[raven]

Aha, LJ seems to want to remind me of Hallowe'en. Unlike last year, though, I don't think Balliol are doing anything for it - which is a shame, because last year the Master held a combined Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes party outside with lots of fireworks and free food and bonfire and effigy in Trinity colours, and invited every member of the college and their friends, partners, and children. It was really rather wonderful. This year I've heard nothing about it, so I guess there won't be a repeat of it. Nevertheless, Maria and I are going to carve a pumpkin. I've never done it before, and I'm childishly excited about it. (Just like I get childishly excited about baking, too; I never baked stuff when I was little and it seems to be much more fun as an adult, because you can make whatever you like and lick the bowl and ignore the recipe wholesale.)

Anyway, I didn't actually mean to start talking about pumpkins and cakes again. I have had a long, long, long day, because I got up ridiculously early. In fact, I am just three hours short of having been up for twenty-four hours, and this wasn't supposed to be the intention. Claire came banging at the door in the morning, because I did ask her to, but I was still silently furious when I tramped into the kitchen looking for coffee only to be laughed at by medics for whom consciousness at half eight in the morning is a regular occurrence.

But I didn't go back to bed, and in the end I went to a class. I'm never good with classes; I never seem to get much out of them, and this one wasn't any exception. There were too many people - eight, plus my rather nice Ethics tutor - in his study, and I had the comfy armchair and kept having to stop myself from dozing off. I only really perked up near the end, when Sagar was trying to explain an obscure point in favour of projectivist morality. It was actually a really good, subtle point, so I leaned round in my chair and watched him put the formulation up on the whiteboard. I can't quite follow formal logic, due to having crashed and burned so spectacularly last year, but I managed to parse the syntax well enough to notice a mistake. He was trying to show something about all properties x, where x indicates a natural property, but the argument pre-formalisation hadn't worked like that. The example they were using was x as a property of action A where A is "pushing someone out of a window." If natural property x is "the state of being an act of defenestration" then the argument fails. (I don't remember why. I'm telling this story for a reason, honestly.)

Then someone else complained about the agent of the act, and why it had to be a moral agent. It could be an inanimate object. "I mean, it is not morally wrong to throw a cabbage out of a window."

Ater almost three hours of this, it was like waking up after a long dream. I could feel the stupor draining away through the room, as everyone's wtf? centres kicked back in. As for Sagar, he put down the pen like it burned, burst out, "Cabbages! Defenestration! Shit, this is nuts!"

And the assembled masses rose and went out. I will do an essay on non-cognitivism during the Christmas vac. and hopefully will have entirely repressed the memory of this class.

I suppose the moral of the story is that I have thrown off the weird grey mood far enough to survive classes and do reading, but for some reason I keep running out of energy in the middle of conversations. It's a bit silly really. I went to steerpikelet's gathering tonight and talked to people and drank some wine and ate some cake and was social. That was a good idea. absinthe_shadow came up with me and drank tea in the kitchen and we talked for hours about nothing very much. Very good fun.

Er... other news. I have finally finished watching season one of Supernatural, and, er, whoa. Good show. Actually, a show with a few obvious flaws, but I love it regardless because it is marvellous. Much love, and now I'm not as afraid of being spoiled I've been able to devour fic like a mad thing, and that is always good. A couple of recs, while I'm here.

Firstly, an odd little titbit. One of my to-write projects is a more serious exploration of girl_doctor - perhaps in the vein of "Insomnia" - which draws more on the characterisation of Ten. Basically, the idea is that girl!Doctor will realise, as time goes on, that she can use sex as a weapon, just like she uses everything else that comes to hand. And being new to this, and a little naive, she wouldn't realise at first that using people to get what she wants is a cruel thing to do. But when she does realise, she won't stop. Because, like Ten, she's ruthless; she wants what she wants, because she thinks it's best and she thinks she knows best, and she'll use her sexuality as cruelty and it will all be gloriously fucked-up.

One would think, though, that such a specific idea would be unique to me, and could just wait on my to-write shelf until I get around to writing it. But I was wrong. I just read "How Am I Gonna Keep Myself Away From Me", (Supernatural, Dean and girl!Sam) by ethrosdemon, and loved it, because yes, yes, this is what it would be like. And I wouldn't want it to be, because hell, I love Sam as a character, I really do. But this plays out with such truth that it's... yeah. Read it. (But, er, it is porny and incestuous. Read it anyway, it's fab.)

And also, "Violent World Our Fathers Bought" by likethesun2 (Supernatural, gen). Quite apart from being one of my favourite people, she's one of the best writers around, and I haven't shared a fandom with her in literally years and omg, read this fic. I betaed it, because I am luckier than you. It is gorgeous and evocative and it has deliciously understated themes and angst and also plot. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. Go, read, stop listening to me babble.

Because oh dear, yes, I have been awake a very long time now. Sleep is in order.

Comments

[elyim.livejournal.com]

Aw, no, cabbages have feelings, too!

Defenestration is one of my favourite words.

That sounds an interesting idea for girl_doctor :D

Hmm, everyone keeps going on about how brilliant Supernatural is. I think I'll download the pilot, once my connection is going faster than 2000 B/s omg.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

So do babies and animals, but they are not moral agents. (Er, I am not endorsing the throwing of babies from windows. Maybe I've spent too long reading philosophy.)

It's one of my favourite words, too. :)

And EEEEE yes watch Supernatural it is joy. Look at my icon of Gratutious Emo! The whole show is like that!

[elyim.livejournal.com]

I'm downloading Supernatural now. My connection is going 100KB/s faster than it was yesterday, so it should be done by the time I've finished watching this ep of Battlestar Galactica XD (and then while I watch Supernatural, I will download the next BSG, and so forth throughout the night! What a plan!)

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

So basically the girl Doctor turns into Servalan?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Er, Servalan? (I know servalan, but I don't think you mean her!)

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

1. Oh, god, just imagining your ethics class is frying my brain. I did formal logic once a long, long time ago, and if I ever learned it to begin with I've certainly forgotten it now, and just--trying to work out how it can be applied to, y'know, practical situations makes me want to scream. (Uh, insofar as anything that descends into a discussion of the defenestration of cabbages can be practical!)

2. Have I mentioned lately how WILDLY EXCITING it is to be sharing a fandom with you again OMG? Well, infer what you will from the fact that that last sentence had as many capslocked and italicized words as plain text. I'm sticking the girl!Sam fic in my memories, because I will happily read incest fic if you rec it to me.

3. Thank you for the rec! I, too, am flabbergasted that it has something resembling plot. Last night I was talking to hiyacynth, bemoaning the fact that my in-my-head epics never have plot, and then I said, "Well, I guess that makes sense, since even my stories don't have plot."

"The long Supernatural story had plot," she pointed out.

And I gaped and exclaimed, "OH MY GOD IT DID!!!"

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

1. That class ceased to be attached to anything practical a long time before the cabbages. In fact, you can probably say the same for my entire degree. Sigh.

2. IT IS LOVE OH YES. I am afraid that it's just my genderswap kink blinding me, but actually I don't think so. It really is that good. What is it about this fandom and genderswaps? I used to have to really look for it, and here people write it at the drop of the proverbial.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

(Ack, pressed send too soon.)

3. Do you ever find your writing process is different when you're writing plot? On the rare occasions that I do write it, I almost feel a certain workmanlike quality about the whole thing - this scene leads to that one leads to the next one - and I don't take time to savour writing the prose like I do when I'm plotless. It's just not as fun. Maybe it's just me, I don't know.

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, on the very rare occasions where I feel obligated to write plot for the sake of plot--which I'd say only ever happens with ficathons, if that--yes, I find it much less enjoyable. I'm less likely to turn out good pure prose, which is honestly the reason I write to begin with. But most of the time, if there's plot in my stories it's kind of secondary, in that I use it only as scaffolding on which to hang the fun stuff. That's what happened with Violent World--I needed two mysteries to showcase the ideas I wanted to write--and in cases like that the logistics and the chain of causality can be excruciating to puzzle out, but the writing itself is still enjoyable. If that makes any sense.

What stories of yours have given you that kind of trouble, if you don't mind my asking? You've piqued my curiosity!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It makes lots of sense. I have the exact same problem, I think. The only fic I've written remotely recently with a plot is this one (http://loneraven.livejournal.com/437854.html), which did tax my brain a lot. The plot was a scaffold to hang stuff off, but I'm still not sure it worked as well as I'd wanted. And then there was "The Sanctity of Ordinary Things (http://loneraven.livejournal.com/445037.html)", which was done for a ficathon, and that nearly killed me. It doesn't even have a proper plot, but it does have lots of OCs and original settings, so I struggled.

And there's another fic - actually, Supernatural! - that I'm trying to write right now, and again it's supposed to have a plot to hang things off and I'm just failing miserably. I write the stuff to hang off the plot in brief unconnected paragraphs and close down the document in disgust. Sigh.

(The other SPN fic, though, is very nearly done... *g*)

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

Let's face it, the Doctor always uses people to get what he wants anyway... It's just that being a girl would make it more noticeable... Go for it, it would be fun..!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I might. :)

[ressie-noldo.livejournal.com]

I shall have to admit that defenestrating cabbages might be one of the more amusing things I've thought about all day with the possible exception of water-soluble werewolves (er, because).

...Which is actually scary, come to think of it.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Indeed it is! *nods emphatically* Does that mean poor Remus can't go out in the rain?

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

At least I've never ended up either taking or teaching a class in which the topic became the ethics of chucking veg out windows. I comfort myself with that.

(Okay. I did once wind up stuck in a group terza rima with a man who kept bringing the subject back to chickens. But I understand he's quite normal nowadays.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're an English teacher, you're above such puerile things. *g*

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

We had a discussion in a pub about whether 'blue flavoured' (e.g. WKD) was linguistically similar to 'colourless green ideas sleep furiously'. No firm conclusion apart from heartfelt vows to never drink a substance declaring itself to be $colour flavoured.

Sorry, this isn't quite as random as cabbages as moral agents.