A Rant, Totally SeriousThere's a rite of passage in every fanwriter's life where they sit down with a new story, a new fandom, Microsoft Word (or word processor of choice), and determinedly go though to update their custom dictionary. It's like the tattoo of the fannish world. Once you have added phasers to your custom dictionary, it's never coming out.
This is a special time--a sacred time, really. Because these words
don't exist and you will stare at them and think "so how is hyperspanner spelled?" and that just leads to like, eight hours on Memory Alpha reading about Klingons and you
still don't know how it's spelled, but you have a working knowledge of how to propose marriage in Klingon with your teeth.
Which brings me to the point--we really, really need to just move into the new millennium and
create ready made custom dictionaries for each fandom. Right, we create archives, communities, mailing lists, awards, and sure, I guess that's okay? But what about the
custom dictionary? I'm just saying. What the hell, fandom?
Just want to put that on the table. Think of it--instead of the horror of trying to remember how to spell hyperspanner or dilithium or
Romulan names, you get your Trek Spelling Dictionary downloaded and just toss it in and voila. You are
done, unless you are like me and make up words and maybe convince like, ten people they actually appeared in canon, which if they hadn't been so damn picky, I wouldn't have had to lie, so that was a very important lesson for everyone. But. Fandom should
get on this shit because okay, fine, I just spent several
days running spellcheck and have to keep stopping, go back, and add
new words and honestly, I'd rather we just standardized already. And you'd think I had them from Voyager? No. No, Voyager was several fandoms and like, four computers ago.
Yes, it hurt when I realized phasers are not actually real. It's been that kind of a day.
So This Isn't NewFor the record: I will never finish this story. I mean, ever. It was all fun and games at twelve thousand words and I was tripping down the path of almost done, but it's twenty-two thousand, I've cut two thousand, added back in twelve thousand, there's no ending, and I have a horrible, horrible feeling that I'm having some kind of epiphany regarding the use of contractions
again. As in, I keep forgetting to use them.
For ReferenceMy personal fannish religion is currently centered around
Star Trek Reboot links collected by
jmtorres. There are
a lot. And they are awesome.
There are Lines HereI know no one actually wants proof that I have crossed that nebulous border between fannishly neurotic and future astral wife of a fictional character, but okay, tell me how to handle V, one of my
two best friends in the world went and
hated Star Trek Reboot. After a three hour AIM exploration of meta commentary, competing themes, the use of alternate universe and time travel, social commentary in science fiction, the significance of Star Trek as a cultural barometer as we move forward as a society, the history of media science fiction, and how unbearably hot Chris Pine is, she--did not agree.
It's like I do not even know her anymore. I may have blocked her on AIM and sent flames, but not under my own name, so it doesn't count and IPs can be falsified, though not really very well. Which just goes to show, I really, really need a vacation or to
finish this goddamn story. You know, whatever works.
Everything ElseArthur the G1 was updated to Android 1.5, with added video support and a touch screen keyboard and some other things. Our love continues.
I need a better last line.