the drabble

"We'll get through this," he says as he fights the pain.

I'm sick of that line.

I don't think I believe in the other side of all this anymore. I don't think there's a "through" to get through--and I don't think I'd trust it even if there was. I don't know how to live in a world where I'm not eternally braced for catastrophe. Like Atlas, the world will collapse if I relax.

Hell is a Mobius. There is no other side.

Actually the book will probably do better among the general Young Turk crowd than among hard-core fans. The book isn't for hard-core fans, right? It's for people interested in the workings of people. Hard-core fans are the ones who will be griping about how it wasn't really like that and you took me out of context.

This is perzactly my thinking on it, Nutty. There's so little insight on the inner workings of Joss Whedon's head I don't see how it would be entertaining to fans on that sort of level who just want to talk about the shows and the stars of them.

It feels weird to me to be marketing it to fans of shows, when so little of teh book actually discusses shows themselves. I'm just talking about people who happened to like these shows, and my zany adventures.

I can't find any other books about fandom out there in a quick glance

Which is a big HOORAY FOR ME! I think, yeah?

What about giving a rough estimate of how many Buffy/Angel/Firefly boards/communities are out there?

Legion.

Ima give it some thought. I think it'd be a mistake to lump it in with the Christopher Golden books, The Watcher's Guide sorts of things.

Really? Ew. That sounds...painful.

The stuff they injected into his knee is called Synvisc, and Will Carrol described it as akin to motor-oil. It is supposed to "promote cartilate growth," but I think what it really is is the stuff you squirt into the hole in a tire, to keep the tire inflated so you can still run on it.

Clearly, Randy Johnson can still run (and pitch 95 mph) on it.

But if she shattered her kneecap, she could walk again, yes?

Yes, almost certainly. It looks like some patellar fractures are recovered from quite well; some require surgery to wire together the pieces of bone and make them grow back together; some actually involve cutting out the patella completely.

This link is kind of technical, but has nice X-rays and MRIs if you scroll down: [link]

I found a few books on fandom on Amazon, but they're heavy on the scholarly, light on the real life experience.

I'm just talking about people who happened to like these shows, and my zany adventures.

But remember that in an editorial meeting, people who don't know anything about this will be persuaded by the idea that if these shows had X number of fans, the book potentially has that number of buyers.

Still, it might be helpful to take a look at how many different kinds of web-based communities are out there (rough numbers, obviously), and possibly what other fandoms do f2fs.

I can't find any other books about fandom out there in a quick glance

I can think of a couple, but they tend to be academic in type, not popular.

A better comparison, in my mind, and based only on the 3-4 essays I read, would be memoirs of people who have done weird jobs or grown up in weird places -- an acquaintance of mine, Rachel Manjia Brown, wrote "All of the Fishes Come Home to Roost," about her childhood at an ashram in India, and that just came out.

Or, those Thrilling Tales collections of short stories, from McSweeney's. Who also put out a "short fiction (and a separate volume of essays) that isn't on your summer reading list, but should be" collection last year.

Nutty, that link is great. Thanks!

I need some kind of a knee-destroying accident that's interesting and believable. Something that would allow her to walk again, but not to dance. Right knee, since she's a right-handed person, and possibly requiring surgery, etc.

This happened to my niece Marisa. She got off a city bus and was hit head on by a bicyclist. Slammed into her right side, sent her flying - she's tiny, never topped 5'1" - and wrecked her right knee and right ankle.

Luckily Marisa had the fallback of being a brilliant violinist, but she'd been planning on dance. She was eleven at the time.

Hey, Allyson. I found that guy's drawing...I knew I kept it. One of my few crazy stories with...evidence.

What I'd like to do today is play all my Miyazaki, at least the ones that have wonderful sky and cloud scenes: Totoro, Kiki, Spirited Away, Howl, copy them into one long sky and clouds dvd and set it to some nice image-evoking, low-emotion-demandy instrumental music. I've been looking for a way to the other side of the looking glass for the last little while. A door in the hedge to slip through, out of real life and the need to interact, cope, deal. Just a place to hide and recharge, with no demands and no expectations, for just a little while.