Rizzoli & Isles (2010) Summary A drama that zeros in on two disparate gal-pal crimefighters from Boston, assertive detective Jane Rizzoli and steady medical examiner Maura Isles. Hailing from very different economic backgrounds, the strong, competent women effectively work together to solve the city’s most puzzling crimes.

This series is on the TNT basic cable network, and has just started its second season recently.  A cop show that  features female leads, they lean towards the foremsics/procedural end of the mystery format, with a female brawler and female brainiac.  The mysteries are uneven, as most of the short first season was character exposition, only a few are particularly memorable.  This is a minus as the best stories are strong on character AND plot.

The leads are interesting with weaknesses and advantages, and are a nice example of how being female should not be an issue, like it still was in the days of Cagney and Lacey.  Unfortunately, Rizzoli’s family did not all get that memo, which is still too true.  Her newly divorced mother is so much a cliche about it, I hope she gets kidnapped by Cylons.

But at the office, it’s the work, which is as it should be. That they are professionals is just expected.  Some of the buddy things could have been taken from cop shows decades back.

First season was good, this season where the whiney mother has been given more air time, I’d been really looking forward to.  As much as I like the Rizzoli and Isles, I hate the mother and am on the edge of dropping the show after only 2 new episodes.  The mother not only has no competence or purpose 0f her own, like the stereotypes of the mid 20th century, but she actively acts as a negative pull on the leads.

Verdict: Good, but in danger from character kidnapped from the 50s.

I am also posting fanfic so I have limited time for other writing too.  More later, as I am trying to find purpose for all the sitess I have accounts for…

I still spend time learning off edu-TV and Wikipedia, writing/reading fanfic, writing an AU game setting,  reading books and magazines, watching some tv drama and thinking about writing more than chases and cleavage, and corresponding with other writers.  I have hopes after I finish the storyline I’m working on, that I might learn Daz and/or maybe scrounge new hardware.

Just because I do fanfic, don’t think I approve of Sues.  Even with the fic being based on a computer game, the lead is a 24 on the Sue litmus test, over a quarter of which is because the quiz, like all purity tests, is harsh on unusual things, like a stable trio.  But life is not simple for my leads, they screw up, get hurt, can’t do things and don’t have special hair, eyes, or bloodlines.  They have to live under Heinlein’s rule, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”  They win, but it costs them in various ways, and the characters do grow and change.  Since Sues are perfect, they don’t grow, eh?

But now that I’ve read so many Sues in fanfic, and read more about Sues in commentary, the more I see Sues in ‘professional fiction.’  I can even remember a story I read many years ago that is a really bad Sue, in a Trek book named Dreadnought.  Sues are everywhere, in movies, books and tv.  Also annoying are RPG players who want to be Sues/Stus, and don’t want to admit it.  They get really pissed when stupid things get them killed, you know…

These things, along with basic life things, keep me busy enough.

While my life hasn’t changed that much as I would have hoped, being disabled but not getting any assistance limits those kind of things that require money.  Hence the delays in hardware upgrades…  I probably won’t post here that often as I have other writing that really requires work.  I still haven’t started revising my NaNoWriMo tale for printing… as the tale before it has to be finished first or I’d be spoiling it for my readers.

I’ve posted more fic on the fanfic site.  The reader stats page are almost mesmerizing, to watch the little bar braphs go up as reader find your post, and hopefully enjoy it.

Alas, even though I posted two new chapters in two different ‘stories,’ I only got three reviews.  This is disappointing, as one had been partly written on a previous reader’s request.  Also, new chapters in the same stories the week before got almost three times as many comments.  The new ones were better, IMO.

There was some wonkiness in the comment system, which may have helped reduce it.  But I’d hope other reviewers would be willing to try again as I had for a review I wanted to send.

But it does make one blue.

My life is blue enough right now, seeing the reviews come in is one of the high points of my week. <sigh>

This is making it harder to contemplate the physical problems I’m going to have to use the other computer I need for some research for coming chapters.  Facing discomfort, at best, if no one will appreciate my efforts, seems a waste of effort.

Like I said, very blue.

One IT friend from another state offered to help talk me through recovery of some things off my terminal old hard drive, but finding when he’ll be free to do so is taking a while.  Alas, my budget says I can’t just give it to some professionals.

Most other writers I like seem to be doing other things right now, and I’m having enough trouble walking that my good computer is still painful to access.  Apathy and blues seem to rule, aside from occasional MS snippets.

Of course the real problem, is that am woefully short on that classic requirement for a writer or performer: ego.  That means, I take comments way too personally.  (unless and until it becomes totally obvious the writer is a nut)  But as I usually give someone else the benefit of the doubt, I go through a fair piece of angst until they reach the nut-point.

I haven’t stopped writing, I’m still putting out thousands of words in a journal/self examination/fiction.  Sorry, but I wouldn’t even publish a chunk of it unedited for a large cash prize.  A small piece or two have already been recycled in a module, so its not been as useless as I once thought.  But it is odd the skeletons I have dug out of storage, and linked into the journal narrative.

I’m letting the small ficlet, rest a little bit before I post it.  I’m sure at least one person will read it after pushing it through babelfish into swahili and back.  But this is a test to see if I’m really going back to writing for others, or continue my study of my own id/ego/superego.

I do know if I resume publishing, I have major revisions/rewrites I’m not looking forward to…

Though it has given me another story idea, a good dream vision that I immediately stole for a D&D session, and some character insights that will probably curve back into my main fanfic.  Like a journal, parts have also worked like some kind of Rorshak test, so I’m learning things even if its not anything about writing.

But I’m like the kids begging uncle remus for the end of the story, and its not happening.  Themes, issues, problems, emergencies, and strange characters appear and are resolved.  Soon, or 50k words later.

The only good thing is that I’m even getting restless with it, and one of my other stories, only in a partial first draft, is starting to call for attention.  I can’t say I’ve got writer’s block as I’m still writing about 4k words a day.  But nothing for publication…

Also the forums i visit seem pretty slow right now, and the new stories in the Pit (what a lovely nickname, guys) aren’t appealing for setting or create the urgent wish to know what happens next.  One that has an interesting idea, promptly failed the plausibility test, even for a fantasy story.

Ah, well.  Maybe one of the stories I like will publish tomorrow…

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak…

Was off with mostly RL stuff.  Only thing fic related is my off-line journal.  Bits of it have already been scavenged for a D&D game Sunday, for future revisions of my main story, and a new story.  The revisions are looking very iffy, as my longer stories get little response.  If no one reads them, I might as well just skip posting and stick to the rarer short pieces.  Not that I’ve stopped writing the longer one, just stopped posting.  So, the summary is, that I’m still writing a lot, between the journal and unpublishable long epic, just little posting.

Though my journal is reaching huge file lengths on the crummy, old laptop I use for it.  It’s so old, (how old is it?) It’s so old, a wireless modem won’t even install properly.   Its really, really safe from viruses tho

Murphy’s Law being what it is, that machine has lots of space on the HD, unlike this one.

So, not doing any writing for release right now.  I still have the last ten chapters of the 2nd book, my answer to being indecisive or greedy enough not to choose sides in the fen debate.

I do know I may do a major rewrite of it someday, to expand parts a few comments said were too sparse.  But then again, I do like the old dramatic thing of leaving some things off-stage.  One of the things I like are stories where not every detail is there, the FX people and sometimes over-detailed books I’ve read were far more disappointing than leaving me areas to ponder.  My imagination is often more vivid than what the author describes in detail… leaving me disappointed.

Its a tricky balance, as you have to not leave too many areas for the imagination to play with or the reader will drop out of the story.  Too much detail, and I wonder what kind of idiot the author thinks their audience is, to explain the plot development that was obvious 100 pages ago.  In great detail, yet.

Then to complicate things more, is using specialized knowledge the reader/viewer doesn’t know.   Like if a bit of knowledge in a mystery was known to the lead in  mystery, but never mentioned until page 329 while they wander around the story in circles forgetting it until the climax.  I don’t mind if they’ve forgotten it on camera, or some kind of sleight of hand they didn’t realize they knew it until later.  That’s perfect, as the PC or reader should be smacking their heads saying, ‘oh, shit!  how did we miss that?’  That’s the perfect way to do it.  But not foreshadowing or leaving the hook out ahead of time, and using a deus ex machina just plain sucks.

On the other hand, I think I’m up to the 4th hand by now , there is the word or phrase that just boggles me.  I know my vocab is large for my region, but sometimes the net polyglot nails me.  And I’m coming to really hate online dictionaries as they never tell me what I’m looking for.  I was looking for ‘epiphany’ as a synonym for realization, and all I found in the 1st three sources was ‘enlightenment.’  Not the same.  Finally my internal thesaurus found it.  So I don’t want to put anything to regional or period in my stories, as I want to communicate the idea without forcing my readers to stop reading to look it up.  There is a handful of terms that brings me to a screeching halt, and I’m reluctant to read those stories or authors now.

Well, on to summarize this rambling, my hopes for writing:

• Not too much detail.  Some things offstage are far more effective than onstage.  Twilight Zone dealing with censors was much scarier than many horror movies with their buckets of blood.  A powerfully written almost-kiss can get more interest than a 5 page love scene.
• Enough detail.  Don’t leave too many or too big holes in the narrative.  Covering the missing sections or a transitions over time, lightly is okay.  This is probably a weakness of mine, as expanding what I’ve already alluded to, in detail, feels like ‘dumbing down’ the story.
• Use specialized knowledge carefully.  Too much and you’re showing off, not telling a story.  Using it, without foreshadowing, at the end is a cheat. (amazingly, our hero just got that gadget in parcel post to make all Klingon engines lose power for thirty minutes…) I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn, low milage fer ya, lady! [#1 and #3 combine to make a cardinal sin of talking down to the reader]
• Language! Language! Language!  Be really careful to stay reasonably close to the vocabulary of your audience.  That’s why jargons and net slang are so dangerous in writing, as your readers may have a different hash table in their brains and think you mean what you don’t.  Not that you can’t override the default vocab lookup (hash table*) for a specific term, but you should pair a tiny bit of exposition with uncommon usage.
• Hackneyed plots.  (didn’t say much at all, maybe in another post)

That’s why most network TV drives me up a wall…  I usually can change channels 1/3 of the way in and do something else, as it rarely has any surprises.