Current mood:

proud but very tired

The Book of Badassity — Chapter 1: Organizations
Remember like two months ago when I released the Book of Badassity’s chapter list/introductory entry (which I had originally referred to as “chapter 1,” but now it’s just an intro, by the way). Well, I told you guys a million times that I had dropped, then un-dropped, then dropped again – you get the idea – this project and, finally, here is its first chapter.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I finished the writing for the last entry of the Ginny Project just three days ago. If you care to know, I mean. This definitely comes as a relief, as I was getting rather tired of it – having working with Ginny since very early June when I wrote “Buying Cho” – but it’s also saddening because I had an absolute blast doing it. (Maybe less in the last entries, which are more serious, but hey.)

I’m going nuts with Canadian English OMG in this project, by the by, just because I know I should really get more used to putting Zs instead of Ss in things such as “organize,” because even though both are correct in Canada, the zeds are a lot more accepted. So, yeah.

This also means, however, that single quotation marks and I will have to say goodbye. I shall miss thee dearly. ‘Wangst.’

Anyway, without further ‘wangst’ing, here’s chapter one. And this one will remain “chapter 1,” unlike the previous chapter 1 which is now nothing but an intro. (Or whatever I decided to call it – “preamble”? “Introductory entry”? Dunno.)


People who organize are people Whom I Like. Because that means that I, for once, don’t have to do just that. (There: I said it. I like nerds because they take a bit of work off my own shoulders brain mouth tongue teeth fuck this shoulders.)

But then again, whenever the person doesn’t do the job properly, I have a lot of trouble at keeping my mouth shut. Which generally results in a brain explosion or mouth explosion; one of the two. My personal preference is the brain, however, because when my mouth explodes I need to go see the orthodontist, as if I don’t have enough of him and his hag-assistants as it is.

So, more about organizations. They are a group of people who do something together or in the same room/building/continent. Yeah, that’s my Great Definition from the Matt-Writer Dictionary. (I should so write that!) Anyway, the Organizations organize things to organize our world. Few come to mind, so hey, this should get very interesting. (Says the guy who’s planned the whole Book of Badassity in advance.)

Conventions
Ah, the convention. The excuse to go dress up as your all-time favourite character, and even wear their name for a bit! Conventions are exceptionally good for losers, nerds, friendless people and the poor suckers whose names actually have been worn out. (In case you don’t get this joke, which is probably the case, this is my explanation: If you get your name worn out [like, when you say, “I’m Jimmy, but don’t wear it out!”] you can just go to a convention and get another name and this one will not be worn out.)

That said, these convention-attendees are all cooler one than the other.

The proof of that, I think, is that when recently nominated for an award he’s never had before, Terry Pratchett actually took his book away from the list of nominations because it would stress him too much when he wanted to have fun at a sci-fi convention. Nuff said. (I was about to start fanboying some more about Pratchett right here, because no, nuff has actually not been said, but I really have to reserve this for the appropriate chapter.

…

…

Stupid chapters.)

So a convention is a place where a bunch of people who share a (surely fascinating) interest go together to… well, I’m not sure, actually. What… What do you do at a convention? Hm, so much for having planned this Book in advance. Man, this sucks. I can’t write anymore! Shit! Now please excuse me while I go delete my LiveJournal.

Okay, well, of what I saw in an episode of That’s So Raven (a long, long time ago, naturally) there are those food tables at the conventions. Yes. So you eat, for one, which is just incredible. Then there is probably role-playing, I guess…

Okay, this is stupid, I’ll just talk about faking being your all-time favourite character some more, because I have a vague idea of how that would be. (No sarcasm here. My idea actually is vague, as I’ve never done it! Except for once, six years ago, when I went as Harry for Halloween. Isn’t that cool.)

Because conventions are also a place to temporarily swap gender, sexuality, or both. Sometimes two heterosexual girls go together as Remus and Sirius, because that ship is not overdone at all. (The biggest flaw in the idea of the Book of Badassity is that, as I already said multiple times, I’m too cynical and critical to fanboy for long. Even now that I talk about something good – conventions – I find the bad stuff and point it out. Oh well. Being happy and fanboy-y and such is really not badass, and rather tl;dr, so I guess it’s better that way. Anyway, there are loads of said fanboying to come soon, and I wouldn’t want to get repetitive.)

So… what was I talking about, again?

Oh, right. Hetero transvestite boylover lesbians.

Well, my point is, it’s a place where you don’t have to be yourself. (Convention, I mean.) You can be… anyone you want. (You don’t know it – because you didn’t hear me – but I said that in a very breathy voice for drama, and it was good.) As long as the character exists, really.

Or, just take a nameless character that was merely mentioned in canon (like the endless list of Muggle familes who died in Deathly Hallows) and completely make up their appearance, personality, sexuality… and gender, too, of course. Or, fuck, you can just invent a character from scratch and pretend they exist.

Conventions are, after all, rather similar to the Internet.

Only, there isn’t any web-talk – which is good – or typos – which is even better – or people who don’t punctuate their sentences – not that you have much of a choice when speaking aloud – which is the best.

Did… Did I just say “speaking aloud”? Well isn’t that redundant.

But back on the subject of making up characters, here’s a little example of how it could go:

You, in a costume of something that doesn’t exist: Hey! You’re in a costume of Sirius’ cock!
Sirius’ cock: Er, yes. And I see you are… er…
You, still in a costume of something that still doesn’t exist: I’m Johnny Sacapuntas – you know, from eych bee pee.
Sirius’ cock: Ah, yes, of course… I see it, now – silly me.
You, who is STILL in a costume (unless you have decided to strip) of something that STILL doesn’t exist (unless Rowling wrote another Half-Blood Prince during that conversation and decided to name a new character “Johnny Sacapuntas,” for some reason): Ye-duh.

That aside, there is one very important rule with conventions, and it is the following.

No, not this one.

Skip another line.

All right, here it is: You’re not supposed to tell people when you go to a convention. Why? Because that will, as a general rule, result in you receiving a beating, being laughed at, or being called a nerd. Fortunately, there is one very good solution to avoid being mistreated thus, and that is 1) never to say “thus” aloud, and 2) to be secretive.

That aside, there is one other very important rule with conventions, and it is the following.

No, not this one.

Skip another line.

All right, here it is: When you see somebody you know at a convention, you’re not supposed to go talk to them, either. That would be breaking more-or-less every single rule of role-playing there is out there – twice. Plus, the person will then tell everyone at school/work that they saw you going to that convention, which of course they were only walking by and had not, in fact, attended, and that you are a nerd, etcetera. There is another problem with seeing people-you-know-in-real-life at conventions, though, and that is this one:

They might talk to you. They might be utter n00bs and dare break rules of role-playing. They will destroy all fundamental rules upon which the meaning of the Convention, the Core Organization of Nerdiness Via Elite Name-Tackling Intellectuals who Organize Nonsensically, was built…

… and shall suffer for it.

Basically, what they do is something like this:

They: Hi, [insert your real-life name here].
You: OMG that’s not me!!!

Then, you go and tell the Konvention King (or “Convention Cing,” if that makes you happy) and they are kicked out.

It’s all good fun.

Terry Pratchett’s City Watch
When there’s a crime in your city, all-out-badass Sam Vimes will be there to help. But everything’s not going all that well.

So the City Watch – the way I see it, anyway – is quite pathetic. It starts off in Guards! Guards!, in which there are only four members to the force. Then, of course, as the books progress (sorry, I’ve only read two with the Watch – Guards and Thud – so again, I might not be the best to write this), the organization gets more and more organized, structured, big – therefore, confusing and hard to handle.

That’s the thing with organization. (And here goes another out-of-place rant.) You can spend hours on end trying to make whatever you’re making (a list, a police force, a sculpture of Mrs. Lovett – whichever) organized, so it’s “easier to deal with afterward!!!,” but in reality, you can go through your day completely unorganized and spend it both delightfully and productively alike.

Since I’m supposed to be talking about the City Watch, I’ll use just that as an example: Terry Pratchett started with one book – Guards – and I’m sure he was utterly clueless as to whether he’d write another book with the same characters, settings (apart from Ankh-Morpork), etcetera, while planning it. And this, this is what is called – and it’s a beautiful word, indeed – unorganization. Unorganizations around the world are the guys who are not responsible for our governments, our wars, our terrorists, our obsession with the media, our money-centred economy, our companies who sell crap for a fortune – cigarettes, for instance –, our polluting electricity and other cheap and bad power sources, our schools, our jobs, our gigantrosity of cities – in which there are muggers and things of the sort – our terrorising news, our drugs, the permits we give to hunters for owning guns, our zoos in which we imprison animals, our farms in which cows have no lives to finally die and be eaten, our paved, heat-radiating streets… etcetera. So the unorganizations are really the ones whom we should be thanking, as they are the ones who have stopped the world from growing all too quickly, to a hell in which, well…

Global warming, mate. And guns, and money. Really, we’d all die if it weren’t for those lovely unorganizations.

/rant, etcetera.

So, back (again) on the topic of the City Watch, they work in Ankh-Morpork and they are useless. There, that’s enough info on their badassity which is, in essence, hardcore, but I really don’t have much to say about it, like with everything else found in Pratchett books, sadly.

But to fanboy about Vimes some more, since he’s not quite as badass as to actually fit in the chapter dedicated to badass characters… He is so cynical. I love him. And I love the way his wife and him interact; it’s a bit like the way I could imagine Remus and his wife talk. (I give credit to scat_catt for the Remus thing, though, because she’s the one who originally brought it up about Vimes. I had never really thought of it before.) (By “wife,” I’m most certainly not talking about Tonks, though.) Or Remus and Sirius, even, if you want. (When I say “want,” I don’t mean, “want in your bed with you for a ménage-à-trois,” though – no, I mean, “want to imagine Remus and Sirius talking and being like Vimes and Sybil.”) Although, Sirius isn’t really like Sybil.

Oh well.

Back on track, I also love the scene in which Vimes reads to his son. (I actually wrote a fanfic concerning these characters [sort of], but I don’t know whether I’ll post it or not.) And how much he cares for him; when I first read the scene in which a dwarf runs up the stairs into Little Sam’s room, my heart was just pounding. Like, honestly, I can’t remember the last time I got that into a book, and that’s saying a hell of a lot.

But enough of that! I will be talking about Thud! later, so I don’t want to say it all here. Maybe I can talk about Vimes there, if he doesn’t fit in “characters.”

So, bottom line is: the Watch is Teh Wonderful.

J.K. Rowling’s Dumbledore’s Army
So I haven’t reread OotP in a long, long time (a year at least), so what I currently think of the DA is that they suck, just because of… well, Deathly Hallows, actually. Yeah, DH kinda made me hate everything about Potter, unfortunately.

But still, I think that the DA is awesome, mostly because it feels all powerful and whatnot when Harry and Hermione (who was actually a good character in book!OotP) do the whole interview thing with Rita Skeeter, and Umbridge bans the Quibbler. This doesn’t have much to do with the DA itself, but it’s kinda related… right? I dunno, I just like that whole event.

So, about the DA itself:

THEY’RE NERDS! :P Really, they are, and they’re cool nerds, too (apart from 70% of them) because they teach themselves and give themselves more work and… Yeah, they’re cool.

Still, though, the only reason they’re here is so I have more than two organizations to talk about. Oh well.

So – yes – this just about rounds up the first chapter to this chapter! No – wait. This rounds up the chapter, which rounds up the… book… er… what? I’m confused. Okay, this just about rounds up the first chapter to this book. There, that makes more sense.

I have really got to go to bed earlier.

Anyway, I feel as though I should have loads of stuff written in advance (especially as it took me two months to give you guys this one chapter), but the sad truth is that this is about all that I have. Plus the notes for the next chapters and some stuff for two films, I think. The thing is that this Book is only fun to do in small doses, every week or so, because it’s… well, I don’t know. So – yes – don’t expect me to update very often. And – yes – expect me to say “sorry for the delay, gaiz” (did I just call you “gays”?) every single time. And – yes – this is 2550 words long, and I’m very proud of myself.