fanfic

Okay, so for those of you actually in Sherlock fandom, what's this about some interviewer making Benedict and Martin read slash fanfic onstage at a professional interview event? I've seen bits and bobs, as well as a slightly more official review of the atrocity, apparently.

I don't know if this Moran person is just a writer, or a journalist, or what, but I've been a journalist for 20 years, give or take, and it didn't take me nearly that long to learn how to do the job. Is this woman just really young, or what? (I should probably not even make judgment until someone explains it better. But I know how I feel about the stories of fans trying to get attention for themselves by asking the Red Dwarf guys about slash at their events.)

Dec. 15 meme answer

For janamelie, who asked: "What is / was it you enjoyed so much about POTC? And Will Turner, who I gather is your fave character?"

How do you condense years of enjoyment of a character into a readable bloc? YOU DON'T. ;-)

For a long explanation, here's a fannish essay I wrote about Will several years ago. It's definitely the most reliable because at the time I was most fond of the character. (Not that I don't still like him, but you know how it is - you're in a fandom and then you move on, and you spread your affection around to other characters as well.)

But in case you don't want to read all that: I think it comes down to the fact it's easy to see Will as the boring straight man to Jack Sparrow's flamboyant, fun, freewheeling miscreant. And he is, to great extent. But frankly, I think the straight man (the character archetype, male or female) is underestimated and that you can see what happens when you jettison that character, by watching both the first and fourth POTC movies ... and comparing their quality. Will is not in the fourth, nobody has really taken his place relative to Jack's pursuit of his schemes, and boy, it shows.

Orlando Bloom plays the character pretty straight-arrow and upright and matter-of-fact for the most part, and normally I'd say "kind of boring, give me the bad guy or the questionable 'hero' instead." The worst example I can think of offhand is Riley in "Buffy," who was the most bland, boring white-bread Boy Scout I did not like - I don't know if it was the character or the actor, but yikes. But, I'm sure somebody liked him, and I know there are POTC fans who felt the same about Will Turner. What I liked about Will is his motives are fairly pure - make sure his friend/fiancee Elizabeth is OK and later, to set his father free of a deep-sea curse - and everything he does is toward those ends. It's not to "get" Elizabeth when he doesn't "have" her yet, nor is it to get her back when they ARE engaged - he's pretty clear his wish is for her to be free to do as she pleases, not to possess her, and in addition to trying to save her when she's in trouble, he teaches her how to defend herself and accepts her help as an equal when he's in trouble; more than once. There aren't many more ways you can write a 17th century white male more feminist than that. Plus, there's at least one moment in each of the three movies Will is in that Orlando plays a moment as goofy and humorous, so the audience can laugh at the character's expense/clumsiness/ignorance of something - he's not an infallible hero who has to constantly be brave and strong and macho and tall.

As for POTC itself, all I can say is I've liked fantasy pirate stories (and I do know the difference between that and real piracy, I've read quite a lot on both - and they should be separated) for much of my life, especially in my younger life, and while there are SO many examples of Hollywood and publishing doing the genre wrong, POTC is (especially the first movie) an example of entertainment doing it RIGHT.