Caption/Potential Exorcism: Two Much (aka Double Fake)

 Another caption for Lisbeth on Rachel's Haven, and this one had me going after making it:

I got some complaints from Lisbeth about how I tended to leave her original male body lying around - I mean, geez, I like pulp and brain transplants, there's gonna be some corpses! - so when I found a caption that offered a fun, sexy Westlake caper, I figured she'd enjoy that.  Hopefully someone there looks up the quotes and figures out what they have in common.  I think that's fun.

The trouble is, it's a good enough idea that I started outline another one of those larger works that I don't have any time for in my head - a version of this story that I'd retitle "Double Fake".

So, here's the idea, slightly tweaked:  Art History professor who used to do a little forgery in his undergrad days gets laid off, but the department head gives him a line on a bit of temp work for this rich guy.  He gets to the meeting, sees the girl unconscious, and finds out the job:  Walk into her boyfriend's apartment, make a copy of the masterwork hanging in the living room, and then exchange the pair.  He's away on business for a couple weeks, so that should be just enough time, and as for getting past security, well, the rich guy has this strange idol:  Put a lock of the girl's hair in it, stare into its eyes, and presto!, not only are you her double, but nobody else can open it up to get the hair out and change back.  That, by the way, is why this rich guy isn't using his magic thing to change people's identities as a service:  Aside from having it because he bought it as art, and liking art more than a business, its usage is really restrictive, although hopefully in a way that seems kind of logical as opposed to just a reason to not solve the problem with magic.

Anyway, when the warehouse she's in burns down (probably sinking the artifact), she escapes, grabbing the professor's coat and bonking her head, so that when she comes to, the memory of the professor transforming and seeing his ID in the pocket convinces her that she's really him.  She goes back to his apartment, starts reading the books he's written to try and remember "the real me", and winds up getting a job at the university's museum despite not previously knowing much about art, after convincing the dean who referred the professor that she's really him.  The dean finds the idea that this sexy young lady used to be his friend kind of hot; maybe they start dating.

The fake girlfriend basically decides she likes her new life, and while she's nervous when the boyfriend returns home, it's surprisingly easy to play this new part.  He's surprised to see his girlfriend working at the museum during a fundraiser, so the amnesiac girl pretends to be herself, but kind of finds she doesn't like the way this guy is talking down to her.  The two eventually meet, the rich guy wants his painting, and the amnesiac girl doesn't know what to do when her memory comes back.

I think the "what it's about as opposed to what happens" is that it's very easy to fall into what you think you're supposed to do, as opposed to what you really want.  It ends with the girl taking her life back, but also noting that the fake has painted his original self, the man that hired him, and a lot of other details that will lead the police to capture him into the picture, before landing in some European seaside town where she paints portraits while living off her ill-gotten gains.

Is there a novel-length thing here?  I'm not sure, and I'm really not sure there's enough screwball to keep things going or that I can make the amnesiac girl more funny than tragic.

Labels: caption, exorcism, pulp cover

- posted 6:54 AM - (0) comments - (archive use only)

 
Caption: No Luck for a Lady

 One of the less active users liked the last pulp cover, so gets one of her own:

Not quite the complete screwball piece as the previous one, because the really weird pulps have to come to you rather than be looked for, apparently.  It's a nice cover, though, and one think I'm wondering if the folks on that other site will pick up is that the quotes are both opposite-sex pseudonyms for other mystery writers.

Labels: caption, pulp cover

- posted 7:04 AM - (0) comments - (archive use only)

 
Caption: The Dead Ringer

Might start posting the captions I do at Rachel's Haven here too, just because that place has sometimes seemed rickety.

Labels: caption, pulp cover

- posted 7:56 AM - (0) comments - (archive use only)

 
Blast from the Past/Possible Exorcism: bikast's "Common Hearts"

It is going to sound very silly, but revisiting a bit of "machinima" from 2007 is the reason for reviving this blog, because the last time I did so, I wound up with thoughts, both things that hadn't occurred to me before and the nagging inspiration for adapting it into prose or comics or live action that I absolutely do not have time for.  Hence, the description of this post as an "exorcism", that maybe writing about an idea for a few hours will keep me from spending many more hours producing it.

The Video

So, let's start with the video series.  It's ten episodes plus two alternate endings, less than an hour all told.  Here's episode 1, "The Newly Weds":

(Link to the full playlist)

It's pretty primitive, technically, produced in a PC game called "The Movies" where I gather the point is actually to simulate owning a movie studio but where the in-game creation tools were (at the time) robust enough that you could produce watchable animated shorts that could be uploaded to YouTube.  Speech is nonsense sounds with subtitles, there's a pretty limited repertoire of movements, and if you watch enough, you'll see many of the same "standing sets".  It's kind of a bicycle with training wheels compared to the rocket-powered AI tools a lot of people (some of them the same people!) are experimenting with today.

And yet, I'll take this over 95% of the AI stuff flooding my YouTube recommendations now.  The hard limitations force a creator to look at how movies work, from blocking to editing to story structure.  Shot-to-shot continuity seldom causes a bad stop the way a lot of AI material does.  And once one starts watching, one's brain quickly understands the limitations of the medium and forgives them, while AI is often so photorealistic that weird motions, tone of voice not being quite right, and ham-handed choices in the writing or music hinders suspension of disbelief.

On top of that, this one is actually fairly well-written, as far as material from an amateur using a desktop computer game goes.

The Story

(Spoilers ahoy, because there's no point writing this if I'm not going to look at it end-to-end)

As it opens, two recently-married couples - Chris & Britney and Alex & Diana - are on their honeymoons at a tropical resort.  The male and female halves of each couple are longtime friends, and while Chris & Britney seem to be enjoying their vacation, Alex & Diana are already at odds.  It turns out that Diana & Britney have previously been lovers, and Diana wants to continue, but Britney feels like that would be really inappropriate.  A frustrated Diana is walking alone when she blunders into another story - a body swap between an executive and the assistant he's been sexually harassing - and winds up walking away with the pair of magical amulets that caused it.

She quickly sees a way to solve her problem by swapping bodies with Chris, first telling Alex that they're about to engage in some kinky role-play, not telling Britney who she really is, and then the next morning telling Chris that she won't swap back unless he pleases Alex for the whole honeymoon.  When they return home, she raises the ante, putting Chris in Britney's body (which she's dosed with aphrodisiacs) and forcing Britney and Alex to recognize what's been going on and jump into action.  

There are three endings - one in which they trick Diana into switching with Britney's dog ("Diana" winds up in an asylum and hopefully the real Diana is just put up for adoption rather than put down), one in which Britney winds up in Chris's body to become the man in the relationship (if only for the night), and one in which Chris realizes that he's fallen for Alex and it's best if he stays Diana.

What Works

Bottom line:  Diana is a good villain, and bikast doesn't ever try to convince the viewer that she's anything but that.  Even in the happiest ending, things turn out okay despite her bad intentions, and not because she's giving her friend group some tough love to put everybody where they belong.  On top of that, her desires are clear enough that she doesn't have to monologue, and when she escalates kind of stupidly later, it's for reasons that fit:  She really enjoys having power over people and probably doesn't actually love Britney enough be a good partner, just from refusing to walk the dog.

None of the other characters are terribly fleshed out, but the one driving the action is, even if she's not the hero of the piece or even really an anti-hero.  Everything happens out of motives you can understand even if you don't approve of them.

Also - having the Amulets of Permuta not-quite-fall into Diana's hands (she acquires them by double-crossing a victim) sets useful limits.  This is the only magic she's able to access, not necessarily knowing which curio shop they were purchased at, so the viewer never has to worry about the larger world of magic or particularly worry about some sort of deus ex machina.  It may or may not be deliberate, but it keeps the viewer checked in an invested.

What Maybe Doesn't

First and foremost - there's a lot of rape here for a story that scans as at least partially comedic and isn't exactly reckoned with, even in the ending where Diana is punished!  Even if you don't necessarily feel like ripping someone soul out of their body and placing it in another body of any sex is an intimate crime (which I absolutely do), Chris is violated moments after he's transferred to Diana's body, and you can argue that Diana sleeping with Britney at the same time is a sort of sexual assault because it's happening under false pretenses, as is everything Chris is coerced to do, and then when he's in Britney's body and drugged up....

It's in the "maybe" category because of what I wrote above:  Diana is a clear villain, and this is villainous shit, albeit things that most creators carefully avoid showing their villains doing, whether because they're worried it'll come off sexy as opposed to sadistic or because they're afraid the revulsion will be too personal (no redemption arc possible, folks bailing because this is more visceral than just shooting someone in the head).  The medium works against it as well - the built-in limits on what can be shown because the designers likely did not want the headaches that come from people creating porn and the kind of toyetic designs make it hard to communicate a really nasty vibe.

There's a certain amount of "product of its time" thing going on as well - most folks, or at least most folks who might be into stories about men and women swapping bodies and getting it on - have probably expanded their definition of what they see as a sex crime in the past twenty years, even as many have broadened their opinions on what is no big deal when done consensually.  All of that kind of rams together toward the end, when Alex discovers that it's been Chris in Diana's body, and it's a bit difficult to tell whether he's horrified that he's violated his friend or that he's done something kind of gay (or what Britney is absolving him of when she says he couldn't have known).

It also means the series sort of struggles around the end.  It's not uncommon - a lot of these things were and are produced as serials with no specific end in sight - but making it up as you go along means it can be difficult to craft a satisfying ending because you don't know "what it's about" as opposed to "what happens".  There's also not a lot you can really do to bring the hammer down on Diana, or much for Britney to do in the final confrontation.  The dog ending is probably as good as it gets.

How I Might Tweak It

One thing you immediately notice watching "Common Hearts" today is that a whole lot of trouble maybe could have been resolved if Diana just came out of the closet (and maybe Britney too, depending on how bi you think she is), but it would be the better part of ten years after 2007 before same-sex marriage was legal across the United States, and even Massachusetts only went that way in 2005.  Nobody's got a smartphone, either, which could have influenced the action.  It was kind of early days for that in '07.

Most of the time, I'll just look at that and say it aged quickly, but this time, a bit of possible backstory clicked into place:  What if the marriages were meant to be scams?  Britney & Diana were the love of each other's lives, but they also saw how shaky the ground could be under their feet.  Maybe they've got conservative families, maybe they've seen queer friends suffer in ways straight people don't because the law doesn't accommodate them in the same way, etc.  So Diana hatches a plan:  They'll find a couple of really close friends, woo them, and marry them.  It would allow them to be together most of the time without anyone the wiser, and maybe when they see Chris and Alex, the girls recognize that there's more to their bromance than the boys will admit, and this will let them be together as well.  Diana just doesn't reckon on Britney being bisexual, Chris being a really good guy, and that relationship developing into something real.

Part of what I like about "Common Hearts" is that this sort of character and story-deepening thing fits, whether bikast intended it to be there but didn't have any place where the characters might say it, or if it's just fundamentally solid enough that one can extrapolate back and fill things in, and it not only doesn't break anything, and in fact makes for a richer narrative.  Heck, one could make the argument that it explains Diana's supply of hardcore aphrodisiacs beyond her just being a freak - she's got no interest in men, least of all Alex, so she has to take them to make him believe she's into him and respond in bed.  Not that you really need to justify what Diana does beyond that!

Where I would maybe break it is to not have Diana set Chris up to get immediately raped - instead, she tells Alex that she's about to do this sort of body-swap role play.  On the other side, she maybe intends to tell Britney the truth right away, but Britney is all over her in Chris's body before she can open her mouth, and then, afterwards, she keeps quiet in part because she really wants to see what Britney sees in Chris, while Chris is kind of shaken by how much Alex was into the idea of him being in his wife's body.  It doesn't solve the issue of things happening without consent, but it might give someone writing in another format a chance to give the characters more inside, rather than just have things happen until they spin out of control.  It potentially makes Diana more sympathetic, maybe even enough that she can be forgiven by the end, but then, I don't know that I'd be very good writing a cruel, purely villainous character.

I don't think I'd go for losing the amulets, a gender-bender story cliché, although there's potentially nice symmetry in the idea that they always move on after they've accomplished something; I'd want the characters to actively resolve things, whatever they decide the resolution may be.  Maybe they become a happy polycule with folks switching bodies for convenience and fun; maybe Chris & Britney stay together while Alex & Diana split; maybe they realign into Chris & Alex and Diana & Britney, with or without body swaps, because the theme that develops might be that they're never going to be happy pretending to be something or someone they're not.

Wrapping Up...

Has this exorcised the desire to adapt and update this from my head?  We'll see in a couple days.  I hope so, just because I'd kind of feel weird doing it:  How do you get in touch with someone anonymous who went off to greener pastures sixteen years ago to get blessing/co-operation?  I could probably just say I was inspired by this story in the acknowledgments of anything I wrote, but I feel like I'd have to change a lot more to just be inspired rather than adapting.

Which is to say, this is a very solid little body-swap story, despite its primitive tools and occasional clunkiness, and a lot of folks who make this sort of thing now could probably do well to study how good the fundamentals are and what makes it work, even if the rest of bikast's work doesn't always rise to the same level.

Any thoughts or interest in seeming more like this?  After all I've deleted in the past week, I'm scared to solicit comments, but...

Labels: bikast, exorcism, machinima, review, Youtube

- posted 3:09 PM - (1) comments - (archive use only)

 
Metablog: Wow, This Thing's Still Here!

I wonder how much I've paid over the past 16 or 17 years to keep the domain name for this, and to what extent it's been subsidizing a place for bot farms to link to their pirate and gambling sites for SEO purposes.  Or do Google and the like no longer take number and quality of links into consideration when sorting things?  Seems like it's closer to pure pay-to-play now, or stealing things to feed their chatbots.  It's going to take a long time to scrub them clean if I post here regularly again.

And I think I'm going to do so, but it's going to be different.  It would have to be, right - nobody picks up right where they left off after 16 years! - but also, being Martina is not that interesting right now.  I've got a laptop job where I work from home, I'm not in a relationship but also not feeling much pressure to be in one, and most of my activities are pretty gender-neutral, so there's not much to say about what was the main thrust of the blog, and I'm kind of over using it for everyday stuff; I've been burned on social media at times on top of not having that much that's unique to share right now.

But, as you might expect from someone who has over twenty years of this stuff online, I am still really interested in gender-bender material, and I was actually considering setting up a DeviantArt account or something to post fanfics, other short stories, or general thoughts about stuff in the genre that I read/watch that are longer than a skeet or three before I remembered that I've been basically squatting on a domain name that's pretty evocative of being in a new body/life for twice as long as I was actively posting on it

So, that's what I'm going to be doing with this from now on:  Occasional reviews, occasional stories, semi-regular roundups of what I'm doing in other forums.  It's going to start with dumb rambling about a piece of YouTube machinima that's so old I was posting regularly here when it came out and probably get sillier and more self-indulgent from there.  Maybe there will be occasional old-school updates, but, honestly, nothing blog-worthy has happened for years, and I'm not expecting it to any time soon.

(Some folks are going to look at links and go "hey, they're breaking kayfabe" or something, and, whatever; most people who read this blog probably figured it was fiction and it's entirely possible I was working with a co-writer or using an alias elsewhere; but either way it's probably worth setting expectations that what you read here isn't really be written from a [conventional] trans person's point of view, but that of someone who is comfortable in their own skin without having had to take a lot in the way of action to mold that skin to their self.  It's for fun, not to try and correct misapprehensions or say how it should be done, beyond wanting execution to be good and entertaining.)

I may find I've scratched this itch sufficiently in a month or two, or maybe not.  Let me know what you think in the comments, which I will do my best to keep clear of spam going forward!

Labels: metablog

- posted 4:36 PM - (1) comments - (archive use only)

 
Part of my New Year's Resolution
I told everybody at Jen's party a three weeks ago that I wouldn't be a shut-in any more, and I meant it. I know it's not good for me, and to be honest, I don't like it. I used to be the most annoying person about telling people that even Blu-ray isn't an acceptable substitute for seeing things in the theater, even comedies and independent dramas; now I haven't even seen Avatar yet because I don't want to go out; I'm honestly saying I'll wait for Netflix. I liked showing my assets off, now I sit home alone in bulky sweats more or less 24/7. Last year was the first season I can remember where I didn't see a game at Fenway Park, although I've got an excuse for most of the season.

You'd think that my not wanting to leave the house would have led to a lot more blogging, but that's just another way to communicate with the outside world, and for the better part of the last year, my thoughts have been along the lines of how the outside world is dangerous. I was quite honestly ready to take this whole blog down, unable to believe how stupid the whole thing was from the moment I woke up as Michelle, even if it was the only thing that kept me sane at first. Just how much had Korpin learned about me just from reading it? About Amy? And we know he's not the end of it.

Like my shrink says, being kidnapped will straight-up fuck your head up.

Anyone reading this will hopefully forgive me for not giving a whole lot of details about that event, or the months following it. I haven't told Kate, Jen, Telly, Amy, or Carlos, except in the vaguest terms. Forget Mom, although I know my silence probably hurts her. I don't even talk about it with Shelly, and who would understand the situation more? I will, eventually, but here's not the place to do it. And I'm definitely not ready.

It was hard for me just to get to Jen's party. I wanted to go, but I wouldn't take the T or even a cab. I've been using Zipcars when I wanted to get someplace and I couldn't have things delivered, but by the time I stopped dithering and said yes, I would go, they were all booked. Kate eventually had to take the T to Jen's and Carlos's place, borrow her car, and come back to pick me up. Pathetic, but at least pathetic enough to serve as a wake-up call.

So that's when I made the resolution to stop being afraid of the world. Not that I've acted upon it much yet, but I'm going to the movies this weekend and writing this. So that's a start.

-Martina

Labels: Carlos, Jen, Kate, kidnapping, Korpin, Shelly, Telly

- posted 12:06 AM - (8) comments - (archive use only)

 
Of course
I haven't been keeping particular track of anniversaries, which I suppose makes me an atypical girlfriend or a bad boyfriend-type person, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the thing with Kate has lasted longer than any relationship I remember having. It's certainly my longest as a woman, and is probably right up there with Maggie from my previous life. We've been cohabiting for over a year, our families like each other, and we've even gotten to the point where being together was assumed to the point where we were making purchases together.

So, naturally, it was time for us to fuck it up.

Kate's got a lot of theories as to why it fell apart. Most of the women our age are getting married and starting families, and while we're fortunate to live in a state where we can do the former, science hasn't progressed to the point where we can do the latter (at least, so far as I know; given what the last six years of my life have been like, I can't exactly take that for granted). We're close enough in personality that the small disagreements seem bigger, and then when we disagree on something big, watch out! Other things I can't even begin to understand.

I was talking about this the other night, in a bar with Telly and Amy. Amy nodded sympathetically, but after about ten minutes, Telly snorted, and banged his glass on the bar a little harder than necessary. "You girls are making it way too complicated. It comes down to one thing: The two of you aren't gay."

Amy and I started in, saying that sexual identity and orientation were more complicated than a simple gay/straight description, especially for people like us, and he cut us off.

"I get that, ladies, I really do, but honestly, it's impressive that you managed to stay together as long as you have. It shows just how much the two of you really like each other; I don't doubt that either of you would rather spend time with the other than the average guy. But, geez, Tina, you've got my sister's hormones and brain. She was into a lot of things, but other girls wasn't one of them. How long did you think you were going to fight that?"

He's right, of course, and not just about me; I think both of us were starting to realize that being with each other was, to a certain extent, hiding from what we really wanted, even if we were afraid of it for our own reasons: Kate has tended toward really terrible breakups, and even after five plus years in this body, I still second-guess the hell out of the whole boy-girl thing, especially now that I'm starting to get some awareness of my biological clock. The good times of a few months ago, when we would go out and be a little flirty only to frustrate guys when we pulled back toward each other, well, weren't quite such good times any more. I can't speak for Kate, but I know I had the occasional thought of breaking from the script, except that I couldn't do that to Kate.

That we're feeling that is probably healthy, but it still festers, and makes us snippy. I'm pretty sure that we'll still be friends when all this is over, but even though I've moved into the spare bedroom, it's not a fun month right now.

-Tina

Labels: Amy, Kate, Maggie, Telly

- posted 9:37 AM - (7) comments - (archive use only)