100 Things #78 Research

[jana_denardo]

Research can be some of the most fun times of writing. Oh it can be frustrating and it can sometimes overwhelm a story if you're not careful. Not everything you learn is story-worthy. You should most definitely research the things you don't know. We all know this. I'm not breaking new ground here.

No, what I wanted to say was that I love when things get taken in a new direction you never expected it. For example in my SF dystopia thing, I know Kaleo was raised in a prison slum. I knew he was very athletic and acrobatic to keep himself one step of everything out to kill him. So I started watching a lot of parkour videos (I love the assassin creed ones) and as I saw them spinning around on things I thought hmmm pole dancing (because my brain likes to hop skip and jump all over).

Kaleo has been trained for seduction. He would be a natural for this so I've been watching a lot of pole dancing. I don't know when it went from something raunchy at a strip club to this (for both men and women) but it's amazingly athletic and pretty to watch (and looks a lot like some of the things I saw with Cirque).

Of course I did recently see a disturbing discussion on FB about how this objectifies the men (or how saying someone looks hot is a objectifying and you're HORRIBLE for thinking like that). I'm not trying to objectify anyone and let's be brutually honest, these dancers didn't work this hard for us NOT to watch them and enjoy their performances. I don't see it as objectifying. Our appreciation of their art is just that and appreciation of a body is part of our sympathetic nervous system. Autonomic. Entirely. So now we're being made to feel guilty about things out of our control. Got enough of that growing up Catholic. Sometimes the hypersensitivity is one step too far which may be an unpopular opinion but I stand by my assessment of what these dancers want.

How much I'll ever use of this in a story, I have no idea. Let's face it, some things are better off in visual mediums. Reading about people dancing, usually pretty boring, ditto fight scenes. I think the key there is brevity. Just a taste or we get bored. Or at least I do. I've skipped entire chapters of favorite authors whose fight scenes go on and on. There probably won't be much but there might be some.

I wanted to share a couple of my favorites.

I just thought his Grease theme was fun. He doesn't seem to be as a strong a dancer on the floor but this was cute.

This is the same competition (and the winner) the odd 20's Mime theme aside, it was great.

I loved this one. (The slow cover of Rihana's S&M is also interesting. It's very pretty.

And now I just want to know where in FL this is for my next visit.

Just amazing control

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I like fight scenes, personally. but you knew that.

Mmm, research.

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

yes but i think you might be in a minority on reading them

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Maybe.

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

It would be easy enough to get a cross section of readership and find out but after today's very disappointing explosion in a writing blog I'm not in the mood

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Oh, good grief.

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

yeah it's that thing I sent you