To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Recs and things

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 01:13:57 GMT

Paper Aeroplanes is a Welsh boy-girl band I've been listening to lately. Imagine Stars, if Stars were fronted by Zooey Deschanel.

Several songs I like:
My First Love
Red Rover
Cliche
Make a Wish
Winter Never Comes"

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Another thing I want to rec is a due South fic: "The Great Northern Maple Syrup Adventure," by nutmeg9cat. It's novel-length gen with a few hints of Fraser/Thatcher UST, and it reads just like an episode, with a good mystery, wacky Canadian hijinks, and excellently characterized versions of Fraser, Vecchio, Thatcher, and Diefenbaker. Seriously, go read it now. It makes me want to write dS fic again!

P.S. On this note, please, someone talk me out of writing the ~~AMAZING~~ horrible AU where Fraser and Thatcher are pairs skaters. Or where they have to solve a crime via skating. Skate America is held in Chicago and they get caught up in a judging scandal which takes out the Canadian pair who were in on it, and at the last minute they have to step in FOR THE GLORY OF CANADA, maybe. Hey, they're Mounties, I'm sure they're good at something wintery and outdoorsy like ice skating. Anyway, their skating somehow breaks the case open, because the corrupt judge reveals him/herself in scoring them. Turnbull sews their costumes (red, possibly with maple leaves, naturally) out of some stretch fabric they have lying around the Consulate for undisclosed emergencies. Vecchio and/or Kowalski make disparaging comments about figure skating throughout the whole thing, but then are the loudest cheering section during the actual event.

...I AM NOT WRITING THIS.

Not yet, anyway.

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Because this is what I think about on lazy Saturday mornings

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:05:40 GMT

Awesome crossover idea: A serial killer is on the loose somewhere in the US, and the characters of Castle, due South, Bones, Body of Proof, and Rizzoli & Isles have to team up to catch him or her. Some or all of the following happens:

( I have obviously given this FAR too much thought. )

You know what would also be amazing? If Mary McDonnell were to guest star on BoP as, like, Bud and Sam's lieutenant/captain, or one of Megan's old med school mentors or neurologist colleagues or something. Anything where she and Dana Delany would share several scenes. I think my screen would implode from that much awesome on it.

(ETA: Come to think of it, DD did guest star in an episode of BSG ("Sacrifice"). I should rewatch that and see if they were in a scene together...)

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Music Recs Round Folk Music Is Delightful (+ fic-writing natterings)

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 01:10:34 GMT

...Dammit, Passchendaele, thanks to you I am now plotting the fic where Fraser, having hunted an international criminal to the vicinity of Niagara Falls, guilts Jaye Tyler into helping solve the case (with the unbeknownst-to-him assistance of her talking menagerie, of course). Arrrrrggghhhh.

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Reasons why I love folk music: Five musicians came together in 2009 (150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species) to make a concept album about Charles Darwin. YES. And it's kind of awesome. Three songs in particular I like: We're All Leaving, Mother of My Soul, and Emma's Lullaby.

I found out about this album after searching for Karine Polwart songs I hadn't heard yet. (I've recc'ed her before; she's gorgeous.) In doing so, I discovered Krista Detor, who is excellent as well. She's a bit more country-flavored, perhaps. I particularly like A Red Bowl (link goes to a live version that's hard to hear, sorry). I have yet to check out their individual bodies of work, but the other people involved in this project were Rachael McShane, Jez Lowe, Chris Wood, Emily Smith (who I have heard before, and is quite nice), Stu Hannah, and Mark Erelli

The other band I want to rec is Horse Feathers, who despite being from Portland sound like nothing so much as a modernized, slowed-down Rankin Family. I like what I've heard, but I do have a caveat: there's something about the lead singer's voice and singing style; he slurs his words (a shame, because the lyrics are contemplative and lovely) and is otherwise kind of...vague, but without being attractively ethereal. If they'd do an instrumental, I'd be all over it.

Nevertheless, Thistled Spring is lovely. Given the lyrics, I really enjoy that it sounds almost like a melancholy iteration of a wedding march at the beginning and end. The Drought is the most Rankin Family-ish of their offerings, and I also like Starving Robin.

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fandom_stocking stockings are going to be revealed today! Hooray! (Actually, I think they've almost all been revealed, but there might be some to go?) I will make a roundup post of everything I did for the fest later tonight.

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Question

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:40:22 GMT

Hmmm. I appear to be writing fanfic for my fake TV show. I'd say I'm writing actual canon for it, because it's mine and technically anything I write for it is canon, right? but...it reads like fic. It really does. This is not a short story, with its associated rising and falling action, etc., in any way, shape, or form. It does not introduce the characters in any meaningful way. It's totally four little filler fics stuck together because they share a theme. (Not to mention that some of the voices are ripped straight out of fanfic. And by "some" I pretty much mean "all.")

That said: in this universe, by 2231 Vancouver has a major league baseball team. (WHY do I keep writing characters who like team sports when I hate them, why why why?) I need a name for this team. I get the impression that baseball team names usually have some connection to their city, and sports team names in general often make reference to sharp pointy objects, such as an animal with sharp teeth, a person whose job it was to fight with swords or spears, &tc. Granted, baseball naming appears less bloodthirsty than other sports.

Anyway, the only two names I can come up with are Pioneers and (Killer) Whales. The first one has promise; the second, not so much. Suggestions? If it helps, this team is not very good; they aren't as unlucky as the Cubs (who, sorry to say, are still the watchword for "lost hope" even two centuries on), but they aren't in danger of stumbling into a World Series anytime soon, so something that sounds hapless might be good.

Also, a related question: let's say that someone is commenting on a team's haplessness, and doing so by saying, "They haven't won a title/pennant/championship/? in twenty years!" I don't really know how baseball playoffs are structured, but I want to emphasize that this team has not been doing well, so what level would they not exceed if they sucked just enough for non-fans to make fun of them, but for fans to keep cheering them on?

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Beyond The Stars

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 04:38:56 GMT

Welcome to the Create Your Own Fake TV Show Meme from mylittleredgirl, who gave me this most excellent list of actors with which to cast my pretend series:
Claudia Christian
Jerry Doyle
Chi McBride
Terry Farrell
Grace Park
Paul Gross
Jessica Steen

I decided I needed more than seven characters (why, yes, I do like huge ensemble shows, why do you ask?), so I added Susan Coyne, Lee Pace, and Mary McDonnell in small/reoccurring roles.

Not very far into this, I realized that I was getting most of my ideas from other TV shows. Specifically, this pretty much mashes up Babylon 5 and Atlantis, with maybe a bit of due South for spice, and a scoop of BSG's paranoia, because this is 2010 and paranoia is in style. I decided to just run with the derivations, not to mention the typecasting I put some of the actors through, so you will likely recognize certain elements. But we are well into the postmodern era now, and one of the hallmarks of postmodern storytelling is pastiche, so in fact I am just being all highbrow and literary. I have a master's degree in this stuff, so I should know. ;)

(But seriously. When you need a security-conscious, humanity-first president who is nevertheless probably not actively evil, who ELSE are you going to choose besides Mary McDonnell? I ask you.)

I, er, also realized that I know nothing about diplomacy, so making five of my characters diplomats may not have been the smartest move...but I'm forging on anyway. It's probably a good thing that the closest I would ever get to writing this is, like, fluffy shipfic for some of the characters or possibly fic where the three aides have a weekly standing date to bitch about their bosses down at the bar.

For the most part, the actors here are supposed to be playing pretty close to their actual ages as of 2010. However, two of them just stepped out of a time-warp from 1994 'cause, well, that show is the only thing I've ever seen them in, and I like to have decent mental pictures of my characters, okay?

Beyond the Stars

( Are you sure you want to eat that? )

( Meme Rules )

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Bad Idea Bear Says Write

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 19:20:13 GMT

Hmmmm. The Bad Idea Bear on my shoulder is whispering in my ear about rereading Ethan of Athos and then writing improbable crossover femslash pairing Elli Quinn and Susan Ivanova.*

There is also a possibility that I have a couple lines of dialogue written for a crossover where Delenn and Laura Roslin have a chat. I still haven't figured out how they might actually meet, but I'm leaning toward "Laura has a vision and meets Delenn in it."

In other news, Dear Brain: Just because our fake TV series includes a variant of Space Elves does not mean the characters need to have names straight out of Tolkien. Please to be coming up with less silly ones.

* Who is apparently my little black dress for ALL OF FANDOM EVER. Oh, the irony.

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Two unrelated geeky things

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 02:56:36 GMT

Just FYI, Joyce has completely infested my brain. (I mean, I knew this already. But now I have confirmation.) First I make a conscious decision to write something around a couple lines from "The Dead." Then in the fourth sentence, I write a metaphor that is lovely, and yet oddly familiar. Thinking...thinking...googling...ah, yes. It is in fact from the third chapter of Portrait of the Artist.

Now I just need to include something from Ulysses (a library with Cyclopean Citizen? a newsroom where headlines blow like winds? an unenactable play where the main character turns into a pig?) and a few nonsense syllables or portmanteaus for Finnegan's Wake, and I'll be all set. Since what I'm writing is told from a female point of view despite all the Joycean overtones, I feel very self-satisfyingly subversive right now.

...Sorry, sorry. Irish Lit and Joyce in particular makes me really, obnoxiously dorky. It'll pass.

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I just had the most wonderful crossover idea: before H.G. Wells, inventor and Warehouse apprentice (Warehouse 13), got bronzed, she ran into Rebecca Fogg, spy for her majesty Queen Victoria (Secret Adventures of Jules Verne). Awesome ensues. A bad guy probably dies. Someone's timeline would have to be fudged a bit, since SAJV is set in the 1860s and H.G. was apparently an apprentice at Warehouse 12 in the 1890s or very early 1900s, but whatever.

(Hmmm...maybe H.G. is sent to recover one of Jules's inventions or maybe even the Aurora, and Rebecca isn't about to let that happen. Though that would put them on opposite sides, and I rather like the idea of them teaming up to fight a big bad.)

Please tell me someone else will write this so I don't have to!

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Oh, and

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:57:12 GMT

Addendum to my last post:

Anyone know how many rooms are in Leena's B&B? 'Cause I'm thinking there could very easily be a scenario where, oops, there's another room but it's not yet set up as a bedroom, so ( spoiler ), you wouldn't mind sharing with ( spoiler ) for a little while, would you?

'Cause if that isn't canon, I think I may have to write it.

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B5 Rewatch: "Exogenesis" and "Messages from Earth"

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:31:37 GMT

( There's always the threat of an attack by say, a giant space dragon. The kind that eats the sun once every thirty days. It's a nuisance, but what can you expect from reptiles? )

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Play ball! Or, um, not.

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 23:06:53 GMT

Dear Brain,

Why do you insist on coming up with fic ideas concerning subjects about which I know nothing? Kidfic is bad enough; adding in baseball and hockey just magnifies the torture.

I have already written about my lack of experience with kids. My relationship to team sports goes something like this:

In high school, I earned the ire of everyone on my team in PE because I would duck rather than try to bat the volleyball over the net.

In fourth grade, I managed to kick the kickball into my own face, nearly break my glasses, and then quickly get tagged out by the unsympathetic hooligans I was playing with because I'd stepped off the plate.

We're not even going into the time in high school when someone backhanded me with a badminton racquet and knocked a lens out of my glasses, or that other time when a low-flying frisbee smacked me in the teeth, because at least those were not my fault.

Let's just say I'm probably lucky that HS only required a year of PE, and that I could substitute dance classes for it during much of middle school. So brain, why are you doing this? At least the idea doesn't require extensive knowledge of either sport to pull off, and I can cover the gaps with research, but...argh. You can't pick something I know about, or at least could lie convincingly about?

With raised eyebrows,
Me

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