i'm banking on the fables of the far, far better things we do
Miscellany and sundry:
+ a small snippet of Alan Cumming at NYPL. (Also, the story behind the t-shirt is that, like many of us, he got soaked in the rainstorm that hit right at rush hour, and the library provided the shirt; he told us he's taken Sharon Stone's mantra* of "I wear it, I own it" to heart, and was not planning on giving the shirt back.)
*Apparently, when doing photoshoots, Ms. Stone insists that any clothing she wears during them goes home with her. Seems like a sound philosophy to me. *g*
∞ I mentioned this on tumblr a few days ago, but I keep waking up with 80s freestyle club hits in my head - first it was One Way Love by TKA, which led me down a youtube spiral, and since then it's been All Night Passion by Alisha, Let the Music Play and Give Me Tonight by Shannon, AEIOU by some band call Freez(??? I never knew that until I had to look it up on youtube to listen to it to get rid of the earworm), Tell It to My Heart by Taylor Dayne, and, for my sins, the 12" remix of Running by Information Society, complete with the pew pew laser sounds. (I'm not necessarily casting aspersions - I own versions of several of these songs [by which I mean, in my iTunes, not just on forgotten cassingles] and other freestyle hits - Point of No Return by Exposé, Can You Feel the Beat by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - but it is kind of disconcerting to have your brain taken over by Information Society all these years later!) I would advise against clicking on any of those links unless you're in a place where you can at least chairdance along.
❄ I haven't done my yuletide noms yet and I think I might have to rethink things to make sure I can request Kaz/Inej from Six of Crows! I'm not done with the book yet (and thus, have not gone looking for fic since I don't want to be spoiled), but holy crap, they punch a lot of my buttons. (Though I still picture them as early to mid 20s at least.) I'm kind of considering doing a themed set of requests this year with a thread of heists running through them - obviously that wouldn't be all I requested, since they are very hard to write! - but fandoms where they are an option! Six of Crows, Gentleman Bastards, Ocean's 11, Gotham Academy.
→ the other day in Starbucks, there was a Vanessa and a Veronica also waiting for their beverages. I found that amusing, since those are names I frequently get called.
☆ Steven Universe: Onion Tales
Well that was...an episode. I feel like it probably would have worked better without so much narration? Like Steven could have done the voiceover at the beginning and the end, but just let the Onion Gang's adventures go by silently. There was definitely a Little Rascals/Our Gang vibe to the whole thing, and the lack of a voiceover would have not made me feel like Steven was completely misinterpreting everything he saw, which I did not find that amusing. I did think this gave Onion a less sinister side - he's just a weird af little kid, but most little kids are weird in some way (when my brother first became an altar boy - and then later when he was head altar boy and training the new kids - we used to have pretend funerals ALL THE TIME. I was usually the corpse, though sometimes I got to be the altar boy and my brother played the priest. And I was probably only 6 or 7 years old. I am not even joking.).
I did like that Garnet gave them the thumbs up when Mr. Mature Man flashed her - did she just think it was a fusion of little kids? - and also how each adventure kind of paralleled the stuff Steven's been through all summer? But mostly I didn't dig this episode much and it seems like an off note to go out on. Who knows when we'll next see Steven and the Crystal Gems? Sigh. Stupid Cartoon Network scheduling.
☔ I posted a story last night:
The Rumor of Rain (at AO3)
Star Wars; Shmi, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luke, Rey; g; 2,285 words
If he reaches out, he can feel each drop of rain as it falls, and the movements of the plants and animals in response, the greedy slurp of tree roots, the unthinking satiation of tiny frogs, and a million other points of life flickering beyond his normal senses.
This is based on the other earworm I've had all week - Tanglewood Tree by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, which seems like a fitting song for Star Wars, where love really is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie / and a half-whispered prayer. (I also want to write a Finn story titled "my body has a number and my face has a name" - the latter half of the line is my icon keyword for him, though I suppose it could be about clones, too; previously it was maybe a Max/Alec thing, but no story ever coalesced around it.)
So I was editing it and then my internet went out and I got distracted by rebooting everything, and I posted while the posting was good, and then after it was up for ten minutes I realized I hadn't completed the editing. And of course it was IN THE FIRST SENTENCE. WHAT THE DICKENS. *facepalm* So hopefully that mistake didn't turn off people reading it. I did fix it pretty quickly!
Anyway, I like how it turned out, and I think I managed to capture the entire clusterfuck of misunderstandings that is Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship in one ~300 word snippet. I also think the Luke section worked out pretty well. That was was where I ran into trouble, because I didn't want to just repeat Shmi and Anakin (and Rey) so I made myself a little key at the bottom of the document to clarify what each section was meant to illustrate, and once I realized what Luke's theme was, everything slotted into place. And then I had two other people read it to make sure those concepts came through, because sometimes I can't tell with my own writing, since I already know what I mean to do. (Though I've never watched Parks & Rec, sometimes I very much relate to that Ron Swanson gif: "I know what I'm about, son." And sometimes, not so much.)
I also discovered that I like writing Han saying caring and helpful things and people thinking he means something else entirely (and by "people" I mean Luke and Leia; I still kind of want to write some Han/Leia PWP titled "Ride It Like You Stole It" but it just hasn't happened yet. I'm kind of enjoying not writing porn at the moment though - it's very freeing right now to just be writing gen most of the time.)
Anyway, I am putting together board meeting materials so let me get back to that.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/871679.html.
people have commented there.
+ a small snippet of Alan Cumming at NYPL. (Also, the story behind the t-shirt is that, like many of us, he got soaked in the rainstorm that hit right at rush hour, and the library provided the shirt; he told us he's taken Sharon Stone's mantra* of "I wear it, I own it" to heart, and was not planning on giving the shirt back.)
*Apparently, when doing photoshoots, Ms. Stone insists that any clothing she wears during them goes home with her. Seems like a sound philosophy to me. *g*
∞ I mentioned this on tumblr a few days ago, but I keep waking up with 80s freestyle club hits in my head - first it was One Way Love by TKA, which led me down a youtube spiral, and since then it's been All Night Passion by Alisha, Let the Music Play and Give Me Tonight by Shannon, AEIOU by some band call Freez(??? I never knew that until I had to look it up on youtube to listen to it to get rid of the earworm), Tell It to My Heart by Taylor Dayne, and, for my sins, the 12" remix of Running by Information Society, complete with the pew pew laser sounds. (I'm not necessarily casting aspersions - I own versions of several of these songs [by which I mean, in my iTunes, not just on forgotten cassingles] and other freestyle hits - Point of No Return by Exposé, Can You Feel the Beat by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - but it is kind of disconcerting to have your brain taken over by Information Society all these years later!) I would advise against clicking on any of those links unless you're in a place where you can at least chairdance along.
❄ I haven't done my yuletide noms yet and I think I might have to rethink things to make sure I can request Kaz/Inej from Six of Crows! I'm not done with the book yet (and thus, have not gone looking for fic since I don't want to be spoiled), but holy crap, they punch a lot of my buttons. (Though I still picture them as early to mid 20s at least.) I'm kind of considering doing a themed set of requests this year with a thread of heists running through them - obviously that wouldn't be all I requested, since they are very hard to write! - but fandoms where they are an option! Six of Crows, Gentleman Bastards, Ocean's 11, Gotham Academy.
→ the other day in Starbucks, there was a Vanessa and a Veronica also waiting for their beverages. I found that amusing, since those are names I frequently get called.
☆ Steven Universe: Onion Tales
Well that was...an episode. I feel like it probably would have worked better without so much narration? Like Steven could have done the voiceover at the beginning and the end, but just let the Onion Gang's adventures go by silently. There was definitely a Little Rascals/Our Gang vibe to the whole thing, and the lack of a voiceover would have not made me feel like Steven was completely misinterpreting everything he saw, which I did not find that amusing. I did think this gave Onion a less sinister side - he's just a weird af little kid, but most little kids are weird in some way (when my brother first became an altar boy - and then later when he was head altar boy and training the new kids - we used to have pretend funerals ALL THE TIME. I was usually the corpse, though sometimes I got to be the altar boy and my brother played the priest. And I was probably only 6 or 7 years old. I am not even joking.).
I did like that Garnet gave them the thumbs up when Mr. Mature Man flashed her - did she just think it was a fusion of little kids? - and also how each adventure kind of paralleled the stuff Steven's been through all summer? But mostly I didn't dig this episode much and it seems like an off note to go out on. Who knows when we'll next see Steven and the Crystal Gems? Sigh. Stupid Cartoon Network scheduling.
☔ I posted a story last night:
The Rumor of Rain (at AO3)
Star Wars; Shmi, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luke, Rey; g; 2,285 words
If he reaches out, he can feel each drop of rain as it falls, and the movements of the plants and animals in response, the greedy slurp of tree roots, the unthinking satiation of tiny frogs, and a million other points of life flickering beyond his normal senses.
This is based on the other earworm I've had all week - Tanglewood Tree by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, which seems like a fitting song for Star Wars, where love really is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie / and a half-whispered prayer. (I also want to write a Finn story titled "my body has a number and my face has a name" - the latter half of the line is my icon keyword for him, though I suppose it could be about clones, too; previously it was maybe a Max/Alec thing, but no story ever coalesced around it.)
So I was editing it and then my internet went out and I got distracted by rebooting everything, and I posted while the posting was good, and then after it was up for ten minutes I realized I hadn't completed the editing. And of course it was IN THE FIRST SENTENCE. WHAT THE DICKENS. *facepalm* So hopefully that mistake didn't turn off people reading it. I did fix it pretty quickly!
Anyway, I like how it turned out, and I think I managed to capture the entire clusterfuck of misunderstandings that is Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship in one ~300 word snippet. I also think the Luke section worked out pretty well. That was was where I ran into trouble, because I didn't want to just repeat Shmi and Anakin (and Rey) so I made myself a little key at the bottom of the document to clarify what each section was meant to illustrate, and once I realized what Luke's theme was, everything slotted into place. And then I had two other people read it to make sure those concepts came through, because sometimes I can't tell with my own writing, since I already know what I mean to do. (Though I've never watched Parks & Rec, sometimes I very much relate to that Ron Swanson gif: "I know what I'm about, son." And sometimes, not so much.)
I also discovered that I like writing Han saying caring and helpful things and people thinking he means something else entirely (and by "people" I mean Luke and Leia; I still kind of want to write some Han/Leia PWP titled "Ride It Like You Stole It" but it just hasn't happened yet. I'm kind of enjoying not writing porn at the moment though - it's very freeing right now to just be writing gen most of the time.)
Anyway, I am putting together board meeting materials so let me get back to that.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/871679.html.
people have commented there.