Things Muppet Wrote on Vacation, Part 1
First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
silly_cleo!!! I hope the coming year is wonderful.
----
You remember that writing meme I did a while earlier, with the fics written in the time it takes for one song to play? As a way of warming up for more serious/extensive writing, I did a few rounds of those on vacation. There are fourteen in total; I figured I'd post them up here.
The rules, in case you needed a reminder:
1. Put your iPod or other mp3 player on Shuffle
2. Pick the first five/seven/ten songs that come up.
3. Write a short fic inspired by each of those songs. You may only write for the duration of the song - if the song lasts three minutes, you only write for three minutes. No cheating!*
*I still cheated. Mostly because I skipped any song where I didn’t know the language, because it was apparently Bollywood Day off in Shuffle-land.
1. "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen/We Three Kings" - The Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLachlan (3:31)
“How d’ya even know any Christmas carols, though?” Rose asked, jogging to catch up with him. “I mean, you tell me you’re this nine-hundred-year-old alien; what do you know about Christmas on Earth?”
“What makes you think that song’s from Earth?” He grinned. “There’s a song over in the Severinth galaxy celebrating industry and efficiency - ‘The Glory of Accomplishment’, they call it.” He hummed a few bars. “Exact same tune.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Singing it thousands of years before there was an Earth, let alone a Christmas.”--
2. "Amazonic" - Maksim (3:20; not uploaded because iTunes is having issues with finding the file)
The place is a music-box, complete with a wind-up dancer in a tatty ball-gown spinning to the same ancient tune.
It must have been glorious, when it was still used; the mind conjures up images of emperors, princesses, royal dances, all those fairy-tale accoutrements. Of course, I’ve had enough education by now to know that those fantasies were bought with the broken backs of serfs and slaves, but…
It aches with emptiness now, here in its dust, and somewhere beneath the rags it all still glitters, still tempts. --
3. "Arcus" - Amethystium (5:06)
Some days, Olivia Benson goes home on time. No new cases, cold trails, any number of reasons.
Some of those days she just stays at the station. Eventually, someone will need help, and she’ll be there when they do. Some of those days she goes straight home and sleeps until the next morning, or whenever she’s on duty. Some of those days she even makes the odd attempt at a social life.
And sometimes she walks.
It’s after the worst of the cases that she walks, after the serial rapists, the murderous pedophiles, the abuses that turn even her stomach. After those, she goes walking, or rides the subway aimlessly.
She watches the people around her as she does: the families, the daughters, the happily-marrieds. And she can’t completely shut off the cop in her brain, who says they aren’t all so happy.
But sometimes she can watch the crowds and know that they aren’t all victims, either. They aren’t all abusers. There’s more to the world than the people who end up in her station.--
4. “Never Let Me Down Again” - Tina Root (Depeche Mode cover) (4:25)
It’s never quite as safe as it seems.
Not in the obvious sense - because the places they go never even seem safe, not remotely - but occasionally she takes her status as passenger and guest for granted. She forgets that any trip could be the last, that one day he could take off without her and not return.
And then the Doctor finds the Master again, in some far-off corner of the galaxy, and they greet one another with half-smiles, and she remembers.
If he hadn’t been forced to return to Earth, he wouldn’t have.
And while she never quite believed that he would abandon Earth to the Axons, she did believe that.--
5. "Club Nowhere" - Blue Man Group (4:50)
He keeps odd hours. He’s there when she arrives in the morning and doesn’t leave when she does at night. The Brigadier tells her that he works through the night, occasionally disappearing into his TARDIS or heading out for a drive but rarely venturing outside the lab.
He sleeps when he’s tired, which isn’t very often, and which tends to be in the middle of the afternoon. She’s caught him, on occasion, slumped over in a chair in the garage or resting with his head on his arms on a lab bench.
He disregards the days and nights, as if to spite them for existing in such an orderly, uniform row.
She always wakes him when she finds him asleep, with an unceremonious nudge. “Wake up, Doctor. We’ve got work to do.”
He’ll have to learn to follow the days eventually.--
6. "They" - Jem (3:16)
“I can’t believe you believe this crap.” Fin clicked through the website, growing ever more incredulous. “Secret organizations? Black-ops raids?”
“You’d rather think that all those eerily similar events are unfortunate accidents?” John rejoined, without raising his eyes.
“How many government agents have you met, John? Do they seem that organized to you?” --
7. “You Keep Me Hanging On” - Kim Wilde (4:15)
“Stop. Seriously, stop that.” She massaged her forehead. “Sam, you’re embarrassing everyone.”
Sam made a noise like “pfft!” and kept dancing.
This was going to take a little more effort than she thought.
“Sam, I know - I know you’re upset.” She dodged a wildly swinging arm. “Look, I get that. And you should be upset. He treated you like crap. Okay? But - stop doing that - but a public striptease is not going to solve anything and - put that down, Sam, another shot isn’t either.”--
8. "Tequila Mockingbird" - Vanessa-Mae (3:29)
Who was it that first compared a court case to a complicated dance? Because hers is a dance measured and precise.
There’s elegance and force in her movements, as she rises to the stand for the cross-examination. As she neatly punches a hole in his case it’s like a sharp turn, a twirl that stops just short, a calculated shift in her weight.
Perhaps he’ll observe her more closely the next time they dance in tandem.--
9. "Song 2" - Blur (2:01)
He acts the classic hipster, dirty clothes and his sister’s mascara. He plays acoustic guitar badly, writes poetry equally badly, and smokes the worst of all - he’d never let his friends know that he never inhales, that he can’t keep the fragrant cloud down for an instant.
But then, he'd never let them know about his excellent golf swing, either. One adjusts to meet the needs of one's surroundings.
--
10. "Truth Be Known" - Atlas Plug (4:35)
It is 1986, and Polly Wright is in two places at once.
Rolling blackouts paralyze Great Britain, the light of a new planet cuts an arc in the sky, and Polly is standing in the street, watching (Polly is twenty years younger - so very young - and staring for the first time into a Cyberman’s blank eyes).
She laughs, too quiet for anyone to hear; you’ve stopped it, Polly Wright, you and Ben and the Doctor. You’ve stopped it already!--
11. "Scorchio" - Bond (3:31)
You can take the firework metaphor quite a long way with Fiona. Unpredictable. Elaborate. Built of gunpowder and chemicals and liable to explode given the slightest provocation.
Bright, stunning when she finally goes off. Searing to the touch. Ready to shake you to the bones and blind you if you aren’t prepared.--
12. "Hijo de la Luna" - Sarah Brightman (4:27)
“Nope. Sorry.” Greg shook his head as Catherine approached.
“What do you mean?”
“We absolutely, positively, can not conduct an investigation into this. And if we do, quote, we will be ‘cursed beyond anything we could imagine’. So there.” He shrugged innocently.
“I don’t know. I can imagine a lot.” She smirked. “Let me guess. Indian burial ground? Alignment of universal something-or-others?”
“Apparently, the moon struck our vic down in his sleep, as revenge for abandoning its cosmic children,” he said flatly. Not even a trace of sarcasm. He was good at that.
“The moon.”
“That’s what the witness told me.”
“Huh.” She switched her flashlight on. “Well, that’s new.”--
13. "To The Pirates' Cave!" - Pirates of the Caribbean Soundtrack (3:30)
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Martha, that’s a very serious pirate and that’s a very serious sword he’s holding.”
“A pirate. Honestly. You’ve landed me in an Errol Flynn movie.”
“Yes. Lovely. So I have. Whoever that is. Now do you think maybe you could climb a little faster?”--
14. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" - Bono (from the Across the Universe soundtrack) (4:23)
They show her the universe, resplendent, its darkest corners and its brightest stars, and for a while Jamie realizes why the Doctor loves company so.
Victoria is closer to his own age, closer to his own time, and he communicates with her in a way he simply can’t with the Doctor no matter how he wants to. But then they open the doors again, and he’s as mysterious as the Doctor ever was, both guide and fellow traveler. --
To bed.
Also, Middleman? Is AWESOME. If you're not watching it, please begin doing so.
silly_cleo!!! I hope the coming year is wonderful.
----
You remember that writing meme I did a while earlier, with the fics written in the time it takes for one song to play? As a way of warming up for more serious/extensive writing, I did a few rounds of those on vacation. There are fourteen in total; I figured I'd post them up here.
The rules, in case you needed a reminder:
1. Put your iPod or other mp3 player on Shuffle
2. Pick the first five/seven/ten songs that come up.
3. Write a short fic inspired by each of those songs. You may only write for the duration of the song - if the song lasts three minutes, you only write for three minutes. No cheating!*
*I still cheated. Mostly because I skipped any song where I didn’t know the language, because it was apparently Bollywood Day off in Shuffle-land.
1. "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen/We Three Kings" - The Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLachlan (3:31)
“How d’ya even know any Christmas carols, though?” Rose asked, jogging to catch up with him. “I mean, you tell me you’re this nine-hundred-year-old alien; what do you know about Christmas on Earth?”
“What makes you think that song’s from Earth?” He grinned. “There’s a song over in the Severinth galaxy celebrating industry and efficiency - ‘The Glory of Accomplishment’, they call it.” He hummed a few bars. “Exact same tune.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Singing it thousands of years before there was an Earth, let alone a Christmas.”--
2. "Amazonic" - Maksim (3:20; not uploaded because iTunes is having issues with finding the file)
The place is a music-box, complete with a wind-up dancer in a tatty ball-gown spinning to the same ancient tune.
It must have been glorious, when it was still used; the mind conjures up images of emperors, princesses, royal dances, all those fairy-tale accoutrements. Of course, I’ve had enough education by now to know that those fantasies were bought with the broken backs of serfs and slaves, but…
It aches with emptiness now, here in its dust, and somewhere beneath the rags it all still glitters, still tempts. --
3. "Arcus" - Amethystium (5:06)
Some days, Olivia Benson goes home on time. No new cases, cold trails, any number of reasons.
Some of those days she just stays at the station. Eventually, someone will need help, and she’ll be there when they do. Some of those days she goes straight home and sleeps until the next morning, or whenever she’s on duty. Some of those days she even makes the odd attempt at a social life.
And sometimes she walks.
It’s after the worst of the cases that she walks, after the serial rapists, the murderous pedophiles, the abuses that turn even her stomach. After those, she goes walking, or rides the subway aimlessly.
She watches the people around her as she does: the families, the daughters, the happily-marrieds. And she can’t completely shut off the cop in her brain, who says they aren’t all so happy.
But sometimes she can watch the crowds and know that they aren’t all victims, either. They aren’t all abusers. There’s more to the world than the people who end up in her station.--
4. “Never Let Me Down Again” - Tina Root (Depeche Mode cover) (4:25)
It’s never quite as safe as it seems.
Not in the obvious sense - because the places they go never even seem safe, not remotely - but occasionally she takes her status as passenger and guest for granted. She forgets that any trip could be the last, that one day he could take off without her and not return.
And then the Doctor finds the Master again, in some far-off corner of the galaxy, and they greet one another with half-smiles, and she remembers.
If he hadn’t been forced to return to Earth, he wouldn’t have.
And while she never quite believed that he would abandon Earth to the Axons, she did believe that.--
5. "Club Nowhere" - Blue Man Group (4:50)
He keeps odd hours. He’s there when she arrives in the morning and doesn’t leave when she does at night. The Brigadier tells her that he works through the night, occasionally disappearing into his TARDIS or heading out for a drive but rarely venturing outside the lab.
He sleeps when he’s tired, which isn’t very often, and which tends to be in the middle of the afternoon. She’s caught him, on occasion, slumped over in a chair in the garage or resting with his head on his arms on a lab bench.
He disregards the days and nights, as if to spite them for existing in such an orderly, uniform row.
She always wakes him when she finds him asleep, with an unceremonious nudge. “Wake up, Doctor. We’ve got work to do.”
He’ll have to learn to follow the days eventually.--
6. "They" - Jem (3:16)
“I can’t believe you believe this crap.” Fin clicked through the website, growing ever more incredulous. “Secret organizations? Black-ops raids?”
“You’d rather think that all those eerily similar events are unfortunate accidents?” John rejoined, without raising his eyes.
“How many government agents have you met, John? Do they seem that organized to you?” --
7. “You Keep Me Hanging On” - Kim Wilde (4:15)
“Stop. Seriously, stop that.” She massaged her forehead. “Sam, you’re embarrassing everyone.”
Sam made a noise like “pfft!” and kept dancing.
This was going to take a little more effort than she thought.
“Sam, I know - I know you’re upset.” She dodged a wildly swinging arm. “Look, I get that. And you should be upset. He treated you like crap. Okay? But - stop doing that - but a public striptease is not going to solve anything and - put that down, Sam, another shot isn’t either.”--
8. "Tequila Mockingbird" - Vanessa-Mae (3:29)
Who was it that first compared a court case to a complicated dance? Because hers is a dance measured and precise.
There’s elegance and force in her movements, as she rises to the stand for the cross-examination. As she neatly punches a hole in his case it’s like a sharp turn, a twirl that stops just short, a calculated shift in her weight.
Perhaps he’ll observe her more closely the next time they dance in tandem.--
9. "Song 2" - Blur (2:01)
He acts the classic hipster, dirty clothes and his sister’s mascara. He plays acoustic guitar badly, writes poetry equally badly, and smokes the worst of all - he’d never let his friends know that he never inhales, that he can’t keep the fragrant cloud down for an instant.
But then, he'd never let them know about his excellent golf swing, either. One adjusts to meet the needs of one's surroundings.
--
10. "Truth Be Known" - Atlas Plug (4:35)
It is 1986, and Polly Wright is in two places at once.
Rolling blackouts paralyze Great Britain, the light of a new planet cuts an arc in the sky, and Polly is standing in the street, watching (Polly is twenty years younger - so very young - and staring for the first time into a Cyberman’s blank eyes).
She laughs, too quiet for anyone to hear; you’ve stopped it, Polly Wright, you and Ben and the Doctor. You’ve stopped it already!--
11. "Scorchio" - Bond (3:31)
You can take the firework metaphor quite a long way with Fiona. Unpredictable. Elaborate. Built of gunpowder and chemicals and liable to explode given the slightest provocation.
Bright, stunning when she finally goes off. Searing to the touch. Ready to shake you to the bones and blind you if you aren’t prepared.--
12. "Hijo de la Luna" - Sarah Brightman (4:27)
“Nope. Sorry.” Greg shook his head as Catherine approached.
“What do you mean?”
“We absolutely, positively, can not conduct an investigation into this. And if we do, quote, we will be ‘cursed beyond anything we could imagine’. So there.” He shrugged innocently.
“I don’t know. I can imagine a lot.” She smirked. “Let me guess. Indian burial ground? Alignment of universal something-or-others?”
“Apparently, the moon struck our vic down in his sleep, as revenge for abandoning its cosmic children,” he said flatly. Not even a trace of sarcasm. He was good at that.
“The moon.”
“That’s what the witness told me.”
“Huh.” She switched her flashlight on. “Well, that’s new.”--
13. "To The Pirates' Cave!" - Pirates of the Caribbean Soundtrack (3:30)
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Martha, that’s a very serious pirate and that’s a very serious sword he’s holding.”
“A pirate. Honestly. You’ve landed me in an Errol Flynn movie.”
“Yes. Lovely. So I have. Whoever that is. Now do you think maybe you could climb a little faster?”--
14. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" - Bono (from the Across the Universe soundtrack) (4:23)
They show her the universe, resplendent, its darkest corners and its brightest stars, and for a while Jamie realizes why the Doctor loves company so.
Victoria is closer to his own age, closer to his own time, and he communicates with her in a way he simply can’t with the Doctor no matter how he wants to. But then they open the doors again, and he’s as mysterious as the Doctor ever was, both guide and fellow traveler. --
To bed.
Also, Middleman? Is AWESOME. If you're not watching it, please begin doing so.