Things for a Thursday morning
SO. I promised myself I would get back into the habit of updating. Here we go.
1. My Alastair Cook did rather well in the 4th ODI today. Admittedly: conditions were pretty much perfect for England (which means the jury is still out on his Captaincy, though I hear he did a lot better with field stuff today). You could see that Kieswetter was a little embarrassed when he started stealing Al's runs at the end (Al ended up with 95) but there was nothing they could do about that after Al kicked off about the Sri Lankan's mucking about in the match on Sunday.
I'll miss the decider owing to being in London this weekend. But, thanks to the wonder of technology, I will at least be able to keep up with the score on my phone.
2. So, yeah, London - heading down on Friday (Friday evening plans currently up in the air, hoping to sort that tomorrow), seeing Talesians and Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (starring my two favourite History Boys) with fen on the Saturday and then coming back on the Sunday. This is effectively my last hurrah as money is super tight.
Still - I am greatly looking forwards to it.
I'm actually holiday for two weeks, which I've never done in summer before, and quite pleased about it. When I go back to work it'll be a week before my responsibilities greatly increase so I'm considering this the respite before the storm.
I'm also hoping to finish an original project I started last year now that my writing is back. When it's done I'm going to get people to look at it and then I'm going to try submitting it to Asimov's. Everyone's got to start somewhere, after all, and Asimov's still accepts submissions (and pays for them too) and carries a lot of prestige with it. You never know.
3. Speaking of writing: X-Men: First Class is where I have set up camp since June 1st. (I wrote the first fill on one of the Kink Memes :D) Me five years ago would've laughed you out of the building if you suggested I might ship Erik/Charles one day. This is not because of an age thing but rather because of my odd relationship with slash re: comic book characters. It's generally a case of feeling that I know them almost personally that stops me from shipping anything other than canon pairings.
So currently I am writing two Epic WiP!Fills - the first is ~18k and only part way into its second act (its got 3 in total) and the other is ~16k and about to hit monster plot. I also have a very self-indulgent fic about surprises going on (Charles is surprised by Erik! Erik is surprised by Charles! Eventually they make-out! There is cricket involved! (But not in the making out.)) and am currently figuring out whether I want to risk signing up for the Big Bang.
I have, currently, about three ideas. Two are AU and one is Post-Canon fix-it. I've said to myself that if I can draft one of the AUs before sign-ups end then I'm allowed to sign-up for an AU and the Post-Canon. It's not like I don't have enough words and the Year of Fakenews proved to me that I can certainly have enough inspiration.
IDK, we'll see.
4. In other media news: I finished watching Outnumbered the other day. I think the way I write children from now on will forever be affected by Karen and Ben (in fact - I already know it is *taps nose*). It really is very enjoyable - not always completely hilarious but each episode has enough humour to justify the sitcom label.
Now that I've done that I'm heading into a rewatch of The Trip. When I watched it last year I fell in love with it and if there was any justice in the world the AO3 would be brimming with Rob/Steve because the show pretty much slashes them itself. (This seems to be a problem endemic to British TV shows, tbh, a lot of them slip through the slash cracks. Which sucks particularly in this case because I seriously think this show is gayer than Merlin. It only ever seems to be the genre shows that capture fandoms. But this is probably something a whole post could be written about.)
I'm also taking suggestions for cartoons/anime to watch. I'm doing a Cardcaptor Sakura rewatch at the moment (Sakura and Li! Break my heart!) but when that's done I'm not sure what to do next. I like them because the 20-minutes or so they average make them easy things to watch in between work. (For reference: I've already watched Avatar, Star Wars: Clone Wars, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Batman: The Brave And The Bold this year. Don't, um, recommend other DC series, though, because Bats is as far as I can stretched and that's mostly because BATB is hilarious.)
I'm particularly interested in anime recs. I've mostly only watched CLAMP shows - but I've also watched bits of Macross, NGE (of course, and I'm still WTF about it after all these years) and Ouran High School Host Club. I'd prefer complete or short series because I cannot be bothered with 900 million episode shows like Naruto.
5. And finally: I saw Transformers 3 today and it was not as bad as I expected it to be.
I went in hoping that it would be better than the second. Which wouldn't be hard, really. And it was a lot better than the second one. There was 100% less humping jokes, for one!
But, seriously, I went in for the big stompy robots. They were big, and stompy, and robots. SO I was pleased. Optimus Prime went on one hell of a rampage at the end of the movie which was...a whole lot more violent than I expected. Dude killed, like, everyone. It was a amazing. I was sadface when Starscream died because he is totally my favourite Decepticon.
I was pleased that Captain Guy Lennox survived because I've always preferred his character to Sam. I think I am turning against Shia, a bit, there's just something painfully annoying about his face. And the less said about replacing Megan Fox, who can at least act a bit, with a double-barrelled British Victoria's Secret model the better.
I kept on laughing every time a Bay-ism crept into the movie. My favourite being this: the final battle (poor Chicago, all those years of not being destroyed by Hollywood and then twice in one year!) happens during broad daylight, yes? And yet - when Lennox and his team of folk leave their airfield (which Lennox says is 10 minutes from Chicago) it is mysteriously sunset. Presumably so that Bay could get in one of those loving aircraft/airfield-draped-in-golden-orange-sunset-light shots that he's so fond of.
There were massive story issues, of course, and some awful acting and an unnecessary amount of screaming from Shia, but it was mostly okay. Also it gets a little grace from me for stealing Spock's "Needs of the many" line and giving it to Sentinel Prime before he does a bad thing.
So, yeah, I'd say 2-3 out of 5, if only for having less bad things in it than the 2nd.
And that concludes this entry
1. My Alastair Cook did rather well in the 4th ODI today. Admittedly: conditions were pretty much perfect for England (which means the jury is still out on his Captaincy, though I hear he did a lot better with field stuff today). You could see that Kieswetter was a little embarrassed when he started stealing Al's runs at the end (Al ended up with 95) but there was nothing they could do about that after Al kicked off about the Sri Lankan's mucking about in the match on Sunday.
I'll miss the decider owing to being in London this weekend. But, thanks to the wonder of technology, I will at least be able to keep up with the score on my phone.
2. So, yeah, London - heading down on Friday (Friday evening plans currently up in the air, hoping to sort that tomorrow), seeing Talesians and Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (starring my two favourite History Boys) with fen on the Saturday and then coming back on the Sunday. This is effectively my last hurrah as money is super tight.
Still - I am greatly looking forwards to it.
I'm actually holiday for two weeks, which I've never done in summer before, and quite pleased about it. When I go back to work it'll be a week before my responsibilities greatly increase so I'm considering this the respite before the storm.
I'm also hoping to finish an original project I started last year now that my writing is back. When it's done I'm going to get people to look at it and then I'm going to try submitting it to Asimov's. Everyone's got to start somewhere, after all, and Asimov's still accepts submissions (and pays for them too) and carries a lot of prestige with it. You never know.
3. Speaking of writing: X-Men: First Class is where I have set up camp since June 1st. (I wrote the first fill on one of the Kink Memes :D) Me five years ago would've laughed you out of the building if you suggested I might ship Erik/Charles one day. This is not because of an age thing but rather because of my odd relationship with slash re: comic book characters. It's generally a case of feeling that I know them almost personally that stops me from shipping anything other than canon pairings.
So currently I am writing two Epic WiP!Fills - the first is ~18k and only part way into its second act (its got 3 in total) and the other is ~16k and about to hit monster plot. I also have a very self-indulgent fic about surprises going on (Charles is surprised by Erik! Erik is surprised by Charles! Eventually they make-out! There is cricket involved! (But not in the making out.)) and am currently figuring out whether I want to risk signing up for the Big Bang.
I have, currently, about three ideas. Two are AU and one is Post-Canon fix-it. I've said to myself that if I can draft one of the AUs before sign-ups end then I'm allowed to sign-up for an AU and the Post-Canon. It's not like I don't have enough words and the Year of Fakenews proved to me that I can certainly have enough inspiration.
IDK, we'll see.
4. In other media news: I finished watching Outnumbered the other day. I think the way I write children from now on will forever be affected by Karen and Ben (in fact - I already know it is *taps nose*). It really is very enjoyable - not always completely hilarious but each episode has enough humour to justify the sitcom label.
Now that I've done that I'm heading into a rewatch of The Trip. When I watched it last year I fell in love with it and if there was any justice in the world the AO3 would be brimming with Rob/Steve because the show pretty much slashes them itself. (This seems to be a problem endemic to British TV shows, tbh, a lot of them slip through the slash cracks. Which sucks particularly in this case because I seriously think this show is gayer than Merlin. It only ever seems to be the genre shows that capture fandoms. But this is probably something a whole post could be written about.)
I'm also taking suggestions for cartoons/anime to watch. I'm doing a Cardcaptor Sakura rewatch at the moment (Sakura and Li! Break my heart!) but when that's done I'm not sure what to do next. I like them because the 20-minutes or so they average make them easy things to watch in between work. (For reference: I've already watched Avatar, Star Wars: Clone Wars, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Batman: The Brave And The Bold this year. Don't, um, recommend other DC series, though, because Bats is as far as I can stretched and that's mostly because BATB is hilarious.)
I'm particularly interested in anime recs. I've mostly only watched CLAMP shows - but I've also watched bits of Macross, NGE (of course, and I'm still WTF about it after all these years) and Ouran High School Host Club. I'd prefer complete or short series because I cannot be bothered with 900 million episode shows like Naruto.
5. And finally: I saw Transformers 3 today and it was not as bad as I expected it to be.
I went in hoping that it would be better than the second. Which wouldn't be hard, really. And it was a lot better than the second one. There was 100% less humping jokes, for one!
But, seriously, I went in for the big stompy robots. They were big, and stompy, and robots. SO I was pleased. Optimus Prime went on one hell of a rampage at the end of the movie which was...a whole lot more violent than I expected. Dude killed, like, everyone. It was a amazing. I was sadface when Starscream died because he is totally my favourite Decepticon.
I was pleased that Captain Guy Lennox survived because I've always preferred his character to Sam. I think I am turning against Shia, a bit, there's just something painfully annoying about his face. And the less said about replacing Megan Fox, who can at least act a bit, with a double-barrelled British Victoria's Secret model the better.
I kept on laughing every time a Bay-ism crept into the movie. My favourite being this: the final battle (poor Chicago, all those years of not being destroyed by Hollywood and then twice in one year!) happens during broad daylight, yes? And yet - when Lennox and his team of folk leave their airfield (which Lennox says is 10 minutes from Chicago) it is mysteriously sunset. Presumably so that Bay could get in one of those loving aircraft/airfield-draped-in-golden-orange-sunset-light shots that he's so fond of.
There were massive story issues, of course, and some awful acting and an unnecessary amount of screaming from Shia, but it was mostly okay. Also it gets a little grace from me for stealing Spock's "Needs of the many" line and giving it to Sentinel Prime before he does a bad thing.
So, yeah, I'd say 2-3 out of 5, if only for having less bad things in it than the 2nd.
And that concludes this entry