if buzzkill wants to be in a band, buzzkill's gonna be in a band
Yuletide stories!
my assignment story:
low-hanging fruit of the poisonous tree
The Good Wife, Kalinda Sharma, 5300 words
When I got my assignment, I was like, "Okay, a story about Kalinda, awesome, let me just find a wiki for this show so I can refresh on what we've been told about her in canon. What, no show wiki? No recaps longer than three sentences? What kind of fandom is this? Oh ... right."
So I re-watched the ENTIRE first season and, hahah, a first season network drama is not terribly concerned with its character continuity. At one point, Kalinda, Carey and Alicia roll up to a private high school and Carey says, "This looks like my old high school" and Kalinda says, "This looks like schools I used to vandalize." And then, like, three episodes later Kalinda tells Alicia that she went K-12 to private Catholic school. Um, okay?
When I was finally done re-watching the first season I realized that ANOTHER episode of the second season had just aired. At that point my story was 85% done and the whole time I was watching it I was like, "Please do not be the episode that reveals Kalinda's secret past, pleaaaaaaaaase do not be the episode that reveals Kalinda's secret past." And it wasn't. But seriously, no more offering to write currently-airing network dramas.
Ultimately I was pretty happy with this story, even though I couldn't be stopped from giving it a bad pun Wheel of Fortune before-and-after title. Thanks to paintedmaypole and cathexys for the beta.
pinch-hit story I started writing at, like, 10:30ET on Christmas Eve:
the things we think and do not say
Friday Night Lights, Jason Street meets JD McCoy, 1600 words
In the thread of request prompts from pinch-hit writers, someone asked for a Friday Night Lights story that threw together one of the first season characters with one of the new kids. I loved this idea, FNL's ability to mash-up its characters in a way that feels like a crossover from within the show (best example ever: Tyra and Matt's grandma end up in the back of Landry's car together at the end of season one) is one of my favorite things.
So with 90 minutes to the story deadline, my thought process was: 1) Jason? Jason and ... JD? Jason and JD! 2) This morning I read an article in ESPN the Magazine about the difference between a good college player and a good college player who will also be good in the NFL 3) Two days ago I was going on at dinner about how the movie Jerry Maguire was briefly incredibly overrated and so now it's actually underrated.
And so from that point the story pretty much wrote itself. I am a football coach's daughter, and I love Friday Night Lights so much I can barely talk about it, let alone write chicken scratch in its universe. But I'm glad I finally managed something.
the awesome story I received:
get me away from here I'm dying
China Mountain Zhang, by kyrafic
Holy shit oh my God. Not only is this story a beautifully-written missing chapter from one of my favorite books, it was also written by one of my favorite people. It contains so many things I love (literally things that only someone who used to sit around and talk about dystopic fiction with me at work every day for two years would know) that I started laughing out loud when I was reading it. When I got to the part about the Green Line to Medford I almost fell out of the bed.
my assignment story:
low-hanging fruit of the poisonous tree
The Good Wife, Kalinda Sharma, 5300 words
When I got my assignment, I was like, "Okay, a story about Kalinda, awesome, let me just find a wiki for this show so I can refresh on what we've been told about her in canon. What, no show wiki? No recaps longer than three sentences? What kind of fandom is this? Oh ... right."
So I re-watched the ENTIRE first season and, hahah, a first season network drama is not terribly concerned with its character continuity. At one point, Kalinda, Carey and Alicia roll up to a private high school and Carey says, "This looks like my old high school" and Kalinda says, "This looks like schools I used to vandalize." And then, like, three episodes later Kalinda tells Alicia that she went K-12 to private Catholic school. Um, okay?
When I was finally done re-watching the first season I realized that ANOTHER episode of the second season had just aired. At that point my story was 85% done and the whole time I was watching it I was like, "Please do not be the episode that reveals Kalinda's secret past, pleaaaaaaaaase do not be the episode that reveals Kalinda's secret past." And it wasn't. But seriously, no more offering to write currently-airing network dramas.
Ultimately I was pretty happy with this story, even though I couldn't be stopped from giving it a bad pun Wheel of Fortune before-and-after title. Thanks to paintedmaypole and cathexys for the beta.
pinch-hit story I started writing at, like, 10:30ET on Christmas Eve:
the things we think and do not say
Friday Night Lights, Jason Street meets JD McCoy, 1600 words
In the thread of request prompts from pinch-hit writers, someone asked for a Friday Night Lights story that threw together one of the first season characters with one of the new kids. I loved this idea, FNL's ability to mash-up its characters in a way that feels like a crossover from within the show (best example ever: Tyra and Matt's grandma end up in the back of Landry's car together at the end of season one) is one of my favorite things.
So with 90 minutes to the story deadline, my thought process was: 1) Jason? Jason and ... JD? Jason and JD! 2) This morning I read an article in ESPN the Magazine about the difference between a good college player and a good college player who will also be good in the NFL 3) Two days ago I was going on at dinner about how the movie Jerry Maguire was briefly incredibly overrated and so now it's actually underrated.
And so from that point the story pretty much wrote itself. I am a football coach's daughter, and I love Friday Night Lights so much I can barely talk about it, let alone write chicken scratch in its universe. But I'm glad I finally managed something.
the awesome story I received:
get me away from here I'm dying
China Mountain Zhang, by kyrafic
Holy shit oh my God. Not only is this story a beautifully-written missing chapter from one of my favorite books, it was also written by one of my favorite people. It contains so many things I love (literally things that only someone who used to sit around and talk about dystopic fiction with me at work every day for two years would know) that I started laughing out loud when I was reading it. When I got to the part about the Green Line to Medford I almost fell out of the bed.