likeadeuce

Not sure who has time for this BUT, really, it's just supposed to be five minutes. From pocky_slash:

1. Clear your schedule for five minutes (or longer if you have time, I'm not gonna turn down more fic).
3. Then look under the cut tag, where you will find ten prompts, all of which are song titles (selected at random from my iPod.
4. Choose one of the prompts, and - using any appropriate fandom/character[s] (meaning ones you think I might enjoy) - write.
5. Reply with your teeny weeny story in the comments to this post.
6. Repost this in your journal and make your friends write for you!

( Prompts )

Because I thought I'd share "the part where Roy Mustang asserts that he's a feminist*." The secondary lesson I took from looking at this section is, if you're going to make a narrative point over the fact that a certain character never says he's sorry, you should go through and make sure he didn't do it half a dozen times in what you already wrote. Thank God for Control-F, and, hey, this only took three times as long as it should have rather than ruining the entire manuscript.

Anyway.

( Roy + Riza + female OC )

*I think he really, basically, kind of is, more or less, which doesn't change the baseline obnoxiousness of dudes walking into a conversation to prove what good guys they are by announcing up front they are feminists**. And Riza is, too, she just, at this point, pre-main-canon, she doesn't really have the vocabulary to talk about it.

** Especially when a large part of your definition of being a feminist runs to, "I've paid women to have sex with me, but I've also taken money from women I was sleeping with." Totally feminist.

ETA: A totally unrelated, but not THAT unrelated discussion with harmonyangel ( This one is about Roy & Riza & her dog & Hughes )

My cold is trying to make a resurgence, and this is not cool. But I'm ignoring it so, hah! Actually, maybe that is not a real plan. I am distracting myself from it by listening to the Dum Dum Girls channel on Spotify Radio, anyway. I have never heard of most of these bands, but they are pretty all right, and then occasionally it will do something like, "We think you might like Wild Flag!" Good guess there, Spotify. Anyway, I feel a little better about this than I did about listening to a playlist called, "Hipster International by Sean Parker."

Moving on! I saw The Artist today, which I thought was beautiful, if a little long for what it was. Probably part of that is my dumb American attention span talking but I could have done with a lot less of the main character moping and a lot more awesome tap dancing. Also, I get that making a movie almost entirely without dialogue makes you pay attention to other aspects of the presentation, but sometimes dialogue is useful to convince you that characters have personalities and reasons to actually be interested in each other, something this movie sometimes lacked. Still, it's nice to see a movie succeed -- critically and if the packed theater is any indication, commercially -- by trying something different. Though speaking of the packed theater, we went to the arts theater that seems to be mostly patronized by senior citizens, which included a woman in front of us who, whenever an actor she recognized came on the screen, would say his or her name loudly and in a very satisfied tone: "Malcolm McDowell. John Goodman. James Cromwell." et cetera. Gotta love moviegoing.

Finally a meme, which I stole from inlovewithnight. I have to say I reject the premise of this meme a little bit, because I tend to talk about my writing decisions way past the point that anybody expresses interest in them, but just in case a question leaps to your mind:

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

And it seems like a lot more fun to do that than to work.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions! Anon commenting is on, if you feel shy. [ETA: Just noticed that and no, I don't do anon, but I doubt this is an issue :)]

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about xyz, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? And so on.

ETA: Oh hey, so my stories are here.

1. New Springsteen album March 6! This blog post purports to have 4 songs from the new album, though it's really "3 he's played before in some form" + the new single, "We Take Care of Our Own." I will confess I do not, so far, like the new single very much -- I can't figure out how I feel about the music but the lyrics are kind of a mess. A lot's being made about whether or not the title is ironic, and it seems obvious to me that it is on some level but I really can't parse the way the irony's being used. And is the conflation of "cavalry" & "Calvary" in there on purpose (for times like this, I should probably have a GIF of Bruce saying, "Catholic school, Catholic school, Catholic school," because that's really the only excuse.) Though I think the big reason I'm not too fond is that, as somebody quicker about this stuff than me (by which I mean I forgot where I read this and don't have a link) pointed out is that it's a song of generalities, verging on platitudes, rather a specific story made up of characters/voice/images.

Part of me thinks I should get the single and listen to it obsessively for the next month and a half but more likely I'm going to wait and hear it in the context of the whole album. Which, most exciting to me, is not the new songs but -- reportedly -- an album version of "Land of Hope and Dreams." If you're gonna click on anything in that post I linked, skip the new single and watch the 9-minute LoHaD on there. I'm smiling just thinking about it. Also, not for nothing, I don't exactly ever think Bruce looks less than appealing but for whatever reason he is extra hot in that video. That early 2000s period might be the peak of his hotness, that's all I'm saying.

2. James Purefoy will be on REVENGE! Some spoilers for his role in that link if you don't want to know, though it barely matters, because I'll be writing fic where he hooks up with Nolan, because come on.

3. James Marsden is on 30 Rock! His first episode was last night and while I will not say this season has gotten off to the greatest start ever, James Marsden is on 30 ROCK. I'm pretty sure I specifically wished for this a few years ago so yay to Liz Lemon for hitting that.

4. On a tangentially related note, the Marsden character on 30 Rock is, basically, a well-meaning guy who is possibly not actually very good for much as a boyfriend, and there is a motif in the first episode around the fact that his greatest contribution to Liz's life is making pancakes. It happens I've been writing a fanfic in which one of my original characters is a well-meaning guy who is possibly not actually good for much as a boyfriend, and one of the motifs in the story involves him making pancakes for his girlfriend. I mean, I just finished drafting that story, so when I saw the 30 Rock episode, my first instinct was, "That's an amazing and awesome coincidence." Then my second was, uh-oh, maybe this relationship motif is showing up as a joke in a sitcom because it's kind of a cliche. And then I thought, I haven't done a poll for a while!

The poll is on LJ, sorry. You can discuss in the comments here if you don't want to answer there.

Finally about that March Media Boycott thing that's been going around, I can't emphasize how much I don't want to talk about it (like, it's an if you comment about it here, I will delete it level of not wanting to talk about it) but suffice it to say I won't be participating, basically for the reasons outlined in this post by Penknife. As a law school graduate, I think the SOPA/PIPA law was terrible, and I'm very glad that the response from the public seems to have changed Congress's mind for now, but beyond that -- yeah, what penknife said.

And I didn't mention Roy Mustang in this post. I'm not sure that's legal so I'm doing it just in case.

ETA: new Lucero song!

Have finished a draft of the Big Bang prequel, in the sense that I have down on paper everything that happens in it, but I still need to string together what all of it means. (Is this a weird way to write? I'm starting to wonder. The way long/complicated stories tend to work for me is that they just unfold in my head and I have to play catch up to actually connect the dots and figure out how A leads to B leads to C -- and also if it's the thing that really should be happening or if I'm just writing it because I thought of it. I need to get more control over my process maybe, idk. I do know that deciding I need a 10,000 word prequel to a Big Bang that only needed to be 15,000 words in the first place is maybe doing it wrong.

This all makes it sound like I spent all of today laboring over this story, but actually I didn't start tonight until after 10. I got to get up this morning, on my day off, to go get a somewhat overdue physical exam (everything is fine, as far as I know; in fact, I seem to be an inch taller than I have ever previously been, which makes me wonder if I have actually been measured since I was an adult or have just been telling people what I put on my driver's license when I was 16.) Anyway, doctor's appointment with all the small humiliations and frustrations that entails -- but the new-to-me doctor was actually pretty great, and I might see if I can officially change her to be my primary care physician.

I had plans to go to the gym after the exam, but I got a tetanus booster shot and as I was leaving the nurse said that my arm should "feel fine as long as you're not weight-lifting or something." Which, I don't know how to describe, but she said it as if the idea that I would be weight lifting was about as likely as me going to Mars. So then I was like, "MEDICAL ORDERS, NO GYM TODAY!" And instead I went to Einstein's to have a bagel sandwich and coffee, then to REI where I got workout clothes on sale (yeah I finally bought the sports bra I posted about a zillion years ago \o/) For the record, my arm didn't hurt from the shot AT ALL, so I probably could have gone but, eh. I am all over my cold, I'm done with doctors for a while, and I have proper clothes so I *will* be back at the gym tomorrow.

I also saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy today, which is one of those movies I'm glad I saw in the theater, because it demands more attention that I would realistically give it, were I watching at home. Some of the attention it demands is of the tedious kind, like, "HOW do I keep all these middle aged white men and/or young white men in bad wigs straight?" But once I got past that, I am pretty sure I caught most of the plot. And, while their characters clearly did not have the great love story of the movie (I can't say who did without spoiling the whole thing), I do hope some resourceful fan has written Character-Played-by-Benedict-Cumberbatch-in-a-bad-wig/Character-Played-by-Tom-Hardy-in-a-bad-wig, because they were fun to watch. And for the record, when I say, "bad wig" I mean, "Clearly someone spent a lot of money to make everybody and everything about this movie look totally shabby." Though Colin Firth more or less escapes the sentence of shabbiness, as do Tom Hardy's lips. This may not be a particularly useful movie review, I don't know.

[ETA: I liked the movie a lot. I should probably say that. That's not the same as being a recommendation, because it's the ultimate in, "The sort of thing you like if you like that sort of thing" for values of "sort of thing" that equal "British men being secretive and repressed in a deliberately shabby-looking movie."]

I should get some sleep.

Getting to this a little late, due to waiting for 3_ships to be revealed. Now I can list everything I finished and posted in 2011. Unlike previous years, I have several things in progress that I hope/plan to finish so with luck they will go on next year's list.

( List of Stories )

( Questions )

I don't know if this really counts as my own "More Joy Day" entry, but I love the post Romancing the Sro, by karenhealey. Karen talks about the 'sromance,' which is of course the female version of 'bromance,' and how these stories don't always get the love they should. (I particularly like the point about Vampire Diaries and how the Elena/Bonnie/Caroline trio doesn't get to pull the same emotional weight as the comparable 'bromances'). But it's mostly a celebratory post that makes me want to dig up the Jean + Wanda backup stories that Colleen Coover drew for X-Men: First Class. Because Marvel Witch rocks.

I put harmonyangel on a train home this morning, then went to work and. . .I wasn't sick enough to stay home, but I didn't feel really great about being at work. Plus, it's kind of dingy outside -- not snowing, like it apparently is in D.C., but just an ideal day to come home, bundle up and sit on the couch while I catch up on TV. So that's what I'm doing right now, and it feels excellent \o/.

I'm thinking about writing because my Big Bang prequel is nearing the homestretch. One thing that keeps rearing its head in this story, and the BB proper, is that I'm focusing the story a lot on original characters. I've written plenty of original fiction, so the notion of creating characters whole cloth isn't anything new to me. But inserting original characters into fanfiction, and giving them major roles in the story, is something I've shied away from doing. For one thing, if I'm writing fanfic, chances are it's because I want to focus on characters in the source text; that tends to be what I'm in fanfic for. Also, I've generally written in fandoms that have a lot of characters, so if I need a minor story role to be filled, there's probably someone who can do it. There are other factors that go into the hesitation, though, including "Are readers going to care about this person if they signed up to read about somebody they already know?" and the even less rational, "Why am I wasting time developing this character? If I want to do that I should be writing original fiction." I know that's irrational; it's not like there are a finite number of characters I have the ability to create, so it's not like I'm 'wasting' one. Still, sometimes that feels true.

Anyway, now I'm curious. How do you feel about original characters in fanfiction? Are you wary of them, are you eager to meet them, are you neutral? Do you use them when you write? What function do they serve? How do you develop them? Do you have any favorites that you have written, or read about? Basically, any thoughts you have on OC's, I want to hear them!

Having a fine time during harmonyangel's visit, despite still having a bit of a cold. Today we went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which I note since I'm going to try blogging/tagging every new movie I see this year, so I won't come to the point at the end of the year where I have no idea what I watched.

Not much to say about the actual film -- it was fun. I estimate a full third of it was completely incomprehensible, but the cast was great across the board. Downey does what he does (though I tend to forget how much I enjoy that until I'm actually watching), Stephen Fry stole all his scenes as Mycroft, and all the actresses really deserved more to do, but everybody was clearly having fun with what they were given.

The agenda for the rest of the evening seems to involve drinking and watching 30 Minutes or Less on DVD.

[ETA: Harmony points out that I didn't mention Jude Law in my review, which I should rectify because he was actually my favorite part of the movie, just reliably being Watson, but I suppose the act of overlooking him counts as meta.]

I was away when a lot of people were doing end-of-year type memes, and I thought of skipping it but then I found this post from last year, and realized it was a pretty valuable inventory.

So, ( 61 Questions about 2011 )