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| Monday, October 15th, 2007 | | 8:44 am |
Fic: At the Novgorod Fair ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) deepad has set up a community, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) eid_fic, for fic about Muslim characters. She issued a challenge (well, more of request, really) for people to submit something, however short, in time for Eid, which was this weekend. I didn't quite manage that, as I'm posting this on Monday morning, but I almost made it. At the Novgorod Fair is unbeta'd, first draft, and based on my memories of a novel I last read about 20 years ago. The character of the Persian in Leroux's Phantom of the Opera has long intrigued me, even though he is written out of most (all?) of the screen and theatrical adaptations. I don't think it's ever clearly stated that he's Muslim, but unless somewhere in the novel is says he is of another religion, I have assumed it as statistically likely. | | Sunday, October 7th, 2007 | | 11:16 pm |
It's not that I had a bad day personally, because I didn't, but I spent much of today reading about horrible things that have happened to other people. Some of this is "just" from the news, and other parts are from the (fairly pathetic) activism work that I do.
So I had another peek at my webstats again. Over the weekend I amused people in Dallas, Michigan, Cardiff, Estonia, Vienna, Sheffield, Sweden, Massachusetts and Helsinki. (These are people who stayed to read more than one web page.) And I can reflect that there must be many more times that number of people reading my work at All About Spike, Better Buffy Fics, and the other websites where my stories are archived.
I don't mind when people don't send me feedback, as long as I can tell they're reading. | | Monday, September 10th, 2007 | | 11:54 pm |
Happiness is...
Checking your webstats and noting that you entertained someone in Oklahoma City for an hour and a half today. | | Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 | | 10:05 pm |
Eldrad lives! I just watched the 1976 Doctor Who story The Hand of Fear. Is anyone else convinced that this is the source of Illyria? ( Spoilers for both Angel and Doctor Who )ETA: I've just googled ' "Hand of Fear" and Illyria ' and got nuthin'. Come on, this is obvious! And surely there's enough crossover between Angel and Dr Who fandom. "The Hand of Fear" is not an obscure serial. It's on DVD. | | Monday, September 3rd, 2007 | | 6:48 pm |
Rec links fixed
I've just checked and updated the links from my Recs page. Most of the stories I recommended years ago are still available somewhere online, thanks to sites such as the Better Buffy Fic archive and All About Spike. Archivists rock.
Unfortunately, the personal archives of at least three major authors have gone missing. One author contacted me by email to say that she was removing her fic from the web, which I understand the reasons for, but which is a sad loss. She she wrote one of my favourite ever slash fics, which I'm glad to say I still have saved on my hard drive.
Cas's website of historical Angel fic is gone. Some of her work available at BBF but not all.
Wisteria's website is gone too (hello, if you're reading this). Again, much of her work is available in an archive (All About Spike) but Hard Candy seems to have vanished.
Nor can I find the Giles fanfic site Wish I Could Stay nor Montague Terrace in Blue by Lovesbitca. I'll send of emails of enquiry but it looks like they're gone. | | Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 | | 12:19 am |
I've just been looking at my website's stats for the first time in years. People still go there to read fic! About 400 a month, in fact. Most of them are directed to my site by recs on other fanfic pages, but I was puzzled by those arriving from Ask.com until I clicked on the the link. If you search for the word "shagging" on Ask.com, the best-looking picture link is of Harmony Kendall. They must be so disappointed... | | Monday, August 27th, 2007 | | 10:59 pm |
Fic: Return Return by Indri Fred goes home. Set after Not Fade Away. Completed August 2007. 2300 words. Rated PG. For Shapinglight, because she worries about the Burkles. Thanks to Caille, Barb C, Malkin Grey and Peasant for moral support. Thanks also to my betas: azdak, Reverence Pavane and Deepa D. | | Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 | | 4:08 pm |
No-one is more surprised than I am OK, I've finished drafting my fic about the Burkles. I think that took three years, a personal record for fic. Is there anyone still reading this journal who'd like to beta? It's only 2300 words now that I've ruthlessly culled the superfluous subplots. Anyone? ETA: OK, I have an Australian and an ex-pat Brit. I really need an American too, as it's set in Texas.
Switching between dialects is hard. In one story I used the word "hoon" and nwhepcat queried it; I was aiming for an English idiom, but "hoon" is Aussie. The other day, I used the word "snib" in front of my partner; it turned out that in the sixteen years we've known each other I had never before had cause to say "snib" and it's a Scotticism. FYI, a hoon is someone driving recklessly and fast, while a snib is a catch, such a window-catch. | | Friday, August 10th, 2007 | | 10:34 pm |
Angel Season 3
I've been watching early Angel Season 3 for the first time (I read the transcripts years ago). It's really the epitome of the show, isn't it? The gang's all there. I'm watching it, knowing how it ends, and it breaks my heart. | | Monday, June 4th, 2007 | | 12:10 am |
Doggerel: A father's advice to his daughter
A very early draft of what became "Cecily's Lament".
My father once sat me down in his study,
Saying, "Let prudence be your virtue,
Cecily, for 'though our name is old and proud
Preceding years have yet allowed
A failing of our fortunes' virility,
Due in some measure to impromptu
Investments in a silver mine, now failing;
But rather than at Fate bewailing,
We look to you, our eldest daughter,
To save us from financial slaughter.
So marry well, think of your sisters
Pursue the titled Cabinet Ministers
Especially those yet in poor health:
Choose not love but conspicuous wealth." | | Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 | | 11:54 pm |
| | 11:45 pm |
| | 11:28 pm |
Ficlet: Tuppenny Soul
Rated G. Written around the time of "Him", I think.
Sometimes, when Xander's out, Spike will run a cold bath. He'll lie in it with his knees bent over the end so that he can get his head flat against the bottom. He'll spend hours there, looking up at the whorled ceiling through the water. It's not as if he can drown.
For some reason, this is always when his mother decides to visit. She sits there, on the edge of the toilet seat, wearing her best mourning dress. She says, "We never expected this of you, William."
"Didn't you want to be a solicitor?" she asks him. "I can't see what this murdering business had to do with that." | | 10:51 pm |
Fic: Early One Morning I was looking through some old files, looking for something else, when I found some drafts of old fic. I thought this one might be worth posting. I wrote it during a particularly dull conference while Buffy Season 7 was still airing. I didn't post it at the time because it smacked of obvious wish fulfillment and then was overtaken by the events of the show. ( Early One Morning. By Indri. Rated PG. ) | | Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 | | 9:49 am |
Eh, I fail to check my email here for a few weeks and when I come back I find I've been nominated for a couple of awards. Thereby almost doubling the number of awards for which I've ever been nominated. Thanks to my nominators if (s)he's reading this. I got ickle buttons.   As usual, I'm not dead. But I have a major writing project underway that isn't fanfic so I'll be an irregular vistor here for some months to come. | | Saturday, October 7th, 2006 | | 3:30 pm |
GIP: Deus ex machina
The lettering's not quite in the right spot but I can't work out how to move it. I have an old copy of Photoshop that came with a graphics tablet but without any instructions. Also I couldn't find a photo of this sort with the Tenth Doctor in his suit, rather than in the Ninth's jacket (I didn't look all that hard, I suppose). | | Sunday, September 10th, 2006 | | 12:19 am |
I've just reread the Dru fic. The plot's all there and the post-NFA sections are rough but useable. The flashbacks though are jarring as the POV is an omni third, which was a deliberate decision at the time, but quite wrong in retrospect. I'm going to have to throw out all those sections, which is a pity as they make up the bulk of the draft so far. Still, I think I know how it needs to be recast. I don't want to say how yet, as I may not be able to pull it off, but it should be fun to write. New and challenging and fun. If it weren't past midnight I'd probably start now. | | Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 | | 11:58 pm |
Doctor Who. The Face of Boe. Time Lord biology. Fic. Oh, how I loathe housework when I'm in this sort of state. It gets in the way, of fic and thought and the re-watching of episodes. I'd say I loathe eating too, except it would be more accurate to saying I loathe needing to eat, because I don't so much mind the eating, except that it's hard to munch when you're laughing or when your eyes are bugging out over someone else's fanfic. My dinner got cold before I finished eating it. Last time I was this bad I didn't have a LiveJournal. Just as well. So tonight, as I made myself cook a square meal (the SO was out), I wondered what Whofic I would like to write. I have, in fact, absolutely no intention of writing any, because I have other things I'm keen to write first, but if I were to write fic, what would it be? I suppose I could dig out my history course notes on ( setting of Girl in the Fireplace ), but as I can't write romance fic, it would go downhill from there. No, I'd be more likely to go with my usual schtick of minor character viewpoints, at least at first: ( spoiler for um, the second Cyberman episode ). But you know what I really want to do, the idea that lodged in my head as I turned sausages on the grill? Boefic. Fic about the Face of Boe. Because ( tiny, tiny spoilers for New Earth ) and don't you just love saying "Boekind"? The Face of Boe, last of his race -- and why's that then? They all got bored? A great plague? The Time War? "What did Boe do, daddy, during the War?" And why's it the Face of Boe anyway? The figurehead? The spokesbeing? What sort of ecology does a fish-bowled head have, on its own? Maybe "boe" is an adjective for some qualia that can't be translated into English and you say "The Face of Boe" the way you'd say "The Face of Evil". Or perhaps the Boe are a composite species, divided up into parts for safekeeping, like the Judge on Buffy. Out there, somewhere, there would be the deceased Big Toe of Boe and the expired Elbow of Boe. No wonder the Face of Boe is the last of its kind then: if you were placing bets on which Bit would survive longest, you'd pick the one with the brain. Especially on Doctor Who, where brain matters so much and there's no business like know business like no business we know. I have this theory about Time Lords now. Here's my theory, half-formed as it is. They were human once, more or less. Of course they were great physicists and engineers because back in the time of the Old Series, what's what proper science was. These days, though, biotech's the go, and I think it's time we learnt about Time Lord bioengineering. I mean, consider the facts of Time Lord biology: two hearts, regeneration, superhuman endurance for running up and down corridors. If you were a Gallifrey-bound Time Lord, all too fond of roast dinner at High Table and averse of exercise, wouldn't you want a second heart as a spare? So bioengineer it! And regeneration, well, you don't want immortality per se because (i) you'd have to also engineer almost zero desire for reproduction as otherwise as a space-and-time-faring species would soon fill up the known universe and (ii) everyone knows that it is Tempting Fate and an Act of Hubris that the universe will strike down etc. So, not immortality, but a long life, maybe with some aging, and some protection against disease. We all know that diseases originating from distant places can cause havoc when introduced to a new population: and aforesaid space-and-time-faring Time Lords could catch anything as they roamed around. And this is where I think they were terribly clever, because clearly there is some mixing or reselection of genetic material during regeneration (there must be a fair bit of redundant DNA for any given incarnation) which is exactly what you need to fend off diseases. The plague-stricken Time Lord regenerates, genes are switched, and she/he may have some hope of finding a genetic mix that can survive Spacepox. So the Time Lords stitched up their own DNA and have felt superior about it ever since, I mean until they just about went extinct. ( Spoilers for the dreadful Eighth Doctor TV movie and an allusion to something said in Girl in the Fireplace )Perhaps superhuman endurance for running down corridors is the Doctor's alone, a survival trait from school? It would also explain his unfailing sympathy for the underdog. And why do I think of him as an overgrown English public school boy? I've started to go through the fanfic. Why is so much of it Doctor/Rose? She's sweet but far too young. I expected more ( references to characters appearing up to and including Girl in the Fireplace ). Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. I notice that the Tenth Doctor is much more likely to get some action than the Ninth, even if it's Doctor/TARDIS or Doctor/sonic screwdriver. I'm starting to find character studies and reflective pieces. May post links later. But why does no-one post spoiler warnings? SPOILER WARNINGS, people. I'm up to "The Impossible Planet". I wonder if it would be possible to write a fic from the POV of the TARDIS that didn't entirely suck. Anyone got recs? Or rec lists? Or links to websites that aren't mostly tosh? OK, need to stop now. Have to wash those blasted dishes. Current Mood: manic | | Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 | | 9:02 pm |
The SO has obtained Veronica Mars Season 2. Between that and the new Who I may explode with excitement.
Could be messy. | | Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 | | 10:50 pm |
Oh no not again
I appear to have contracted a new fandom or, rather, re-contracted an old one. I have all my usual symptoms: thoughts about the beloved fiction occupy most of my waking hours, I spend my evenings researching barely-relevant background material, I construct lengthy storylines and critiques in my head, everything I read or see or do is somehow related to the fiction. It's sad, it's obsessive, it's something I once thought I'd grow out of, and it sometimes brings me great joy.
Tonight's Wikipedia searches were for "chav", "emo", "Battersea Power Station" and "converse sneakers". And I also refreshed my memory on Time Lord society.
Twenty years ago now, my brother and I would sit our infant sister in front of copies of Doctor Who Monthly, teaching her how to distinguish between Cybermen and Daleks. We wrote and illustrated a few hundred pages of a never-completed choose-your-own-adventure book in which you tried to pass the practical section of the Time Lord university exams. We wrote poems about Peri and songs to be sung by the Master with Ogron chorus. I read every tie-in novel I could get my hands on, even the not very good ones by Terrance Dicks ("a smile like a piano keyboard"). I spent many of my school lunchtimes with my hands clasped behind my back a la Peter Davison, exploring planets with my best friend, Claire.
These days my sister has a degree in robotics. My brother's going through a Battlestar Galactica phase. When I'm not doing my actual science day job, I'm making up stories about the Rani in my head and pondering Gallifreyan population dynamics. (I no longer perpetrate filk.)
It's odd revisiting the show with an adult perspective (and the new script writers play with that, of course). It's obvious to me now that Gallifrey's modelled on Oxbridge and that the Doctor is one of those really smart people you met at university who were always too distracted with their own reading and researches to do well at exams.
I'm very glad that the new scriptwriters are content to give a nod towards of the old show's weaker aspects without repeating them: the new, shorter format means we only get five minutes of so of chase sequences in each story, for example. Pity many of the "sf" explanations are such tosh though. But yesterday I rewatched "New Earth", "Tooth and Claw" and "School Reunion" and liked them even more than I did the first time. So much fun.
It reminds me of the early seasons of Buffy -- witty scripts, an optimistic tone, yet shot through with darkness. I like happy shows, but only those ones which acknowledge the omnipresence of evil and loss.
Anyway, I'm only halfway through the second new series so far. Looking forward to the rest of it.
I realise that by now the number of people interested in my Drusilla fic is in the single digits; but, as I am one of those people, it will be done. Late October, most probably. And that will probably be my last hurrah with Buffy fandom, much as I have loved it. |
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