Arrant Nonsense

I just got a notice that my Firefly fic "Cerberus" was nominated in wicked_awards's "No Rest for the Wicked" round 4. Many thanks to whoever nominated me--after the week I've been having, it feels very nice to know that people are still reading and enjoying my fanfic.

This was the story that I thought was pretty straightforward, until someone left me a review saying "Gee, I wonder what would have happened if they hadn't been rescued right away *wink wink*" that sent my twisted brain skittering off in unpleasant directions. Because, you know, Jayne is a human man, not a vampire or a werewolf who can just shrug off injuries like the ones he'd just been given. So, if they hadn't been rescued right away--he'd have died. So, I wrote an alternate ending. Because I'm evil.

And then River piped up and said, "Hey, you know that throwaway line in your alternate ending, about me being unhappy with my damsel-in-distress role? It wasn't a throwaway line. Write an alternate middle that I get to be awesome in, okay?" And, so I did.

Yeah, that one got away from me. But it's fanfic, so it's allowed to do that. It's all "alternate" anyway, right?

Yesterday, I cracked 40,000 words.

Today, I cracked 41,000 words.

My villain now has even more motivation to hate Ben than he had before. I've done a bit more world-building. It's still coming together piecemeal, and I'm going to have to go back and edit a couple of scenes to reflect the new reality.

In other news, I made some more Sherlock Holmes wallpapers from the trailer, off the template I used before. I may post them later, or I may make another RDJ wallpaper from some candids that just showed up with him in the Tony Stark goatee, wearing a fabulous hat and an open-necked shirt, and smoking a cigar. GUH.

Later, we're going to see "Night at the Museum II." Is it bad that I think it'll probably be smarter than "Terminator: Salvation"? I mean, okay, my Geek Cred is intact in that I actually went to see the thing (and I'm terribly disappointed that I didn't get the Sherlock Holmes trailer with it, WTF, drive-in, just WTF?), but I have...issues with it. Issues. There's a good word.

Also: Coolest. Thing. EVER. Yes. Someone made a Vera replica. Having seen that, my life is now complete and I can die reasonably happy.

And picked up the new Serenity: Better Days book.

It's SHINY, y'all.

And this week, there's a new Angel comic as well, and another Brian Lynch one called "Everybody's Dead." I think it has something to do with zombies, but it's Brian's and I'm grabbing it.

I've done another pass through the Giant Bugs story. I'm going to let the Hubby have one more shot at it. At this point, it's as clean as I can make it, so I'm about ready to call it "done" and ship it off to Writers of the Future.

Of course, that means I've gone from "wow, this is the best thing I've ever done" to "I kind of think this sucks," but I'm going to mark that down as normal writerly wibbling and low self-esteem, and ship it off anyway.

And SerenityStuff will give away a special edition of the new Special Edition Serenity DVD coming out next week to someone they randomly draw who blogs about it...

I bring you...

Twenty-Five Reasons You Should Buy the Serenity Collector's Edition DVD:

Well, wait. I'm not going to C&P all 25 reasons here. There's a link, you can click it. But I'll post highlights.

• More stuff you don’t need an all-regions DVD player to see. With this 2-disc set you’ll finally get the features that Europe and Australia got already (You don’t get the long Q&A Joss did in Australia, but you can catch that on Youtube). First up: The Extended Scenes (6 min. 45 sec.). Longer versions of some of the scenes in the movie, including more Mal and Inara.
  
• Better cover art. Way, way better cover art. It’s not 11th Hour quality, but few things in this world are and this is much classier. Not a llama in sight.
  
• The Session 416 videos! River’s scary-cool progression through the Academy. I loved seeing ‘em online but I can’t wait to see ‘em on a bigger screen.
  
• Brand. New. Cast. Commentary. Joss, Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau, and Ron Glass talking about our favorite movie. Face it, this is a good enough reason all by itself.

And here's a list of what's new and what's not on the Collector's Edition, in case you're still waffling.

So, there. Go forth and buy this on the 21st.

In other Whedon-type news, the third issue of Spike: Shadow Puppets is coming out tomorrow...and Dark Horse issued a three-piece PVC set of Mal, Jayne, and River as well. Ouch, my wallet.

And while I have no illusions about being one of the "cool kids," I might as well do it as well, even though I'm late to the party. Yes, a Buffy retrospective.

It seems only fitting that I'm late to this party, since I was late to the show and very late to the fandom. See, I'm one of those strange people who really loved the movie beyond all reason and was disappointed by "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and the subsequent three or four episodes, and stopped watching for a few years after that. It seemed to me that the show hadn't captured the flavor of the movie at all, the humor was missing, it was darker, Sarah was awkward and didn't move as well as Kristy...and there was the whole not-just-vampires thing. Even the theme song grated. It all added up to a great big "ugh" for me at the time.

( Dude, this got long... )
Therefore, THANK YOU, JOSS. If it wasn't for you, this online community of fans wouldn't exist, I wouldn't have made the wonderful friends I have, and I probably wouldn't have started writing again--or, if I had, it would have taken me much longer to get to where I am.

The lovely and effulgent liz_marcs asks: Who are your Top 5 OTPs? And that got me to thinking, and I shall reproduce my reply to that post here.

My number-one, cast-iron OTP is Spike/Fred, and I will never forgive the writers for having Spike go to Harmony after he got solid again instead of running to the lab and giving Fred a big ol' bearhug. However, when he knocked Pavayne into the circle that was supposed to make him corporeal in "Hellbound," in order to save Fred--that was the moment for me. She thought he was worth saving, and he sacrificed what he thought was his only chance to be a "real boy" for her...yeah. *dreamy sigh* Spike and Fred don't have the baggage that Spike and Buffy do--she wasn't even around for the Ring of Amarra incident. So she sees him as he is rather than as what he was, which is everyone else's handicap.

I'm not sure I have any other OTP's, by the strict definition. I have pairings I enjoy, and pairings I write to the exclusion of others. But at the same time, I don't see any contradiction in shipping Spike with both Fred and Illyria--because my Spike/Fred ship is an AR, and the Spike/Illyria ship is dependent on canon. Had the Spike/Fred ship happened on the show, I couldn't ship Spike/Illyria. If that makes any sense.

Then there's Firefly. Wash/Zoe is the obvious OTP there, for all the reasons that everyone else has ever mentioned. However, Jayne is the Little Black Dress in that fandom, and in a post-BDM world, I could see him and Zoe coming to an ... understanding. And I can't really see her with anyone else on the crew. Had Wash lived, then I never would have conceived of Jayne/Zoe as a pairing, but it works for me in an odd way after what happened. They've bantered back and forth ("I can hurt you." "Zoe could get nekkid."), so Jayne's attraction to her has always been there, and I think the argument could be made that she rather likes him too. If he made an effort, who knows what could happen?

And then there is my favorite crossover pairing: Jayne/Illyria. *facepalm* Jayne sees the world very simply, and I think that would appeal to a God-King who's had a drooling fanboy and a broken genius as her Qwa-ha Zahns. And I'm fair certain that Jayne would be attracted to her--I mean, look at her.

*ponders some more* You know...this whole thing may be a function of just sticking my favorite characters together. Shallow? Moi?

Look at the pretty, shiny fic that bigsciencybrain wrote for me! Pre-Jayne/Zoe, with spot-on River characterization and Mal getting the better of Niska in a very *cough* creative *cough* way.

Go forth, read! Shower her with praise!

Title: Gun Control Means Hittin' Your Target
Author: babies stole my dingo (agilebrit)
Fandom: Firefly
Rating: PG-13 (default)
Length: Short story (a little over 2000 words)
Disclaimer: Joss is the genius behind these characters; I am but a lowly follower. I make no money from any of this, so please don't sue me.
Feedback: Concrit adored! If you see something that can be improved upon, please let me know, even if it's only a typo.
Written for: friend_fic, a multi-fandom friendship-between-members-of-the-opposite-sex ficathon. The prompt was "nothing whatsoever."
Notes: What does Kaylee know about guns? Mal gives Jayne an assignment to teach her. Takes place post-BDM. Many thanks to the Hubby and bigsciencybrain for their valuable feedback and input.
( Read more... )

Only half.

So. Wednesday, we leave home to pick up the Ariel Ambulance in Vegas, a small matter of an 800-mile round trip. Get to Vegas all right, check in to the Excalibur, eat (the buffet was meh; I liked it okay, but the Hubby didn't--and the weird thing is that he's not as picky as I am), wander around, find the Shark Bay at Mandalay Bay (which is WELL worth the price), yadda yadda. Not too bad coming down. We did have to stop in St. George and get the tires on the Willys balanced, because something happened and the poor thing was wobbling all over the place. Hubby wonders if the tires are out of round. He may be right.

Also, rain. Not in Vegas, but during the trip. Rain is BAD for driving the Willys in. The wiper on the driver's side is *cough* unreliable, and the defroster sucks. Also, the windshield leaks.

Next morning, we head over to Cameron's house to pick up the Ambulance and only get lost once. Naturally, it wasn't ready to go when we got there, and we futzed around for about an hour and a half getting the tail section loaded and stuff. Vegas apparently has a dearth of dedicated Browncoats, and only one other person was there to help. Cameron threw his back out, poor guy, but managed to be all right by the time we left.

He wasn't planning on coming down with the Ambulance because of money issues, but we offered him our spare bedroom, and he eagerly accepted. He would follow us later that night. In his Delorean. How cool is that???

On our way out of Vegas, we got stopped in a massive traffic jam. Ten miles ahead of where we stopped, there was a fatal accident in which an eighteen-wheeler burned to the ground. This delayed us another hour-and-a-half, possibly two hours. Dude.

The Ambulance actually hauls pretty well. It's aerodynamic enough, and the Willys was actually quieter coming up to Salt Lake than going down to Vegas because of the better airflow. However, by the time we got into mid-Utah, it was getting dark and starting to rain. Yeah, remember what I said about driving the Willys in the rain? It's worse in the dark. The air shocks are kind of iffy anymore, so when we're hauling a load, the headlights point UP instead of at the road. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stopped in Payson for the night.

We got on the road at sunup the next morning. Cameron had managed to find us at the hotel and was parked behind the Ambulance when we got up; he followed us into town. In the rain. Yayness.

The Con, there at the start, was extremely disorganized. Apparently, they had several last-minute cancellations, and so they had to re-do the entire schedule. My panel was still scheduled for noon (one of the first ones of the day, whee!), and it went well. I did actually manage to get through my entire presentation--and I met a couple of people who want to put together a local writer's group.

I also got to meet a couple of local authors, really nice guys, who can actually write. One of them, Ken Rand, writes fantasy westerns(!) that are really awesome, and the other Eric James Stone, has actually won a Writers of the Future ... thing. Yeah. He read us a short story about time-travel where he had two competing timelines--one of which was a timeline where Lincoln didn't get assassinated. Cool stuff.

Oh, there were celebs, too. Richard Hatch, Walter Koenig, and Craig Richard Nelson were all there. I didn't really interact with any of them except to smile and say hi, except for Walter, who came over to the author's table and talked dogs with us for a bit. *grin* He has a Puli.

There were the requisite people in costumes. Star Trek, Star Wars, and BSG, for the most part, but there was also a family in "Incredibles" regalia, which the mom in the family made herself. THAT was made of awesome. Cameron had a Ghostbusters outfit made by the actual guy who designed the costumes for the movie.

I sat at the Ambulance table most of the time, chatting with people about Firefly and the Ambulance, but I also got to chat with Ken quite a bit, and I scored some swag. After a rough beginning, I felt that the Con went pretty well. Cameron went back to Vegas, and the Ambulance is sitting in my driveway; we're going to (probably, weather permitting) take it back on Thursday.

I also finished (well, almost finished; I still have to incorporate some of the Hubby's suggestions) the friend_fic. It even has a title.

And, since I know everyone's dying to see what the Ambulance looks like behind the Willys, there's a pic: ( behind the cut... )

Okay, today has sucked, but the Steelers are ahead won the game (YAY!), and I found this screencap today, in which Jayne, during a very serious conversation, right after River has clocked him on the head with canned goods...is staring at Inara's boobs. Seriously, check it out: