Like Trying to Hide the Daylight From the Sun

Writing About Guns: Resources (meta and non-political)

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:16:14 GMT

Last night snickfic was kind enough to rec my SPN/Discworld crossover A Grand Sneer and had some lovely things to say about it (thanks, btw). Being insecure, not having looked at it in, well, a long while, and wondering how I've grown as a writer since, I went back to see if I really had done some of the things in it that s/he'd mentioned. I only got to the end of the first chapter before I face-palmed:

"Get back!" shouted Dean, pulling his pearl-handled automatic out of his belt and taking aim.

Oh, Self, you were so naive back then. Semi-automatic, Dean's Colt m1911 is a semi-automatic, which is a whole other thing. (This is why rereading your own work is always a dangerous thing). Then again, it was my first Supernatural fic and as a writer I started out in two fandoms (Buffy and Doctor Who) whose canons are notoriously anti-gun (penalties range up to "being flayed alive onscreen" for villains who show up with them). So for a long time I didn't really need to know about guns, and not being the type who much cares for guns in the real world (I'm a knife/aluminum baseball bat kind of girl), I had little to no interest in researching them. Leading me to write things like the above. **Cringes**

( Bad Self. Research is always important. Especially when you start expanding into new fandoms )

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Meta: Dean Winchester's Road to Lisa's Doorstep (Supernatural)

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:17:31 GMT

This is cleaned up and reposted from some anonymous comments I made. I've been working on this theory for awhile now, and this discussion prompted me to finally write the whole damn thing down, if you'd like the context.

Basically, this connects the dots that we got in canon to develop a plausible road map from the Bendy Weekend to the end of 99 Problems, based on the premise that, physically, Lisa has been Dean's dream-girl since he met her, and explores his relationship with her from there on, as well as exploring Dean's love affair with death and his deteriorating regard for his father. His relationships with Mary, Ellen, Jo, and Castiel don't play much into this particular roadmap, though I don't deny their importance in developing his character, it's just this is a bit long already.

( Read more... )

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Catching Up with the Doctor

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:55:01 GMT

Spent the last two days catching up on all of Doctor Who since the end of series four. My thoughts below:

( Lots of spoilery bits through the end of series five... )

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Machete

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:34:02 GMT

So I got to go to the Machete premiere tonight and had a great deal of fun people watching before the show. Austin doesn't do red carpets quite like most places: there were as many people in ripped t-shirts as gowns, and judging by the pictures from Venice, Robert Rodriguez hasn't changed his clothes in 48 hours. But he did make a point of going out of his way to shake the hand of my favorite usher at the Paramount, an 83 year old lady with a cane who doesn't take any guff from anyone, so he gets full credit for that.

I never go to a Rodriguez film expecting deep social commentary or anything: I want shit to blow up and gore and for each character to be more bad ass than the last. And you get that. But one of the things I do love about him is that in a movie with more casual female nudity than has been seen on screen since... well, Sin City, probably - it also passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. Every character Rodriguez writes is something of a cartoon, but his women kick just as much ass as his men do

Still not sure what was up with Lindsey Lohan's character though.

Oh, and when la revolucion comes, it's going to be a procession of low riders. I so wish I had been in town to watch them film *that* sequence.

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On Facebook and the Different Masks We Wear

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:23:49 GMT

So, Facebook, in its apparent never-ending quest to conquer the rest of the internet, is now cross-postable with LJ. You may have heard about this; I'm about the last person on my f-list to make a post about it, so I'm pretty certain you have. So, in the interest of full disclosure, here's my deal:

I personally have no use for this option and have further taken the step of changing the e-mail account associated with my Facebook so that there's no chance of software linking my LJ/DW posts with my Facebook/RL identity. There are a couple of folks out there who know a bit more about my RL than others (though there is only one who knows me in RL), and as I develop relationships with you wacky folks, I am willing to gradually share more. There are a few of you whom, if the opportunity presented itself, I wouldn't mind having a drink with. But the fact is: I like having a separate fandom identity, a place where I can occasionally bitch about my (frequently much wankier) RL and write silly stories and lust after fictional characters without fear of consequences and/or hearing about it from my family for the next fifty years. I certainly don't need my professional contacts to know exactly how much time and effort I spend thinking and writing about comic books, tv shows, and other things that they're not paying me to think about.

Long story short: I'm not posting anything from LJ/DW on Facebook, and while a couple of you know my real name, in fandom, I'm always going to be Morag. If I post something so absolutely dripping with brilliant wit that you feel the need to share it with Facebook (I know, I know, I'm just that funny and wonderful), then go ahead and share it, link it, whatever, but share it as Morag's, and don't sully it by associating it with the meatsuit doing the typing.

P.S. - If you've decided to move to DW, I'm moragmacpherson there as well.

ETA: I have no intentions of abandoning LJ any time soon (I just got it broken in), but I added the crosspost footer from DW so that folks can comment where they prefer. In general I'm better at keeping up with my LJ f-list than my DW circle, but I can work on that too.

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Attention: stupid dead academics!

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:22:01 GMT

Okay, all of you guys from the 19th century and earlier writing commentaries on Aristotelian physics: could you please define the symbols you're using for physical constants? If I don't know what alpha stands for then it's really hard for me to follow your discussion of the faults of "v α F/R; F>0; R=0".

I'm pretty sure v is velocity, F is force and R is resistance, but I have absolutely no clue on alpha, and none of the modern uses of alpha make any sense. And no, there's no decent prose statement of the law either.

(Yes, I know Aristotle's dividing by zero there, which is problematic, but the formula has to do with the motion of celestial spheres, which he believed was infinite, and while I always thought dividing by zero = does not exist, Roomie assures me that the result of dividing by zero could also be termed infinite)

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I Can't Believe I'm Watching This

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:02:28 GMT

Ohmigod, does the Snoop Dog tribute to Sookie Stackhouse count as filk? This is so fantastic, I completely lack the words.

In other words, they aren't pulling the punches on the Ho!Yay this season, are they?

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