Like Trying to Hide the Daylight From the Sun

Thing the First: Catching up on Leverage and there was Hardison in a waistcoat. I thought my waistcoat-thing was just due to Arthur, but no, it's its own thing.

Thing the Second: I'm actually trying real, no-holds-barred self-editing on a story, which I haven't done in ages because my betas spoil the crap out of me. I swear that most of what I'm doing is deleting over-dramatic lines, eliminating parts that at one point fit where I thought the story was going but didn't in the finished product, and stream-lining dialogue. Despite this, the word count has gone up by almost a thousand words from where it started. Seriously, WTF?

( Six word stories! )

I don't normally look to sportswriters for particularly insightful social commentary (with the notable exceptions of the late Hunter S. Thompson and the late Ralph Wiley). I particularly don't usually look for it at CBS Sports—home of Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder, whose coworkers maintain to this day that they didn't think he was particularly racist). But this Dan Bernstein article on the child-molestation scandal and (repeated!) cover ups at Penn State is... well, I'll let it speak for itself:

( But you have to do it. You have to read every word, every sickening description and every name involved in the institutionalized evil at Penn State. Your opinion about anything going on is invalid if you have not yet done so... )

Read Bernstein's whole article here. Then steel your stomach and read the grand jury report.  And when some idiot friend/co-worker/relative tries to play apologist for Joe Paterno over the next couple of weeks or at Thanksgiving, cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war. 

Arthur.  Lovely, honorable name of ambiguous ethnic and etymological origins, although it does seem to muck about with bears an awful lot.  There are worse ways to be named for a bear.  "Ursula" for one has always reminded me of the sound I make when I vomit for a particularly long period.  And "Beowulf" is fine but it makes people think that any moment you're going to start quaffing all over the upholstery (that's not another vomit joke, don't give me that look).  No, "Arthur" captures the whole 'bear' bit while being vaguely medieval but still a bit modern and maybe a little posh with only a little bit of scruffy growling Anglo/Celtic violence poking out at the ends.  It rather suits you.  That's not my problem.

The problem, my love - my muse, my great internal critic - is that your name contains half the bloody vowel sounds a mammalian throat is capable of producing if you pronounce them long and languid to be savored properly (the way I hear it in my head), and picks up half of the remainder if you pronounce it terse and broken like most Americans do instead.  I shan't bring up the issue of rhotic versus rolling "r"s lest we wind up fighting about them until next Sunday and they only complicate the next bit, which I'm getting to.

This wouldn't be an issue if you'd simply tell me your real last name. 

But you're a stubborn bastard and so I've been forced to make one up for you.  (I know I'm neither the first nor the last to do so and no: I don't care; and yes: I am indeed a very special fucking snowflake, thank you for mentioning it, you sarcastic prick)  And I keep finding wonderful, meaningful names to match you with: all of which have at least one internal rhyme and and worse, both internal and external rhymes, and therefore sound about as natural and unforced as a Marvel villain's when attached to Arthur.

I know this is illogical: that Arthur Miller was indeed a real live human who wrote some good plays and some bad plays, but published all of them under a given name with two internal rhymes and never thought about it twice. But it's giving me fits, driving me to distraction when I've things I'd much rather be doing to you and so I really must insist: tell me your name.  I promise I won't share it.  I won't even rhyme mine to the real one.  All I'm asking for is the ghost of a clue.
_______
*Conveniently phrased in Eames' voice that you might actually rise to the taunt

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:


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 )

I know I've been out of touch and that's only going to get worse for the next month.  Sorry guys!

1.  Reverse Big Bang fic is done!  And 25,000 words long - only five times the minimum, heaven help me.  And the art for it is amazing - can't wait for the rest of you to see it on November 7.  So much love to jjhunter and dollarformyname for working with me on it.

2.  xover_exchange fic is half written. 

3.  Need to work on my report now.

I'm not keeping up on anything, I'm dreading the election results tonight, but fuck it, I'm going to go see Neil Gaiman, so I'm just going to laugh and keep pressing on.

1. help_pakistan fic is done and in my trusty beta's hands now. As is my way, a story I thought was going to take 3,000 words to tell wound up 6,500 words long, but it's written and I'm pretty happy with it. I hope bookchan will be as well.

2. Sent a rough outline to my artist for the Supernatural Reverse Big Bang and she approved it pretty enthusiastically, so I'm all set to start writing that. The requirement is five thousand words and the outline is five hundred words: we'll see how out of control that gets.

3. Received my assignment for xover_exchange and all I have to say is: WHAAAARRRRGARBL! Okay, it's going to require me to write for a shared fandom I didn't sign up for and use one of the vaguest prompts given, but I think I can make this work. I hope.

4. While I was trying to figure out the middle of the help_pakistan story, I managed to write two stories for twisted_yarns, which I've since claimed. Play It, Sam and its sequel/companion, I Google You, are both fluffy little pieces responding to a prompt requesting romance between Sam Winchester and Sam Carter. They're un-beta'd, but I cleaned them up a bit for reposting on AO3.

5. Added links to my AO3 account and the delicious of my fic over on the sidebar, but still haven't gotten around to updating the Master Fic list (but the delicious is at least up to date). Will ponder doing that after sleep.

Okay, sleep now.

So I'm working on my help_pakistan fic and, in accordance with bookchan's wishes, have dropped the SG-1 team in the midst of Lancre.  I've got the beginning and the end bits set up and I'm pretty sure they work out fine, (and because I'm on an in media res kick, they're both in the first bits) but I'm on the middle parts and... gyahhh.  Balancing the jokes I want to make with Exposition Overload and it's all just... arglebarglewharglegarb, not to mention that Jack and Teal'c keep disappearing for paragraphs at a time.  I'm on attempt number five to get this scene written and if it doesn't work out soon the whole bloody thing's getting hand-waved.  In the immortal words of James May: "Cock!"

P.S. - Thanks to everyone who offered help with the speed of Discworld light question.  I'm pretty sure THAT joke at least is going to make it in, regardless of what else happens, is probably going to stick around

Hey folks - so my help_pakistan  prompt is for a Discworld/SG-1 crossover, and it's starting to shape up - in a stunning reversal I'm writing gen humor again - it'll definitely be more than 1,000 words but probably won't be more than 5,000 - but, things being how they are, I've lost track of who here I've discovered in which fandoms. 

So, any of you who are familiar with both canons (particularly Lancre and Feegles on the DW end (and mighty is my bitterness that the new Feegle book isn't going to come out in the States until way too late for me to utilize it for this story), and I'm pretty sure I'm using a season 2 or 3 SG-1 team), who might be willing to beta this story for me, please let me know.  Or if you have a friend who would, pass the word along.  And thanks!

Okie dokie, this is an exercise in gonzo journalism or a Lester Bangs-inspired indulgence.  iTunes is set on random, and I'll write about whatever comes up for however long as the song lasts.  We'll see if anything of interest shows up.  A caveat: there may have been a little bit of whiskey involved in the decision to embark on this enterprise, and it's still flowing.

( A thousand words about random songs )

And I think that lyric might have been it for me.  Wow, that's a thousand words of self-indulgence.  Fuck it, post it, be done with it - that's the joy of music, it's the catharsis. 

I have returned from the wilderness of no interwebs to a f-list that is... quite long.  News of me:

1.  I fail at AGAHTL.  I'm putting the current version of the chapter to bed and re-reading the rest of OFNA in the hopes that inspiration strikes.  I suck.

2.  I succeed at my Cas/Jack 'verse, but only after fish_echo  spends three hours on the phone talking me through it.  Latest version of the story is now in her inbox but she's got a lot on her plate, so it can't hurt to shower the girl with love.  Which she is utterly deserving of.

3.  Two more nominations for me over at the COAs, both for Indeterminate Place, UK - I guess someone really liked it, thank you, whoever you are.  The story is one of my more favorite little one-shots I've ever written and a crossover between the Buffy-verse and World War Z - which is an utterly awesome book and one you really ought to read if you haven't.  My little fic is up for Saturn's 2012 Award (a mod award which isn't open to public voting and where its one of two nominees, the other being an 800k epic, so I don't have much hope) and the Best Literature Crossover.  So, ooh, shiny.

Okay, off to go cruise the f-list until I sleep.  Missed you all.