chesneycat

I've just had a rather interesting review for this drabble over on the Pit of Voles.

The review goes thusly:
Most of these stories are very believable. This one, chap 79, is not. Hatchlings don't attack those they don't choose unless that person stands in their way while searching for or making their way to their rider. The little queen would lock eyes with the candidate and then, upon not finding what she was looking for, ignore the girl and continue to search for her lifemate. She wouldn't take time to attack the girl. These babies hatch *hungry* and want to find their food provider as quick as possible.

Oh. Dear.

That particular drabble?  Describes the hatching of probably the most famous queen dragon on Pern.

*attempts to smother giggles*

*fails*

Tell it to Anne, dearie.  But you'd better hurry, because the failboat leaves in the next five minutes....

It's been a long time coming... but the penultimate installment of Mary Sue's revenge! has finally been posted.


Yay!

This should be free of spoilers....
It was quite an interesting strategy on the Beeb's part to only show a single, limited scene in their adverts for this series, and we were a little wary going in.  The opening made good use of the blue filters, and seeing bits of London float across the screen upside-down gave it a nicely atmospheric intro.  Then we meet Alex, and we see (if you hadn't already figured it out from the previously leaked info on the show) that the writers have taken things up a notch in terms of the meta-plot.  Alex Drake is taking her daughter to school, and she's in possession of the notes and ramblings of Sam Tyler. She knows what he believes, and that gives her some knowledge (albeit flawed) of what she's up against when the plot takes its inevitable turn towards the eighties.  Getting her there... well, I won't go into the details, except to say that they chose their Bowie title track very well indeed.  [Jez didn't spot the lyrics when they first appeared by the river, but they're quite glaring if you're more familiar with the song than he is.]
 
What IS immediately clear is that they're not simply retreading the same old ground with this show.  You can believe what you want about how real the past is, and how much is mere subconscious structure.  I'm leaning towards the latter, because the characters come across very differently in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Hunt's charisma has been upped substantially - he never did anything for me as a viewer in Life on Mars, but seen through the lens of Drake's psyche, her fascination with the man and the tropes she sees in him and the others...well. The dynamic between them is oozing, and while I doubt the plausibility I can't fault the acting.  Overall, I'd say the show has got an internal feel like damn good fanfic.  Same characters, same type of plot, but very much observed/scripted/designed/created by a different personality in the form of Alex Drake.

Some complaints - Jez thought that they were trying too hard with all the eighties paraphernalia.  Brash, garish, obvious, stereotyped.  Part of it could just be the opening-episode culture-shock... but it's VERY different to the washed-out feel of seventies Manchester.  Again, this makes me lean further towards the 'it's all in her head!' interpretation.  That's one reason why I don't think this show is going to end happily, except perhaps in the bittersweet, self-recognising end that is as poignant as it is painful.  But maybe not.  All the same, looking at what Drake thinks of why she's there, what she has to do... I don't expect her to rewrite history.  Nuh-uh.

Memorable moments - ooooh... the clown! There'll have been nightmares across Britain last night.  Shame they couldn't get the original voice for George, but Zippy came across as freakily as ever.  Drake realising that she's doing a Tyler and trying to figure out what's going on, and where it leaves her... Spine-tingling!
 
Edit to add - I'm not the only person who made the connection to 'this is LOM fanfic by Alex Drake".

I'm not going to get much done today.  On thursday, there was a small incident involving the local electricity substation blowing up, and although they've opened the lab again, I can't log in to my desktop until the main server is rebooted...

Anyway... I've read Legolas, by Laura some time ago, but I've never actually listened to it before.

Intro/Prologue/Part1/Part2/Part3/Part4

Possibly NWS if you're listening to it aloud... but oh, so hilarious!!  Especially when the Dark Lord of 'Mondor' says anything...


To cleanse the palate, I'm going to rave about Sapore again, described as "the poshest deli in Sheffield".  Okay.  I know.  The bar is set VERY low in this town.  But Sapore could certainly hold its own against rivals in any city.  Especially when it's just down the road, and the owner lets you, no, encourages you to taste pretty much anything in the shop.  Pop in on a Saturday, and you'll leave with ten quid of groceries (minimum!) and a full belly.  [He seems to particularly like us because we do try the fancy stuff, unlike his other local regulars who just pop in every other day for a couple of breadcakes and a white loaf...] This weekend, we tried some wonderful Bleu de Bresse amongst the other cheeses, and went through his entire new range of jams and chutneys... we'll be doing a fair bit of our Christmas shopping there, I can tell you! 

God, quality food!  Pure heaven.

Ah!  Server's up again... time for me to get started.

DRAGONDAYS IS FINISHED!!!

80,000 words.  Two years.  And an enormous amount of learning.

I think I'm almost ready to start tackling something I could sell...

Dragon Days has just been updated!  Only one last chapter left to write now, and hopefully that'll get completed over the weekend.  The end is finally in sight.

( Chesney... )


( Fanfic and self-analysis )

( school fete, books, general crapness )

Guess what?  Chapter 19 is UP!

Linkage

:-)

I've just updated Mary Sue's Revenge.

Enjoy!

This one's for julietvalcouer and everyone else who knows her from AMCF...

"Return of the White" is was a recent fanfic posted at ff.net, stuffed full of the usual cliches.  It's not exactly godawful ("steady gates" aside), but the author has chosen a rather familiar name for the dragon in the starring role.  And thus, we have classic lines like:

"I awoke to Anareth planting herself on my arm and slapping me with her tail"

"And I hope a wild firelizard eats your guts out, Anareth said dryly. I can recognize humor, you know."

 

 

EDIT - and it's been pulled.  Why does the badfic always run and hide?

...is updated!

Chapter 18 can be found in all the usual places: AMCF, MOM and FF.net.  But I'm too lazy to add the links right now. 

Bite me.


[okay, I got round to adding them this morning....]

Last night, we threw a bit of a half-term party.  It was meant to be a BBQ, but the weather was pretty cold and cloudy, so it became an indoors pizza-party instead.  Nice seeing a lot of the teachers and a few of my work friends together.  Everyone was impressed with the size of the garden, as most of the people there haven't actually seen our house in daylight before. Chesney was also a hit, as despite the loud music/voices and a few shouts of "NO!" whenever he got too close to the strawberries and cream, he spent the entire evening moving from lap to lap.  I'm going to spend the next week getting hairs out of my trousers though, and I'm sure everyone else is going to be doing the same.

Weirdly, we found out that two of our friends have just been through the same thing we have pretty much (i.e. post-heartbeat disaster), but about a week earlier, so I probably wasn't the best hostess to everyone else there.  These things happen so often, but it's kept so hidden, except when it's not.  I think they, too, have grown from the experience, and that's what it is.  Just life, and experience.  Nothing to be afraid of.  Anyway, some interesting discussions were had - we agree that a science background can make basic acceptance easier, not that it helps at all with the rest of the mountain.  But the main question was about life, consciousness, souls and all that.  An eight or nine week embryo really doesn't have much scope for consciousness, but the spark of life's there already, and they're amazingly tenacious.  As far as souls go, my totally non-scientific opinion is that they grow out of love.  These were lives worth grieving for, if only because we loved them.

Anyway... the party wound down at about 1am, which was about right seeing as a lot of us are working today, and the teachers are still zonked out from teaching.  I got Jez to drive me in - he didn't drink an entire bottle of wine, unlike myself, and I'd prefer to give myself a couple more hours before getting behind the wheel again.  No obvious hangover yet (aside from a touch of dehydration - why did I forget my pre-bed pint of water? Why?), which surprises me, but I guess I took things fairly slowly over the evening.

Must do it again some time.  Preferably when it's sunnier.

Ah... and the whole fandom debacle.  Well.  I've been following it for a few days on fanficrants and also over at fandom_wank, and my reactions have been a mixture of laughs and raised eyebrows (both of which were heavily tinged with a large dose of WTF? at Six Apart's complete lack of clue), and annoyance on behalf of the groups who really shouldn't have been caught up in the Great Strikethrough.  I mean, they even bahleted serious literature communities, which is getting pretty close to the level of book-burning.  But even so, some of the stuff that's gone and reappeared does make me a little uncomfortable (and by some, I mean a very tiny minority).  Yes, it's fictional, and yes, it's not actively promoting any nastiness, and yes, the disclaimers are all in place.  But I think I see some of it in the same category as foxhunting... the enjoyment that the participants get out of some of the... edgier? journals/communities seems a little too much, and a little misplaced.  To be blunt, some of it is just too... squick, and I'm uncomfortable just knowing it's out there.  But who am I to judge?  There's fanfic porn, and then there's fanfic porn.  Mileage will vary, as they say.   But honestly, wielding the big delete purely on the basis of listed interests?  The sheer stupid of it all beggars belief.

A semi-anonymous reviewer has just left this review of Mary Sue's Revenge.

i spottedone but i don't kknow why? plz help me!

WTF, Barbeque? They've given me an e-mail address, but I'm not feeling hugely charitable towards them... Going back to read the chapter in question, what they've written kind of makes sense, but to be honest, if you need to ask, no, you didn't spot one of the deliberate mistakes. 

If you want answers that I've already told you I'm not going to give, you can damn well ask for them coherently or not at all.

That's all.

Dragon Days Chapter 16 has just been posted, in all the usual places.

Enjoy!

Available at MOM, FF.net, AMCF and now here on LJ for your convenience!

Chapter 8: In which the owner of Crystel-Sparkle Weyr is about to approve Mary's persona sheet, but gets distracted by an unfortunate e-mail...

At present, DragonDays is projected to reach somewhere in the region of 75k by the time it's done.  So, as a bit of motivation, I thought I'd slap on a nice little Blue Peter-style totaliser.

43,942 / 75,000 (58.6%)

I really must start writing more often.  It's getting so long, that people will be put off re-reading the whole thing before each new chapter.  Far easier for the readers if it's still fresh in their memories.

Yes, I've just posted Chapter 15 of DragonDays.

You can read it at MOM, AMCF, or FF.net.


Woot!  I was only up until half two this morning finishing it off...

This story was linked to over in the AMCF Spam thread, and it's definitely worthy of a wider audience.

If you only read one ass-baby fic this year, make it this one.  Trust me.

I've just spent the last two weeks numbing my brain with technical manuals; more of the same is hardly at the top of my wishlist.  But, it has to be done, so I'm trying my best to intersperse decent work with something else that keeps me motivated.  When I'm not on an enforced diet (particularly one involving a chocolate ban that was breached in a big way on the previous day), I'd usually turn to Mr Cadbury.  Today, that's out of the question.

It's been an odd day.  My car's waiting for a new exhaust, so I walked into work.  It's (mostly) all downhill, and I certainly won't be doing the journey in reverse any time soon.  1:5 hills are for vehicles, not people! Anyway, it made a nice change, and didn't take the full hour I'd allowed for it.  Plenty of time for thinking, and yet, strangely, I barely remember what I occupied myself with.  A bit of work, then it was off to the hospital for another blood test.  Pointless, considering.  At least I should get the official results back long before I need them, but it does press those instant-depression buttons.  Again, that's something that can usually be fixed with the hasty application of a bar of Bournville, but I needed an alternative today.

So, in between exposure-time calculators and filter-profiles, I've been scribbling some more of my favourite drivel.  "Mary Sue's Revenge" has had its first update in [*checks*] over nine months.  I really do like writing pure crap every now and then!

Finally, the fanfic chapter from hell is done. Real life got in the way, big time, but this one was a major bitch for several other reasons.   Several different scenes, told in varying ways, all from Pete's POV.  Not helped by me deciding to use flashbacks, which fucks up the tenses very badly unless you're careful, and then I have to watch I don't slip too far into the passive... Grrrr....  Also not helped by having a large cast to juggle around and place in just the right places... especially the people who don't appear on screen, or even get a mention. I still had to know what they were up to in order to write this one.  Thank heavens it's done! 

Phew.

If you want to read, DragonDays chapters 1-14 is available at AMCF, MOM and FF.net