get me off this crazy thing

From cleolinda, Legendary sword master Bob Anderson has passed away.

:(

Among other things, Bob Anderson was the swordmaster for the first Highlander film, and for a few of the HL seasons on TV. Also, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and The Princess Bride.

Wiki article.
ABC News

Yay, the Highlander Holiday Shortcuts reveal went up yesterday. :D Go and check it out.

This is what I wrote:

Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood
Duncan/Methos, the Four Horsemen
Adult, ~7,500 words
written for amand_r in the 2011 Highlander Holiday Shortcuts Festival.

Summary: "I leave you alone for ten minutes and find you directing troops into battle," said MacLeod. "Well," said Methos, "I came out here to find out what all the fuss was about, and, you know." Methos finished with a shrug and a wave of his hand, as if to say this sort of thing was a natural hazard of his day-to-day life.

Great big thank yous to killabeez for hand holding and betaing, and also to unovis for reading and betaing.


Link to story at hlh_shortcuts comm.
Link to story on AO3.
Link to story on HL Archive.


( Because I like to talk about the writing process and stuff, below the cut is some navel gazing and whatnot. Click at your own risk. haha. )

Firstly, don't forget to go to the Highlander Holiday Shortcuts Exchange and check out all the wonderful new Highlander stories coming through each day! A MUST. DO IT!

~~~

Went to see the new Sherlock Sherrly Holmes film yesterday. Loved it like PIE. Seriously. I believe I loved it more than the first one, which I liked quite a bit but never got giddy over . Not sure giddiness and any incarnation of Sherlock Holmes is likely. Very fond I am of Sherlock in general but have never been uber passionate about it. Anyhoo, this second film was FUN. And I loved it like PIE.

( Sherlock and Mycroft's parents must have had their hands full )

To my friends who are careful regarding depictions of animal cruelty, (I'm looking at you, melina123) you may want to be cautious if you're going to go see War Horse come Dec. 25.

I went to a screening of this on Sunday, and, don't get me wrong, I really liked it a lot. Spielberg at least knows what he's doing, and it's an incredible story of one amazing horse. I didn't cry although it was a close thing and there is a part of the film that I couldn't think about afterward without nearly crying all over again. Though, I think what saved me from totally breaking down was that I couldn't forget that it was a movie. There was so much to love, though, and the acting was superb. Especially Emily Watson.

Any writer/director/artist has to be careful when making a film or writing a story wherein an animal (usually a dog in about 99% of these stories) is put in mortal peril; the ease with which you can manipulate your audience is very great but you need to be careful about it our you tip over into melodrama.

( More detailed spoilers )

Yay, new story. Written for the dw_femslash ficathon. :)

The Dating Lives of Aliens
The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah Jane Smith / Maria Jackson (older), non-explicit
+3,300 words

Summary: Laughing, Maria fell into Sarah Jane's arm. "It's good to see you! What are you doing here? Are you checking up on me?

Notes: for kwanboa in the 2011 DW Femslash Ficathon, who wanted FLUFF. Well, this is certainly silly, if nothing else. Thank you to dragonfly (on DW) for the last minute, super fast beta! Link takes you to the LJ community.

In retrospect, the perfectly manicured fingernails of mesmerising fuchsia should have been a sign, but, honestly, how was Maria to know? It's not like one should expect aliens to enroll in physics.

You know, this no livejournal at work think sucks donkey cock. I really do miss it. :( My iPhone is great and a life saver, no question, but I get major eyestrain reading on it, and it's much worse to write posts or long emails on it.

It's why I'm not posting as much or reading my friend's list as much. :( sniff. Pity me. I miss you guys something awful. I can't read LJ at work and I'm so frequently busy until late in the evenings that reading and posting once I get home is also difficult.

I would like to buy an iPad, and maybe in the new year I will manage that. I would have to get a 3G one, though, as I can't use my workplace's wireless without invoking the wrath (and idiocy) of IT. bastards. I hate them.

~~~

So, I've finished Mad Men through its most recent season and, I don't know, it was great and all, but I hope I'm not supposed to be madly in love with Don Draper, 'cause he's gross. Nearly all the male characters on that show are revolting, imo. I do love Peggy and Joan, though. I have wanted to love Betty, and I feel for her being married to a nightmare like Don Draper, but she's a tough one to get fond over. I love little Sally.

~~~

I don't talk about this much, but I am *still* working my way chronologically through all the Star Trek shows. Started with Enterprise, then TOS, then Next Gen <3 <3, and now Deep Space Nine, which was the only one of the ST series that I never watched in its original run and the only one that I couldn't get into. And, it's still very difficult for me to remain interested in it. I don't know what it is, I know so many of my friends love it and hail it as the best of the ST shows, but I find watching it so tedious for some reason. Not that I don't love many of the characters in it a great deal, but I guess the conflicts in it don't grab me as much. It's weird to love the characters so much but not really care about the show (I am supremely uninterested in the Dominion or Cardassians and what not. I am somewhat interested in the Marquis because of Chakotay and Tom Paris, but there isn't much about them, really). I've come to love Kira, and I hadn't much liked her before. And I'm all about Odo and her and can't wait for them to get together! I think they might be my favorite, then Sisko and Jake, and then the rest. I used to really love Dax, but now actually watching the show more closely, I don't find her nearly as interesting as I thought I would, and I'm not really that big a fan of Dax/Worf. I love Alexander Siddig quite a bit, but, although I am fond of Bashir, I like the actor so much better in all of the other projects I've seen him in. (Assad, I will always love you!!! xoxo)

I'm in the middle of season 5. I got waylaid somewhere mid season 3 and stopped for nearly a year, I think, but then muscled through. It's a little more interesting now.

Thank goodness that most (all?) of the Star Trek shows are on Netflix streaming!!! yay. I've set up the xbox I stole from my mother so that I can stream onto my TV. In a word, It's AWESOME.

~~~

New apartment is lovely, although I lost energy and got distracted and haven't finished decorating and stuff. whoops.

Still horseback riding tons. Oh hey, I have also started a weekly ballet class for adults! I'm... really not very good at it, I've discovered. haha. Who knew? lol. Ballet is hard, you guys. It's like, really hard. I find that I have tons of strength, and I'm not even a little bit sore the next day, but completely fall apart when I have to balance or twirl. It's fun though! My body is all the wrong shape for ballet, but it's all good.

I've signed up for the dw_femlash ficathon and of course hl_shortcuts. *big eyes* I guess this means I actually have to write something... For the past few months I've mostly been rewriting some original fic; my fanfic writing skills are rusty.

Although I've been reading tons of fanfic. Mostly Harry Potter fanfic, randomly (don't ask), although I'm not finding anything I like much. :(

~~~

So, where was I...

I think I'll answer two of these, seeing as they're relatively quick answers.

5 –If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a fic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?

Um, I don't think I've had a character try to push their way in so much as I've had characters in a story know the direction of a story better than I do. *g* So, in those instances where characters take over the wheel of the car, I go through this process: fight it, get stymied, stop writing, let the story stew for a bit (anywhere from moments, a day, or weeks), go back to it, try the opposite of what I was doing before (meaning, for example, if I was trying to make the characters go forward, I make then walk backward, or sometimes it's make a character whisper instead of shout, or have them be weak instead of strong, or something like that), that usually unlocks the story and I can get going again. Sometimes I can bypass this whole thing by taking a step back, closing my eyes, asking a question, letting the answer bubble up naturally, then writing again.

I don't think that really answered the question, though.... lol.


6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

Oh, I like both. I used to think I preferred writing male characters, and I think in fanfiction that still is the case. But in original fic, I write both and enjoy both. There's something wonderful about writing the opposite gender, I can't lie, but I love writing complicated women, too. They touch different places inside of me.


( The 30 questions on Fic )

Few things can make me both so happy and sad as a wonderfully incoherent phone call from all my best pals calling from the dance floor of Club Vivid. Love you guys, thanks for thinking of me. Really wish I could be there to hug and kiss you all in person. Honestly, if there had been any way, I would have tried to go. Love you.

In other news, I think I found an apartment. So that's good. :)

Or something.

This is a quickie post to say I'm leaving today for a 4 day horseback riding trip into the wilderness. Like John Locke, we will be hunting our own food. JUST KIDDING. I think, actually, we will have a cook. And mules. Lots and lots of mules. :D :D

~~~

In other news, July decided to become hell month. It was basically overwhelming before it began. There is much I need to write about, especially about sherrold, and also my best friend has had rough time of it recently. But I can't write quickly about those things.

On top of all this, there are fun things like Harry Potter and Sarah Connor Chronicles and Downton Abbey (!!!!! AWESOME. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Lost (still) and Nip/Tuck (I can't seem to look away!) to talk about and scary things like the fact that I've decided to move into a 1 bedroom yikes!! to talk about. But all that will have to wait.

xoxo,
tifah

Yay, I like these sorts of exploratory memes that make me think. So, I will do this meme, although I don't promise to relate to all the questions. :D


1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

Well, I started reading fanfic because I was bored at a temp job. A couple of years before, a friend of mine, who had gotten into X-Files fandom, sent me some print out stories, which I read and felt ambivalent about (Mulder/Scully). The whole concept was mystifying, and the stories were interesting but OOC for me, so I didn't get it. Then, a few years later, I'm bored out of my mind at a temp job were I had to answer a phone that never rang, mindlessly searching through Yahoo (this was pre Google, kids) and came across that large fanfiction archive for X-Files (Gossamer?). I read some more fanfiction, was still mostly 'meh' about it, although the slash was eye-opening. *g*. Then I found the old ASCEM archive, started reading Star Trek Next Gen stories both slash and het and gen, was still 'meh' but clearly searching, and then I read ST: TOS K/S - the first story I read was one of Jungle Kitty's, and then I started in on killabeez's stories, and then the rest of the archive. I happened to have been rewatching TOS at the same time as discovering K/S so it rather dovtailed nicely. It was an incredibly fun way to watch TOS, with new eyes. I've never experienced the same sort of discover and wonder watching something known with new eyes again, except for maybe HL.

All the while I was reading, (the story's not done yet!) I was still mystified that people spent this much time writing these stories, but once I found well written, captivating stories, I began to understand the appeal. But I still didn't know *where* people were all writing and doing and chatting and stuff. I didn't know what a newsgroup was or anything. I knew how to work a internet search engine, but that was about it; I had never had any sort of exposure to the online world. Prior to this, the internet was just a place where webpages were. And I didn't have access to a newsgroup reader, which would have shed some light on the situation. Eventually, my industrious little researcher self figured it out. This was about the time that the ASC* groups began being mirrored to email lists, which I figured out how to subscribe to.

Then, to actually answer the question, once I got the hang of the newsgroup, I started posting. ASCEM was in the middle of a drabble craze (true drabbles, only 100 words) at that moment, and it was relatively easy to write a K/S drabble. I clearly remember my thought process: "I can probably write a drabble. Let's try." The feedback was nice, so then I started writing a real story, that sort of was a sequel to the drabble. And then the rest is history. I liked the act of writing enough to continue although at first it was the community and the illicitness of slash that was the draw. I don't know how much of it actually had to do with K/S or Star Trek. What I mean is, it could have been any show or any pairing, it just happened to have been ST: TOS and K/S. And I honestly think it had to do more with the caliber of the fanfic for K/S, than the show itself, that was the siren song that drew me in.


( The Questions )