her heels so high and my hope so low
Aug. 5th, 2009 04:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spintheiryarnsHERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME.
1. You know that ridiculous crossover fic I've been nattering about since January 16? It just went off to beta, all nearly-29000-words-and-gonna-get-longer of it, so HA. FIC WILL APPEAR RELATIVELY SOONISH.
Of course, this now means that I no longer have an excuse not to actually reread the Series of Unfortunate Events books, or watch Star Trek, or-- most importantly-- stop looking at pictures of motorcycles and buckle down to write my![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
polybigbang. Oops.
2. So naturally I spent the rest of my evening torrenting Ken Burns' Baseball and watching the first inning. I haven't watched it since I was little and renting the videos with my dad! And I've failed at my New Years' resolution of keeping track of how the Cubs and the Mets are doing, same as I do every year, but oh my god baseball history is still so cool and I love it.
3. The Sisters Grimm series, by Michael Buckley. Because, honestly.
"Snow, get behind me!" Charming shouted, as he leaped to his feet. "I'll handle this brute."
"Billy," the teacher cried. "This is the twenty-first century. Women don't need the white knight routine anymore. I can fight my own battles."
. . . Instinctively, Charming and Puck stepped forward, ready to take over the fight, but Snow White flashed them an angry look.
"Gentlemen, please!" she said sternly. Charming and Puck threw up their hands in surrender and stepped aside. She sprang to her feet, planted them again, and then eyed the monster with a smile.
"Come and get it, ugly," she said. "School is in session."
Natalie roared and leaped at her. Snow White stopped the attack by jumping in the air, spinning around, and roundhousing the monster in the face. One of Natalie's fangs broke off in the middle and the monster fell to the ground, groaning in pain. The teacher stood over her with angry eyes and eager fists.
"If you were smart, you'd stay down," she said.
Sabrina and Daphne looked at each other in amazement.
"Snow, where did you learn to do all that?" Charming asked, obviously stunned by what he had just seen.
"I teach a self-defense class at the community center," Snow White replied. "We're called the Bad Apples. We meet every Saturday at four p.m."
Every so often I rewatch the Brothers Grimm movie, and I love it well enough, but then I end up grumbling to people for a few days about how I wish their sister had lived to adulthood and helped Jake and Will con people so I could slash her with Lena Headey, and how it would have made so much better of a show than Supernatural with basically the same dynamic but also with awesome ladies, and how sad it is that that premise would still be too similar to the movie for me to write it myself.
The Sisters Grimm is . . . not actually like that at all! But the title reminded me of the idea, so I bought the first couple of books and oh my god I love them so much. They're actually about Jacob and Wilhelm's several-greats-granddaughters Sabrina and Daphne Grimm, who live with their tiny badass Granny Relda in a modern-day town full of fairy-tale creatures. And together, they fight crime. No, really, they do.
"You know very well the police took your license away," Mr. Canis said, steering from one side of the road to the other in hopes of dislodging their stowaway. Unfortunately, nothing the old man did had any effect on the monster and it continued to beat violently on the roof.
"I got a couple of speeding tickets." Granny shrugged.
"You were arrested fourteen times for reckless endangerment. Several neighborhood groups banned you from driving on their streets. The German government said that if they ever caught you in a car in Berlin again you would be hanged," the old man corrected.
The characters are really wonderful-- lots and lots of badass women of a wide range of ages, obviously. There's a lot of moral grey area-- the three most prominent male characters are Mayor Charming, who is embezzling from the town and only steps in to resolve crises for the sake of his own reputation, Mr. Canis AKA the Big Bad Wolf, who is trying very hard to live a quiet reformed life as a peaceful old man but doesn't always manage, and Puck, who is, well, Puck. And there are the Grimms themselves, who are stuck in Ferryport because of a curse: as long as there are Grimms alive, one of them has to live there, and as long as a Grimm lives there none of the Everafters can leave. So not everyone on either side is particularly happy about that.
As Sabrina waited in the hall, she could see him rummaging through the room. He made quite a racket moving things around, knocking over a helmet in the process, which rolled across the floor with a clatter. Soon he returned with a gold-colored hard hat, which held a can of soda on each side. Tubes ran out of the cans and dangled below the chin strap. On the front of the hat the words EMERALD CITY GREEN SOX were printed in big green letters. Mirror dusted it off and handed it to Sabrina.
"This is the Golden Cap the Wicked Witch of the West used to summon the flying monkeys?" she said in disbelief.
"The Witch was a huge sports fan," Mirror replied. "The magic instructions are inside."
"You've got to be kidding me."
So yeah, these . . . may or may not have beat out Snow White: A Tale of Terror for my favorite fractured fairy tale, because I love that movie an awful lot, but they're coming awfully close. :DDDDDDDDDDDD
4. In celebration of the possibility of me finally actually posting fic: a WIP excerpt meme. This thing is always going around somewhere.
From various Link Larkin/Violet Baudelaire fics I have in various stages of progress:
"The point is," Link went on, and then paused for several seconds, looking confused, "you were sixteen-- I was sixteen-- someone was, and you're in love and you kiss in front of God and everyone and it's amazing, isn't it? It's like as long as you're together you can do anything. And then."
Violet shifted, twisting a little so she could tuck her feet up under her and lean back into the corner of the sofa. "And then?"
"And then," Link went on with exaggerated gravity, "everything goes to hell."
"Mm." Violet nodded, slowly, and thought of a sail vanishing over the horizon. "I remember that."
-------
The girl in Link's kitchen was half Violet's age at best, with curly blonde hair cropped short; she was wearing an appropriately old-fashioned blue sailor dress, though, and her expression of thin-lipped irritation was very familiar indeed.
"You're not Violet," Link observed, after a moment.
Sunny managed, somehow, to look even less impressed with him. "I was wondering when you would notice."
-------
"Hey, sweet thing." The worried look on his face split into a grin. In the otherwise pitch black of the tunnel Link's white shirt-- in far sorrier shape than when Violet had last seen him-- and light blue pants made him a weirdly ghostly figure. "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
Violet braced herself on his shoulder and sat up. "You know, I really think we're past the point where you need to hit on me."
"I'll stop hitting on you--" Link wrinkled his nose, thinking it over-- "when you stop being hot. So, never."
"Oh, well, if you insist." Violet tugged at the remnants of ruffles on Link's shirtfront and kissed him; but his hands were flitting over her, still anxious, and she caught them between both of hers. "I'm okay," she went on more gently, thumb stroking absently over the unfamiliar curve of his ring. "I got a little bruised up when I fell, but it's no worse than usual, I'm fine. Are you?"
From that Doctor Who/Hot Fuzz fic I promisedaria about a million years ago before Link/Violet swallowed me whole:
The Lawman hated, hated, hated it when people compared him to the Doctor-- which they almost always did, and frequently unfavorably, too. Admittedly he shared the Doctor's discomfort with the Time Lords' policies about noninterference; admittedly he might have shared a little of the Doctor's wanderlust as well, and the driving need to Put Things Right.
But he wasn't deranged, and he certainly wasn't irresponsible. He didn't go around playing the fool, for one thing; it was a waste of time, and the Lawman firmly believed he should maintain the dignity, and thus the respect, that only befitted a Time Lord. It made the entire species look bad, cavorting recklessly around the multiverse the way the Doctor did. Not to mention his literally legendary irresponsibility. Leaving his chameleon circuit nonfunctional for centuries at a time, dressing so conspicuously, dragging hapless civilians through space and time with him-- it was a wonder, honestly, that the man hadn't run through his remaining five regenerations already.
The Lawman was eleven hundred and fifty-two years old and had only regenerated twice, which just went to show where a little caution and some attention to keeping your TARDIS in good repair got you. Admittedly it had a marked fondness for looking like various potted plants, and for all the Lawman's efforts he'd never been able to explain it, but those were at least far more universal and easily camouflaged than a police call box.
And the beginning of mypolybigbang fic, which I rather like so far despite having no clue what I'm doing:
It's late on a Wednesday evening. In an hour or two there's going to be a handful of second-shifters who are just getting off and don't have wives keeping dinner warm for them at home, and another waitress'll be in to help Ashley out; but right now they're still at work and the first-shifters have already come and gone. So it's just her mopping the floor, and Buddy Holly on the radio, and Cole and Dylan sitting in a corner booth with the sports section of the Chronicle and arguing about baseball. Not quiet, exactly, but peaceful.
And then the door dings and Ashley dives to put the mop away, wiping her hands on her apron. "Hi," she says brightly. "What can I get you?"
The girl smiles back but takes a moment to answer, busy looking around curiously at the inside of the diner. It's not a long enough moment to be rude, but it's long enough for Ashley to realize that she's not a teenager but a young woman about Ashley's own age, with a sweet face and a long dark curly ponytail but dressed like a boy in jeans and a grease-stained t-shirt. It doesn't help that she's not so much wearing her jacket as drowning in it, and Ashley has to wonder how anyone could tolerate or even survive wearing a heavy jacket like that around San Francisco in July. "Hi," she answers finally, focusing on Ashley again and smiling hopefully. "The sign outside said you were hiring?"
5. I cleaned my laptop screen! The world looks so much brighter now :O
1. You know that ridiculous crossover fic I've been nattering about since January 16? It just went off to beta, all nearly-29000-words-and-gonna-get-longer of it, so HA. FIC WILL APPEAR RELATIVELY SOONISH.
Of course, this now means that I no longer have an excuse not to actually reread the Series of Unfortunate Events books, or watch Star Trek, or-- most importantly-- stop looking at pictures of motorcycles and buckle down to write my
polybigbang. Oops.2. So naturally I spent the rest of my evening torrenting Ken Burns' Baseball and watching the first inning. I haven't watched it since I was little and renting the videos with my dad! And I've failed at my New Years' resolution of keeping track of how the Cubs and the Mets are doing, same as I do every year, but oh my god baseball history is still so cool and I love it.
3. The Sisters Grimm series, by Michael Buckley. Because, honestly.
"Snow, get behind me!" Charming shouted, as he leaped to his feet. "I'll handle this brute."
"Billy," the teacher cried. "This is the twenty-first century. Women don't need the white knight routine anymore. I can fight my own battles."
. . . Instinctively, Charming and Puck stepped forward, ready to take over the fight, but Snow White flashed them an angry look.
"Gentlemen, please!" she said sternly. Charming and Puck threw up their hands in surrender and stepped aside. She sprang to her feet, planted them again, and then eyed the monster with a smile.
"Come and get it, ugly," she said. "School is in session."
Natalie roared and leaped at her. Snow White stopped the attack by jumping in the air, spinning around, and roundhousing the monster in the face. One of Natalie's fangs broke off in the middle and the monster fell to the ground, groaning in pain. The teacher stood over her with angry eyes and eager fists.
"If you were smart, you'd stay down," she said.
Sabrina and Daphne looked at each other in amazement.
"Snow, where did you learn to do all that?" Charming asked, obviously stunned by what he had just seen.
"I teach a self-defense class at the community center," Snow White replied. "We're called the Bad Apples. We meet every Saturday at four p.m."
Every so often I rewatch the Brothers Grimm movie, and I love it well enough, but then I end up grumbling to people for a few days about how I wish their sister had lived to adulthood and helped Jake and Will con people so I could slash her with Lena Headey, and how it would have made so much better of a show than Supernatural with basically the same dynamic but also with awesome ladies, and how sad it is that that premise would still be too similar to the movie for me to write it myself.
The Sisters Grimm is . . . not actually like that at all! But the title reminded me of the idea, so I bought the first couple of books and oh my god I love them so much. They're actually about Jacob and Wilhelm's several-greats-granddaughters Sabrina and Daphne Grimm, who live with their tiny badass Granny Relda in a modern-day town full of fairy-tale creatures. And together, they fight crime. No, really, they do.
"You know very well the police took your license away," Mr. Canis said, steering from one side of the road to the other in hopes of dislodging their stowaway. Unfortunately, nothing the old man did had any effect on the monster and it continued to beat violently on the roof.
"I got a couple of speeding tickets." Granny shrugged.
"You were arrested fourteen times for reckless endangerment. Several neighborhood groups banned you from driving on their streets. The German government said that if they ever caught you in a car in Berlin again you would be hanged," the old man corrected.
The characters are really wonderful-- lots and lots of badass women of a wide range of ages, obviously. There's a lot of moral grey area-- the three most prominent male characters are Mayor Charming, who is embezzling from the town and only steps in to resolve crises for the sake of his own reputation, Mr. Canis AKA the Big Bad Wolf, who is trying very hard to live a quiet reformed life as a peaceful old man but doesn't always manage, and Puck, who is, well, Puck. And there are the Grimms themselves, who are stuck in Ferryport because of a curse: as long as there are Grimms alive, one of them has to live there, and as long as a Grimm lives there none of the Everafters can leave. So not everyone on either side is particularly happy about that.
As Sabrina waited in the hall, she could see him rummaging through the room. He made quite a racket moving things around, knocking over a helmet in the process, which rolled across the floor with a clatter. Soon he returned with a gold-colored hard hat, which held a can of soda on each side. Tubes ran out of the cans and dangled below the chin strap. On the front of the hat the words EMERALD CITY GREEN SOX were printed in big green letters. Mirror dusted it off and handed it to Sabrina.
"This is the Golden Cap the Wicked Witch of the West used to summon the flying monkeys?" she said in disbelief.
"The Witch was a huge sports fan," Mirror replied. "The magic instructions are inside."
"You've got to be kidding me."
So yeah, these . . . may or may not have beat out Snow White: A Tale of Terror for my favorite fractured fairy tale, because I love that movie an awful lot, but they're coming awfully close. :DDDDDDDDDDDD
4. In celebration of the possibility of me finally actually posting fic: a WIP excerpt meme. This thing is always going around somewhere.
From various Link Larkin/Violet Baudelaire fics I have in various stages of progress:
"The point is," Link went on, and then paused for several seconds, looking confused, "you were sixteen-- I was sixteen-- someone was, and you're in love and you kiss in front of God and everyone and it's amazing, isn't it? It's like as long as you're together you can do anything. And then."
Violet shifted, twisting a little so she could tuck her feet up under her and lean back into the corner of the sofa. "And then?"
"And then," Link went on with exaggerated gravity, "everything goes to hell."
"Mm." Violet nodded, slowly, and thought of a sail vanishing over the horizon. "I remember that."
-------
The girl in Link's kitchen was half Violet's age at best, with curly blonde hair cropped short; she was wearing an appropriately old-fashioned blue sailor dress, though, and her expression of thin-lipped irritation was very familiar indeed.
"You're not Violet," Link observed, after a moment.
Sunny managed, somehow, to look even less impressed with him. "I was wondering when you would notice."
-------
"Hey, sweet thing." The worried look on his face split into a grin. In the otherwise pitch black of the tunnel Link's white shirt-- in far sorrier shape than when Violet had last seen him-- and light blue pants made him a weirdly ghostly figure. "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
Violet braced herself on his shoulder and sat up. "You know, I really think we're past the point where you need to hit on me."
"I'll stop hitting on you--" Link wrinkled his nose, thinking it over-- "when you stop being hot. So, never."
"Oh, well, if you insist." Violet tugged at the remnants of ruffles on Link's shirtfront and kissed him; but his hands were flitting over her, still anxious, and she caught them between both of hers. "I'm okay," she went on more gently, thumb stroking absently over the unfamiliar curve of his ring. "I got a little bruised up when I fell, but it's no worse than usual, I'm fine. Are you?"
From that Doctor Who/Hot Fuzz fic I promised
aria about a million years ago before Link/Violet swallowed me whole:The Lawman hated, hated, hated it when people compared him to the Doctor-- which they almost always did, and frequently unfavorably, too. Admittedly he shared the Doctor's discomfort with the Time Lords' policies about noninterference; admittedly he might have shared a little of the Doctor's wanderlust as well, and the driving need to Put Things Right.
But he wasn't deranged, and he certainly wasn't irresponsible. He didn't go around playing the fool, for one thing; it was a waste of time, and the Lawman firmly believed he should maintain the dignity, and thus the respect, that only befitted a Time Lord. It made the entire species look bad, cavorting recklessly around the multiverse the way the Doctor did. Not to mention his literally legendary irresponsibility. Leaving his chameleon circuit nonfunctional for centuries at a time, dressing so conspicuously, dragging hapless civilians through space and time with him-- it was a wonder, honestly, that the man hadn't run through his remaining five regenerations already.
The Lawman was eleven hundred and fifty-two years old and had only regenerated twice, which just went to show where a little caution and some attention to keeping your TARDIS in good repair got you. Admittedly it had a marked fondness for looking like various potted plants, and for all the Lawman's efforts he'd never been able to explain it, but those were at least far more universal and easily camouflaged than a police call box.
And the beginning of my
polybigbang fic, which I rather like so far despite having no clue what I'm doing:It's late on a Wednesday evening. In an hour or two there's going to be a handful of second-shifters who are just getting off and don't have wives keeping dinner warm for them at home, and another waitress'll be in to help Ashley out; but right now they're still at work and the first-shifters have already come and gone. So it's just her mopping the floor, and Buddy Holly on the radio, and Cole and Dylan sitting in a corner booth with the sports section of the Chronicle and arguing about baseball. Not quiet, exactly, but peaceful.
And then the door dings and Ashley dives to put the mop away, wiping her hands on her apron. "Hi," she says brightly. "What can I get you?"
The girl smiles back but takes a moment to answer, busy looking around curiously at the inside of the diner. It's not a long enough moment to be rude, but it's long enough for Ashley to realize that she's not a teenager but a young woman about Ashley's own age, with a sweet face and a long dark curly ponytail but dressed like a boy in jeans and a grease-stained t-shirt. It doesn't help that she's not so much wearing her jacket as drowning in it, and Ashley has to wonder how anyone could tolerate or even survive wearing a heavy jacket like that around San Francisco in July. "Hi," she answers finally, focusing on Ashley again and smiling hopefully. "The sign outside said you were hiring?"
5. I cleaned my laptop screen! The world looks so much brighter now :O
