sparkles and badass

[jedibuttercup]

I'm a very novice PHP programmer. Let me just say that up front. But I picked up a new trick today in pursuit of a work project, and informed my boss that whatever else happened, it made my day 'sparkles and badass' to be able to tell our coworker 'yes, and here's the test!' instead of 'uh, I have no idea...', and all it took was a half hour of internet research and a little trial and error. :)

In other news: I am 18,600 words into a mid-season 3 Falling Skies canon divergence story that seems headed in a distinctly Tom Mason/John Pope direction. Plus, you know, a garnish of Mason Family Love including Dan Weaver and Maggie. I am not quite to the Tom/Anne fallout part yet-- not going to fridge her, I swear, despite being peeved with her role that season-- as the story seems liable to go another 10K or so words minimum before all my metacommentary on Season 3 is sufficiently vented. Don't ask me where it came from; except maybe that I rewatched all 30 episodes last week in prep for the new season, and got clubbed across the face with "BUT IF THEY HAD ONLY...."

Back to "Never Look Back" next week, I swear. I know just what Buffy's up to in that chapter. But Tom and Pope really want their say first, and I don't argue with steamrolling plot bunnies this large. And to give you an idea of just how seriously I mean that 'steamrolling' bit, even beyond the unusual wordcount: I actually went to the bookstore, hunted down a translation of Popol Vuh, and read it just to find an appropriate enough tagline for this thing.

... I don't suppose anyone is actually interested in reading this monster? Even just to read; not beta. Is there actually an audience for a "what if they actually talked to each other instead of randomly breaking into a fistfight in enemy controlled territory, and things snowballed from there" kind of thing? The fandom is still seriously teeny on AO3. And even on ff.net the number of adult-centric non-OC-romance stories is pretty microscopic, never mind slash of any kind.

Comments

[sulien.livejournal.com]

0.o You read the entirety of the "Popol Vuh" just to find a tag line? Bloody Hell... That's one of the mythologies that I've been meaning to read for decades, but I've never gotten around to researching which translation would be best for readability and accuracy. Much like the "Mabinogion" and the "Kalevala". :-p

As for your "Falling Skies" story, I'd love to read it if I don't have to know the series very well. I tend to get extremely annoyed when the screen writers seem to be unable to come up with anything other than Idiot Plots, especially when they're so egregiously stupid. So, I never got back to watching that series after the first season when I heard that they were getting so bad. One of the things I like best about your writing is that I can't think of a single instance where you used an Idiot Plot, outside of crack!fic, so if I can get by with season 1 knowledge I'm in! As for beta reading, I don't know how much good I'll be to you as my brain has been mostly offline of late due to various & sundry things, but I will give it my best shot, if you're willing.

[jedibuttercup]

Well, when the show itself called the penultimate episode of Season 3 "Journey to Xibalba", I got curious and found the wiki entry on the Popul Vuh. And then I got fascinated. And then I bought the book.

Current story title is Waiting for Dawn, and the summary (tagline) I pulled is: "Such was the defeat of the rulers of Xibalba: accomplished only through wonders, only through self-transformation."

I don't think I'm going to finish it before tomorrow's premiere of Season 4, as I was attempting; but it should be sometime in the next few days. If you'd really like to read it, I can email it to you then. The events are seriously embedded in Season 3 canon, but if you remember who the main characters are from Season 1, there should be enough cues embedded to get what's going on.

[sulien.livejournal.com]

And critics say that fan fiction is nothing insubstantial fluff, churned out by 13 year old boys or girls in order to put themselves into the story. Ha! You've put pad to the asinine notions of the detractors of fan fiction more times than I can count and it's fair to say you've done so again. Hells, I think it's fair to say that you do more research than most published authors these days. Okay, enough of my fangirling... It's really nice to see that I'm not the only one who has gotten the bug to go and research something after getting my curiosity piqued by something I've seen on the tube. :)

Sweet! Yes, please, I would love to read "Waiting For Dawn" when you've finished it! And you really did find an excellent quote to use as a summary/tagline, it certainly made me want to read the story. In fact, that summary would have made me want to read the story regardless of the fandom and I'm even more interested in finding a good translation of the "Popol Vuh" now.

Do you mind if I ask which translation you read and what you thought of it?

Also, I will do my best to read the story within 3 days of receiving it and send you back as much of a beta as I can manage.

[jedibuttercup]

I grabbed the translation by Dennis Tedlock; he's the one that consulted an actual 'father-mother' of an existing Quiché lineage for cultural information to enlighten his work and flesh out the footnotes. It's an interesting read, the framing info as much as the myths themselves.

So far there are excerpts of a Grimm fairy tale and the Gettysburg Address cropping up in the story as well. I see connections: I want to share them, it always bemuses me that people find the method of doing so remarkable. But I guess from a critical level, it's all the same as songfic. *shrug* But if one other person smiles, I consider it worth my while, and the critics can go hang.

It's at 27,400 words at the moment, in three chapters... I think there'll be one more. Tomorrow or Tuesday, I should think. I already have header art for it as well.

Maybe it's something about the time of year I find inspiring? The last time I was seized by a story this hard it was last May, with Olympus Has Fallen; I remember reading several books about fictional Presidents and real-life Secret Service agents for that one. :)

[sulien.livejournal.com]

I found a .pdf of Dennis Tedlock's translation online, but I bought the Nook book and will in all likelihood buy a paperback copy of the book as well at a future date (it's easier for me to read in electronic format, but I do love the feel of a book in my hands). Thanks for the info!

Also, right on to telling the critics to go hang!

[jedibuttercup]

Awesome. I kind of prefer paper books for the experience, too, though Nook/Kindles do have their convenience.

*stifles yawn* I'm, um. At 37,500 thousand words or so? Four chapters. Epilogue yet to add tomorrow.

Will you want it in its constituent bits, or all at a lump? :)

Holy Buckets...

[sulien.livejournal.com]

Preferably all in one lump. Though, it will definitely take me more than three days to go through that large a story for a beta! I'll go ahead and break it down into 'bite size' chunks as I read it and send the saved beta as separate documents to send in separate emails, if that's okay.

*bounces in anticipation* Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing Colin Cunningham running through my brain for that long a story. *g*

[sulien.livejournal.com]

Nooks & Kindles? Not me, I use my laptop for ease of reading to get the book to just the right distance for my trifocal lenses while not killing my neck and shoulders. I also love being able to use my phone as an e-reader and carry it in my back pocket. :)

[pronker]

Congratulations on solving the work problem. So satisfying to DIY.

Aw, write it for your own sake. It sounds like it wouldn't leave you alone otherwise.

[jedibuttercup]

:) I've found that if I indulge the muse this way when a story idea really pushes me, it makes it easier to write other things. So, yeah. I just feel less like I'm wasting my time burning so much energy on it when I know there will be at least one other person whose day is made better by the story existing.

[edenfalling]

I can't say I know that much about the show, but I am all for stories where people actually talk to each other in constructive ways. And fight aliens, of course. :-)

[jedibuttercup]

:) I usually call Falling Skies "that family drama with a backdrop of alien action", the way I called Terra Nova "that family drama with a backdrop of timetravel and dinosaurs". And it usually does it pretty well. But there were at least two main dramatic plot twists in Season 3 that depended heavily on people not talking to each other; it made my brain hurt. So. Fic?

[xlade.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll put it this way. As a general rule, I avoid slash like the plague. I have never watched a single ep of Falling Skies. HOWEVER. You are soley responsible for my ten ep venture into Walking Dead (before I gagged and had to stopped), my obsession with Person of Interest, and I think the reason I even tried watching Supernatural (before quitting, for the same reason as walking dead). I add shows to my watch list, just because you write fics for them. So post away. I shall read!

[jedibuttercup]

Aw, thank you! That's flattering to hear.

About the slash... what I call slash is usually "two people with a serious emotional connection who happen to be the same gender"; I very rarely get to the sex part, which is what most of the rest of the internet seems to call slash. What I really adore is exploring the characters and how their interactions and decisions shape everything. Particularly when if you flipped one of their genders in canon, without even altering their words or actions, everything they say to each other would read completely differently.

I don't blame you for bowing out of Walking Dead; I have to squint through my fingers a lot. And if Rick or Daryl ever dies, I'm done. But I only made it eleven episodes into Supernatural, myself. :)

[sulien.livejournal.com]

It's good to see that I'm not the only one who bases a lot of my TV/movie viewing on your opinions and the fic that you write! :)

[earcmacfithil.livejournal.com]

Considering that I ask YOU to read MY monsters, I suppose I owe you many times over. :-) I haven't seen any "Falling Skies," though, so I'd certainly be missing a metric buttload of the backstory.

And do we EVER know "where it came from?" (Coming from someone who took Rapunzel from an uncertain young woman dealing with culture shock upon returning to her real home and meeting her real parents to a powerful Goddess who intimidates the Aesir, rebuilds entire planets, sings life into existence, and destroys the Universe!)

[jedibuttercup]

:) I should have your current stuff back to you long before the NPT deadline, never fear.

I could wish my muse would be more consistent, though; sometimes I'm really pushing to get 1,000 words out of an idea. But with this one, I'm 27,400 words in, and only about three-quarters of the way done as far as I can tell. It would be nice to know why!

[earcmacfithil.livejournal.com]

Shiny. I'm fearing not.

Ja, me too. Then I wind up with stuff unspooling in my head while I'm sanding parts at work. And before I know it, I have these enormous Fic-Zilla arcs that end up pushing novel length! Worse, though, my mind cranks on this stuff, but then when I open the document, my fron grinds to a halt. Doesn't help that I'm so distrac...SQUIRREL!

Although sometimes when we struggle to get 1K words down, how often is it because we're having trouble getting our own writing angles to mesh with the prompt? If that makes sense. Or we have a great concept, but struggle to find a decent story for it?