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Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
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kassrachel
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![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) kouredios and I watched "Take This Sabbath Day" and "Celestial Navigation" today.
If I had a bit more brain, and a bit more time, I'd write something long and squeeful about both of them -- what a fabulous pair of episodes! The seriousness of the first one, the humor of the second -- though of course there's humor to leaven what's serious and vice versa. I am rapidly falling wildly in love with these characters.
(Also, when I saw "He Shall, From Time to Time," it knocked me right out. ( A small spoiler ))
Anyway. Anyone who wants to squee in comments, please feel free. I am loving this show like crazy.
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Comments: Read 20 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, January 4th, 2010
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kassrachel
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Happiest of birthdays to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yaoobruni (who does not really read lj anymore, so if you wanted to wish him a happy day, I'd advise email) and to minyan, aka taabe (who does read lj, I think, though is traveling at the moment, so who knows, maybe email is the way to reach her too.) I can't imagine my world without y'all, and I hope your coming year is wonderful in every way.
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Friday, January 1st, 2010
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kassrachel
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It's Yuletide reveal time! I can acknowledge now that I wrote Post Parting, the Lost in Translation story.
The story was written with tremendous help from yaoobruni, who helped me think through what might be happening in Bob and Charlotte's lives ten years after the end of the movie, and who deserves a ton of credit for how the story turned out. I'm grateful also to slinkling and sheepishlynew for their audiencing and beta help!
I figured the story's subject matter was a surefire "tell" that it was mine, given that I just had a baby a few weeks ago, but no one seems to have guessed that I wrote it...
Anyway: happy new year to all! I'll add the story to my website later when I have another moment to spare.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
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kassrachel
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2009 was a busy fannish year for me. Not quite as productive as 2008 (I just looked back at last year's year-end post and am kind of gobsmacked, actually) but still an awfully good year, fandom-wise. I made it to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) muskratjamboree and vividcon, posted my first-ever vid commentary, and, oh yeah, made and posted four vids, a sestina, and a decent amount of fic (roughly 65,000 words, most of which are in SGA.) \o/!
If you want to know the breakdown, read on. All fic links to go my website; you can also find all of my fic mirrored at the AO3.
( I made this! )
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Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
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ellinor
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Sherlock Holmes in 25 words or less:
Fits successfully into the Holmes oeuvre—pulpy adventure about dedicated friends—but stays a movie of today. But couldn’t they find a razor for Downey? B+.
I have more to say about this one (and feel entitled to add it, now that I’ve distilled my 25 words). To my mind, Downey’s wardrobe and grooming were among the weakest parts of this film. Distractingly sloppy, when we know that Holmes was actually fastidious about his personal appearance. Sure, the film departed from the source material in some other unnecessary ways (and Downey spoke too mumblingly fast some of the time) . . . but fundamentally, it worked. Jude Law is a great Watson, and the film played up some under-recognized elements of both Holmes and Watson—Holmes’ athleticism, Watson’s intelligence, Watson’s bravery, Holmes’ dry sense of humor, Watson’s suaveness—as well as the things we know about Holmes and Watson, such as their dedication to each other and Holmes’ analytical process.
In essence, Holmes has always been part of the pulp-adventure genre of its day. Part of Conan Doyle’s genius is his creation of a character and setting that translate so well into the pulp adventure genre of any era. So yes—this is a 2009 movie. It had a steampunk aesthetic that will soon seem dated and a quick-cut editing style that (in addition to being annoying), is very much of this time. But it’s also a Holmes movie. I could quibble all day with bits of it—but basically, I liked it. Perhaps the best testament is that I’m looking forward to the sequel.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, December 28th, 2009
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kassrachel
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astolat made a post in the Yuletide Admin community explaining Yuletide's move to the AO3:
The old AutomatedArchive code was written originally in 1998 in Perl by yours truly when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. *g*...
To give you a sense of the advantages that we get from using [Ruby on Rails], the old Yuletide software is about 20,000 lines of code. The new code that I wrote to make Yuletide run on the AO3 was about 1000 lines of code. The entire AO3 code (which has PILES more functionality than the old AutomatedArchive software) is 10,000 lines of code.
As you can imagine, this makes a huge difference in terms of how much time it takes to create and edit applications -- it's like the difference between writing or betaing a story that's 1000 words long vs one that's 20,000 words long.
I come away wanting to fangirl the yuletide mods & coders even more than I did before. If that's even possible. :-)
If you're curious about any of this, read the whole thing here.
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Sunday, December 27th, 2009
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kassrachel
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It seems to me as though a lot of my friends have been saying this year that they think their Yuletide stories are incredibly easy to guess. I'm joining the bandwagon; I think my story is ridiculously easy to guess, too. (Maybe not as easy as the year I wrote Avenue Jew, but hey. :-) If you think you know which story I wrote, leave a comment (to which I will obviously not respond at this time) and if you guess right, I'll try to write you a drabble sometime in the new year!
On an unrelated note: I received an Amazon Kindle as a holiday gift this year, which is made of awesome (I've been reading New Yorker articles while rocking the kidlet back to sleep after late-night feedings, because I can page through the magazine with a single thumb-click.) I seem to remember that there's a dw or lj comm for fans who have kindles; can someone point me there? I'd love to add some of my favorite SGA stories to my pretty little white toy... ETA: Got it! Thanks!
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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kassrachel
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A first batch of 17 Yuletide 2009 recs: 5 in Fridy Night Lights, 1 Italo Calvino, 4 Dollhouse, 1 Jonathan Coulton, 3 Fringe, 1 Graceland, and 2 Real Genius.
Posted with deep thanks to my in-laws (who will never see this, but the sentiment remains) who took a Boxing Day stint of babywatching in order to let me indulge in the Yuletide archive! *g*
The AO3 has a bookmark/rec feature built-in, which is awesome. So if you prefer, you can navigate my list of yuletide recs thus far over at the AO3 -- with the added bonus of being able to see the metadata on the stories (tags, warnings or lack thereof, how many times a story's been bookmarked, etc.) Or, you can read them below, as you prefer.
( With no further ado... )
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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kassrachel
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I'm working on an actual Yuletide recs post (thanks to the awesomeness of the people in my life who've been willing to watch the kidlet so I could read fic on Boxing Day as has become my custom) but for now I have to squee about the Yuletide Madness ficlet which came my way sometime late last night: Not One Whit Explosive, a Walter Bishop vignette. In which Walter comes across a mysterious object, and is charmed thereby. The voices are spot-on and this fills me with love for Walter and Peter and their whole nutty enterprise. Oh, thank you so much, mystery author!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, December 26th, 2009
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kassrachel
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From rivkat comes a post titled Yuletide! which offers a retrospective of Yuletide through the years, chock-full of links to posts about the server crashes, instances of the ISP getting hacked, and databases getting corrupted and going kablooie which we all remember so fondly. < / snark >
Seriously, it's kind of amazing to be reminded of all of the ways in which running Yuletide has been an incredible challenge over the years. Kudos are due to the mods, the coders, and this year the OTW coders and Systems teams, for going above & beyond the call of duty to bring us this amazing story exchange which is totally one of the highlights of my fannish year.
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Friday, December 25th, 2009
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kassrachel
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OMG -- someone wrote me an Until the End of the World story, Terra Nullius. My mystery author says in the notes that the canon was new to them, which blows my mind, and they did a beautiful job capturing the themes of the movie: place and placelessness, time and motion.
I am so happy that there is an Until the End of the World story out there now -- and even though it was written just for me, I can share it with all of you, too! &hearts!
YAY YULETIDE. I cannot thank the mods and the coders enough. This is seriously my favorite thing about the December holiday season. Hearts and flowers and gloms to you all!
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Thursday, December 24th, 2009
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stealthmuffin
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I'm certain worse ideas have come out of overtime. I just can't think of any at the moment.
If I write one of these at work (see yesterday's post for why), at the very least I'll keep the poor schlub whose job it is to monitor my email entertained. And possibly horrified. I'll post what I do write, but I make no promises (about schedule, quantity, or quality). (Why not just work on Third Book? Work saps away just enough concentration to keep that from happening. But goofy ideas are just fine.)
Poll #1503025 WTFic Ideas
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39What bizarre fic should I write to get through the rest of my holiday overtime? None of these will do! You should write this instead!
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Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
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stealthmuffin
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Guess who's still at work?
Guess who's still at work late for the third time this week?
Guess who was at work till 9 on Friday?
Guess who's about to start gnawing on her cubicle walls?
Oh, ConHugeCo. Really, you make the "quit my job, shave my head, and go live in a garret" option far too appealing.
I'd ask for distractions, but there's no telling what will be blocked by ConHugeCo. (And, sadly, Youtube is out -- not blocked but out for other reasons -- otherwise I'd be watching A Muppet Family Christmas and clinging to my holiday spirit.)
Maybe I'll write total crack fanfic and mail it to myself, thus scaring whatever poor sap gets to go through my emails. Hmm...Sorting Hat/Companion Cube songfic? Moustachio the Thinkonium/Tik-Tok road trip buddy movie? Jeeves and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day? The King of All The Cosmos/The King in Yellow/King Kong steel cage match?
Actually, coming up with these prompts is kind of fun. Maybe I'll just come up with a big long list and make you all choose one.
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Comments: Read 23 or Add Your Own.
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ellinor
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Avatar in 25 words or less: [note: the trailer on the site is a bit spoilery for my taste]
I didn’t hate it—but I hated its utter lack of introspection or ambiguity. It’s . . . disappointing, watching such fantastic moments and such detailed beauty, squandered. B-.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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kassrachel
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The first episode of The West Wing I ever saw was "In Excelsis Deo." I saw it at my sister's house some years ago; that was maybe even when it first aired? I have no idea; I didn't know the show or the characters at the time. I just remember watching the episode with her, and finding it surprisingly moving given that I was new to the whole universe.
I've been watching S1 of West Wing slowly over the last couple of weeks, and today managed to watch four episodes in a row, culminating in "In Excelsis Deo," and OMG. I cried like a baby all through the final scene.
Granted, I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in three weeks, I've been dealing with some scary familial health stuff, breastfeeding continues sometimes to be painful enough to bring me to tears, and I'm still awash in postpartum hormones, so it's possible that I'm a little bit emotional anyway. But holy wow, that episode packs a serious punch when you know who the people are and when you care about every last one of them.
Damn.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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