a conspiracy of cartographers

Things I am doing instead of writing my Yuletide:

+ writing post-Covenant Nick/Alan
+ writing an odd Highlander/Young Wizards crossover in which Nita is trying to figure out whether she needs to stop the Gathering, and also is having tea with Methos
+ reading more Vorkosigan books
+ talking about absurd Killjoys/RocknRolla fusion fic with feverbeats

Things I am not doing instead of writing my Yuletide:

+ packing

I still love my Yuletide! And I am over word count, so that isn't an issue. I just have this absurd notion that my Yuletide needs plot, and the plot is being rather shy. Ah well. How goes everyone else's Yuletide writing?

Thought progression:

1. Headstones reunion tour in February.
2. Hard Core Logo 2 actually got filmed and primered when I wasn't paying attention!
3. WHY AM I NOT IN CANADA.

In conclusion, however much I <3 Danger Days, I ... kind of already have my version of bandom? (Not that I'm not seeing MCR in Chicago next week. I'm just saying.)

I saw the first part of Deathly Hallows! Now, my relationship with the Harry Potter movies is a bit weird and fraught; almost none of the characters are anything like they are in my head, the aesthetic took forever to grow on me at all, and my enjoyment of the films is inverse to my enjoyment/memory of the books -- so, although I know Prisoner of Azkaban is objectively a good movie, if a bit light on necessary backstory, I really don't like it much, and somewhere around Goblet of Fire I started liking the films a lot more, because they did lots of necessary editing. I realized around Half-Blood Prince that I honestly didn't remember which stuff they'd kept in and which they'd taken out; I mean, I know they cut Voldemort's backstory and that Hermione's throwing-of-birds enchantment was a lot less horrific than in the book, but that is it.

So in the spirit of that, hey, I really enjoyed Deathly Hallows! I remembered enough salient points to not be lost when they sacrificed backstory, but mostly I didn't know what was supposed to happen when or if they'd just skipped a huge chunk of something. Probably camping. Anyway. It was good fun!

( Here be spoilers, I guess: squee, frowny faces, and a hilarious conversation with my parents. )

The view out my window right now is of the perfectly full moon reflecting silver-white on the misty banks of clouds I'm flying over. Right now. Because there is free wifi on the freaking airplane. Technology, man.

It seems that mid-November is being bleak and hideous to everyone. For me this is mostly manifesting as a desire to hibernate, but while I am awake, I have been trying to seek out and create happy things. So here are two links and a poll!

i. Grace Jeanette sings "Na Na Na": that is, the adorable little girl from the Killjoys universe does a jazzy piano rendition that is almost unbearably cute. HUGS GIMME HUGS.

ii. Damn You, Auto Correct! What it says on the tin, really; it almost makes me want to get a smartphone, if only because the things are apparently hilariously dumb. I literally laughed until I cried reading through this.

iii. So uh I hear there might be this movie about a boy wizard coming out tomorrow? (The movie is coming out, I mean. I'm pretty sure the boy wizard has to wait until part two for his mentor to do that? IDK.) I sometimes pretend it has been years since Harry Potter was really important to me, but it is actually still mildly dangerous to say things to me like "What do you think about the treatment of Harry's parents' generation in Deathly Hallows?" or "Talk to me about the Black family!" or "So that Dumbledore guy ..." I have Opinions! And Feelings! And while I don't remember a lot of things that happen in DH (seriously, there was a dragon in the trailer and I was totally at sea -- this is what happens when you only read something once) I am still wicked psyched about it. So I think it is time for an impromptu show of hands! Tell me which Hogwarts house you belong in.

I just finally got around to watching my first Sarah Jane Adventures episodes in ... god, years! At the same time that I got a bit jaded during the Ten's Rubbish Specials year, I also stopped watching Torchwood (I still haven't seen Children of Earth!) and SJA. But those s5 cut scenes that appeared the other day made me long for more Doctor, so tonight I watched The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and The Death of the Doctor. This is another way of saying that I spent two hours tonight completely teary-eyed. It turns out that all the crying I didn't do in End of Time I was actually saving for Tennant's actual last stint as Ten? And then oh my god, Jo and Eleven! (And, let's be honest, a RTD episode where the only thing that made me go "Yep, that's Rusty, sigh" was the Grosk, and memory was actually a useful weapon! WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE.) I love Eleven more than words, people. Nothing gets me teary than grainy clips of old Doctors, though.

This message brought to you by Aria's late-night desire for the Christmas special! And her Doctor Who love that stubbornly will not die. And probably her dithering about Yuletide.

Today my hair is doing hilarious flippy things! Hair, you are not Chloe Sullivan.

Apparently there really is going to be a remake of the Highlander movie? Google tells me that they have the writers from Iron Man signed on and everything, although most of the news links are from 2009, so who knows. Look, it is absurd to reboot your franchise when the whole premise is "there can be only one", or at least it is if you want another final showdown with the Kurgan. I think they should just make a movie about Methos, but I understand that Really Old Guy Who Is Seriously Awesome But We're Not Quite Sure Where He's From is a less catchy film title.

Anyway, I'm more occupied with staring in fascination at the much more up-to-date reports that Zack Snyder will direct the next Superman. And Chris Nolan will produce! Seriously, every time I remember these facts, I sit very still in a state of dazed paralysis, trying to wrap my mind around the sheer cracked insanity that could result.

In other news, I thought I would try my 50,000 November word count by just adding up all the various things I'm writing, but then ... I started writing an actual goddamn non-fanfic novel. I understand that one should be writing roughly 1667 a day in order to hit the minimum complete word count by the thirtieth, which means that tonight I should be at 15000. Alas, I only started three days ago, and am at 7495 words. That means I am 15% done! And ... halfway to the current word count I should have. Whatever! I have great tabs open; I keep staring happily at the googlemaps street view of Scottish towns, I have two google books of Sir Walter Scott laying around, and I am drowning in ballads. GOOD TIMES.

The beginning of November seems to be a bit rubbish, but my brain is being kind today, so I thought I would make a post about happy things.

+ Having finished Tam Lin, I have discovered to my deep satisfaction that, contrary to what I feared, it doesn't actually fill me with a deep longing to re-ensconce myself in my liberal arts education; in fact, it fills me with a deep relief that I don't have to take exams. (My god, my education is entirely my own! Now I just have to keep living in towns that come equipped with college libraries.) I may be more than a bit in love with Thomas, which should surprise exactly no one. I am tempted to dust off my old Carter Hall manuscript and stare it down as though I'm actually going to get NaNo work done on it. (Carter Hall is the, um, Tam Lin story I started when I was but a wee one in high school. It is happily very unlike Pamela Dean's version, and unhappily very like it was written by a fifteen-year-old.)

+ Speaking of NaNo: my word count this month, entirely in ridiculous WIPs, is 4281, or a whopping 9% of 50,000. I am only counting at all because fahye is keeping careful track of her word count, and I often do things that Fahye does, mostly subconsciously. She is, by the way, better at this unofficial NaNo thing than I am.

+ I enjoy other things about November, also! I am loving the weather; it keeps hovering confusedly somewhere between 30°F and 50°F, and the ten-day forecast promises chilly rain later this week, but I am holding out hope for snow, because I am always holding out hope for snow. A certain portion of houses in my neighborhood are still sporting tattered forlorn Halloween decorations; another portion are already cheerfully displaying Christmas lights. Sometime in mid-December I think I shall pick an evening that is not too cold and walk the eight blocks or so that compose my immediate neighborhood, checking out all the decorations. For now I am just breaking out all my hats and scarves and drinking roughly my own weight in hot cocoa.

Back in the Midwest! I feel very much like some awkward metaphor about a Rubik's cube or jigsaw puzzle or something else that can be rattled about and have a few bits missing; that said, though, there is something immeasurably relieving about falling back into routine. The grooves are reassuring, and I finally have the time to read manuscripts again. Having lunch with were_duck definitely helped too.

Other things that are helping: reading Pamela Dean's Tam Lin at a luxuriously leisurely pace. I cannot believe I never read it before. I cannot believe I didn't imprint on the damn book at thirteen. How have I conducted my life as I have without reading it? The advantage of reading it after college is that, with the exception of a few of the moderns, I get every single literary reference thanks to my silly degree. The disadvantage of reading it at all is that my writing starts to sound like Janet's internal monologue.

Incidentally, I thought I might try NaNo this year, not in a public posting sense but in a "get something original written!" sense. Then I looked at my WIP folder and laughed at myself. I suppose I could try to get at least 50,000 words of fic done this month! It's not as though I don't know I could.

Also: MUSIC.

i. First, getcher new Decemberists here! You have to join the mailing list, but if you join the mailing list you'll get gems in your inbox like the record will be called The King Is Dead and will be available on January 18th, 2011. That's 1/18/11. If you take away the slashes, that reads 11811. What does that mean? Must you ask? Clearly it is a snowman surrounded by a colonnade of waving banners. And once again I am soothed by the reassurance that the Decemberists are just as fucking absurd as I am. The song itself is called Down by the Water, twists at my heart in pretty much the same way all of their songs do the first time, and rhymes 'wrong' with 'anon' because lines like 'the summer swells anon' are always rife in Decemberists songs.

ii. Getcher new My Chemical Romance here! Or omg the Sing trailer here. I may be a bit in love with the Killjoys universe? We're approaching starry-eyed here.

iii. Amelia introduced me to The Clockwork Quartet; you can dl both their songs free, and then possibly for afters gnaw off your own hands with joy. Or at least you can if you are me. The Watchmaker's Apprentice gives me the same scary-grinning joy that The Mariner's Revenge Song does, only with fewer accordions and more tick-tocky noises. I am actually terrified of listening to The Doctor's Wife again, because I've already done the wide-eyed listening as I figure out the lyrics; I know if I hear it again, I will start sobbing. Basically it's like the Decemberists +100 STEAMPUNK. I didn't even know that was possible.

Real life update pending, to be made at a point when I have done some sorting out of all the homesickness and joy and relief I'm dealing with, and possibly also at the point when I have even become close to glutting the need I have to just sort of mash up happily against my friends and not stop hugging them. In the meantime I have nefarious plans to go into town for hot chocolate and Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, because I am a bit of a masochist sometimes.

Also, a meme:

Out of utter curiosity, if I was chained up in your attic/study/basement/library/secret lair, and I had to write you one story, what would you request? (demand?) Or alternatively, what's something you always hoped I'd write but know is never going to happen?