somniloquence

This was definitely the most active fan fiction year I've had in a very long time. A lot of people know that when my twin sister died some years ago, my creativity sort of died as well -- I've participated in Yuletide and made vids, but it's been a serious struggle to write. Downright agonizing. But I've plugged along, writing something outside of Yuletide for the first time last year when I wrote a little Loki & Pepper Avengers story.

And it was the same kind of year, going along, making vids, until July happened. I didn't expect it, but man did I fall hard for Pacific Rim. I was just obsessed, still am, and it's been weird, because I don't know anyone else in the fandom with my pairing interest that I can spend time around talking about it, or anyone who's at the obsesso level I still am at. I'm the kind of person who really needs to squee with people. Still, I have a third part of a story kind-of series coming up, and more vids I want to make, and I guess you could say Pacific Rim changed my life, because suddenly, for the first time since my sister died, I felt like I could create, I felt the overwhelming DESIRE to create, particularly in writing. I can't tell you how monumental that feeling has been, and I wish I could share it with people.

( Yuletide reveal and year in review for fic and vids )
And I guess that's it? Not too bad for someone who's had such a hard time creating.

Gosh, I'm really really behind. This weekend was... overwhelming, and now I'm having all kinds of technical problems with the two books that are putting me further and further behind. So much for regular posting!

Day 27 - Best pilot episode
I think I would give this one to Miracles. Back in the day, when TV shows weren't uploaded to torrents, you kind of had to make a point to catch a show when it aired, and I was really intrigued by the sound of the episode description when it bowed. I also knew that was the show David Greenwalt had left Angel for, so I expected it to be good. I was completely blown away. From the beginning, with the accidental exhumation of the nun (I always think of Destina's "frosty dead nun eyes" here) to the extreme crisis of faith Paul has in the first moments, to the meeting between Paul and Alva, and then the car-train crash (I could NOT believe that they killed off their hero in the first episode!) with Paul's blood forming God Is Now Here, and then that cool Exorcist shot at the end with Paul going up the stairs... I was utterly and completely hooked. I wish so much this show could have come out on TNT or something like that, where they would have known what to do with it.

Um, I guess I should make a new web streaming copy of Darkness, Darkness and put it up, huh?

Day 28 - First TV show obsession
I'm not entirely certain how this differs from favorite childhood show, because to me, the feelings are pretty synonymous. So I will probably have to go back to Laredo, because I went to great lengths to try to watch it when I was young. If this means being in fandom and doing fannish activities, then it would probably be The Professionals -- we watched it on Canadian TV back in '78 and were so insane for it that we gathered every Friday night hours before it aired (at 12:00 am) and got prepped with the old piano-key VCR and all our snacks and drinks, and then immediately played it off the tape after it was over. Then we joined the Professionals fan club, which we saw advertised in the London Times (yes, I know, Times of London, whatevs) -- this was no small feat in 1978, trust me. I had the fan club posters and other crap all over my dorm room when I went to college, and everyone always asked me who they were.

Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
I miss the days when I felt that obsessed about things, you know? The closest thing I have to that is Justified, right now. That's really the only series I feel like, I have to see the new ep rightnowomgi'lldieifidon't. Even True Blood I've only just caught up on the first two eps today. Whatever it takes to make it work for me like Pros did once upon a time, Justified is the one show that really has it. And White Collar is somewhat close.

For maygra, 5 things Paul Callan won't eat in a restaurant (from Miracles).

(There's no way I can do these in order, so please bear with me as inspiration strikes.)

1. Black pudding. There's a great little Irish bar down the street from the diocese, a real one run by a real expat Irish family, not one of the fake ones that people buy a license to own. They serve breakfast every day except Sunday. He didn't know what black pudding was the first time he ordered the full Irish breakfast, but he learned real fast to stay away from it. Why would anyone want to eat sausage made from blood? Just thinking about it makes him shudder with far too many bad memories. Blood shouldn't be a food except for vampires, and they don't really exist. At least, he hasn't found a real one so far.

2. Anything with the word "mom's" on it. It's not something he'd share with anyone except Poppi, and even then, he has never mentioned it. Or maybe the subject just hasn't come up. But there's something sharp and a little painful when you see that on a restaurant menu, a tiny pricking reminder that you never really had a mom to compare the cooking to. What would his mom's recipe for apple pie have been like? Or how would she have made a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup incomparable? Whoever's recipe for "Mom's apple pie" it is, he only knows it wasn't his own mother's.

3. Anything with apricots: jam, tart, pastry, you name it. Peaches, too. Smell of preservative in the grave, smell of arsenic in the breath. They say it's peach pits, that smell, but both apricot and peach pits smell the same to him -- heavy, too sweet, musky, and rotten to the core.

4. He never really understood what the fuss was about chocolate. It doesn't really taste that special to him, so he's never ordered a chocolate shake at the diner, or the chocolate cream pie Evvie likes so much. Alva thinks he has some kind of serotonin deficiency, that his levels aren't lifted by chocolate the way others' are, but he just doesn't really like the taste. Paul would choose caramel any day.

5. Guacamole. It's a texture thing, he tried to explain to Alva and Evvie the time she brought back a giant pile of nachos from the diner. She just raised a Spock-like eyebrow at him, and Alva almost chuckled. "You keep unfolding mysteries like a flower," was all he'd said.

Spoilers for Alias, and for Miracles, Hand of God

I’m having so much fun with Alias and Miracles that I almost (hah! But not quite) don’t have anything to say about them – they’re just great little romps, full of very different kinds of psychological melodramas and action, but both really pacing along, keeping me glued to my TV.

On Alias, it’s been interesting watching Sloane, who I don’t generally care for, break out of the shell of cool, detached malevolence and into an angry, desperate guy who can’t decide which direction he’s going. And even more fascinating to watch Irina be the voice of reason, watch her move him along in the direction she wants him to go. This convinces me even more that it’s a triple-cross brewing, because she could easily wash her hands of Sloane, take pretty little Sarky with her, and blow the pop stand for something better. I think she’s working towards an end, and that’s also the reason Jack isn’t pursuing that end as hard as Sydney is.

I love the couplehood of Syd and Vaughn, especially because I think it’s heading towards thwartedness as stuff with Fake!Francie heats up. And Willage! My god, that poor guy, he just never sees it coming and gets himself into such hot water. I really want him to wise up – I know, it’s not like you expect your new girlfriend to be a robotic, emotionless spy assassin, but I hate seeing him perpetually put himself in the position of resident dunderhead and then suffer horribly for it later. I like him, he’s cute. Maybe Sark could wise him up to the ways of the world.

And finally, we got the episode of Miracles we’ve been promised for over a month, and lo! It was good! I really enjoyed this episode, although for god’s sake, Paul, the face! Watch the face! That guy is going to look like Frankenstein’s monster pretty soon for all the severe facial injury and head trauma he’s received in five episodes. Although how cool was it to see him beating the kid senseless? Paul, we didn’t know you had it in you!

What was especially enjoyable was the tension between Keel and Paul – it’s clear that the episodes are being aired all out of order, because we see a bit of this tension developed here in episodes that have already aired, but Paul’s twitchiness makes more sense after viewing this episode. The guy has some serious father issues, and Keel isn’t helping anything by withholding either information or ideas. Paul should feel like he can ask Keel to help him with the questions he seeks answers to, but Keel is keeping too much to himself and building mistrust. I’m not certain he sees that, either, and is blinded by his own ambitions and his own fear for Paul.

It was a lovely bit of slashiness between the two of them at the police station. The way Keel kept touching Paul, and then the look on his face when he said “It led me to you, Paul.” Yikes! Earnestness from Keel, what will we do? I also loved Paul’s sarcastic, “I can completely believe that” when Keel told him he had been deciphering bird languages at university. There’s a nice bit of that slashy dislike and tension going on there, although I’m still uncertain what I think about that. And there’s tension with Evvie; I don’t think she trusts Alva when it comes to Paul now, and so maybe there’s just a big box ‘o tension being loosed at SQ and none of it means anything more.

But I mean, how can you resist all the soulful eyes and the sad glances? Angus’s huge eyes, Skeeter’s big almond eyes, and the unhappiness just hiding there behind them is wonderful. Now that Paul’s seen this darkness inside himself, what’s he going to do? And is Keel really as frightened of Paul’s potential as he seems? (He did seem really disturbed during his argument with Evvie.) Oooo, I just can’t wait to find out. I also wonder about that last dream – Paul with his father and the fountain of blood. Who will be revealed as his father, and will Paul meet anyone else who’s had that dream and can tell him?

But Free the Hair, man! Skeeter is just so luscious, especially when he makes Skeet Face (which some wag on TwoP described as looking like he’s either going to cry or throw up), and I want them to get him out of those preppy clothes and the slicked-back hair. Let it hang fetchingly across his furrowed brow, and put him back in those t-shirts and jeans from the pilot, please! They’ve got Angus dressed in the nice turtlenecks and jaunty hats, now let Skeetmeister be properly dressed.

Spoilers for Miracles ep The Bone Scatterer

I am not good at pimping shows. I can't stand hearing that people think something I love is crap, so I avoid trying to sell people, most of the time. I've pimped Miracles though to a few people and they loved it, so when someone asked if we could watch the ep that was on L's TiVo at a gathering this weekend, and then I could explain who everyone was and give them the backstory, I blurted "No!" and then, "well, I mean, why?" but relented, and we started watching Little Miss Lost from last week. A couple people seemed to really like it, but last night I just cringed through the entire ep, realizing that they would tune in and see this big pile of crap and not only wonder what I was smoking, but also laugh mockingly at me. Sigh.

This ep reminded me way too much of XF -- first we got this wonderful stuff that lured us into the show, like Deep Throat and Darkness Falls, and then when people started pimping it to their friends, we were graced with shit like Space and Ghost in the Machine. People tuning into Miracles last night must have been going, WTF? There was definitely some of the cute Alva/Paul interaction, and Alva was delightfully weird (I want to know where he got that Star Trek comm device that allows him to speak any language, any time, anywhere), but the cliches were so painful I had to take a Tylenol3 afterwards.

First was the whole kid calls the Miracles Inc. hotline, and they figure out where he is. Then when they get there, Evvie spouts some craptacular line about showing people life goes on, and the sheriff's all over her like a rash, and surmises instantly that she used to be a cop. No one asks questions about why these freaks, good-looking though they are, are wandering around schools and libraries and cruising underage youths. (I did really enjoy the dad insinuating that Paul's interest in his son was unhealthy. Heee!) Then of course Sheriff Dad turns out to be The Great Santini; and of course so does the multifunctional wrestling coach, and pretty much all the men in the town. Gah.

I worry about Paul and his tendency to focus so strongly on children, especially boys, and with that soulfull gaze and all, he's going to get into deep trouble one of these days. And he was raised by priests, so this could be a problem. Hopefully Alva will keep him on the straight and narrow, and keep flirting with him in order to refocus poor Paul. My favorite part of the ep, though, was Indian Gaydar, when the (incredibly good looking) guy in the bar suggested Alva head on out of town to meet people like him at the Rainbow Bar. I howled. Especially because Alva seems to get gayer all the time, even though they're not showing the eps in order at all.

The story overall left me really cold, I think mostly because of the reliance on hackneyed plot points and trite dialog. Honestly, the kid's breakdown in the cabin should have been sad and heartbreaking; instead I felt like I could diagram the dialog before it was spouted, it was such a collection of cliches. You could tell everything that would happen before it happened, and the twin thing just felt ridiculous -- al of this to the point where I wasn't able to be horrified by the final death with Sheriff Santini, even a little. It drives me nuts when stories make someone so over the top evil and obviously Bad that you can't care even a little when that person is brutally killed right before your eyes. The pacing was glacial in this episode, too, and I think that's a mistake when you're trying to lure viewers -- or maybe they never were trying to lure at ABC, but I imagine Greenwalt would like to. They need to step things up a bit, and hopefully next week will deliver.

And Skeeter's hair was too slicked back, too much. I am hereby starting a fan campaign called Free the Hair -- we want it unfettered and falling fetchingly over the eyes and temples, as in the ABC promo they air where Skeeter and Angus circle around each other slashily. Such great hair wasted with gel and a comb. Although, it didn't stop me from wishing he could keep watch over me at night.

Veritas

What a delight to see Carlo Rota (Mick Schtoppel/Mr. Jones on La Femme Nikita) at work again. I've missed him terribly. He's always so enjoyably hammy and jokey, plus he looks awfully smashing in a big fur-collared Joan Crawford coat, and you can't say that about many men.

The show is still doofusy beyond belief, but who cares when Vincent and Solomon are giving each other arch looks and come-hither glances. When Vincent told Sol he was making a mistake, I half expected him to finish up with, "and now come here and give us a kiss."

The one tactical error I thought they made was having Vincent appear to go bad so early in the show. But since this is also being shown terribly out of order, it may be that this ep falls later in the storyline, so the audience would know enough about Vincent to care and follow the story. As it was, since we know virtually nothing about him and the crew only three eps in, it's hard to emotionally connect to the betrayal storyline. But ah crap, who cares? Arnold is just so fun with the Vulcan death grip and the super zen cool line readings.

Now if Solomon would just give him a kiss.

Spoilers for Miracles, Little Miss Lost

I think Miracles has now become the official Spooky Dead Children Show. They really know how to do a dead or dying kid up right, if you ask me. But I like it -- last night wasn't a terribly original plot, and the last new ep a few weeks ago used the old tale of the hitchhiker ghost, but both stories use their hoary old cliches nicely and spiff them up with panache (if not some large errors in logic, but that's true of pretty much every single show I watch, including Buffy). Which, for me these days, is mostly what counts, along with some really nice eye candy like Skeet Ulrich and Angus MacFadyen.

A lot of Little Miss Lost doesn't make sense at all, but I didn't care so much because Paul was being extra twitchy and Alva was being extra amusing and fey and odd, so I'm willing to let them hang the story on the characters rather than the plot -- and frankly, right now, that's all I really want in a show is character-based drama, not plot-based. So let Greenwalt build holes big enough to drive those constantly appearing trains right through them, he's giving me wonderful character stuff with Paul especially, so I'm on for the ride. (Though I think it's best if Paul takes a break from public transportation for a while, or his face will soon look like Freddy Kruger's if he's not careful.)

I could really identify with Paul's fear and desire to meet his father, and his internal struggle with wanting to and not wanting to know more. I'm adopted, and have never had a desire to meet my birth parents (especially my father, who, I'm given to understand, was a major prick), but there's always questions in the back of your mind. So having the records sealed on him is a difficult thing to face, plus it makes him give over with the haunted, sad, lost little boy look, and Skeet now has me in the palm of his hand with that. I loved that they brought Tommy back as some kind of harbinger, and that the darkness is still unnamed and a large, looming presence that isn't clearly defined, but is definitely set on Paul as its focus. And I love Evvie and Alva's nifty interaction, especially the joke about how an accent will get you almost anything with women in this country. Lovely stuff. Character stuff. Just what I needed. This show continues to make me way happy, regardless of problems.

Comics stuff

So, my friend feochadn has started a journal, only she STILL doesn't have an entry yet (as of late last night). And Jo, I know what you need to make your first entry: A huge apology to me. Yes, that's right. Because she loaned me her The Authority comics and there are huge segments of important stories missing! It jumps from issue 22 to 27, and then there's only 27 and 28, and 28 was last year for god's sake, and it ends with Midnighter dying! And Apollo draped over him begging him to come back! I can't stand it. Gah!!!!!

And I have no sense of resolution on the #22 storyline, either, and am really wondering about that. Dammit, Jo, I'm relying on you for my Authority fix! Midnighter is becoming almost my favorite guy ever, and I love this group -- even maybe more than I loved Watchmen (my only complaint is that I'd like to see Midnighter and Apollo smooch a bit more). Especially in the issues that just ended, where I don't know the story resolution, I love the comparison between this fake, cruel Authority and the real ones -- the real Authority bicker and quibble and say snarky things to one another, but the fake ones are just plain nasty to each other, and there's no trust or teamwork. They're the antithesis in every respect, cowards and liars and backstabbers -- and completely missing the point that even the nastier elements of their personalities still help the real Authority work together better. I feel like I've had storius interruptus.

And today, elz has a nice commentary about something I think way too much about: souls and vampires and how it all fits into the picture of goodness, and what redemption means.

Spoilers for Miracles (as if anyone's watching!)

Last night’s episode of Miracles wasn’t as strong as the pilot. Naturally, because I’d told everyone I know they absolutely had to watch it, so they were probably all tuning in, going, she really is the biggest idiot around. Nevertheless, I found a lot to like about it, and while in order to progress the story a bit and move Callan into his new role of working with this investigatory group, as well as introduce these two characters into his life, they had to do that step-step-step approach, I did really enjoy it. There were, again, a lot of cool visuals (this is going to be fun to vid to!), and Skeet Ulrich is just wonderfully twitchy and haunted (literally, it seems, especially on the twitchy part). Angus MacFadyen was amusing with his portentous phrases and arch delivery, and then turning it around and almost mocking himself. His character is going to be very interesting.

It’s hard to tell with only two episodes so far, but it appears they are going to give us the emotionalism that I crave in a fannish-type show — the ending was a nice touch, and gives us a good indication of what Callan’s struggling with, trying to make these emotional connections to people while also being caught up in something darker and more frightening. While some of the passengers’ post-“miracle” experiences were a little far-fetched, the little girl who saw her future really got to me (how unbelievably creepy would that be to see at age 11 all the shit you’re going to go through as an adult, the failures and the emotional problems, and know there’s probably not a damn thing you can do about it?), as did the woman who burned up — if they hadn’t performed the autopsy, she’d have come back to life, and how really icky and freaky is that? Definitely going for that heebie-jeebie X-Files vibe and succeeding there, in a big way.

It doesn’t hurt that I’m really in love with Skeet, now. Yummy — but I want them to get him out of those sweater/shirt combos and into tees more often, and those shirts do nothing for him. This boy is delicious, they need to let him show it off. And Angus has trimmed down nicely (I noticed that in Equilibrium, even though there he still seemed on the portly side, which he seems to get on occasion) and looks quite dashing in his flowy coat. The two boys have a nice dynamic, I look forward to seeing more.

Veritas

This is wonderfully goofy and over the top. Not much else to say other than “speaking of nice dynamics” — Alex Cross and Arnold Vosloo make for a tasty, tasty dish. They have that cool adventurer and sidekick chemistry; I almost wish everyone else was off the show so they could just run around together. Vosloo’s character, with his martial arts teachings and deadpan asides, was just the highlight of the show — he’s a riot with his Zen cool master of all things attitude. And if you close your eyes when Alex Cross talks, he sounds exactly like Callum Keith Rennie. It’s freakish. But man, he’s easy on the eyes. Forget the annoying kid, keep the dad and Arnold, and let them be cool and vibey together, I say.

Non-reviewy life issues stuff

I’m having a minor crisis of faith about fanfic, or maybe it’s just a crisis of categorization — I’m working on a story in Mag 7 that is so not my pairing, as a gift for someone, and a really short story in Buffy that is ostensibly about Spike and Buffy, but Buffy’s not even in it (mostly because the longer, even weirder piece just is not coming together). And it’s lame and kinda pointless, I suppose. And I wonder about these kinds of things — I want to update my home page (anyone out there gifted at making banner .gifs for the graphically challenged? Have the Optima typeface and can translate what a non-designer would like to have, who’s also an idiot? Want to take on helping said idiot?), but even if I could update, I still have a structure where I focus on specific pairings within my fandoms (I’m completely J on the Myers-Briggs scale, and have to organize everything just so, or I get wiggy). I’m not sure what to do with stories like these precisely, where they don’t fit into my “one pairing, 24/7” motto, and I’m not even totally certain I should post them.

If one’s a gift, once it’s given, I’m not certain it’s something I even should post — and I’m not the type to send to archives; I’m a control freak and if I don’t put something on my page, I usually won’t do anything with it at all because I hate the idea of having stories floating around with my name on them that I don’t have ultimate control over (I realize that in reality I have none once they’re on the Web, I just like the delusional feeling of control). And the other story is just kind of stupid and short and dialogy, with Dawn and Spike — and I’m not certain it’s something I can say is Spuffyish, and fits in with my “Spike and Buffy 24/7” position, and maybe worse, whether it’s a complete waste of time. If people get to know your writing in a fandom and expect certain things from you, is it worth it to step outside that? (Not that I’m, like, a name or anything, but...) Fan writing is so different from my RL writing that I wonder a lot about expectations and assumptions. If you’ve structured your fandoms by certain ‘ships, and then you step outside those or come up with something that doesn’t fit perfectly within them, what do you do?

And if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?