August Reboot Not Running Yet

Getting back into my groove in August has not happened yet. What I have managed to accomplish: a Batman short story and a drabble set in the Dark Knight Rises. I'm glad I did something creative, but I need to spend this weekend working on chores and creative pursuits, while keeping a dental appointment and dealing with library books.

Laundry, dishes, the house needs a scrub over from ceiling to floor, website work, figure out where I am in writing projects, write, and cook; I'm exhausted by just the list. Course I'm also exhausted from eating too many carbs and not exercising enough. The ice cream was good though.

In other news, tabs I have left open to talk about. Time to clear them off.

• Headspring Press: need to read and see if they are a fit for my fiction.
• Wordhaus.com: another potential market
• The CanAm Missing Project: tucking this into the ideas folder. Possibly can work with the Piper of Shadows universe.
• New thoughts on "write what you know": I found this video interview compelling.
• Guest Blogger Starling: Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced: a post to explain to men that just don't get it.
• Not So Big House: concepts I want to use in the remodel of my house.

Last but not least: Batman: Puppet Master! This fan film is set after the Dark Knight and introduces the Riddler and Scarface to the Nolan Bat-verse. Kudos on the effects and the Batsuit, I like the tweak they gave the Riddler (not so much the actor's choices) but the real power of the whole thing is Wesker. If the actor playing Riddler had brought the same chops to this fan film that Frank Birney did, we'd have one hell of a film here.

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I'm Not at the Paying Job!

Yes, I have successfully left the paying job and now am watching to commercials at the movie theater for the Dark Knight Rises. What happened in Aurora, Colorado this morning didn't change my plans, but I am watching the people entering the theater and really took notice of the exits. It's a different world again.

Next week, I'll probably be staying late again so I deserve this treat. And getting in for a 4:30 feature was the best plan; no fighting for a seat.

After the movie: Wow, just wow. Do not wait to see this movie! I don't see any way of continuing without spoilers, so SPOILERS!

My inner Cat/Bat shipper is purring like a kitten. Bruce does show his legendary trait of picking the wrong woman, but in his defense, I think he picked up on a resemblance between Bane and Ra's al Ghul. Tom Hardy in the mask looked like Liam Neason a few time for me. And let us rejoice that there is no Damian in the Nolan Bat-verse!

Sticking with Bruce for a bit, the whole hermit/recluse thing was the one wrong note in the whole shebang. Problem one, he gives up on life because Rachel is dead. Ugh, too much power to an OC. Problem two, didn't Bruce gain an appreciation for what Wayne Enterprises meant at the end of Batman Begins? That's what I took away from him retaking control of the company.

The fanon explanation I'm building in my head: Batman vanished 8 years ago, taking the blame for Two-Face's murders. Bruce channeled money and energy into building the fusion power McGuffin, and then up pops the scientific paper that turns it into a nuclear warhead. Damnit, Gotham doesn't need Batman with the Dent Act and all he managed to do was build another weapon instead of anything useful like his father had done (the elevated train system), and that is what triggers the full recluse state a few years after Batman retires.

Anne Hathaway was brilliant as Selina Kyle! ChrisDee's Cat Tales are my favorite portrayals of Selina Kyle, but Anne was a better blend of the Frank Miller goggle-whore with the classy feline grace fans prefer than we could have gotten. Her character arc growing from a taker from the Have-Too-Much to a hero who rescues her man is pitch-perfect. THIS is the Catwoman that travesty of a Halle Berry film didn't even try to be.

Detective work unfortunately took a back seat and then was dropped by the wayside as the plot built up from the first two movies with graceful shout-outs to Knightfall and No Man's Land. But it did manage to lurk in the backstory, namely John Blake figures Batman's secret out. Then he figures out a lot more but not in time to do anything about it.

Now to talk about John Blake, the character the Internet couldn't figure out (maybe someone did guess successfully, I was avoiding spoilers). Kudos to the writers and Joseph Gordon-Levitt for pulling off a combination of traits from all the Robins: Dick Grayson's work as a cop, moral compass, and wise-ass nature; Jason Todd's anger at his orphan state, and the detective skills from Tim Drake. This is a great example of an OC done right, sorry poor dead Rachel. What I kept waiting for them to do was to tie Blake back to the kid Batman and Rachel saved in the Narrows, but they didn't.

Fanon exercise: If the timeline supports that kid being Blake, he is Blake. After all, Gordon went from having an infant in Batman Begins to two kids 10 or slightly under by the Dark Knight. If the timeline doesn't, that kid is going to become Nightwing's Robin.

Alfred, oh my god, Alfred. If you don't get teary eyes and sniffles when he breaks down at Thomas and Matha's graves saying how he failed them, you have no heart.

Which leads me to what I overheard in the theater during the credits. A couple down the row from me brought up the possibility that the last scene was a fantasy constructed by Alfred. While eating supper after the movie, I came up with an outline of why I thought it was real. Then when I got home and poked around the movie's IMDB page, I found out that Nolan constructed the ending so that both meanings could be read into it. And that was okay, because my outline of support became the basis for a fanfic expanding on what we didn't see.

Have a taste of what I came up with for the opening:

The bastard. Selina's fingers manipulated the lock picks automatically and left her mind free to run on the same track it had been running on for the past few days. The man she had mocked as a parasite, the man who gave Gotham everything he had, the man she had betrayed, the man who forgave her and trusted her to follow his path, the man she saved, the man who got past her claws and walls, the man she kissed without any ulterior motive, the man who died so a city might live.

Calling him the bastard was the trick to keeping her tears at bay.

Trust me, I have a lot more than that already. Which relieves me terribly, for it proves that all this overtime hasn't killed off all creativity.

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Closing Open Tabs

What Anonymous Doctor says hearted a million times:

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.

After all, it’s our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.

Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it’s the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation. They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women’s bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.

Where Is the Physician Outrage? Written by An Anonymous Doctor and originally published on Whatever (http://whatever.scalzi.com).

The Doonesbury strips referenced in "Where Is the Physician Outrage?"

Michael Bay vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles controversy: I ran across one theory that Michael Bay said he's making the Turtles aliens to deliberately rile the fandom up. Because what came up after that infamous remark was a comment that the ooze is alien. But you know what, the damage has been done. The awful stuff in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen insulted me (a white, non-Transformer fan woman), so I don't want Michael Bay anywhere near my green teens. Then to use my worry about a universe I adore and have accepted many mutations of by various license holders to stir up publicity? Oh hell no, you ain't get any of my money.

Because of all that and that I am a rabid fan of both franchises, this Gutters page made me giggle a lot.

Project Rooftop highlighted a redesign of the Turtles cast that kicks some shell!

Bully will be released un-rated, since the MPAA is being dicks about language used by actual teens. But male bums and full-frontal female nudity are fine for PG-13 movies. *Rolls eyes* From the trailer, I feel this is a movie that all of America needs to watch.



In full disclosure, I was alienated and had no school friends until I changed school districts for my sixth grade year. My online handle is my reclaiming the word that was constantly thrown in my face as an insult. And now what kids face is so much more worse and physical.

And my baby sister is engaged! We're all very excited and happy, even though the wedding itself is over a year away. Now that my neck is back to normal, I need to get back into exercising so I can shed the extra weight I'm carrying.

Okay, that's everything, I hope. Now I have to get back to outlining Forget the Sun and what the paying job actually pays me for. :p

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Geaux Tigers!

I can't have the TV on and get any work done, so its WWL and all the BCS talk. I want my state to win, evenif I'm not much of a football fan.

But I am a Better Than Ezra fan and they released Death Valley EP. The band started while they were students at LSU and they noticed that most of the fight songs hadn't been updated since they were first written, so they modernized the songs. Enjoy!





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Let's start the countdown!

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Too Cute!

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Craig Ferguson explains Doctor Who

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October's first week is done

October is moving along, faster than anyone probably likes. I realized it had been a while without an update, so here I am.

Progress with Primal lifestyle: I didn't lose any weight during the challenge, so I think I'm cheating somewhere and not realizing it. And I never managed to work the exercises in. But I'm feeling tons better, energy up, and no trouble with getting out of bed (and getting the lamp alarm to finally work has helped more than I expected it to). Keeping a food diary and opening up the routine to exercise are the next steps.

TV viewing has went way down. I'm taping Castle and watching Bones. What did they do to Bones' hair? For three episodes now, at random points during the show, I'll blurt out "I really don't like her hair." I laugh and concentrate on the mystery, so it really must be bothering me.

Creating threesomes for the sake of threesomes isn't me. So I was mildly surprised when my brain chimed in with Brennan/Booth/Hannah could work. Of course the one who will put up the most resistance will be Booth (oh Catholic guilt trips!) followed by Brennan (if I love people I lose them so let my brains keep me away from the rest of the human race). I still want to fix their confrontation in season five. Booth should have mentioned her baby want. Really, I didn't expect another outcome, including running away to Indonesia, but damn it the writers just left that alone like they forgot about it.

And Haven has gone bye-bye until second season (squee!). Frell, I did not see the twist they ended on coming at all, and I have been really good at picking the twist up by the thirty-minute mark. And what does it mean about Agent Howard, who also trained Mulder (*giggling*)? But how awesome is Vince, who knows so much more than he is telling but seems to have a strict hands-off policy to keep living in Haven. The tattoo appearing and disappearing on Julia and going back so far into Haven's history, delicious. It's not a separation between Troubled and the norms, so I'm intrigued with what else it could be a marker for. Poor Nathan and the Chief, but I was glad to see the Rev again. I thought they hadn't played enough with the fundamentalist wacko theory (the Troubled are Godless or cursed by God), so I'm looking forward to him shaking things up next season.

Mom and I went yesterday and saw Secretariat, and what an awesome bio pic it is. I'm still in awe at how they shot it to make you feel like you were riding the greatest racehorse that ever lived.

Novel Push Initiative: NPI has also been keeping me busy. I gave myself the goal of 250 daily words for the month of October in Zy's novel, which I finally named Stellar Gift of Death. So far I've kept ten days in a row.

I've also been working on editing "Covenant of the Restless," so it fits into the Piper of Shadows universe. Details are over in DUF.

Fun stuff: I found a new YouTube user whose fan trailers I adore. I really wish this one could happen for the small cameo at 0:30. *Sigh*



I would also love to sit through this movie:



And this one, the World's Finest moment makes me tear up:



Something Positive had a rift on witches that should amuse all the Oz fans I know.

And now I'm off to blog about NPI day 10, to finish folding laundry, and to edit "Covenant."

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Five Years Ago Today

I was at my baby sister's apartment in Natchitoches, having evacuated from a gal named Katerina. Mother Nature has decided we needed mood weather to remember and the thunderstorm hasn't stopped yet. The leak in my back bedroom is worse and now running down the wall. *head desk*

I guess I should start calling for estimates on a new roof that I know I can't afford because I have some outstanding debt to pay off first. I wanted to hold off until I could afford to extend the back half properly. I'll figure something out, eventually.

Now in honor of five years of rebuilding: Vince Vance's "I am New Orleans."


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Really not dead

Current progress on TinMan: Dragons and Ninjas

Progress Bar from Writertopia

Crap, two weeks? I thought for sure I had posted when I hit the month of writing mark. I thought for sure I had posted about seeing Hancock. Great, I guess I'm officially dreaming of writing blog posts now.

Well, Hancock will go into another post, probably after I see Hellboy II. The crazy people behavior I bitched about last post has receded out of my face again, and I'm thankful. So to writing.

As of July 4th, a full month of nonstop writing the likes I haven't had in a long damn time, I had 56,294 words. I'm pretty sure that's a personal best. This morning's total before I get started on it again is at the top of the post. What's not good is how everything else is still tossed aside for the story. It's great for the writing but not so good for the losing weight and exercising categories.

*Shrug* I'm past the climax and actually got through another smut scene. I think I have four or five more sections to go before reaching the end. I want to end in Kansas, but I'm not sure how to end in Kansas yet. I'm not stressing over it. Some scenes I had perfectly outlined in my head and knew what was going to happen before I wrote them (Zack teaching DG self-defense and Cain's reaction is one example) and other scenes just came to me on the spur of the moment (Cain needs to be in danger to get DG's butt moving, research Japanese torture methods during World War II, oh they used waterboarding, wow that ends up being on par with Donnie's torture scene from Family, Friends, and Foes). In shorter words, it'll come together.

And I ended up with another theme song for it. I really don't know how that keeps happening.


Well, I have a tough scene to compose right now DG confronting her mother about the state of the O.Z. with a lot of tricky character stuff I want to do. Let me go get on that.

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This is the way writing used to be

I'm over 19,000 words into the project I started on June 4th. I can't stop not working on it, I can't get it out of my head, the words are coming so easily.

So why is it TinMan fanfiction instead of my original project?

I have no idea. I thought it was going to be like my Hellsing love, where I love madly but no participating. *Sigh* At this point, I've decided to finish it and then get back to my vampires.

Also, I ended up with three theme songs. *Scratching head* I'm not exactly sure how that happened either. I think my muse backed over me with a dump truck.

The first theme song is "Home" by Breaking Benjamin, which serves as a great theme for the TinMan universe.


The second theme song is "Suffer" by the Echoing Green for the angsty-portions.


The third theme song is "I Turn to You" by Melanie C and it's for the action-packed climax. Yes, I can see that portion of my story set to this song as a video. Scary, who would I get to play Zack?


Yeah, it's technically a crossover. Zack got sent on one of solo-adventures, and Allie and Mike are probably going to make an appearance at the end. I don't know why he keeps getting caught up in these crazy adventures, and I'm blaming everything on the muse's dump truck.

Here's the whole playlist of what I really like so far.


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Hellsing Yummy

I'm on a Hellsing kick. I'm sure it has more to do with me about to start a story with vampires and nearly nothing to do with my wanting a nearly seven-foot-tall, bad-boy-sexy vampire who could scary the bejesus out of anyone I ordered him to. You believe me, right? Of course, there's a health dose of escaping the damn ethnography. I doubt you can get much further than Alucard fighting un-dead Nazis.

So I've been gathering AMVs, which has a bonus that I'm getting introduced to new songs and bands to inspire the Strix stuff. This one is currently one of my favorites.



I've been comparing the anime (which I have the whole box set) to the OVAs (which I only have volumes I and II). I've been coveting getting the complete manga set (it's not finished yet, and I only have volume 8). I've been lapping up And Shine Heaven Now (Erin Ptah keeps the characters very in character but gives them funny. And her crossovers are the bomb). And I've been reading fanfiction.

Here's another vid before the ranting part of the post. Warning: it's a gory cut.


I do have one issue with the canon that sort of bleeds into what I have issues with in the fanfiction. It's not bad enough to spoil my enjoyment and it may be a translation issue. I can cut slack on translation issues. But my brain picks at it.

The setting is 1999. Sir Integra Hellsing is 22 years old, so that means she was born in 1977. Her father Arthur dies and she wakes up Alucard in 1989. Alucard was imprisoned 20 years before in 1969. Arthur was leading Hellsing in 1944 in his twenties, so that means he would have been born in the 1920s.

Integra Hellsing is the last descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, who is often enough called her grandfather to make me gnaw. The math doesn't work, and my brain will seize upon it and not let go.

The setting for Dracula is commonly pinpointed to 1887. Abraham Van Helsing is described physically:

"a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods."

He is a medical doctor, and a doctor of philosophy and literature. He taught Dr. Seward. We're not talking about a wunderkid here; he is a paternal figure for the rest of the crew of vampire hunters, and even says Arthur Holmwood reminds him of his dead son.

I always want to cast him in his sixties, but it could be the fifties. Even if Abraham is 50 in 1887, that means he would be 83 in 1920, which would be the earliest for Arthur to be born. DOES NOT COMPUTE! There must be a missing generation between Abraham and Arthur. Maybe the Japanese term for male ancestor translates to "grandfather" no matter where on the actual family tree the guy falls.

And this is enough of a break in suspension of disbelief that whenever I see Abraham is grandfather, I get the DOES NOT COMPUTE! and have to remind myself of the missing generation. Cause either it's a missing generation, or Abraham had a slew of sons and control of the Hellsing Organization bounced around brothers for a while. I'm glad it doesn't come up THAT often.

But other than having to deal with the DOES NOT COMPUTE! message, it doesn't bother me when I see it in fanfiction. After all, they are only copying what has been said in the manga (I think the anime and OVA are a little more murky with the family tree). No what drives me batty in the fanfics are when they haven't bothered to read Dracula at all! Kouta Hirano doesn't follow it slavishly, but he uses enough of it that if you fanfic writer are going to use the characters, you should go see the source material. None of the film adaptations even get you close, NONE.

Yes, I got thrown out of a okay fanfic describing Abraham and Alucard's relationship by the author having Dr. Seward call Van Helsing "boy." Ignoring the appalling lack of knowledge on Victorian manners, Seward would not call his old friend and former master "boy." And you would know this if you read the bloody book.

I know I need to leave in the review to the actual guilty author. But I've been wanting to rant about the bad math for a while now, so you get to have both. Sorry. Here's another vid if you made it this far. I like this one, combining the anime footage with the music video footage.


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Rose on the Other Side

So one of the Christmas presents I bought with Dad's gift money is a soundtrack of Doctor Who scores, specifically Nine and Ten with Rose. Since I've been listening to it non-stop for the commute four days now, I've been having fun Doctor Who thoughts.

As the "Doomsday" track played for the upteenth time, my muse popped up with the following observation. "Rose is working for airship world's Torchwood, maybe even running it like Capt. Jack. But for the world to have a Torchwood, they have to have a Doctor to inspire its creation. But it wouldn't be our Doctor, the one Rose fell in love with, and wouldn't have had a relationship with her because Rose didn't exist on that world. Oh the possibilities!"

I wish I knew a Doctor Who fanficer to give it to, since I probably won't do anything with it. A dozen probably already have used the idea; I'm slow with seeing these things. Hell, might even be an official spin-off book dealing with the idea as far as I know. (If there is, tell me, I REALLY want to read it now.)

That was yesterday around lunch. After lunch, I came across a news article that Doctor Who wants to get Tom Cruise and some other celebs into the blockbuster episodes that will air in 2009, David Tennent's last. I kept reading while reeling from that to find out that Billie Piper will be reprising her role as Rose soon. And today I found this article catching up with Billie Piper taking a break on the set of Doctor Who.

Damn, will they use that? Two copies of David Tennent breaking a dimensional barrier?

*Head 'splodes*

If I'm having a psychic connection with someone in production, why won't it answer my Titanic question? (How the hell is the Doctor going to get the TARDIS off the ship or the ship out of the TARDIS? I'm not exactly sure which is the proper way to phrase the idea.) I want to know for Christmas--not the middle of summer! Stupid Sci-Fi Channel delay.

And make the Agatha Christie episode! I love the Dickens one and the Shakespeare one. Maybe her two week disappearance for a story start? And put Torchwood on DVD. I can't work it into my schedule when it shows on BBC America. And I want more Capt. Jack sexyness.

So to sum up, a YouTube fanvid "Doctor Who - The Other Side - Scissor Sisters."



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There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/