life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

elerrina_amanya is down in Belfast. She's living where I lived, in the room that I had in second year. She's doing some of my modules. It's a rather weird feeling.

So far it does seem to have freed up the computer well at night, but the wrath of my little brother may descend on me at any moment. :)

And previously:
1. Padmé
2. Anakin
3. Chancellor Palpatine
4. Obi-Wan
5. Yoda
6. Old Ben
7. Luke
8. Vader
9. Han Solo
10. Wedge Antilles

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From: i_rule_the_galaxy_mwahahaha@empire.gov
To: skywalker_l@alliance.net, organa@alliance.net, sexy_scoundrel@galacticmail.com, vader@empire.gov
Subject: Re: Fw: Re: Re: Fw: Survey

Subject: Survey


NAME: Supreme Emperor Palpatine, Ruler of the Galaxy.

NICKNAMES: Your Supremeness, Most Noble and Mighty Emperor, Yes, My Master (that one's Vader)

SEX: Who needs sex when I have power?! UNLIMITED POWER! MWAHAHAHA!!

( Read more... )

We've started the annual rodent wars with a bang. Yesterday my mum saw a mouse run over the worktops in the kitchen. Bleach, mousetraps, chocolate. Then another one peered out from behind the Aga. (Someone must have left a door open recently).
Then after we came back from church my dad said, 'Look at the huge moth in the hall!', and we looked, and it was a bat. It sort of twitched when we put the light on, and we flapped at it ineffectually. Then it lay down on the floor and squeaked at us in a distressing manner. I've never heard one at such close quarters before; I can well believe they're ultrasonic. Eventually my dad got it onto a flattened-out cereal packet and got it to go out the front door.
Bat, mice...all we need now are the squirrels.

I saw it with elerrina_amanya the other day. The main problem I had with it was the length; too many things had to be left out, including most of the Wickham plot, which means there was no red herring for Elizabeth. And Lydia's elopement must have come completely from left field for anyone who hadn't read the book.
The Bennets in one way were too nice (Mary wasn't snooty enough, and Lydia and Kitty were giggly rather than flirty. Even Mrs Bennet was toned down a few notches.), apart from the eavesdropping. On Bingley's proposal and all! I'm surprised he didn't flee then and there. Diffident!Bingley was rather funny and likeable, if not exactly canon, and you could really see the good side of Darcy in the second half of the film. I liked Charlotte Lucas as well, the actress got across her plight of an unmarried 27-year-old in a way that the BBC didn't really.

Miss Bingley's actress I can't quite place—some UK soap? I wasn't convinced by her sleeveless ballgown; it kept looking like her corsets to me. And on the subject of clothes, why was there so much nightclothes interaction? Darcy's motive for hand-delivering his letter (much curtailed, of course, in the film) was probably to avoid the servants' gossip, which would have been achieved really well by visiting her in her bedroom after she had retired. Oh, and Mr Bennet talks about powdering his hair or something in the book, whereas in the film he didn't even seem to shave. And the Bennets are more close to their farm than the Bingleys, but I can't believe that they and their visitors would have walked through it every time they went out of the house.

Oh, and could someone please cast Lydia as a blonde or something, so that I don't have to spend the first ten minutes wondering which is Kiity and which is Lydia?

But I did enjoy the film, although it was no substitute for the book, or the beloved BBC version. Very nice visually—and for the making of icons, of course. I've done a few bases myself.

Teasers:

( 25 Elizabeth Bennet bases )

Comment, credit, and if you make icons out of them, I'd be interested to see them.

Went into town to try to get some gear for a wedding I'm going to in November. Also new trainers, because the current pair are getting scratched, and have been submerged in the sea and smeared in cow crap...

So, shoes and a dress/skirt, right? Returned home with a shirt/jersey all-in-one top. But it was a lovely jade-green colour which suits me well, and it's so hard to get that...

My entry to the Jack ficathon is now, by a conservative estimate, approaching 5000 words, and it keeps sprouting new ramifications and twiddly bits. If I could write concisely I could produce many more stories for the same number of words. This is what happens when I try to introduce plot! Massive great bloated things...

Anyway, I'm starting to type it up now, and I've just realised that I've fallen into a pov trap. I have a character whom Jack dislikes (and vice versa), but although he's snarky and obsessive and not intended to be sympathetic to the reader, he is consistent from his own viewpoint, and understandable to an extent. As I'm writing in tight third-person (Jack's), I find that this hasn't come across at all. A slight re-wriet seems to be in order, but I have no idea how to do it. Has this sort of thing ever happened to you?

We're running out of hours of dial-up this month. It gets renewed at midnight on Saturday 11th (why couldn't it have been one day earlier?), so my time online is a trifle limited. If I don't answer your comments, or comment to your clever and wonderful post, please forgive me.

Teasers



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Comment & credit, no hotlinking.

During the last episode of the series Characters A and B left Character C in a rather unpleasant situation because they thought he was dead (which he was, briefly). This spawned a lot of fics in which A and B go back to rescue C. C is canonically possessed of considerable technical knowledge and resource, not to mention charm. My fic had him getting himself out of the situation (which is what I think is likely to happen in the next series) and going on a desperate wild-goose chase after A and B, and eventually finding them with a lot of luck.

I didn't go into detail of the actual escape, I just stated that it happened and left it up to the readers on the basis that their imaginations would be equal to it. One person got back to me asking about it, and I responded with two of my canon speculations. The reader then responded: Thanks, you should really put these things in your fic you know. Plot holes can grind on people.

Now the point of the fic wasn't 'What happened to C after the series finished'. It wasn't plot driven; the focus of the fic was how much C wanted to find his friends, how happy they were to see him and how C reacted to certain changes in A that also happened in the last episode of the series. It was a character-story, not a plot- or event-story. I might go back and write the event-story, or the next series may fill it in better than I could.

The purpose of this is to ask: was I expecting to much of my readers? I know with torture and sex scenes it's often more effective to fade to black and let the reader's imagination fill in the blank. Can you do that with a bald statement: getting out of there wasn't a problem cos C is so cool? Is it too much to expect that readers can work out what the story's meant to be about?

So far:

The Medical Physics Agency sent me feedback on my interview. It was sort of okay; they said that intellectually I was capable of doing the project, but that I wasn't confident enough in the interview, that I didn't describe my own old project well enough (I have trouble remembering it by now!), and that other people beat me on programming.

I don't really want that PhD, but it makes me down to think of finding a job. :(