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Crack addiction
So, um, yeah, I haven't been showing much progress on my word meter, and I'm not finished with chapter 14 yet. *cough cough* Remember the Wheaton/Scalzi fanfic writing contest, that I posted about at the end of May? Well, I finished my entry and submitted it yesterday. As of last night, I am officially No Longer Being Distracted By A Second Project, and I'm back to Mac.
In the meanwhile, the contest results won't be announced until some time in August, and in the interim, the contestants are being encouraged to post their stories if they so choose.
Before you attempt to read this, you might want to go back to Scalzi's blog and look at the picture again. Especially if you haven't seen it before. (True, in that case, you won't actually be 'seeing it again', but let's not get overly pedantic, okay?)
This may or may not be the crackiest thing I've done -- Doctor Who and the Hodge-Podge is certainly a contender -- but it must be close. I'm not even sure how much one can count it as RPF. It's more like Unreal Person Fic -- including the implausible set-up, with two real people saying, "Hey, write fic about us." (Followed immediately by the admonition "But no slash!") (Quickly modified to "No explicit sex! Non-sexual situations such as china shopping are okay, though.")
Once the twin green suns had dropped below the northern horizon, Jhonn the Scalzorc, Lord of Snark, rose from his bed of debauchery, breakfasted on trolls’ flesh, n00bsblood, and bacon, and sought out his friend Wil the Warrior. The realm basked in the comfortable lava-lamp glow of the volcanoes, and Jhonn need not fear the evil sunlight.
He found Wil drinking Velvet Wesleys and admiring the undulations of harem girls.
Several hours later, after the exhausted harem girls had fallen asleep, Wil noticed his friend was still there. “Yo, whuzzup?” quoth the mighty warrior.
“You’re quothing again,” said Jhonn. “Cut it out. I have had the dream again, of square glowing screens and small keys with letters.”
“Well, that sucks,” said Wil.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if I could read,” the Scalzorc grumbled, “or if there were harem girls on the screens.”
“You are accursed, my friend!” the warrior declared. “We are all suffering. My own screens have been dark these many moons.”
“I told you, you should’ve switched to broadband.”
“I did! But evil is afoot in the land. The intrawebz has been stolen by the Special Effects Wizard, and all our screens are darkened.”
“Well, that sucks,” said Jhonn.
“No kidding. His special effects budget was slashed – ”
“Hey! We agreed, no slash!”
“ – was cut, and in wrath he has cursed the intranetz.”
“Did he steal them or curse them?”
“Who cares? Come, let us gather our weapons and go kick his ass.”
Jhonn nodded. “ ‘Tis a cromulent quest. Great fortune cometh to he who defeats the Special Effects Wizard.”
“I can’t believe you just said ‘cometh’.”
“Bite me,” quoth the Scalzorc.
“No slash!!” snarled the warrior. “It will be an exciting, action-packed, epic journey, and our mighty deeds will delight the makers of stories and publishers of best-sellers!”
“What if publishing is a dying profession?”
“STFU, Jhonn.”
“Wow, that was an exciting, action-packed journey!” Wil exclaimed. He flexed his mighty thews. “I think I strained something splattering that last pack of zombies.”
“The thews are looking mighty, though,” the Scalzorc remarked. “Been working out?”
“Don’t get snarky. Everyone knows I have the physique of a Greek god.”
“No, everyone knows you have the physique of a geek god.”
“What’s one letter more or less? You can’t even read.”
Behind them lay the realm of the Special Effects Wizard, vast matte-painted plains littered with the detritus of their recent epic battles. Furtive shapes pawed over the fallen CGI hordes, looking for lines of intact code to pirate. The air was still thick with pixels.
During their harrowing passage through the manifold levels, the brave companions had racked up imposingly high scores, but the toll had been high. Most of the Scalzorc’s sparse hair was utterly gone, and Wil had been forced, in heroic desperation, to don the Clown Sweater of Doom to overcome the fearsome Guardian of the Rotoscoped Rotunda. That Guardian now lay dead, its eyes empty scorched sockets, its aesthetic sensitivities blasted by the searing horror of the Sweater.
Before them loomed the Lair, its massive forced-perspective walls towering out of sight. The ramparts were patrolled by an endless mob of infinitely mirrored extras, their limbs twitching jerkily in a Ray Harryhausen nightmare. Great black crows wheeled overhead, occasionally dive-bombing Wil in futile attempts to seize a loose end of his sweater and begin unraveling it.
“I don’t like this,” Jhonn murmured.
“Oh, stop whining. They aren’t after your sweater.”
“I don’t mean the damned crows! The gate’s wide open. Who ever heard of a Lair with an open gate?”
The air quivered with the deep resounding thrum of dramatic music.
“Shit,” quoth Jhonn.
“Here it comes,” quoth Wil.
With a howling series of chords from an electric cello and the final crash of a tuba –
“What?”
Jhonn shrugged. “Just because it’s dramatic music doesn’t mean it’s any good.”
With a howling series of chords from an electric synthesizer and the final crash of a kettledrum –
“Better,” said Wil.
– a roiling morass of stage fog boiled out from the gate like a huge frothy topping of Fail Whip on a creamy Fuckup Pudding Cup. Coils of fog twisted in clashing shades of cyan and magenta, emitting a stench of unrefrigerated week-old tuna casserole. Bolts of eye-searing energy slashed jaggedly through the cloud –
“No slash!!”
– ripped jaggedly through the cloud. Through the opening crawled a small tabby kitten with wide green eyes.
“Mew.”
The Scalzorc’s mighty axe sagged and his fierce visage softened at teh cute. “Awwww. Where’s my camera? I haven’t posted a picture of a cat in ages.”
“Well, duh. We lost our wireless connection back when we were attacked by the Animatronic Aardvarks. You can’t post anything until we defeat the Wizard Richard – ”
“His name’s Richard?”
“Yeah, and he’s being a Dick. And first, we must subdue this ferocious creature!”
“Mew.” The kitten gazed wide-eyed at Wil’s sweater and pounced on Jhonn’s toes.
“This’ll be easy,” Wil declared. He raised his mighty spear –
“No slash!”
“Aw, give it a break. It’s a real spear. You know? As in ‘spear-carrier’?” Wil lifted his mighty spear and wiggled its point in front of the kitten’s nose. Entranced, the kitten pounced, and Wil moved the spear out of its reach.
The frustrated kitten stretched out a tiny paw, swatted at empty air, and yowled.
“meeeEEEEWWWWWW . . . ”
As it lunged towards its elusive prey, the muscles underneath the kitten’s fur rippled, stretched, and then stretched again, hideously distorting its form like a Dali watch. The eyes gleamed with manic lust at the maddening speartip. The hind paws extended into long, narrow withers, melting from feline into equine, the claws fusing to become hooves, the tail narrowing and then splitting into a long flowing tress of horsehair, still lashing back and forth as the enraged cat shuddered in its transformation.
The kitten reared up on its hind legs and yowled, towering over the adventurers. As it pawed the air, its shoulders rippled and blurred, and giant wings erupted and spread across the sky. The claws on the front paws gleamed, curved razors. The kitten tossed its head, and a golden horn sprouted between its eyes and spiraled up, the deadly point winking in the ambient red glow of the volcanoes.
“Awesome,” Wil breathed.
“Aw, shit,” Jhonn snapped. “So much for teh cute.” He elbowed Wil. “Don’t just stand there! Do something!”
“What?”
“I don’t know! Tame it!”
“Are you shitting me? You tame it!”
“Hel-lo? Orc here! You ever see an Orc riding a horse? We don’t tame animals, we eat them.”
“That’s not a horse!”
“Well, it sure as hell isn’t a cheeseburger! It’s, oh shit, what is it?”
“It’s a, um, it’s – a UnicornPegasusKitten!”
The Scalzorc frowned. “Does that count as one word or three towards total word count?”
“Who the fuck cares?!?”
The UnicornPegasusKitten lunged at Wil’s spear.
“Get on its back!” Jhonn shouted.
“How?”
“You’re a mighty-thewed warrior, right? Don’t warriors do that kind of shit all the time?”
“Oh. Right.” Wil hefted his spear, eyeing his adversary with the calm, confident demeanor suitable to all mighty-thewed warriors attempting epic feats. With his other hand, he reached into his dice pouch and withdrew his d20. The Great Die, carved out of solid ruby by the Master Diemaker of Gygax, was the seal of office for the Secretary of Geek Affairs. Doughty warriors had been known to cast down their weapons and flee at the mere sight of this magnificent icosahedron.
Unfortunately, cats had never been known to give a rat’s ass about it.
The psychotic gaze of the kitten followed the sparkling shape of the die as it rolled past. Wil vaulted onto the broad furry back of the UnicornPegasusKitten even as the die finished rolling and settled. The gold ‘20’ shimmered with its promise of unparalleled success in all epic feats.
The kitten squalled, smacked the die with one paw, spread its fearsome wings and leapt into the air with an ear-shredding caterwaul.
“Shit!” Wil swayed dangerously as the kitten swooped. “What the hell went wrong?”
“I think your sweater pissed it off!”
“I thought cats were colourblind!”
“With a sweater that loud, it’d have to be deaf as well!”
The kitten soared into the ruddy sky and swooped again, alarmingly close to the molten lava that boiled from the nearest volcanic peak. Wil barely kept his precarious seat. With the cunning of the true warrior, he reached forward and skritched the kitten behind one massive ear.
“Niiiice kitty . . . ” he crooned. He leaned forward to whisper into its ear. “You want tummy rubs? Land safely and you get tummy rubs . . . you’d like that, right?”
Perhaps the Evil Wizard was watching, aware that his minion was being subverted. Perhaps the Great d20 had landed on a 2. Perhaps the ugliness of the Sweater was so profound as to weaken the very fabric of existence. Perhaps the plot required an additional complication.
With the shattering din of a thousand Foley artists flinging a thousand crash boxes at their mothers-in-law, reality wrenched sideways. The nearest volcano belched, glowered at its mother and refused to apologize for its bad manners. Wil abruptly found himself soaring in the opposite direction from the moment before; on the ground below, Jhonn stumbled as the world realigned, narrowly avoiding a plunge into the inevitable convenient bottomless abyss that gaped open at his feet.
“What the fuck – ?”
“That goddamned Special Effects Wizard!” Wil roared. “He’s flipped the image in frame! Shit!”
“So what’s the big deal?” Jhonn tried to juggle his shield and axe, which he now held in the wrong hands. “It feels weird, but the overall picture composition is much better this way . . . ”
“I’m right haaannndddeeeeeeddd . . . ” Wil awkwardly waved his spear with his left hand. He was clutching the reins of the UnicornPegasusKitten with his right hand –
“Excuse me? The UPK has reins?”
He was clutching the cords of his iPod with his right hand, and didn’t dare let go in case the UPK hated his playlist.
“That’s even weirder.”
Bite me.
“No slash!”
Oh, you just wait.
Wil’s mighty spear elongated, caught in the Special Effects Field that had so changed the once-cute kitten. It grew to such a length and weight that even the mighty Wil could no longer hold it up; the tip sagged, the sharp edges coming dangerously near to his friend as the UPK swooped down upon him.
“All right, that’s enough!” Jhonn roared. “Give it a fucking break already!” He cast aside his useless axe and reached for his belt.
The air thrummed with consternation as Jhonn the Scalzorc brandished the Mallet of Loving Correction.
With the UnicornPegasusKitten bearing down on him in its final attack, the Scalzorc turned to the weakest point in the Wizard’s defenses. He swung the Mallet of Loving Correction and dealt a cataclysmic blow to the Fourth Wall, which had already been broken.
Wil and Jhonn staggered to their feet, their ears ringing. The Lair had vanished into nothingness, its underpinnings utterly shattered by that one mighty blow at the foundation of unreality. Before them, a very ordinary, very astonished kitten looked around in confusion, spotted the d20 and pounced on it.
Wil retrieved his priceless die, picked up the kitten and rubbed its tummy. “Never let it be said that Wil the Warrior broke his word.”
Jhonn laughed, and the startled kitten bit Wil on his bearded chin and LOL’ed.
“Damn it! You’re scaring it!”
“My bad.”
“I am so Tweeting this,” Wil remarked. “And you should sleep soundly now. The UnicornPegasusKitten banishes all bad dreams, save nightmares of itself.”
The Scalzorc scowled. “So is it time for epic feasting yet?”
“I guess. Pizza sound good?”
“What about the intratubes?”
“Oh, screw them.”
“Now, that really does sound slashy.”
“Okay, okay, enough of that! Drop it already!” Wil snarled. “We’ve long since hit the ‘gag’ part of ‘running gag’.”
“Whatever.” Jhonn shrugged. “Let’s go shop for china patterns.”
And yes, I'm back to finishing Reverb now. I promise!
In the meanwhile, the contest results won't be announced until some time in August, and in the interim, the contestants are being encouraged to post their stories if they so choose.
Before you attempt to read this, you might want to go back to Scalzi's blog and look at the picture again. Especially if you haven't seen it before. (True, in that case, you won't actually be 'seeing it again', but let's not get overly pedantic, okay?)
This may or may not be the crackiest thing I've done -- Doctor Who and the Hodge-Podge is certainly a contender -- but it must be close. I'm not even sure how much one can count it as RPF. It's more like Unreal Person Fic -- including the implausible set-up, with two real people saying, "Hey, write fic about us." (Followed immediately by the admonition "But no slash!") (Quickly modified to "No explicit sex! Non-sexual situations such as china shopping are okay, though.")
Where There’s a Wil
or
How to Scalzorchestrate Your Enemies’ Downfall
or
How to Scalzorchestrate Your Enemies’ Downfall
Once the twin green suns had dropped below the northern horizon, Jhonn the Scalzorc, Lord of Snark, rose from his bed of debauchery, breakfasted on trolls’ flesh, n00bsblood, and bacon, and sought out his friend Wil the Warrior. The realm basked in the comfortable lava-lamp glow of the volcanoes, and Jhonn need not fear the evil sunlight.
He found Wil drinking Velvet Wesleys and admiring the undulations of harem girls.
Several hours later, after the exhausted harem girls had fallen asleep, Wil noticed his friend was still there. “Yo, whuzzup?” quoth the mighty warrior.
“You’re quothing again,” said Jhonn. “Cut it out. I have had the dream again, of square glowing screens and small keys with letters.”
“Well, that sucks,” said Wil.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if I could read,” the Scalzorc grumbled, “or if there were harem girls on the screens.”
“You are accursed, my friend!” the warrior declared. “We are all suffering. My own screens have been dark these many moons.”
“I told you, you should’ve switched to broadband.”
“I did! But evil is afoot in the land. The intrawebz has been stolen by the Special Effects Wizard, and all our screens are darkened.”
“Well, that sucks,” said Jhonn.
“No kidding. His special effects budget was slashed – ”
“Hey! We agreed, no slash!”
“ – was cut, and in wrath he has cursed the intranetz.”
“Did he steal them or curse them?”
“Who cares? Come, let us gather our weapons and go kick his ass.”
Jhonn nodded. “ ‘Tis a cromulent quest. Great fortune cometh to he who defeats the Special Effects Wizard.”
“I can’t believe you just said ‘cometh’.”
“Bite me,” quoth the Scalzorc.
“No slash!!” snarled the warrior. “It will be an exciting, action-packed, epic journey, and our mighty deeds will delight the makers of stories and publishers of best-sellers!”
“What if publishing is a dying profession?”
“STFU, Jhonn.”
- - -
“Wow, that was an exciting, action-packed journey!” Wil exclaimed. He flexed his mighty thews. “I think I strained something splattering that last pack of zombies.”
“The thews are looking mighty, though,” the Scalzorc remarked. “Been working out?”
“Don’t get snarky. Everyone knows I have the physique of a Greek god.”
“No, everyone knows you have the physique of a geek god.”
“What’s one letter more or less? You can’t even read.”
Behind them lay the realm of the Special Effects Wizard, vast matte-painted plains littered with the detritus of their recent epic battles. Furtive shapes pawed over the fallen CGI hordes, looking for lines of intact code to pirate. The air was still thick with pixels.
During their harrowing passage through the manifold levels, the brave companions had racked up imposingly high scores, but the toll had been high. Most of the Scalzorc’s sparse hair was utterly gone, and Wil had been forced, in heroic desperation, to don the Clown Sweater of Doom to overcome the fearsome Guardian of the Rotoscoped Rotunda. That Guardian now lay dead, its eyes empty scorched sockets, its aesthetic sensitivities blasted by the searing horror of the Sweater.
Before them loomed the Lair, its massive forced-perspective walls towering out of sight. The ramparts were patrolled by an endless mob of infinitely mirrored extras, their limbs twitching jerkily in a Ray Harryhausen nightmare. Great black crows wheeled overhead, occasionally dive-bombing Wil in futile attempts to seize a loose end of his sweater and begin unraveling it.
“I don’t like this,” Jhonn murmured.
“Oh, stop whining. They aren’t after your sweater.”
“I don’t mean the damned crows! The gate’s wide open. Who ever heard of a Lair with an open gate?”
The air quivered with the deep resounding thrum of dramatic music.
“Shit,” quoth Jhonn.
“Here it comes,” quoth Wil.
With a howling series of chords from an electric cello and the final crash of a tuba –
“What?”
Jhonn shrugged. “Just because it’s dramatic music doesn’t mean it’s any good.”
With a howling series of chords from an electric synthesizer and the final crash of a kettledrum –
“Better,” said Wil.
– a roiling morass of stage fog boiled out from the gate like a huge frothy topping of Fail Whip on a creamy Fuckup Pudding Cup. Coils of fog twisted in clashing shades of cyan and magenta, emitting a stench of unrefrigerated week-old tuna casserole. Bolts of eye-searing energy slashed jaggedly through the cloud –
“No slash!!”
– ripped jaggedly through the cloud. Through the opening crawled a small tabby kitten with wide green eyes.
“Mew.”
The Scalzorc’s mighty axe sagged and his fierce visage softened at teh cute. “Awwww. Where’s my camera? I haven’t posted a picture of a cat in ages.”
“Well, duh. We lost our wireless connection back when we were attacked by the Animatronic Aardvarks. You can’t post anything until we defeat the Wizard Richard – ”
“His name’s Richard?”
“Yeah, and he’s being a Dick. And first, we must subdue this ferocious creature!”
“Mew.” The kitten gazed wide-eyed at Wil’s sweater and pounced on Jhonn’s toes.
“This’ll be easy,” Wil declared. He raised his mighty spear –
“No slash!”
“Aw, give it a break. It’s a real spear. You know? As in ‘spear-carrier’?” Wil lifted his mighty spear and wiggled its point in front of the kitten’s nose. Entranced, the kitten pounced, and Wil moved the spear out of its reach.
The frustrated kitten stretched out a tiny paw, swatted at empty air, and yowled.
“meeeEEEEWWWWWW . . . ”
As it lunged towards its elusive prey, the muscles underneath the kitten’s fur rippled, stretched, and then stretched again, hideously distorting its form like a Dali watch. The eyes gleamed with manic lust at the maddening speartip. The hind paws extended into long, narrow withers, melting from feline into equine, the claws fusing to become hooves, the tail narrowing and then splitting into a long flowing tress of horsehair, still lashing back and forth as the enraged cat shuddered in its transformation.
The kitten reared up on its hind legs and yowled, towering over the adventurers. As it pawed the air, its shoulders rippled and blurred, and giant wings erupted and spread across the sky. The claws on the front paws gleamed, curved razors. The kitten tossed its head, and a golden horn sprouted between its eyes and spiraled up, the deadly point winking in the ambient red glow of the volcanoes.
“Awesome,” Wil breathed.
“Aw, shit,” Jhonn snapped. “So much for teh cute.” He elbowed Wil. “Don’t just stand there! Do something!”
“What?”
“I don’t know! Tame it!”
“Are you shitting me? You tame it!”
“Hel-lo? Orc here! You ever see an Orc riding a horse? We don’t tame animals, we eat them.”
“That’s not a horse!”
“Well, it sure as hell isn’t a cheeseburger! It’s, oh shit, what is it?”
“It’s a, um, it’s – a UnicornPegasusKitten!”
The Scalzorc frowned. “Does that count as one word or three towards total word count?”
“Who the fuck cares?!?”
The UnicornPegasusKitten lunged at Wil’s spear.
“Get on its back!” Jhonn shouted.
“How?”
“You’re a mighty-thewed warrior, right? Don’t warriors do that kind of shit all the time?”
“Oh. Right.” Wil hefted his spear, eyeing his adversary with the calm, confident demeanor suitable to all mighty-thewed warriors attempting epic feats. With his other hand, he reached into his dice pouch and withdrew his d20. The Great Die, carved out of solid ruby by the Master Diemaker of Gygax, was the seal of office for the Secretary of Geek Affairs. Doughty warriors had been known to cast down their weapons and flee at the mere sight of this magnificent icosahedron.
Unfortunately, cats had never been known to give a rat’s ass about it.
The psychotic gaze of the kitten followed the sparkling shape of the die as it rolled past. Wil vaulted onto the broad furry back of the UnicornPegasusKitten even as the die finished rolling and settled. The gold ‘20’ shimmered with its promise of unparalleled success in all epic feats.
The kitten squalled, smacked the die with one paw, spread its fearsome wings and leapt into the air with an ear-shredding caterwaul.
“Shit!” Wil swayed dangerously as the kitten swooped. “What the hell went wrong?”
“I think your sweater pissed it off!”
“I thought cats were colourblind!”
“With a sweater that loud, it’d have to be deaf as well!”
The kitten soared into the ruddy sky and swooped again, alarmingly close to the molten lava that boiled from the nearest volcanic peak. Wil barely kept his precarious seat. With the cunning of the true warrior, he reached forward and skritched the kitten behind one massive ear.
“Niiiice kitty . . . ” he crooned. He leaned forward to whisper into its ear. “You want tummy rubs? Land safely and you get tummy rubs . . . you’d like that, right?”
Perhaps the Evil Wizard was watching, aware that his minion was being subverted. Perhaps the Great d20 had landed on a 2. Perhaps the ugliness of the Sweater was so profound as to weaken the very fabric of existence. Perhaps the plot required an additional complication.
With the shattering din of a thousand Foley artists flinging a thousand crash boxes at their mothers-in-law, reality wrenched sideways. The nearest volcano belched, glowered at its mother and refused to apologize for its bad manners. Wil abruptly found himself soaring in the opposite direction from the moment before; on the ground below, Jhonn stumbled as the world realigned, narrowly avoiding a plunge into the inevitable convenient bottomless abyss that gaped open at his feet.
“What the fuck – ?”
“That goddamned Special Effects Wizard!” Wil roared. “He’s flipped the image in frame! Shit!”
“So what’s the big deal?” Jhonn tried to juggle his shield and axe, which he now held in the wrong hands. “It feels weird, but the overall picture composition is much better this way . . . ”
“I’m right haaannndddeeeeeeddd . . . ” Wil awkwardly waved his spear with his left hand. He was clutching the reins of the UnicornPegasusKitten with his right hand –
“Excuse me? The UPK has reins?”
He was clutching the cords of his iPod with his right hand, and didn’t dare let go in case the UPK hated his playlist.
“That’s even weirder.”
Bite me.
“No slash!”
Oh, you just wait.
Wil’s mighty spear elongated, caught in the Special Effects Field that had so changed the once-cute kitten. It grew to such a length and weight that even the mighty Wil could no longer hold it up; the tip sagged, the sharp edges coming dangerously near to his friend as the UPK swooped down upon him.
“All right, that’s enough!” Jhonn roared. “Give it a fucking break already!” He cast aside his useless axe and reached for his belt.
The air thrummed with consternation as Jhonn the Scalzorc brandished the Mallet of Loving Correction.
With the UnicornPegasusKitten bearing down on him in its final attack, the Scalzorc turned to the weakest point in the Wizard’s defenses. He swung the Mallet of Loving Correction and dealt a cataclysmic blow to the Fourth Wall, which had already been broken.
- - -
Wil and Jhonn staggered to their feet, their ears ringing. The Lair had vanished into nothingness, its underpinnings utterly shattered by that one mighty blow at the foundation of unreality. Before them, a very ordinary, very astonished kitten looked around in confusion, spotted the d20 and pounced on it.
Wil retrieved his priceless die, picked up the kitten and rubbed its tummy. “Never let it be said that Wil the Warrior broke his word.”
Jhonn laughed, and the startled kitten bit Wil on his bearded chin and LOL’ed.
“Damn it! You’re scaring it!”
“My bad.”
“I am so Tweeting this,” Wil remarked. “And you should sleep soundly now. The UnicornPegasusKitten banishes all bad dreams, save nightmares of itself.”
The Scalzorc scowled. “So is it time for epic feasting yet?”
“I guess. Pizza sound good?”
“What about the intratubes?”
“Oh, screw them.”
“Now, that really does sound slashy.”
“Okay, okay, enough of that! Drop it already!” Wil snarled. “We’ve long since hit the ‘gag’ part of ‘running gag’.”
“Whatever.” Jhonn shrugged. “Let’s go shop for china patterns.”
- fin -
Beth
June 2010
And yes, I'm back to finishing Reverb now. I promise!
no subject
(And I am so glad I didn't bother trying to write an entry. *g*)
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This story is made of WIN!
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So, alas, I cross my fingers and hope that my lolmac kicks ass here. I think this has a chance. We'll just have to see!
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I confess that I am glad I need not be in competition against you, my friend! Thanks for your good wishes!
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Aw... *blushes*
I would feel the same way about you, were we neck and neck!
I really did try. I think my lack of fantasy background (I never really got into it. Don't know why, but it is what it is.) and being crazy busy at work due to the summer rush and my boss going on vacation just killed any bunnies before they started eating solid food. That, and I really don't know much about Scalzi (I know, I know - my head hangs in shame, alright?), so I was stymied. Anyway. Like I said, I had a few very nebulous thoughts, but nothing ever solidified.
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In my own case, I knew Scalzi's 'voice' better than Wil's, so I had gone over to Wil's site and read more of his writing, checked out his Twitter feed, etc. . . . in other words, I did research. *eyeroll* I guess it's an unbreakable habit. Or an automatic reflex.
At any rate, one of the things that I like about my own submission is that it's pretty well balanced, with both of them strongly presented; and I'm hoping that when they read it, the character voices will sound right. And, of course, I'm hoping they laugh their asses off. That would be great.
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Nice to know I'm not alone in that. *g*
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If you don't win, demand a recount. Gird your thews and demand a recount! :-D
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BTW, in case you didn't follow the discussions on Whatever, the original 'no slash' admonition was not only discussed at length, the discussion was reasonable and sane. This is from Scalzi's follow-up post:
"Some folks who write fanfic on a regular basis were upset at the “no slash” admonition for the stories, based on the fact that the genre of “slash” in fanfic encompasses a vast range of gay situations, and not only explicit sex between same-sex folks. Well, the confusion in this case was my bad, and I apologize for it. We didn’t want explicit sex in the stories primarily because Wil and I are real people who actually know each other and prefer not to read about us getting it on even when I’m an orc and he’s riding a unicorn pegasus kitten, and I used “slash” because I was thinking of it in the narrow sense relating to the two of us getting it on in fictional form, and didn’t consider that in stories there might be other characters added in to open up the explicit sex possibilities, meaning I should have just said “no explicit sex, please.” Again, my fault, my responsibility, and I apologize for the offense.
"The original entry’s gone far and wide so trying to substitute the “no slash” admonition with “no explicit sex” and pretending no one will notice is like trying to close the barn door when the horse is out. That said, I updated the entry a couple of days ago to clarify our position, and I’ll likewise go in and further strikethrough “no slash” and replace it with “no explicit sex.” Likewise, although I’ve closed the comment thread on the announcement entry to any more discussion of slash as it relates to our little picture, if you have a mind to discuss it further, you can do it in this thread."
A few comments into that second thread, someone did indeed turn up with a characteristic Het Guy Comment: "Anyone who has a need to turn this into slash or porn is a pretty uncreative weak writer. That is something a teenager would do."
Scalzi immediately jumped on him:
"I assume you’re not trying to troll or start a flame war, but that’s what you’re going to do with a post like this, so let me just say:
a) Being one of those writers who generally does poorly with sex scenes, I respect people who can actually make them work in whatever format;
b) Let’s not disparage writers on the basis of what they enjoy writing, because of course among other things science fiction writers don’t exactly have a sterling literary reputation either, because of biases that have nothing to do with the actual quality of the work.
Basically, we don’t have to go there this early in the thread, so let’s not.
[Subtly motions toward the Mallet of Loving Correction]
Thank you."
Is that class or what?!?
no subject