Stuff, Done

I am totally not conscious. Yet somehow I am at the keyboard typing.

Saturday was fun day - an estate sale, crockpot chicken soup, and going with my mother to see Avengers. First viewing for her, second for me. I got enough out of it that I will probably see it a third time when it hits the $3 theaters. I want a post-movie Natasha and Bruce fic, because I think they were finally good with one another by the end of the film.

Sunday was work day. As in, of my list of eighteen items, we got fifteen done. A lot of housework and gardening. Including a round of edits for my last turn-in to class this week. Stopped at 291/617, with a word count of 124,367, which is seventy words in the wrong direction, dammit! But it flows much smoother and hits a major point I've been dancing around.

Who Will Take The Vote? Whose Rhetoric Reigns Supreme?

Voting time rolls around again tomorrow, and since I'm meeting up with flybystardancer for dinner, I will be voting before work. Fortunately my polling place is just around the corner from home. Thus, today I have reviewed the material and issues.

One of the propositions on the ballot is an issue I don't care about one way or the other. What does it say that I thus tend toward the side whose argument does not sound like someone trolling on the Internet? Seriously, guys, hire a writer who is not emotionally invested in the issue. One who can present a calm, reasoned argument and a logical rebuttal. Because your impassioned italics and BLOCK CAPS EMPHASIS has just lost you my vote.

Writer's Block: My Town

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Hmm. Well, I live in Anaheim. Which most of the world knows as home to Disneyland. Which it is; the Mouse is definitely the 800-pound gorilla. But my parents remember Orange County before then, when, as its name implies, orange trees grew as far as the eye could see. Pocket orchards remain here and there, most less than an acre but still utterly charming. My house is relatively new; it was built in 1955, the same year Disneyland opened. A little bit south of us, a little bit north of the Kingdom, stands The Colony. It's a section of Anaheim reaching a few square miles between North and South Streets, stretching wide between East and West Streets. It's the original settlement, full of beautifully kept old houses. Sometimes I drive its streets and imagine what Anaheim must have been like before it was so built up. Back when it was all agriculture, rather than pop culture.

Sometimes, I can still smell the oranges.

Fic Pimpin'!

So I've now seen Avengers twice, which puts me lagging far behind my-cousin-the-budding-film-director, but hey, it's what he hopes to be making someday.

Still, somehow it feels like there were more good Avengers movie fics coming out before the movie than there have been since. Part of that is maybe that the film was so good, it leaves writers (we who are notorious for latching onto gaps and spackling them over with words) little to say. And part of it is that fanfic writers haven't had nearly as long to write after having seen the film as they did before seeing the film.

So, while finding some good Avengers movie fics, there haven't yet been enough to sate my cravings.

This is where hoshikage comes in with her story Aftermath, which feels like a very natural continuation of the setup at the end of the film. None of the shoehorning-them-all-into-the-comics-setup so many authors are falling back on. I actually cringe at reading many otherwise fine authors' versions of Thor, because he's not the movie Thor. hoshikage nails his voice, and all of their voices, and... enough words from me, because they fail to convey how much I love her writing and this piece in specific. Go read it!

Damn Dragons

Shifting viewpoints, implying passage of time, starting to deal with politics. As in, this was the point in the writing when I realized there were politics. Grr.

Page 302/617, word count 124,065. Calling it a night in the middle of a scene, but my brain's on the fast track to not making sense anymore.