gisho

This will make sense to no one at all, I expect, but: I have finally settled, in my own head, what happens to Gilfaethwy. That used to bother me no end. I don't expect I'll ever use it to write with. Nonetheless.

Puck of Pook's Hill, Rudyard Kipling - Puck: "The fact is they began as Gods. The Phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls, and the Jutes, and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought more when they landed. They were always landing in those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they always brought their Gods with them. England is a bad country for Gods."

American Gods, Neil Gaiman - Wednesday, Whiskey Jack: "When the people came to America they brought us with them. They brought me, and Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns and Kobolds and Banshees, Kubera and Frau Holle and Ashtaroth, and they brought you. We rode here in their minds, and we took root. We traveled with the settlers to the new lands across the ocean. The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to the new." . . . "This is not a good country for gods. My people figured that out early on."


This has to be useful in a story somehow.

No idea how. But I'll have to find something. I wonder if Gaiman ever read Puck of Pook's Hill?

I have three origific projects currently competing for my (limited) free time and mental space.

( Which one would you be most interested in reading? )

Because I have often found the best way to get inspiration for something is to get an obligation to write something entirely different, and I have a challenge fic due on the 25th of April and no clue how to start.

I have 2265 music files on my computer right now. I just randomized the complete list in XMMS. Give me a number from 1 to 2265, and the name of a character or characters, and I will write a ficlet somehow related to the character and to the song inthat spot on my playlist.

(Original characters totally eligible - Lanthorn has been loud lately, and, ooh, I don't think I've even rambled to anyone at great length about Lian Liancourt and Ai Kanno, have I?)

Very belatedly, for theeternalmind, who asked for anything with Makubex. I do wish Tokyopop hadn't lost their liscence - all my inspiration for GetBackers these days requires knowing what the heck happened in the last few manga volumes, and, well. Thankfully, however, it's no harder to get inside his mind now than it was when GB was the fandom I wrote most for.


( seven stars and seven stones )

Originally posted on the kinkmeme, for the prompt "Movie-verse Adrian meets comic-verse Adrian". They really were rather different characters, weren't they?

( ~1400 words )

So I have this thing where I like to borrow mytheological/worldbuilding concepts more than actual characterization or plot from a fandom, and apply them to completely different fandoms as a sort of distortion filter to see how they illuminate alternate circumstances.

This was how I wound up assigning daemons to the GetBackers characters. It is also how I came up with this, earlier this evening, and it would not leave my head or let me sleep until I wrote it down. So. Yeah.

Set in the Vorkosigan saga universe, but will make more sense to Hetalia fans, because that's where the concept comes from and it's a pretty damn weird concept. But cool.

( ~1500 words, eeep )

Because Janey needs more fic. I've been working on this one for a while. Actually had about twelve different scenarios I was toying with, but these are the ones that worked out. Also includes sginficatn amounts of Dr. Manhattan, Jon Osterman, Laurie Juspeczyk, and (weirdly enough) Adrian Veidt. And Wally Weaver.

It's pretty clear that physics in the Watchmen universe doesn't exactly work as it does in this world, but I refuse to try to figure out how it actually does, so all the physics is fudged. Sorry.

... actually, there is no reason #4 couldn't have happened in the comic. I may or may not use it for backstory elsewhere.

Enjoy.

( ~4000 words )

Totally unrelated to a fic which I am not outlining now, no way, no how, a hypothetical question:

You are Batman. (For the purposes of argument.) You wish to take down the Great Firewall of China. How do you do it?

(Points will be awarded for style and asskickery.)

Idea nicked from eugenetapdance. The theory: put your music on shuffle. Write a ficlet for each song, taking only the time the song runs to do so. When you have ten, post.

The practice: I can't type that fast on my PDA, and between that and the fact I was doing some of these on breaks at work and kept getting interrupted, and the fact that some ideas just would not shut up . . . well, they're short. About half, the ones I did on my laptop, were done while the song played. I should do a formal variant where instead of time, you have the wordcount of the song.

Also, there are twenty. I'd done twelve before I remembered to check. And I skipped some songs which were just impossible. I got 'We Will Become Silhouettes' and all I could think of was to go the Cage route, make six blank lines, and declare it a ficbit. I swear it'd work for 'Watchmen' and that song, but I couldn't bring myself to. And you just

okay, I was going to type 'You just try writing a fic that relates to 'Other Places Jimmy Hoffa Isn't', but I had a flash of inspiration and apparently, ( you can. ) That was fun. But there's still stuff I just can't fic to. I enjoy the challenge, and it's good exercise writing short pieces, but given my worldbuilding obsession stuff is going to get long.

Most of these could be movie- or comic-verse; the two are congruous. Some are movie-verse, more or less. Honestly, my inclination is to declare my 'personal canon' to be a hybrid, with the comic's richness of bckground detail and backstory, but the movie's masterplan and denouement, which made vastly more logistical sense to me.

Am undecided whether I should go with Rorschach warning Adrian, as in the comic, or Dan, as in the movie. On the one hand I like the implication that Rorschach and Veidt have parted ways so far Rorschach doesn't care enough to warn him, and there's no way the grappling gun could reach that office or break the window. On the other hand, the "smartest man in the mourge" line is a personal favorite.

Detail, details. Aaaargh. Also I do subscribe to the theory that Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis aren't as dead as everyone thinks, and have plotbunnies brewing as to how they managed it.

Anyway, onto the ficbits:


smile like you mean it [the killers]
( Comedian (dreams aren't what they used to be) )

photograph [verve pipe]
( Sally (and if you want beautiful, pitiful ...) )

get on your boots [u2]
( Sam & Sandra Hollis (i don’t want to talk about wars between nations) )

space oddity [dave bowie]
( Jon, Laurie (and the stars look very different today) )

bleeders [wallflowers]
( Rorschach (maybe next time is never) )

darkness, darkness [solas]
( Silhouette (in the coolness of your shadow) )

high and dry [radiohead]
( Adrian Veidt (you broke another mirror) )

we didn't start the fire [billy joel]
( Hollis (since the world's been turning) )

if you believe [our lady peace]
( Laurie, Dan, Rorschach (you can't close your eyes) )

ants marching [dave matthews band]
( Bernie (people in every direction) )

the rose [bette midler]
( Nelson, Rolf (the soul afraid of dying) )

viva la vida [coldplay]
( Adrian Veidt (i know st. peter won't call my name) )

sour girl [stone temple pilots]
( Jon, Laurie (i was a superman but looks are deceiving) )

thunder road [bruce springsteen]
( Sally, Hollis (show a little faith, there's magic in the night) )

all tomorrow's parties [velvet underground]
( Laurie (for thursday's child is sunday's clown) )

windowsill [arcade fire]
( Detective Steve Fine (you can't forgive what you can't forget) )

these things [she wants revenge]
( Captain Carnage, Silk Spectre (i'm not a bad man, i'm just overwhelmed) )

leeds [indigo girls]
( Adrian Veidt (on a bed of anxiety over a deep dark drop) )

bizzare love triangle [new order]
( Dan, Laurie (living a life that I can't leave behind) )

streets of philadelphia [bruce springsteen]
( Nelson, Rolf (i walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin) )