In the interests of spreading a little sarcasm* joy on a Friday, I give you Your Love Is (Love Song with Metaphor) by Paul and Storm. (Half the joke is in the music, so I do recommend listening to it.)

In my most recent fiction writing, I've found myself really reaching for metaphors. And falling waaaay short. So much so that I even made a meta-ish comment in one story where the narrative character is disgusted with himself for not being able to come up with anything better than dog and cat metaphors to describe the object of his affection. No rivkat I, more's the pity. I think I might have to steal use some of these next time.

( Your love is any number of things I had not previously considered love to be )

What's your favorite metaphor?

*

Bits and pieces of things:

( The Office 4 X whatever last night was, i.e. the first episode following the writers' strike )

( Several mediocre movies and one major disappointment: Enemy at the Gates, Imposter, Purple Noon and Washington Square )

I was going to write about a couple good books I've read recently, but this is already too long and I must get to work! argh.

While lounging through the blahs over the last few weeks, I took the time to thoroughly browse the Librivox catalogue. When cofax7 mentioned the site, I was intrigued by the idea of free recordings of favorite books in the public domain, but not encouraged the last time I tried some downloads. I have the same issue with multiple readers that cofax7 has, plus my brush with the reader of on of the Nellie Bly books made me want to reach through the speakers and smack her, as she had an arch, overly dramatic/perky style that was just annoying.

This time I struck gold in the form of several books I think I'm going to enjoy listening to:

Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott, read by Clarica. Clarica has an American accent and her voice is calm and seems able to handle Alcott's clause-happy sentences well. This is one of my favorite Alcott books, and I look forward to catching up with it. No Rose in Bloom available yet, but I have hope.

Emma by Jane Austen, read by Sherry Crowther. Crowther is also American. Her voice is softer than Clarica's, and she has a bit of a tendency to over-enunciate, but I can deal.

Persuasion by Jane Austen, read by Elizabeth Klett. Klett reads faster than Crowther, and has a highly listenable style. She's my favorite of the American-accented readers I've listened to so far.

The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, read by Karen Savage. Savage is the star of the most recent readers I've listened to. She has a crisp, British accent and a facile ability to handle the French names and phrases that dominate both books. She also does a credible job with Sir Percy Blakeney's drawl, which for me never falls into eye-rolling territory, but adds enjoyment to the reading. She may seem to tend to melodrama when first listening, but these are nothing if not melodramatic stories (and politically and socially problematic, which I recognize, while still enjoying them). I want her to read *everything*.

Enjoyably enough, she's now recorded Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This is the third P&P in the library, and I think the only one read by one reader. Savage again does multiple voices, which can be a bit distracting, perhaps, but once I got used to it, I liked it very much. She reads Austen in a much less melodramatic style than Orczy, as is entirely appropriate (whew!). The narrative goes very quickly, and is done in BBC/received, but Savage slows down for the character voices, not least I suppose, because the upper class voices traditionally demand that upper class sort of drawl. I like her voice for Elizabeth -- brisk and direct -- quite a bit.

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster, read by Kara Shallenberg. Another American voice for a British classic, but it works fine. Shallenberg has a bit of a nasal tone, but this works well enough for Forster's wry observations.

The Twenty Year Thaw (Originally posted here.)

Author: denynothing1

Rating: On the soft side of explicit.
AU, McKay/Sheppard
Word count: 17,500 I fail at flashfic.
AN: Seriously fluffy crack herein. Or cracked-out fluff. I can't decide.
Thanks to haphazardmethod and cofax7 for beta. They both deserve a medal for making the characterizations here much better than they were originally. As my ski bunny, beta, I absolve cofax of all skiing/snowboarding errors. She did her best to keep me honest, but I still left in some bits I made up to serve the story.
Disclaimer: For fun, not profit.

( Part 2/2 )

This was originally posted back in January as part of the sga_flashfic f**king freezing challenge, waaay over there. I'm putting it here so I can archive it, well, here.

The Twenty Year Thaw

Author: denynothing1

Rating: On the soft side of explicit.
AU, McKay/Sheppard
Word count: 17,500 I fail at flashfic.
AN: Seriously fluffy crack herein. Or cracked-out fluff. I can't decide.
Thanks to haphazardmethod and cofax7 for beta. They both deserve a medal for making the characterizations here much better than they were originally. As my ski bunny, beta, I absolve cofax of all skiing/snowboarding errors. She did her best to keep me honest, but I still left in some bits I made up to serve the story.
Disclaimer: For fun, not profit.


Summary: Spectacular scenery awaits you at Pegasus Ski Resort, with its uniquely beautiful setting that is both vast and varied. Located in the heart of the majestic, historic Athosian Reservation, Pegasus offers world class terrain for all abilities of skiers and riders. We also offer world class slalom, mogul, downhill and snowboarding instruction and specialize in off-piste adventures, led by knowledgeable local guides. Après ski facilities feature our award-winning spa, Atlantis, as well as fine dining and dancing. For an out of this world experience you'll never forget, book your winter getaway to Pegasus today!

( Part 1/2 )

One Hand Open, One Eye Closed by fialka (The Sarah Connor Chronicles, gen)

Remember all those terrific stories about Scully that Fi wrote once upon a time? Now she's focused on Sarah Connor, and may I just say, yay!

This is intriguing speculation on the time line presented in the series, and a terrific, sort of sideways illumination of just how awesome other people think Sarah is, filtered through her own doubts on that topic.

No real spoilers, thankfully, as I'm (as usual) about two eps behind. Also, I need an SCC icon. Hmm.

Is fantastic.

The vid is called "Telescope," and presents a history of women in astronomy, from Hypatia to Helen Hogg, who has an observatory named after her in Ottawa. \o/

I love, love, love the old photos and paintings of women at work.

Serendipitously enough, this past week I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by an astrophysicist who may be the most energetic, fun and inspiring scientist I've ever met. Her work on proving the presence of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way was so elegantly done and presented so clearly that even I understood it well enough to be blown away. And inspired all over again.

Yay, women in science!

You could feel the change in the air during this competition. It was coming last year, but crested with quite a splash last night. And not just because of the two girls everyone's been talking about -- Zhang and Nagasu -- but the two they weren't, as much -- Flatt and Wagner. As I said in a comment to siljamus, this very much felt like a typical between-OOOOOs comp, with changes happening that are leaving some behind. That makes me a little sad. Though it's inevitable, I thought this was an incredibly emotional competition. I got all choked up several times.

I'm such a sentimental wimp, sometimes. :P

( Starting with the penultimate flight )

Good lord. I'm exhausted.

I broke down and wrote this while watching the next part of U.S. Nationals we got on tv last night. I was going to just kick back and watch, and then write up a few impressions, but I got sucked in by my rediscovered love of ice dance. It's so weird -- I'm in love with ice dance again! I will watch for more than just mocking the costumes! I guess anything really is possible.

One thing I had to note with amusement is the impact the performance that *caused* me to fall in love with ice dance all over again -- that of the phenomenally beautiful young Canadian couple, Virtue & Moir, from last year -- has had on choreographers and skaters, at least the US ones. Maybe it's a trend that was going on already and that I just didn't notice, but I really do think that routine, and their performance of it, caused real buzz. The top performances from the US ice dancers this year were reminiscent in many ways of that stunning waltz, and I can't even begin to describe how happy that makes me. I watched the performances last night on the edge of my seat. Yay! It was awesome.

( Ice Dance Free Dance )

Well. I hadn't meant to write so much about dance, but um, I did. Who saw that coming? *g*

I'll write up the Ladies' Final in another post.

Whee!

Hello, livejournal. It's figure skating weekend (at least, in the U.S.)! Luckily my VCR did its job while I was out today and recorded the teeny, tiny number of actual performances in pairs and the Ladies' short that NBC deigned to show us. Yay?*

First up, Pairs. This will be short (um ish), because I've heard nothing much at all about U.S. Pairs this year. Many of the teams I've never seen, and one (Inoue and Baldwin), I was hoping never to have to see again. Naomi Nari Nam and her partner are injured (ETA: They actually competed, which I didn't expect, and finished 7th), and last year's champions, Castile & Okolski, who were really quite delightful, have been very quiet. We have been in dismal shape in pairs for so long, side by side triple toes landed on one foot and going in the right direction will look like up to us. *sigh*

( Pairs Final )

Well. That was actually quite refreshing!

Bonus coverage of the Ladies' Short Program, and what do you bet we'll see this again tonight. The two little girls who got such extensive coverage last year are back, but Emily Hughes is injured and is not. Kimie Meissner has had a very up and down year -- mostly down -- as she's definitely been struggling with growth issues. As always though, I do love her attitude. She is so calm and so positive and so determined without being in any way obnoxious, that I just want things to go better for her. We'll see, I guess.

( Ladies' Short )

*You know, on edit, the number of programs wasn't bad, the fluff was minimal, Scott only shouted inappropriately 3 or 4 times, Jamie and David continue to be adorable, and Bob Costas, while hardly controlled where his expressions were concerned, at least did not verbalize his boredom and impatience with the proceedings. So you know, yay for that. *g*

As I am curse by time zones, and the Ladies' Final doesn't even start for me for another 20 minutes, I will now go hide from spoilers. *g* See y'all later!

Happy Birthday to laurashapiro! May this year be filled with fun and discovery (and maybe a little relaxing here and there? One can hope. *g*)

~~~*~~~

Now that my flist(s) are filled with happy reactions to The Sarah Conner Chronicles, I went back to see if I had written anything scintillating after I saw the pilot last summer. Well, not so much. I do remember that, amongst all the pilots that friends and I watched that same night, it was the one we most enjoyed (and the only one we watched all the way through, IIRC). There was much predicting that the show would take the internets by storm.

And so it has come to pass. I will reiterate that I loved the twist that got them to where they are now, and really want to know more about the history of that mechanism. I was completely unspoiled for which character Summer Glau plays, so the reveal for me was a fun surprise. I do like SG, but I think I may adore Glenn-must look up proper spelling of her last name, though it sounds like-Heady as Sarah. I love that she does not look like she's 26 years old (and that they didn't cast a 26 year-old to play her), and that so far she's smart and resourceful and driven in the way she approaches each struggle. That so completely works for me.

~~~*~~~

For awesome woman #3, the folks at pers_pineapple (and they're not so bad themselves, btw) have a fabulous first post up, focusing on the rewatch of the Life pilot.

I'm still struggling with the best way to write Dani Reese -- to capture her particular brand of toughness. Her vulnerabilities are also new and different to me (very different from Dana Scully's, for example), and that's taking some thinking, too. But I have an idea of a kernel of a something, so that's, um, hopeful.

Meanwhile, I direct you to this snapshot by nestra, which captures Reese beautifully in a couple swift, sharp strokes: Fairy Tale of L.A.. (I know most Life fic fans have no doubt read this by now, but I wanted a link here for me, too.)

~~~*~~~

Speaking of Scully, Anjou, aka comice, has just completed a marathon posting of 23 chapters in 25 days of an old school XF mytharc epic, A Winter's Tale. I have just printed out all 65,000 words, and am rubbing my hands in anticipation.

~~~*~~~

Quite the opposite in the number of words department (and also so I have a link here), I put up a SGA snippet at cofax7's ostrich_2008 com: Mystery of the Universe, #468, 135 words about Rodney and... chicken.

~~~*~~~

And now I must go work for a living, because no one has yet gotten a clue and dropped a winning lottery ticket in my lap. Woe.

Poor Christopher Bowman. His death makes me very sad. The fact that I'm not a bit surprised makes me even sadder.

I think my favorite nickname for him was "Hans Brinker from Hell." He was such a funny, sad, brilliant, aggravating, sweet, horrible person, and he was all that and more as a skater. Sometimes his performances were just glorious exhibitions of skill and fun and grace. Sometimes they were like uncomfortable little psychodramas, the kind you don't want to watch, but can't turn away from.

In the end, though, everyone did turn away. There just wasn't *time* to deal with someone that screwed up, that prone to backsliding time and again. And when I say, "Everyone tried," I mean *everyone*. I don't think there was a single person in the skating community who didn't try at one point or another to help him in some way; everything from giving him a hand up to giving him a much needed smack upside the head. But in the end, Bowman's wholly -- and wholly classic -- addict brain defeated all of them. Defeated him, too.

(Toller Cranston: "He used to go out for a quart of milk and not come back for three days.")

He had a great smile (actually, he had two great smiles -- the show smile and the much rarer genuine smile), he was naturally musical, in a way that can't be taught, and he had a couple triples that were just breathtaking to see -- phenomenal and utterly dependable. They all had different (and superb) skill sets, but for sheer flair, he could skate rings around Wylie and Eldredge when he put his mind to it. (The only skater to beat him in the natural skills department in the early nineties was Kurt Browning, IMO.)

( Evidence )

Yuletide generated musing:

What kind of writing exercises strengthen the ability to world-build? Any suggestions?

How do you set up context for readers who are not familiar with your source text when writing fic, yuletide or otherwise?

So. Story notes.

Overly long Author's notes, yes (those tend to get away from me), but I've never done what people call DVD commentary for one of my stories. Either I can't be bothered, barely having time to write the actual fic, or I can't figure out how to do it, because I don't have the language to describe the tangle of inspiration/perspiration/desperation that goes into writing. (I also firmly believe that though I find others' story notes fascinating, the only person interested in mine would be me, and that's not particularly motivational. False modesty? No. Dead certainty. *g*)

But... This story I really enjoyed writing and researching. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed writing a story this much, so that made it a good experience for me.

The rest of what I have to say has to do with how much I love the show, Life. It's only aired 11 episodes, and it's constricted by the 42-minute format from being as great as it could be, IMO, but the potential of the story, and what *is* actually on the screen, which is beautiful and quirky and unfailingly interesting, make me incredibly happy. I love the characters. All the characters. If they don't yet have the rich three-dimensionality the characters of Friday Night Lights showed right out of the box, they have the potential to get there, and I am so hoping that we'll get to that point. I know I'm going to enjoy the ride if we do. The show also has a twisty plot with clockwork-like reveals and characters involved in that plot in unexpected ways, and I am a total sucker for that sort of thing.

Then there's my love for the setting -- Los Angeles -- and the time frame -- the early nineties to the present.

Because those two things interest me so much -- for entirely personal reasons -- this is the other thing that worries me about doing something like this commentary: how long it will take me to get to the point. But here goes.

( Notes on 'Life' and 'Five Times Charlie Crews Didn't Tan (and One Time He Got Burned)' )

Five Times Charlie Crews Didn't Tan (and One Time He Got Burned) parts 4-6

Author: denynothing1

Ratings range from PG to R for language and imagery.
Spoilers: Through episode 1 X 11
Disclaimer: Life is the property of Universal Media Studios. No copyright infringement intended. No, really.
~12,900 words

Notes: This is for vonnie_k and angstville. : ) More notes at the end.

Summary: Snapshots by natural light, 1993 to 2007.

***~*~***

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
~~ Baz Luhrman, "Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen)"


( Five Times Charlie Crews Didn't Tan (and One Time He Got Burned) Parts 4-6 )

Good lord. I've never written anything on LJ so long I had to split it into 2 parts.

This will be parts 1-3. 4-6 to follow.

Title: Five Times Charlie Crews Didn't Tan (and One Time He Got Burned) Parts 1-3

Author: denynothing1

Ratings range from PG to R for language and imagery.
Spoilers: Through episode 1 X 11
Disclaimer: Life is the property of Universal Media Studios. No copyright infringement intended. No, really.
~12,900 words

Notes: This is for vonnie_k and angstville. : ) More notes at the end.

Summary: Snapshots by natural light, 1993 to 2007.

***~*~***

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
~~ Baz Luhrman, "Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen)"


( Five Times Charlie Crews Didn't Tan (and One Time He Got Burned) )

First of all, Happy New Year!

Second of all, since my family's favorite ways to celebrate holidays is to eat, this necessitates we do some cooking.

Because we'd have more children than usual at our dinner this year, I decided to make something I thought they might like. I settled on Nigella Lawson's Honeybee Chocolate Cake, just because hello, it's chocolate. And also cute. Okay, maybe a little twee. But cute.

I'd never made this cake before, and in fact, don't bake much at all -- I don't have the room, and I certainly can't afford the calories. But I *loved* making this cake, and most importantly, the kids loved it too. I highly recommend it for adults, too, as it's not too sweet, it's incredibly moist, and most important, it's hilarious to look at. And yes, before anyone points it out, it IS a cake covered with bugs. But they're smiling honeybees! Made of marzipan! So I didn't mind it. Too much.



( Here's the recipe, which I followed, mostly, except for one little disaster*. )

( Heroes -- the end of Vol. 2 )

( Life, something something, Part 1 )

Okay, I guess that was "briefly" only when compared to how longwinded I usually am.

(I do not know how to make the picture appear original size, so you'll have to click to enlarge. Aarggh.)

*Okay! Since Callum. Keith. Rennie. is now an award-winning Chef, I thought you might like a little peek behind the scenes as AU!Ray and his crack crew make you your annual birthday cake for the enormous celebration tonight at Chez Hap!

**Fraser is perfectly fine with this, as he believes that revenge is a dish best served cold. Preferably at some place above the Arctic Circle, where he will soon be dragging Ray "on a case."

***Clark's toque did not fit his enormous, superhero head. Sorry.

****John refused to wear his toque. It's probably best not to ask why. Not that he'd tell you, anyway.

*****I'm fairly certain that very calm look on Lex's face means he's just put out a hit on Ray for making him wear the stupid toque, plus Ray went ahead and used Scharffen Berger for the cake when Lex announced he was going to fly in several pounds of Valrhona for the occasion. I sense a mean power struggle on the horizon.

******When Rodney heard, "Cake!" this is NOT what he thought was going to happen.