potentiality_26

I'm still alive!

Sorry for disappearing.  My story is basically the same as it was when I "came back" last time... Lord, was it three years ago now? Almost four?  I've been having a rough time, not because anything too bad happened to me personally, but I definitely had a small breakdown and... well, it's like I fell in a hole and when I finally managed to pop my head up it felt like all this time had gone by and how could I possibly check my messages?

Anyway, I'm here, checking my messages.  I'll try to stick around this time.

How is everybody doing?

So I've been watching Critical Role and re-reading Les Miserables.  Seems like the best time for it. 
  

Hi everyone!

I know I was MIA for a while long before things started to get weird, but current events have really been kicking my ass.  I won't go into too much detail for those who come here wanting to avoid it, but I will say that I'm currently doing okay in all ways except psychologically.  I've let a lot of things slide and it's definitely made me feel worse instead of better, so I'm trying to get back on the social media horse in order to feel less isolated. 

How are you all doing?
  

Title: True North
Fandom: Escape Room
Pairing/Characters: Zoey Davis/Amanda Harper
Summary: Amanda makes it. Everything changes and nothing does.
Rating: PG-13
Length: Short (1216 words)
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Notes/Warnings: Happy Halloween, I guess?  This is kind of a horror movie. Fills my 100fandoms table prompt #22 (fire). Possibly also my hc_bingo "survivor's guilt" square, but that might be too tenuous.
Excerpt:
She looked for Amanda last, scrubbing tears out of her eyes as she read the story of a veteran who fell climbing alone- yeah, right- and then almost threw her laptop against the wall when the article went on to talk about hikers in the right place at the right time, about miraculous rescues and brilliant doctors, about the hospital where Amanda was being treated.

Treated.

On AO3
  

So I was in a department store the other day, and there was a song playing.  I didn't recognize it but i liked it, so as you do I tried to pick out some lyrics so I could find it again.  I didn't manage it until later that day, and judging from the lyrics and my general memory, I'm pretty sure it was "Bad Moon" by Hollywood Undead.

BUT the song I heard was definitely sung by a woman, slower tempo, and more... pop-y, I guess, than the Hollywood Undead version even though, again, judging by the lyrics I thought it was the song.  So then I figured it was a cover, but no amount of searching has turned up such a cover.  I've found five thousand versions of "Bad Moon Rising" by CCR, but this "Bad Moon" song?  Nope.  And I haven't been able to find anything else with similar lyrics, either. 

Anybody heard of a song like this?  Because right now my theories are basically:

a) The store was playing an obscure cover for some reason, like from someone local, or

b) Mandela Effect type shit happened to me a few days ago.  
  

Title: Menace
Fandom: Callan
Pairing/Characters: David Callan/Toby Meres
Summary: Sometimes there's only one bed. This is one of those times.
Rating: PG
Length: Short (1,186 words)
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Notes/Warnings: I feel like this must come before Playing with Fire chronologically, but I've made it a series while I figure it out. I have ideas for more in this 'verse.  Not Brit-picked.
Excerpt:
Callan stopped for a second too long in the doorway. Meres, having picked up their bags with exaggerated deference to Callan’s age and experience, nearly collided with his back. Evidently the section had elected not to spring for a double room on this occasion.

On AO3
   

Better late than never, eh?

Here's my list of books I read in school that weren't on the BBC's list but were important/influential/enjoyable for me. 

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Look, I can't in good conscience say that I liked The Awakening, but it is beautifully written and I had to read it three separate times in school so I think everyone else should suffer with me.  Other "everyone else should suffer with me" books that surprised me by not being on the list include The Scarlett Letter, Doctor Zhivago, and The Canterbury Tales.    

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Nothing can really recapture the experience of having read this in high school- joking with your classmates about whether any of you would have the guts to answer an essay question with Bartleby's catchphrase, then getting older and looking back and thinking, "Hey, remember that time in school when we read that story about a depressed guy who slowly stopped working and then died?  That was wild."

The Book of John Mandeville
There are books you read in school that you love, there are books you read in school that you hate, and there are books you read in school that make you want to stay in school forever because you figure it's your only chance to figure out what the hell that even was.  The Book of John Mandeville was that last one for me.  I did wrote a term paper on it and I still have questions that no one can answer for me.  Please ask me to scream at you about this book some time. 

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses by Mark Twain
Oh, Twain.  He's kind of a local boy where I come from, and it's a little hard for me to get my head around any list that doesn't have The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and/or Tom Sawyer on it.  But obviously Twain also has issues, and at this point either you've read those or you haven't.  You've also either read The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper or you haven't.  I have and I loathed it.  Now, I don't remember if I read this essay of Twain's for a class or if I just happened to stumble on it in one of my textbooks, but either way I loved it.  Great lampooning of an annoying author, and also an excellent lesson on what does and doesn't make for a good story.       

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
I am astounded that this isn't on the list.  Great book, important book, there's not really much else to say.   

I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell
Probably not common assigned reading but a really good book and my benchmark for magical realism outside Latin America.  The last line gets me every time. 

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
I can't really say that I enjoyed this book either, but it's another book I can't believe wasn't on that list, though as with Twain (and probably Cooper too, God help us) I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's not there because the list isn't American.  Because in America this book is a really big deal.  

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
A Christmas Carol was on the list, which means that short fiction counts and The Lottery is basically the most important short story ever written. 

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
Okay, so technically this book was assigned reading when I was in elementary school, not high school or college, but The Secret Garden and Charlotte's Web were assigned reading when I was in elementary school too, so it counts.  In terms of formative children's fiction it's way up there for me, and the movie is one of those childhood favorites that linger into adulthood because it's just so good. 

Paradise Lost by John Milton
This is another case of me just being really confused that it wasn't on the list.  Great piece of Bible fanfiction.  IDK. 

Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant
Technically this wasn't assigned reading so much as something I read on my own for a term paper on Grant, but it's really worth reading if you want to get most questions about the American Civil War right on Jeopardy.  Seriously this book is 80% battle strategy.  

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The absence of Toni Morrison on that list is baffling to me.  Again I'm assuming it's because the list wasn't American.  Probably not her most famous book, but it's the one I read in school, so I'm mentioning it here.  A lot of it really stuck with me, too. 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Love this book.  I had a bit of a weird experience in college where I was reading it for a literature class at the same time I watched the movie for a theory of film class, and though I thought the movie was great I was pretty annoyed at it for being so different. 

Year of the King by Antony Sher
This was assigned reading for a classical acting class I took, so it should come as a surprise to no one that I'm the only one who read it, and it's a shame because it's so good.  Wonderful look at the craft of acting, and- on a more personal level- at the difficulties of living and working with mental illness. 

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The second most important short story ever written, IMO.  I read it for school at least twice and I looove it. 

What books did you read in school that you enjoyed or otherwise got a lot out of?
  

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Repost this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Thought I'd try this out even though it's a somewhat wonky list- couple of repeats, couple of "Really? That made the list?" books- and I'd be interested to see what others think.  
     

I live!

From this list. 

From corvidology:

10: What’s your favorite trope?

Pining/Seemingly Unrequited Love.  As I said in an earlier post, I think it's the little black dress of fandom. 

11: What’s your (least) favorite overused trope?

I'm not a fan of specific movie or book AUs.  I do enjoy the fusion type where, say, it's a Harry Potter AU so the characters go to Hogwarts or it's a Pacific Rim AU so the characters are Jaeger pilots even though the plot is largely original- but if the fic is just following the story beats of something else, it has to be really good and really well suited to the characters to keep my attention. 

12: Which trope would you absolutely abolish?

There isn't one.  There are definitely tropes I would rather never hit my eyeballs again, but that is why AO3 blessed us with the ability to filter tags.  Like I know this question is just a thought experiment and I can't actually abolish any trope, but with the climate in fandom being like it has been for the last few years, I'm not willing to point a finger at anything.

13: Are there any tropes you’re embarrassed for enjoying?

RPF.  I used to never read it unless the people involved were fictionalized and preferably long dead, but then I watched Buzzfeed Unsolved and weakened.  That's more a genre than a trope, though.  I can think of any tropes I'm embarrassed for enjoying.    

Also, I guess I have to re-answer question 22 from my last post, since I've had a real "start reading a 100k slow burn fic at midnight" kind of week.  And 100k is a book, y'all.  One that would probably take me a few days to a week to read.  What is it about that wordcount on a fanfiction makes us look at it in the middle of the night and think, "Sure, that's possible"? 
  

Fic meme taken from stonepicnicking_okapi.  Ask me:

1: Do you/would you like to write professionally?
2: Which author has influenced you the most?
3: Any guilty pleasures (books/fics)?
4: What’s better (or the least bad): character over plot or plot over character?
5: Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?
6: What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to writing?
7: Do you listen to music while you write/read?
8: Favorite quotes?
9: If you could wish for a new book from any author, who would it be?
10: What’s your favorite trope?
11: What’s your (least) favorite overused trope?
12: Which trope would you absolutely abolish?
13: Are there any tropes you’re embarrassed for enjoying?
14: Do you have a go-to AU?
15: What kind of character do you wish you saw portrayed more often?
16: What’s more frustrating: plotholes or OOC characters?
17: What’s more draining: writing smut, fluff or angst?
18: Are you a ‘neatly designed outline’ writer or a ‘fuck it i’ll figure it out as i go’ writer?
19: Do you think major character deaths are ever necessary?
20: If you could ‘unkill’ any character from any story, who would it be?
21: Would you like to write an alternative ending for any of your favorite shows/books/etc?
22: Are you more likely to be the person who starts reading a 100k slow burn fic at midnight or the person who starts writing a drabble at 4 a.m.?
pick just one:
23: fluff or angst?
24: fantasy or sci-fi?
25: fake dating AU or inpromptu babysitting AU?
26: road trip AU or high school AU?
27: coffee shop AU or florist AU?
28: stuck in an elevator AU or camping gone bad AU?
29: 20s AU or 50s AU?
30: high school AU from a fantasy/sci-fi story or fantasy/sci fi AU from a realistic story?
31: mythological creature AU or superhero AU?
32: meet cute or meet ugly?