happy christmas
Dec. 27th, 2012 10:57 pm1. Best Christmas EVER. Or, maybe not ever, but I have enjoyed the past four days, and it felt nice and Christmas-y. Yuletide was a massive, delightful success! My recipient loved her story, which made me clap and dance around a bit with joy. I'm proud of that story, and I like to make people happy. And then! And then I got a wonderful story for the Tanakh. My author wrote Noah's Arkangel, which is, oh my god, I can't even words. There's so much going on in there -- it's 27,000 words long -- and it's everything I wanted out of an AU/reinterpretation. There's representation! Of everyone! There's anthropology ethics! There's religion! There's funny cultural misunderstandings! It's glorious.I spent my morning before and after I opened presents reading it, although there were some parts where I skimmed because I got anxious about what was going to happen next, and then I had to go and reread them.
I've also been going around and skimming through the Yuletide archives, because it just makes me happy to see all of the comments from the recipients, although to be honest I don't even know where to start. I've been going through the recs at the Yuletide community, mostly.
2. I've got the rest of Bridging the Rubicon down now, as an outline. I really like it. I mean, it's kind of stupid, and I'm going to have a hard time finding the right balance between humor, deadly serious relationship stuff, and critical commentary, but it's, um, a whole lot simpler than what I was trying to wrangle before? I don't have it on the computer, because I outline best in stream-of-consciousness in a notebook, but anyway I'm thinking I should find out when Big Bangs take place because it's going to be massive, I might as well commit to a community so I'll be accountable for finishing it. And that way I can find a beta. I liked having a beta reader for Yuletide, and I wish I knew more about the art of getting someone to edit fanfic.
3. Les Miserables. My head is full of a tangled mess of ALL THE FEELINGS about it. I went to see the movie on Christmas.
4. Doctor Who! My show! I was nervous because I just keep losing faith in Moffat, and a lot of the things I heard/saw about the Christmas episode made me roll my eyes. But it was SO MUCH BETTER than it sounded. I've also just decided that I'm not going to engage in criticism and analysis of this episode beyond what immediately jumped out at me. It's Christmas. I will say this: it had a lot more ... substance ... than Eleven's previous two Christmas specials. One of Moffat's biggest weaknesses, I think, (besides the fact that he is bewildered by the existence of characters who are not straight white men) is that he thinks he's being all clever and surprising and will knock his audiences off their feet with his brilliant twists and turns, but a lot of the time ... he doesn't. He takes an opportunity to subvert the scenario he's set up, and he plays it straight instead. Case in point: River Song and the whole, massive, "oooh who is this Good Man she killed, it seems like it's the Doctor but he's said he's not a good man and that would be too obvious, Moffat's been too excited about this for it to be that straightforward" buildup of her character. And yet, for all of her *mysteriousness*, she's exactly what she was touted to be: she married the Doctor and is in Stormcage because she killed him. And for the Christmas specials, there was the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and then there was A Christmas Carol, and he played those straight, almost boringly. Don't get me wrong, I loved them, but they were such bizarrely straightforward adaptations of previous stories that I almost couldn't believe it, and they weren't as memorable as they could have been as a result. And when he doesn't go for the un-surprise, his "clever twists" are more like "out of left field WTF moments".
( spoilers below )
I've also been going around and skimming through the Yuletide archives, because it just makes me happy to see all of the comments from the recipients, although to be honest I don't even know where to start. I've been going through the recs at the Yuletide community, mostly.
2. I've got the rest of Bridging the Rubicon down now, as an outline. I really like it. I mean, it's kind of stupid, and I'm going to have a hard time finding the right balance between humor, deadly serious relationship stuff, and critical commentary, but it's, um, a whole lot simpler than what I was trying to wrangle before? I don't have it on the computer, because I outline best in stream-of-consciousness in a notebook, but anyway I'm thinking I should find out when Big Bangs take place because it's going to be massive, I might as well commit to a community so I'll be accountable for finishing it. And that way I can find a beta. I liked having a beta reader for Yuletide, and I wish I knew more about the art of getting someone to edit fanfic.
3. Les Miserables. My head is full of a tangled mess of ALL THE FEELINGS about it. I went to see the movie on Christmas.
4. Doctor Who! My show! I was nervous because I just keep losing faith in Moffat, and a lot of the things I heard/saw about the Christmas episode made me roll my eyes. But it was SO MUCH BETTER than it sounded. I've also just decided that I'm not going to engage in criticism and analysis of this episode beyond what immediately jumped out at me. It's Christmas. I will say this: it had a lot more ... substance ... than Eleven's previous two Christmas specials. One of Moffat's biggest weaknesses, I think, (besides the fact that he is bewildered by the existence of characters who are not straight white men) is that he thinks he's being all clever and surprising and will knock his audiences off their feet with his brilliant twists and turns, but a lot of the time ... he doesn't. He takes an opportunity to subvert the scenario he's set up, and he plays it straight instead. Case in point: River Song and the whole, massive, "oooh who is this Good Man she killed, it seems like it's the Doctor but he's said he's not a good man and that would be too obvious, Moffat's been too excited about this for it to be that straightforward" buildup of her character. And yet, for all of her *mysteriousness*, she's exactly what she was touted to be: she married the Doctor and is in Stormcage because she killed him. And for the Christmas specials, there was the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and then there was A Christmas Carol, and he played those straight, almost boringly. Don't get me wrong, I loved them, but they were such bizarrely straightforward adaptations of previous stories that I almost couldn't believe it, and they weren't as memorable as they could have been as a result. And when he doesn't go for the un-surprise, his "clever twists" are more like "out of left field WTF moments".
( spoilers below )