Projects!! LIFE!!!

I have a couple, one is much more huge than the other. In the interest of organization I will explain the less massive one first.

Fanfiction: Firefly/A:TLA crossover

I linked most of you to a blurb snippet on Facebook that I wrote as a bit of an intro to the universe. I have bits and pieces here and there but not a plan for conflict climaxes. When my other project is done, maybe I'll work on it.

LIFE project: MY SISTER GOT MARRIED AND MOVED TO LOUISVILLE!! 

I stayed up for four days finishing our bridesmaid dresses, 8 hours of sleep total. That's why I failed to post the Tuesday prior to the 21st. Then we spent the next half of the week preparing for the wedding, with its execution on Saturday. Then we spent 2 days taking care of cleanup and driving home. Then we moved Rachel and David to Louisville. That's why I failed to post the Tuesday prior to the 28th. Then I prepared for my current project:

I STARTED MY MISSION AND WE WERE SENT TO BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA!!!!!! 

 We arrived in Ohio for training and learned of our teams and assignments at dinner on Friday. I was sent with a team of all girls which I am thankful for, because I do not need to be distracted by bold and beautiful men. Training continued until Sunday when we were commissioned and it was announced to the world where we were being sent!

We packed and left Ohio on Monday morning and reached our destination today! We hit the ground running and have already received appointments to interview for jobs! We expect to have our apartments by Thursday.

My team consists of 8 girls total, split into 2 households of 4 and I am ridiculously thankful for my team, they are all wonderful and we work very well together.

Oh! And my sister and her husband were sent on a team to Dallas, TX!

So that's my current project! I'll keep you updated as we go! Love you love you!

Oh, and here's pictures:

Fanfiction FTW

I have to admit that while I don't comment very often, I do read all of your posts!

While fanfiction is definitely my most common area of fan works, I'm rather proud that I've been branching away from Harry Potter recently into other fandoms.

For Once Upon a Time, I have a RedCricket (Ruby/Archie) fanfic that was surprisingly popular as far as my fanfictions usually go. And I got several reviews from people who said they didn't like RedCricket, but they ship it now. So, I'm very proud of that.

I also wrote a fanfic for Dragon Age, which is a video game. In the game, you discover that one of your traveling companions is heir to the throne. You can choose either to instate your friend to the throne, leave the current ruling Queen on the throne, or convince the two of them to marry. I choose the third option because the two characters each had qualities the other lacked, and together they make an effective ruling team. However, this choice seriously pisses off your companion (because he's not fond of the Queen, and she's the daughter of a man who is responsible for the deaths of a lot of people, one of which is extremely personal to your traveling companion). Even after you save the world, he's still pretty pissed at you. And then, in the companion game, you meet up with him again, and he's actually pretty friendly. And I thought "hmm... I wonder what happened to make him change his mood" (other than the game developers not wanting to code the character for different emotions). So the fanfic is the companion and the queen growing together, learning about each other, and falling in love. That sort of thing.

I've had a number of other fanfics for other fandoms in mind (like the Oblivion movie), but they haven't come to fruition yet. Still, it's rather exciting to be trying new things.

As far as Harry Potter goes, I'm currently working a project involving Harry being sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor. Basically, he's the same Harry we know and love, but he's in a different house and interacting with different people. I plan to go through the first two books and rewrite the events according to Harry's house change. It's exciting for me because I get to learn more about Blaise Zabini and Draco and a reinvented Terence Higgs. So, it's fun, though I'm being a little slow in updating.

Also, I have two Next Gen Rose/Scorpius fics, which I count as branching out because I don't usually write Next Gen.

As far as physical crafts, I'm working on some Harry Potter stuff for Christmas gifts. :)

Projects? What's a Project?

Oh, the projects that I have in mind...and don't have time for...

Most recently, I've been going through my old drawings of my characters for whatever various story, fanfiction, or fanart ideas I've had in the past.  As all artists know, we get better the more we practice, and as I was looking back at my initial character designs, I couldn't help but be a little disgusted.  I was lacking in technique like nobody's business, and some of my ideas were just ridiculous.  So I decided to go back and re-design my stuff.  I'm not saying my technique is perfect now (far from it, in fact), but it's certainly better than it was at the initial design stage.  The project slowed to a halt right now, what with school and all, but I'm hoping to get back to it a little bit in December when I'm between semesters.

I have ideas for themed card decks, too, but that is WAY down the line...like Harry Potter, Super Mario Galaxy, Banjo-Tooie, Firefly,...there are many more, I promise you.

Then there's Christmas presents, which are a project in and of themselves.  Which reminds me, some of you have not answered my Facebook post!  I need, from you, your favorite neutral color (i.e., black, grey, brown, navy, etc.) and your favorite non-neutral color (i.e., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, or variations thereof).  You CAN tell me two neutral colors, but not two non-neutral colors.  Unfortunately, that's not the way these things work  =(  They will be seen together in a something that you will all be receiving for Christmas, so keep that in mind.  So far I have received answers from Cassie, Anne, and Heidi.  Tori and Maggie, I still need answers from you, please-please.

And then, of course, there's the Oz/Wonderland stories I've been working on for about three or four years.  I am hopelessly stuck on Wonderland right now, and even a little bit on Oz.  I think I know what I want to happen, but I can't decide, and it's driving me crazy.  I've tried the whole, "let the story talk to you and exist on its own" the way some of you do, but it's just not working for me.  I don't know that I'll ever have these stories done, especially now that I keep drifting off into a trilogy where I also incorporate Neverland.  This is going to be another one that may have to wait until I'm all settled in with life (like, after I get my certificate and a job to go along with it).  To try and mitigate things, I've tried designing my characters, but that's gone terribly as well, so I don't know what to do. It's on the back-burner, like I said.

As always, I love and miss you guys.  I hope everything is going well, and I look forward to reading the rest of your posts.

Fanfiction is a thing I do

Okay, so I think all of you are aware that I write fanfiction. I've been writing fanfiction since 2003, so a full decade now, which, wow, that took a moment to sink in. Geez.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, my main fandom is Harry Potter, and I am pretty proud of the fact that, in my little corner of the internet, I'm pretty well known and respected as a fanfiction author. I checked my author stats recently, and I had over 12,000 hits on my stories in September alone. I've won some ficfest competitions, and, good gracious it's a small world, the other day Chase was talking to a coworker who admitted to reading HP fanfiction, and when he asked if she knew of Realmer06, her eyes lit up with recognition, and she was a bit starstruck to discover I lived about five minutes away.

(Have I mentioned that Chase got a job here in Fredericksburg so we are officially no longer long distance? I'm super excited about that, but I've been AWOL for a couple weeks, so I can't remember what I have and haven't said.)

Anyway, so yeah. I am pretty damn proud of my little tiny bit of internet fame, and my current project is one I'm really excited about.

I have this habit when I write of always trying to fit everything into the same universe, so that the Percy I write in one story is the same Percy I write in another. It's a compulsion I have. Anyway, over the past five years or so, I wrote a huge Next Gen trilogy about Rose and Scorpius and Albus (I'm well known; I never said I was particularly fast about getting things published), and because so many cousins made vague appearances at one time or another, and I wanted to be consistent, I started to develop my little headcanons of things.

This grew and grew until I had charts and timelines and birthdays and age gaps, at which point I said, you know what? I should just write all this into a project.

And that's what I've been doing for the past year or so. The project is called Pieces: A Story Cycle, and each Next Gen kid gets a chapter, a moment if you will, about what defines them and makes them who they are. I've got everyone clumped into cousin groups, and eventually, I'm going to write longer off-shoot stories like the massive Rose/Scorpius trilogy that started it all, for the rest of the Next Gen kids, too.

My goal is to make this a project that people can be as immersed in as they want. If they want to read everything, go for it. But if a person is only interested in Scorpius as I see him? They can just read Scorpius's moment without missing anything.

I've linked up above to the story if you're at all interested in how I've come to see these characters we know next to nothing about. All the stories on this particular site link in to this specific universe. The stories span from Deathly Hallows to the time between the epilogue to far into the Next Gen's timelines. Honestly, there's something for everyone, and I really am very proud of that.

Also! Tangentially related, I started an Etsy shop, where I sell (supposedly) a lot of my HP craftiness! So that's been fun. :)

Fan Works

I was supposed to pick a topic and I forgot! This week, I want to hear about fan works that you have done in the past (maybe one you are most proud of) or something that you are planning on doing or working on right now (if you are not one of us in school and have the free time). It can be fan fiction, crafts, videos, whatever. Tell us about it.

Oh yeah, that.

I am allowing myself TEN MINUTES to write you guys an update before I go back to deciding which 16 crucial words to delete from a max 500 word paper, and reading 200 more pages before Friday.

School is going as well as can be expected and at the same time kicking my butt. A paper a week is still killing me, especially since once I'm through with research I usually need at least 5 drafts to get it into academic language. Right now I'm see-sawing between needing to add more words to be more specific so I don't get annoying questions about things that I didn't look into (because, seriously, I CAN'T BE AN EXPERT IN A WEEK! I am not Tony Stark!) and needing to cut at least 16 words to make it under my word count. BLURGH!

Otherwise, though, classes are going well. I got to present on Sherlock in my Film Musicology class and it was awesome. I keep getting really good ideas for my own research, but of course I don't have time to work on that right now. Heaven forbid I be doing original research in an area I'm actually excited about! We're still talking about searching in Z-401, though we've moved from search engines (like Google) to commercial databases (like Ebsco)! I am learning SO MUCH in that class *sarcasm*. But hey, at least it's not a ton of extra work right?

The biggest news here is that I got a job! I'm working 12 hours a week cataloging scores for the music library. This is the ideal position for me - it gets me valuable experience I can put on my resume and gives me practice at something I didn't get to catalog much at my old position. It'll also give me a little bit of spending money - minimum wage in Indiana is way higher than minimum in Ohio! At first I was concerned that it might be too much with everything else, but I'm finding it really nice to have a couple hours a week where I can do something that I know I'm pretty good at, that distracts me from the pretty much constant feeling of a sour stomach from nerves, and that I have no chance whatsoever at getting an F on!

And that's it, time's up! I hope you're all doing well (I'm writing this three days early, so far it's just Katie's post) and I hope we don't have weeks like last week too often!

EDIT: Remember how I said everything was fine? (Okay, fine-ish. Okay, not really fine, but I'll live.) Well that was until somebody decided to shut down the government! Because, apparently, government shutdown means EVERYTHING, right down to the Library of Congress website. I mean, I get that you can't get in the building, but they TOOK DOWN THE FRICKIN' WEBSITE! That's, like, 90% of my sources for original research! (We do have others but none are nearly so comprehensive.) Every paper since the first week has included at least one manuscript from their digital resources. Now, normally, I prefer to stay out of politics, but I draw the line when it starts interfering with my HOMEWORK! (As a side note, this isn't the only class that's affected - I had an email from a professor of another class that there was a section of our homework we wouldn't be able to do if we hadn't started yet, so just skip it.) I'm not siding with anyone (personally I think they're all being morons for not being willing to compromise on SOMETHING) but will somebody, PLEASE, put the right people in time-out until they stop sulking and WORK THINGS OUT?!?! (I also fail to see how punishing those of us who have nothing to do with the process by, for example, impeding our research and making us fail an assignment, is going to get anything done. Let's punish the idiots that got us into this mess instead! I'd suggest starting with a docked allowance - that seems to work on others who typically behave in this manner!)

Oz the Great and Powerful

Yay, catch up week. Nothing new is going on with me. I'm still working my temporary job, and things are going as well as they could be. I finally watched "Oz the Great and Powerful" the other night. I was hesitant to see it since I'd heard so many negative things about it, and I'm sad to say I wasn't wrong in my expectations. I wanted to post my review of it because there are just some movies that are made that make me wonder how anyone could have thought they'd had a good storyline.

The main problem with Oz the Great and Powerful is the main character (Oscar, or Oz for short) is ultimately unlikable. We are introduced to him as a con-artist. He works as a magician and takes more than his fair share of the proceeds, is flippant with his helpers, and is constantly winning over women in ways that are just insulting to the intelligence of women.

SLIGHT DEVIATING RANT

Every single girl he comes across is given the identical music box and is told it was the possession of his deceased grandmother who fought in a painfully obvious made-up battle in a war that took place when women weren't allowed to fight. Really, due? This works for you? Where do you find these brain-dead women?

There were reviews that claimed this movie as incredibly sexist, mostly because the three most powerful women in Oz are looking for a man to save them. While I have no desire to jump on that bandwagon, Oscar's come-ons make it hard for me not to question the mindset of the writer. 

Oscar's plays shouldn't work, but they do. And the fact that these women actually believe such ridiculous and obvious lies makes me wonder. Did the writer think this would be funny? Because it's not. It just makes me want to gag myself. I was jumping up and down in my seat when Glinda finally entered the picture because she's the only woman he puts the moves on who doesn't fall for it.

SLIGHT DEVIATING RANT OVER

Oscar gets a little credit when his long-term sweetheart appears. Turns out she's been offered a proposal in marriage, and she came to get his thoughts on the matter. He tells her to accept the proposal on the grounds that she deserves better than him. But this otherwise applaudable moment is brought down with the girl's insistence that she believes he could be better if he wanted to be. The fact that she knows all of his dirty secrets and still wants him because she believes he could be better is just too reminiscent of women in abusive relationships. I want that girl to run out of there and never look back.

Due to Oscar's nature with women, an unhappy boyfriend appears with the intent to rip him limb from limb, and Oscar escapes by getting into a hot air balloon that is sucked into a tornado that takes him to Oz. Once there, he discovers there was a prophecy about a wizard coming to Oz from a far away land who will save the kingdom from the wicked witch. Naturally, everyone believes Oscar is this man.

Obviously this is supposed to be a redemption story, but one of the flaws is the redemption takes too long. Oscar starts his journey in the land of Oz with the same greedy, womanizing nature he's had the whole beginning of the movie, fully taking advantage of whom the people believe him to be. As a viewer, I don't like him, I don't like his actions, and I cannot enjoy a movie where I want to slap the main character every five seconds.

About halfway through the movie Oscar finally meets up with Glinda who is the only person in Oz who sees him for exactly who he is and isn't afraid to let him know it. Glinda knows he's a fraud, but she also knows the people believe in him, and she knows that belief can go a long way. She convinces Oscar to help her rally the people so they can be led against the wicked witch to take back the throne.

(This is why the sexism argument doesn't work for me. It's Glinda's quick thinking and ingenuity that saves Oz. Though she needed Oscar's training in illusion and misdirection to do it, and just because she steps into the background and let's Oscar take all the credit, does not mean that she wasn't the one pulling all the strings all along. Oscar never could have been motivated to save Oz without Glinda's guidance, and there's no way he could have faced the wicked witch one on one and cast her out as Glinda does. The way I see it, Glinda is the real savior here, Oscar's just a tool.)

Glinda and Oscar work together, and when he has the chance to chicken out he sticks it through, and he even manages to make some friends. Things turn around for him, and this is the place where his character-changing redemption should come through, but ultimately the redemption story falls flat because of a certain wicked witch.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

When Oscar arrives in Oz, he meets a young witch named Theodora. She believes him to be the prophesized wizard and is excited to take him to Emerald City. On the way, Oscar wins her over and, according to some online speculation, may even sleep with her. After one night of meeting this man, Theodora is convinced the two of them are going to spend the rest of their lives together. This is very awkward for Oscar since of course he wasn’t intending on anything but playing her. He does nothing to disillusion her however, and brushes the whole thing off with the notion that she’ll forget all about him once he gets as far away from her as possible.

Later, Theodora's sister, Evanora (and current caretaker of Emerald City), lies to Theodora and alludes that Oscar had spent that night with her. Theodora is crushed, and in a moment of anguish, Evanora convinces Theodora to curse herself so that all the pain she is feeling (along with all the goodness in her) will go away. Theodora agrees, and as her heart is "withered away," she becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.

It is hinted that Theodora had some wickedness in her to begin with, but all we see of it is one instance where she gets angry and lets a fire ball lose. This does not exemplify wickedness, just a girl who has trouble controlling her emotions. Ultimately, Theodora is characterized in near complete innocence. Her transformation can be seen as pure manipulation on the part of Oscar and Evanora. And that's why the redemption story doesn't work.

Theodora's transformation from an innocent young woman to the wickedest witch there ever lived does not endear me Oscar in the slightest. Regardless of any other factors, he is at least in part responsible for what happened to her. He chose to play with the delicate feelings of a naïve girl and then cast them aside as though they meant nothing to him (as he has done with countless other women), and he never owns up to this fact. The movie may end with him making friends and becoming a generally more likable person, but the fact that he puts the moves on Glinda at the end of the movie just reinforces the sinking feeling that he ultimately changed very little from his time in Oz.

SPOILERS OVER: IT IS SAFE TO CONTINUE

The movie completely neglects to do the frame story where Oscar would wake up and realize he had been dreaming and that all the key people in his life had been in the dream. I think if the movie had done this, a lot could have been accomplished in the way of his redemption. Perhaps he goes after his sweetheart (whose double is Glinda in Oz), or apologizes to his working partner (who doubles as the monkey he befriends) for treating him so horribly. He could even own up to the women he's been manipulating, which would show at least some understanding of how his womanizing actions were wrong and could make up at least a little for what happened to Theodora.

The movie does have elements of a dream, such as him putting the china girl doll back together being reminiscent of the cripple girl who saw his magic show and asked him to make her walk. But without the frame story where we see how his ordinary life changes, we don't ultimately see him learn from his experience in Oz. He changes, yes, and grows. But has he truly become a different man, one the audience can like? Does he truly embody "goodness" as Glinda claims? Does he become the "great man" the people of Oz were looking for and the audience was expecting by the end of the movie?

The ultimate answer is no. The movie does have some good elements, but the redemption story is too week for those elements to follow through. And that's why the movie falls on its face. Its namesake simply doesn’t hold.