Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

I’m just wrapping up my filk musical for last-minute posting to ASC. The Sound of Borgness has been in progress for just a year and a half, making it rather new for my Trek fic. Strangely enough, the hardest song to filk was “Something Good,” though I like it and the meter is pretty straightforward. This is the first hard evidence I have that “Something Good” isn’t all that good - I’ve never understood the anti-”Something Good” sentiment among people who like the rest of the cheese in The Sound of Music.

The link to my commentary on “The Lamne’rau” works now. I’ll put The Sound of Borgness up later this weekend - posting it to ASC is my current priority.

On the Stargate side, I wrote a drabble for tonight’s episode, “Chimera” - All Clear. I haven’t seen the ep, so spoilers are minimal. This is the first time I’ve written a Stargate story about episodes I haven’t seen, though I used to do it all the time in Voyager. Even now I’m not sure which Voyager episodes I’ve seen and which ones I only read about in Jim’s Voyager Reviews.

Mac link of the day: Ready to leave your Baby Bell? Try Voice over IP.

I prefer to read text in a narrow column - it’s much easier to read that way. I hate websites that fix the page width, preventing the text from wrapping in a smaller browser window. I’ve gotten annoyed lately because I’m always resizing the Safari window: if someone’s text runneth over, it’s easy enough to go for the green button and expand Safari, but going back to my preferred window size is often a more manual operation (although a second click of the green button works in many circumstances).

I’ve never had much success with bookmarklets (bookmarks that do cool JavaScript things), but today’s macosxhint worked so well for me that I decided to make my own, that would push Safari right and make it skinny: w||i.outerHeight>h){s.moveTo(0,0);s.resizeTo(w,h)};if(m){s.moveTo(m==1?0:screen.availWidth-w,0);};s.resizeTo(w,h);};rsz(self,window,600,screen.availHeight,2);”>600xFull, w||i.outerHeight>h){s.moveTo(0,0);s.resizeTo(w,h)};if(m){s.moveTo(m==1?0:screen.availWidth-w,0);};s.resizeTo(w,h);};rsz(self,window,700,screen.availHeight,2);”>700xFull.

Give them a click - they may work in less cool browsers. Safari doesn’t go under my Dock, which is also on the right, when I click - very, very nice. You can also drag a bookmarklet link to the start of your bookmark bar and use command-1 to run it (or click on it, of course, but I keep my bookmark bar hidden most of the time).

Mac program of the day: Unison, a newsreader

I found the first issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction while I was catching up with the rasfc newsgroup with Unison. Usually I refuse to read articles that you have to register to see, but I really wanted to know what Peter Jackson and the Denial of the Hero by M. Garcia was all about. So, some excerpts (a fair use):

As the trilogy of films unfolded, it became evident that Jackson had fundamentally rewritten the characters and their motivations, and in so doing, had quite stripped the essence of heroic fantasy out of the story. In the film trilogy the heros are weak and hesitant, while most of the villains are denuded of their tragedy. […]

It might seem that all of Tolkien’s character development involves the acceptance of destiny, depicted in (sometimes overwrought) mythic language. But an even more curious reversal takes place in the person of Frodo. Frodo alone of all the major characters in Tolkien’s work chooses his destiny. […]
Jackson portrays Frodo as a lost creature through the last leg of the journey. He is so burdened by the ring, and so baffled by Gollum’s tricksy talk, that he even turns against Sam.

M. notes that a pivotal Frodo scene is omitted from the movie, the one in which Frodo binds Gollum with the Ring: “If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.” Which, of course, he is. There’s no mention of the Faramir or Denethor character assassinations, but if you thought Gandalf and Aragorn were (at least occasionally) heroic this article will set you straight. There’s no room for heroes in Jackson’s world:

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings remains unfilmed and, since it seems increasingly unpalatable to contemporary sensibilities, probably unfilmable.

I wonder, did Peter Jackson see the real story and revise it consciously, or was he, like the literary critics quoted in the article, unable to read the story as it was intended to be read? Are there stories that cannot be told because the audience just can’t see them? It’s a disturbing thought, since those are probably the stories I’d want to tell.

Movie links of the day: Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, Star Trek: Nemesis Pictorial Plot Synopsis (rated R for profanity), and Roger Ebert on Macs in movies

The title is from one of the DVD extras on Signs - M. Night Shyamalan prompting the orchestra when they were taping the soundtrack. He doesn’t like CGI, so it was interesting to hear about his struggle with the special effects for the aliens. The other DVD commentaries I’ve listened to recently came with Stargate season 4; Stargate is all special effects all the time.

I wouldn’t want to make a movie myself. The process looks way too complicated and you have to be a business manager, or get your work chopped to bits by whoever is the business manager. I still find DVD commentaries interesting for the insight into how people string a story together under sometimes strict restrictions of time, place, or expense. Lots of money and effort can go into something very small like areal shots of Indian crop circles (or Jonah morphing into Jack in “Beneath the Surface”), while the most striking bits like the Last Supper scene (or Thera with her head on Jonah’s shoulder) come out surprisingly easily.

In that way, filmmaking is a lot like writing. Sometimes you hammer away at the technical details, and sometimes it all just flows out of a good setup.

I wasn’t planning to do the DVD commentary meme, because it seemed
like way too much work considering that nobody really cares
(Bitter!Jack the Muse is sitting on my shoulder, playing a tiny violin
for me right now). But href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mandysbitch/100150.html">CGB’s
MiSTing highly amused me, and Seema requested a commentary on “The Lamne’rau” or “The Museum.” I went with the shorter story.

Whenever I get ftp access back, I’ll put this up on its own web page (and I’ll get the new SG drabble up), but for the moment, the body of the story is going in the extended entry field (the MT equivalent of a cut). First, my commentary on the ASC headers of the story:

Title: The Lamne’rau

Hold it right there! The majority of effort on this fic went into the title. I spent hours combing through on-line Romulan dictionaries, trying to come up with a good Romulan term for “Borg.” (The precise derivation comes up in the story.) It’s disturbing how much time I devote to tiny details nobody is ever going to notice.

Author: Jemima
Contact: jemimap@crosswinds.net

That email address is long dead, but nobody sends fb anyway. At least this way I can pretend that the reams of fanmail bounced.

Series: VOY
Rating: PG for assimilation
Codes: 7

Obviously, this story dates from my Borg period.

Summary: Seven’s brief childhood, as glimpsed in “Dark Frontier”,
“The Raven”, “Author, Author” and other episodes.
Preliminary to Tertiary, a life of Seven of Nine.

And I really meant to write it. I had
big plans, involving psychobabble and a cool AQ frame story. The best
laid plans of muse and man… I have other fragments of Tertiary
floating around in my UFO folder, but none are in any shape to post.

Archive: ASC only, but feel free to link to
http://jemimap.freeshell.org/voy/fic/tertiary/lamnerau.html

There isn’t room in this DVD to insert
my tirade against redundant archives and fic taxes.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns their bodies, but their souls are free.

This is a standard Jemima disclaimer in which I don’t disclaim anything because I haven’t done anything wrong. If you disagree, you’re welcome to sue me.

Date: January 2003

In the fine tradition of January fic-dumps to ASC, I dusted this baby off and posted it. It was written much earlier as part of Tertiary. I don’t know the exact dates, but I do know I started Tertiary in late June, 2001 and worked on it on and off through August of 2002. As far as I can tell from the changelog (I track my fic using RCS), a lot of The Lamne’rau was written in February and May of 2002.

Note: This story won first place in the Voyager Featuring Seven
of Nine category of the 2002 ASC Awards.

Something missing from this note is appropriate thanks to members of the C/7 list for help with a timeline of Seven’s childhood.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fossil of the day: a 428 million year old millipede in Scotland

I’ve finally written a Stargate filk. You can find One Brass Horus in the SG-1 section. Here’s a preview to see if you know the original, “One Tin Soldier”:

I’ve also put up The Perfect Setup, the sequel to The Universe Survival Guide. I don’t think it compares to the original, but there were demands for a sequel and Bitter!Jack The Muse is easily influenced in his current state.

Here’s a Friday Five, by way of Seema:

At this moment, what is your favorite…

1. …song?
“She” by Charles Aznavour.

2. …food?
Chicken Sofrito (with cardamom)

3. …tv show?
Stargate SG-1.

4. …scent?
I’m not a big scent person, but I noticed cardamom is popular now. It makes me hungry.

5. …quote?
“Better a dry crust and peace with it, than a house full of feasting with strife.” Proverbs 17:1

In my day tirade of the day: a Slashdot thread on silver paste

The results are up for the JCFicHaven Decathlon, a new fanfic contest that’s not entirely unlike AAA. I rooted through all the award pages to find out what B’Elanna the Canon Correcting Muse (Retired) had won, and put her awards up on her award shelf. Jade’s awards are also up on her index page and relevant stories.

I can’t speak to the results, since I didn’t actually vote in the contest. B’Elanna the Muse won the silver medal overall, but every story of hers that placed was written at least three years ago, except for one drabble that’s only two years old. Apparently Lurking in particular was new to a lot of readers. I always liked that one myself.

I knew I hadn’t written much lately, but it was surprising nonetheless to look back on how much I wrote circa January 2001, and how little since Voyager jumped the big Borg shark in the sky. It makes me wonder how long this Stargate thing will last before I jump my own personal shark.

Well, back to the Ice Planet fic…

SCO quote of the day: “I can’t believe that SCO is interested in opening a new legal front. It’s a little like Napoleon invading Russia. At some point, you are overextended. Then it’s winter. Then it’s over.” –GrokLaw
Mars attack of the day: OMG! They Killed Spirit!
RSS link of the day: iTunes Store RSS generator

In hindsight it was obvious. I think Jerie was the first to suggest that Jack was my Stargate muse, but I knew it couldn’t be just any Jack. It had to be a particular Jack, like the AU General O’Neill, or mini-Jack. Today I realized that my Jack muse is Bitter!Jack:

O’NEILL: What are you doing here?
CARTER: It turns out we made a mistake. A big one.
O’NEILL: Which one? We made a few.
CARTER: Our alliance with the Aschen.
O’NEILL: Oh that. Not working out, is it? Gosh, I wish I’d seen that coming. Oh, wait… I did see that coming.

In honor of Bitter!Jack, I’ve put up my “2010″ drabble, I do not love you Thursday, and an only marginally longer story along the same lines, And why you come complaining. Both titles are from “Thursday” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and the poem is included with the longer story for your convenience.

Sports stat of the day: The Mars Scorecard, though it gives the home team way too much credit for partly-functional landers
Warning: Second-hand spoilers for Stargate season 7, first-hand for S4 “Beneath the Surface”

Jerie has been blogging about the Real Sam again. Now I don’t object to the hussy at all, but I do object to the idea that the Sam we usually see is some fake Sam, or Sam with the military mask on, or anything less than real 100% Sam.

To me, the Sam doing the hussy with The Boyfriend is no more or less the Real Sam than the Sam mowing down Jaffa on alien planets. If you want to see Sam with a boyfriend, Jack or not, that’s fine, but that’s just a little piece of Sam. Sam had no boyfriend for six and a half years, and yet she was a character who smiled and frowned and felt plenty of emotions.

I admit that Sam is an enigma and a hard character to write, not unlike Buffy. But that enigma includes her previous boyfriend episodes. I didn’t find that Narim or Martouf or even Jonah cleared up the Sam question, so I doubt that The Boyfriend will do for me what he’s done for Jerie. We did have a fun chat about it a while back, though, in which I told her:

Open your eyes!
You are looking at Sam! The real Sam!
Not the mask of Sam - that’s Sam! The one on the show!
The Person On The Show Is The Real Sam.
She is not a front for some fanon Sam. Look at Sam! She’s right there on the screen! I see Sam’s feelings all the time.
I don’t know which ones she’s hiding.

Jack can’t figure her out when they’re having a conversation about it. I mean Jonah -
Jonah was all nervous about his feelings
because he didn’t know,
because even with free-the-brain-stamp,
she was still being Buddy Thera instead of kissyface Thera.
He was nervous about telling her about his feelings,
he said so - he made some disclaimer,
like would it be okay to tell you I remember feelings?
Why would he have to ask that if he knew?

But all along it’s totally obvious that Jonah is nuts about Thera.
She’s kind of fond of him,
the way Sam is kind of fond of Jack.
But it isn’t obvious that it’s more to her.
Even when he drags it out of her,
he gets some one word answer like “I’m glad”
- open profession of undying love it isn’t.
And [Thera putting her head on Jonah’s shoulder] may constitute marriage on some planets,
but in my book it’s just cute and says I’m kind of fond of you Jonah,
but who knows how fond?

Thera is the unhidden Sam.
In fact, Thera acts very much like the real Sam, showing us that the real Sam isn’t hiding her feelings, any more than Thera is.
That is Sam. Sam is Sam.
One must accept the Sam. Visualize the sound of one Sam clapping…
Do not look for other, inner Sams until you understand the outer Sam.
For this is TV, and the outer surface is all you get.

So you see I’m kind of zen about the whole Sam thing.