April 28 -- May 18, 2001: Updates -- Return of the Hornblower WIP -- some very serious thoughts about real people slash. No, not really. -- pissed off. -- Sorkin whacking / random packing -- graduation -- duh -- getting lost in Astro City -- stitches in time -- proved right -- look! -- warning: i talk about god
"Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. I was your servant here on Earth and I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments. To hell with you." -- translation of Pres. Bartlett's Latin speech by MightyBigTV.com
Now that I think about it (and Two Cathedrals had to at least make you think about it) The West Wing has always had, for me, a faintly religious feel to it. Or at least, the kind of ambiance that I associate with religion. "I serve at the pleasure of the President." Service. Dedication. Leadership. Men, specifically, in leadership. Theological debates-- okay, maybe they call it policy, but that's just semantics. Sam and Toby and their love for the beauty of words: their meaning and sound and their very real power. Liturgy.
Anyway. Besides being dramatically compelling, President Bartlett's crisis of faith was fascinating to me. I was raised non-denominational Christian, and although I'm... lapsed, I guess, it's still what comes to mind, in a lot of cases, as a yardstick, if nothing else. It was interesting to read in Maygra's blog a while back that she's been an atheist from childhood (if only to point up once again to this white middle-class Sunday-school suburbanite baby that yes, Virginia, some people are different from you!) 'cause I did, once, have a freaky moment once where I thought "Hey, what if there really is no God?" but apart from that one time, I've always remained pretty convinced that there is one.
And sometimes, despite the fact that I'm lapsed, and even despite the fact that if I weren't lapsed, one of the things that I would believe in is justification by faith alone... I bargain with God. "Look, God, I know you don't bargain. Not by works but by grace are we saved, through faith... that whole thing. So I know that if I promised you I'd do something for You, like start going to church if just you did this one thing, that'd be really cheap of me, 'cause I know you can't be bought, and even if I did go it wouldn't really mean anything inside, faith-wise, so I really might as well not even promise, but please, if you could just do this one thing, 'cause you're God, that'd be great. Please. Thanks. Amen."
Yikes, even my faith is cynical and half-assed. But still, I could empathize with Bartlett's speech in the cathedral. It was gorgeous, honest, and painful. What was the title of the episode where the President told C.J. that when he was younger, he thought seriously of becoming a priest? On the plane to Portland. (And does anyone want to write that AU?)
But. He doesn't really think that Mrs. Landingham's death is punishment for lying to the American people, though, does he? He didn't really think that 3.8 million jobs would equal out and cover up a "massive conspiracy to defraud the American public." His Presidency hasn't been about that; I mean, he's been serving (serving God, serving America, serving the public-- whatever-- but serving) since before the MS, and the cover-up, so-- why? For what?
Maybe that's what he's asking himself now. For what? For an easy life, a long life, a web of protection over his loved ones? He doesn't have any of that. Even though he's the President. Especially not since he's the President. So then what good is doing good if it doesn't count for anything when it comes to the people you love, like Zoey and Charlie and Josh and Dolores Landingham?
But that's not quite right. I don't think he feels ripped off, like "I kept my part of the bargain, where were you?" It's not really all about Jed Bartlett being selfish and wanting his life to be perfect. He's lost people before and he probably really didn't believe Mrs. Landingham would outlive him... although, with the MS, who knows? Maybe he did. She was certainly a tough broad. I can see young Jed, looking at that gorgeous young Mrs. Landingham, a tart-tongued perky-breasted Valkryie in sweater and pearls, and thinking she was the type of woman who'd not only live forever, but be young forever...
But anyway. To see this woman, who cared so much about justice, about equity, get cut down in an incredibly unfair, ironic manner... that's just not fair, and that's when the question becomes: what good is caring if God doesn't care?
Tangent: In a show less excellent than the West Wing, I could get some snarky mileage out of the fact that God didn't kill Mrs. Landingham-- Aaron Sorkin did. So when he puts words in President Bartlett's mouth, makes him rail against her killer, Sorkin's really talking to himself...
It'll be interesting to see how Bartlett resolves this crisis of faith next season. I'm certainly finding it more interesting than whether or not those firefighters on Third Watch can get their lives straightened out, or whether Carter transfers out of the ER... (do it! leave! Don't draw Abby away from Luka, you too-charming bastard!) Okay, maybe I'm a little involved... *grins*
And, let's see, what else about "Two Cathedrals?" Well, there's some more comments here at this site. Oh, and Young Jed is, indeed, fab. Very very Dead Poets Society. *grins*
Look here! Do you believe how beautiful this place is? That's a real building! This is a real place in Russia!
Of course, it might not be there any more, because this photograph was taken in 1910. And it probably didn't even look like that in real life, because that's the whole point of this website for "The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographs Recreated" (and touched up, and colorized) using faboo modern technology.
This particular photograph is the fourth one under "Architecture." (It's also used on the site's splash page, which I only found out after I went there. So now I feel cool, because the site authors obviously agree with me that it's the coolest picture on the site. *grins*) And, anyway, now I have a setting for my story where SG-1 goes to a planet where people worship whales. (No plot yet, just whales. And an overly cute child, but this is Stargate, after all-- they play the "cute kid" card all the damn time.) It's really just perfect. The grassy area that goes down to the water's edge, and the gazebo-like thing on the other side of the river... The whole setting looks weirdly Mediterranean, doesn't it? Anyway. Just wanted to say. Cool pictures. Cool site.
I don't have pet peeves; I have major fucking psychotic hatreds, okay? And it makes the world a lot easier to sort out. -- This is not me. This is something George Carlin said. But I have it at the top of my Poison Ivy/Harley Quinn WIP, hoping it'll work as a sort of trigger to Poison Ivy's character. Because comics characters, I'm finding, are more complicated than characters from other media. Want to write a Shanghai Noon story? See the movie, that's all the research you need. Well, you might want to read a few Westerns or do some research on the Forbidden City, but the movie is the be-all and end-all as far as characterization and relationships go.
But trying to write Poison Ivy (or Pamela Isley) is tougher. Is she all about revenge on the patriarchy, or is it the looming threat to the environment that pushed her over the edge? Does she hate men? Is she in love with Batman? Is she completely irrational, or does she know how she looks to other people? What are her powers all about-- are they innate, something almost mystic, or is her strength the result of something she cooked up in a lab?
There's cartoon canon and movie canon and comics canon. Whole reams of comics canon. And not just alternate histories, but alternate characterizations-- femme fatale, wounded bird, activist antihero. Sometimes the myths mesh and sometimes they're contradictory.
*smiles wryly* Really, I only mention this because yesterday morning I was sorting through a drawer full of paperbacks to see which ones were good to keep and which ones had to go. That afternoon I got rid of about one and a half paper bags full, which is a pretty good accomplishment. Anyway, that evening, I was puttering around doing something else when it dawned on me: "hey! Pamela is like Jim Gardner from Stephen King's Tommyknockers. A gentle guy most of the time, but with this monster lurking in him, the terrible knowledge he has. Not secret knowledge, this is stuff everyone knows about nuclear power, but he just can't deal with it, can't live a normal life knowing the fact that because of a few people, a single mistake, life on earth could be wiped out in a horrible, ugly way--"
Later on in the book Gard admits to himself that the reason he gets so irrational about nuclear power is because he also sees it in himself-- a terrible capacity for ugliness, for destruction, and the way it could (and can, and does) get so easily out of control, especially when he drinks.
So maybe, I'm thinking to myself, I should go back and re-read some of the bits about Gard in the first half or so of Tommyknockers, you know, before everything gets too wacky. Maybe I could get some clues for my story-- for a really strong, really harsh, really focused portrait of Poison Ivy.
You knew it, didn't you-- that's one of the ones I gave away.
Dammit.
Must wait until the end of the month and visit the library again... well, I'll probably have more time for reading then anyway.
I am alive. Since last time I blogged there've been two house inspections (three if you count the inspection of the New House which we all had to attend,) a visit from Selphie, a short story due to my online fiction writing course, and oh yeah, shopping & preparations for Mother's Day. Which went well. I got my mother some plastic sunflower placemats which we can use outdoors, and a book about quilting for beginners, which I think she liked.
(Pinky outdid herself in the gift department; she cross-stitched a bunch of sunflowers, took out the cheesy bland message that came in the cross-stitch pattern and included her own, and then took it to the craft store and framed it. So she's officially the good daughter for this coming year, I think.)
The quilting book was kind of a shot in the dark. Mom likes that homey sort of decorating style, but I've said before that she's a planner, a an organizer, and I think that in a lot of ways, handmade projects are just too small-scale to really interest her. She likes transforming a whole room: taking all the pieces-- a shade of paint, a certain wallpaper border, a piece of furniture-- and bringing them together to create an effect. In her mindset, spending too much time on one element, crafting or knitting or being otherwise overly Martha-Stewarty, is pointless. Like going off on a tangent.
But when Mom's mother passed away a few years ago, she left behind a room full of quilt stuff. I don't know the exact technical terms. Quilt fabric and quilt blocks and quilt tools and quilt fluff and a top-of-the-line Singer sewing machine. And my mother happens to be the only daughter on her side of the family, so she got most of Grandma's things-- her clothes, her everyday jewelry-- by default. So she took home the quilt stuff too.
She never really had room to set up a sewing room in this house. But when we'd go and look at houses, a lot of times she'd say something like "Look at this little room by the master bedroom! That'd be a great sewing room." And there's a little room offset from the game room in our new house that'll probably end up with a sewing machine in it.
Selphie, who was down for Mother's Day, also wonders, like I do, if Mom's really got the temperament for quilting, or, more precisely, the temperament to enjoy quilting as a hobby. "It seems to me like originally, quilting would have been an outlet for women who might have enjoyed doing mathematics," she said, "or being artistically creative, but Mom never seemed to be all that artistic or mathematically oriented, to me." Which was a good observation. But who knows? The book I got her lets you start out slow. It has tips on setting up your work space and smaller projects too, like making tote bags and small wall hangings and table runners and things to carry babies in.
I like reading the names of the quilt blocks. If we were naming the patterns today, we'd name them after things we looked at, things in our minds, and so hearing the original names makes me feel closer to the people who named them in the first place. People like my grandmother's family, who came from Nebraska to California in covered wagons. They named their patterns things like Birds in the Air. Jacob's Ladder. Ohio Star.
I know Mom still misses her mother. We never really got to know her that well; we moved away when I was nine or ten, and after that us kids only saw her once or twice a year. I know Pinky thinks it's vaguely creepy that sometimes Mom wears Grandma's jewelry, or Grandma's clothes. I don't.
Whether Mom really gets into this quilting thing or just keeps Grandma's stuff around like a big unassembled security blanket-- it really doesn't matter. I still, God willing, have thirty or forty years left to educate Pinky about quilting's proto-feminist roots, and its reclamation by artists like Judy Chicago, and how it would be really, really cool to learn how to quilt.
Hey, I already know she doesn't want the jewelry. She might as well get stuck with the sewing machine.
Went to the library today. I have no idea who's in charge of new books, but I would marry him or her right now. It's graphic novel central these days; I'm in fangirl heaven. There's mainstream stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek & Aliens tie-ins, but there's also Hellblazer, Transmetropolitan, Scott McCloud's Zot!, Frank Miller's 300 and Sin City, six or seven of the Sandman trades, as well as other Gaiman: Black Orchid, The Books of Magic, the Books of Faerie. Other non-traditional comics: Elric of Melnibone, Elfquest, Bone, Concrete, Cerebus. Manga: Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Lone Wolf & Cub, Gunsmith Cats. And Batclassics, all the best Batman stories: The Long Halloween, Arkham Asylum, Black and White and others. Also Alex Ross' amazing art in "Superman: Peace on Earth" and "Shazam! Power of Hope."
Alex Ross also did the covers for Astro City, written by Kurt Busiek, which is one of my new favorites. I recently read "Astro City: Tarnished Angel," and really liked it, and so today I checked out "Astro City: Life in the Big City." Wow.
"Astro City: Life in the Big City" collects the first six issues of the Astro City comic book into a trade paperback. They're all stand-alone stories, so the book is perfectly readable on its own. You don't have to know fifty years of backstory, and you don't have to buy more comics to find out "what happens next." But, since all the stories take place in the same city, they build on each other, giving you different pieces of the picture as you read, creating a really rich environment. You can almost get lost in Astro City. I actually did-- I wrote this huge review which you can find here.
Oops. Not Sheila. Shrift. *rolls eyes* I'm kind of stupid, okay, let's move on, nothing to see here. Except new art in the sidebar. *grins* A Buffy/Faith kinda "wild things" picture and a Wesley/Gunn kinda "check out us manly men" pic. What can I say? I love Wesley and Gunn.
I must have been thinking of something else that Sheila said. Maybe the Sandman quotes. I've discovered that I have the power to crack people up with three simple words: "Sentinel/Sandman crossover!" Usually followed by "No, seriously!" *grins* Oh, come on. Naomi hangs out at Fawney Rig with Burgess in the late seventies. Jim gets bitchy with Death. Lucien has to tell Blair "you're supposed to be organizing, not reading" at least seven times a day. It's a fun little story that lives in my head and makes me happy.
Sheila is talking about her graduation, which reminds me of a story I like to tell about my own graduation from high school.
The story begins with the guy who taught Government and Economics at my high school. He had been teaching Government and Economics at my high school, along with other assorted social studies classes, for the past twenty years. If you wanted to, you could go into the library and find an old yearbook from the seventies and see him looking almost creepily the same. He was also an asshole, although it was kind of understandable in a way. I only had to be at my high school for four years, and I'm still pretty bitter about it, so there you are.
So, my senior year, I'm like, "Screw you, bitter dude," and I decided to take Government/Economics independently, as a snail-mail course from Brigham Young University. I don't remember what I did with the chunk that got taken out of my schedule. Yearbook, I think, which was completely not worth it. Anyway. Graduation time nears, but due to massive amounts of procrastination, I have not finished the mail course yet. So, I recieved an empty embossed folder at the ceremony and was told "come back later with your Government/Economics credits and we'll give you your diploma."
I was busy that summer. I went on a cruise down the Mississippi with Aunt Jane, I celebrated my freedom from being required by law to go to school, I did other things that I can't actually remember now. ^_^ The school credits finally got done just before I would have had to pay for an extended time limit. Okay, not actually before. A little bit after. But anyway, I finished the courses, mailed off the packets, and got my special piece of paper.
There I am walking into my old high school, months and months after graduation. Feeling very weird, very out of place, but that was just par for the course as far as high school went. Hoping desperately not to see anyone I know. Classes are in session, so it's very quiet as I walk into the outer lobby of the principal's office. The secretary is sitting at her desk; she looks up, and I hand her my piece of paper and explain why I'm there, feeling like a big loser who didn't graduate on time with the rest of her class.
"Oh, okay," she says, and pulls out this manila folder. She starts to flip through it, one piece of paper at a time. Wow, I think to myself, other people didn't graduate either?
Flip, flip, flip, flip, the secretary keeps looking, through what I now see is a pretty significant stack of diplomas.
Flip flip flip. The pause grows awkward. I shift from foot to foot, but suddenly I'm beginning to feel like not such a big loser.
Flip flip flip.
Flip flip flip. I'm not kidding.
"Oh, here you are," she says finally, and hands it over.
Officially diplomae'd, I walk out of my old high school thinking but one thought: "Friggin' yikes."
*shrug* For a while, I tried to assume the best. Okay, so what if there were only sixty or so people in my graduating class? That folder of diplomas didn't have to represent a completely alarming percentage of utter failure on the school's part. Maybe other people actually had graduated-- they just hadn't bothered to pick up their diplomas. It was possible, right? (I've always assumed the diplomas in the folder weren't alphabetized-- at least I hope not, because my last name begins with a letter in the first ten letters of the alphabet. Anyway.)
Two years go by, and it's time for Pinky's graduation. Because she was part of the Class of 2000, instead of wearing shiny stoles over their shoulders, they got these giant gold medallions on golden chains. I forget her actual graduation theme, but according to Pinky it was almost "Graduation, Pimp Style!"
Anyway. As cheesy as it was, she wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to be in the slide show and walk with her friends and have a flat hat to decorate, which meant she had to work really hard. She missed a lot of her freshman year due to health problems, and since then it was always a struggle to catch up. So she's sitting at the dinner table with my mother one night, papers strewn all over the table, trying to figure everything out, and I hear "Okay, I need X number of credits to actually graduate, but they only require that you have twenty-seven before they let you walk in the ceremony and get your fake diploma holder, and for now, I think that's a more realistic goal."
I perked up my ears. "Twenty-seven? I thought it was twenty-one."
"No, they changed that."
"When?"
"After your class."
Hm.
The moral of today's story is: homeschool is my friend and yours! Or possibly just: yikes.
Did some updating. Added non-slash and miscellaneous blogs to the sidebar. Grrr, there's now some manly appeal to the sidebar, with Neil Gaiman who rocks and Jimski whose early entries eerily parallel certain crises in my own life, except he's much funnier than me. Dammit. I was waffling on Terry's Random Notes until I read back to April 15 and came across the line, "After experiencing all the appropriate joy from the balloon animal the other day, I experimented with inappropriate joy today." That's really all I need. Also, he has a neat section of wallpaper guys.
At the Buffy the Journal Slayer site, journals get sorted by favorite character. I'm under Xander, mainly because I just like saying "I'm under Xander." Hee hee.
And now, some highlights from the entry that I tried to upload last time that tragically didn't make it:
BTVS: Willow kicks ass. Also, this evening I took a nap and had this weird dream where I was comforting Tara, because something had happened to Willow, and it was really really... cathartic, for some reason. Like, it was a deeply sad dream, but I woke up feeling refreshed and very cheerful.
AtS: (points and sings) Angel liiiiikes Cordy, Angel liiiiiiikes Cordy. Hee hee. The Wes/Gunn thing is so obvious as to preclude even mentioning, except I just did. Oops.
WW: Toby IS the Batman of speechwriting. And am I the only one who giggled when he said "Dick something?" *snicker*
But then Aaron Sorkin fucked up again. (I just remembered this, so the short-summary thing is out the window. Gonna rant now. Batten down the hatches.) Me, I don't really have big feminist hackles. The high point of Pinky's life was hugging Gloria Steinem, but I watch V.I.P. for godsakes. But this latest episode, "Fall's Gonna Kill You" or whatever, pissed me the fuck off.
Sam objected to a piece of writing. He said "it sounds like it was written by a high school girl." A woman in the room said "There's something wrong with a girl's writing?" Sam said "There generally is if she's in high school."
(Uh-huh. Someone obviously isn't still bitter about getting their ass soundly spanked by a nineteen-year-old intern, oh no.) Anyway. Different issues were addressed, and Sam's last announcement before leaving the room went something like this:
"I've known women who were excellent writers. I've known women who could blow the walls off brick buildings. But this sounds like it was written by a girl."
Fuck.... no... look, Sorkin, you still don't get it. Imagine if that scene had been written like this: "I've known people with learning disabilities who were great writers, but this sounds like it was written by a retard."
But actually, my analogy's flawed there, because "retard" is a derogatory term no matter how you use it in a sentence-- but when the FUCK did "girl" become a slur?
So, Sam, what are you saying? No one ever, ever wants to write like a girl? Okay, and I guess no one ever wants to hit like a girl, or throw like a girl, or cry like a girl, or act like a girl, because "girl" equals "substandard," it equals "inferior," like, obviously right? Right?
I mean, shit, it just baffles me that anyone's still this fucking stupid. Especially someone as smart as Sam's supposed to be. Didn't anyone send Sorkin the memo about Girl Power? Did the whole "grrl" phenomenon slip under his radar? I just... we reclaimed it, okay? Didn't we?
I mean, there it is in Sports Night too: "You, my friend, are a woman." But then, it was mocking, it was ironic, sarcastic. Not directly derogatory. I used to think it was funny... now it's just creeping me out. *sigh* So... who's listening to me? I don't know. But let me just say this: listen the fuck up, Sorkin. Me, I'm declaring right now. You're not allowed to use "girl" as a fucking insult any more, or I will come to your house and KILL LIKE A GIRL!
*clears throat*
Okay, I'm done.
Real Life: (what's that show? when is it on? huh? what?) The people who want to buy our house sold their house, which means we're going to be moving in less than thirty days. It's not a huge deal, we're only moving about twenty minutes closer into town and we are hiring movers for the heavy stuff. I'm looking forward to Packstravaganza 2001 if only as an excuse to shed some of the crap I've accumulated over the last twelve years.
I just feel so *guilty* about throwing things away. But I'm not going to pack all this crap to the new house, so... I dunno. It's crunch time.
I swear, I'm gonna have an online contest, and it's gonna be called Win a Box of Crap. Because I cannot get rid of this stuff myself; you'll have to come to my house and wrestle me for it, beat me into submission, toss the box in your car and take it away. Yeah, that's a better name for this contest: Wrestle Me For My Box of Crap.
Because seriously. Who wouldn't want my tiny die-cast Catwoman? My giant purple velvety sombrero with yellow edging and sequins? (Pinky got it for me in Mexico-- I can't throw it away.) Issue #25 of Star Wars Insider? It's got the the C-3P0 interview. How about my junior prom dress? It's teal, and it comes with matching: shoes, gloves, earrings, and purse.
My God, I'm a sad case. I have had a velvety teal prom purse and gloves in my dresser since 1996, and I look at it every time I put on a pair of earrings, and think "Why did I even waste my precious time tracking down a damn teal purse in the first place?" And yet it's STILL THERE.
Seriously. I don't even care about the sentimental stuff. Who wants my stuffed animals? Except the leather-jacket bear I got at Graceland, I'm keeping that one. I'm also keeping my '70s Folk Rock Hits cassette, but who wants my mix tape of video game background music? How about twenty copies of every issue of the independent newspaper I produced for two straight years in high school?
So. There it is. It's all on the table. Who wants to wrestle me for a box of crap?
Okay, um, fuckin' A.
Here's the process. I write a big huge long entry about how I'm going to be moving, and then some comments on Roswell and Angel and the West Wing, and I go to upload, and EliteFTP says there's a file with the same name-- overwrite? And I say sure. And it gives me "Illegal operation" and shuts down. And I try to upload the file using CuteFTP, which I don't use a lot 'cause it's only a demo copy, and then check the page, and there's nothing there. Blank. Empty. So I check weblog.htm on my hard drive-- blank. Empty.
So I'm like "FUCK! I just killed my weblog!" Actually, EliteFTP killed the file, and then I uploaded the blank file OVER the weblog, but whatever. "I'm going to have to do the sidebar from scratch and I'll never get those entries back!" But luckily I was able to pull a cached copy off Google.
So I'm pissed off and all, so I write a shorter entry that sort of sums up the longer entry, and I try EliteFTP again, and it crashes, and wipes out the file again.
So I pull another copy off Google and this time save a backup copy in another folder, and now I'm really, really pissed, so we'll see if this works. I may or may not get back to the TV comments or the bit about me moving and my teal dress that I wore to junior prom.
Helen is right: audiogalaxy.com rocks. Yesterday I was kind of down and wrote this huge bitter gut-spilling blog entry about how much my life sucks. But I couldn't upload it, because I was downloading a bunch of MP3s and my FTP program was ticked about it. So, I downloaded MP3s, and then I listened to some of the them and laughed for about an hour and changed my mind about sharing my angst. So you all have to thank N'Sync's "Digital Getdown" for saving you from intense TMI.
How bad is this song? It's so bad, it's actually a good argument for N'Sync slash. Okay, I'm being a bit facetious, but it just can't possibly be real person slash, because there's no way a real person had even the slightest thing to do with actually putting together or performing this piece of (for lack of a better term) music.
*laughs* Just for starters, it's about cybersex. The music: there's actually a modem dial-up sound sampled right in, which is about as subtle as it gets. The vocals: there's an overabundance of Cher-"Do You Believe"-style electronic voice warbling. The lyrics: oh, god. The phrase "Freaky deaky" is used. Repeatedly.
So of course I've got it stuck in my head now.
I lose my mind just when you're speaking
I see you on the screen, I get to freaking, so get down--
Digital Getdown is to actual music what Laffy Taffy candy is to actual food. Like, if you just saw a chunk of Laffy Taffy sitting on a table, you might not realize what it was supposed to be. You might think it was Silly Putty. Or that sticky stuff you use to put up posters. But food? Even if you put it in your mouth for some odd reason, you probably wouldn't get right away that it was actually a food product, meant to be consumed by humans. Digital Getdown is like that. It's just the most unintentionally ridiculous song I've ever, ever heard, and so of course it cheers me up immensely. :)
hmm hmm hmm hmm. This is sort of experimental to me, sharing 'fic before it's done. But I like the ego strokes... I mean, I'm giving you all a chance to head to Blockbuster and rent the Hornblower movies, ok? *grins* Actually I'm not sure if they're rentable. I know you can get the first four on tape and DVDs... Aunt Jane has the DVDs. Anyway.
This is another early scene. Horatio and Archie are still prisoners of war, having been captured by the Spanish. But since Horatio has given his word as a gentleman that he won't try to escape, he's been given certain freedoms by the commander of the prison, including walking back and forth (alone) from the prison to the commander's villa to occasionally have dinner. Here he is on his way back:
It wasn't stealing, Horatio told himself, turning the small orb over in his hand, but it was still hard to tuck it into the inner pocket of his jacket and keep walking. One bruised peach was of the most minute value... but that didn't matter, he told himself severely, or it shouldn't, anyway-- it was the principle of the thing. If he were here on a mission, he could be accused of looting, he thought, feeling a hot blush stealing up the back of his neck. In the British Army, looters were hung as an example to their fellows. But no. The peach had fallen onto the ground, Horatio told himself. Instead of little value, surely now it had none. The owner of the orchard certainly wouldn't want it when so many of his trees were still heavy with ripe fruit...
By the time Horatio was let back into the cell, he still had not silenced his inner debate. He leaned against the door with a heavy sigh, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. Feeling faintly foolish, he waited for the guard's footsteps to recede.
"Horatio. Is something wrong?" Archie asked, propping himself up on one elbow.
"Course not." Horatio said, digging into his pocket. "Here," he said, and lobbed the peach gently towards a startled Archie, who caught it out of the air with one hand.
Holding the peach up so that he could see it in the dim light from the window, Archie considered it, a faintly suspicious smile playing about his features. Swinging himself up onto his bunk and lying back, Horatio watched closely out of the corner of his eye.
"Did you steal this?" Archie finally asked, amused.
"It wasn't stealing," Horatio said and closed his eyes. "It was salvage."
"Oh," Archie laughed. "Well. Far be it from me..." He let the sentence trail off, taking a hearty bite of the fresh fruit.
Horatio smiled, lay there in the slowly darkening twilight, and listened to Archie eat the peach until it was gone.
Added Debchan and Kate Bolin and Te to the blog, so now there's probably going to be a lot of Buffy chatter to offset the Due South and Farscapeness of us.
And, Betty Plotnick's new story just dropped-- tenth story in her Sixteen Instinctive Behaviors series. Yay! (In case you didn't know, I host Betty's stories in my web space. Also Kalena's, Brighid's and Jessica Harris', because I practice the Easter Egg philosophy of webhosting: oooooh! Shiny!! Gimme!!)
So, I added Betty & Brighid's stories and announced them together on my update list, along with the latest addition (hm, I originally typed "addiction"-- freudian typo?) to American Pie. (That's the problem with hosting such prolific authors, they make me look bad on my own big-slash-ego update list. *grins* I'm constantly updating, but I don't think I've announced a story of my own for weeks.)
Anyway. Brighid, as always, blows me away. And I really like the darker tint of her OZfic. I'm also really excited about the final quartet of stories in Betty's series-- apparently these are supposed to be the sexy ones. *grins* Betty's really got her own voice and her own ideas about the characters-- contrast with some of my early TS stories. "In Your Dreams" is like faux-Francesca, "Treasure" is store-brand Brighid and so on. It took me a while to find my own style but Betty is so wildly original and perceptive-- I mean, after 2000 stories you'd think there wouldn't be any new insights about the characters. But she's there. Right out of the gate. Reading her stories just makes me so *happy.* Well, and jealous too. But mostly happy. :)
I also added new art to the sidebar: two versions of a cover for "Florotica," a Nightwing/Poison Ivy story by Kerithwyn Jade. One's a plain illustration, one's mocked up to look like a comic book cover. :)
