Good Vibrations

fic rec: Good Vibrations
There's one line in Serenity which causes audiences to burst out laughing, every time I've seen it. This little fic by liquid eyes does a really nice job of combining Kaylee's engineering skills with them other needs of hers.

the pitter patter of tiny feet in big combat boots

I've done perhaps half the work on the new look website: look at the shiny new design. You can flip between a Buffy or a Firefly style, although they both need a little work still on the basics. The remaining things to do are:

• decide the navigation
• fix that wierd thing with the header under firefox
• reformat the existing fic pages (4/7 complete)
• reformat the blog

shiny

One of the things you really notice about Whedon's work is the love of language. It is something to be played with, twirled around and twisted into new shapes and syntax. Buffyspeak is not real Valleyspeak and Firefly is in its own gorram universe of language. It's archaic, it's futuristic and it's just plain odd. Yet it is always understandable. I can't think of another scriptwriter with such a love of words and wordplay as Whedon. There's the fact that I unconsciously call things that are good "shiny" (I had to explain it to a colleague recently) or that "scary visual place" evokes a particular voice in my head. Sometimes, in an idle moment, I wonder if a handful of Firefly fans using "shiny" to denote "good" will eventually spread the word, meme-like, until the fictional meaning comes to be the norm. Then there is "corpsified" which is just a great word.

The big problem is writing Firefly fiction which evokes its futurespeak without just borrowing phrases wholesale. That's a problem with any fanfic: badfic sites always mentioning the borrowing of memorable phrases. I've been a member of the worthless word of the day mailing list for a long while now and it struck me tonight that here is a source for archaic and/or obscure words to use in Firefly fanfic. F'example:

picaroon
[Spanish picaron] /pik uh ROON/
1) a rogue or adventurer; a bohemian
2) a pirate, corsair
3) a small pirate ship
carnaptious
[fr. Sc. knap, to bite] /ka(r) NAP shus/
Scots & Irish dial. : bad-tempered, irritable, grumpy
cahooting
[fr. cahoots : collaboration, collusion]
conspiring, plotting

See? Hours of fun.

no power in the verse can stop me

What with all this new found Mal-lust, and the fact I have 1400 words of firefly fic in progress (subject to change when I get around to reading the Serenity mini-series comic*) I've decided the time has come for version 3 of the order of aurelius and this here blog. The site's going to be an archive just of my fic without all the other fripperies and folderols. I guess it'll divide into Buffyverse and Fireflyverse sections but I've been learning some css and rss tricks and I'll be using them to make it smooth. Well, maybe I can do a fic rec thing, using some cute code to make it easy to maintain...

So anyway, this is advance notice that these pages may go all squiffy for a bit whilst I piss about with code.

*which no-one told me was filling in the gaps between Objects in Space and Serenity (film). I thought it was one of those dreadful tie-in comic versions of the film and thus avoided it. And #1 is rare. Grrr.

update: the comic shop had #3, but not #1 and #2. Have got them on order.

Sure is a purdy lookin' fella

Well.

That was unexpected.

I went to see Serenity at the weekend, like all good Joss fans bumping up the take. Actually, I went twice. But at different cinemas in different cities so no-one realised I was being a menky geek. I should probably point out I was in different cities on account of travelling for work (i.e. the second viewing is on expenses).

I was late to the Firefly fan party, seeing as the phrase "Western in space" just makes me think of gou-su like Star Trek. Then when I did fall for Firefly, I fell hard. But not for any one character, or any particular pairing, just for the whole gorram set-up and story-telling. Not one of the characters got me all tingling, or caused hot and sweaty thoughts about their nekkidity. This was, I thought, a sign of my own growth and maturity. Hells, even Spike doesn't cause the same naughty thoughts as he used to. See, growth and maturity. No more crushes on fictional characters for me.

So I'm a bit surprised to discover I have developed a crush on Mal. Course, he's a bit nastier in the film and thus appealing to the side of me that likes men with dark violent thoughts but still...

(Although the nekkidity still ain't appealing. Semi-clothed. Semi-clothed is good...)

Three Deep

pimpage for Three Deep, the multi-universe, multi-programme, mutli-lovered, multi-everything virtual season by alira, Barb C, Cyn, Dori, dutchbuffy, Kalima, Klytaimnestra, macha, pip and Sylvia. Yep, that's one heck of a writing team.

extra pimpage

My pal Mags's novel is now available via both amazon dot co dot uk and amazon dot com at the very fair prices of UKP9.02 and USD12.21. Eligible for free delivery and despatched in 24 hours.

What's that? Why buy it? It is not Buffy, Angel, Spire nor anything Whedonesque...?

It's set in the Boxer Rebellion and was provoked by watching Fool for Love too many times. It has kick-boxing heroines fighting it out with sabres. What more could you want?

Otters

What are you?
I'm an otter. I swim around on my back doing cute little human things with my hands.
Thank you, you're free to go. What are you?
I'm a cow--
Get on the back of the truck!
-- Bill Hicks.

Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman in conversation. They are otters.

Gaiman: One of the reasons that both Joss and I can do some of the stuff that we've done over the years is because you're working in a medium in which enough stuff has simply entered popular culture that it becomes part of the vocabulary that we can deal with. The materials of fantasy, of all different kinds of fantasy, the materials of SF, the materials of horror...it's pop culture. It's tattooed on the insides of our retinas. As a result, it's something that's very easy just to use as metaphor. You don't have to explain to anybody what a vampire is. You don't have to explain the rules. Everybody knows that. They know that by the time they're five.