Followed this link from kimlockt

Fanfiction Rant

Apparently I’m a criminal! Whee!

I’ve never been on that side of the law before… I wonder what crime I’ll commit next… Hmmm.

The guy really needs to get off his moral highhorse. Or, I, petty criminal that I am, will be forced to take him down. (or not–wimpy side kicking in there.)

Once More With Hobbits: A Lord of the Rings and Buffy: the Vampire Slayer Musical Adventure.

My personal favorite: “I’ll Never Tell” with Legolas and Gimli for the laughs and “Standing” with Sam for the tears.

It snowed here. A lot. Outside my house, there’s about 14 inches. 14!! And it’s still falling.

It’s beautiful. I am such a winter personality. I love the magic of a snow storm. That line that Lorelai says in GG, during the first snow storm, yeah, she was channelling me.

So the trip to AZ is in limbo because my parents aren’t sure if they want to battle the elements all the way done and then on the way back, ’cause it’s supposed to snow again on Tuesday. Kinda disappointed, but since it took us about 6 hours to get to my apartment in SLC (my parents live about three hours away normally), I really can’t complain too much. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

So what am I doing right now? I remembered last night, when I should have been sleeping, that I had forgotten to do an assignment. And if I don’ turn it in, in the next day or so, I’ll fail. Yeah. Oh, and I also remembered that I forgot the shoes that I had tramped all over the valley trying to exchange them because they were too big. Weird thoughts come to you late at night, I tell ya.

And am I a really bad GG fan if I admit that I don’t like a particular fanfic that has almost become canon, it’s talked about so much. Shivery was updated today (or yesterday) and I tried yet again to read it. I really did. This is at least the third attempts. And (I hate to say this), I can’t stand it. The story starts out so circular that I lose the story line and I’m so confused. And then, that’s when it gets dark, and I end up feeling awful about the world. Her writing is remarkable, filled with images that live, I’ll give her that, she certainly makes me feel, but… eh. It’s just not me, I guess. And I do read quite a few of the darker fics and enjoy them, I just don’t know. But it’s such the standard for GG fic, that I fear I’ll be stoned for my dissent.

(Sigh). Back to describing the layout of my doctor’s office. And this is what I’m paying thousands of dollars for…

Merry Christmas every one!

I’ve had a pretty good Christmas so far. Came home with my sisters (there are 3 of us). Since we graduated and moved out, Christmas has become more and more lax. We haven’t had a Christmas tree in three years. And while I still get presents from my parents, they haven’t been wrapped in years. This year, the sole decoration was a needlepointed pillow of a snow scene that my mom picked up at Walmart. Yeah. I think my parents are waiting for grandkids to get excited about the holidays again–they’ve got a wait yet, I think.

My sister gave me the Evanesence CD (finally), so I wonder what I’m listening to now?? 🙂 A lot of their songs start sounding the same, but wow, their lyrics are amazing. And I still get emotional listening to “My Immortal.” At least now, I don’t have to flip through radio stations in the hopes of catching it–I was getting really tired of all the cheesy Christmas songs. The worst of the all: “The Christmas Shoes.” Maybe it only plays here in Utah (if so, count your lucky stars), but I’ve never heard such a sacchrine, “manipulate your heart-strings” song. I told my sister that and made her change the station driving home, and now, I’ve been labeled Scrooge. It’s a badge I’ll proudly wear if it means that I never have to hear that song again.

Passed all of my classes, don’t know how. Sometimes I swear, I’m receiving the grades for the guy ahead of me in the alphabet. We start again on the 5th, not as much time off as I want, but I’ll have more off in March. When I get back, I’ll find out my rotation schedule for next year. Chris (my study partner and best friend) spent two days figuring out how the lottery system works and how to get the schedule that we want. I front-heavied everything, putting my hardest rotations, like surgery and ob-gyn at the front of the year, and then psych and peds later. I don’t know if that was wise, but I freak myself out just thinking about how hard next year is going to be, so I thought that maybe making it hard at the beginning, when I’m more motivated and they’ll be more lenant if you don’t know as much. I’m going to be such a little ignoramious… Only seven months more….

I’m heading to Arizona for the rest of Christmas break. Visiting family, spend a little time in the sun. It should be fun. I’m bringing along my writing notebook and hopefully, I’ll have a chapter to post on Like Never Before when I get back. I’ve got a whole collection of drabbles that I’ll be adding soon for GG, I’m excited. I did them around themes this time, and I’m experimenting with writing humorous ones–probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

It’s nice having absolutely nothing to do, and getting to do what I want… I wish it could be Christmas all the time.

Cross-posted on lotr100

Title: Ringbearer’s Choice
Word Count: 100
Team: Hobbits
Characters: Frodo, Fellowship
Slash/Adult Content: No
Notes: Movieverse of FOTR

Ringbearer’s Choice

Wow.

I am so blown away by the positive response that my latest chapter got. You know that scene in Moulin Rouge, where Christian is first singing to Satine, and she gets this stunned look on her face and then they’re off dancing in the stars and clouds above Paris–yeah, that’s me. I was positively giddy today–I skipped down the hall, much to the chagrin and bafflement of my more mature classmates (maybe I should go into peds, I’d fit right in there with the kids). I was checking my email every few minutes just to see if there were more nice things in my inbox. It felt like Christmas and my birthday and every other magical day there is.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I honestly wasn’t expecting anything like that. I really expected a rather lukewarm reaction, “damned with faint praise” at best. It’s probably not wise to trust my own judgments, especially since I had been staring at the same scene every day for about three months.

But it’s nice to be proven wrong too.

And I tell you, flattery is the best medicine for a ill muse–she perked right up and I had about a dozen brain whirl-winds this afternoon about the next couple of chapters. I’m sketching the ideas, working them in and I’m really excited.

Response to AvidTVFan’s fabulous review

Like Never Before chapter 8 has now been posted on ff.net. I finished it Friday night, had my sister read it (she’s my unofficial beta), who told me that it wasn’t as good as my other chapters but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Eh. According to her, my Paris was out of character, which really worries me because I spent so much time making her believable. All I had was one episode to go off in showing this side of Paris. One episode–“The Big One” from last season, where Paris has her breakdown. Yeah, not a lot of inspiration.

Ugh.

So, I went back and edited. Big time. I think it’s better now, but… I’m really nervous about posting it. Meeting the groom on the day of the arranged marriage kind of nervous. I don’t want to be tarred and feathered here! I tend to lean on the freak-out side, so hopefully things aren’t as bad as I fear.

Chapter 7 was rewritten too, to attempt to get more of Jess’s voice. My biggest fault, I think is that my characters tend to become as verbose as I do and I struggle to rein them in. But it’s so difficult to convey conversations in monosyllables as Jess demands.

Chapter 9 was done and I was going to post it in a couple of days–I had that one written a year ago, when the idea first came to me–it honestly was the reason that I wrote this story. But it was only 4 pages long and after this last chapters’ record of 8958 words on 17 pages, it was way too short. So, I’m rearranging, combining some chapters and other housework before it’s read to be displayed. I am aiming for Christmas/New Year’s. We’ll see how well I succeed. At least I like the chapter more!

The weather forecasters promised me snow and I got . . . gray clouds and no snow. Am quite bummed.

On the other hand, my parents promised me a washer and dryer and I got . . . a washer and dryer!!!

Most people probably won’t understand why this would cause such glee, but until you have to go to a laundry mat that is four blocks from your house and is apparently the hangout for the mentally unstable (buses and laundry mats… Those are the two places that I get hit on. Bleh.) and charges you $2.50 per load and your clothes still aren’t dry. Yeah. It really was the bimonthly entertainment. And that was the good place that closed down for no apparently reason a month ago.

So my parents brought the unit and spent most of the day installing it into my little apartment. I was in a bit of a mood, as in cranky for lots of little reasons. Chauffeuring my sister to work four blocks away (which with the badly timed lights means a seven minute journey in each direction) because she refuses to try to carpool, trying to clean my house so that we could move things around and having my roommate just sit there and read, even though she promised to help, my study partner NOT calling to say when/if we were studying today. Not that I had time or interest today–big believer in procrastination and the test is two weeks away–but it still would have been nice to get a phone call to say that he had decided to go skiing instead.

But my parents thought that I was in a mood because they were taking me away from my studies, so I got out of it soon. Relationship with parental units is so strange as an adult. It’s much better now than when I was in high school, although I never really had any major problems with them. But they still treat me like a kid one minute, and the next I’m supposed to have all of the problems figured out because I’m independent now.

I was in a pretty good mood today. Cardiology was understandable for once (if only they could manage to put physiology in terms of balloons and gas tanks!) and it got done early, another bonus. My afternoon study session was fairly productive and I didn’t get too freaked out when I heard the third and fourth years talking about the horrors of rotations–I so don’t even want to think about it, but I’m not being given that chance.

Came home, had a fairly relaxing evening and sat down to watch some television and within ten minutes my blood started to boil.

(I’m still exploring this Livejournal thing and just figured out how to do the cut thing. Of course, I can’t resist playing with it! And since it is spoilerish information if you haven’t seen it….)

Rant Number One

Wow, do you realize that the last time I posted here was back in August?? I realized that today was December, December 2nd my calendar tells me. I’m not really sure what happened to September and October and November–are you sure we really even had a November?

First of all, updates: Yes, to those few people who know what I’m talking about, I’m still working on my Gilmore Girls story, Like Never Before. Honestly, I swear. I’m working on chapter 8 and have been (bit by painful bit) for the past three months. It’s sixteen pages long now, sixteen pages and I think I hate it. Which is funny, because when I first started thinking about this story a year and a half ago, this was one of the major chapters of why I wanted to put my ideas to paper. But right now, it’s hitting too close to home. I’ve had a hard time writing this fight scene and having such an easy resolution, when I know from hard, personal experience that it never goes this smoothly. Even when you’re trying so hard to communicate, things still get mired and knotted. And yet, to change it, would just lengthen the story out even longer. If it wasn’t necessary to move the “plot” along, I’d just trash it. I have one scene left. One scene that’s probably less than two pages long, but do you think I can write it? NOOOOO! Stupid story.

Update number two: And I’ve been once again hit by the drabble bug, so look for an update to my drabbles, as well as some LOTR ones–I’ve got an inkling to write a Eomer drabble, and I don’t know where that one came from!! As of yet, no one has taken my drabble challenge, although Agent M at ff.net wrote a perfectly delightful one entitled Tana and Kirk. Read it, it’s fabulous.

And speaking of drabbles, I just finished reading The Da Vinci Code and really really enjoyed it. The author did an incredible amount of research to justify every one of his theories and well as add layers and layers of details and symbolism. I feel like I need to read it again, just to understand all of the symbolism. Right after I read it, I stumbled across another of fileg‘s beautiful drabbles that struck me as ironically appropriate: Earth, Water, Fire, Air. Read the Arwen drabble….And then do yourself a favor and go and read the rest of fileg’s stories and see why I love her writing so much.

Update number three: We’re starting to discuss The Hobbit on my Tolkien discussion group. I just posted the first five chapters of musings and thoughts, the next five chapters will be done by this weekend. I hope to get all the way through it before RETURN OF THE KING opens….Can anybody guess how excited I am??? Today, I saw one of the tv trailers for the first time and it induced the “moment-of-silence” followed by “utter-squeal-of-excitement.”

Um, yeah. That’s all the business I guess. School’s been kicking my butt, mostly because I’ve become so apathetic towards it. I cannot wait for Christmas. One of my best friends is flying in and spending almost two weeks with me!! I have two lovely weeks with no classes, no endless hours of studying the disease processes of anemia or the electrical circuits of the heart, no trying to avoid certain people because things have gone so horribly wrong. Nothing but sweet, delightful boredom.

And I had to laugh. Last week, driving home for Thanksgiving dinner, I heard the new Evanescence single, My Immortal, and completely, totally, head over heels fell in love with it. Seriously, it was one of those songs that caused an emotional reaction where I felt the words and music just beating in my veins. I haven’t been able to get enough of the song since then. And what was the quote from GG tonight “And those who bring Evanescence will be severely mocked.” Yeah, I’m ridiculous.

Only 14 more days until ROTK!!!!!!!!! Just wait until the day before, then I’ll be shouting it!

Drat. I’ve been sucked in.

I blame it all on the thread at henneth-annun. Of course, they would have to create a challenge to write drabbles and then write some of the most beautiful, poetic 100 word fics that I have ever read.

Of course, I’m still scared to touch any Tolkien subject with my keyboard. My two fics are still only two painful paragraphs long and will probably stay that way for years to come.

So I tackled GG, the project of the day. There were definitely scenes that I wanted to explore, but I knew that I didn’t have enough to make an actual story out of them–Jess’s leaving, for one. And I think there’s still more that I might add later.

There’s incredible power in this form–each word has to be just right. I think some of mine are still weak, but some seemed to get what I wanted. I had to find the tendency to make it sound like a prose-ish free verse poem.

And so I issue a challenge: I want more and I want yours. Any GG character, any pairing, any situation, any time. Directly from the show or an AU. I’d love to see some that managed to capture the humor and wittiness of GG–I only got the angst. Email them to me, post them here or on my review, wherever. Heck, you could even write me and say that while you wrote one, it’s been put where all the bad fics go; I don’t care. I’d just like to see people write.

On a more personal note, but still related to my fic, my shoulder has been giving me a lot of problems again–recovery has not been as smooth as I could wish and I’ve been in some pain. Thankfully, I have therapy tomorrow–my salvation, I swear, but I think I’m causing the pain by being hunched over my computer and I know my doctor’s going to want me to back off. Thus my ambitious plans to have the next chapter finished and posted in a week probably won’t pan out. And I was so excited!

I don’t know, listening to the Buffy musical seems to make everything better. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do without a Buffy fix!

Airports, airplanes are wonderful things. Seriously, think about it–you get to your destination in a small fraction of the time it would take you to drive, you don’t have to worry about packing our car, or where you put the map, or the crazy drivers on their cell phones, and you share a seat with someone who inevitably is defined by the word “interesting”–and for some reason (the cheesy side of me is saying it’s because in a plane you’re high enough to brush the angels’ wings…ugh, I’m making myself ill), inspiration flows, your muse becomes yours again.

A few weeks ago, I flew to Washington, DC, probably my favorite city in the world. Some day I’ll live there, just off of Rock Creek Park on Connecticut Avenue. But I digress. I had layovers on the way there in St. Louis and on the way back in Houston, nice long layovers. I brought my notebook, my “Pilot P-700” blue ink pen, and a three mixed CDs that I had made the night before–so with Eva Cassidy, Matchbox 20, Loreena McKinnett and, yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Musical playing in my ears, I wrote. Mostly on my story, Like Never Before. I wrote most of chapter 7, the first scene of 8, the last scene of 12 and polished up 9. Not bad for a few hours on a plane, eh? I’m so excited about it! The chapters are coming together just as I had hoped and I’ve received a little more encouragement (thanks guys!), which just makes the juices flow better and sweeter. Boy, i really am waxing crony tonight, aren’t I? 🙂 🙂

I posted Chapter 7 last night. My sister read it, declared it perfect, then proceeded to lecture me of how random the scene with Jamie was. I was afraid of that. I rewrote it a little and I hope it flows a little better, but it’s extremely important that it happen this way. I hope most people can forgive me for Jamie. Jamie is such a foreign character to me–we’ve seen him, twice, and yet Paris and he have this “relationship”???

Jamie doesn’t have a last name, does he?

In any case, I should have chapter 8 done shortly (fingers crossed), as long as I don’t get distracted by my other project: I’m designing a webpage! Now, I know basic, basic, basic HTML–I know what < i > and < b > mean, for example, but I’ve never designed a site from scratch. It’s for my Lord of the Rings literary discussion group–we just finished reading LOTR together, and I’m trying to compile all of our ponderous thoughts and discussions and put them on an easily navigational site. I made our logo today, which I’m really impressed with–it’s exactly what I was hoping for. I’d proudly display it, but I have no idea how to attach an image if it’s not on the web. Now to figure out how add drop-down graphics and lay out a table. Ah, right now, I am really loving life.

10 days until I start school again. I think I’ve completely forgotten all of my “doctoring skills.” Oh dear.

I’ve decided that I’m too old for ff.net and that’s why nobody’s reading my stories. I’m not fourteen anymore and I can’t write non-description little fluffy stories than are only 500 words long.

Sheesh. They can read Harry Potter with its 800+ pages, but my story gets passed over for being too long. Not that I really blame them for Harry. I’v been completely absorbed in that world again…

Is it really a comfort to know that I’m getting older and can’t even pretend to be in a teenager mindset anymore? I don’t know. All I know is that getting only 4 reviews for my last chapter sucked. Even some of my Old Faithful reviewers didn’t live up to their nickname. I know my story’s different–heck that’s why I wrote it! But surely people are getting tired of reading about how Tristan comes back from military school all changed or how Rory becomes a bad girl or how Jess leaves Rory pregnant! Surely? Right?

It makes continuing more difficult. I told myself that I wasn’t writing for praise–well, I guess I’d better prove that now.

Update news: Finished chapter 6 of Like Never Before at 4:30 am this morning. WHEEE!! I never thought I’d get that one out–what a difficult birth! When I started thinking about this story last summer, I knew what was going to happen the first few chapters, a couple in the middle, and then the last chapters. But these middle ones were a complete mystery. This chapter in particular took a turn that I was not expecting. I would say that it wrote itself, but I practically had to force the words on the paper! It will be posted on FF.net this evening!!

I had hoped to finish off chapter 7 too, but alas, I have run out of time. I’m having surgery tomorrow morning and only have time to tie up all of my real-life obligations.

This is the first time that I’ve really actually felt scared for a surgery. Maybe it’s because I now know what goes on behind the mask and maybe it’s this fear that something will go wrong this time and change my carefully laid plans. I have complete trust in my doctor, he’s one of the best surgeons around (and besides that, he’s really cute!), but there’s still that worry.

Gee, I feel as nervous as if I was on a date (oh, how would I know–my memory of my last date doesn’t go back that far, but go with me here). I’ve spent all this time preparing my LJ page, so that it looked nice and pretty, and now I’m sitting around, wondering if my “date” will show up. Well, in any case, I’ve enjoyed this.

Although LJ could make it a lot easier on their customers if they put a HTML color wheel on their page so I didn’t have to go track one down. Thank the stars for dogpile (my favorite search engine).

Events of the day: made spring rolls for lunch with mom. Tried sauteing the shrimp with ginger–a little strong (less next time), but very good. Wrapped in rice paper with red leaf lettuce, cucumber, shredded carrots, mint leaves and cilantro, dipped in soy sauce. Very flavorful. Much better with the peanut sauce though.

Worked on Chapter 6 and 7 of my Gilmore Girl story, Like Never Before. Still not sure about the name change, heck I keep calling it Life is for Learning, one of the many that I went through. I prefer Songbird, but I’ve gotten so few reviews that I’m hoping the name change will induce some more comment. I shouldn’t feel too bad about it–those who have read it have honestly loved it, so I can’t feel too self-conscious, but seriously, when I see all of those unbearable stories out with with poor grammar and missing plots and fake characters and they have 200 reviews, I get a little jealous. So if you want to make me happy, go read my stories at http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=219204 and review.

Chapter 6 is coming along well. I just have scene left (out of a three scene chapter, I guess that’s not saying much). I’ve been hung up on some of the descriptions. Only I would care enough about trying to get the description of a restaurant that I’ve never been to absolutely perfect. Oh, I hope to finish it tomorrow.

FF.net finally up and working again. Finally I can catch up on some of my favorites. Holly Gilmore updated both of her stories, “Previously on Gilmore Girls” and “This Feeling That Remains,” (GG)

Pick out my engagement ring this morning. After setting up my account at theknot.com, with Daffy Duck as the groom, I decided that I hated all of their choices of rings and went and explored for my own. I’m seriously considering a three diamond ring with a purple diamond in the center, crowned by two clear, and amethyst along both sides. Had no idea until today that there were such things as purple diamond. I really like the light ones–good thing, they’re the cheapest, eh? So, I have the ring, I have the dress. Now, I just need the guy. One who’s very understanding of my purple devotion. 🙂

LOTR link for the moment: http://www.lordoftherings.net. They finally have new pictures for ROTK up!! Woohoo! Okay, so they’ve been up for a month, I’ve just been busy. I really wish they’d coming out with the trailer already. (grumble, grumble). My LOTR group has been silent recently. Will need to look around for more things to discuss.