Standing On Boxes

It wasn’t a contest but someone figured out where the titles to the chapters of one of my fics come from. (Sure, other people might know also but they never said anything, that I can remember and the fic has been up with those titles for a LONG time.)
Do they deserve a reward? Or to be punished for giving it away? I’ll have to think about it. What would be appropriate?
Hmm…
BTW – 90% of the titles of my stories/chapters/parts have some kind of meaning in the context of the story. They aren’t random . But less than 20% of them are phrase or song or poem/prose fragments that matched something in the story or evoked a mood that matched something in the story.

I’ve renamed the page/entry for my Kim Possible story/series. It now has the title of the series (
The Slayer and the Green Girl

), not of the first story. I’ve also added entries for the rest of the dreams – 10 total.

I was originally going to have a part of “The Other Girl” set in Tokyo. I’ve changed my mind. Sort of. The Tokyo part of their trip will be a separate story. If I ever write it, it’ll be a short anime crossover – though VERY minor. Not a lot of action. Mostly, our gang go to a strange bar (that I’m thinking of borrowing from someone else.)

Put me down as one of the people who thought the epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows was unnecessary. I would have preferred a darker ending than that.
(But it is ostensibly a children’s book. So I can’t act too surprised at the ending. But no spoilers from me here. Sorry.)
But overall, even though a number of themes have been picked over with a fine tooth comb by fan fiction writers, I preferred it to the last book in a number of ways. Give me a couple weeks to digest/re-read it before I go into any detail. Maybe.
Sure, I wasn’t ecstatic about who the Author “bumped off” by the end… and some of the backstory revealed towards the end – the history of some of the characters that is revealed – is a little surprising (Whole cadres of fic writers must be in heaven at some of the things we learned. It’s a good thing I rarely read straight (non-crossover) HP fan fiction. It’s going to be scary out there for the next while.)

Only 3 days until “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” comes out. Can I avoid spoilers until I snag a copy (I didn’t pre-order one. There are going to be so many copies floating around that we’ll be tripping over them. I’ll probably grab the first copy I see under $20. (Does Scholastic actually think anyone would buy it at the $35 list price? Or wait until it shows up used? Nah…

A bit of randomness…

• I finally finished the first season of “Magic Knight Rayearth” – not bad in a ‘I think I’m too old for that’ kind of way. 20 episodes. The 2nd “season” is 29 episodes. I think I’ll watch something else first. Maybe I should start in on those 26 episodes of “Escaflowne” ?
• The third Dr Who series just started on Sci-Fi. I watched the Christmas episode but I haven’t started in on the other episodes yet. The last two are sitting in my DVR. Maybe this weekend before I get too far behind.
• Found at the used book store…
  1. Tanya Huff’s new book – 3rd volume in her ‘Confederation’ series. Didn’t even know it was out yet. Follows the same formula as the last two books and short story. But still good. Read the first two volumes first.
  2. Found a copy of the first 3 episodes of the original “Bubblegum Crisis” I think I like the animation style of the newer one better. Story wise — the character names might be the same and some of the locations but other than that it feels different. Not sure if I’ll hunt down the rest of the original 8 episodes. It’s available used or as a complete set… expensive for an 8 episode OVA.
  3. Found the OVA of “Read or Die” – Interesting but the sequels (Including a tv series) aren’t something I’m dying to see.
  4. Found an unopened copy of a CD I wanted. It’s out of print (?)
• Haven’t done any writing for the past week or so… no real inspiration right now.

On the way home from work a few minutes ago….
There’s a huge intersection near the office. I caught the tail end of a light change… it must have turned red just as I reached the other side…
How do I know? There was a flash… Ouch!
Yup! One of those traffic cameras. They take your picture and send you a ticket in the mail.
I wasn’t the only person in the intersection at the time (and I was just inches away from the other side when the flash went off) so I don’t know who actually got tagged (maybe all of us?)
Won’t find out for weeks… but let’s not be positive here (it was a long day – so pardon the pessimism.)
So much for my ticket free driving record (It’s been 15 years since I last got a ticket. (I’ve only ever gotten 2 (until now).)
I wonder how much it’s gonna cost me…. (Insurance increase, etc.)
Okay… thanks to the wonders of the internet… the list of traffic/otherfines in our fair city.
Most traffic related fines are$132 or lower + 4 points on your license.
Personally? If I do get a ticket? I’m hoping it’s this one (Since it’s the closest matching description):

The “Cutting it too close” tax.

Okay, not really. But the 4th of July is tomorrow – a Wednesday and it feels odd to take off a day from work in the middle of the week.
I don’t have any real plans for the day…

Someone figured out how to sign an iPhone up for a pre-pay plan with AT&T (Not sure of the terminology). $40/month (approximately half the minutes of the 2 year/$60 plan but basically the same (aka unlimited data). You just have to pay in advance every month (in some auto-pay kind of way (credit/debit/checking account).
The key point being — you aren’t locked into an AT&T plan for 2 years. You can cancel at any time. Even before you use it.
Drawbacks (as I see them):

• The phone is still only useful as a phone with some kind of AT&T/Cingular calling plan.
• What happens if you cancel? The iPhone has to be activated initially but it works as a wireless “internet tablet” after that. The concern is — will future software updates work if your non-Plan’ed iPhone doesn’t have a current calling planof some sort?

I’m tempted… it would be expensive still but without the 2 year lock in?
However… I then went and looked at national AT&T coverage… AT&T has almost no/weak coverage up where my mother lives and other places I might travel and need a phone. So I would have to keep another phone for those times if I wanted to use an iPhone as a phone.
We’ll see if I can hold out until the Fall… maybe Apple will come out with something less phone-like but with all the other features.

Almost every BtVS fanfic writer is tempted at some point to rewrite the series from their point of view, with their favorite character getting the glory or their OTP (‘One True Pairing’) being the center of the story.
I’ve got one myself. My “Class of ’99 story, if I ever get back to it, is meant to retell Buffy and WIllow’s high school years – in a B/W kind of way. (9 stories/parts in all)
But here’s a new/different one. “Buffy: A New Journey, Season One” by Jessica Nightsong over on Passion and Perfection (a femslash fic site). The first two parts are approximately equal to the first to episodes of the series (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”, and “The Harvest”).
How different? Well… although it’s one of those “Lesbian Buffy” stories right from the start, that’s been done many times.
No, what tells us this is different, right from the start, is that the person Buffy has lunch with on her first day at Sunnydale High is Amy. (I don’t think I’ve ever read a story before where it was Buffy/ Amy. And a well developed Amy at that. In fact, in the first story the writer seems to delve more into Amy’s thoughts than Buffy’s.
And that’s just the beginning. I won’t spoil most of the story but the character appearance order? Different. And interesting times are ahead for Buffy and Amy if the writing quality keeps up — and on this particular fic site it usually does.
Okay… the whole Buffy falls in love with Amy bit? Happens too fast for my taste but is certainly in keeping with the general pace of such things. You just have to accept it and move on.