Recent Entries

Speaking of my obsessoin with Freddie Stroma [nsfw if you work for a bunch of fascists!!!)

Freddie Stroma dancing
Uploaded by verefence. - Discover videos of people, family and friends.

And this video only makes him even MORE adorable . . .

Saw HBP Last Night . . .

It wasn't bad, actually. I still think the producers are relying too much on our knowledge of the books.

But I do expect loads of Ernie McClaggan stories to pop up, because Freddir Stroma is just as cute as a button.

What did you lot think?

More to come . . .

Cassius, it's over -- Cassius, away!

I have three -- maybe four? Yeah, four! -- Dreamwidth codes to get rid of.

Anyone in need of one?

Let me know!

Okay, so my Expert Fanficcers: Big Bang Question

What was the first Big Bang?

Well . . . not the first Big Bang, but . . . oh! you know what I meant!

Thanks~

♥♥♥♥

Best. Website. Ever.

http://www.changar.com/archives/go.html

Loved. It.

Full. F'ing. Stop.

Hly Spt! That Could Have Ending HORRIBLY!!!!

Rupert Grint had SWINE FLU!!!

Thankfully, it was a 'mild case'.

And the photo they used of him is completely adorable. BEHOLD!!!

Myspace is still good for something . . .

Golly, Molly . . . !

Question to the Writers [Continued]: Knowing Your Main Characters -- How Much is Too Much?

Okay, so I got some really interesting answers from you guys in my last post when I asked about knowing your characters, be it origfic or fanfic. In that post, I mentioned the character analysist sheet from The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942. Here it is, in its entirety. How do you feel about this? Too much? Too . . . inconsequential? Again, this isn't for every character in your story, rather, just the main characters [maybe secondary, depending on how integral to the plot they are--Ie. Xander and Wilow for BtVS, or Ron and Hermione in HP].

Physiology
1. Sex

2. Age

3. Height and weight

4. Color of hair, eyes, skin

5. Posture

6. Appearance (over or under-weight, clean, untidy)

7. Defects (abnormalities, birthmarks, diseases)

8. Heredity

Sociology
1. Class: lower, middle, upper

2. Occupation: job, hours, income, working conditions, attitude toward organization, suitability

3. Home life: parents living or dead, separated or divorced; parents’ habits, mental development and vices, character’s marital status

4. Religion

5. Race, nationality

6. Place in community

7. Political affiliations

8. Amusements, hobbies

Psychology
1. Sex life, moral standards

2. Persona premise, ambition

3. Frustrations, chief disappointments

4. Temperament (easygoing, pessimistic, optimistic)

5. Attitude toward life: resigned, militant, defeatist

6. Complexes: obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias

7. Extrovert, introvert, (or both)

8. Abilities (talents, languages spoken)

9. Imagination, judgment, taste, poise

10. I.Q.

Oh, and I've no ulterior motive in asking these, I'm just generally interested in how my friends write. If I've friended you, and you're a writer of any sort, then it's probably because I like what you write. Probably a lot. So . . . this is just me, trying to get to know you a bit more, in my own weird way. ♥

Oh, this movie can go very wrong . . . and a Question for Writers

So I used to stay clear of Netflix's Instant Watch because I had always thought that it was for all the B-Movies and reject movies that no one wants to waste time renting. Sometimes, I would watch really old movies -- like the entire Porky's trilogy, for instance -- or TV shows, when they finally started putting them up for instant viewing.

Every now and again, however, I'm pleasantly surprised when I take a chance on a movie. I did that with Evil (2003), a.k.a "Ondskan". I mean, the premise . . . it was alluring, compelling, tempting.

( Okay, really I just recognized one of the stars, a former AC&F model by the name of . . . )

Has anyone else seen this? If you have seen it, how'd you find it? I had some issues with the movie and its expectations on the viewers, but I have to say I was sad that the movie ended -- I wanted to see more! So anyway, now I'm risking it with another movie, this one a deliverable. In the Blood, starring even more cuties. ( The premise of this one . . . ? )

Okay, now the question for the writers: How well do you know your characters? This can go to really any fiction, including fanfiction [regardless of whether you deal with already-established canonical characters, or less fleshed out tertiary characters]. I was reading "The Art of Dramatic Writing" by Lajos Egri, and there's a section on knowing your characters completely. There's a list of questions that you ask yourself about the characters, ranging from basic physical attributes, to hoeps and dreams, to thougths on sex, to intelligence/creativity level.

How do you lot feel about that? Do you find it necessary to already know the life -- and death -- of your characters before you start writing them? How much do you feel you should know? Do you find that your characters, once you know them this extensively, write themselves? Or does knowing them too much put them in a little box in the corner that you find too hard to write them out of if need be?

An Open Letter to Tom Felton . . . and a Day with the Moms.

Dear Tom Felton,

Please take note—

—you always look better with hair covering that fivehead.

With warmest regards,

G~abe

I had a wonderful day with my mom. We went to Half-Priced Books so she could renew her stock of tawdry romance novellas, I set up her Blackberry's internet connection, and then we went to Denny's, where we both had their new Grand Slamwich. You can tell just from the name what that sandwich's ingredients are: sausage, egg, bacon, cheese, and ham slapped between two pieces of bread. My arteries scream just re-thinking about it . . . but—oh!—was it delicious.

[If you should try it sometime, and you all should at least once before you leave this mortal realm, do yourself a favor and ask for sourdough bread. Yum, yum gimme some!]

I bought a [supposedly] true story of a British intelligence officer who, after being shot in the head, developed psychic powers. It's written pseudo-biography style, but has those Bartimaeus-like footnotes on almost every page, where the author says "hey, I don't want to take up space and time describing what such-and-sch is . . ." before basically describe, in detail, such-and-such and so-and-so. Still, it looked fun! And funny.

I also scored a 1969 edition of Funk & Wagnalls Modern Guide to Synonyms, which will go nicely with my 1939 edition of the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia and the 1931 Modern English Dictionary. That's been my new thing, old dictionaries and thesaural publications. Why Funk & Wagnalls? No particular reason; I just keep finding them. I'd like to score some old British ones, but they'd probably be really expensive. Is there an equivalent of Half-Priced Books in the UK?

Anyways. Then my mom helped me box up a bunch of old programming books and Photoshop/Flash books that are like . . . four and five years out-of-date, and we drove them to the library in the less . . . savory part of town. We just set the boxes in front of the door with a note saying "donated". My hope is that some kid will see the book, pick it up because of the pretty colors, get hooked on it, then become a bad-ass graphic designer or programmer or web developer or whatever. It could happen, right? So best to donate books like that to libraries than give them to Half-Priced Books to [maybe] make money from.

[To their credit, they do donate to libraries, a lot.]

And now, I'm sitting here, writing a bit on Colliver, a bit on MarcJam, working more on my CGabrielWright website, reading a very interesting plot outline for a certain someone's

hd_careeerfest [I think that's what it's called, innit?] story, and perusing the world of LJ. I was going to go to Chicago for Pride, but I just spent $205 on books for second summer session of school. AND THAT'S JUST ONE CLASS!!!

~le sigh~

No worries. I've made $57 last 2 weeks before. I can do it again!

So that's that. Anything interesting afoot?

G~abe

Today's Link Spam: Fear the gay chicken

I . . . don't know if this qualifies as NSFW or not. But you may want to turn the volume down just a smidge.

:lol:

Desktop Meme: Herein You Can Learn A Lot About Gabe

. . . and why he doesn't get shit done.

BEHOLD!

[click to enlarge -- if you dare! WARNING: The actual size is 3360 × 1050. Far from D/U-F.]

So . . . what does this reveal?

[+] First, Gabe must like his screens/icons/text tiny!!! ( Under the covers for length and any Who-Cares? that might float around . . . )

So there you have it. A complete break-down of "Why Gabe Can't Finish Half of What He Starts". :lol: Well . . . I finish all the things I get paid for and get grades for, so I'm not entirely bad . . .

NEXT: I think I'm gonna make a tute on using Liquid Story Binder, yWriter, and OneNote for those of us who need help organizing the worlds we create, be it fanfic or original fic. I'm a hardline fan of LSB, but yWriter and OneNote are also amazing tools.

ADDENDUM-1: Oh, I was serious about fic-recs that deal specifically with the socio-political world immediately after HP:DH. Pairings are irrelevent, it can even be het, so long as it's well conceived and well written.

ADDENDUM-2: If you haven't done the Desktop Meme in awhile, I urge you to hit that PRNT SCRN button and post away! Alternatively, if you have done it, link me to it! I love Desktop Memes more than most other memes. I dunno why. Don't judge me! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I just finished reading "Genesis" by Bernard Beckett . . . and Dear K.J. Parker . . .

. . . and just got kicked in the gut by the ending.

Seriously? Why didn't I see that coming???

So of course, now I need to re-read it and peep out all the signs.

If you haven't read this, please -- do yourself a favor.

And now, an open letter to K.J.Parker . . .

Dear K.J. Parker,

Please stop with the semi-colons.

They don't make your writing smarter, especially when half of them are inappropriate, half are superfluous, and the other half are plain ol' wrong.

I just started the first of three stories in the Engineer Trilogy and if I should never see another semi-colon again in my entire life, it'd be six lives too late.

Thanks for ruining my favorite punctuation mark.

Jerk.

With love,

~Gabe.

Argh! This is why you just read, Gabe -- just read . . .

In light of my previous question about Spider-Woman and Wolverine, I began to search the 'net to see if Spider-Woman's history had been ret-conned . . .

Let's just say that, yet again, my own curiosity hath spoilt me.

~le sigh~

I'll never learn.

OMG I Need Help from My Comic-Lovin' Friends!

Particularly fellow Marvel-ites . . . specifically, fans of NEW AVENGERS.

Because something is driving me absolutely crazy. ( Putting under the covers to hide my geekiness . . . )

Does anyone follow The New Avengers??? Do they deal with this later on? Was their past history ret-conned?

HALP!!!

Oh, and hello all!

Promised Photos -- Detroit Electronic Festival & Indy Pride 2009

Alrighteethen!

So . . . three weekends ago, I went on my annual mini-vaca up to Detroit for MOVEMENT: The 10th Annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival. Last year, if you remember, I posted pics of scruffy!Gabe. Well, I was only marginally scruffy this year, and I've finally uploaded the photos -- and photos from this past week's Indy Pride -- to Picasa [which I recommend, if only for its ease of use].

Preview:

Link: Movement/DEMF

I was in the Pride Parade this past Saturday morning for work. So I didn't get a lot of parade photos, but I did score loads of nice shots post-Parade. I seem to have been on the hunt for cute dog photos this year. That's probably because last year people went all out gayifying and prettifying their canine companions. It was more subdued this year, and I was with a friend who brought her dog, too.

Preview:

Link to Indy Pride Stuff

Link: Indy Pride

I had left my camera on all day, and set to auto-focus, so it ran out of juice. After that, I just used my HTC Touch Pro camera phone. And here they are . . .

Link: Pics from the Camera

I hope you have as much fun looking at the pics as I had taking them and being in some of them. Enjoy!

Oh, and if you go to your city's Pride Parade, please let me live vicariously through you and post your photos!

Another Argument About Language . . .

So I take a couple friends to lunch today—Chinese buffet ftw, btw—and one of my friends and I get into yet another ~~argument~~ ~~discussion~~ ARGUMENT about language, notably idiomatic language.

I say something like, "Idiomatic language doesn't need to be logical. Take 'raining cats and dogs' for instance."

He says, "Well, that saying has a history and is so colorful, it's meaning cannot be misconstrued any other way. No one would ever think it's literally raining cats and dogs—even foreigners!"

Which is a valid point. Then he demands—okay, demands is a strong word—that I come up with another example to prove my assertion.

I couldn't. At least not right on the spot.

See, I feel that arguments and discussions should be met with an clean slate. Examples should pop up, organic to the discussion. I don't have a list of examples stored in my brain to which I can call upon and wield like weapons when the situation permits—I haven't the memory for that! And maybe my poor memory has shaped how I discuss and argue with people. In fact, I'm sure it is.

So after sitting across from my friend and his smug expression for the next 20 minutes, unable even to enjoy my crag rangoon!!!, I gave up. I didn't give in, mind; he knows that I'll think about it for days on end, until an example pops in my head. He stands to take a call from his cell [he is, at least, polite] and excuses himself. I say, "You know we're gonna talk about you behind your back, right?"

He laughs.

Then pauses.

Then walks off.

And it hits me.

THAT is a completely illogical statement. And I mean the exact—technical—opposite of what I said.

In literature, when someone walks away, and the other person is saying something after them, it usually reads something like:

Rob stood up and stalked off.

"Yeah, walk away like a coward, you coward!" I yelled to his back.

Logically—and technically—speaking, if I'm saying something behind your back, then I'm saying something to your face. I mean, if your back is to me, then I'm looking at the front of your actual back. If I'm behind your back, then I'm back to facing you. Strictly speaking. The phrase behind your back is logically inconsistent with the idea of fronts and backs, and would be more consistently represented with talking at your back, or even talking behind you, but not behind your back.

My friend came back to the table, smug look now vanished. I didn't say a word. I think I had made my point.

Addendum: Yes, I know I'm being completely nit-picky about backs and fronts and fronts of backs, but that was my initial point. Idiomatic language need not be logical or literal or even grammatical. We say things all the time that we accept at face value without thinking about what the literal meaning is. No one would ever think that "behind your back" would mean "to your face", but literally, that's what it means. I think. Idiomatically, of course, it means something totally different. Which is the point of idiomatic language. And thank gawd for it!

What !?!? 2 Gabe Posts in as Many Days?

Surely you jest!!

But this is no illusion.

I came across a new 'boy-band' named Vice on Myspace. Although I'm mostly on Facebook nowadays, I still use Myspace to find new music and comedians and whats-not. So I get this friend request from Vice, and they're all secretive and stuff. "Sign up to receive a password to go to a website once we send you an email letting you know when you can preview some music!"

Well . . . as I've said before, I'm a sucker for marketing. So I'm immediately interested.

I sign up.

A month later, I get the email with the password.

Two weeks after that, I get the web-link for the sneak peek.

And this is what I see

And I immediately think of my Next-Gen-lovin' LJ-friends, because . . . come on . . . if that's not Albus, James, Scorpius, and Hugo in a boy-band, then I don't know what is!

In fact, didn't someone write that story already?

abusing_sarcasm?

draykonis??

~sigh~

Their music is . . . odd, for a boy-band. Some are very danceable, but nothing radio-dancey. Of the four songs I've heard, there is a ballad that's nice, I guess, if you like typical boy-band ballads. But their Adam-Ant-wannabe "war paint" leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, if you're gonna do it, then do it. Here, let me show you . . .

That's how you do poncey war paint! And pirate-glam, too, in case you're gonna try a glittery eye-patch for your next promo shot.

Okay, that is all. Oh, and if you decide to see Drag Me to Hell, you should probably see it drunk or stoned. I mean, it's not bad, but it's definitely not something you should see without chemical assistance. Oh, and bring ear plugs, because Raimi ain't scerd to scare you by bloody ears.

I've Decided That I Hate Vampire Stories

And not just Harry Potter creature!fic that are vampires, but vampire stories in general.

And not just Twatlight, or that horrible Lost Boys II, or the irredeemable Dracula:2000, but ALL vampire stories.

[Yes, there's is an exception, which I'll explain at the end.]

I hate the contradiction of the vampire. ( Under the covers, because it's long, drawn out, badly argued, poorly exampled, and I'm a little drumk . . . )

Okay, well, I'm done ranting. Yes, I realize that there are cool implications in dealing with vampires in stories. Maybe I hate vampire stories because I hate the stories that writers are writing. Yes, there are nice implications of a world in which vampires exist. But no one writes it. I'd love to read a story -- or see a movie -- that explains, or investigates, how a society would really have had to evolve in a world where vamps live with humans. How integrated would they have been. Certainly there would be a bit of subjugation involved. But a world where we have the nuke and a shit load of military boys is a world where humans are no punk bitch. And a vampire who has seen man crawl from a potato famine to destroying nearly an entire city -- two actually -- with a single device would hardly have the holier-than-thou attitude that we see in Blood Groove, True Blood, Lost Boys, and countless other vamp stories/shows/movies.

I mean, think about it: a world like Twatlight's, where the father-vamp dude is a fuckin' doctor?!?! Okay, Edward sulking around Mary Sue all day telling her to leave him alone even as he follows her is uninteresting. Blah. Blah. But showing how a vampire decided to go to Med School to erect a ruse -- AND GOT HIS FUCKIN' DEGREE!!! -- is pretty damned interesting. Well . . . it could be interesting. I mean, I have two RNs for friends and a friend going to med school, and so far, no night classes. The only time they are in class when it's dark is when it's winter time and the sun hasn't come up for their 7:00AM class! Write me THAT story, vampire lovers, and no more nonsense about soulless, dead, undead people who are somehow able to sniff me out of my hiding place.

This said, I cast no aspersions against people who read, write, and love vampire stories of any sort. Altho' I do shake my head in wonderment at Twilight lovers. ;-P

Auto Tune the News

"Everything sounds better auto-tuned . . . so let's auto-tune the news."

I love these guys.

It doesn't hurt that the nerd with the glasses is the cutest thing since sliced bread drippin' with jelly . . . sexily flavored jelly.

Enjoy.