beyond the wide world's end

I know I've been pretty quiet lately, but that's because not much is going on. I won my Supreme Court case in AP Gov -- Caminetti v. United States; I was Caminetti.

Uh, in other news, four ways to tell you live in the country:
1. "Hey, what'd you do this weekend?"
"Slaughtered hogs."

2. "You bastard! You didn't show up and I had to shuck all the hay by myself."

3. "Hey, mom, there's a dead deer by our driveway. I did not hit it."

4. "Hey, you want to go elk-hunting with me this weekend?"

All true conversations. Oh, Ellensburg.

Current NaNo wordcount stands at about 6K.

I have an eye exam Thursday to make sure my eyes aren't too bad for me to join the Air Force. Yes, I know, the very fact that I have to say that makes people want to quail and run away. Don't worry, I know my eyes are definitely too bad for me to actually fly; alas. I just need to know before I put in my application for an AFROTC scholarship, because otherwise it'll all have been a big waste of time and I'll be really pissed off at my damn eyes.

Why do I have the feeling that the thesis question for my senior project I-Search paper (yes, as if doing the project isn't actually bad enough, we also have to write a research paper) is going to be, "How do you get four branches of the Armed Services to work together in an intergalactic civil war, and who's going to kill each other first, the Marines and the Rangers or the enemy?"

I appear to have picked up a very faintly Southern tinge to my writing. This is in contrast to the entire time I was writing in CSI:NY, when all my writing was NYC-flavored.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is in my hands! I've had a hold on it for a week and a half, and it was due back a week ago, and it came in today. Hurrah!

I wrote a 160 word sentence, as I have fondly been telling everyone I met today. It has been met with, variously, "That's a pretty long sentence," "How many lines is that?", and "Faulkner wrote a sentence that was like 360 words."

The quarter ended Friday; only three-quarters of my senior year remain.

If my band doesn't start shutting up while we're practicing for the Veterans Day Assembly, I'm going to fucking slap someone. It's Veterans Day. You do not do that shit.

On a reread of Deathly Hallows, more closely and slowly this time, to be followed by a full reread of the series from Sorceror's Stone to Deathly Hallows.

Have a week before apocalyptothon submissions are due, so have to rewrite the latter part of my story sometime before then.

Have been writing a lot of SW fic -- the sequel to "What is Lost", currently nameless, in much the same style I wrote WiL -- which is to say, with bits and pieces all over the place. I have a vague plot in mind, but I have to figure out what to do with Luke and Leia; I'd thought I'd had it figured out, but apparently not. And also do a little more research into the EU, specifically with Quinlan Vos, Aayla Secura, and Mace Windu. Possibly Yoda.

As well, I'm halfway through the summer before my senior year, so I'm having to seriously start narrowing down schools, start my essays and applications, look at scholarships, et cetera. I narrowed my list of schools down slightly, but I also added some; I still have the problem that most of the schools I'm looking at are reach schools; I need more safety schools if I want to be able to go somewhere other than the UW if no one on the East Coast takes me. And guys, I really hate Seattle, so I'd rather not go to the UW.

Current list of prospective schools, in no particular order (okay, that's a lie, it's in alphabetical order):

Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA)
Boston University (Boston, MA)
Brown University (Providence, RI)
Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH)
Davidson College (Davidson, NC)
Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA)
Duke University (Durham, NC)
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Prescott, AZ/Daytona Beach, FL)
Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC)
University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA)
Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)

I'm looking at an anthropology/archaeology major with a possible double major in music/music ed, although my experience at Brown has me looking at a creative writing major or minor -- leaning very, very tentatively, I might add -- except at ERAU, where I'd probably be going for global security and intelligence studies or homeland security, and UNC, where I'd probably go anthropology and peace, war, and defense.

I'm thinking about writing my essays on writing, music (specifically, my experience with symphonic band vs. wind ensemble), or fandom. I'm not sure how that last part would work, but it's unusual, I hope.

I need to start practicing bari again -- I need to have my music memorized for marching band, and I need to have my music down for All-State auditions in the fall. And start practicing flute, so my teacher doesn't kill me.

Don't even get me started on having to do scholarship apps.

Or summer reading. Which isn't technically required, because it's homework for the main school year, but I'd like to do it now so I don't have to do it then.

Also, knitting, because I actually have a commission I need to finish.

I'm going to edit my final project story -- now renamed to "And All the Saints are Sinners" -- a little bit more, then possibly send it out somewhere.

Yes. My life really is this boring. *rolls eyes* I haven't been out of the house in three days, no wonder I was sad to come home.

ETA: Dude, Boston College CREEPS ME OUT. My comp was on the BC website, my mom walks in with the mail including the BC "come here! we rock!" guide and application, I say something about being really uncertain about BC for various reasons, and then BC e-mails me not two seconds later. What the hell, is this school stalking me or what?

Okay, so I am actually writing the story where Beauty falls in love with the candlestick instead of the Beast. *stares* I'm sorry, I can't help myself. The high school musical this year was Beauty and the Beast, and while it was all fantastically fantastic, the actress that played Beauty had way more chemistry with the actor that played Lumiere than the Beast. Which really raises the question: what happens if Beauty doesn't fall in love with the Beast? And the enchantress is pretty much a grade-a bitch for enchanting all of the Prince's people as well as the Prince himself.

And something else, which I notice a lot in musicals: the leads have next to no personality, the support has it in spades. I mean, look at the Beast compared to the other male characters: Lumiere! Cogsworth! Gaston! Lumiere! (no, seriously, David played him so well) Even LeFou and Maurice -- even Chip -- have more personality than the Beast. Now, female leads tend to have more personality than the male leads, and Belle is a doll and spunkier than most Disney females (Cinderella, Snow White: I'm looking at you. Ariel, Jasmine, you guys are spunky too. Same goes for Mulan. Nala, somewhat. Meg, sort of. Elizabeth Swann, you're just disturbing), but look at Mrs. Potts! Look at Babette! (Okay, Babette and Lumiere are adorable, but seriously, if I was Belle? I so totally would have fallen for Lumiere, not the Beast. Sure, she's a girl, he's a candelabra, but they could have made it work! That's what magic's for!)

In other words: I actually am writing the story where Belle falls in love with Lumiere and Lumiere practically has a heart attack because oh shit, this chick is for the Beast, if she falls in love with him they'll never be human, and can she just get away from him already??? And Belle does the whole, why would I be in love with him he's a jerk and he has no manners and all he ever does is yell and sulk, you have a sense of humor and we can work around the spell thing, that's what magicians are for. And if I'm stuck here, then I want to be stuck here with someone I like.

You see my point? Lumiere/Belle is my new OTP, right after James/Sirius, John/Rodney, and Drew/Mac.

So until the PTB broke the news that Louie was Danny's big brother, I was actually quite enamoured of the idea that it was the other way around: Danny was the elder, Louie was the younger. Because it would work. Now, I'm an only child, so I'm obviously no expert, but Danny has always pinged as "older brother" on my radar. The mature one. Not necessarily in the Lab of Dysfunction, but...I don't know how to explain it. He does not read as a younger brother, at least the way I look at it. He reads as the one that always had to bail his baby brother out, the one who practically had to raise his kid brother, the one who had no childhood, basically. I can see him as a younger brother, if I quirk my head and squint and look just so, but most of the time, he reads as older. Even when I wrote identical twins Danny and Louie (which the show so should have done), I was still looking at Danny as the older one -- and Louie as the favorite. We basically have no canon evidence for this at all, even in -- oh, god, what was that ep, the Tanglewood follow-up. Run Still, Run Deep -- I have no canon evidence at all, except that, uh, Louie actually is the older brother. But it would work much better if he wasn't!

Danny's an older brother. Flack's a younger brother. Lindsay's a younger sister of a family consisting all of boys, or, alternately, the last chance to have a boy out of a lot of girls, but my money's on the first. Mac's an only child. Hawkes is an only child. Stella -- I can see her as older, younger, or only, but I can actually see her making a pretty decent younger sister, even though I wrote her with a younger sister in the Bardverse. Aiden is a middle child of a large family, angled a little more toward the top of the food chain. Hammerback's a younger brother of several sisters (Can't you just see him? "Check this out! This is so cool!" "Oh my God, Sid, that's disgusting, you're disgusting, get away from me!").

Thoughts?

See, I have this belief that unless they directly contradict each other, all "real world" fiction takes place in the universe. That is to say, at some point in time:

Dr. Temperance Brennan (Bones) came up to New York for a forensics convention and had to (confusedly) suffer Danny hitting on her all evening until Aiden pulled him off.

Flack and Charlie Eppes (Numb3rs) once worked together on a project while in college and still keep in touch occasionally.

Heller and Dr. Edward Slope (the Mallory novels by Carol O'Connell) were Mac and Hawkes' old bosses and Flack once got into a turf battle with Detective Sergeant Riker and his partner, Detective Kathy Mallory.

Stella and Annabeth Chase (Close to Home) met at college. Somehow.

Flack once got stranded in Boston when Logan Airport got snowed in and got involved in Mystery with intrepid PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro (Dennis Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro series).

Mac once did a joint mission with Jonah and Colonel whatshisface (The Unit).

Any other suggestions?

My favorite passage from a book, ever, comes from Dennis Lehane's Mystic River, which is an absolutely gorgeous book:

I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to a woman you'd dated in high school -- a woman you'd loved and lost -- danced above you with shimmering eyes, and you said, fuck it, let's dream just one more time.

And while I hate Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (and the only reason I'm reading it is for school), my second favorite passage comes from there:

Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any incosistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.

Now given time, I could probably look through my books and pick out a couple more (there's at least two more from Mystic River alone, and Lehane, God, I could fill a book with the gorgeousness of Lehane), but these are the two that stick out the most.

Coming up on Part Two of the stories I'm not writing:
- if I AUed HP to have a live Cedric, the way I'd do
- "Dangerous Heroes", a.k.a. the Bardverse Mafia story that shall never be
- sequel to "There Are No Heroes Here"
- the great Draco/Hermione epic I started a long, long time ago and never wrote

( ...Bloody Sunday and the Post-BS (oh, shut up, you guys know what I mean) World. Spoilers, obviously. )

Any questions? Drop a comment.