stunt_muppet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stunt_muppet) wrote2010-02-07 01:43 am
stunt_muppet) wrote2010-02-07 01:43 am
Entry tags:
I should sleep.
1. But guys I'd forgotten how very much I missed playing video games. I haven't done it in the longest time and it is ever so much fun to get immersed in a colorful virtual world and fight monsters and engage in ship-to-ship combat with sky pirates. The feeling of ultimately useless but still satisfying accomplishment after you best a dungeon! How very clever you feel when you manage to apply strategy instead of going in with magic blazing! I do not intend to spend all my time doing this, because it is actually less productive than toodling about online, but now I remember why I spent such a huge chunk of my adolescence doing this.
It helps that I finally restarted Skies of Arcadia: Legends after not playing it for years, and while it is nothing terribly innovative as far as story and game mechanics (though the multi-elemental magic system and the airship combat lend it a nice twist) you play as a SKY PIRATE and I am willing to forgive a lot for that. Also, it has Aika, the male protagonist's childhood friend who doesn't become a love interest and (as far as I can remember) doesn't get kidnapped and is just as rambunctious and adventuresome as he is and kicks lots of arse. Hooray!
2. So apparently the entire East Coast, including Hometown, is buried under feet of snow and shut down for the weekend. Guess how much snow we have here right now? None. Not a single paltry flake. I'm annoyed.
3. So apparently Neil Gaiman is going to write an episode of Doctor Who! I'm really pleased to hear that - I think Gaiman's very good at telling dark fairy tales that adults can enjoy and that's what many of Moffat's stories feel like to me (especially Blink). I look forward to seeing what he'll do with the verse and I hope it'll scare the pants off me in the process. Also I kind of hope they get Teri Hatcher to play a villain in his story, I don't care if she's not British.
Tempering my enthusiasm, however, is the level of whining that the announcement has kicked up even in the first few hours, and the thought that it'll keep going solid for another year until Gaiman's episode airs. I'm hardly a Gaiman stan, I don't demand everyone like Gaiman or be excited about the news, but if Gaiman's writing isn't to your taste, just say so instead of rolling out the He's Popular So He Sucks and declaring everyone who does like his writing mouth-breathing emo goth hipster teenie sops. Because people who like things you don't like are WRONG WRONG WRONG, obviously, THEIR TASTES ARE BAD AND THEY SHOULD FEEL BAD.
I mean, I'm hardly innocent of fannish whining when it comes to Doctor Who, but I like to think that I can at least cop to my own tastes and opinions without going ad hominem. Also, if you're going to kvetch this much, Who fandom, at least start producing more good crack to make up for it. I lose patience with you.
4. During my walk today I started doing more thinking about that Ratchet/Arcee AU in light of the plot developments in Season 3, and I found that difficulties arise. See, if Arcee survives and escapes from Lockdown with her memory intact, that means she ends up controlling Omega Supreme, which is kind of a problem for three reasons: It makes it difficult for she and Ratchet to spend any substantial time together (because she's busy training and piloting Omega while he's out doing field-medic things); it means that there's no reason for Omega to end up as Team Optimus' ship; and...well, having to serve as mentor and guide for a purpose-built, sentient weapon of mass destruction seemed to mess Ratchet up but good, and I feel kind of bad sparing Arcee the memory wipe only to instead saddle her with massive war trauma and possible PTSD in his stead.
What I had in mind was that the two part ways after escaping Lockdown (and Arcee is escorted back to the Ministry of Science building by actual soldiers so this crap doesn't keep happening), and Ratchet doesn't see her again until after the war takes a losing turn and the Elite Guard is forced to activate Omega Supreme. After that, the two meet up again when Ratchet is stuck in the middle of a losing battle that Arcee and Omega Supreme are sent to turn the tide of, and she recognizes him, offering him (and presumably the other survivors) a ride back to base camp. And on that ride, they get to talking, and she explains to him what Omega Supreme is - he is, of course, repulsed, and while Arcee defends the Council's decisions as necessary because of the war she reveals that she has her own doubts about the project. Once she drops him back off she gives him her comlink frequency - she wants someone to talk to, especially about the combat she's seeing and her increasing moral unease about Omega Supreme, and it's not like there's anyone in Intel or the Elite Guard she could talk to about that. Much of the rest of their interaction comes in the form of these communications, taken whenever they have a peaceful moment and, at times, invaluable for keeping each other sane.
After the war's over, Arcee can't let Omega just get scrapped and repurposed. Ratchet has mentioned retirement on a space bridge crew, and for that he'll need a ship. He can also probably be trusted to treat Omega with respect and not try to use him as a weapon. So the two make an arrangement for Ratchet and the crew he ends up with to use Omega/Teletran-1, while Arcee stays on Cybertron and tries to go back to a normal life (since it seems way too convenient for her to take a space bridge posting as well, and I have a feeling she'd want to go back to teaching young bots how to be peaceful and productive after she's had to teach one of them how to kill).
If I was going with my original idea of an AU of the series with Arcee, then that does raise the problem of the second season finale, and how it'd have to be Arcee rather than Ratchet awakening Omega, and Arcee's back on Cybertron. Easy solution there, though - after the first season, Arcee (who may still have some connections with Intel and the Elite Guard) hears that Optimus' crew, and thus Ratchet, and thus Omega, are on Earth, calls in a favor with Ultra Magnus (surely she's got a few), and takes a ride on his ship to Earth and stays with Team Optimus from then on out - again, back on Cybertron, there are few people she can talk to about what happened during the war. This also gives me ample opportunity to write her Doing Something with the team and being a bit all adorable with Ratchet much to Bee's disgust.
This still doesn't solve the "massive trauma" problem (poor Arcee), and there's the additional difficulty that I'd then have to write a relationship between two shell-shocked and rather broken people. I do like writing people healing and coping, but I'm not actually very good at it.
There's also the problem of Arcee's personality - i.e. that I have only fleeting clues to what it is. I try to make her competent and reasonably tough when I write her (she is a qualified spy) because after watching some G1 I am irritated at how Arcee rarely gets anything at all to do and I want her to be competent and tough, but if I make her too hard-edged or sarcastic or hyper-competent I run the risk of making her a thinly-veiled Sue. Plus, from what we can see of her personality she's rather...well, nice. Sweet. Determined but gentle. And frankly I don't know if that'd make for a good pairing with Ratchet, because Ratchet is a grouch and whoever he's with needs to be able to put up with his grouching and grouch right back. There's always the possibility that he'd mellow around Arcee and treat her differently than the way he treats other people (surely you know at least one cantankerous old man who's still a perfect gentleman to his wife, I know I do), but - especially if they clash on the issue of Omega being used as a weapon - he's eventually going to lose his temper and snap at her, and she needs to be able to hold her own in that argument if I'm going to write them in a believable relationship. I kind of explained it away in the few snippets I wrote by bringing up Arcee's previous job as a teacher; if she's teaching very young robots she needs to be able to get them in line when they're being unruly, and that means refusing to take crap after a certain point. But I don't know if that's enough.
I can't believe I am putting this much thought into shipfic about grumpy old robots.
In other, less thinky ficcing news, I continued to try writing G1!Optimus/Elita-One (that may have been the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
springkink prompt pairing I claimed but shush) and found an unexpected bright spot amidst the difficulty of writing robot relationships: I am no longer obligated to write kisses (which I am similarly very bad at because I never know how to describe them) because G1!Prime doesn't have a mouth. Thanks Prime, I knew your faceplate would one day come in handy.
5. And now I really am going to go to bed. I have got to stop staying up like this; it's not good for me. Even on weekends.
It helps that I finally restarted Skies of Arcadia: Legends after not playing it for years, and while it is nothing terribly innovative as far as story and game mechanics (though the multi-elemental magic system and the airship combat lend it a nice twist) you play as a SKY PIRATE and I am willing to forgive a lot for that. Also, it has Aika, the male protagonist's childhood friend who doesn't become a love interest and (as far as I can remember) doesn't get kidnapped and is just as rambunctious and adventuresome as he is and kicks lots of arse. Hooray!
2. So apparently the entire East Coast, including Hometown, is buried under feet of snow and shut down for the weekend. Guess how much snow we have here right now? None. Not a single paltry flake. I'm annoyed.
3. So apparently Neil Gaiman is going to write an episode of Doctor Who! I'm really pleased to hear that - I think Gaiman's very good at telling dark fairy tales that adults can enjoy and that's what many of Moffat's stories feel like to me (especially Blink). I look forward to seeing what he'll do with the verse and I hope it'll scare the pants off me in the process. Also I kind of hope they get Teri Hatcher to play a villain in his story, I don't care if she's not British.
Tempering my enthusiasm, however, is the level of whining that the announcement has kicked up even in the first few hours, and the thought that it'll keep going solid for another year until Gaiman's episode airs. I'm hardly a Gaiman stan, I don't demand everyone like Gaiman or be excited about the news, but if Gaiman's writing isn't to your taste, just say so instead of rolling out the He's Popular So He Sucks and declaring everyone who does like his writing mouth-breathing emo goth hipster teenie sops. Because people who like things you don't like are WRONG WRONG WRONG, obviously, THEIR TASTES ARE BAD AND THEY SHOULD FEEL BAD.
I mean, I'm hardly innocent of fannish whining when it comes to Doctor Who, but I like to think that I can at least cop to my own tastes and opinions without going ad hominem. Also, if you're going to kvetch this much, Who fandom, at least start producing more good crack to make up for it. I lose patience with you.
4. During my walk today I started doing more thinking about that Ratchet/Arcee AU in light of the plot developments in Season 3, and I found that difficulties arise. See, if Arcee survives and escapes from Lockdown with her memory intact, that means she ends up controlling Omega Supreme, which is kind of a problem for three reasons: It makes it difficult for she and Ratchet to spend any substantial time together (because she's busy training and piloting Omega while he's out doing field-medic things); it means that there's no reason for Omega to end up as Team Optimus' ship; and...well, having to serve as mentor and guide for a purpose-built, sentient weapon of mass destruction seemed to mess Ratchet up but good, and I feel kind of bad sparing Arcee the memory wipe only to instead saddle her with massive war trauma and possible PTSD in his stead.
What I had in mind was that the two part ways after escaping Lockdown (and Arcee is escorted back to the Ministry of Science building by actual soldiers so this crap doesn't keep happening), and Ratchet doesn't see her again until after the war takes a losing turn and the Elite Guard is forced to activate Omega Supreme. After that, the two meet up again when Ratchet is stuck in the middle of a losing battle that Arcee and Omega Supreme are sent to turn the tide of, and she recognizes him, offering him (and presumably the other survivors) a ride back to base camp. And on that ride, they get to talking, and she explains to him what Omega Supreme is - he is, of course, repulsed, and while Arcee defends the Council's decisions as necessary because of the war she reveals that she has her own doubts about the project. Once she drops him back off she gives him her comlink frequency - she wants someone to talk to, especially about the combat she's seeing and her increasing moral unease about Omega Supreme, and it's not like there's anyone in Intel or the Elite Guard she could talk to about that. Much of the rest of their interaction comes in the form of these communications, taken whenever they have a peaceful moment and, at times, invaluable for keeping each other sane.
After the war's over, Arcee can't let Omega just get scrapped and repurposed. Ratchet has mentioned retirement on a space bridge crew, and for that he'll need a ship. He can also probably be trusted to treat Omega with respect and not try to use him as a weapon. So the two make an arrangement for Ratchet and the crew he ends up with to use Omega/Teletran-1, while Arcee stays on Cybertron and tries to go back to a normal life (since it seems way too convenient for her to take a space bridge posting as well, and I have a feeling she'd want to go back to teaching young bots how to be peaceful and productive after she's had to teach one of them how to kill).
If I was going with my original idea of an AU of the series with Arcee, then that does raise the problem of the second season finale, and how it'd have to be Arcee rather than Ratchet awakening Omega, and Arcee's back on Cybertron. Easy solution there, though - after the first season, Arcee (who may still have some connections with Intel and the Elite Guard) hears that Optimus' crew, and thus Ratchet, and thus Omega, are on Earth, calls in a favor with Ultra Magnus (surely she's got a few), and takes a ride on his ship to Earth and stays with Team Optimus from then on out - again, back on Cybertron, there are few people she can talk to about what happened during the war. This also gives me ample opportunity to write her Doing Something with the team and being a bit all adorable with Ratchet much to Bee's disgust.
This still doesn't solve the "massive trauma" problem (poor Arcee), and there's the additional difficulty that I'd then have to write a relationship between two shell-shocked and rather broken people. I do like writing people healing and coping, but I'm not actually very good at it.
There's also the problem of Arcee's personality - i.e. that I have only fleeting clues to what it is. I try to make her competent and reasonably tough when I write her (she is a qualified spy) because after watching some G1 I am irritated at how Arcee rarely gets anything at all to do and I want her to be competent and tough, but if I make her too hard-edged or sarcastic or hyper-competent I run the risk of making her a thinly-veiled Sue. Plus, from what we can see of her personality she's rather...well, nice. Sweet. Determined but gentle. And frankly I don't know if that'd make for a good pairing with Ratchet, because Ratchet is a grouch and whoever he's with needs to be able to put up with his grouching and grouch right back. There's always the possibility that he'd mellow around Arcee and treat her differently than the way he treats other people (surely you know at least one cantankerous old man who's still a perfect gentleman to his wife, I know I do), but - especially if they clash on the issue of Omega being used as a weapon - he's eventually going to lose his temper and snap at her, and she needs to be able to hold her own in that argument if I'm going to write them in a believable relationship. I kind of explained it away in the few snippets I wrote by bringing up Arcee's previous job as a teacher; if she's teaching very young robots she needs to be able to get them in line when they're being unruly, and that means refusing to take crap after a certain point. But I don't know if that's enough.
I can't believe I am putting this much thought into shipfic about grumpy old robots.
In other, less thinky ficcing news, I continued to try writing G1!Optimus/Elita-One (that may have been the
springkink prompt pairing I claimed but shush) and found an unexpected bright spot amidst the difficulty of writing robot relationships: I am no longer obligated to write kisses (which I am similarly very bad at because I never know how to describe them) because G1!Prime doesn't have a mouth. Thanks Prime, I knew your faceplate would one day come in handy. 5. And now I really am going to go to bed. I have got to stop staying up like this; it's not good for me. Even on weekends.
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Everything in this fandom turns into a kerfuffle. Comments about scrapped ideas for Eleven's costume have inspired flamewars. And even mentioning the name "Neil Gaiman" anywhere on the internet will provoke screaming about how HE'S A HACK ONLY STOOPID GOTHIC POSERS LIKE! NO HOW DAR U HE IS LIKE UNTO A LITERARY JESUS! YEAH, WELL, YOUR MOM! NO, YOUR MOM! until everyone else ragequits the internet and goes for a long walk outside.