icebluenothing

This was .... a hell of a year, really.

I left a job that was slowly killing me even though I had no fallback plan for it. I was more broke than I've ever been, getting by on ramen and peanut butter sandwiches. I put together a spiffy redesign of webmutant and starting shopping my resume around, and now I'm paid quite well at a job I really enjoy.

They turned on the proton beam in the Large Hadron Collider, and the world didn't end. An exploding star halfway across the visible universe became the farthest known object ever visible to the naked eye. The SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately-developed spaceship to make orbit, and India launched Chandrayaan-1 to the moon. A woman in Spain became the first person to have a successful trachea transplant with a lab-grown replacement. We found snow, real snow, falling on Mars.

We lost George Carlin. And Gary Gygax and Edmund Hillary and Heath Ledger, Arthur C. Clarke and Forrest J. Ackerman and Stan Winston. And Boeing Surplus.

I had my first migraine. That's a club I was perfectly happy not being a member of,

The Merchants of Deva had to cancel our annual party at Norwescon, thanks to untenable new rules and regulations at the hotel. I joined the committee for Steamcon, and made it to an Orycon for the first time in years; it was pretty laid-back and uneventful, but it was nice to have a room at a con for just me and Ahna for a change.

I started using the jQuery Javascript library, and it finally made coding Javascript fun and easy.

I finally got to go to Florida for Halloween Horror Nights, and I got to take windbourne with me, and we went to DisneyWorld and Epcot while we were at it. I fell asleep on the plane and woke up to find my fear of flying was suddenly, inexplicably gone.

We saw Avenue Q and Phantom. And I saw English Beat, Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers, Goldfrapp, Cold War Kids, We Wrote the Book on Connectors, Vixy and Tony and Tricky Pixie (about a million times), and probably some other bands I'm forgetting. David Tennant announced he was leaving Doctor Who. Steven Moffat was tapped to be the new head writer, which I couldn't be happier about.

.... I got published. I have a story in a book, from a real publisher, a real book I can take down off the shelf and hold in my hands. And best of all, it's a Doctor Who book -- I'm finally, really genuinely a part of my favorite thing in the world. A small part, a footnote of a footnote, but still.

I bought myself a completely adorable little laptop. Used it to finish revisions on my fan-film script, write a new story for Halloween, enjoy having wireless Internet access practically everywhere I went, and now I've fried it stone dead. A short in either the power supply or the motherboard, most likely.

I put together lots of props for the Mercury's Doctor Who night, and everyone's amazed and delighted expressions made all the work totally worth it. That same weekend, my condo burst a pipe and had a terrible flood, and I've been living with a bare concrete floor in my dining room ever since.

The price of petroleum hit $100 per barrel for the first time, this year. Gas reached $4.00 a gallon. Our economy tanked, taking everyone else with it, but at least that brought oil crashing back down to $40 a barrel. Seattle was crippled by the most massive snowstorm in years.

I wasted hours and days of my life on someone I thought was one of my best friends, who turned out not to really be a friend at all. It's the first time I've ever had to explicitly tell someone I was done with them, and the first relationship of any kind I've looked back on with the sense that it was all just -- pointless. I let a lot of my other friendships fade during this time, and I wish to God I could just have that time back again.

I donated money to a political campaign for the first time in my life. I watched in horror as John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, the most calculated and cynical and anti-intellectual such choice I've ever seen, and even deeper horror as so many voters seemed to take her seriously. And then Barack Obama was elected, the country finally waking up from one long post-9/11 nightmare of hate and fear and choosing love and hope instead. Barack Obama didn't get the country to just believe in him -- he gave us a chance to believe in ourselves again.

I literally danced in the streets that night, with thousands of people, thousands, who could finally believe in their country again, who were laughing and crying and cheering and everyone was a friend, that night. It felt like we'd won a revolution without ever having to fire a single shot. It was, honestly, the most joyful and meaningful and profound night of my life and I will never forget it, not ever.

We reached the deep minimum of a long solar cycle, but after a slow start, it looks like Solar Cycle 24 is finally beginning. Maybe the future will be a little brighter.

You've been -- interesting, 2008, I'll give you that. Still, I won't be sorry to see you go tonight. Even if you do cling to life for one extra second.

(Just posted this to the doctorwho community -- thought I'd put up a reminder here as well.)

----
Hey, Seattle people, here's a quick reminder of something going on tonight to help chase your post-casting-announcement blues away:



.... As evaleastaristev posted last month, The Mercury is a private club at 1009 E. Union, and Doctor Who is the theme for our pre-Halloween celebration this year. This event will be open to the public, 21 and over, with ID. Please bring cash for admission, and for drinks and tips.

Hope to see as many of you as possible out there tonight in your best costumes. For those of you who can't make it, we'll have photos up of all the cool props we've been making as soon as we can. Thanks, and whether we see you or not, have a great Halloween!

I never did sit down and write this up, so here it is now:

Set Report: Day One

Last Monday was out first day of filming. I had the day off, which means I had the entire day to plan and fret and generally bounce around. I went out and bought some lights and some material to use as reflectors; I didn't think we were going to need them for this shoot (although I'm sure we'll need them later), but my general rule to live by is that I'd rather have something and not need it than need something and not have it.

I also needed a couple of things to make this "meeting" look like a meeting; a couple dozen Krispy Kremes, and some Starbucks cups. I asked my local Starbucks if I could have a half-dozen empty cups and lids, and they wanted to know why, naturally, so I told them I was shooting this little video of a meeting scene -- "just something me and my friends are going to put on YouTube," I oversimplified. "Oh, okay," was their reaction -- and I've now discovered a magic word to get supplies and assistance for an amateur film without making it seem like a big deal. YouTube sounds safe and inconsequential.

I picked up capnexposition and the camera he was borrowing from the U-District and headed out to Bellevue. We got to our location, and almost everyone was there, so it looked like things were going well -- but I got a call from lokheed telling me he was going to be about 45 minutes late. Was there material we could shoot without him? Well -- no, not really. But that turned out not to even be an issue, because we had a much worse problem on our hands.

We'd been issued the wrong camera -- one that didn't have the right jacks for our external microphone. That left us with three choices -- use the on-board microphone, make a trip back to the U-District for the right equipment, or scrap the whole venture and reschedule.

I didn't want to reschedule; for one thing, this was the only time lokheed was going to be in town, and second, I was worried I'd lose momentum on the entire project if we didn't manage this first step. I also didn't want to make do with the on-board microphone -- those are always crap, and they pick up the hum of the camera motor. The main thing that makes an amateur film seem amateur is crappy sound, and I want to avoid that at all costs.

So we waited for retcon to make the round-trip to the U-District. He made good time, but oh, lord, it felt interminable to those of us waiting. We went ahead and broke into the donuts, realizing that dinner was still hours away.

They came back with the right equipment, and after some trouble getting it set up, came the question: where did I want the camera for the first shot?

I hate to say this. But I froze. My brain just completely locked up, faced with the prospect of actually, finally doing this.

endorphan saw the look on my face, and stepped forward and made a suggestion. It was a good suggestion, too, so that's what we did. I joked at the time that he was the "assistant director," now, but really, what that did was set the tone for a productive and creative evening where everyone felt free to make their comments and suggestions on camera angles, line readings, everything. I hope that carries over into other shoots -- I loved the feeling of collaboration. It felt more like a drama workshop than just me poncing around being an auteur, and I loved it.

Once we had all the technical hitches out of the way, the rest of the evening went really smoothly. My actors are great. Line fluffs and corpsing were kept to a minimum, and no one had that stiff awkwardness that one usually associates with amateur acting.

I didn't write lokheed's part with him in mind, but now I can't imagine having done this without him. ursako is just as good an actress as windbourne and briara have been telling me she is, and she really nailed the main scene that's going to sell the emotion of the opening. She has the biggest part aside from the Doctor and his companion, and after this first night, I am 100% confident she's going to be able to carry it off. And endorphan was a real pleasure to work with, as well -- it was really gratifying to watch him go through a read-through that seemed really off to me, then give him just a few words of direction, and then watch him turn around and give me exactly the performance I had in my head when I wrote those lines.

It's an amazing feeling to watch all this coming to life in front of my eyes. I can't wait for our next shoot.

Thank you so much to everyone who was there and made this happen, and thank you to georgmi for getting us such a great location. I can't even tell you all how much this means to me.

Looks like I can talk about this now:

"[T]hough the competition was aimed at finding just one winner, the judges were so impressed with the quality of many entries they've decided to extend the prize.

'We had an incredibly strong shortlist of the best 25 entries,' explains Guerrier. '[...] we felt our shortlist was of such quality that it deserved a whole book of its own.'

This special anthology, deftly titled How The Doctor Changed My Life, will be published in late 2008. The 24 runners up are:

Violet Addison; Steven Alexander; Mike Amberry; Arnold T Blumberg; Anna Bratton; John Callaghan; Dann Chinn; Stephen Dunn; Richard Goff; Peter Hallbright; Tim Lambert; JR Loflin; Nick May; James C McFetridge; Simon Moore; Michael Montoure; LM Myles; Einar Olgeirsson; Bernard O'Toole; Andrew K Purvis; Michael Rees; Mark Smith; Chris Wing; Caleb Woodbridge."

bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2007/06/19/46091.shtml

Some of you got a sneak-peek at this the other day -- I accidentally posted the welcome message for it here, instead of there, but then I deleted it:

I've created a community for discussing and planning my Doctor Who fan film project. If you're going to be in it, or you'd like to help out, or you're just curious, check it out at dw_eleventhhour.

.... Wow, I don't know if anyone fell for that one. I think I managed to hook a few more of you as I kept it going throughout the day, but --

April Fool's, everyone. Come on -- me, get tired of Doctor Who? I'll get tired of breathing, first. When I found out the series was starting on March 31st, I just couldn't resist.

The hardest part was coming up with bad things to say about it. I had to go around and compile other people's complaints and rewrite them; so they were real opinions, just not mine. I loved it, actually. Fun, energetic, and I love the new companion already.

Judging by the season opener, and by this nicely creepy trailer (1min:22sec) for the rest of the season, I think they might just be hitting their stride, this year.

(Oh, and ssandv -- assuming you weren't pranking the prankster, there -- I hope you'll give the new series another chance. Boom Town was easily my least favorite Series One episode.)

Title: Mockingbird
Author: icebluenothing
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set between Tooth and Claw and School Reunion
Length: 15,000 words (both parts, that is). This one's a long one.
Summary: Who is the stranger who's stolen the Doctor's old face? Why does he want into the TARDIS so badly? And can the real Doctor convince Rose who he is in time?

Previously:

" . . . Don't bring the Doctor. Come alone. And don't tell him where you're going. Your life is in danger, Rose."
" . . . That's not me you've been travelling with, Rose. It's not. Do you believe me?"
" . . . If he's still pretending to be me, of course he's gonna come looking for you. And if he's not pretending to be me, if he realizes you suspect him, well -- then he's still gonna come looking for you. Either way, you get to be bait."
" . . . He said it was called regeneration. Something Time Lords can do when they're injured." "And you believed that? Don't you think I would have mentioned it to you before if I could do something like that?"

And Now:

( Read more... )

Title: Far Away Into The Silent Land
Author: icebluenothing
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set after Series Two; spoilers through Doomsday
Summary: Words left unsaid sometimes have a way of being heard.
Notes: (No relation to And Dismantle the Sun. There’s no limit on how many post-Doomsday codas one person can write, is there?)

( Read more... )

Over in the doctorwho community, someone asked: "Why is everyone so bothered about the Doctor being half human?"

This is an idea that was introduced in the 1996 FOX TV movie, and I've always disliked it. I commented there, but thought I'd reproduce it here.

________

I hate the whole half-human idea, not because it ruins the Doctor's specialness -- but because it ruins ours.

Consider the Doctor's wonderful monologue in The Ark in Space:

"Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species. It's only been a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable... indomitable."

Or even just the line, "It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favorite species." It's clear throughout the entire series -- the Doctor loves this planet, loves its people.

To tell that story, the story of an alien who finds us worthwhile, is to have the faith that we are worth loving, that we're worthwhile, that despite all our flaws, there is something special about us. That we're redeemable.

To tell the other story -- the story of someone who loves this planet because of his birth and lineage, out of simple chauvinism -- is to reject that faith, to say that the only reason why anyone could possibly care for others is out of simple tribalism.

That's a painfully limited story. And it's not Doctor Who.

(I just posted this to a bunch of Doctor Who communities, but it occurs to me there might be a few of you out there who might want one of these, too. So, yeah.) ---- I wanted to take a minute to thank all of you who voted for me in the Mauve And Dangerous fan fiction awards. I'd hoped I'd win something, but winning three awards was more than I would have imagined. Thank you!

To celebrate, I've put together my first fanzine in over ten years -- a printed collection of my favorites from the Doctor Who fanfic I've written this past year. It includes From This Day to the Ending of the World, Of More Value Than Many Sparrows, The Candle That Burns Brightest, and The More Things Change.

It's 44 pages, spiral-bound, with a full-color title page and a clear vinyl cover. Since I'm working in a copy center these days, I wanted to make this as nice as possible. Basically, I just wanted a good copy of these stories I could keep on my bookshelf -- if you'd like one, too, they're $10.00 US. It's a limited edition -- I only printed thirty copies, and I'm not going to be printing any more.

Thanks again for all the support and comments you've all given me on my stories. It keeps me writing.