Tag: rec

*Curtsies* hello, Duke! I was wondering whether or not you’ve ever had any experience in screenwriting for TV or film? That is my absolute dream job, and I’ve had a bit of playwriting experience and just wondering how similar/different it is in your opinion.

dukeofbookingham:

*Curtsies* I worked as a script consultant for an indie TV show I was on in college but it was very low-key and mostly consisted of me saying to the writers “How am I supposed to say that with a straight face?” and fixing the grammar. So I’m not sure how much help I’ll be here, but I do think you have to acknowledge that TV has a lot of tropes and conventions that stage plays really don’t, because TV scripts are written for a group of characters that already exist and have to fit into a certain time slot and follow a certain type of narrative arc. Not so in the theatre. In the theatre pretty much anything goes. But again, this isn’t really my area. You might look into the book Save the Cat! A couple of my screenwriter friends have gushed about that in the past.

J. Michael Straczynski has written a really good scriptwriting book. He wrote for Babylon 5 as well as exec produced it. He’s also written for movies, comics, etc. Definitely a good place to start.

throwback thursday: SGA

laporcupina:

As a fanfic author, I am not historically someone who gets a lot of… multimedia appreciation, shall we say. Some authors get lots of fanart, some get covers for their stories, some get podfics, some get other kinds of craftiness, but I am generally not one of those some. (This is not a complaint or a veiled plea for such, simply a fact based on almost twenty years of fandom.) Which does not mean I have never gotten anything – I have and when I have, it has been wonderfully executed and very humbling. Case in point:

The Physics of Survival series podfics by ArwenLune

Object in Motion

Impetus

The Lorentz Factor

The series can be summarized as “An Atlantis Marine as a Runner and those he left behind.” It’s not a light topic – torture, imprisonment, grief – and features seven narrators over three stories and five of them are OCs and that is both why I am not more mainstream as a fanficcer and why I was surprised when ArwenLune asked. 

I could not have asked for a better performance if I’d commissioned it. The readings are wonderful, in part because of the amazing preparation that went into it – I got emails about name and acronym pronunciation, etc. I know Arwen Lune wished for a better reception for them – as I did for her sake – but… This is, to my knowledge, the only time I’ve ever been podficced and I consider the bar set high enough to be seen from space.

MCU fic: Resonance

laporcupina:

I don’t make a habit of reposting fic announcements, but this is the first time I’ve crossed the 3k word mark (barely) in more than two months, so I am calling an exception:

Resonance

3300 words | Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, etc.

Tony offers to help Rogers find Barnes, of course he does. It’s what
friends should do – and he and Rogers are becoming friends, despite
both of their best efforts – and Tony has done a lot more for people he
respects a lot less. He doesn’t care that Barnes was a HYDRA assassin
any more than he cares that Clint was briefly Loki’s minion or that
Clint killed people even when he wasn’t under mind control or that
Natasha has killed even more. He’s a former arms dealer and has a great
big glass house from which he knows not to throw stones.

“I’m not
saying that the very concept of him doesn’t scare the crap out of me,”
he tells Pepper privately. “And I don’t just mean the ‘world’s deadliest
assassin’ part. But whoever’s left of James Barnes deserves better than
what he’s gotten.”

Pepper kindly does not mention that this was
not exactly the quality or quantity of grace he showed Rogers when it
was time to dig him out of the ice. He never likes it when his personal
growth is rubbed in his face.

Neither of them are surprised when
he spends most of the next week waking up in the middle of the night
sweating and shouting in Pashto. His own experiences in Afghanistan
don’t measure up to Barnes’s seventy years of captivity, but there’s a
fair bit of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ involved. Different
injuries, different reasons to be kept, different means of doing so…
and yet. And yet. Bad people found them and took them and tried to use them to reshape the world and it resonates in the bone.

.

[Inasmuch as I used a ‘reference’ for Bucky here in terms of recovery level, it was the version from Blues in the Groove, which I suppose this could be a prequel for. Reading that is completely unnecessary for this, though.]

This, and everything else this author writes is so awesome. It’s strongly grounded in reality (as much as anything based on a comic book movie and comic books can be). Go. It is essentially a stand alone that happens after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. 

mostlysignssomeportents:

Unicorn on a Roll: more comics in the tradition of Calvin and Hobbes

The first collection starring Phoebe and her unicorn friend Marigold Heavenly Nostrils was the strongest new syndicated strip I’d read in years; with Unicorn on a Roll, Dana Simpson demonstrates that she’s got plenty more where that came from.

It alarms me to think that I almost skipped this series. The publisher sent me the first book and I stuck it in my daughter’s room, thinking we’d try it at bedtime. But it got shelved, and then every time I looked at the spine, I thought, “gah, not more dainty-girly stuff” and pass it over.

But my daughter rescued it (and me) because she’s smarter than her old man. By the time I noticed that she was reading it to herself, she was basically finished with it, but wanted me to re-read it to her at bedtime. Dubiously, I picked it up and started reading, and in seconds, I knew she’d found a winner.

Phoebe isn’t just a female successor to Calvin – I think I like her better than Calvin. Like Calvin, she’s precocious and funny and has this amazing imaginative internal life. But unlike Calvin, she’s not a jerk to kids of the opposite sex, and she’s introspective in a way that’s healthy without being mopey (and is the source of a lot of sweet humor that adults and kids can both enjoy).

Book two starts a year after Phoebe meets Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, freeing her from paralysis brought on by being unable to look away from the beauty of her own reflection (unicorns, right?). In that time, Phoebe’s parents and frenemies have come to grips with her new invisible (usually) friend, who can project a field of uninterestingness that allows her to mix with humans with impunity.

Phoebe is growing as a character (another satisfying departure from the usual kids’ comic formula), as is evidenced by the first major plot-arc of the book: her decision to free Marigold Heavenly Nostrils from her duty to be Phoebe’s best friend (naturally, Marigold rewards her by sticking around of her own free will). The amazing thing is that this piece of relatively moral philosophy manages to pull off a bunch of extremely funny gags in several modes – some aimed square at the grownups, some at the kids, and plenty that both can enjoy.

The book is a perfect mix of ongoing stories – largely about Phoebe’s relationship with her rival/pal Dakota, and Max, the boy she’s friends with and who acts as a kind of foil for her strongest characteristics – and one-off gags about things like nose-picking, rainbows, generation-gaps with parents, and how awesomely cool a unicorn looks on roller-skates (hence the title).

The ongoing stories – Marigold falls in love with a unicorn so humble he won’t let anyone see him lest he be admired; Phoebe competes with Dakota for a part in the fourth grade play; the other unicorns summon Marigold for an intervention to get her to unfriend Phoebe – cover some heavy ground, but always with a sprightly touch, and never without great comedy.

In case there’s any doubt: I plainly love this strip, and I love the books. The short intros (the first by Peter “Last Unicorn” Beagle; this one by My Little Pony rebooter/creator Lauren Faust) make it clear that there are plenty of others who can’t get enough of Phoebe and Marigold. And the aftermatter – glittery unicorn poo cookies recipes and tutorials for drawing Phoebe and Marigold – are great, too.

Unicorn on a Roll [Dana Simpson/Amp]

Previously: Heavenly Nostrils: If Hobbes was a snarky unicorn and Calvin was an awesome little girl

Read the rest

Full Of Grace

bomberqueen17:

The next installment in the Now And At The Hour Of Our Death series is up, featuring Natasha’s POV (as promised), an explicit sex scene because I’m kind to you all, and James being realistically anal about weapons maintenance. I’m not sure what I’m doing with all this but as I’ve pointed out, I wrote it months ago and I’m just dying to post it. Also it was just my birthday and I deserve a treat. So here. Have a short opening salvo of Buckynat goodness. 

In which Natasha tries to get Bucky to join the Avengers, and Bucky has realistic objections to this plan.

Full Of Grace, on AO3. 

Start of what promises to be a really good epic (from an author that finishes their WIPs) of Bucky x Nat.  Bomberqueen is really good at mixing action/adventure with plot, emotional growth, hot sex and a soupcon of pop culture.