Some revamping of characters and worlds

When NaNoWriMo 2012 came around, I asked what story I should focus on, the alternate history X-Men meets Harry Potter meets Girl Genius (most of which was finished) or the fantasy world with everything from mages to werewolves to dragons to vampires and everything but the kitchen sink. Both of the stories contained a cast of characters I had worked with in more than one venue, starting with a modern day tale that just didn’t work. However, I took the advice of my friends, ThatGirlSix and Lillehafrue, and started work on a prequel to the fantasy world, using a different cast entirely. I didn’t feel it went well; I was creating new characters on the fly and didn’t feel any too invested in them at first. By the end, though, I was invested in a couple of them enough to possibly continue the story at a later datel. I also had a chance to set some of my fantasy world in thick pudding, if not quick-drying cement.

Right now, though, I’ve got my eye on both of my other stories. I figured most of the characters had enough differences between them that I could feasibly do both and make them separate casts entirely. So, I’ve spent most of today (with my feet up to help battle both a swollen right foot and a diabetic ulcer on the left) doing just that.

Main characters got new names in some cases. Others got new names, backgrounds, and backstories entirely. One set of characters married; another will remain as lovers and still another will remain as siblings. Some nobility got demoted. One more minor character was elevated to familial status, and I’m working on creating an entirely new character to replace a deleted one. A handicapped character in one story is regaining the use of his legs, and is splitting his powers with this new character (who will be handicapped – as was his now-deleted counterpart). Following so far? Good!

My eyes are crossing from an extended period on both my favorite baby name site and on the fantasy name generator at ninefrenchboys. Hopefully I’ll be able to read the notes I’ve been scribbling on a pad of yellow paper. I brainstormed some of the names with the Girl, who gave me some definite ideas of what names sounded more “martyr” and which didn’t. I’ve been reimagining the looks of a few characters so they’re not quite so much like their counterparts.

All of this will mean some rewriting, along with more than one global find/replace (a reason I transferred both stories over to yWriter). Maybe, just maybe, by the time Camp NaNoWriMo starts in April, I’ll be able to flesh out some more of what I started and get one of these beasts done.

Now, back to setting up my character pages!

Stretching disbelief

Okay, y’all, explain this to me. Downton Abbey is an English period drama right? Set around 1920? Then why, oh why did someone cross it over with Thunderbirds, set over a century later? Why?? Who in blazes thought that would work?? SMH.

Well, I skimmed it over. Seems like Scott is just smushed in there to “save” Mary — mostly by being a packhorse and helping her cover up the fact that some man died in her room. Jeff is shoehorned in as a reason for Scott to be at Downton. There’s a brief mention of Lady Penelope and the Island, but really, is this a Thunderbirds cross-over? I don’t think so.

The tricky thing about writing cross-overs is making them plausible while keeping each universe true to itself. For example, someone has written a Doctor Who/Thunderbirds cross-over which manages to do that. Doctor Who is a very flexible universe which can stand being woven together with other fandoms. There could be a case made for movie-verse Thunderbirds and something modern day, such as Supernatural. One writer has done a lovely job melding TV-verse Thunderbirds with the anime Battle of the Planets. Of course, it’s fairly simple to cross Thunderbirds over with some of the other Gerry Anderson properties. Most of them are supposed to be set around the same time. But if you have to create an OC (such as a “long-lost Tracy sister”) in order to make the fandoms cross, you’ve done it poorly, IMO. It ends up being implausible, and stretches a reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief beyond its limits.

Yes, people have the right to write what they want. Yes, I’m ranting like a persnickety old geezer who wants the kids off her lawn. But I just can’t fathom how this Downton Abbey story could be called a cross-over with Thunderbirds when, if you change the names of the Tracys, you have some generic Americans visiting the manor for some unspecified reason.

More scintillating dinner conversation!

Part of last night’s conversation was in response to Boy #2’s suggestion that we watch The Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellan, 1982). We finally bought a DVD version of this because our taped-from-my-parents’-TV VHS copy died. Hubby led off the discussion on “fictional gentlemen adventurers with secret identities”, with an eye to finding out if there was one older than Sir Percy Blakeney. I mean, the Baroness D’Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel back in 1903. There had to be somebody!

Well, we really couldn’t think of one! Zorro, whose pedigree is similar, wasn’t created until 1919 in “The Curse of Capistrano”. The Shadow, another “wealthy man about town” was 1930. Wikipedia suggests Sherlock Holmes to have or be a secret identity, but he was more a master of disguise – then again, so is Sir Percy! But, as Hubby put it, “he’s not going around under an assumed name in a more or less constant fashion”.

Tonight I brought up two old Disney favorites that I thought might be relevant. One was the Swamp Fox, who is a historical figure anyway and not at all fictional. The “old swamp fox” was a sobriquet the British gave him.

The other was the Scarecrow, or the Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn, who was a smuggler and pirate with a “secret identity” of a country vicar. Hubby brought out the fact that the man was not a hero, and a quick look at Wikipedia showed that his first appearance was 1915. Hubby mentioned a character in an operetta, that of an archeologist who had a secret identity of a freedom-fighter in Northern Africa. The operetta was The Desert Song, and was written in 1926. It was inspired both by tales of Lawrence of Arabia and a 1925 uprising in Morocco. The archeologist’s name was Pierre Birabeau and his heroic alter ego was The Red Shadow. (It had a really cool song: The Riffs.)

So, as far as I can tell, ol’ Percy is an original! Do any of my readers or friends have any candidates? (And don’t you just love our table talk?)

A little fangasm!

Within just a day, I’ve had the pleasure of hauling out my Thunderbirds knowledge (with all the attendant books and other paraphernalia) to help a couple of fellow fanfic writers and personal friends. It was certainly fun, especially all the stuff about Alan Tracy’s educational background. Add to this my posting the first chapter of one of my short stories (Burning Muses) at AO3 and uploading a new post to my RP, and I’m full of Thunderbirds at the moment. It’s given me quite a hunger for fic and for writing or editing what I already have up. I edited the first chapter of Burning Muses, making it tighter. In many respects it was like my edit of the little scene I wrote a few days ago. The changes I made brought forth Brains’s voice and made him less … poetic. (Because if Brains is anything, it is NOT poetic.)

Then, there was the chatter at the dinner table. We went from Gosford Park to Downton Abbey (which we have not seen) to Acorn (which streams Downton Abbey), and then to Netflix – where movies are more plenteous in DVD than in streaming. This led to BBC America (and how we could get it on cable), to other premium cable services, to Game of Thrones and whether or not the TV series matched the novels. That particular thought brought out movies that didn’t match their source material – Boy #2 brought up the Percy Jackson movie (The Lightning Thief). This brought the whole shebang back to … Thunderbirds! The Girl’s comment: “I knew there was another kids movie like that! ” Hubby brought up that Frakes had said in an post-film interview that he directed the movie that the producers wanted, even though he knew the fans would be “annoyed by it” (Hubby’s words, not Frakes’s.) I promptly chimed in. “Annoyed? Annoyed?” Which, of course, is far too mild a term to describe the old guard’s intense hatred of the film.

Maybe if he’d stayed closer to the source material, we’d have had another Thunderbirds movie. After all,  there will be another Percy Jackson film, coming out this year.

Some fandoms get all the luck…

AO3

My friend lillehafrue sent me an invite to An Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) and I accepted. (Thanks, lille!) Posted a couple of small one shots, neither of them in my primary fandom.

Since I’ve posted at eFiction sites, the interface wasn’t as daunting as it would be for those who haven’t and I have some knowledge of HTML coding, which helps. The “warnings” business was more than a little confusing. I ended up deleting my first one shot because I couldn’t figure out a way to edit the “Author chose not to use archive warnings” in favor of “No archive warnings apply” (because they didn’t). So it still has some bugs to be user-friendly. (For all it’s complexity, eFiction is easier.)

Some of the Thunderbirds writers I know are there. Most aren’t, the elites in particular. There are only a handful of Thunderbirds stories, which means that ff.net is still the biggest archive. If I use it for my Thunderbirds work, I’m going to take my time putting it all up. (Can’t import from ff.net anyway; ff.net has blocked that.) At least no one is going to be using my penname there.

About Jeff Tracy

When will Thunderbirds fanfic writers get the memo?

Jeff Tracy is not a coercive, moronic,  business and parental failure. In either universe. If he was, he would have neither the finances nor the trust of his sons, both of which he needed to start and maintain International Rescue.

This short rant brought to you by a review on FF.net, the letters TB, and the number 5.

That is all.

Well, I figured out what was wrong with the little ficlet…

I’ve been writing a ficlet for Thunderbirds based on the stories “Operation Crash Dive” and “The Impostors”. After watching “Crash Dive” I started to wonder: what if Captain Hansen thought International Rescue had really stolen those secret aircraft plans. He knows Scott’s name, first and last – a security issue that has really, really irked me, btw – and he has the names of Gordon, Alan, and Virgil, too. He could easily figure out the rest of the family because of Jeff’s notoriety, John’s writing career, and Gordon’s accident. Would he use this information to help the search for International Rescue or not?

So, that’s the plot of this little ficlet (which will become a chapter in my Missing Scenes Anthology, even though it’s not technically a missing scene). The problem was: I hated my first draft. I’ve been working this evening (Saturday into Sunday) on fixing it and I finally figured out what it really needed – Hansen’s voice. Everything I wrote was too formal for him. Yeah, he’s an airline pilot and all, but his whole demeanor is far less refined than the pilots I’ve seen. He doesn’t seem as polished.* So, I’m rewriting to bring the whole piece more into the vernacular and as I do, I like it more.

Still not at all comfortable with using a lot of vulgarity or profanity, so I’m not going to.  Hopefully I can get the idea across without having Hansen drop f-bombs in his thoughts. Now to see if ThatGirlSix can beta for me. If not, a quick once over by lillehafrue will suffice.

*Yes, I know they’re marionettes, but damn if those voice actors didn’t bring them to life!