Small Updates

I've acquired the first of the Kaldor City audios (an unofficial, but winked-at B7 spinoff with shades of a Doctor Who crossover) and I'm looking forward to listening to it because it's been, y'know, days since I've heard Paul Darrow chew on the scenery. If my sewing-room DVD player could handle other-region disks, then I wouldn't be suffering from withdrawal. Further opinions as listening warrants.

Speaking of matters B7-shaped, I had a slightly-more-surreal-than-usual dream last night, that I'm debating using for material for b7_soolin (yeah, yeah, another RPG character) but I don't want to freak out the other players too much. I'm a total stranger to most of 'em, you see...

I'm about to start tackling The Ancestor Cell, controversial DW novel of yore. Here's hoping it makes sense.

The "Avon lady" costume progresses well, but you've probably picked that up from my other journal, already. Go rummage around there for a link to the picture, if you haven't seen it already and you want to.

Halfway Through...

My apologies to the pedestrians in downtown Oakland, whom I startled rather badly when I burst into guffaws during track 12 of Occam's Razor. I rolled my eyes so hard, I'm surprised I didn't fall into traffic.

I agree with the consensus of fandom, this is so PGP B7¹.

(What is it with fandom and all the abbreviations? Are we that lazy?)

How on Earth does an actor get by on a monotone performance for, hrm, 20+ years? I'm sure that Darrow had tonal variety at some point in his career, but I guess he's figured out what works and why put out an extra effort if one doesn't have to?

There was a comment someone made in response to vilakins wtf is Avon's appeal? entry, the gist of which boiled down to "A snarly baritone and I'm anybody's" - like I said, if it works. Still, if one of my larpers played a character like that, I'd feel obligated to talk to them about the appeal of emotional range.

OW! Another eye-spraining moment (track 16 - I'm listening as I type, obviously). Damn, that one hurt. Go figure, there's two female characters in the story, and one of them is predictably unable to resist Avon's Iago's manly charms. Ow, ow, ow. I think I pulled something.

But, eye-roling aside, the story's alright. The cast is entertaining, the production values are better than some Big Finishes I've listened to. I've heard worse than the theme tune on the Top 40, and the story's engaging enough. Aw, hell, that'll probably mean I'll feel obligated to buy the rest... That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the exchange rate! I was lucky to get this first disk as part of a bundled special. Oh well, I'll cope. ;)

Postscript: hearing Darrow intone "I'm a rhubarb farmer" just now was worth the price, alone. I think I want to make that my computer's critical-stop noise.

¹ Addendum: The final track utterly confirms it. How was this even a matter of debate? "Well, now"? "Well, now"?? Why not just slap the B7 logo on the cover and be done with it? Oh yeah, lawyers.

Descendant And Related Mutterings

Descendant is still stalled, for several reasons.

1) I'm not quite sure if what I have in mind for What Happens Next (in the final half of the story) has sufficient oomph, so I'm spinning my wheels.

2) I've been distracted by a new shiny - b7_soolin

3) I'm still unsettled by the Mary Sue factor.

No matter how I file the edges of Kara, the Sue-ness is still showing through. It might just be me. I might be too close to it and so paranoid of the factor that I've lost perspective. However, I don't think that's the case. I think my worry is still justified.

I already carved out all the really obvious MS-ness from the original version of the character (exit: tragic death of mother at hands of the Federation) and knocked the moral high ground out from under her - she chose to continue working for the Feds when her first chance to run came up. I won't remove her one kewl ability, especially as I've limited it to the point whereby if she uses it again after it's introduced, there's an excellent chance that she'll die. What else can I do?

I had an idea last night, as I was drifting off to sleep and battling the problem¹, but I don't know if it's a good idea or a knee-jerk reaction to the lingering presence of Mary Sue.

Change Kara's gender.

Pros
-- Totally different chemistry between the characters. Rather than Kara and Andriss being girly chums together, there'd be an inevitable factor of "Are they or aren't they...?" going on. I'd tinkered with the idea of having a certain amount of ambiguity, relationship-wise, between the two women, but I decided it was borne of a need to be sensationalist, rather than from good character development. Meanwhile, luv Avon tho' I do, he's got just a wee streak of the misogynist bully in him and he wouldn't be able to use that against Kara-as-a-guy.

Hold on a sec, I seem to have had a sudden outbreak of slash pixies. Back! Back, you little devils! Right, where was I?

-- It'll certainly be a bit unusual, as there's a definite prevalance of "give the psi powers to the girls" in SF. Cally, Deanna Troi, every Anne McCaffrey character evar (okay, that last one is inaccurate, but you know what I mean. Her male characters are pretty dam' girly). A male character dealing with what I've created could be veeeery interesting. Hm. Hmm...

Cons
-- It means we're down to one woman on the crew (until/unless I get Dayna out of trouble) and I fear that smacks of tokenism, even tho' Andriss owns the blasted ship and is the holder of the piggybank. It'll be more challenging to write Andriss and "Kara" as an equal partnershp with the inevitable are-they-aren't-they? going on, but that much, I know I can deal with as long as I'm aware of it.
-- Is it perhaps a wee bit too much testosterone?

On the face of it, it might be a good idea - although it'll take me a while to let go of female-Kara². She's been in my head off and on for, oh, 21 years or so. So I'll have a further think about it and see if it gels, or if this is identified as a panic-driven case of change-for-change's sake.

Meanwhile, vilakins, I'd like to pick your brain for a moment, if I may? ( Come into my parlour... )

No particular reason for the icon choice, other than it was feeling neglected.

Rather to my surprise, the outline for Descendant is done.

Kara's still a woman, but that's because I started the outline with her as a woman, and decided to keep on going as I had begun. The jury's still out on if I'll change Kara's gender or not. Re-reading my earlier entry, I'm worried that maybe I'm implying that a female character simply can't go toe-to-toe with a domineering personality like Avon's and, hell, I'd hate to imply that. Avoiding that sort of implication is certainly a reason to keep her female. But she does need something. There's a lack of oomph to her that I'm mentally associating with Mary Sue soppiness. Why she might have that oomph as a male character, I don't know. Oh no! I'm a victim of gender programming!

*grumble/giggle*

Regardless of Kara's gender, the name must change. Why? Kara. Kerr. Kara. Kerr. I didn't think things all the way through when I was doing my usual take a regular name and play with it tactic. I just can't have two names that similar in the same story. I'm so used to Avon's first name hardly ever being used that I completely forgot about it. D'oh!

I've rescued Tarrant and Soolin. We'll see if that survives to the final draft, or if the transport ship turns out to be a decoy. It's an idea I'm still kicking around but, for the moment, they're esconced aboard the Tenebras.

If someone out there on the 'net is really that bored, I've uploaded the outline here. Keep in mind that a) it's an outline and b) I could still change a lot of it. :)

PS. I'm on the verge of upgrading to a (shudder) "plus" account so I can get a few more userpix without having to shell out the dosh. As I think the only person annoyed by on-screen ads would be me, as my readers check this space out via their friends' page, it might not be all that bad...

Iconage

I upgraded to plus. My husband says I'll tolerate it for no more than two days, and then I'll snap and pay money to make the ads go away.

Anyways, point is, now I have room for 'em, I need more icons. I need something apt for audios, something for B7 in general (rather than a particular character) and, y'know, stuff.

*goes off to rummage through the interweb*