Comings and goings
May. 8th, 2024 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMonday was a bank holiday, so I reposted a fic: Career Day, Sky High, G. Magenta, Layla, Warren, Larry, Zach. Canon pairings, Warren/Layla implied. Magenta’s POV. 2,348 words. Summary: ‘Plan for a Super Tomorrow…Today!’ Magenta-style. (February 2007)
I added a clause for clarification and deleted a couple of spaces. In the notes from 2007, I had written, ‘This is another case of a ficlet becoming something longer.’ Now I’m boggling at the ‘another case’. As it’s over 2,000 words, I’m delighted this will bump up my word count average on AO3. Rereading it, I was pretty happy with it, as I think I used Magenta’s POV effectively, although I suppose my notes don’t reflect how important Magenta and Layla’s friendship is to the fic, but I was able to add a tag for that at AO3.
Also, I watched Fallout 1.1 The End
I came to this knowing that it’s based on a video game, that the reaction is that it’s not terrible (though not ‘The Last of Us’ levels) and it’s set in a post-apocalyptic alt future. Also, Jonathan Nolan was involved and I saw Michael Emerson in the trailer.
Neat episode title. We quickly established that the apocalypse was nuclear and happened in the mid-twentieth century, although my heartstrings weren’t quite as plucked as they were meant to be by the father and daughter at the heart of the scene. I respected the birthday boy’s mother for carrying on with the party and managing all the tensions (class, machismo, nuclear threats!) Noted too that the black man who’d been chummy with the white father was not allowed into the shelter.
Then we were introduced to three characters over 200 hundred years later who will, presumably, (well I know two of them will from the trailers) meet. I got on with the most with Lily and her section. I liked her offkilter underground world based on the chirpiest version of the 1950s/60s American worldview, now with added incest jokes. As the trade/wedding went all violent, she seemed to be one of the few people in bunker 33 with a survival instinct, although she needed her father to save her. He then chose her over half a dozen people she’s grown up with and was abducted up top, with hints about the main ladyboss kidnapper and her knowing Lucy’s now dead mother. Great use of Kyle MacLachlan, and while she’s clearly naive and has no idea what she’s headed for, I’m fine with following plucky Lucy up top.
Where Maximus lived in a Brotherhood, who had turned scavenging in mechas into a medieval chivalric order (as dictated by Not!the Catholic Church.) That bit I think I got, but I was struggling with the dynamics and what was actually happening in this section. Why was Maximus always put upon? (Was it racism?) Anyway, he’d got his friend’s spot on a mission looking for a guy and his very important doohickey, so he too was at the start of a journey/quest.
And then we met the Ghoul, a mutant. I wasn’t at all engaged with this section, the fact that it was set in the night-time may have been for atmospherics and to heighten the tension, but made it difficult for me to work out what was going on. Quasi cowboys woke up a mutie, The Ghoul, who they were both afraid of and underestimated to help them do one last job. He killed them all (essentially) and took the job ‘for the game’. I’m presuming he’s somehow the father we saw at the top of the programme.
Whoever picked the songs had fun, and there’s a sense of scale to it all, but…I only really care about a third of it, feel middling about a third and am unenthused by the other bit.
I added a clause for clarification and deleted a couple of spaces. In the notes from 2007, I had written, ‘This is another case of a ficlet becoming something longer.’ Now I’m boggling at the ‘another case’. As it’s over 2,000 words, I’m delighted this will bump up my word count average on AO3. Rereading it, I was pretty happy with it, as I think I used Magenta’s POV effectively, although I suppose my notes don’t reflect how important Magenta and Layla’s friendship is to the fic, but I was able to add a tag for that at AO3.
Also, I watched Fallout 1.1 The End
I came to this knowing that it’s based on a video game, that the reaction is that it’s not terrible (though not ‘The Last of Us’ levels) and it’s set in a post-apocalyptic alt future. Also, Jonathan Nolan was involved and I saw Michael Emerson in the trailer.
Neat episode title. We quickly established that the apocalypse was nuclear and happened in the mid-twentieth century, although my heartstrings weren’t quite as plucked as they were meant to be by the father and daughter at the heart of the scene. I respected the birthday boy’s mother for carrying on with the party and managing all the tensions (class, machismo, nuclear threats!) Noted too that the black man who’d been chummy with the white father was not allowed into the shelter.
Then we were introduced to three characters over 200 hundred years later who will, presumably, (well I know two of them will from the trailers) meet. I got on with the most with Lily and her section. I liked her offkilter underground world based on the chirpiest version of the 1950s/60s American worldview, now with added incest jokes. As the trade/wedding went all violent, she seemed to be one of the few people in bunker 33 with a survival instinct, although she needed her father to save her. He then chose her over half a dozen people she’s grown up with and was abducted up top, with hints about the main ladyboss kidnapper and her knowing Lucy’s now dead mother. Great use of Kyle MacLachlan, and while she’s clearly naive and has no idea what she’s headed for, I’m fine with following plucky Lucy up top.
Where Maximus lived in a Brotherhood, who had turned scavenging in mechas into a medieval chivalric order (as dictated by Not!the Catholic Church.) That bit I think I got, but I was struggling with the dynamics and what was actually happening in this section. Why was Maximus always put upon? (Was it racism?) Anyway, he’d got his friend’s spot on a mission looking for a guy and his very important doohickey, so he too was at the start of a journey/quest.
And then we met the Ghoul, a mutant. I wasn’t at all engaged with this section, the fact that it was set in the night-time may have been for atmospherics and to heighten the tension, but made it difficult for me to work out what was going on. Quasi cowboys woke up a mutie, The Ghoul, who they were both afraid of and underestimated to help them do one last job. He killed them all (essentially) and took the job ‘for the game’. I’m presuming he’s somehow the father we saw at the top of the programme.
Whoever picked the songs had fun, and there’s a sense of scale to it all, but…I only really care about a third of it, feel middling about a third and am unenthused by the other bit.
