Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love reel_merlin.

I suicidally signed up for two reel_merlin fics in July: Imagine Me & You, and Laws of Attraction. (RM, like many others of its kind, is a comm where people write Merlin AU fic based on movie plots. You sign up for a movie and, in this case, get a two-month deadline.) Due to circumstances quite beyond my control, I found myself being signed up for co-writing a fic with firstlightofeos; after much debate, we settled for Closer. Runi also had a fic of her own to write—Mean Girls. I of course didn't actually start writing much of my fics until, like, two weeks before the deadline (which was September 1st; later, it was extended to September 8th).

In the meantime, Runi and I discussed the Closer fic at length. And by that I mean TO A TRULY RIDICULOUS EXTENT. Seriously. 'Overthinking' doesn't begin to cover it. We watched the movie—I think I watched it, like, three times in the past month—and read (and annotated) the play, and discussed each character thoroughly—their motivations, their personalities, the play/movie's recurring motifs and timeline quirks, the locations, shit, everything. We drafted an outline, picked a structure and what would happen in each scene. I started spouting Closer quotes in all kinds of everyday conversation; I swear, even my brain started monologuing in Closer quotes.

Er. We ended up not writing the Closer fic, and chose to focus on our individual fics.

( My creative process, let me show you it. )

And now I'm writing Imagine Me and You. I have no idea whether I'll finish on time—I have four days, which is not much, but it's somewhat doable—but I'll do my damnedest!

So like, if I start spouting flower meanings out of the blue, please don't mind me, really. *grins* These fics have quite clearly eaten my brain.

I've never been a Trekkie—I know nothing of the old series apart from the occasional tidbit, and of course the fact that Kirk/Spock was the Slash Ship to Start All Slash Ships. (I'm all for that, incidentally. And the subtext made me laugh out loud way too many times.)

I've just watched J. J. Abrams' Star Trek and shit, it's made of AWESOME. It's also possibly the Wibbly-Wobbly-Timey-Wimiest movie I've ever seen, even though it's totally anti-WWTW logic, of course. Here's my two cents: ( Are you out of your Vulcan mind? )

I liked this movie far (FAR) more than I did any of the latest Star Wars flicks (which I didn't hate, except for most of Hayden Christensen's bits). Watch and learn, Lucas. This is how a decent director works his actors! This is how a competent plot-maker (and J. J. Abrams is nothing if not a superb plot-maker) develops his story! ... Oh man, I loved this so hard. I'm still on a major geek high.

I watched Angels & Demons right before Star Trek, and I can't decide if I hate The Da Vinci Code or this one more. This one had worse plot devices and lamer action sequences, even though the plot itself was better—more credible, I guess. Tom Hanks had some particularly horrible bits. The burning scene was cool, though. *grins* Of the two books, A&D is probably better; the two movies are pretty much equally bad, but this one doesn't have Ian McKellen.

A Half-Blood Prince trailer showed right before Angels & Demons. As usual, I'm doing my best not to be excited, and not to let myself think that this movie could actually be decent. I know it won't work, but I can still try. *grins* Man, they're going to fuck up the book's plot so thoroughly, it's not even going to be funny. I can hardly wait.

Regarding yesterday's season finales: I haven't watched Grey's Anatomy at all this season, but I know what happened, and yay! Finally! As for Supernatural, oh my God, that was mind-boggling and brilliant and almost entirely unexpected. I loved it! I thought they'd ruined the show's next season with this larger-than-life season plot, but they didn't. I'm happy.

Overall, it's been a good day to be a geek. *beams*

Happy wedding day, oxymoron! I hope everything goes well ♥

I'm a big fan of character-driven fiction. It's not that I think plot is unimportant, but it's secondary—a plot has to be truly dazzling to make me ignore severely underdeveloped characters. (Lord of the Rings anyone?)

So yeah, character-centric > plot-centric. This applies to movies, TV series, books, fanfiction, you name it. I'd take Closer over Catch Me If You Can (and Havemercy over City of Bones, and Dexter over Alias, and Drop Dead Gorgeous over Draco Sinister) any day. Shit, I just fandom-dated myself really badly by mentioning that fic, didn't I.

By 'character-centric,' I don't mean plotless—it's mostly that the plot exists to push along the character development, and not the other way around.

( Issues of the Week, BSG, genfic and Dollhouse )

Just to clarify, I don't consider 'plot-driven' an insult or anything. Nevertheless, I do believe bad writers don't try to write character-centric stories nearly as often as they do plot-driven ones (maybe it's easier to settle for the latter, because plot-driven fiction is the norm, and to part with that you need a firmer crafting hand, to have at least some idea of what you're doing? I'm not sure).

...And then Stephenie Meyer comes along with a primarily character-driven universe that has little to no plot or character development for at least 70% of any given book in the series, and I...I don't even know what to do with that.

Anyhow! I've rambled on for long enough. Do any of you guys have a preference? Is this a distinction that matters to you—in published fiction, fanfiction, or TV?

(Unrelated: Geek pride ftw!)

I realise most people don't give a crap about the Oscars nowadays, but I can't help it—I still watch the show every year, and live-blog a long LJ post about the ceremony *grins*

So, just for the record, here are my opinions on who should/will win the main categories:

( Oscar predictions )

I'm almost done watching all the Oscar-nominated movies (except for the foreign language movies and the documentaries). I just have half of Kung Fu Panda and Bolt to go, and five hours before the ceremony. Woot!

I'm in London! *grins* I've done few interesting things other than shopping so far, mostly because I came with my father, stepmother, uncle, godmother, and three brothers. We're doing many of the traditional touristy things I tend to run away screaming from — London Eye, Madame Toussauds, etc. Oh well.

As per instructions on inksplotched's LJ:

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride - preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."

I have a special love for Goldman's highly amusing 'edits' in the PB book, so here's one:

But from a narrative point of view, in 105 pages nothing happens. Except this: 'What with one thing and another, three years passed.'

...dude, I have no Princess Bride icons? Fail!