vanillalime: (Default)
I came across a post of spooky dialogue prompts on tumblr and thought I'd share. It might be handy for those who have signed up for [livejournal.com profile] spook_me, or if you are just looking to write a scary story for Halloween. Depending on how you read them, the prompts can be as funny as they are creepy!

  1. "Look, I dressed up as you."

  2. "Oh my god, I think the crystal ball is working."

  3. "That wasn't there before."

  4. "I dare you to go down there."

  5. "If you can't wake up from the nightmare, maybe you're not asleep."

  6. "Y-your eyes, what's happening to your eyes?"

  7. "That costume really is convincing."

  8. "I don't believe in ghosts."

  9. "Hey, this isn't funny."

  10. "Do you think keeping your eyes shut will keep you safe?"

  11. "You've heard the stories about what happened in that house, right?"

  12. "There's no one here."

  13. "He was right behind me."

  14. "I swear, that door was locked a minute ago."

  15. "I think we're lost."


(Credit to tumblr's frightening-fall-fic. There's some other inspirational stuff there, too.)

Oz prompts

Aug. 22nd, 2019 02:25 pm
vanillalime: (Default)
So many good ones, so little time to write for them...

I swear, I blinked and summer is nearly over. But this also means FOOTBALL. And pumpkin spice food products!

Anyway, I absolutely love the remix idea that [livejournal.com profile] cmk418 came up with for [livejournal.com profile] hardtime100, but I have a seed of an idea for July's "camping" prompt (a moody B/K AU!) so I'm inclined to start with that, I think. Hopefully I finish it before [livejournal.com profile] oz_magi rolls around. ;D

ALSO Someone on Dreamwidth ("wholeyolk" -- I don't believe I know her?) listed Oz as one of her requested fandoms in the annual Fandom Giftbox fest, but neither of her prompts sparked anything in me. Maybe someone else might be interested in taking them on? It's not an exchange, you just post fic (100 word minimum) to whoever's giftbox by September 22. I wrote a couple of things a few years ago for [livejournal.com profile] ozsaur and [livejournal.com profile] trillingstar when they posted giftboxes. Very low pressure. Anyway, here is wholeyolk's giftbox, and these were her requested Oz prompts:

  • Character/Pairing: Chris Keller/Vern Schillinger

Prompts: It’s not love, that’s for sure, but it’s definitely lust…plus a pinch of sadism, just for fun. I’d love some more of their history together, such as during the first time that Keller was put in prison as a teenager and Schillinger “protected” him. Missing scenes from their time in Oz would also be interesting—they certainly do a lot plotting together, so perhaps their liaisons continued in some form? If you wish to incorporate the characters’ canonical relationships/fucked up issues with Beecher into the story as well, that’s absolutely fine.

  • Character/Pairing: Miguel Alvarez/Alonzo Torquemada

Prompts: Alonzo’s late, last season seduction of poor, try-hard Miguel is fascinating, and I’d love to know more! Loss of virginity for Alonzo + first time with a guy for Miguel = yummy, smutty times. :D I’m also especially interested in Miguel’s point of view and the despair/hopelessness/oblivion of it: What is it like to go back on drugs and give up on machismo in one fell swoop? What happens to them after the end of the last episode? Or, Miguel has been told that he’s never getting out of Oz, but Alonzo’s not in for life, so maybe he has some string he could pull…


A couple of people posted giftboxes with Stranger Things prompts that I absolutely loved, so I'm going try to put something together for those. In June, I rewatched the show's first 2 seasons, then I watched Season 3 when it came out last month, and I fell in love with it all over again. It's basically become my new obsession. And I think I've found a sub-group of fans whose interests run parallel to mine, so the fandom isn't quite so intimidating anymore. Whereas with the Marvel fandom... it's so big and scary there, man. When I try to wade my way through their stuff, I still feel like somone from small-town Iowa who's been dropped into the middle of New York City. Without a map. LOL

OH, I nearly forgot! [livejournal.com profile] spook_me sign-ups will be here before you know it! I CAN'T WAIT. I wonder what new special creature prompt [livejournal.com profile] ozsaur has planned for this year.
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It's been a while since I touched base here! I've actually been super-busy with fun fandom things, but haven't had the time to post about them. So, an update!

First and foremost...

1. LeeFest 2019 !!!

YES, I am going to see Lee again! IN TWO DAYS. This time in a play! And, as you can probably imagine, I'M A LITTLE BIT EXCITED.

Lee is appearing off-Broadway in the play "Long Lost," written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Donald Margulies. The play has been in previews for the last 3 weeks and had its official opening on Tuesday night. My husband and I are attending this Saturday's evening performance, alongside [livejournal.com profile] tobyfan, [livejournal.com profile] miltil, and [livejournal.com profile] discreetmadchen, all of whom I met in 2017 at the PaleyFest Oz reunion. AND in a delightful coincidence, [livejournal.com profile] suespur had already made plans to be in NYC this weekend, and she'll be there, too! WOOT! Michiganders represent! A long-time Oz fan named Jessica (she was at Godfather IV), who I've come to know through Twitter, will also be there.

The play sounds awesome, and Lee is basically the co-lead as a recovering-addict ex-con (sound familiar? LOL) who suddenly reappears and wreaks havoc in the life of his wealthy, successful younger brother (Angus?!). Here is a quick montage video of some highlights from the play put out by the theater company:



As awesome as the PaleyFest reunion was, I've always longed to Lee actually *perform* in person, and I can't believe it's going to happen. ZOMG


2. A New Fandom! Kind of!

In keeping with my tradition of discovering fandoms at least 5-10 years after everyone else...

At the end of April, along with half the world, I saw the movie Avengers: Endgame. Now, I've been a casual Marvel fan at best, seeing maybe half the movies in the universe (the other Avengers movies, and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and a few others here and there). And while I'd enjoyed the ones I'd watched very much, I was never really "into" the whole thing. And that changed when I saw Endgame. I was BLOWN AWAY and thought the whole movie was AMAZING and that it was the most PERFECT way to end the series, and I was like, WOW, I get it! I FINALLY GET IT. So, I went on this big marathon of watching every Marvel movie in sequence (the lone exception being the Incredible Hulk, because apparently that movie's pretty bad and has little tie-in with the rest of the universe and didn't even have Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk), and my excitement GREW, because I finally realized the extent of the intricacies of the plots and I was blown away by how they all came together, and OMG, now I love these movies so much! And then I went back and watched Endgame a second time, and I understood everything so much more, and now I have that FEELING you get when you love something so much you don't even know how to begin to celebrate it.

I thought I might want to write fic for it!

BUT I checked out AO3 to see what was going on there, and OMG, there is SO much stuff. And... I don't like a lot of it. There's a lot of people into things I'm totally not into, at least not in the way they are. Which is fine! Whatever floats your boat, and all that, but it's so overwhelming and it's been hard to find my niche.

Once again, as I discovered with Stranger Things, I'm not sure big fandoms are for me.

*runs back to Oz*


3. Writing :(

I want to do more writing, but I'm in a bit of a funk. There was a superpower prompt at [livejournal.com profile] hardtime100 that I was so excited for, but I couldn't transfer the witty banter in my head to the screen. I want to settle down and get back to my neglected Big Oz Fic, but other shiny objects keep distracting me (like the trailer for the new Spiderman movie where he deals with the fallout from Endgame OMG Tom Holland is awesome). I do have this Holly Beecher ficlet that I started way back last Halloween that I'm poking at again. I think I like it, even if there's not much to it. Sometimes I need to remind myself that short stories are OK too. Maybe that will get me going again.


Anyway, that's about it! Hopefully, I'll have something about meeting Lee to post later (maybe not 6,000 words like last time, but *something* anyway :D)!

ARGGGGHHHH

Mar. 21st, 2019 02:37 pm
vanillalime: (Default)
I am going to finish this Oz Groundhog Day fic if it kills me. IF IT KILLS ME

It is giving me fits, people. FITS

What in the world possesed me to write this in present tense? There had to be a good reason at one point.

Blurghhhh. I cannot even write a coherent sentence at this point. Or if I do, it has at least 18 adverbs in it. Which is probably a few too many.

Oh, but hey, the trailer for Stranger Things Season 3 came out yesterday, and IT IS AMAZING. And not just because they used an awesome remix of Baba O'Reily. Maybe I'll procrastineate by watching that a couple hundred more times instead.



Big Brother Steve + Little Brother Dustin =  ♥ ♥ ♥

And March Madness, baby! After one compete game, my bracket is PERFECT.

this will not last

Michigan FTW Go BLUE!!!

And hush, [livejournal.com profile] suespur, I don't want to hear about it.
vanillalime: (Default)
I'm trying to start my Oz story for [livejournal.com profile] spook_me, and I've realized that probably the hardest part of writing any story is simply starting the damn story. Because the idea is all there in my head, but it's intimidating to take that first step of coming up with and writing down that first sentence. So, I just do it, writing down perhaps not the best sentence, but a sentence that will get me going.

So I wrote, "Toby sat on his tiny bed, his back propped up against the wall," and I thought, "Wow, it seems like I've been here before." LOL

So then I went back through my stories from the last year, and while there isn't anything exactly like that, I did notice a trend that ALL my stories begin with a proper noun--the name of the story's main character:

Principal Tim McManus glanced down at his agenda one last time and started rubbing the top of his balding head.

Toby paused as the words drifted slowly toward him.

Victoria squinted into the distance, searching, until suddenly she saw it.

Toby rolled his eyes at the glowing image in front of him.  


Angus checked his watch and groaned.

Sean parked his car and, dragging his feet, made his way toward the door to Claire's apartment.

Tobias Beecher was sitting on his bed, reading a book, when Ryan O'Reily flounced into their pod with a huge grin on his face.
(<< I think this is the sentence that I thought I might be repeating.)

... and on and on.

This tendency of mine is probably now going to bug me every time I try to start a new story, thereby making the process even harder.

I just found it interesting and thought I'd share.

I'm also kind of procrastinating, if you can't tell. LOL
vanillalime: (Default)
Woot! I am back! From a very long, very busy vacation! Actually, considering the GO-GO-GO nature of our trip, maybe "rested" is not the right word... rejuvenated is probably better!

We spent most of our time hiking and kayaking through several National Parks in the US southwest (plus, at my insistence, a day in Vegas lounging by the pool, reading a book :D). Here I am with my husband on top of Devil's Bridge in Sedona, Arizona (from this distance, you can't tell how sweaty and exhausted I was, LOL):

51A94049-EBF3-44E9-859E-D70BCF023B4B.jpeg

(I was too chicken to walk over to the center of the bridge where it's the narrowest. I figured I was close enough. O_O)

Anyway, now that I've washed all the laundry, and bought some groceries, and sorted the mail, and searched social media for new pictures of Lee, I'm checking back into LJ! Where I'm feeling motivated to write again!

Ooooh there are new [livejournal.com profile] hardtime100 prompts! Plus I still have a story idea from the seasonal prompts [livejournal.com profile] cmk418 gave me! And I'm going to write up another episode recap from my Oz rewatch!

But best of all, I am energized to jump back into the long Oz fic I was working on. I took a break from it in early June when I reached a good stopping point, right before the action really gets going, so that I could write my Victoria Beecher story. Then when I went back to it, I was like, "OMG, you've written nearly 7,000 words and nothing has even happened yet! The pacing sucks! The story sucks! You suck!" And it sort of put a big damper on the whole project. :( But now I've re-read it with fresh eyes, and maybe it doesn't suck! So I'm going to do my best to get going on it again!

YAY!

I'm glad to be back amongst the other 5 Oz fans who have not yet abandoned LJ! We're keeping LJ cool!  ♥

Updates!

Apr. 19th, 2018 12:43 pm
vanillalime: (Default)
A rundown on what is Going On.

Television
Homicide: Life On the Street:
I just finished Season 4! Although I was sad when I realized that Ned Beatty and Daniel Baldwin had left the show, I really liked the new Mike Kellerman character they brought in, once I got over the fact that he was played by the same actor (Reed Diamond) who played the sadistic plantation owner in Meloni's "Underground" series. The stories, writing, characters, and acting are just so, so good. This season had meaty guest appearances by JK Simmons (playing a neo-Nazi, what a surprise!) and Terry Kinney, as well as recurring appearances by Zeljko Ivanek, Kristin Rohde, Granville Adams, and Sean Whitesell.

Reading
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero: I was so intrigued by [livejournal.com profile] the_emu's review of this adult book (sort of a "members of a Scooby Doo-like gang grow up into completely dysfunctional adults haunted by their mystery-solving memories"), that I went ahead and bought it. I'm about a third of the way through it, and IT IS AWESOME. I don't read enough, and this book is making me wish I did more. I'd forgotten how great it is to curl up on the couch and read, especially when....

Weather
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHEN WILL IT STOP SNOWING. Seriously, yesterday was the first day in a long time where we didn't get any snow here in lower Michigan. It feels like I've been stuck inside since Halloween. On Tuesday, I woke up to nearly an inch of snow covering the ground (although it melted pretty quickly). It's been like some bizarre never-ending winter. I think this is how Narnia felt under the White Witch's spell. Supposedly, it's going to get nice for the weekend, but I WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT.

Writing
My big, long, epic Oz story: So, I started it. And, like I feared, it's going slow. But it's going! I wrote the first two scenes, which were basically just to establish the setting (i.e., mood/timeframe), and it took 2,400 words. LOL. I did take a lot of time to make it complete and polish it and feel comfortable with it, because I figure I need to get that beginning right so that the actual story has something decent to build from (and, hopefully, prevent me from getting so discouraged that I abandon the whole thing). Maybe the words will come a little quicker now that I'm moving toward the actual plot. *fingers crossed* I also did some poking around and found a really great Samuel Johnson quote that I think would fit in perfectly as the ending line for the story (or maybe the beginning). The quote has also inspired the story's tentative title. AND I also made some screencaps to use to maybe make a graphic to accompany the story.

I think this is what you might call "procrastination." :D
vanillalime: (Default)
Just an update on where my head is at these days.

1. Oz

Yeah, my love for this show isn’t going away any time soon. I envision myself participating in Oz Magi 2032, even if I have to fulfill my own wish. Heh.

The current Oz drabble tree reminded me that the very first Oz fic I wrote was for a drabble tree, back in February 2013. So this month is my 5-year anniversary of writing Oz fic! In some ways, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing in the fandom for that long. But on the other hand, when I go back and look at all the things I’ve written, there’s actually quite a lot there. Which leads me to…

What I really want to do this year is stretch myself and try writing a long fic. (Although I said the same thing last year, too, and the farthest I got was opening a document and giving it a title, LOL.) I’m too chicken to sign up for a big bang, but I’ve been poking around the [livejournal.com profile] 1_million_words comm that [livejournal.com profile] cmk418 has mentioned, and it might help by giving me the push I need. For a while now, I’ve had three different ideas for a long Oz story, and I’ve pretty much settled on which one I want to write. I have no idea how long it actually might be, but I always seriously underestimate my stories’ lengths (generally, they turn out twice as long as I think they’ll be when I start). So if I’m thinking the story is going to be long (over 10k? 15k maybe?), chances are it’ll be long.

Unfortunately, though, I’m a slooooow writer, and I constantly edit and re-edit (which is absolutely necessary because I’m not good enough to get anything right the first time, or even the first dozen times). In addition, I find it difficult and counter-productive to work on more than one story at a time, and I won’t do WIPs, either. So if I do this, it would likely be the only thing I write this year, and I’m not thrilled about the idea of that, especially if it turns out to be a big fail and I never even finish it.

Wow, it kind of sounds like I’m trying to talk myself out of the whole thing, doesn’t it? :|

Also, [livejournal.com profile] oz_daily. *sigh* I don’t want the comm to die, but after nearly 3 years, my LJ scrapbook is at 90% capacity, and I’ve sort of lost my enthusiasm for doing it. The thing that really set me off was Apple’s latest iOS update, which now prohibits me from taking screencaps from HBO (or Amazon or Netflix or whatever), which pisses me off to no end. If I want to take a screencap now, I have to use my old original iPad which is still on an earlier iOS. But that thing is agonizingly slow and doesn’t create very good quality caps. In addition, the traffic here at LJ isn’t what it used to be either, obviously, and at this point I don’t know how many peeps were even seeing the pics I was posting. If I bring it back, I think it’ll just be on a weekly basis, or maybe just do occasional themes, because those were always fun.


2. Homicide: Life on the Street

I got the DVDs for Christmas, and I just finished Season 1. (Yes, I’m the slowest binge-watcher in the world. Actually, I'm not even "binging," I'm just "watching.")

The show’s really good! I particularly love Melissa Leo’s character and, in a surprise, Daniel Baldwin’s. And Ned Beatty, as always, is just a delight. (I’m still not good with the character names.) The highlight was probably the classic "Three Men and Adena" episode, for which Tom Fontana won his third writing Emmy.

I get a little thrill whenever an Ozzie makes an appearance on the show. Lee appeared in five S1 episodes (albeit briefly, in some cases). He seemed so sweet and wholesome and YOUNG (I guess he would’ve been about 27?). I can see why all those casting agents back then wanted to cast him in boy-next-door roles, because he certainly fit the bill:


(credit: leetergesen.com)

Lee was incredibly moving in his scenes after his character has been shot. Edie Falco was in a few eps as his wife, as well as Sean Whitesell (Donald Groves), who played a doctor. (I think there was even a scene with the three of them together.) Luis Guzman also guest-starred in one ep, and Zeljko Ivanek has a recurring role as a prosecutor.

In summary, S1 Ozzie count: 5

Interestingly, the bi-annual New York PaleyFest, which hosted the Oz reunion last fall, just announced last week that they they are holding a Homicide reunion in May. I guess Fontana enjoyed himself so much at the Oz reunion, he wanted to do something again. ;)

Now, onto Season 2! It’s a truncated season of only 4 episodes, so I should be able to get through them a little quicker. :D


3. Stranger Things

I watched Season 1 in the fall and finished Season 2 a few weeks ago. I really liked Season 1 and LOVED Season 2.

I’ve always been a sucker for coming-of-age mystery stories (supernatural or not), especially if they’re set during an earlier time period—Stand By Me, IT (the 90s miniseries, anyway, I still haven't see last summer’s movie), Super 8, even Now and Then (a not-so-good, all-female Stand By Me rip-off).

Heck, when I think about it, To Kill a Mockingbird fits the category, too.

Anyway, I loved this show so much, I was actually feeling *fannish* about it, a feeling I haven't experienced since watching Oz. I’m not interested at all in shipping anyone from it, but I love so many of the general/platonic relationships within the show. I was seriously impressed by the acting abilities of all the kids, but my favorite character by far was Dustin. The actor has such great comedic timing. I also floved the whole redemption arc of the teenaged Steve character that began at the end of S1 and continued through S2. So then, imagine my excitement when the show developed a Dustin-Steve subplot in S2 that had this delightful "little brother-big brother" dynamic to it.

I was actually thinking of writing fic for the show, and I had an idea for a nice, short (HA!) Dustin-Steve missing scene story that would’ve been easy to write, something that I thought would be a good way to get my feet wet in a new fandom. Then I checked AO3, and I saw that there were already three versions of my missing scene fic written by three other people! Within the last month! Heh. That’s when I realized how big the fandom was and how many people were writing fic for the show. Some of which was very good, but much of it… not. There also seems to be a lot of fanfic with all kinds of weird out-of-character and/or underage pairings (a by-product of having such a large/young cast, I guess). Anyway, at that point, I got scared away and scurried back to the safe confines of Oz. Maybe I’ll try again later, but I’m not sure big fandoms are for me. LOL
vanillalime: (Default)
LJ comment

In a week full of immenient gloom and doom, I'd like to thank "Evans John" for giving me the laugh of a lifetime. I cannot wait to work the phrase "super driver on top" into the next bit of porn I write.

Very helpful! Sounds like Trump wrote this.
vanillalime: (Default)
oxford comma

Credit to mxduki's tumblr.

(The Oxford comma should always be used. Always, always, ALWAYS.)
vanillalime: (Default)
Recently, I wrote a couple of pieces of Oz fic for the Fandom Giftbox fest over at Dreamwidth, and reveals were held last week. One was a short drabble written for [livejournal.com profile] trillingstar, who had requested B/K New Year's Eve/lockdown fic. The other was a piece of McManus/Murphy epistolary fic (my first attempt at such a thing) written for [livejournal.com profile] ozsaur for her prompt "The two of them talk about retirement plans."

A Sixth Sense (PG-13, 100 words)
Summary: Chris always knows what Toby needs to hear.

Goodbye Tension, Hello Pension (PG, 898 words)
Summary: Tim and Sean exchange e-mails discussing their retirement plans.

In addition, [livejournal.com profile] dustandroses had also requested Oz fic for the fest, and I was drawn to her prompt of "Keller likes a challenge, so he seduces some guy even he wasn't sure he could get." But, try as I might, my brain just couldn't formulate a coherent story out of the bits and pieces of plot I had for a Keller/Busmalis pairing (seriously!).

But then, BUT THEN, I looked at dusty's General Likes, and OH, the plot for another pairing took off--one that's definitely different for me, but a story just dying to be written nonetheless. Unfortunately, I knew that there was no way I could get such a story done before the fest's deadline, so I put it aside. And now I don't know if i should go to work on THAT, or my story for [livejournal.com profile] spook_me (which I've got an idea for, but not the details), or try to do both, or WHAT. But I'm feeling excited about writing something.
vanillalime: (Default)
Chris Meloni retweeted this yesterday, and the plot bunnies are hopping! *g*

spook me plot

(Although, I think [livejournal.com profile] trillingstar might have already written a story about this?)
vanillalime: (Default)
.... is a lot harder than it sounds, as it turns out.  :(

In the next day or so, I hope to post a Rymon story.  It started out as a funny, silly, little badfic to explain the ridiculous biography of Simon Cowell that was published this spring.  But the thoughts and ideas and WORDS kept coming, and it just became impossible for me to sustain that intentional badfic "voice" for so long.  I ended up re-writing the first half to make it "better," yet the base of the story remains a big pile of dialouge-heavy angsty schmoop.  I also wanted to incorporate more realism into the plot than originally planned, but the guys have distanced themselves and blurred the lines between what is real and what isn't so much these last couple of years.... well, the canon isn't what it used to be, that's for sure, limiting what I could do.

I know that it sounds like I'm trying to make excuses, but that's probably because that's exactly what I'm doing.  LOL

I am, however, fairly confident that I successfully painted Tony Cowell to be the fool that he is in the story, thereby accomplishing one of my primary objectives.  :)

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