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THE COMING OF THE MOOBS!
1) I am now a (re)qualified first aider, albeit a qualified first aider with a strapped wrist, because apparently practicing CPR for extended periods of time is one of the many activities which screws up my weak wrists. However, I know all sorts of things, including how to improvise a cervical collar in order to move someone with a suspected spinal injury, and how to use an external automatic defibrillator. THESE THINGS ARE SO AWESOME. You just open them up and they talk at you, and there are explanatory diagrams, and they can ONLY deliver a shock if a person's heart is in v-fib, and they even talk you through CPR if you don't know how to do it. Doubleplusgood.
2) I have now worked out why my Yuletide fic is such an utter disaster, and while unfortunately it's more a compatability problem between my prose style and the canon than anything easily fixable, I think I'll be able to lower my expectations and change my approach enough to get it done in time.
3) Um, I think I need to talk for a while about Starcross, which I read in one glorious sitting last night.
- ART. ART MUMBY. YOU LITTLE KICKASS HERO. WITH YOUR FOOTNOTES AND YOUR BRITISH PLUCK AND YOUR ABILITY TO THROW LETTER-OPENERS. NEVER CHANGE.
- It's really an awful bore being held hostage by mad geniuses and threatened with this or that in order to make one's mother do their awful bidding. It sometimes seems as if never a week goes by without some reprobate or other pointing a revolving pistol or a Changeling-spore disseminator at me and insisting that Mother share with him some ancient secret or other. It makes a chap feel a little hard-done-by, and inclined to ask, 'Am I a boy, or a mere bargaining counter?' <333333333
- I, um, have a giant crush on Amelia Mumby. She's a frigging immortal being from a distant star, and she looks after her kids and comes up with genius plans and sometimes forgets tiny details like the fact that they'll all be attacked by thought-sucking monsters when they travel to the end of the universe, and she saves the day by telling gentlemen to REMOVE THEIR HATS IN THE PRESENCE OF A LADY, and ldjdsdbsddllkjds. She is the most awesome fictional mother I have ever encountered. She's like a VICTORIAN SARAH CONNOR.
- THE PLOT! THE HIJINKS! It had MAN-EATING HATS and FRENCH SPIES and TIME TRAVEL and MYRTLE'S BATHING COSTUME (I think that scene where she and Jack were fighting the giant Martian sea creatures armed only with a knife and her bathing costume's Extra Features was one of my favourites). The Moobs were both scary and ridiculous, which is very important for a YA book, and I just loved them as villains. And SIR RICHARD BURTON AND ULLA, to whom I took an enormous liking in the first book; their brief cameo at the beginning was very gratifying.
- Is it just me, or was this one even more Pratchettian? I am thinking particularly of the wool-mercenaries and their World Cosy and their nightmare myth about the Great Moth, because that whole thing made me grin as soon as it was even obliquely mentioned. And Professor Ferny with his nutritional compost.
- There were EVEN MORE illustrations than in Larklight, and a lot more DELIGHTFUL back-and-forth between the text and the illustrations (Myrtle, in her nightwear). Someone needs to make me icons, stat.
- AND SPEAKING OF. MYRTLE THE ALCHEMIST. THAT WAS POSSIBLY THE SINGLE BEST THING I COULD HAVE IMAGINED FOR HER, AND 'IT IS SOMEWHAT LIKE COOKERY' AND SHE IS GOING TO PROVE JUST WHO IS SUITED FOR WHOM, JACK HAVOCK. OH MY GOD. I THINK I ACTUALLY MADE AUDIBLE SQUEALING NOISES. MUST FICIMMEDIATELY VERY SOON.
- Finally, I LOVED LOVED LOVED the ending. This is the great thing about YA fantasy! The villains don't die, they get to start over. The whole plan cooked up by Art and his mother was just a beautiful, beautiful message about the constructive power of imagination and independent thought, and I just know that when I write my epic fic about the marriage of Captain Jack Havock of Her Majesty's Secret Service to Miss Myrtle Mumby, Lady Alchemist, the flower-girl will be five-year-old Modesty Spinnaker.
2) I have now worked out why my Yuletide fic is such an utter disaster, and while unfortunately it's more a compatability problem between my prose style and the canon than anything easily fixable, I think I'll be able to lower my expectations and change my approach enough to get it done in time.
3) Um, I think I need to talk for a while about Starcross, which I read in one glorious sitting last night.
- ART. ART MUMBY. YOU LITTLE KICKASS HERO. WITH YOUR FOOTNOTES AND YOUR BRITISH PLUCK AND YOUR ABILITY TO THROW LETTER-OPENERS. NEVER CHANGE.
- It's really an awful bore being held hostage by mad geniuses and threatened with this or that in order to make one's mother do their awful bidding. It sometimes seems as if never a week goes by without some reprobate or other pointing a revolving pistol or a Changeling-spore disseminator at me and insisting that Mother share with him some ancient secret or other. It makes a chap feel a little hard-done-by, and inclined to ask, 'Am I a boy, or a mere bargaining counter?' <333333333
- I, um, have a giant crush on Amelia Mumby. She's a frigging immortal being from a distant star, and she looks after her kids and comes up with genius plans and sometimes forgets tiny details like the fact that they'll all be attacked by thought-sucking monsters when they travel to the end of the universe, and she saves the day by telling gentlemen to REMOVE THEIR HATS IN THE PRESENCE OF A LADY, and ldjdsdbsddllkjds. She is the most awesome fictional mother I have ever encountered. She's like a VICTORIAN SARAH CONNOR.
- THE PLOT! THE HIJINKS! It had MAN-EATING HATS and FRENCH SPIES and TIME TRAVEL and MYRTLE'S BATHING COSTUME (I think that scene where she and Jack were fighting the giant Martian sea creatures armed only with a knife and her bathing costume's Extra Features was one of my favourites). The Moobs were both scary and ridiculous, which is very important for a YA book, and I just loved them as villains. And SIR RICHARD BURTON AND ULLA, to whom I took an enormous liking in the first book; their brief cameo at the beginning was very gratifying.
- Is it just me, or was this one even more Pratchettian? I am thinking particularly of the wool-mercenaries and their World Cosy and their nightmare myth about the Great Moth, because that whole thing made me grin as soon as it was even obliquely mentioned. And Professor Ferny with his nutritional compost.
- There were EVEN MORE illustrations than in Larklight, and a lot more DELIGHTFUL back-and-forth between the text and the illustrations (Myrtle, in her nightwear). Someone needs to make me icons, stat.
- AND SPEAKING OF. MYRTLE THE ALCHEMIST. THAT WAS POSSIBLY THE SINGLE BEST THING I COULD HAVE IMAGINED FOR HER, AND 'IT IS SOMEWHAT LIKE COOKERY' AND SHE IS GOING TO PROVE JUST WHO IS SUITED FOR WHOM, JACK HAVOCK. OH MY GOD. I THINK I ACTUALLY MADE AUDIBLE SQUEALING NOISES. MUST FIC
- Finally, I LOVED LOVED LOVED the ending. This is the great thing about YA fantasy! The villains don't die, they get to start over. The whole plan cooked up by Art and his mother was just a beautiful, beautiful message about the constructive power of imagination and independent thought, and I just know that when I write my epic fic about the marriage of Captain Jack Havock of Her Majesty's Secret Service to Miss Myrtle Mumby, Lady Alchemist, the flower-girl will be five-year-old Modesty Spinnaker.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2007-12-16 03:24 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
Myrtle the Alchemist! SO MUCH LOVE.