Goddam

[desperance]

I hate when I have read my entire f-list. By the middle of the day. Post more, people! Or, I don't know, send me cheerful and engaging e-mails. Or money, or something. Anything. Distract me! Don't you know I have work to do?

In other news, Amazon just offered me a box set of Wagner's Ring Cycle. In the midst of a list of SF & fantasy DVDs they thought I might want to buy. I think this is highly appropriate, but ... surprising.

(They will also sell me the whole of Buffy for less than fifty quid. I am resisting, but it's hard. I don't neeeeed the whole of Buffy - I have much of it on video! including some that I have never watched! - but I don't have the last two series and there's half a series missing in the middle. Which might be why I have never watched it, because I know it's incomplete. They offer me completeness, in a neat little box.)(*resists*)

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

It's a slow day, isn't it! I've been trying to rouse that part of my flist that lives across the Atlantic, using just the power of my mind.

[badbookworm.livejournal.com]

I'm doing workses. Workses on spec, but workses nonetheless. I *will* submission this 9-12 market into submission, dammit.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Well, if dduane and petermorwood's Sword of Xanten (other titles apply in other jurisdictions) is fantasy, then the Ring Cycle has to be too. They both retell parts of the same myth cycle.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Amazon are strange sometimes. They will offer me Westerns. I don't like Westerns, but I have bought a couple as gifts. They also offer me things I have already bought from them...
If you're really bored, you could read Living With Ghosts.... (It should help you sleep, at least).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ach, it's my own work that bores me; I am turning an Exciting Battle Scene into something stultefyingly dull. Because I can, I suppose.

There are many alternative temptations, Living With Ghosts not least among them; but I am supposed not to move from this chair until I have committed more work. For which purpose LJ is a splendid distraction, because it keeps me in this chair.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

More blood! More thunder of cavalry and dust clouds and flaming arrows and trebuchets throwing Greek fire. And some Wrath of Heaven. It's traditional in Wuxia battles. An earthquake! A ravine opening under the feet of the enemy! A rain of frogs... And, of course, lots of slo-mo of the killer swordsman as he battles his way looking ragged and dirty and beautiful. A thunderstorm. A sudden outbreak of manifest goddess?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

And I have jsut realised that I am enabling myself not writing by enabling you not writing which may be terminal recursion.....

[desperance.livejournal.com]

More blood! More thunder of cavalry and dust clouds and flaming arrows and trebuchets throwing Greek fire. And some Wrath of Heaven. It's traditional in Wuxia battles. An earthquake! A ravine opening under the feet of the enemy! A rain of frogs... And, of course, lots of slo-mo of the killer swordsman as he battles his way looking ragged and dirty and beautiful. A thunderstorm. A sudden outbreak of manifest goddess?

Hee. As it happens, I have just been doing some thinking and worked stuff out - and the stuff out which I have worked? Is all contained somewhere(s) within this list.

[Hint: no rain of frogs. Otherwise, it's all possible...]

[And, metaphorically, a frog...]

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Dragon, frog: both reptiles....
I am hating my book today. It told me where it wanted to go and now won't beeping go there. Heroine is being stalked by crystal bones and she hasn't noticed...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I like crystal bones. Do they chime? As they stalk?

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, suppose they gave a battle and nobody fought...

That's my problem: it's a fugitive battle, one side retreats as the other advances, there is no fighting and they won't catch up. It'll be okay later, but for now all these bloody people insist on thinking lots, and being fraught, and not committing plot. Sigh.

They shall run around an unexpected bend in the river, and there will be a broken bridge, and...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

They chime. And they slice. She has at least noticed, now. But this book is just not sensible.
Broken bridge is good. Broken bridge is brave-handful-holding-back-the-hordes. (And could have frogs...)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

...except of course when we are on the side of the hordes. Who have no intention of crossing the river. Then it is fiendish-ambush- laid-by-evil-rebels-whom-we-chase...

And she has already called him a frog, you see. Internally. And now he has a shiny green coat...

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Just to let you know that I am simply longing to read this.

Broken bridges make me think of Horatius, and Miss Snodgrass, my dragonish, scary, bespectacled history teacher declaiming MacCauley with gusto. It was a seminal moment. (Scary, too.)

[song-of-copper.livejournal.com]

This is the perfect excuse to spout drivel on LJ instead of work. >_< If my boss notices, I shall just have to say 'Chaz told me to.' ;-P

Hope you feel better soon! :-)

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Do not resist the Buffy - you'll break out in spots or something. Yeah.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Buy Buffy, watch it, then lend it to me. :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You does not haz? I thought everybody haz'd, except me... (Which is one reason I've been resisting, because I have local friends who could lend; but, y'know, they'd have to lend for months before I got through 'em all...)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I does not haz, partly because, like you, I don't neeeeeeeed the whole of Buffy. In fact, I really only neeeeeeed/want about eleven episodes out of the whole Buffy/Angel cycle, but I don't own any of them at all, and I wouldn't mind watching the whole thing sometime. :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, now. I can't imagine only wanting a scatter of them. Of course there are stand-out episodes, just as there are duff episodes (or indeed whole duff series: that whole secret-underground-base thing, what was that about again?) - but everything matters in context, and only makes sense in context.

Oh, except for "Once More, With Feeling" (if that's what it's called? the musical episode?), which is probably fabulous anyway. But you'd still need to understand the current interplay between characters to get all the nuances. Context is king. Whoo, yeah...

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

My dear old thing! I have some Buffy videos which I intend to pass on to Oxfam (mainly because that frees bookshelf space for eg Daniel Fox's forthcoming volumes, which I gather will be excellent.)

They are: Series 1: 1-12; Series 2: 1-11; Series 3: 1-11, 12-22; Series 4: 1-11; Series 5: 1-11, 12-22.

If you would like any of them, do send me your address to gauroth at gmail dot com. Or even if you don't want any of them but would like a Christmas card, send me your address. I love sending out Christmas cards!

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

I hate when I have read my entire f-list. By the middle of the day. Post more, people!

You could get more friends, to make the list longer.