The Dressage Ring

I've been experiencing a resurgence of interest in Sentinel-fanfic, not sure why.  My mother's father recently died*, so it's possible I'm feeling really nostalgic 'remember the good times' feelings as a way to deal, but anyway....

So, Sentinel fandom and Highlander were the first fandoms, at the same time, that I found myself involved in.  I know what attracted me to both shows, the 'what-if?' factor.  For Highlander, it was 'what if these long-lived people existed?  how do they view the world?  And I could do a bit of meta on that, but that's a separate post.  For Sentinel, it was 'what if these people existed, how would it change things? And not? And *wow*, there's a reasonable scientific basis for the senses occurring, even if the mystical stuff is, well mystical! (But I love the mystical part anyway, lol.)

And so I find myself re-reading fanfic as archived on AO3, and reading some of the fanlore wiki, and realizing that fandom really had a far-reaching affect on a lot of *other* fandoms.  I knew that, of course, because you see all those Sentinel AUs all over the place, even in fandoms like TeenWolf where it the main audience may never even have heard of the show the AU is referring to.  But Sentinel is, as someone once said, 'the little black dress of fandom'.  It really does go with everything - even with properties that don't actually need any more things to hit the supernatural/ mystical/ existential button (like, Dragonriders of Pern, Heralds of Valdemar, Supernatural...) you can see the Sentinels everywhere, and it's fun. 

And also, I find myself being inspired to write, although I know it won't happen right away.  I want to write, sort of as a gift to Sen-dom, a piece with the same style of Asimov's 'Commentaries on the Bible'.  Only, on the fictional book, Burton's 'Sentinels of Paraguay'.  And I find myself wondering how many 'quotes' people have made up from that book.  And also thinking I need to re-watch the series so I can find canon quotes.  And then I thought, it would be great if these commentaries were able to pull off something like Cesca's utterly incredible "Written by the Victors" (fanlore entry, AO3 story link), using historical sources describing the controversy over 'the Ellison case' (complete with quotes from TSbyBS, the published-unpublished book, entries from 'The Memoirs of Simon Banks' which has an edition out annotated by Daryl Banks...).  Something which leads the reader to assume that in that future time when the Commentaries are written, Sentinels and Guides (because I swing that way!) are common, or at least commonly known about, and part of the everyday fabric of society, much like the Bible and it's influences.

And I definitely want to finish my Mag 7.5 piece, which is a fusion between Magnificent 7 and Susan Foster's GDP universe. 

Speaking of which, I think I read one of my own comments on the fanlore page about the GDP**, at least it sounded like me.  But it was capitalized correctly, and even now, I'm only half-way into capitalization unless i'm writing an actual story.  (I got into the habit of not capping in posts during college, when we actually had to worry about how many bits and bytes the messages used...)  Anyway, the comment was to the effect of, "The GDP-verse is an incredible idea, with some great world-building, and some really lousy execution."  It's the 'great idea/ lousy execution' part of that that makes me wonder if it was my quote.  Certainly i'm not the only one who's said that, but that particular set of words is a common turn of phrase of mine.  And whether or not the fanlore page has my comment or someone else's, i stand by the evaluation - there's a lot of writing execution factors in many of the stories -strained wording, plot holes, flipping tenses, etc - and there's a lot of 'didn't think through the implications' factors in the stories, too, like making the US, Canada, and America one giant country with no explanation of how it got that way, and the impact on history.  Which it would have had, and how much and what would depend on when and 'where' the uniting had come from. 

Still, as ideas go... it has a ton of potential, and I really wish I could come up with ideas like that on my own.  Alas, I am, like the commercial, not the person who invents things, just the one who likes to make them *better*.  And yes, I'm well aware how egotistical it sounds to put it that way, and 'better' in the case of fanfic and other arts and crafts is a matter of opinion, for sure.  But the whole 'sussing out the puzzle pieces and putting it together to see the big picture' thing is an innate part of my personality - i *think* about things like this, ruminate over them.  cogitate.  If i were a cow, whole pastures would disappear beneath my hooves as i thought over the whys and wherefores and hows and the 'what does it really mean?' 's part of stories.  I don't think of this as particularly creative, as I associate creativity with originality... so I'd never take credit for idea origination.  But yeah, a large part of my interior motivation to write fic is 'gotta fix it'***.   I just hope i don't insult anyone in the process...

So here's to nostalgia, and the most delightful little black dress in the world, and inspiration to write! *chugs a glass of tullamore dew*
-boogieshoes

*Grandpa was 95+, and we all knew it was going to be this year, I think.  He died the best death possible, if such a thing *is* possible - in bed, surrounded by family, lucid until he went to sleep.

** The GDP universe is one where Sentinels and Guides are known.  Sentinels are up-held as unassailable heroes, and Guides are pretty much 2nd class citizens, with laws and customs in place that make it difficult to impossible to protect a Guide from an abusive Sentinel.  The Guide Development Project, charged with training and protecting Guides until they are matched with Sentinels, is sometimes the source of the worst offenses, but can rarely, if ever, be held accountable.

*** This is also a major reason I tend to be hesitant about writing a lot of things I think about.  I don't ever want to imply someone's idea is broken or not worth it.  I wouldn't spend time on it if I didn't think it had some merit.  But I sort of wish I could stick an explanatory note on a lot of my stuff - 'I'm putting beads on the cross-stitch pattern!'  Because like my stitching - I wouldn't do it if I didn't like the pattern, but I love putting beads on it to make it 'better'.

i've been having major drama with my computer lately, culminating with an emergency buy this weekend. follow along the story now:


so the guest room is being done in 'bad victoriana impression of ancient egyptian' (because an accurate rendering of ancient egyptian furniture, even for the pharoah, would make guests run, instead of be delighted...), and the stencil being used to put grout lines on the wall got, well, gummy, as repeat stencils tend to do. and i decided to clean it with acetone.

this was my first mistake, because i had the acetone sitting higher than my toshiba laptop, and i was tired, and knocked the bottle over, and it splashed on the toshiba. i let it dry, but the keyboard was fried. so i went and bought a cheapy plug-in mouse and keyboard. then i started having problems with weird input bugs, and i thought it might be the old keyboard reading stuff even though i was using the plug-in. i researched at work, dl'd instructions to take out the on-board keyboard, had second thoughts, and bought a wireless keyboard and mouse. the wireless combo worked for a while, especially after i updated the java script that runs things.

then the input bug came back. and i got frustrated friday night, and decided to finally take the inboard keyboard out... mistake #2.

i killed the toshiba. so Saturday morning i went to the local target, and bought new laptop. and an external hard-drive. then i went to the computer repair shop and asked if i could get a data transfer, and a downgrade to windows 7.

the data transfer was relatively successful. they didn't manage to get some of the programs across - like pidgin, the chat client, adobe reader, openoffice - but they got most of the files across, and did get mozilla firefox and thunderbird across. they got my old email file (yay!), but unfortunately, they didn't get my old bookmark file across. which sucks.

so monday (one of those short saturday/ closed sunday places), i picked up the laptop and brought it home and began to remove the crap windows insists on putting on their new boxes. i'd managed to put pidgin back on the new lappy, and gotten to the chatrooms - always the hardest part of a new machine for me - so i could have help if i needed it.

until i deleted the 'bluetooth thing'. yes, mistake number 3. see, i think bluetooth, and think the schizophrenic phone or smartphone type things. i don't think WLAN drivers... guess what this was? back to the computer store, sigh. and out more $$ to get them to undo my stupidity.

needless to say, i'm no longer going to be fixing my own computer. the local repair shop are nice people and don't make fun of me. at least while i'm in the store, hah.

anyway, i need to rebuild my bookmark file, so i'm taking favorite links in the comments for fanfic, writing tips, neat places to shop... etc.

-boogieshoes, the extremely frustrated

more snippety from my mag7 story.  I hearby commence shamelessly begging for comments. -bs

same scene as ch. 1, continued.

i think. i'm starting to lose coherency, but i finally hit on an idea for a reasonable sentinel AU setting.


( Sentinel intro and AU set-up )

-boogieshoes, tired but happy