Today’s Rhapsody is “Urban Rhapsody” by the Neo Soul Acid Jazz Collective.
Just stumbled over this bit of fun from Tom Tomorrow that I had to share. A quick note as a middling at best football fan who barely remembers the lineup of his own team I never really cared about Tim Tebow. Most of what I knew about him was from a handful of culture war feeds which would have people like Pat Robertson going on and on about how inspirational he was, how Denver was keeping him to “placate a Christian audience” and when he was traded for being a mediocre player that God would punish Denver. That’s right. We are divine retribution!
Addendum: To squeeze some of the humor out of this, according to one of those feeds some idiot at the WND believes this for real.
I’d forgotten I’d done this one.
It was one of those pictures at the very end of your sketch book where you’re trying to fill the last ten pages as fast as possible so you can start the new one. Sometimes this can make you ambitions in some very interesting ways.
Anyway this is from one of the side projects I work on from time to time. The scene involves two rather shady characters meeting to talk unobserved at an even shadier fighting pit. This is the bareknuckled boxing fight that is going on as they discuss business.
Looking at this puppy with fresh eyes I think I might just do a finished version of it.
I have a confession to make. I had a fanfic phase. I’m not particularly ashamed of it. I improved as a writer doing them (and one of my major side projects is a former fanfic with all of the anime and fanfic bits taken out) but the thing is I think working on stories that are mine are a much better long term investment and based on this writing fanfiction is a waste of time. Regrettably, however I keep getting ideas for them. Some with interesting possibilities, others that are just silly. I try to forget them as quickly as I come up with them but most of the time they just linger.
So I figured I’d share them as as a way of venting and who knows someone might actually use the ideas.
So here are some of my current batch I think I’ll put them in order of how sensible they are be warned most of them are rather embarrassing. So enjoy and try not to judge.
1. Game of Thrones: Tyrion Delayed.
For whatever reasons Tyrion’s stay at Castle Black lasts longer than expected. Perhaps as little as a couple of days or maybe long enough for him to be a witness to the whole wight incident. At the very least it means he doesn’t meet up with Caitlyn Stark and is not taken to the Eyrie which means among other things, Jaimie and Ned don’t fight so Ned isn’t injured and Tywin’s attack on the Riverlands do not occur perhaps delaying the War of the Five Kings.
Perhaps if Tyrion is delayed long enough that it is he who is the messenger who takes the Night Watch’s evidence and warning of the Others returning.
2. Sleepless in Ponyville: Epilogue.
This one I’ve actually done sketches for as a comic book exercise and potential Deviantart material. The idea is that right after Luna watches Scootaloo’s dream at the end of the Sleepless in Ponyville she encounters an Alicorn version of Dream of the Endless (or more likely Daniel) who welcomes her back to the Dreaming.
3. Emberverse/MLP Crossover
For some reason this one just won’t go away and I keep adding notes to it. Instead of Nantucket’s transportation to the Bronze age, the event that begins Dies the Fire is a large chunk of the southwest being replaced by Equestria caused by Rainbow Dash’s first Sonic Rainboom. Most of Stirling‘s first trilogy and the first few seasons of MLP go on as schedule as Celestia tries to keep her subjects in the dark until she can do something about it. So far the biggest ideas I’ve had for this is a scene where a CUT army is taken out by a weaponized sonic rainboom and a reference to the Pony’s fanatical human followers… the Bro-Neigh.
4. Game of Thrones/MLP Crossover.
Okay, this one’s really stupid. What happens is the Starks find the Mane Six instead of the Dire Wolves. Happily I managed to stop myself before I could decide which pony each Stark got. (Well okay, Bran’s pony warned him about climbing anywhere near where the Lannisters were staying)
Well before I start this week’s double feature review I have to confess this one is going to be slightly incomplete. The DVD of my first film on my list Mamoru Oshii’s Avalon was scratched so I was only able to watch three quarters of it. So any thoughts I have about it are incomplete. I’ve always liked Oshii’s work from the Wolf Brigade, The Ghost in the Shell films, Beautiful Dreamer and most recently Sky Crawlers and I was looking forward to watch his live action films.
I enjoyed what I saw of Avalon. It’s a quiet lyrical science fiction film about a professional game player in a near future trying to find the truth behind the game that seems to dominate this future culture. Done in a sepia palate and skillfully using all of it’s shoestring budget, I enjoyed what I saw of Oshii’s signature style. (Including an adorable Basset Hound!)
The next film on my list was John Boorman’s Zardoz. To be honest I’m mildly embarrassed that I’d never seen this one before. As a longtime science fiction fan I was certainly aware of it, it was in all my textbooks about science fiction films and we’d been making jokes about Sean Connery in a speedo for years.
To be honest I was completely surprised by this film. Based on everything I knew about it I was expecting a barbarian, post apocalyptic action film. What I watched was quiet and cerebral meditation on the meaning of life, immortality and death. Scenes of armed horse riding “brutals” only appearing sporadically throughout the film, all in all far better than I ever imagined.
One thing I found interesting in both of these films it is with so many critics complaining about the modern viewer’s short attention span I was actually surprised to watch a movie with such a deliberately slow pace. Both Avalon and Zardoz were better for it.