Green Room - Weekend Edition - Week 5

[clauderainsrm]

 The Week 4 Sudden Death Write Off is happening right now. therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1150733.html

But so is the new prompt for Week 5 therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1151017.html

I'm hesitant to go into details to avoid jinxing it. But this has the potential to be a HUGE week in Idol history. If it happens, don't worry, I'll definitely be posting about it.  :) 

***

The rain just started here. Right now it looks like Debby is just going to be a tropical storm as it comes by us. But it's going to be a hurricane much sooner than original projected. So who knows.  Either way it's not expected to be too bad... there is definitely a LOT more coverage than usual about it. Which makes me wonder if it's just for the newbies in the area (there are a LOT of them). But honestly I have to think that if you keep hyping up how serious a storm is and it's not much of anything, if you are just making it harder for them to take the REAL threats seriously when it's a 4 or 5 hurricane. 

***

Speaking of taking things seriously. It's time for me to ask a few more questions, calling out specific people.  :) 

gunwithoutmusic  -      Poetry has always been risky in Idol. There have been times with it's done really well, but that has been very specific people writing at very specific times. For this mini season you've been only writing poetry so far. Was that a conscious choice coming into the mini season or just how it has worked out so far?  (on a side note penumbra  was actually on the list of prompts. But I moved it back to the reserve list after your list entry this week. So for once someone else looked over my shoulder rather than me looking over theirs) 

chasing_silver  - Your work has always been strongly tied to a sense of  time and "place". So seeing an entry about moving into your new home made a lot of sense to me.  I know you mentioned in the footnote about how you came to connect uncanny valley with seeing the remnants of the former owner's lives, but I'm curious about other ideas you might have played with in the process to come up with that.  Was there an "eureka" moment of when your brain made that jump or has that moment just been sitting in your brain waiting for the right opportunity to emerge? 

off_fleek_geek - Is podcast fanfic a thing now? It makes sense that it would exist, but honestly this is my first experience with it. I suppose it's more for genre podcasts than it is "current events" or interview based podcasts though. (That would be "interesting") But I digress, this was a fun entry. What was it about the prompt that made you think that the podcast would be the perfect vehicle for this story?  It could have existed on it's own, but the framing format really seemed to add to it, so I think that was a good call. Just wondering about your process coming to that conclusion. 

Comments

[roina_arwen]

Those are some excellent questions! I look forward to reading the answers!

[chasing_silver]

I'll be honest, I have trouble sometimes thinking outside the box on some prompts. I thought about the robots and the humanoid-vaguely-looking things but then landed on that I wanted "uncanny valley" to be more of a concept than a strict definition about things that look human but aren't. And then I just thought back over the last couple months of the summer and how I had been in and out of all these people's homes and seen all of their precious things and pictures and memories and how odd it is that folks live whole lives outside of ours ... how insular we all are, and how you can connect with someone without ever knowing them. And then the entry came to be!

I will say we met the sellers of our new house today. And the lady I wrote about is so, so very lovely. And when I told her I could not wait to continue on the work she had done in her beautiful and very loved home, she hugged me. <3

[murielle]

I loved your entry. I love other people's stuff. There was such a tenderness and joy in it. And I'm delighted to discover that it's true and you'll be getting that home and that you were able to share your respect for her home with the previous owner. Beautiful!

[chasing_silver]

Thank you! It was really special to get to meet her!

[off_fleek_geek]

Storm shouldn't be that bad, fingers crossed it doesn't affect the power or anything on the way through there.

Oh hey, that's my name up there! *laughs!* I didn't expect that.

Magnus Archives has inspired quite a bit of fanfic and fan art. It helps that it's genre fiction, and over time it builds up to feel more like an audio play with a LOT of lore and worldbuilding. They've even at times had contests for people to write and submit episodes with winners being read/acted on the podcast.

Originally I did start writing this as a stand-alone story. Part of the way through I caught myself reading it in my head in the voice of the podcast narrator and realized it was very Magnus-like, and that's when I went all in adjusting it to be fanfic. The framing felt right, and I'm glad people liked it!

But I was only one vote away from being in that Sudden Death Write Off soooooo, gotta do even better this week :D

[murielle]

None of us are safe! ;-)

I'm afraid I'd never heard of the series your entry was based on so I enjoyed it as a stand-alone. And I did enjoy it!

[gunwithoutmusic]

You know, this is probably the first time since the first time I've played that I came into this without an idea of what I was going to do, and without a list of ideas in place ready to be matched up to prompts. This whole season so far has been very different for me.

I'm in a new job and a new place in life than I was any other time I was writing, and I've been wondering a lot lately if I really even know what I'm doing anymore when it comes to writing. I guess I came into this for the first time without really looking for a win. I just want to play around and do "writing as art" kind of stuff; not knowing if it's going to work is part of what excites me about it.

Side note: it's killing me how behind I am on reading entries. :( There's some good stuff this time around. My votes never matter anyway since I always voted for everyone, but I'm still gonna try and get back to reading more regularly.

[murielle]

I can honestly relate to what you've answered.

Years ago when I followed Bleodswean. I did not for a moment believe I could ever win because look at how great you all are! But I believed if I did the best I could with each prompt I could become a better writer. I like to think I have improved.

You are a poet, S. And you write beautiful, profound poems that stir and move the hearts of your readers. I think, because you write from your heart, always.

[unmowngrass]

Hey, I have done an entry. Still in rough draft format (ie, I will need to fix the formatting), but the words are done.

Is anyone able and inclined to beta read for me, please?