greerwatson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greerwatson) wrote2011-08-24 05:05 am
greerwatson) wrote2011-08-24 05:05 am
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So...second post. Hmmm....
Ah!
Last month saw both Mary Renault and Forever Knight fic posted to my website.
The two MR ficlets, posted under the heading "Summer Challenge 2011", were previously posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
maryrenaultfics, one by me and one by my sister. They are not, of course, stories written for the actual Summer Challenge, which hadn't yet been set. That was actually the point....
Both ficlets are set in the ITOWverse. The first, "Summertime" was written by Flo, and related directly to...ahem...the absence of our beloved mods, who were off on a (well deserved) holiday. In the ITOWverse, apparently, where they no doubt thoroughly enjoyed themselves chatting with all of MR's characters. "Prompts Unprompted" (which was mine) was simply a sequel to Flo's, though it did include a topical reference to the problems LJ was having at the time.
In making webpages for the two stories, I wanted something summery in colour, while avoiding the green tones that I'd used in my summer series last year. Of course, I continued to use the same graphic design as before: one of my many variants of GRSites.com's brown128.jpg (the most productive background graphic I've ever played with), with a central panel surrounded by an elaborate frame of nested tables, including variants of 321Clipart.com's bg64.jpg (producing rippled, satiny textures in various shades) and 99694.jpg (assorted wavy watery textures), among others.
Yes, I know. Very boring.
Well, the point is that I started by doing a pretty pale blue for Flo's story, to suggest the summer sky. However, when I did a cover page for the (admittedly rather short) series, I used a golden variant for the background (as you can see here); and, in combination with the usual sky blue gradient that I use on the index pages, it was all very colourful, and out of keeping with the mauvy-blue I'd already used on "Summertime". So I redid that in turquoise blue shades ("Summertime"), and did my own story in a soft yellow (Prompts Unprompted")—thus picking up the two dominant tones of the index page, and, I hope, tying the whole thing together.
I have to admit that I don't think it's the most successful design I've done. (I was far more pleased with last autumn's series. Mind you, that was in brown tones.) Although the individual pages are not bad, taken separately, the colour disparities are really too great; and the three pages don't really come together as a set.
Flo rather liked the mauvy blue version, though; so I've saved it for a suitable ITOWverse story in the future. Assuming, of course, that she continues to write them.
Last year, I wrote a holiday fic for Simcoe Day. This year, I got mildly inspired for Canada Day. Only mildly, which is why the result is a mere ficlet, "Flying Sparks". I dashed it off, and posted it to FKFIC-L at the last minute, so that it would get in people's inboxes On The Day—which is obviously important for a holiday story.
The webpage ("Flying Sparks") has a sparkly red-and-gold background that, I hope, suggests fireworks. To accentuate this, I also used an animated background as a very narrow border. It's more obvious on the title panel, but also appears in the frame around the story: it's the innermost table in the frame, which puts the sparkles right next to the white of the story panel, which tones them down a lot.
The other story posted is "The New Guy", which was written forfkficfest. After the reveal, I posted that to FKFIC-L, as well. (I do believe in supporting the mailing lists. They need it nowadays, I'm afraid.)
Since "The New Guy" describes Nick's first day at the 27th Precinct, i.e. backstory for Season One, I decided to go with a plain textured blue background, representing a police officer's uniform. (And yes, obviously I know Nick's plainclothes.) This was trimmed in brass (321Clipart's bg64.jpg, used unaltered).
I wanted to use a police-themed divider bar to separate the different sections of the story. However, try as I might, I simply couldn't find one that I thought suitable. Nor could I find any police-themed graphics that I could use to make a bar. (There's a lot of cartoony stuff around; but I wanted something fairly realistic/classy.)
Finally, I cropped out the badge from Nick's ID, which was seen in close-up in one scene in "Dance by the Light of the Moon". (Nick shows it to the stripper, Anne Foley, when he interviews her at Jilly's.) It had a nasty magenta highlight on one side—from the lighting, I guess—so I blew the thing up with Microsoft Picture Manager, did a bit of work on it in Paint to patch it over, and then reduced it to an assortment of small sizes. In the end, it got used all over the webpage. In fact, I've just used it again on the page I've been making for "Gold Regrets".
Which has not yet been posted, since I'm not sure whetherfkcommentfic has the same restrictions as fkficfest, i.e. that one should only post the story to one's own site after the game is over.
"Gold Regrets" has, however, been posted to the comm. It doesn't quite fit the prompt; but it is, at least, about a very successful Tracy in an AU future fic. Which is most of what was asked for.
Ah!
Last month saw both Mary Renault and Forever Knight fic posted to my website.
Mary Renault
The two MR ficlets, posted under the heading "Summer Challenge 2011", were previously posted to
maryrenaultfics, one by me and one by my sister. They are not, of course, stories written for the actual Summer Challenge, which hadn't yet been set. That was actually the point....Both ficlets are set in the ITOWverse. The first, "Summertime" was written by Flo, and related directly to...ahem...the absence of our beloved mods, who were off on a (well deserved) holiday. In the ITOWverse, apparently, where they no doubt thoroughly enjoyed themselves chatting with all of MR's characters. "Prompts Unprompted" (which was mine) was simply a sequel to Flo's, though it did include a topical reference to the problems LJ was having at the time.
In making webpages for the two stories, I wanted something summery in colour, while avoiding the green tones that I'd used in my summer series last year. Of course, I continued to use the same graphic design as before: one of my many variants of GRSites.com's brown128.jpg (the most productive background graphic I've ever played with), with a central panel surrounded by an elaborate frame of nested tables, including variants of 321Clipart.com's bg64.jpg (producing rippled, satiny textures in various shades) and 99694.jpg (assorted wavy watery textures), among others.
Yes, I know. Very boring.
Well, the point is that I started by doing a pretty pale blue for Flo's story, to suggest the summer sky. However, when I did a cover page for the (admittedly rather short) series, I used a golden variant for the background (as you can see here); and, in combination with the usual sky blue gradient that I use on the index pages, it was all very colourful, and out of keeping with the mauvy-blue I'd already used on "Summertime". So I redid that in turquoise blue shades ("Summertime"), and did my own story in a soft yellow (Prompts Unprompted")—thus picking up the two dominant tones of the index page, and, I hope, tying the whole thing together.
I have to admit that I don't think it's the most successful design I've done. (I was far more pleased with last autumn's series. Mind you, that was in brown tones.) Although the individual pages are not bad, taken separately, the colour disparities are really too great; and the three pages don't really come together as a set.
Flo rather liked the mauvy blue version, though; so I've saved it for a suitable ITOWverse story in the future. Assuming, of course, that she continues to write them.
Forever Knight
Last year, I wrote a holiday fic for Simcoe Day. This year, I got mildly inspired for Canada Day. Only mildly, which is why the result is a mere ficlet, "Flying Sparks". I dashed it off, and posted it to FKFIC-L at the last minute, so that it would get in people's inboxes On The Day—which is obviously important for a holiday story.
The webpage ("Flying Sparks") has a sparkly red-and-gold background that, I hope, suggests fireworks. To accentuate this, I also used an animated background as a very narrow border. It's more obvious on the title panel, but also appears in the frame around the story: it's the innermost table in the frame, which puts the sparkles right next to the white of the story panel, which tones them down a lot.
The other story posted is "The New Guy", which was written for
fkficfest. After the reveal, I posted that to FKFIC-L, as well. (I do believe in supporting the mailing lists. They need it nowadays, I'm afraid.)Since "The New Guy" describes Nick's first day at the 27th Precinct, i.e. backstory for Season One, I decided to go with a plain textured blue background, representing a police officer's uniform. (And yes, obviously I know Nick's plainclothes.) This was trimmed in brass (321Clipart's bg64.jpg, used unaltered).
I wanted to use a police-themed divider bar to separate the different sections of the story. However, try as I might, I simply couldn't find one that I thought suitable. Nor could I find any police-themed graphics that I could use to make a bar. (There's a lot of cartoony stuff around; but I wanted something fairly realistic/classy.)
Finally, I cropped out the badge from Nick's ID, which was seen in close-up in one scene in "Dance by the Light of the Moon". (Nick shows it to the stripper, Anne Foley, when he interviews her at Jilly's.) It had a nasty magenta highlight on one side—from the lighting, I guess—so I blew the thing up with Microsoft Picture Manager, did a bit of work on it in Paint to patch it over, and then reduced it to an assortment of small sizes. In the end, it got used all over the webpage. In fact, I've just used it again on the page I've been making for "Gold Regrets".
Which has not yet been posted, since I'm not sure whether
fkcommentfic has the same restrictions as fkficfest, i.e. that one should only post the story to one's own site after the game is over."Gold Regrets" has, however, been posted to the comm. It doesn't quite fit the prompt; but it is, at least, about a very successful Tracy in an AU future fic. Which is most of what was asked for.
no subject
I, on the other hand, have NOT been doing my Summer story (nor finishing off the last few bits on the next Alec installment) due to various work-related crises. Last week we had a 6 week old baby go missing (now back safely - and now in care - but not before some of the team grew a few more grey hairs - it's the kind of case that hits the front pages of the Daily Mail if it goes wrong. This week we had another emergency Court application when a family broke the conditions the Court set for the child being placed back in their care. And a case that ought to have finished this week didn't because noone could agree about the child not having ongoing contact with the violent father (deep sigh for the vagaries of our Court system - means we have another piece of work to do to try out another stop-gap measure and have that fail before we can go back to Court with the evidence there is no other option but to make sure this child doesn't see her father who believes 45 DV incidents in one year is 'not a problem'). And I've been put on notice to go to Court tomorrow about a private law report I wrote just before I went on leave. That will make it three days in Court this week....
Woe is me! Debbie (my Asst Team Manager) goes on leave next week for three weeks! The job is unmanageable without her, so early September is going to be just dreadful.
Legal say they're glad to have me back though. Apparently in my absence they were getting some very weird instructions from Paul (my manager - who may be senior to me but has never done care proceedings in his entire career) and had to give him instructions about what to do or not do, and refuse to implement his instructions, because they were dangerous practice and would leave the dept liable. (Legal are supposed to give advice but take instructions, so you an see the difficulty they were in).
So Alec remains sitting under a tree with the last of those letters unread....
And Theseus' summer clothes have not yet been embroidered....
I may do another ITOW story to add to the Summer prompt series. We'll see how the weekend inspires me. Then you can play around with more pretty backgrounds.
no subject
We all look forward to your new stories with bated breath, though I realize work takes precedence—perforce, given the type of job you have (and the Daily Mail peering over your shoulder).
Blogging is a slippery slope, there's no doubt about it. Nor do I fancy your solution. A workload like yours terrifies me. I just have too many more important things I want to do—like the pretty backgrounds, you understand.
no subject
no subject
I never realized this until LJ began talking of deleting inactive accounts (last year, was it?)—not that mine was "inactive", since I log in pretty well every day.
As I'm sure you recall, there were loud outcries; and they hastily assured everyone that they had a special status for deceased members. They also said that, although they would make inactive user names available for others to use, they would not delete those people's comments, but mark them in some way.
However, they did make it clear that, if there was nothing in the journal but LJ's official "welcome" message, then they would deem it a spam account and delete all comments. Which alarmed me, since I'd never used the blog feature at all, being interested only in joining communities.
I mean, I've posted stories to a couple of places, commented on friends' entries, and participated in long discussions, especially on
So posting something to the blog was a bit of a priority. If only, as I put it, in case I get run down by a car. (Not that I plan to be, of course—but who does?)
However, I had no idea that LJ was marking private messages as "suspicious" I've certainly sent them before without any problem. Or none that anyone's mentioned. Perhaps this is another of TPTB's new little tweaks. LJ's had quite a number of changes recently.