So. Chapter one done. More or less. Knowing myself, I'll return to it a few more times to shove in witty ideas that will totally unbalance the rhythm, but ones which I cannot live without ... 

Now. Decisions. Do I move to the least spectacular, albeit final chapter or do I continue chronologically?

Cons: Dunno. Stuff. Reasons. Probably good reasons.

Pros: The first chapter ends in a sort of ... closure note. The third would pick up beautifully. And then the third one ends on an adventurous note, as is how the second begins... Tone wise this would work best. 

The second one is the most fun. Leaving the best for last?

The third one is the shortest and would not be so difficult to write. So, getting that out of the way, I'd have the rest of the year for building the mammoth that is the midrif ... 

Decisions, decisions... 

Murphy says that looking at beautiful things makes you want to make good choices ... 

Hm. Half an hour before the General is home. I'll wait until then.

I'm 190 pages in in Word or 321 pages in in InDesign; Morphei just gave Kay the entire breadcrumb trail and I only have fourteen pages of the first chapter left, counting in the scene where everyone tries to pressure Kay into choosing a side and she's well over being that naive. Sweet, sweet closure. Easy sailing from here on out.

Okay! Okay. So, I think four days of staring in front of myself during most social interactions and spending some very restless moments on the toilet (why do best ideas always come just as I pull down my unmentionables and of course right then I have nothing to write them on?) This was a lot of acting weird from a normal person's perspective. But it felt good to use my brain. I have a good brain. Once you get the wheels turning, the endgine excercises some admirable might.

          I helped myself by pulling all four Kay-Murphy scenes into a new file and just combed through them time and again, just for structure. First I needed to make it all into one event, and the flirty-threatening attitude had to go. it was great, it was fun to read, but it had to go. Instead I weaved the thing into a long, slow, friendly but sad conversation, a lot like the one she had with Nuada, but not quite like it. There are some nice twists there that I don't want to give away just yet and in the end, I think the result is even better. I may have to watch so that the cadence doesn't become bothersome, like a jo-jo, but instead a smooth delivery to the last part of the first chapter: Marowit's execution. 

           So, a day or two more and we're done with the first third. Great job, brain!

Eeeerghhh... I've written about a dozen pages of conversation between Kay and Morphei, after he dies, but although their lines are deep and almost friendly, they're missing that adorable spunk they had when they were talking as enemies. He would always threaten her and she would always call him a pillock and the debates were better for it... I am completely torn between keeping the mood suspended and dream-like or having it back to the sexy, dangerous version.... damn it. Frikkidy frak.

Crap, I caught a muscle cold in my shoulder and now my upper back is so stiff and sore I'm getting a bad taste in my mouth. Auch. That'll teach me to sit underdressed in a garden for two hours, having coffee with younger men. 

By younger I mean three days. And when I say underdressed, before anyone gets any ideas and the General hatchets my head off, I only had a tank-top, a T-shirt, and a woolly sweater on. I should have added the windbreaker because, well, it was windy.

Some poster

I really like this poster. Not as if it's the best poster ever, but it's a 100 times better than anything else about this production, i have no idea what movie this is nor am I at all interested in it. But when someone told the graphic designer - make us a really REALLY good poster about some who-the-fuck cares movie, and this is what they did, KUDOS. It would even work without the shadows, since we can see the shadow on the newspaper already....

LoL, can you see the shadow's right arm biceps is visibly photoshopped? :D It's a lighter shade than the original form of the arm. Ouch.

PUNS!!
:D

The Martian (*spoilers*, be warned)

 

Guess my expectations were really high and I didn't understand all of it, having only read half the book so far, but it's a cool movie and there were several things I liked about it. 

First, the things I didn't like/get:

I didn't get how come if they all left because of the storm and the threat of tipping over the... MAV, I think it was called, why was there a MAV sent down for Ares IV four years in advance to the Ares IV team arriving... Wouldn't that totally put the MAV IV in danger of being tipped by any random storm? 

This may be something i didn't see right, but why does the Kapoor character send a lower employee footage of Mark being alive, so she can recognize it and then hysterically phone back the Kapoor man to tell him what she just found and that it's important?

Having watched Gravity, I didn't find it plausible when one of the astronauts just leaves the Hermes and strolls around on the outside un-tethered.

Why, if the commander in the end has the thruster chair, why does she need to be tethered? 

Why did the Hermes have to collect the supplies and not just turn or use the lunar sling acceleration? That part might be explained better in the book, there may be a clear answer.

It didn't portray loneliness very well, because there's always something happening so dramatically. Okay, so Mark Watney was a really fun guy, but even at the beginning of Prometheus, when the ship is sleeping and that freaky android is all by himself, the loneliness is portrayed better. But here even when he's contemplating his singular existence on the whole planet (that we know of), it's like that's the best thing ever.

I thought the romance between the two astronauts, especially the baby in the end is completely stupid. Sex, okay, fine, obviously, but still completely unnecessary. 

If Jessica Chastain wasn't so overwhelmingly beautiful, her role would be entirely dull. seriously, ANYBODY could act like that, any actress. But true, she is super pretty and no matter what she says is plausible, because just keep talking and we'll just keep looking. 

It's true when someone said all that's missing was a Wilson.  

It did feel kind of high horse, as I've read somewhere, that this is such an American, such a NASA pride parade, as if no other agency on the planet has anything to do with space travel. Yes, NASA rocks, but none of the stations in the sky at the moment are American, guys.

---

And now things I liked.

I liked the flute soundback - really similar to that of Alien, and it was awesome.

The deserts, man, those endless deserts. I would walk the shit out of those deserts. I have to check where they shot this, because that's certainly my next vacation, right after the sights from Prometheus (Iceland) and half the sights from Exodus... So Ridley Scott is my vacation destination promoter, really. 

My grandma thought this was a documentary :D Bless her. 

I loved it in the end when the trainees of NASA run by him and they all slow down and respect him.

Michael Pena. Even better here than in Ant Man. That guy is beyond awesome. He'll never get any award for his performances, because he's, you know, a Latino, but he totally steals the show.

Phobos sliding by.

THE SOJOURNER!! <3 <3 <3

The Glorfindel reference. Again, I was the only person in the theater laughing out loud. Where are all the nerds gone??