They play hockey!

[mrissa]

For months I have been saying I should write some synopses. Now I'm actually doing it. I hate synopses. On the up side, as synopses go, they've been relatively painless. I avoided using this one for the relevant project:
She's the Laird's daughter, wild and restless. He's a fallen knight, claimed by the Queen of Air and Darkness. They play hockey!

But I thought of it, is the thing, and now I'm trying desperately not to overapply it to other projects:
She's the Evil Regent in retirement. He's magically imbued with the personification of the law of the land. They play hockey! Err, no, fight crime. I totally meant fight crime on that one. Or fight for crime. One or the other, I'm almost sure.

Or:
She's a teenage refugee from a destroyed planet. He's the captain of a troop of space Marines. They play hockey! Ummmm...again with the fighting crime, I think.

Or:
He's a skald with a silver arm who owes the gods a favor. She's a princess from a foreign land, used against her will in the schemes of the mighty. They play hockey! I really can't get away with them playing hockey. If there was magical puffin curling, however, I wouldn't say no.

But I probably should say no, because magical puffin curling is silly. But you can just see them sliding across the ice with their little feet tucked up under them, all glowing blue and bewildered and "gronk!"....

Right then. Synopses. Really.

Comments

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

No really! I need that puffin curling story now, 'cause I can see it too, and am desperately trying to hold in the giggles, because my coworkers all think I'm the "quiet" one. :)

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I was holding on until I got to "gronk!" That broke me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Puffin dialog is remarkably easy to write.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So doesn't that mean I should avoid writing it?

*gronk*

[intrepida.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be pondering magical puffin culring all through my Topography of Rome class. Thanks!

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

Of course not! I can always read it at home. Jeff likes to hear me laughing.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Also, there's not really a suitable short and snappy converse of "they fight crime !" and "they keep trying to get the competent authorities to handle crime while they go out and get a good meal and get laid, but crime keeps following them home" doesn't really condense much.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In Soviet Russia, crime fights you?

Re: *gronk*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My pleasure!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

On reflection, I can kind of do that for the first half of The Perfection:

He's an adolescent of a mysterious human subspecies enslaved by barbarians in childhood. She's an obsessive last survivor of a transhuman clade running a technovigilante quasi-religious order from an abandoned orbital facility. In the year 28,000 Gregorian*, on and off an Earth whose recolonisation by the human species is slowly failing, they fight... just about everybody.

Pretty much everything else of mine does not really have two characters that could be made that pivotal, though. One, or three, or four, or an ensemble cast, but not so many pairs.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"But who is your target audience ?"
"Oh no. Nobody gets shot for real in Sovietland !"

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Drat. Forgot the footnote, which should read:

*"Who names a calendar after a bunch of chanting monks ?"

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

He's a row of primal variables representing the first player's strategy. She's a column of duals indicating the second player's expectation. They fight!

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Isn't that "who names a style of chant after a system for keeping Easter in the spring?"

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

..but they both do better long term by co-operating.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I squished a couple of things into pairs that really aren't. In fact, most of them really aren't.

[jenett]

I would read all of these. Just saying.

And the puffin imagery made me lose it. At work. In giggles.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I'd read the skald & princess hockey story. If there were a cute puffin sidekick, so much the better. However, curling with the puffin just seems cruel.

I <3 puffins!

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

She's a Scandasotan writer with a flair for mixing the sublime and the absurd. Her sidekick is the Wonder-poodle, trainer of monkeys and lover of mud. They play hockey!


You're right. It totally works. I wonder if it can replace, "in bed with a gun" at the end of fortune cookie fortunes...

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

That was intentional, yes.

Also, "who wants twelve pictures of Gregory the Great in a swimsuit ?" was a bit too modern-culture specific.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I blame Matt Fraction (my former savantmag.com co-editor) and Warren Ellis for the psychotic pervasiveness of the "They Fight Crime!" meme.

That said, "They play hockey!" is probably the coolest manifestation of that particular meme that I've ever seen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. We can certainly give it a try.

I am not at all sure that the said Wonder-poodle is going to get that she can't grab the puck and run around brandishing it at people, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Alec! Bad pun!

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Y'know what the worst part is? I totally didn't even notice it as I wrote it.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Hee! You just made my day. Thanks!

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I love you brain. Please, please, pretty please, write something with magical puffin curling? In my mind, it takes place down a Scandosotan rabbit hole (or perhaps ice-fishing hole?), but I'm sure whatever you come up with will be superiorly authentic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a natural gift, is what.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Authentic?

"I just love her puffin curling scenes. They're so authentic."

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

Dammit! I held on past the "gronk!" and then you made me lose it with this comment.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is very hard to get me to be repentant about this sort of thing.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Part of me wishes my stories could be described with Fighting Crime. "He's a sentient plant alien with anxiety issues. She's a tough-as-nails human space investigator with a dirty job to do. They fight crime!" works for certain values of crime. Everything else is, "She's a moderately complicated mage fighting for her family and way of life. She-- no, this other she, over here-- is a moderately complicated non-mage fighting as well. They fight everyone! Except each other. Except when they do. They just fight. And banter."

Between They Fight Crime and the Hero Machine thing, I shall giggle a lot this coming week.

Fortune cookies

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

You're right. It totally works. I wonder if it can replace, "in bed with a gun" at the end of fortune cookie fortunes...

Oh, I'm so going to start doing that.

suzanne

authentic

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

"I just love her puffin curling scenes. They're so authentic."

*splorts* Oh thank you. I really needed that chuckle.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Well, for the Scandosotan parts, I meant, but if anyone can write authentic magical puffin curling, it's you.

She's an ex-physics vigilante who wields a mean science fiction pen; it's a strange book where Minnesota nice meets the Queen of Hearts on ice. Together, they're authentic!

*handwave, handwave, handwave*

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Also, I've been meaning to ask you--have you seen Men with Brooms?

[ellarien]

Hmmm. Now, I do get characters in pairs -- so much so that I often have trouble telling which one is the actual protagonist.

She's a shy Physics student. He's an interdimensional traveler with a literally tangled past. They save a planet.

He's a retired Admiral with his own submarine. She's a librarian with an alien in her family tree. They fight crime. (Well, almost. The crime in question being Grand Theft Planet, or possibly a very old genocide.)

He's a journalist who's seen one too many disasters. She's an interplanetary gate operator. They ... ah. She saves the worlds; he watches, makes an impassioned plea to the villain at a crucial moment, and follows her home afterwards.

He's a computer hacker raised by aliens. She's a musician raised on a farming planet. They ... find their parents. (And restore the possibility of fast hyperspatial travel, but that's incidental.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Can't? I suspect she can. Whether the other players want her to may be a different matter.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

That third one sounds like a variant of the plot of The River Wild. But I bet in your version he doesn't get all the credit for saving everyone.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I understand the gronking. But why do they glow blue?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Maaaaaagic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, sadly.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

That movie has magical beavers, so perhaps puffins wouldn't be out of place in a remake/sequel.

I just love her puffin curling scenes. They're so authentic.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

That was the funniest line of the post, in my opinion.