Fandoms: Thunderbirds Are Go!, Kingsman: The Secret Service
Genre: flashback
Rating: Gen
Characters: Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, Roxy "Lancelot" Morton, Sherbert
Pairings: none
This is a crossover and part of a proposed "5 Ws and an H" (or maybe "Six Questions") series. The question it answers is "How" or perhaps "When" as in "When/How did Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward get her pug, Sherbert?" Answer: During her training for the Kingsman organization. Some knowledge of both properties is probably required. I still have no idea if Sherbert is male or female, so I'm plunking for male. Also, he looks like a puppy and not a full-grown pug, so I've got an explanation for that. I've also posited that Lord Hugh Creighton-Ward is/was a Kingsman.

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Yes, I am a winner.

That doesn't mean I'm finished. I am never finished at the end of NaNoWriMo.

Story is a Thunderbirds fanfic, Guardian Angels, Inc. I am not posting until it's finished and if it is, it'll go to my WordPress site first.

I'd much prefer to have one where I can use a custom image as a header like I do on my tumblr and WordPress build. But a lot of the comms that might have that available are closed down for one reason or another. I found a nice style at a defunct comm but when I turned off my userpics in each comment, it left an ampersand behind--something I couldn't get rid of! So, this bright, big, and very bold theme will do for now.

The shelter had a "$5 Felines, $15 Fidos" because they were overcrowded. I figured this was the right time to get a new companion for Kami as we don't actually know how much longer Inky has (he's 12). So my daughter and I went out on Thursday to see if someone new caught our eye.

There were some torties that reminded me of Tika, (;_;) as well as a couple of dilute blues which reminded the Girl of Callie. There were some really pretty calicos, the kinds with dramatic patches of dark and light on white fur. But the one who really captured our hearts was a skinny brown tabby who actually climbed up on the Girl's shoulder when we took her out of the cage.

The shelter named her Cindy. We've since renamed her Willow. She is definitely a people cat and though introductions to the other cats has been relatively smooth so far, it's the introduction to the dogs that has us wary. Lacey has been mostly curious--hackles slightly raised, tail wagging, and following Willow to sniff her butt. (Willow freaks at this, of course.) But Chala? She sees prey and barks loudly whenever Willow shows her face in the kitchen--which really freaks Willow out! We've had to double the gate to keep Willow in the back of the house as she's skinny enough to pass through the bars. We let her out into the rest of the house when the dogs are in bed. Even then, Chala will bark. Truth be told, neither Chala nor Kami has gone through this "adding a new cat" business before, something we have kept in mind as we do this.

Otherwise, so far, so good. Boy #2 came up with the name Willow; he said her disappearing act whenever a dog approached reminded him of a will o' the wisp, which he mangled as willow wisp. I think Wisp would have been a good name for her, too.

Pics to come when I beg them from the Girl. If you're a friend on FB, there are some posted there.

Despite having lived outside of Massachusetts for over half my life, I am still a Bostonian at heart. I grew up here. It was a huge part of my life, especially during my teen years. So, my heart breaks to see the venerable Boston Marathon marred by senseless violence directed at the innocent. Tears spring to my eyes at the caring responses from my fellow Bostonians and my fellow Americans. I seethe when I think that someone imagined this brutish action would send their demented, blathering “message” to the people of Boston. To America. To us.

Whoever did this: beware. Remember what we did at Lexington and Concord. Remember that we are the home of Old Ironsides. The blood of those patriots, those warriors, still runs through our veins and have been further strengthened by the myriad immigrants who have made Boston their home.

You will not get away with this.

Part of last night’s conversation was in response to Boy #2’s suggestion that we watch The Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellan, 1982). We finally bought a DVD version of this because our taped-from-my-parents’-TV VHS copy died. Hubby led off the discussion on “fictional gentlemen adventurers with secret identities”, with an eye to finding out if there was one older than Sir Percy Blakeney. I mean, the Baroness D’Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel back in 1903. There had to be somebody!

Well, we really couldn’t think of one! Zorro, whose pedigree is similar, wasn’t created until 1919 in “The Curse of Capistrano”. The Shadow, another “wealthy man about town” was 1930. Wikipedia suggests Sherlock Holmes to have or be a secret identity, but he was more a master of disguise – then again, so is Sir Percy! But, as Hubby put it, “he’s not going around under an assumed name in a more or less constant fashion”.

Tonight I brought up two old Disney favorites that I thought might be relevant. One was the Swamp Fox, who is a historical figure anyway and not at all fictional. The “old swamp fox” was a sobriquet the British gave him.

The other was the Scarecrow, or the Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn, who was a smuggler and pirate with a “secret identity” of a country vicar. Hubby brought out the fact that the man was not a hero, and a quick look at Wikipedia showed that his first appearance was 1915. Hubby mentioned a character in an operetta, that of an archeologist who had a secret identity of a freedom-fighter in Northern Africa. The operetta was The Desert Song, and was written in 1926. It was inspired both by tales of Lawrence of Arabia and a 1925 uprising in Morocco. The archeologist’s name was Pierre Birabeau and his heroic alter ego was The Red Shadow. (It had a really cool song: The Riffs.)

So, as far as I can tell, ol’ Percy is an original! Do any of my readers or friends have any candidates? (And don’t you just love our table talk?)

Within just a day, I’ve had the pleasure of hauling out my Thunderbirds knowledge (with all the attendant books and other paraphernalia) to help a couple of fellow fanfic writers and personal friends. It was certainly fun, especially all the stuff about Alan Tracy’s educational background. Add to this my posting the first chapter of one of my short stories (Burning Muses) at AO3 and uploading a new post to my RP, and I’m full of Thunderbirds at the moment. It’s given me quite a hunger for fic and for writing or editing what I already have up. I edited the first chapter of Burning Muses, making it tighter. In many respects it was like my edit of the little scene I wrote a few days ago. The changes I made brought forth Brains’s voice and made him less … poetic. (Because if Brains is anything, it is NOT poetic.)

Then, there was the chatter at the dinner table. We went from Gosford Park to Downton Abbey (which we have not seen) to Acorn (which streams Downton Abbey), and then to Netflix – where movies are more plenteous in DVD than in streaming. This led to BBC America (and how we could get it on cable), to other premium cable services, to Game of Thrones and whether or not the TV series matched the novels. That particular thought brought out movies that didn’t match their source material – Boy #2 brought up the Percy Jackson movie (The Lightning Thief). This brought the whole shebang back to … Thunderbirds! The Girl’s comment: “I knew there was another kids movie like that! ” Hubby brought up that Frakes had said in an post-film interview that he directed the movie that the producers wanted, even though he knew the fans would be “annoyed by it” (Hubby’s words, not Frakes’s.) I promptly chimed in. “Annoyed? Annoyed?” Which, of course, is far too mild a term to describe the old guard’s intense hatred of the film.

Maybe if he’d stayed closer to the source material, we’d have had another Thunderbirds movie. After all,  there will be another Percy Jackson film, coming out this year.

Some fandoms get all the luck…

Gerry Anderson dies at 83.

The end of an era, really, and a big loss.

I was rather hoping I’d go on doing a drabble a day until the start of NaNo, but something came up today that brought the drabble train to a screeching halt in favor of my novel. I’ll talk about it in a moment, but first, a recap of the whole drabble a day experience.

Writing time frame: September 16th through 28th.

Posting time frame: September 17th through 30th

Total writing time: 13 days

Days missed: 1, leaving 12 writing days

Drabbles written: 15, plus an alternate ending for one. Only one of these I thought was sub-par.

Drabbles posted: 14 as of today.

So, it was pretty good. I only missed one day of writing and the rest saw one or more written.

( Revelations )