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Here we go again ...
Apr. 14th, 2016 07:53 pmSo I got plunnied hard for a Ginger and Lou piece when I watched the Hart to Hart pilot. I rarely ever like pilots as much as I like a series proper, and this was no exception; I really thought it was gross how Jonathan kept manipulating Jennifer into helping him solve cases and would also just decide to pick up more cases without even asking her first. It felt like he really thought more of other people than he did his wife's safety. It was honestly hard for me to believe that they were really in a healthy relationship in the pilot. I think that was dropped in the series proper, thank goodness, and they were equally into solving cases in the series. I also think a lot of the time the cases just dropped in their laps instead of them always being asked to look into things or deciding to look into things. But anyway, the pilot has them undercover and pretending to not know each other (and in Jennifer's case, to not like Jonathan). So my plunnie involved Ginger and Lou undercover and pretending to hate on each other. They have a reason for it, of course; it's not just randomly being done.
I wrote several pages of that since getting plunnied, and then I got another plunnie while watching Perry Mason and decided I could incorporate that one into the fic too. The plunnie was horrible, involving Lou being accused of killing Ginger after an argument. Unlike a story I did some time back, this time there would be a body and Ginger would really be dead. That was unacceptable, but I tweaked the plunnie into Lou getting accused of hurting Ginger and Ginger unable to back him up because he's unconscious from the attack. The fact that they had been pretending to hate each other didn't help, either.
The story altogether is twenty pages long and thirteen of those pages were written in the last 24 hours. As much as I love to write, things don't often flow quite that easily, so I'm thrilled. I think it's finished, unless I want a little more to go into the epilogue scene, so I will hopefully be posting it soon.
Meanwhile, my Big Valley story decided it refuses to be a oneshot. I have enough material for three chapters and more to come. I kept trying to think of it as a oneshot, but when I saw the direction it wanted to go in and how there are several clear chapter breaks in what I wrote, I gave up. (And I am so grateful again to one of my steady reviewers, who is apparently a Big Valley fan. He is once again the only one commenting. Oftentimes, he and a woman are the only commenters. What I'd like to know is, why is it that the people who actually frequent some of these story categories are rarely interested enough to comment?! They read; I can see it from the hit counts. But 99% of the time, they never want to say anything!)
Yesterday I was thinking that I had two frames of mind battling for control. One was an extreme desire for a hurt/comfort fix, specifically with Ginger as the victim. The second was an extreme desire to watch Don Knight in more stuff. I got to see him on Kojak, so that hyped me up, and then later that day we got a Hawaii 5-O disc with his first guest-spot.
That was an interesting experience. In the Kojak episode he is totally a secondary bad guy, but still pretty bad, really. The Hawaii 5-O episode was ... hmm. Actually, there didn't really seem to be any "Big Bad" in that episode. There were three jewel thieves, and in their own ways, each one was sympathetic.
The episode starts out with the police chasing Don's character, who has a girl next to him in his car. There's no indication of what's been happening that led up to that point. (And they're playing the musical cue from the car and helicopter chase in Christopher's episode. Heh.) Suddenly the girl wakes up and starts fighting Don's character Jack Larsen for the wheel. That goes about as well as can be expected, and she finally opts to fling herself out of the car instead of staying with him. The jump ends up being fatal, and one is left wondering what on Earth kind of a horrible person Larsen is that the girl would basically kill herself to get away from him.
It's not until the fourth act when things really start coming together and we see that perhaps things aren't what they seemed to be. Another of the thieves is totally in love with the girl and insists on believing that Larsen stole the jewels from their hiding spot and killed the girl because he didn't want to share. But Larsen doesn't have the jewels and is looking for them too. And he really hadn't killed the girl, even though he did apparently beat her trying to get her to talk (ugh). Larsen insists that the girl double-crossed them both. But the girl has left a coded message for her guy, revealing the new location of the jewels to him. The guy goes a bit hysterical, screaming again that Larsen double-crossed them and killed the girl, and shoots him down. Chin Ho later informs us that Larsen is still alive.
Anyway, there are two possibilities of what happened. 1, That Larsen did steal the jewels because he was trying to cut the others out, the girl found out and stole them back, and he beat her and tried to get her to tell the new location. 2, That the girl stole the jewels because she was trying to cut Larsen out, Larsen found her and beat her to get her to tell the new location. The first way seems messier and more confusing, so it seems more likely that they intended for it to be the second way.
The question remains as to why the girl wanted to cut Larsen out. Either she found out he was especially awful or else she just didn't want to share because she wanted bigger shares for herself and her guy. I'd be more inclined to believe the latter, because while Larsen definitely seems to be somewhat cowardly and was horrible to beat her, the other guy is prone to violence as well. He almost killed one guy before Steve stopped him, and Steve later had to intercede when he was beating up Larsen. And then he shot Larsen. But since he was so emotional because he actually really loved the girl, I did have some level of sympathy for him. I loved that the girl loved him too. It's not often that you find crooks in shows who genuinely care about each other. But I didn't like that she wanted to cut Larsen out of their deal. And I also didn't like that Larsen beat her. But he really didn't kill her; he was shocked when she leaped out of the car. There's no indication that he wanted her dead, although it's certainly possible that she leaped out because she figured he did. Or maybe she was just that determined to keep him from getting the jewels because she wanted her guy to get them even if she couldn't share in it.
So in the end, everything is just up in the air enough that I am mildly curious about Larsen and kind of like all three of the crooks, even though at the same time I of course do not condone stealing jewels or some of their other behavior.
I kind of wish I'd taken pictures from the Charlie's Angels disc. I had debated whether I'd want to, but it's so time-consuming that I opted not to. However, I really knew that I was well on my way to including Don among the darlings. He was already pretty close to it and the more I watch an actor on the cusp of it, the greater the guarantee that they'll make it in. I would definitely say he's in. I want to watch the Mannix episode again and I should really take pictures from that. Paul Gantry is still my favorite of his characters and I think I need an icon. Plus, Tumblr seems to have a deficiency of Don Knight content, so I need to correct that as I try to correct the deficiencies they have regarding the other darlings.
Also, I finally got my second gift card after two months, only to discover that Amazon has changed their policies regarding free shipping again. It wasn't that long ago that they changed to $35 as the minimum, and now they have two different options: buy $25 worth of books and they and anything else with them ship free, or buy $49 worth of non-book merchandise. AURGH! Seriously, WTH? When they switched to $35 I thought they were just greedy, but now I'm wondering if they're in financial trouble because maybe most people try to get free shipping and they're actually losing money by trying to fill all the free shipping orders. It costs so much money to ship things that I can't believe even a Prime member's yearly fee could cover all the shipping costs if, say, they're the type to order things left and right all through the year.
So I've been trying to decide what to do. Part of me wishes I hadn't bought some music a month ago with some of my first gift card. I had actually intended not to use the gift card, but for some reason, Amazon doesn't give me the option to not use an attached gift card to pay for digital music, like it does on regular orders. I really wanted those songs and I never get to buy digital music, so I can't fully regret it, but now I'm in a position where I have to either wait for a third gift card or else spend $13 in cash in addition to the gift card money, just to reach the new minimum free shipping amount. Or I could go the book route, since there was one book I really wanted, but I wanted several DVD sets right now too and if I get $25 of books, I can only get one other thing with them if I'm trying not to go over the gift card amount. So I feel like I'd really be happier getting the DVDs right now. Part of me keeps hoping for that third gift card, but I'm in a stretch where I'm not qualifying into too many surveys for that company right now, so it could be a while before I can even get the smidgen needed to get the gift card. And prices on Amazon fluctuate, as everyone knows, so I don't know whether waiting is a good idea. (And since I already had to wait so long for the second gift card, waiting even longer isn't really appealing.)
Then if I get the DVDs now, I need to fully decide what to get. I really decided on season 1 of Rockford (the only one I'm missing) and The Big Valley season 4, but then that leaves one slot that's difficult to fill. Everything I want most is slightly less that the needed amount, so I've been considering other things I wanted but not quite as much. I think I decided on Vega$ season 2, volume 1, but now part of me wishes I could get one or two Charlie's Angels sets. But season 2 is also slightly less than the needed amount and season 5 is outrageously priced compared to all the others. Sigh. It's so frustrating that normally I'd be thrilled for some of these DVD sets to have such low prices, but that right now I just wish one of them would be a dollar or two more so that they'd fit in the needed slot....
I had been going back and forth on whether to get The Big Valley or Cannon, since I want to support the new Cannon releases. And I don't think I have many season 1 Cannon episodes recorded. But I think Cannon does air uncut, whereas I know The Big Valley does not. And season 4 has so many episodes with darlings (1 Simon, 1 H.M., 2 Richard, 2 Don ...). So I kind of wanted The Big Valley right now, but I fully intend to get Cannon too.
And I really need to have a Hawaii 5-O tag. But going back and finding all the instances where I talk about that series to tag them is not going to be fun. So time-consuming....
Also, my Lalaloopsy order arrived from Build-a-Bear's website and they stuffed pretty firmly everywhere ... except where I specifically asked them to! I didn't want a floppy neck and they didn't stuff the neck firmly! Now I have to go into the store and fix that, in addition to getting something for her to wear. I'm hoping I'll get to do that right away; I can't even fully enjoy holding her and such when I'm worried about the extreme floppiness of the neck. If I buy from the website again, I think I'm just going to order unstuffed since I'd probably always have to go into the store anyway to have it done over right.
I wrote several pages of that since getting plunnied, and then I got another plunnie while watching Perry Mason and decided I could incorporate that one into the fic too. The plunnie was horrible, involving Lou being accused of killing Ginger after an argument. Unlike a story I did some time back, this time there would be a body and Ginger would really be dead. That was unacceptable, but I tweaked the plunnie into Lou getting accused of hurting Ginger and Ginger unable to back him up because he's unconscious from the attack. The fact that they had been pretending to hate each other didn't help, either.
The story altogether is twenty pages long and thirteen of those pages were written in the last 24 hours. As much as I love to write, things don't often flow quite that easily, so I'm thrilled. I think it's finished, unless I want a little more to go into the epilogue scene, so I will hopefully be posting it soon.
Meanwhile, my Big Valley story decided it refuses to be a oneshot. I have enough material for three chapters and more to come. I kept trying to think of it as a oneshot, but when I saw the direction it wanted to go in and how there are several clear chapter breaks in what I wrote, I gave up. (And I am so grateful again to one of my steady reviewers, who is apparently a Big Valley fan. He is once again the only one commenting. Oftentimes, he and a woman are the only commenters. What I'd like to know is, why is it that the people who actually frequent some of these story categories are rarely interested enough to comment?! They read; I can see it from the hit counts. But 99% of the time, they never want to say anything!)
Yesterday I was thinking that I had two frames of mind battling for control. One was an extreme desire for a hurt/comfort fix, specifically with Ginger as the victim. The second was an extreme desire to watch Don Knight in more stuff. I got to see him on Kojak, so that hyped me up, and then later that day we got a Hawaii 5-O disc with his first guest-spot.
That was an interesting experience. In the Kojak episode he is totally a secondary bad guy, but still pretty bad, really. The Hawaii 5-O episode was ... hmm. Actually, there didn't really seem to be any "Big Bad" in that episode. There were three jewel thieves, and in their own ways, each one was sympathetic.
The episode starts out with the police chasing Don's character, who has a girl next to him in his car. There's no indication of what's been happening that led up to that point. (And they're playing the musical cue from the car and helicopter chase in Christopher's episode. Heh.) Suddenly the girl wakes up and starts fighting Don's character Jack Larsen for the wheel. That goes about as well as can be expected, and she finally opts to fling herself out of the car instead of staying with him. The jump ends up being fatal, and one is left wondering what on Earth kind of a horrible person Larsen is that the girl would basically kill herself to get away from him.
It's not until the fourth act when things really start coming together and we see that perhaps things aren't what they seemed to be. Another of the thieves is totally in love with the girl and insists on believing that Larsen stole the jewels from their hiding spot and killed the girl because he didn't want to share. But Larsen doesn't have the jewels and is looking for them too. And he really hadn't killed the girl, even though he did apparently beat her trying to get her to talk (ugh). Larsen insists that the girl double-crossed them both. But the girl has left a coded message for her guy, revealing the new location of the jewels to him. The guy goes a bit hysterical, screaming again that Larsen double-crossed them and killed the girl, and shoots him down. Chin Ho later informs us that Larsen is still alive.
Anyway, there are two possibilities of what happened. 1, That Larsen did steal the jewels because he was trying to cut the others out, the girl found out and stole them back, and he beat her and tried to get her to tell the new location. 2, That the girl stole the jewels because she was trying to cut Larsen out, Larsen found her and beat her to get her to tell the new location. The first way seems messier and more confusing, so it seems more likely that they intended for it to be the second way.
The question remains as to why the girl wanted to cut Larsen out. Either she found out he was especially awful or else she just didn't want to share because she wanted bigger shares for herself and her guy. I'd be more inclined to believe the latter, because while Larsen definitely seems to be somewhat cowardly and was horrible to beat her, the other guy is prone to violence as well. He almost killed one guy before Steve stopped him, and Steve later had to intercede when he was beating up Larsen. And then he shot Larsen. But since he was so emotional because he actually really loved the girl, I did have some level of sympathy for him. I loved that the girl loved him too. It's not often that you find crooks in shows who genuinely care about each other. But I didn't like that she wanted to cut Larsen out of their deal. And I also didn't like that Larsen beat her. But he really didn't kill her; he was shocked when she leaped out of the car. There's no indication that he wanted her dead, although it's certainly possible that she leaped out because she figured he did. Or maybe she was just that determined to keep him from getting the jewels because she wanted her guy to get them even if she couldn't share in it.
So in the end, everything is just up in the air enough that I am mildly curious about Larsen and kind of like all three of the crooks, even though at the same time I of course do not condone stealing jewels or some of their other behavior.
I kind of wish I'd taken pictures from the Charlie's Angels disc. I had debated whether I'd want to, but it's so time-consuming that I opted not to. However, I really knew that I was well on my way to including Don among the darlings. He was already pretty close to it and the more I watch an actor on the cusp of it, the greater the guarantee that they'll make it in. I would definitely say he's in. I want to watch the Mannix episode again and I should really take pictures from that. Paul Gantry is still my favorite of his characters and I think I need an icon. Plus, Tumblr seems to have a deficiency of Don Knight content, so I need to correct that as I try to correct the deficiencies they have regarding the other darlings.
Also, I finally got my second gift card after two months, only to discover that Amazon has changed their policies regarding free shipping again. It wasn't that long ago that they changed to $35 as the minimum, and now they have two different options: buy $25 worth of books and they and anything else with them ship free, or buy $49 worth of non-book merchandise. AURGH! Seriously, WTH? When they switched to $35 I thought they were just greedy, but now I'm wondering if they're in financial trouble because maybe most people try to get free shipping and they're actually losing money by trying to fill all the free shipping orders. It costs so much money to ship things that I can't believe even a Prime member's yearly fee could cover all the shipping costs if, say, they're the type to order things left and right all through the year.
So I've been trying to decide what to do. Part of me wishes I hadn't bought some music a month ago with some of my first gift card. I had actually intended not to use the gift card, but for some reason, Amazon doesn't give me the option to not use an attached gift card to pay for digital music, like it does on regular orders. I really wanted those songs and I never get to buy digital music, so I can't fully regret it, but now I'm in a position where I have to either wait for a third gift card or else spend $13 in cash in addition to the gift card money, just to reach the new minimum free shipping amount. Or I could go the book route, since there was one book I really wanted, but I wanted several DVD sets right now too and if I get $25 of books, I can only get one other thing with them if I'm trying not to go over the gift card amount. So I feel like I'd really be happier getting the DVDs right now. Part of me keeps hoping for that third gift card, but I'm in a stretch where I'm not qualifying into too many surveys for that company right now, so it could be a while before I can even get the smidgen needed to get the gift card. And prices on Amazon fluctuate, as everyone knows, so I don't know whether waiting is a good idea. (And since I already had to wait so long for the second gift card, waiting even longer isn't really appealing.)
Then if I get the DVDs now, I need to fully decide what to get. I really decided on season 1 of Rockford (the only one I'm missing) and The Big Valley season 4, but then that leaves one slot that's difficult to fill. Everything I want most is slightly less that the needed amount, so I've been considering other things I wanted but not quite as much. I think I decided on Vega$ season 2, volume 1, but now part of me wishes I could get one or two Charlie's Angels sets. But season 2 is also slightly less than the needed amount and season 5 is outrageously priced compared to all the others. Sigh. It's so frustrating that normally I'd be thrilled for some of these DVD sets to have such low prices, but that right now I just wish one of them would be a dollar or two more so that they'd fit in the needed slot....
I had been going back and forth on whether to get The Big Valley or Cannon, since I want to support the new Cannon releases. And I don't think I have many season 1 Cannon episodes recorded. But I think Cannon does air uncut, whereas I know The Big Valley does not. And season 4 has so many episodes with darlings (1 Simon, 1 H.M., 2 Richard, 2 Don ...). So I kind of wanted The Big Valley right now, but I fully intend to get Cannon too.
And I really need to have a Hawaii 5-O tag. But going back and finding all the instances where I talk about that series to tag them is not going to be fun. So time-consuming....
Also, my Lalaloopsy order arrived from Build-a-Bear's website and they stuffed pretty firmly everywhere ... except where I specifically asked them to! I didn't want a floppy neck and they didn't stuff the neck firmly! Now I have to go into the store and fix that, in addition to getting something for her to wear. I'm hoping I'll get to do that right away; I can't even fully enjoy holding her and such when I'm worried about the extreme floppiness of the neck. If I buy from the website again, I think I'm just going to order unstuffed since I'd probably always have to go into the store anyway to have it done over right.
