Meme - 2018 Writing Asks

1. Do you have a word-count goal for 2018?

2. Will you participate in any fandom exchanges or fic challenges, etc?

3. Do you anticipate writing for a new fandom in 2018? Which one?

4. Do you think you’ll stop writing for a fandom in 2018? Which one?

5. Which WIP is first on your list to complete this year? Will you post a snippet?

6. Which yet-to-be-started fic is first on your list?

7. Will you change anything about the way you interact with other writers?

8. Is there a story idea in your mental vault that you’ve never been brave enough to try writing? Is 2018 the year?

9. Short term goals… what do you hope to complete this week or in January?

10. Will you keep a record of all the fics you write and/or post this year?

11. Would you like to try any new fanfic genres or tropes in 2018?

12. Will you change anything about the way you edit or rewrite in 2018?

13. Aside from fanfic, are there any other fan works you’d like to try creating? Fanart, or fanvids, gifsets, or podfic?

14. Have you ever lost large chunks of your work in the past, due to not backing up your work? Will you change your methods in 2018?

15. Do you foresee any personal or professional obstacles in 2018, that would keep you from creating fanworks?

16. Do you have that one fanfic that you wrote a ton for, ages ago, but never posted? Will this be the year, come hell or high water, that it WILL get finished and posted?

17. Do you typically answer all comments/reviews individually? Do you plan to change the way you interact with your readers this year?

18. Do you typically post multi-chapters as you write, or finish it all and then start posting? Would you like to change your posting method?

19. Would you consider non-fandom writing events, like NaNoWriMo or writing contests?

20. Any plans to work on original fiction this year?

100 Great Scenes In Not So Great Films - 24 - The Flamenco Fight in "Puss In Boots"

The Case For The Prosecution: I do feel that I am being mean because I first saw "Puss In Boots" when I was ... older than the target audience. But it does the same thing that a lot of children's lit and films do which annoyed me as a child and annoy me still:

Look at character X, see how their poor behaviour is due to the bad things that have happened to them.

And my response is still, yes, but they're still being an arsehole. And Humpty Dumpty is. Repeatedly. So no, I am not going to like him or forgive him quite as easily as Puss does. But then again, Puss is a gentleman.

The Scene Itself:

Watch on YouTube

Why the scene is so good:

It's music and how well it fits both the dancing and the fighting, the tempo of it and the style. It's just so full of the joy of sword-fighting and dancing, and has lovely touches like the kitty litter diss and the fencing footwork.

FIFA World Cup Draw

As I am prone to doing, I've done a redraw of the 2018 FIFA World Cup based purely on the rankings. The rankings used are FIFA's October ones, as that was the latest available ranking when the draw itself took place.

The result of the real draw can be seen here.

Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D	Group E	Group F	Group G	Group H
Germany	Brazil	Portugal	Argentina	Belgium	Poland	Switzerland	France
Denmark	Croatia	Uruguay	England	Mexico	Peru	Spain	Colombia
Costa Rica	Iceland	Sweden	Tunisia	Egypt	Senegal	Iran	Serbia
Saudi Arabia	South Korea	Panama	Russia	Japan	Australia	Morocco	Nigeria

I abided by the FIFA rules that each team could have no more than 1 team from each Confederation (or no more than 2 from UEFA). To comply with this I had to swap Iceland and Costa Rica to stop there being too many UEFA teams in Group A and I had to move Australia and Japan along one to prevent there being two Asian Football Association teams in group G. (Yes, Australia is in the Asian Football Confederation, not the Oceania one.)

Panama, South Korea and Saudi Arabia have all been moved up one, again to prevent there being too many UEFA teams in group A. I had to move that many because if I'd just swapped Saudi Arabia, there'd be too many UEFA teams in B, and if just Saudi Arabia and South Korea then there would have been too many in Group C. Mostly this shows how many more European teams are put in the World Cup draw.

Groups A, D and H have 1 out of 4 of the same teams as the random draw, while groups B, C, E, F and G are completely different. I suspect Portugal and Spain might prefer mine, while in my draw, groups B and H are a bit group of deathy.

FIFA, however, also have a tradition whereby the host country is always the first team in group A (so that they get to have the opening match). If I apply this rule to a draw from the rankings, you get these pools.

Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D	Group E	Group F	Group G	Group H
Russia	Germany	Brazil	Portugal	Argentina	Belgium	Poland	Switzerland
Croatia	Uruguay	England	Peru	Mexico	Spain	Colombia	France
Costa Rica	Denmark	Iceland	Sweden	Tunisia	Egypt	Senegal	Iran
Saudi Arabia	South Korea	Panama	Morocco	Japan	Australia	Serbia	Nigeria

For version 2 I had to swap Peru and Mexico to stop there being two South American teams in group E, Denmark and Costa Rica to stop there being too many European teams in group A and Serbia and Nigeria to stop there being too many European teams in group H. Finally, I also had to swap Japan and Morocco to prevent there being two African teams in group E.

Group A now has 2/4 teams the same as the real drawn while the remaining groups are completely different. I suspect England are glad this wasn't the real draw, as they would face the mighty Iceland (and some team called Brazil), and groups E and F look tasty.

There was a big to-do-age about how easy Russia's real draw was, but I think it's more of an artefact of putting the hosts in Group A. Because Russia's ranking is lower than everyone else's, there were always going to be two weak teams in A, and, because Russia are in UEFA, the weak team weren't going to be the weakest of the European teams, who might, or might not, be better than Saudi Arabia, who they did get.

And, even with this allegedly suspiciously easy group (I am deeply, deeply dubious of the stats, factoids and logic used to define group A as an easy group, from a Russian perspective), Russia still aren't going to qualify.

I know this, you know this, they know this. The terribleness of the Russian national football team is known factor.

It is inexplicable.

I have no idea if it's because the shape of the Russian football season is so different to others, or if it's that the huge amounts of money floating about the Russian league have lead to a lack of players for the national team, or if my curse on Fabio Capello had some unfortunate knock-on effects. Maybe all the really athletically ept Russians do other sports. Whatever the cause, there is something rotten with Russian football and they haven't been able to fix it before this World Cup. That means that the atmosphere for the later stages might be lacking. That FIFA know this, and might try to fix it, might be why people were suspicious of the draw, although I think it was within the bounds of probable draws due to Russia being picked first.