#archwrites

[copperbadge]

So the algorithms have informed me of a White Collar reboot: https:// variety.com /2024/tv/news/white-collar-reboot-willie-garson-1236028159/

Which hope is more futile: no more Nazi loot, or canon OT3?

Oh, no, it's like running into an ex you dumped years ago because they were awful but they look amazing and are obviously flirting with you. Oh, no, White Collar, I cannot allow you to break my heart a second time.

I feel like...Jeff Easton did not react super great to the entirely justified yelling about the badly mishandled Nazi Loot plotline last time, but I do think he maybe learned that Nazis are in fact a real thing and not a plot point that you get to play with however you like. And the climate vis-a-vis fascism in 2024 is very different from what it was in 2011. I think any production or distribution company would give him much less of a free hand in terms of "Let's do a lighthearted dramedy plotline about the lasting ramifications of intentional and industrialized genocide. Oh, we will mostly ignore the genocide part, don't worry."

Fuck, I hope. I never even watched the last season of the last run. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Maybe I'm a sucker, I've been a sucker before, but even though I probably won't watch it, I want to believe that "no more nazi loot" has strong odds. As for a canon OT3...yeah, awful as it is, I want that to be the futile hope, because if it's between "no nazis" or "my OT3 but nazis" I'm going with "no nazis" and if folks feel differently they should quietly walk away from me right now.

Not that you can never write a story with nazi loot in it and make it good and meaningful, but you have to first realize that WWII was not just a setting for an Indiana Jones movie. I'm not confident a lot of people in the White Collar writers room have had this realization.

Man, you either don't get renewed for a third season or you live long enough to become a villain. (Or you are John Rogers. John Rogers, please do not let me down.)

[intosnarkness]

Hello yes I gotta lotta problems with you person

1. Too charming

2. Too funny

3. Too good at writing

4. Too kind and supportive

In conclusion please refer back to this list as needed

This bitch right here you guys. I’ve know Arch for like 15 years at this point (we met in 2006, I think?) and she’s held on to all these grievances for SO LONG and just now pops them out like a fucking nuclear can of Pillsbury Grands Biscuits.

You wanna dance, professor?

1. Too smrt

2. Too good at wearing red lipstick (it’s a PROBLEM)

3. Way, way too good at encouraging me to write Dumbledore/Dobby fanfiction when I was in my 20s

4. Too in Iowa so I can’t go to her house and lie on the couch and talk about how the framing device of a guy telling story in 1800s literature is totally echoed in the Princess Bride but also Midsummers Nights Dream

( Anonymously tell me a problem you have with me.  )

[notfknapplicable]

@what-alchemy it actually IS a low-residency MFA program!  And I agree, it’s really the only way I’d be able to keep my job and get an advanced degree.  I also have plans for a master’s in library science, but I wanna start this program first.  That particular MS program is fully online and I have a coworker who is also a “nontraditional student” and a double major, so I feel like if she can do that with undergrad work then I could pursue an MFA and an MS simultaneously while still working.  But again, I wanna start the MFA before I apply for the MS, just to be sure I can handle something like that.  Being a librarian would be right up my alley.

@archwrites thank you!  I’m very excited and feeling more positive than negative about my prospects.

[roboticonography]

archwrites replied to your post “what is your "ideal" robot? I mean actual robots. What is your...”

Offended that the Robot Devil doesn’t make this list

Speaking his name just makes it that much more likely that he will show up. You are right, though. He is an excellent robot. And he gives great writing advice.

“THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY!”

[arukou-arukou]

catmemes4lyf reblogged your post and added:

one time i filled the coffee maker and ran it,...

musicalluna replied to your post “Me this morning: This...this coffee looks wrong. What happened? Why is...”

oh no

keeperofkats replied to your post “Me this morning: This...this coffee looks wrong. What happened? Why is...”

同感

archwrites replied to your post “Me this morning: This...this coffee looks wrong. What happened? Why is...”

The purest bafflement a human can experience

What I’m getting from these replies is that I am not the only one who has zombied their way into this situation. Truly the early morning is a cursed time.

[copperbadge]

archwrites on this post about the Gardner Heist

I know if you wanted to do this you already would be, but I’m just saying I’d read your book about the heist

Honestly, given I have my own pet theory I’m probably not a good person to write it -- while I could try to be objective, as Rex Stout says, nothing corrupts a person so thoroughly as the writing of a book :D I also really wouldn’t be doing anything more than pulling together threads other people have already gone over, except for one specific research project for which I would need access that the Gardner’s not likely to give to some rando from Chicago (and honestly the information I’m after might not exist).

What I would really like to do is write a fictional book about the return of the paintings. If the paintings came back to the Gardner, even if they were damaged, it would be worldwide news. There would be lines around the block to get in and huge donations pledged for restoration or the exhibition of the missing paintings, even if you didn’t get them all back, even if you JUST got back the Vermeer and maybe one of the Rembrandts, perhaps some of the sketches. 

The Gardner does have a legal condition that nothing in the museum be permanently changed but it also has permission to send paintings out on tour, and it could charge absolute top dollar from the museums it partnered with to exhibit the stolen paintings. It would be a massive PR boost and it could probably seriously enhance the museum’s endowment -- I don’t know what their endowment is but they’re currently in a $65M campaign and just got a $5M matching gift, and they could earn that match in probably six months if the paintings came back. 

So here’s the thing: what a spectacular temptation it would be to forge those works. The Gardner moreso than most museums is connected to the art crime community precisely BECAUSE of the theft, so finding a forger isn’t even that tough, theoretically. What if a curator -- or even a development officer -- commissioned a forger to “return” a handful of the stolen works?

I think there’s a spectacular novel in the idea that the works just showed up on the Gardner’s loading dock one day, and nobody can figure out if they’re the real thing or exquisite forgeries. So you write the book as if it’s a nonfiction book about the heist and the return, and you include first-hand accounts Studs Terkel style, and then the very last interview is either the thief who stole and eventually returned them, or the staff member who commissioned the fraud. 

WHAT a book that would be. 

[copperbadge]

pipgraham replied to this post

but is it gay?

Six Harvests? Not especially -- the protagonist and his wife are both straight, and it’s set in a small town in Texas in the 1930s with all that entails. There is a secondary character, the protagonist’s sister, who is a lesbian, but that really only comes into play in the last third or so of the book, and isn’t a major plot thread (she’s not living in the town for most of her story). 

Nameless is significantly more gay; it’s not especially overt, like there’s no sex scenes or anything, but it’s very clearly a love story between two men who are both excruciatingly bad at being in love. 

archwrites replied to this post

Is it Bunburying if you didn’t invent the dying relative 🤔

BUNBURY BY PROXY. Even funnier! 

col1999 replied to this post

I just switched to A&H litter because the store was out of my regular one, and my cats L O V E it. Like 'enthusiastically tossing it everywhere' love it. Which is not awesome, but what IS awesome is that the litter clumps like a motherfucker, so. Pros and cons.

It might just be a function of A&H litter, too -- mine also like to kick it everywhere, especially when I’ve just refilled the box. Polk will get in and kick litter out of the box until the level is precisely to her liking, and then Deebs will go garden in it for half an hour, the little filth monsters. 

ilacatz replied to this post

The annoying thing is that each time I see that ask I get tempted to find out if the fic mentioned actually exists because bile fascination

So the good news is 

[Description: A screengrab of AO3 search results; the search was for tags Mpreg, Jesus Christ, and Seahorses, and there are no results found.]

Not to be judgey, but the unsettling news is that if you remove “Seahorses” you get seven hits. Now, only two of those are Pregnant Jesus, but both are Pregnant Jesus in an A/B/O AU, and I read them both with my own two eyeballs, and I blame you. 

annechen-melo replied to this post

I know it would be treif as all get out to use the onion jam I have in the fridge (which has bacon in it) but what about a savory version with caramelized onions?

I’ve definitely seen savory Hamantaschen before! I will say I wouldn’t use the cookie recipe -- if you’re going to use something like caramelized onions, I’d use pie crust and essentially make little onion tarts. 

[copperbadge]

archwrites

SAM, have you seen the hilarious article about the Great Bucatini Shortage of 2020? It filled me with delight.

Amusingly, the article is why I bought some! 

It’s a serious investigation into the issue, but I had never heard of Bucatini, and the idea of a bunch of people who ate this random esoteric pasta SO OFTEN that they noticed when it was no longer available had me wondering, for about the first quarter of the article, if it was serious. And they talked about not seeing it on shelves, and going to other cities to find some, and I was like “...really?”

I went to Amazon, which you all know I don’t normally shop at, and there it was for $2 a box. I needed to make a grocery order anyway, so I went to Instacart to see if it was available near me, and sure enough, Mariano’s had it for $1.30. 

I didn’t end up eating it last night because I wore myself out cooking everything else, and I didn’t have a sauce appropriate to its glory in any case, but I plan to sample it soon. I’m skeptical it holds more sauce than normal spaghetti, I’ve seen the bore size of the hole and it doesn’t seem like the sauce would get very far.