Wtf: Author's Notes for Interlude 10

[black_sluggard]

Oh my god, is this a happy memory for Konrad? They exist!

I generally don't like OCs, and this isn't going to be important, but here's a fun bit of trivia:

Francis is the first named OC of any significance to this story. With the sole exceptions of the Ghost and briefly mentioned Sturmman Schneider, every other named character up to this point is part of Castle, Heroes or NCIS canon— Though some are incredibly obscure, and in Konrad's case it's kind of a stretch.

Originally, this character was going to be called Joseph O'Hanlon, but I decided to change it at the last minute. In my head, Konrad's time as Richard Conway is essential to the eventual evolution of Kevin Ryan, so naming this character Frank McNulty (after Javier's original partner from the unaired pilot) just felt right to me.

Additionally, this interlude was born of a particular pet peeve of mine. In general terms, it regards over-emphasizing a character's ethnic background and/or conflating it with a character's cultural background. Which isn't to say such combinations are unrealistic or unlikely (they aren't really), they just bug me when I see them on TV. I could think of several examples, but because I watch a lot of crime shows (er, ship for a lot of crime shows...) this is never so glaring as with an Irish-American cop character, since it is not only incredibly common, but the stereotype goes way, way back.

(And do I have to point out the unintentional hilarity of an Irish detective played by an actor named "Seamus"?)

I like Ryan a lot (when he's not doing stupid things like proposing to the wrong person, hello!), but it always bothered me when they'd play up the Irish, so this is a little bit of a fix-it for me...

Also, it feels necessary in context of the plot since, well... As we now know, Konrad isn't even remotely Irish. So all that had to come from somewhere.

While it would have been cool to have actually posted this on St. Patrick's Day, this scene was planned out ages ago, so it was never really intended to be posted then anyway...

Still, other deadlines I hope to make. *fingers crossed*

Comments

[adja999.livejournal.com]

Huh. Weird. It must be your layout correcting it?

I realized the first time around I used CSS coding, which is used in the style sheets but I'm pretty sure the comments don't speak that language. So I went back and did it in html.

This makes me feel a little better. I hate losing geek points.

I'm that big of a dork. i'm a nerd, I'm proud of it, I describe myself as so, I know the NATO alphabet by heart and I feel like my life isn't complete because I don't speak Klingon.

[black_sluggard]

Yeah, it's probably my layout. I write my stories in Tahoma 10pt, and for some reason it just bugged the hell out of me that the journal wanted to put them in Arial. >.<

I don't know how to do CSS at all, but ages ago I went and looked up how to override the font so it would all display how I wanted.

[adja999.livejournal.com]

I actually write in arial 8 or even 6. I zoom up so the entire page is filled with text. I like to have a maximum of what I write on it. It's mostly for an easy check that I'm not repeating the same adjectives or verbs all the time, if I'm not using the character's name too much and to see the looks of my paragraphs next to each other.
And that, when you copy paste it in LJ, gives you ridiculously tiny font. So you have the choice of pasting it in the htlm tab and going back to add < i >and < b > tags when needed. *huff* This is why I love AO3. ^^
I like Tahoma too, they're pretty similar. One thing I CANNOT write in, is Times New Roman. I mean, I could for a formal letter or something, but if it's beyond a couple of hundred words, it just bugs be cause if I do my tiny font + zoom technique it just doesn't look good in small font.

I'm not a pro at CSS, but it's amazing how much you learn just by fiddling around with your layout. The one I had previously (with the "Payback's a bitch" Jerk BITCH header), I didn't make, I'm far from having the inspiration for that, but I picked the fonts and the colors and the tiny images that represented 'location' 'music' 'mood', etc...
The one I have now... is annoying. But I don't have time for it now.
I also made my moodtheme. Because I love Parker so much. ^^

You learn a lot for that. And painlessly. It's also how I learned my English. I took German in Highschool. I never studied. I cannot speak a word of it. Well, maybe one word. HALLO! My English? I owe it to Buffy. (Again)


EDIT: See? Learning again. You don't even have to finish a html tag for it to be taken into account in a LJ comment. *takes note*