For those wondering about We Are Legend, it is done! For those wondering about using my ideas or asking me to beta, skip to just after that.

Howdy! I'm Jeune Chat, I'm a 39 year old woman living in the American Midwest. I work at an aluminum rolling mill and write fanfiction on my days off.

I'm a big fan of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series and Elemental Masters series, also Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang series, the Matador series by Steve Perry, and much of Piers Anthony's work. I read fantasy, science fiction, horror, and non-fiction. I've been known to read Tom Clancy and Steven King, peruse Bill Bryson, and pick up random books on interesting subjects ranging from Chinese footbinding to the number and nature of deaths in Yellowstone park. (Yes, that sounds morbid, I know, but it's very interesting.)

I used to whitewater kayak in college, and I still play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) frequently, including DMing duties.

I collect crabs and lobsters (statues, toys, antiques, dishes, salt-and-pepper shakers, etc), Isabel Bloom statues, and things relating to Ancient Egypt.

I have a great interest in fairy tales and folklore and have a reasonably large collection of books on said subjects.

I enjoy an eclectic collection of movies, including bloody horror, horrific terror, offbeat comedy, action, sci-fi, fantasy, and true-to-life stories.

I play piano, occasionally sing, and have a music collection as strange as my movie selection, ranging from Disturbed to Deep Forest.

I am currently owned by a cat called Timothy, who lets me live in his house. That's his picture up there, isn't he pretty? My pen name comes from my cat, as he is a young cat, so thusly I am Jeune Chat!

I have an account on AFF under the same pen name, but as per my conscience, I warn my underage readers to wait until they're 18 before warping their fragile little minds. Besides, you're not allowed over there anyway. I am also on LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, and Ao3 under the name of jaune_chat, but be warned that I have higher-rated stories over there. Please mind the warnings. I'm also on Tumblr under jaune-chat and Twitter @Jaune_Chat1 (Jaune-Chat) if you'd like to chat!

There’s a little story I once heard: A young actor was talking to an older actor in a bar one night, and was reading some reviews of his recent performance. Most of them were fairly bad, so the young actor turns to the older and says, "Well, I guess you have to learn how to ignore the bad reviews." The older actor claps him on the shoulder and says, "Son, you must also learn how to ignore the good ones.”

Quote of Coolness

“Groovy.” Ash, Evil Dead II

“Good. Bad. I’m the guy with the gun.” Ash, Army of Darkness

"Help, help, I'm being repressed!" Dennis the peasant, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

“Eastman. He came out of the east to do battle with the Amazing Rando!!” Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie

“Your anger don't impress me.” Goo Goo Dolls, “Broadway”

"Look and see her, how she sparkles, it’s the last unicorn!” America “The Last Unicorn”

“I don’t wanna be a crutch, one step away from down.” matchbox twenty “crutch”

“Reach down your hand in your pocket, pull out some hope for me, it’s been a long day.” Matchbox 20 “Long Day”

“Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort.” Papa Roach “Last Resort”

“What if your words could be judged like a crime?” Creed “What If”

“She wears a coat of color, Loved by some, feared by others, She's immortalized in young men's eyes. Lust she breeds in the eyes of brothers, Violent sons make bitter mothers. Close your eyes, Here's your surprise" Creed, “Beautiful”

“I cry out to God seeking only his decision, Gabriel stands and confirms I’ve created my own prison.” Creed, “My Own Prison”

“The Horseman comes! And tonight he comes for you!” Sleepy Hollow

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” Dune, Bene Gesserit litany against fear

“Tidal waves couldn’t save the world from Californication.” Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Californication”

“She pulls and tears my ventricles, steals my one remaining breath.” Phish, “Heavy Things”

“With fingernails that shine like justice, and a voice that is dark, like tinted glass.” Cake, “Short Skirt, Long Jacket”

"Just explain to me what you were trying to do when this happened." "Well, I was in Barbados, hanging a picture on the wall..." "Ok, that tells me everything I need to know." Strong Bad and Homestar Runner, Strong Bad email "4 branches"

"Geez, guy wouldn't know majesty if it came up and bit him in the face." "That happened once!" Strong Bad and Coach Z, Strong Bad email "dragon."

Quotes on Writing

My sister gave me some blank books to write in last Christmas. In one of them she hand-wrote several quotes on writing that I've found very inspirational. I thought I'd share.

"The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes." Agatha Christie

"You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke." Arthur Polotink

"Writing is both mask and unveiling." E.B. White

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." Walter Wellesley Smith

"The role of the writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." Anois Nin

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." E.L. Doctrow

"And by the way, everything in life is writable if you have the guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt." Sylvia Glath

"What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers." Logan Pearsall Smith

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." Richard Wright

"For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle." John Cheever

"Be obscure clearly." E.B. White

"Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum." Graycie Harmon

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one." Baltosor Gracion

"When you are describing/ A shape, or sound or tint;/ Don't state the matter plainly,/ But put it in a hint;/ And learn to look at all things,/ With a sort of mental squint." Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." Lord Byron

"What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told." Andre Gide

"Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes." Theodore Dreiser

"It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write." Sinclair Lewis

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." Vladimir Nabokov

"Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space." Orson Scott Card

"A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer." Karl Kraus

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." Isaac Azimov

"Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too." Graycie Harmon

"The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes." Andre Gide

"i never think at all when i write. nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well." Don Marquis

"The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads." William Styron

"Writers are just people who have a whole lot on the inside that they need to get to the outside, with pen and paper as their preferred method of transport. Same with dancers, artists, and singers - all with the same urges with differing transportation.' Graycie Harmon

"Writing is a produce of silence." Carrie Latet

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart, confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write." Rainer Maria Rilke

"Books want to be born; I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such." Samuel Butler

"What things there are to write, if one would only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like mediations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach." Lygan Pearsall Smith

"Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life." James Normal Hall

"The artists' only responsibility is his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies." Faulkner

"A writers if someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Thomas Mann

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted." Jules Renard

Updates!

War and Peace In Mind - Complete! An epic-length tale from the first-person perspetive of Warren Peace (from the movie Sky High), this was a 22-month labor of pure love. It's primarily a drama/action story, with a fair amount of introspection. Rating is PG-13 shading into hard R for language (lots of F-bombs) and gore (if there's a broken arm, I describe it; I have a strong stomach). Sexual content is mostly limited to insinuation and innuendo; there are no overt NC-17 or M-rated scenes here. However, there is an M-rated cut scene from the epilogue entitled "Red and Black," that is both on AFF and my LiveJournal (my name is Jaune-Chat on LJ, watch the spelling).

Big Damn Heroes - My newest undertaking is a Heroes/Firefly fusion, with the characters of Heroes acting as the crew of Serenity in the Firefly universe. The plot will be a modified pilot from the Firefly series with Heroes elements. This is a more thought-intensive process than I had originally realized, and I'm having to go through a lot of heavy cognition to see what I really want out of this. It's all Joss Whedon's fault; he and his writing staff wrote this fantasic dialogue that I'm having a terrible time imitating while not trying to copy it too badly.

We Are Legend - The sequel to War and Peace In Mind, now complete!

One Shots? - I have some one-shots for the WaPIM universe to cover the time lapse between the end of WaPIM and the beginning of its sequel. "Warren vs the weddings," "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," and "Redeemers' Grace" are now all complete.

Big Damn Heroes Casting Choices: Hard Cognition

Captain Malcom Reynolds – Nathan Petrelli

Zoë – Claire Bennet

Wash – Hiro Nakamura

Jayne – Elle Bishop

Inara – Jessica Sanders

Kaylee – Molly Walker

Dr. Simon Tam – Dr. Mohinder Suresh

River Tam – Peter Petrelli

Shepard Book – Monica Dawson

Brighteyed-Jill did a lot of the initial casting, particularly for the roles of Nathan, Elle, Mohinder, and Peter, which never really changed when I decided to write the story. She discussed her casting with me, and I did some further thought on the roles when I took up this gauntlet.

Nathan was the most obvious choice for the Malcom Reynolds role. Though Nathan was never as unsophisticated as Mal, or had as much of a sense of humor, he was the only one we felt had the presence and strength to pull off both Mal’s military background and have the sheer will to hold together Serenity’s crew.

Having Elle in the Jayne role was also a virtual no-brainer. We needed someone who liked violence, but would have some concept of loyalty. Elle had loyalty to the Company in the Heroes series, but was also delighted to use her abilities to annoy, irk, damage, or fry anyone who got in her way.

Mohinder as Simon was a logical fit. A young hot skilled doctor? Score!

Peter as River had some debate, and for a while Sylar was considered for this part, but it really came down to a list of necessary qualities that we felt were essential to the River character. Namely, vulnerability, innocence, craziness, and the potential to be an absolute badass. While Sylar had the later two in spades, he didn’t project much of the former two, while Peter could have all four qualities.

The other roles were somewhat harder to cast.

For Wash I eventually settled on Hiro. One of Wash’s most memorable attributes on Firefly was his sense of humor. While Heroes isn’t the funniest show on television, there are some humorous moments, and most of them occur when Hiro is on the screen. Hiro has also shown some flashes of competence lately, and has great dedication to a cause, so he ended up working pretty well. For a while I considered Micah as Wash, but I eventually dismissed that for the same reason I couldn’t cast Micah as Kaylee: Micah’s powers negate one of Serenity’s charms, that of her occasional unreliability.

Casting Wash’s role also makes one consider who should be his wife Zoë. There are two prominent married couples in the main Heroes cast that I considered, namely Niki and DL and Nathan and Heidi. While Niki might have made a good Zoë, DL really wouldn’t have worked as Wash; he’s too serious and dour. I needed Nathan as Mal, and I couldn’t quite see Heidi as a soldier, so I just had to stab out in whole new directions.

Since I’d decided to play fast and loose with ages and relationships amongst the Heroes cast, I looked farther afield to find Hiro’s badass soldier wife. Luckily season three of Heroes gave us Badass!Brunette!Future!Claire, which made me see her as less of a victim and more of a potential mover and shaker. So Claire became Zoë. I discarded the father/daughter relationship between Nathan and Claire for the fellow soldier relationship between Mal and Zoë and the husband wife dynamic between Zoë and Wash.

The Kaylee character demanded someone with a sunny disposition and a modicum of confidence in her chosen field. I wanted to keep the ‘sister’ dynamic between her and the Inara character, so I thought I’d like a woman for that role. Molly turned out to be the perfect Kaylee for me. Obviously I advanced her age to her early twenties, but that still puts her as one of the youngest on Serenity’s crew, as it is on Firefly. I will not be keeping the Simon/Kaylee tentative romance, but I might have some hilarious misunderstandings about it! (At least, ya know, I think they’re hilarious. You might think otherwise!)

Inara’s character is very complex and I had to think a lot about who I could cast for her. Inara has to have UST (unresolved sexual tension) with the Mal character, sisterly companionship with the Kaylee character, philosophical differences with the Book character, tolerant distain for the Jayne character, motherly concern for the river character, and good friendly vibes with the rest of the cast. She needed compassion, confidence, class, and beauty. All in all, that’s a tall order.

Peter was briefly considered, but I really needed him as River. I really thought about Heidi, even wrote some scenes with her, but it didn’t work out. Since poor Heidi was never terribly affectionate with Nathan in Heroes, there was a sort of cool barrier to the UST I needed between Heidi-as-Inara and Nathan-as-Mal. Enter Ali Larder’s suite of characters. Niki had the compassion, love, and even occasional vulnerability I wanted. Jessica had confidence in her work and great strength mentally. Tracy was a high-class woman with a lot of style. Mix them all together (and subtract the multiple personalities, thank you very much) and you had a pretty good version of Inara. I kept her name as Jessica only because I thought that rolled off the tongue better. Besides, Jessica had really fabulous hair.

The Book character ended up as being an 11th hour change. Since it was intimated in Firefly that Book might have been a former Alliance operative, HRG (Noah Bennet) became an immediate obvious choice. However, after some time, I was having second thoughts.

The Book we meet at first is a kind, calm, pleasant, peaceable priest. I feel pretty strongly that HRG would never give up his guns, and the thought of him feeling enough remorse for his past actions to join an abbey and start gardening made my brain itch.

So, for a while I considered Isaac Mendez, thinking his “commando” participation had been in “future reconnoitering” or something of the sort. But it was Book’s unusual physicality that made him so intriguing, the contrast between generally looking and acting like a priest and then knocking someone out like a soldier. So I turned back to the Heroes cast to look for people that could kick ass but seemed reluctant.

Enter Monica Dawson. Compassionate but reluctant, with the ability to bring strong men to their knees, I could honestly believe she might have worked with the Alliance for years before finally dropping out to do penance. And I could see her gardening and spreading the Good Word with no problem. Just by advancing her age, she became a great Book.

The final character I was really having fits casting was the dialogue. Joss Whedon and his team wrote some amazingly unique dialogue for Firefly, incorporating Old West turns of phrase mixed in with the occasional bits of Mandarin. I quickly realized that when I was trying to recreate various scenes that I was steal every single bit of the dialogue verbatim. It was just too good not to use, and it was making it harder for me to find my own voice or the voices of the fusion characters. The way Nathan Petrelli talks is not the way Malcom Reynolds does; as a matter of fact, Mal’s words sound strange in Nathan’s mouth. I had to eventually tell myself to ignore as much of that dialogue as I could, even though some keeps creeping in. Curse you Joss!

The last thing I had to decide was, powers or no powers? Firefly always kept its sci-fi limited to space travel and other technology, with what empathic abilities River had showing that was as far as he wanted to push the envelope. BrightEyed Jill also kept her vision with no powers. Me, I like superpowers. I think they’re neat. And I thought there were ways to incorporate them into the Firefly ‘verse in a matter-of-fact tone that wouldn’t rob the world of its wonder. Adding a few shades of Volume Four of Heroes to the Unification War gave the Indeps (and hence Mal/Nathan) another layer of reasons to hate the Alliance as well.

Betas and Ideas - I've occasionally gotten requests asking me to either beta a story, use some of my ideas in a story, or a combination of the two. Let me let you know my typical response: Yes, I am generally cool with people using some ideas from my story in their own. I find it extra cool when people get inspiration from my own stories. However, please do ask before using anything, remember to credit me if I do give permission. There are just a few elements in my stories I'm fairly protective about and don't want other people using, so please remember to ask first.

Betaing - Due to my writing schedule, job, social life, etc, I no longer beta.