It’s Saturday morning here in Sydney, but I might get this done before it turns into Saturday in the US. That is the power of the trans-hemispheric lifestyle!

There’s lots of exciting news coming up this week, some about Shay’s Story and some about the Uglies series in general. No it’s NOT movie-related news. You will know when that happens. You will FEEL it in your bones. But it’s still pretty cool.

In the meantime, here’s one of my oldest theories about fan art: We writers rob our characters of downtime. We don’t let them have all those moments in life that don’t involve fleeing from the Germans or swinging from the ratlines. We may start a chapter with character just kicking back and talking, but a page or two in, the Zeppelins attack!

This is because we want to write exciting stories, and we are all taught as tiny writers to jump straight into the action. But readers also regard characters as friends, and downtime is an important part of friendship. So a lot of fan art imagines those relaxing moments that are excised from canon, but which are surely a part of the characters’ in-between-the-chapters life.

For example, McL-Jessie’s vision of Dalek at home, presumably post-series. You know, just hanging on the couch:

Or checking out the tools of another culture, as per pockynightmare:

Or transforming into My Little Pony characters, as sue9000 envisions such a thing:

Okay, that was a stretch. But it’s an unwritten rule of authorship that if someone sends you MLP crossover fan art, you must post it.

The same also applies to cyborg pandas!

(You had to have been at the WesterForum meet-up to understand this. And even then, I’m not sure if it’s understandable. It’s just a thing that happened.)

From Deviant’s Firanda we are reminded that naptime is also downtime, especially if it’s non-canonically cuddly.

And finally, from SkyHawkC, there’s my favorite lazy activity, having a snack:

Okay, that’s the climax of Behemoth, but for the Behemoth itself it probably wasn’t that big a deal. You know, “Whassup?” “Nuthin. Eating a dreadnought is all.”

That’s it for today’s FAF! Stay tuned for interesting posts all this week.