a) I just realized that I am either mentally conflating Jim Kirk and Julian Kestrel, or just operating on the assumption that Jim has daddy issues almost as massive as Julian's. That seems less unreasonable than actually conflating them, doesn't it? I guess I could try picturing Chris Pine the next time I reread the books and see what happens...

b) Hooray for short books: I started at lunchtime, and finished over my dinner of pizza (only slightly delayed by the delivery guy trying to find my house on a completely different street), Lauren McLaughlin's Cycler.

OMG SO GOOD. WANT FANFICTION. The sequel, which appears to be horribly confusing Amazon by being called (Re)Cycler, is out next month, but but but. WANT. FIC.

Slightly more specifically: Cycler is the story of seventeen-year-old Jill, who, four days a month, turns into Jack. (For a time, Jill simply became male for four days of the month, but she found the whole thing so traumatizing she learned self-hypnosis to destroy her memories of the experience, and then a whole male personality, Jack, came into existence.) Jill's getting along with her Big Secret pretty well, right up until Jack decides that he would rather have a life of his own in the four days of existence he gets every month than keep on keeping Jill's secret--a life that includes falling in love with Jill's best friend. Meanwhile Jill's searching for a boyfriend of her own in the form of the mysterious loner transfer student in her calc class.

Let me just say: HIJINKS ENSUE.

( Spoilerishly specifically: )

c) Misha Collins, seriously, I am going to unfollow your ass if you don't knock it off with the world-domination-via-thirty-consecutive-tweets.

Ummmm, I totally did not forget for a while I had written this, what, no.

This is a fixit of a fixit, or in other words a sequel to Common Language, a Bechdel Test fixit story I wrote about the kidnapped Air Force sergeant from "Children of the Gods." This will not make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read that.


Sam, Daniel. post-"Children of the Gods" and post-"Secrets". PG. 1,302 words.
"Teal'c, all of this started, from our perspective, when a woman under my command, Sergeant Jessica Hoyt, was kidnapped from this facility. What can you tell us about her current whereabouts?"


( Tell )

Just finished reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes, which means I knocked off all six books in the Outlander series--a bit under 6,000 pages in total--in about thirty-five days. Which is probably right up there with the speed at which iulia and I knocked off the first seven seasons of Stargate, back in the day.

Normal function will now resume. Um, whatever that is.

Relatedly, does anybody else, when reading a book and coming to a bit where they are so overcome with delight at whatever is happening in the story that you cannot keep reading... do you ever hold the book up and press your stupidly grinning face into the pages and breathe in paper until you're ready to go on?

Or is that just me?


PS, you guys, I realize he is Not Quite the Point, but my love for Lord John cannot be textually rendered. OMG BOOK SEVEN WHY ARE YOU NOT IN MY HANDS YET. WHYYYYYYY.

Cliche Bingo, again, this time the Coming of Age square. Er, sorry about the title, it just sort of ... stuck. Many thanks to iulia and rubynye for the encouragement!


McCoy, Chekov. PG. 1,326 words.
"So you lost one today."



( This Is Growing Up )

THIS IS A CLICHE BINGO STORY, THAT'S HOW IT HAPPENED. I kept looking at the Futurefic square and my brain refused to serve up anything but this.

This is also the coda to Hawks and Hands that I had plotted before I finished writing the story and then never managed to write. Until now.

Due South, hockey AU. Fraser/Kowalski. PG-13. 5,700 words.
Many many many thanks to brooklinegirl and iulia for beta and encouragement!
Ever since Ben had played his last game, six months before, they had exchanged glances in the direction of men who walked down the street, hand in hand and unmolested by passersby. There had been significant changes of channel regarding sitcoms, pointed clearings of throats over entertainment news... and now this.


( The Future in Five Conversations )

For a while now, I have attributed lots of things (inability to watch late-seasons Due South, antipathy toward most sitcoms) to having a "farce squick".

After seeing Star Trek for the third time with iulia and therefore seeing the Land of the Lost trailer for the third time and seriously nearly coming out of my seat, I have now articulated it slightly better, I think: I have an embarrassment squick that extends even/especially to characters who do not realize they ought to be embarrassed (Benton Fraser, and possibly everyone ever played by Will Ferrell) and also, relatedly or not, absurd humor mostly just makes me angry.

(BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, IS WHY. IT'S NOT FUNNY, IT JUST ... DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.)

So, you know. There is a whole class of movies and TV shows that I really am never going to watch. And I guess it's good to know that.


What, no, I'm having an extremely productive day at work, why do you ask... ?

Here! I keep watching this Southland clip over and over, and now you can too! My very favoritest of moments with LAPD Officers John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) and Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie), who are not having a great day:

So I was vaguely determined--having seen half the pilot when it actually aired--that if I was going to get into Southland I was going to do it in a linear fashion, which is something of a novelty for me. Show first, then fic! Crazy!

So for some reason last night I decided, around midnight (having already taken today off to have a post-weekend-vacation decompression day), that this was the night I was going to start watching. And then I didn't stop until I'd seen the first five episodes and it was 4:30 in the morning.

Um. So that may have been a bad idea, but otoh, you guys, I think someone looked into my brain and then created John Cooper just for me. ♥♥♥

Now off to watch the last two. And maybe that little bit from ep five in the tattoo parlor over again. And again. And maybe one more time.

I'm home from the up-north weekend vacation with about six mosquito (or maybe black fly?) bites on my right hand, two blisters on the toes of my left foot, 387 photos of trees, water, and rocks (and occasionally me and/or Iulia) in various combinations, and one missed call from a guy I went on a single mediocre date with in May who I was really hoping had realized I'm not interested sometime in the past several weeks of my not answering his texts or e-mails (including the e-mail that said I should just let him know when/if I wanted to be in touch again). Suggestions on what to do with any of the above are welcome.

Also, I had nearly forgotten that I am writing Due South fic while I was gone, and ... here it still is, waiting for me. To say nothing of my Remix story, OH GOD.

iulia and I are fulfilling a biological imperative as natives of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and spending some time "up north", in this case hanging around on the southern shore of Lake Superior, which is about as up-north as you can get without involving an ice fishing shanty.

Tomorrow, we will be on a boat, motherfuckers.

Today: ( LENS FLARE. )

This morning I was nearly late to work because I got distracted while writing 563 words of Due South fic.

Damn you, cliche_bingo. DAMN YOU.

The nice thing that sometimes happens, if you spend enough time ranting privately and fuming about a thing, is that someone else comes along who articulates just how you feel about something. (It helps if you have spent some time ranting to each other, to get the match-up quite precise.)

So, behold, fairestcat has said her piece, and I can just point in that direction and say I AGREE as loudly as if I were a drunk hockey fan (my longing for a refrigerated arena and an eight-dollar beer being neither here not there at the moment).

I AGREE: I Don't Care About Blair Sandberg's Hair.

airgiodslv also raised points that made me nod vigorously: Community.

Although I have to admit, at some level, ignoring common courtesy and decency and basic concern for the welfare of other people, my view on warnings boils down to this, with apologies to C.S. Lewis:

A story about a triggery topic which can only be enjoyed without a trigger warning is not a good story to begin with.

I've been reading/watching/obsessively refreshing a fair amount of coverage of the uprising in Iran this past week. I knew I was saddened by it, but hadn't really thought it was affecting me particularly outside of the time I spent actually watching it.

Today, driving back to work after lunch, Moxy Fruvous's "Gulf War Song" came on the radio, and I sang along like I usually do:

"Won't you stand by the flag?"
Was the question unasked,
"Won't you join in and fight with the allies?"

What could we say? We're only twenty-five years old,
With twenty-five sweet summers, and hot fires in the cold.

And then my eyes filled with tears and I could not get another sound out as the rest of that verse played.

This kind of life makes that violence unthinkable.
We'd like to play hockey, have kids and grow old.

***

There is a line on my lj/Dreamwidth profile that reads "Writing makes me crazy, but not writing makes me crazier." This is amended, during particularly trying projects, to "Writing makes me crazy, but not writing makes me crazier and this is one of those times." I went today to change it from the latter to the former, only to find I'd already done that a while ago, and am now pondering how to make the second part of that more emphatic. In possibly-related news, my attention span and I both really, really hate summer.

***

So I signed up for cliche_bingo! And here is my card:

( Under here! )

You guys all okay? [Anybody know if embracepassion rides the Red Line? ETA: She's fine!] If you're reading this and if you live in the range of the Metro, please pipe up! I worry! I used to ride that train, although not usually on that stretch. STILL.

{{{Red Line}}}

{{{{{{{{{{{{{DC Commuters}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I'm thinking of you, guys.

List 10 of your favorite characters from different fandoms, and ask people to spot patterns in your choices, and if they're so inclined, to draw conclusions about you based on the patterns they've spotted.

Ahahaha, okay, but looking at my userinfo or being iulia is cheating.

1. Star Trek - Leonard McCoy
2. Supernatural - Dean Winchester
3. Stargate SG-1 - Daniel Jackson
4. Merlin - Arthur Pendragon
5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Spike
6. My Chemical Romance - Bob Bryar
7. Panic at the Disco - Jon Walker
8. Torchwood - Ianto Jones
9. Numb3rs - Don Eppes
10. Due South - Ray Kowalski

Like everyone else in my circle, I've got a couple of DW invites burning a hole in my proverbial pocket--anybody need one? Or know someone who needs one? Comments are screened, leave your email and I'll send the code.

ETA: one left!

ETA2: all gone!

Many thanks to iulia for excellent beta!


Star Trek: Reboot. McCoy, Kirk. PG. 2,018 words.
Jim could be fantastically thoughtless except when being thoughtful would embarrass McCoy more.



( Ten Sessions )

Having segued pretty directly from reading Patrick O'Brian (Post Captain, HMS Surprise) to reading Diana Gabaldon (Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and now Voyager in the span of ... a week or so?) I just spent about twenty minutes sitting at my desk reading Jeremy Hugh Baron's article "Sailors' Scurvy Before and After James Lind: A Reassessment" (Nutrition Reviews, v.67 n.6, pp.315-332, June 2009) and wishing that he'd talked more about lime juice.

(The upshot seems to be, for those desperately interested in scurvy and lime juice, that lemon juice was the vastly preferred preventative recommended by people who actually dealt with actual scurvy cases, while lime juice was subsequently recommended by people ... engaged in growing limes, and was far less effective than correctly-preserved lemon juice. Lime juice came into use much later and was never as widespread, globally speaking, hence getting attached as a nationalist tag to British ships/sailors/etc.)

❝who do you ship me with?❞

I think I even linked it right, this time...

I meant to accomplish things today, but Dragonfly in Amber has been happening. And also a nap.

So: Jack Randall looks a bit different when you have read enough books whose protagonists are sadists and/or sociopaths--or maybe it's just a result of being ten years older than the first time I read this--which makes his bits no easier to read and possibly harder. Curse you, Diana Gabaldon, for making me feel bad for everyone involved.

(For future reference: if you happen to be reading the Dell paperback with dragonfly, goblet, and plaid on the cover, everything starts going Horribly Wrong on page 367. I am hoping to fix in my mind just how much of the book is spent on the Everything Goes Horribly Wrong part; I found it much easier to rewatch The Shawshank Redemption (which I did a lot, in the few years after I first saw it) once I had determined that the Subplot of Greatest Unpleasantness covered about nineteen minutes of the film and then was safely over.)