I'm in a melancholic funk tonight, for a variety of reasons. I'm back in the town where I lived for ten years but left ten years ago, and it has changed almost beyond recognition; they paved paradise and they put up a four-story luxury condo development, with a Nordstrom's and a Starbucks in gleaming stone and stainless and glass. My conversations with my old friends are stilted and weird, because really, there is nothing more to say after "and how is X? Are you still living on Y street? Are you having a good summer?"

I drank three beers at a party, which was probably a mistake. Actually, I am finding I am enjoying parties less and less lately. My mouth moves and I talk with people but I want to go home and read. Is it possible to become an introvert as one ages? I have always scored as ENTP on ye olde Myers-Briggs, but I wonder whether my answer to the question, "do you find yourself energized or drained by crowds?" has changed, or whether I was always just deluding myself.

I'm working full-time this week, or rather, I am taking a class that requires 8 hours a day. I am not used to this. I can't even read lj and dw during the day to entertain myself. I really just want to go home and cocoon with B and Netflix and my kitty.

1. Lookie what triestine sent me! ( Tentacled toys! )

2. strangefandom is gearing up for another round! Signup post is here.

3. I have been beta-reading again. I forgot how much I really like beta-reading. I get to read a story before anyone else does, and I can pick on all the stuff I don't like and the author says thank you!

4. I had a lovely trail run on our scenic local trail system and I saw a snake! (I realize that not all of you may think this is awesome. But after the first 1/2 second of "OMGWTFSNAKE!", after it failed to rattle at me, I was pretty pleased to have seen actual wildlife, especially since I had a camera with me.)

5. I went to our Wednesday Farmer's Market and scored all sorts of delicious local veggies, yay! (For values of local including an hour to the south, where they already have tomatoes! And squash!)

6. I am going to be in Boulder (CO) next week, if anyone wants to get together.

Just a quick vid rec: bironic has just posted a Wraith-POV SGA vid, Every Day is Halloween in the Pegasus Galaxy and it tickies all my boxes: it's short, it's funny, the clips are well-chosen and cut to the beat, and the music doesn't make me want to stab myself through the eardrums.

Happy Canada Day! Or Dominion Day, as it used to be called, although personally I am glad they changed it because that always made me think of Virginia. They could just smoosh it and call it CanaDay! Anyway, happy 142nd birthday, you country up north of me.

Here are some essaylets from expat Canucks that made me smile - at the NYT.

And here is some relevant music! (For varying values of relevant.)

Banks of Newfoundland - Simani
Northwest Passage - Stan Rogers
Proud to be Canadian - Arrogant Worms
Saskatoon Moon - Connie Kaldor
Isle of Newfoundland - Dick Nolan
Last Saskatchewan Pirate - Captain Tractor
Montréal -40°C - Malajube
The Canadian Dream - Sam Roberts
We'll Rant and We'll Roar Like True Newfoundlanders - Harry Hibbs
Rant and Roar - Great Big Sea (same song as above, more contemporary sound)
Farewell to Nova Scotia - Stompin' Tom Connors
Nova Scotia Farewell - Clam Chowder (same song as above, more contemporary sound)

These are all on my website, so right-click and save. Or collect the whole set in the form of a zip file: Canaday.zip. I love comments to see who's interested and downloading, but don't feel obliged. Random passers-by are welcome to download songs as well.

In other news, my remixredux09 story is in beta. \o/

In other other news, I still have loads of DW invites if anyone wants one.

I probably had other other other news, but I can't think of it right now.

I have been entertained by various people on my flist (jmtorres here, damned_colonial here) posting some of the more amusing warnings they have used on their stories. My favorite set of warnings is A.J. Hall's rather comprehensive list on the cover page of her HP novel Dissipation and Despair, which includes among other things:

Atheists are warned that the local vicar is presented in a favourable light.
Catholics may be disturbed to learn that he is contemplating committing monogamy.
Mary-Sue haters are advised that he is an OC.

Looking through my own body of work, I think my favorite warning is for the HP Hermione/Everyone fic I wrote for the Blame Someone Else challenge, Four Funerals and a Wedding: Warnings for character deaths out the wazoo, and bad puns. (I had forgotten that this was translated into both Czech and Russian! I hope they managed to get the bad puns in there, which are after all the point of this story.)

On a more serious note, I have looked through my website, and all my stories with non-con or dubious consent are clearly labeled except for one, which I am about to label right now. Most of my stories with non-canonical character death are so labeled as well (or link to an optional warning); the exception is a due South story of mine which I agonized about, as some of you know, because (skip) Fraser dies in Across the Great Divide. But it's not permanent! and finally posted with no warning. (I had a couple of hints about the nature of the story in the header, and the character death is right up front in the first scene; as it happened, about a third of people who commented mentioned that they immediately read the ending at that point before continuing with the story.)

(Also, this is a test of amadi's magic warning code to see if I am doing it right!)

I had Farrah hair in high school (what? It was in!) and I never liked Michael Jackson's music. But I do have one story which some of you may appreciate - at least, those of you who are into SCA and other re-enactment groups.

When I was at the University of Maryland in the early 80s I was involved with a medievalist society called the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia, which was not part of the SCA but sometimes hung out with them. In particular, I was involved in the dance group; we would perform various Renaissance and other country/folk dances at Renfaires, etc. A bunch of us (Marklanders) went up to the SCA event Pennsic one year, and one of the things we did was a scheduled dance performance.

I don't remember who came up with the idea, but: as a "grand finale special treat," our leader announced, we would perform, for the first time ever, the famous "Guillaume Jean Pavane." We dancers lined up, hands hidden behind our backs. Then the music started, and we whipped our arms to the front, revealing that each of us wore a single glove, as we began to dance to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. We did a sort of parody of a pavane, a stately figure dance with occasional moonwalk steps and other, er, modern touches. I vaguely remember it was enthusiastically received, and great fun.

It's a meme! cordelia_v gave me five words she associates with me, and although my first instinct was to read it as a single sentence, the actual meme is for me to expand upon what they mean to me. So I shall:

( editing running politics multi-fannish sailing )

If you would like to meme, holler "Words!" at me in a comment, and I will give you five words that remind me of you.

Also, I have bunches of Dreamwidth invites. If you'd like one, comment or PM or email (address in my profile). You don't have to be on my flist (heck, you don't even have to have me on yours, provided I might vaguely recognize your username).

Yesterday was reveal day at remixthedrabble, so I can now fess up to the remixes I wrote. I'm not going to repost them, but I do have them all tracked so feel free to comment there and I will see your comments!

due South

The Good Life (The Consequences Remix) [Fraser/Kowalski, 100 words, Rated PG] for malnpudl

From a 9000+ word story to a drabble, hee! This was a POV-shift and a time-focus shift; clearly, the whole point of Mal's story was to get them into bed :-) so I just looked at the aftermath of teh sexin'.

Ode to a Sumptuous Supper (The Doggerel Half-Wolferel Remix)
[Diefenbaker, Fraser/Kowalski, 100 words, Rated G] for kernezelda

I seem to have a tendency to write sonnets for this fest. \o/ I admit that the "doggerel" pun was the first thing that occurred to me. I am quite proud that I managed to tinker it into an exact 100 words. No real change in focus other than making it rhyme and scan!

Horatio Hornblower

Myth Reading (The It's All Greek to Me Remix) [Hornblower/Kennedy, 100 words, Rated PG] for jestana

This was actually the first of these I wrote. Mostly a condensation rather than a rewrite, although I added the double entendre (which seemed the obvious way of taking it!), wrote it as first time rather than established, only alluded to the Ganymede/Zeus bit (but I'm proud of that pun) and gave it another punny title. Clearly, drabbles bring out the punster in me.

Hard Core Logo

Honesty (The Such a Lonely Word Remix) [Joe/Billy, 100 words, Rated PG-13] for exeterlinden

This was a pinch-hit. I apologize for the Billy Joel reference in the title; I did a little googling and it turns out that "Honesty" is actually the title of a Billy Tallent song as well (!) but I couldn't find any reasonable bit to quote from it. Another drabble that's more of a condensation than anything else, but I twisted it a bit at the end by placing it time-wise in a different place than the original had been intended (I think).

Check out the master list for bunches of drabbles in bunches of fandoms!

Okay, now I need to update my website with these links, as well as the links to the drabbles written for my stories, and then I need to buckle down on the remixredux09 story which is currently (goes off to count words) 344 words. I kind of want to flail and grouse about this story but of course I can't because of anonymity. I will say that it is in a fandom I have written before, but about characters and themes I don't usually write about, although (of course) since it is my story, it is getting a large dollop of Isisness. Which may or may not be recognizable.

Hello world! I am at a conference, which means that I am in a hotel room (actually a studio condo) where I have just made myself dinner (chicken mango salad) and drunk a measured 1/3 of a bottle of zin, and now I am sprawled on the couch with my laptop on the hotel wireless which drops about every 10 minutes. I am reading fic and really, truly, going to work on my remixredux09 story. Really.

Speaking of remixing, the remixthedrabble stories have started being posted! You can find the indices, neatly separated by fandom group, here. I might have written some of them *looks shifty* and there are four remixes of my stories! I won't point to them individually, mostly because I am anxious to get this post done before the damn wireless drops again and makes me go through the rigmarole of logging in again, but I will say that I suspect that keerawa wrote Falling Into Place (The Bitter As Life Remix), and also, the remix of Theory/Practice (it's SGA, it's on the SGA page) is brilliant.

Oh, one more thing I wanted to mention; there really were crickets for days after I posted my most recent story. (This is what happens when I write an obscure pairing in an obscure fandom, I guess.) It really made me think about: am I writing for myself, or for the glory of feedback? And you know, I wouldn't post if I didn't want others to read my stories - but it was a story I wanted to write and I am glad I wrote it, and I would have been happy about it even had nobody commented. (As it is, it's probably the least amount of feedback I've received since I started posting my stories on LJ. [SGA was a feedback-lover's dream - and that was back in the early days. I can't wrap my head around the pages and pages that some stories have received!] But I'm okay with that, which sort of surprises me. [And don't go read it just to be nice; if you don't know the fandom it won't make a lot of sense, and it will spoil the canon storyline for you.])

(Yes, I have a parenthesis problem. The first step is admitting, etc.)

Aid and Comfort
Sharpe: Richard Sharpe/Jack Spears, NC17, 5775 words.
Summary: Even an honourable man sometimes finds temptation difficult to resist.

This story is set within the events of (and is completely spoilery for) Sharpe's Sword. I am grateful for the aid (and comfort) of the_stowaway, who reminded me of the delicious Sharpe/Spears subtext in this episode, let me steal all her best ideas from the plotbunny I still hope she writes eventually, fixed all my canon and period goofs, and made lots of excellent suggestions including the one that sparked my train of thought leading to the title, which is of course from the British Treason Act 1351. Any remaining errors are mine.

j_s_cavalcante has posted Anima, which is the flip-side counterpart to my story Being Ray Kowalski! (Both stories are novel-length NC17 genderfuck; mine is Rae Kowalski waking up in an alternate reality where she has apparently always been a man named Ray, and JS's is Ray's side of the story when he finds himself occupying Rae's body. JS beta-read mine and also made the cover illo, which is NSFW.)

I haven't read her story yet but hope to do it soon. You should read mine first if you haven't already, because she continues the story after the swap-back (which I totally left for her to do; I like to not tie stories up with bows, but I know lots of people want that resolution). We had been talking about her story for a long time, and I read a few of the early drafts of parts of it (before it grew to an epic!) and I'm quite excited that it's done and posted.

remixthedrabble stories are starting to go up, yay! I like the groupings that the mods have chosen to present them in. I've read a handful or so and some are very clever.

I got my remixredux09 assignment and have been reviewing my remixee's stories. Inspiration has not yet struck like a lightning bolt, but I'm sure I'll be able to do something interesting. In the meantime, remixers_lounge is being cluttered with "Dear Remixer" posts, which I mostly don't understand the point of. Some of them are pointing out that their websites are being moved, or that there are additional stories under a certain tag in memories, or that a particular series is co-written and therefore ineligible but that this isn't clear in the fic list, and that is fine. But Remix isn't like a fic-exchange fest; remixed stories aren't gifts for someone, tailored to their tastes, they are what we would do with the same raw idea. So, Remixer mine, if you're reading this: write the story you want to write. I already wrote the one I wanted.

ETA: And in a weird sort of way, I think that these items are related, because - j_s_cavalcante's story is kind of a remix of mine! I mean, same idea (the plotbunny actually came from malnpudl), different POV, focus on different aspects of the story. But it's still the same story. And that, I think, is nifty!

Finally, I am busily coding up my new story yay, although I'm a little apprehensive about posting it on Saturday night to the resounding echo of crickets. I had been toying with the idea of directing comments to LJ, since I like seeing all my comments stack up in one place, and most of my other story comment links go to LJ, with the exception of those first posted at archives such as Yuletide. And then I thought, hmm, most of the audience for this story are at DW. But then I read a post from someone (was it r_becca?) who said "I don't care where you comment, I love comments and I want to make it as easy as possible for you to do it!" so I think I will have two links, one for LJ comments and one for DW comments, so people can choose as they like. Or maybe that's too complex. I don't know! I am dithering!

(Also, hmm. My mood theme seems to not show up on LJ unless I individually edit and re-save the post there. I wonder why that is. Must investigate.)

We stayed up far too late last night watching all 4 episodes of Lost in Austen. I think B loved it even more than I did. (He is a sucker for costume dramas. Also, we saw the A&E Colin Firth version of P&P a couple of years back, so the references were fairly fresh.) As we were going to bed he said, "So that was kind of fanfiction, wasn't it?" and I said, "Oh, yes..." and then I was horrorstruck by the sudden realization that it was totally and completely Mary Sue fanfiction. (Which, God love him, B must have heard me mention before, because when I said that, he actually knew what I meant.)

But I still loved it. I think my favorite bits were the Colin Firth references (and the pond incident!), Mr. Bennet who is just as awesome here as he was in P&P, Elizabeth in the last ep, and, er, a certain scene with Caroline and Amanda that had me laughing out loud in delight. (B: "Did she just say what I thought she said? I: OH YES.)

The story I have been working on is in beta. I am still kind of ridiculously in love with it, because the flaws haven't yet been pointed out to me and it is as perfect as a new boyfriend or a shiny toy. I am always boggled when people claim to hate their own just-posted stories. I always think the most recent thing I have written is the best thing in the universe, at least for a while.

I do not find myself inspired by any of the Porn Battle prompts except my own, and those only in a sort of vague way, perhaps because I just used up my porn on the above story. I might poke at one of them. I dunno. But I've been enjoying reading them - at least the ones in fandoms I know. I have left comments all over the place. And I have a couple of recs:

Transubstantiation by athousandwinds | Brideshead Revisited, Charles/Sebastian, NC17, ficlet. Charles gets drunk with Sebastian, and falls. Fabulously in-character and with the feel of genuine Waugh. And the fact that I am, of course, picturing the young Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews as they were in the miniseries doesn't hurt.

Shafted by sionnain | due South, Ray/Ray, NC17, short story. Kowalski and Vecchio get stuck in an elevator. I've found it hard to read Ray/Ray lately, because one Ray is always Ray and the other is Kowalski or Vecchio, which irritates and confuses me. But this story is in first person, and that neatly sidesteps the problem - plus, when POV-Ray thinks of himself, it is as 'Vecchio', and Kowalski calls him Vecchio, and, I dunno, it just works for me. Plus, slyly funny and hot like burning.

(These are just the ones that I think, oh, people, you should go read these NOW! Lots of the Porn Battle ficlets are well worth reading, though.)

Next week the remixthedrabble stories go live! (Let's see how that codes.) I am v. v. excited as to both the reception of my drabbles and to see what people have done with my stories. I have written four drabbles in three fandoms, all of which I have written in before. I think they all scream "ISIS WROTE ME!" but I always think this.

Finally, I am delighted to see that bitchinparty will be happening again, but alas, I cannot attend. The next weekend is the Boston Marathon, which I shall be running with revbiscuit \o/ and trying to make both would involve too much $$ and too much jetlag. But, you all go! Have a good time! Don't mind me sobbing quietly in the corner.

Over the last several nights B and I watched Longitude, the A&E Television movie based on Dava Sobel's book about the 18th c. carpenter John Harrison, who essentially invented the marine chronometer in his pursuit of the prize for finding a method of determining longitude at sea. It's quite an enjoyable movie, although the format of jumping back and forth between Harrison's story and the story of Rupert Gould, a retired WWI naval officer, whose obsession is restoring Harrison's early timepieces, was a little hard to get used to.

And it's got a lot of star power - and a whole lot of familiar faces. In "Six degrees of Canada" fandom (C6D) we like to joke that "there are only twelve actors in Canada" - well, watching Longitude I felt kind of like I did when I saw Suspicious River and all the creepy guys were Stargate actors. Except in this case, 1) nobody's creepy (well, hardly anybody), and 2) all the guys are A&E Age of Sail miniseries actors.

Sir Henry Simmerson and Sergeant Harper from Sharpe are in it. So is Major Edrington from Hornblower. (And, although not A&E or AoS, Quirrel's in it and his father is Dumbledore, although not the same Dumbledore as his Dumbledore. Hee!)

I remember thinking this while watching a whole series of A&E stuff in a boxed set we'd borrowed from friends. Hornblower, Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Lorna Doone, Jane Eyre, and probably a couple of others. Horatio's landlady's daughter Maria was also the youngest of the Bennet sisters. Lt. Kennedy showed up at a party in The Scarlet Pimpernel. And so on.

I guess AoS = A&E6D! Because apparently there are only twelve actors who do period drama miniseries on television.

The other night we saw Troy, which was not nearly as bad as somehow I had expected it to be. I mean, it would have been nice if they'd selected a standard accent to use, so that Odysseus hadn't sounded like he was from Sheffield. :-) And some of the dialogue was kinda stoopid. But I didn't get bored for the nearly 3 hour running time, and there was lots of eye candy (read: good-looking people in attractive yet skimpy costumes. And horses).

Pretty much the only characters who seemed to have any sense at all were Odysseus and Hector, which made me think that maybe if they had just sat down and had a couple of beers with each other, this whole Trojan War thing could have been avoided. (Also made me think of Eric Bana/Sean Bean RPF la la la.) It also made me realize that yeah, I like my men older and a little scruffy, because Orlando Bloom made a very pretty Paris, but Not My Type. Although I just don't find Brad Pitt attractive at all, even though he meets my age criterion. On the other hand, Peter O'Toole as King Priam? Yum.

( And that got me thinking a little about Star Trek: Reboot and why it is not my fandom: the guys are too young and not scruffy enough. )

( Another reason why it is not my fandom is that much of the fanfic is written in present tense, which in general I do not like. )

Now, I recognize that these are my own damn issues, and I don't actually expect fandom to dance like puppets to my tune. (Darn.) I deal. But I am not getting what I want from ST: Reboot, so I'm not too interested in the fandom.

What I do want, I realized after contributing a bunch of prompts to the Porn Battle and having a little discussion with catechism, are RPF crossovers. Like Geoffrey Tennant/CKR, or Viggo Mortensen/Richard Sharpe. (Written in past tense. :-) And speaking of crossovers, I absolutely have to rec this magnificent story:

Sharpe's Demon by splix | Sharpe/The Prophecy crossover, Lucifer/Sharpe, short story, NC17. In India, Sharpe (and this is bookverse Sharpe, pre-movie-series) encounters a stranger. I have not seen The Prophecy, in which Lucifer is played by (as you might guess) Viggo Mortensen, but the Devil is recognizably enough the Devil that I didn't need to. And I am entirely in love with this story, from the younger, more venial Sharpe (I recall reading somewhere a quote about Bean playing great villains, and that Sharpe is a villain that happens to be one of the heroes) to the casual and tiny reveals of the Devil's identity that speak to the reader but that Sharpe doesn't recognize. (I adore the unreliable narrator aspect of this, the complicity of the reader in the underlying truths of the story that are hidden from the narrator!) Fabulous.

Whew. That's enough typing. Just one more thing: I know some of you are, like me, runners, and I wanted to point to the new-ish runners community.

[xposted to http://isis.dreamwidth.org/7493.html. Comment where you like.]

I have contributed some prompts to Porn Battle VIII. You should too.

I have signed up for Remix/Redux 7. You should too.

I have decided not to sign up for C6D Midsummer '09. But you should, anyway. (I have offered to pinch hit! I just don't have the C6D writing mojo going at the moment.)

I am writing. I am reading. I am contemplating vidding.

I am, I think, going to bed now.

I just got off the phone with a customer service rep from my health insurance company. After I gave her the information about the claim, she said, and I quote, "Oh, I see we denied that in error. We'll pay the hospital and send you an updated explanation of benefits."

o.O

I think I'm going to go out and buy a lottery ticket now.

Some of you may recall that back in February 2008 there was a lunar eclipse. To celebrate, I uploaded a small selection of songs with the word "moon" in the title, plus as a bonus track, Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. (Note: the songs are no longer on my server. But if you're going, "oh, darn," over any particular track, lemme know and I can re-upload.)

The point is that I wrote a little info about each of the songs, and for the bonus track I wrote, "Come on, doesn't this take you back to 1983? Aren't you humming, "turn around, bright eyes" RIGHT NOW?" And kelliem, damn her (bright) eyes, commented with an embedded link to the Total Eclipse of the Heart video, which is...well, fucking bizarre. (And also, apparently, removed from YouTube. Alas. Kind of.)

Well, yahtzee63 just posted (a link to) the Total Eclipse of the Heart Literal Video Version. I was, literally, laughing so hard I was crying. (I also think this is amazingly cool because it's the opposite of a songvid; instead of taking a song and constructing a video accompaniment, the creators took a video and changed the audio track to construct, um, I am not sure what.)

All about me I see this meme in which people give their 10 favorite pairings, and I am all, "woe! I am NOTP! I like them all (or, mostly all)!" Because, mmm, Sharpe/Harper - and Sharpe/Leroy and Sharpe/Spears (and yes I am writing something, damn you, the_stowaway) and Sharpe/Alatriste (la la la splix) and Sharpe/Teresa, of course, and so on and so forth. Fraser/Kowalski! Kowalski/Vecchio! Vecchio/Suzanne! See, this is what I loved about HP and SGA; so many characters, so many possible relationships, each with differing ramifications. The stories I could tell about Sheppard and McKay were a different set of stories than those I could tell about Sheppard and Ronon, or McKay and Zelenka, or Zelenka and Weir, and, and, and.

I am bored. That is: I am doing things I don't like doing, involving taxes, and health insurance, and work, and there is no email landing in my email box. Woe.

So, hello all you new people who have subscribed to me at Dreamwidth! Hello all you not-new people (and heck, new ones too; there are a few, although mostly it has been attrition rather than accretion) who have me friended at LiveJournal! Introduce yourself or tell me something or ask me something or, I dunno. Rec me a fic. Sing me a song. Bake me a cake.

The other day I felt like reading something, and none of my current fandoms appealed to me. I checked my bookmarks and found a story which I had no memory of having bookmarked; I read it, found a link to another story in one of the author's notes, and read that; and am here to gleefully rec them both. They are both crossovers between Harry Potter and other literary works, both gen, both works of genius. Other than that, nothing in common.

The Lamentable Comedy of Severus, Half-Blood Prince of Denmark by a_t_rain | HP/Hamlet crossover, gen, PG, novella. When Severus Snape finishes at Hogwarts, Dumbledore sends him to do a research fellowship with one Doctor Faustus, who is perfecting the Plothole-Plugging Potion. Severus drinks a test version and is sent whirling into the 16th century, where he lands on Rosencrantz just as he and Guildenstern are about to go to Elsinore. He puts on Rosencrantz's doublet and hose, travels to Denmark, and the rest is history Hamlet. Or rather, Hamlet as it would have happened had an irascible young wizard with a talent for potions stepped in. Which is awesome.

Sherlock Holmes and the Ravenclaw Codex by dolorous_ett | HP/Sherlock Holmes, gen, PG, novella. Hogwarts Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black sends for Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery of the disappearance of an important artifact. This story is told in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle, through the narration of Watson, and it's done very well here, perfectly canonical-feeling. The merging of the worlds was very well done; I particularly liked Holmes's distrust of the wizarding world, the reason for which is slowly revealed through a clever backstory. I think perhaps it's because in HP canon we see the world of magic through the eyes of a child who is discovering its wonders, and of course, it's magic, yay! to most of us, so the jaundiced eye is a fresh perspective.

Icon in honor of the new Star Trek thingie apparently being abbreviated ST: AOS (for "Alternate Original Series") although I am never not going to imagine Post Captain James T. Kirk when I see it. Although an Age of Sail AU seems kind of redundant, doesn't it!

Saw it, liked it, failed to feel fannish about it, although that hasn't stopped me from reading a few selected bits of fanfiction. The various actors rocked their characters utterly, particularly Karl Urban who manages to evoke look and sound and mannerisms of vintage McCoy superbly. Also, Leonard Nimoy has aged gracefully, mmm. But I did not like ( spoiler for new-canon relationships and characterization ) And I can't read Kirk/Spock without imagining original Kirk/Spock, which I am entirely not interested in. So I might poke around the edges of the fandom, but alas I am not going to join in. (Alas, because it looks to be the Next Big And Really Fun Thing!)

6. Fangirls are awesome! I got my Mordewind CD (these are the Polish sea shanty guys!) fresh from Poland, thanks to the kind efforts of ladysunflow. Plus an awesome card with - I can't even describe it. An octopus-water-tower-art-thingy. ♥♥♥ And I sent out a book and chocolate and cheese and stuff to various fanfriends. I love doing that. I love getting stuff, and I love sending stuff, and, I love you all ♥♥♥!!! \o/

6.1 There will be a locked post early next week. La la la.

7. Speaking of sending stuff, I have a small selection of Dreamwidth codes. Email me at isiscolo at gmail if you require one.

8. I totally love it when I see a post that I think, hmm, shall I metafandom this? I am not sure. But I decide to do it, and when I click on my Delicious Complete linky, the fields in the form are all filled out, which means that another metafandom editor has already added it! Justification FTW.

9. In replying to a comment on my previous post, I noticed that six of my icons (in four different fandoms) depict men with guns. I...am not sure what that says about me.

You know how it is. You have nothing to say for a couple of days, or a week, and suddenly: you have too many things to say, and you are probably not going to remember them all. And by you, I of course mean me.

1. STAR TREK TONIGHT! Finally. Although I don't feel bad about not having been able to read your reaction posts, because I can sort of tell that most of you thought it was pretty good. :-)

( A brief history of my relationship to Star Trek. )

So the Star Trek of my heart is Kirk and Spock and Uhura and the rest, and so I am unreasonably excited and yet sort of nervous about watching this new version.

2. I have completed 2 of my 3 assignments for remixthedrabble (and on DW that's not going to show properly as a community, is it. Bah) and am happy with them! Now, on to the third. I'm tapping my foot anxiously awaiting sign-ups for the next RemixRedux. And - I'm dithering on midsummer2009. I mean, I love the C6D Midsummer Fest! And yet...I am not entirely sure that I can come up with enough requests, or offer enough things that I will really want to write. And I still have unfinished things hanging over my head I must finish.

3. There is an anonymous feedback meme sprouting like an infestation of cockroaches all over my flist, and ( we hates it, Precious, yess we does. )

3.1 This makes me think that maybe it's time for another of my not-very-periodic rounds of offering to read your stories and tell you What I Really Think. I need to think about constraints on this, but I'll make a post when I do. ETA: This is my post from the last time I did this, just so you can see what I'm talking about.

3.2 And it also reminds me that I have been thinking about posting about negative feedback (not just concrit, but not flames) and the culture of not saying anything if you can't say something nice. Which again, deserves its own post. This is just a Note To Self (and preview of coming attractions, for the non-selves).

4. Another thing I'm intending to post about is Dreamwidth, and how my DW circle differs from my LJ flist. I will say that I am now leaning heavily toward making my DW journal my primary journal - but only after some of the beta bugs are worked out. In particular, I really need my reading filters, because I like to organize my flist into "associations" which are partly fandom-related and partly "how I know this person" and partly other stuff, and that way I also don't have to go to skip=lots. So I am holding off adding most crossposters to DW. However, if you seem to be primarily reading me at DW, I will read you there, too.

4.1 One thing which is sort of weirding me out, though, is seeing posts on LJ by people who have crossposted, and all the username links are DW-style snowmen instead of LJ-style heads, but sometimes the snowmen don't go anywhere (that is: the DW username doesn't exist), or the context is, "And then I read this fabulous story by username" except that "username" is a DW link but "this fabulous story" is a link to LJ, and it hurts my brain. I admit I go through and edit my crossposts so this doesn't happen.

5. Changing subject entirely: I am currently listening to Cormac McCarthy's The Road on audiobook, mostly because mlyn pointed me to the trailer of the movie, which features a very shaggy Viggo Mortensen. And I just discovered a few days ago that our library has started (recently) offering a new downloadable audiobook option through the "Across Colorado Digital Consortium" and they have a whole bunch of stuff I can't get through Netlibrary.com, and I gleefully zeroed in on Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral...and the stupid system doesn't recognize my library card number, and our library people said, when I called them, "oh, we've noticed that nobody seems to be able to log in, huh, isn't that weird?" and I want my audiobooks dammit!

5.1 Also, when I finish my current interminable dead-tree book, am going to read Patrick O'Brian's The Far Side of the World, which I think is the next one in the series I haven't read, but I'm not entirely sure. So it might be a re-read.

5.2 Also, the Sherlock Holmes trailer fills me with unholy GLEEEEEEE.

...um, I should probably quit writing this entry and post it now, huh?

An LJ post locked to your friendslist is commonly referred to as being 'flocked.' Is a DW post locked to your circle 'clocked'?

(also, removing someone from your circle = 'squaring.' I INSIST.)

This post brought to you by too much red wine.

PS Should not have had my credit card to hand while drinking said red wine during DW seed account sale.

PPS Still haven't seen Star Trek. NEXT WEEK DAMN IT. OR ELSE.

I begin with a rant: Mammothfail fills me with rage for many reasons, not least because I live in the desert southwest, not far from the Southern Ute tribal lands, and this is a part of the country where the history of the land and of the people are inextricably intertwined. Okay, I like alternate histories, and I think it would be totally cool to have the vanished megafauna still roaming this continent - but a) I don't see why one needs to "remove" the indigenous people in order to do this, and b) in no possible way does this removal not result in a "wildly divergent history" as the author claims. Argh. Read, learn, get annoyed.

---

Here is something cheerier! Have some wildly divergent recs in some wildly divergent fandoms! First, in comments to my recent Master and Commander pimping post, mlyn pointed me to keiko_kirin's stories - and I spent many enjoyable hours reading them. These are my favorites:

More Certain in Affection by Keiko | Aubrey/Maturin, PG, novelette. Stephen has arranged for a source to stay at a gentleman’s club that caters to a particular sort of gentleman, with particular tastes; Jack, unknowing, follows him there. Possibly this is the Age of Sail version of the “undercover in a gay bar” trope, but it is handled so deftly and sensitively here that it seems completely in keeping with canon. Jack’s utter obliviousness is just wonderful.

The Glass Portrait by Keiko | Aubrey/Maturin, G, short story. This instantly became one of my very favorite M&C stories: it's a lovely, slow and stately portrait of Jack and Stephen growing old together. The language is beautiful, subtly weaving together the threads of their interactions with their families, old friends, and each other until the picture emerges.

Next, we have a Big Eden vid, and a Hot Fuzz story. See? Wildly divergent.

Being Alive by dkwilliams | Big Eden, Henry/Dean, Henry/Pike, vid, PG. This vid follows Henry as he moves from his New York life, to Big Eden and his relationships there: with his grandfather, with Dean, with the people of Big Eden, and ultimately with Pike. I particularly like how each section is self-contained in the narrative but follows from the previous bit and leads into the next logically and coherently.

Long Shot by kass | Hot Fuzz, Nick/Danny, R, short story. A sweet and hot little story in which Nick accidentally learns something about Danny - and then learns something about himself.

---

I have started poking again at the epic Aragorn/Boromir, which is somewhat divergent from canon although perhaps not wildly so. (And now you can laugh and say, "in what way does NOT DEAD not constitute wildly divergent?") I had about 2800 words, I deleted a whole bunch and wrote a whole bunch...and now I have about 3000 words. Sigh.

Also, I went trail running this morning and somehow managed to fall while going uphill and had to pick rocks and dirt out of the palms of my hands, and it hurt.

Also also, Lyle Lovett is giving a concert here in July. I am tempted to buy tickets even though I haven't seen a concert in ages and the ticket prices are ridiculous. (And Girlyman is going to be here tomorrow night. Ditto, ditto. Concerts kind of freak me out now that I'm old.)

Also also also, still haven't seen Star Trek yet. Damn it. SOON.

Also, I'd better wind this up or I'll never post it.

I finally have to admit[1] that I no longer find Callum Keith Rennie[2] particularly hot[3].

---

[1] To my flist. I admitted it to myself quite some time ago. Although skuf teased it out of me a while back.

[2] Young(er) CKR still rings my chimes, although not as much as he used to. But wow, does he ever show his age.

[3] Wow, I sure had an enormous crush on him. I kind of miss being that gaga over someone. (I am currently crushing on Sean Bean, but not with nearly that intensity.)

I listen to audiobooks while I run, and this morning I finished up The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (read, incidentally, by Adrian Cronauer, whose own story formed the basis for the movie Good Morning, Vietnam). In 1757 he takes passage on a packet to England, and one of his fellow passengers is a captain in the Royal Navy named...Archibald Kennedy! I think I giggled out loud at that! (I enjoyed this book quite a lot, and recommend it to fans of the 18th century, although I should warn that it is an abandoned WIP, so to speak.)

By the way, I am trying to be conscientious about reviewing my books on Goodreads, so if you would like to friend me there you can find me by email, isiscolo at gmail dot com. My reading tastes are heavy on biography and nonfiction, historical fiction, and occasional SF and literary fiction.

In other news, last night I dreamed that I got into a raging online flamewar with malnpudl. Which is perhaps a sign I should spend less time on LJ and DW.

1. If you are as annoyed as I am by people who don't cut-tag their LoudTwitter posts, stick this into your Customize Journal Style/Custom CSS/Custom stylesheet textbox:

.loudtwitter {
display: none!important
}

Voila, no more tweets!

2. gnatkip has an exceptionally useful post (which I immediately metafandom'ed) on Greasemonkey scripts that can be made to work with Dreamwidth.

2a. I really can't function without LJaddons. So it was incredibly useful to me to learn that the Insets right-click menu can be used at other journal sites by ticking the "On all" ticky on its Settings/Communication. Then, you can code all the special journal-specific tags at the touch of a button - and I went ahead and coded "dw user on lj" and "lj user on dw" as options. The latter is easy (<user name=^^ site=livejournal.com>) but the former is way complicated:

<a href='http://^^.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[info]' width='16' height='16' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='http://^^.dreamwidth.org/'><b>^^</b></a>

Maybe you just want to trust me on this. (And to make it for a community rather than an individual, change user.png to community.png.)

3. Speaking of better living through, this is an awesome animated vid about oxygen for all you chemistry geeks.

4. Just a reminder that I am on Dreamwidth as isis, and if I don't have you friended here, and you like music and other media of the type I talk about here, you might want to subscribe to me there with your OpenID/DW username; or ask me to give you access, and subscribe to my 'upload' tag.

For meresy's C6D porn tag game. faycequevoudras gave me the prompt:

Show your face
Don't hide
Take off the mask now
Underneath is a deep dark secret

And well, this is what happened. Wilby Wonderful crossover, Emily-centric, R. Heaps of thanks to china_shop for a most helpful beta, and for the title as well.

( Just Different )

( Crossover reveal, and a tiny author's note )

I need a beta for my porn-tag fic. Someone who has seen a lot of C6D media. I kind of don't want to give it away.