apples from the end of the world

I'll just step into this police box and arrest myself

2009-04-13T23:59:13Z

No wait, one more catch up post to make, in terms of television:

I was pretty ambivalent on the Doctor Who special. It wasn't bad, but I didn't think it was all that interesting, either. Not that I will ever complain about having David Tennant on my screen. The only other show I've kept up with is Sarah Connor Chronicles. (Though I've seen two episodes of Kings, and plan to watch more when I have time [so, in a few months?], and occasionally watch an episode or two of Bones when I need cheering up. Dollhouse is off my list, though I'm still reading reviews in case there's an amazing change in the current trajectory.)

But, Sarah Connor Chronicles. That show. I am completely in love, and I am SO SAD that it's probably not coming back next year, because those last few episodes were spectacular. Derek's death - I was accidentally spoiled, but OH. I didn't expect it to be nearly so early on in the episode, and it was just so quick, so random, so needless. I LOVED it. I mean, I really, really, really didn't want him to die, but in terms of where the show was going, they executed it perfectly. Round the corner, bam, he's down, and it's surprising, heart-stopping, but they don't linger on it because for the Terminator who killed him, it was just a random casualty on the way to the goal, not important. And John's face, after, and Sarah, just doing what needed to be done and moving on, no time for grieving. Savannah and John Henry singing together (how much do I love their creepy weird little friendship? I love this show precisely because it made me care about John Henry). And the graves. John: Everybody dies for me. John.

And then the finale! I am hoping SO HARD that it doesn't end there, because. Oh. Guh. John stepping through into the future and there everyone is, Derek (alive!) and his father (though I still think the actor is too young and pretty) and Allison (Cameron? Probably Allison, I think, but that alleviates a huge worry, because one of my first thoughts was, but they can't write Summer Glau out of the show!) - and they don't recognize him! I am not sure I quite get what is going on with the timelines here - most people seem to be postulating that since John skipped over the apocalypse, he is no longer going to end up the leader of the rebellion, that this is an alternate timeline. I've only seen half of season two, so I'm not quite sure about the details of the rebellion in the first place, but I'm kind of hoping that this isn't true, because I want to see how John becomes that leader. I think the thing that gets me most about the show is that hero-narrative. What it means to be a hero, to be the hero, to take on that half-mythical role, to have everyone turn to you as the savior of mankind. And the people who support him, who give things up to allow him to be the hero, who are themselves the real heroes so that he can stand as the figurehead, who die for him (everybody dies for me). After all, that's why it's the Sarah Connor Chronicles, because it's not about the actual hero so much as it is about the construction of that heroic figure. That, plus cyborgs. Perfect show. (And by cyborgs, I do of course mean questions of identity, and what it means to be human, and what it might mean to be not-human, and did I mention how much I loved John Henry and Cameron? Cameron, lying, and that scene where John felt her heart (which felt like a subversion of the whole seduction scene trope, and goodness, I could say so much about how this show treats female sexualization - good things, unlike most of my rants on the topic.) But so many questions about what cyborgs are capable of, and Cameron's "sorry" that reads like an expression of love, and John Henry questioning his identity. "God has a hardware problem." And the two Johns being paralleled, which all goes to say that I think this is the best show on tv right now and I really, really want another season.

Um.

In terms of things that fail, in case you haven't seen it, there is Amazon and its ludicrous ranking system, (ie, the suppression of sales ranking information/search results for books containing adult content, by which they apparently mean anything pertaining to homosexuality, including YA fiction.) Better summaries here and here.

A Land So Wild and Savage

2009-04-06T02:52:17Z

Since I started my sudden LJ hiatus right after Christmas, I never did get around to claiming my Yuletide story. I kind of forgot about it, but then I looked outside this evening and saw snow everywhere and remembered. Sigh. So, long belated link.

I totally did yuletide because I wanted to write fic for a children's book, which I got to do, and it was a lot of fun. I got assigned to Laura Ingalls Wilder, which I had decided to offer because I thought it would be fascinating to write a female narrative of the western experience. My recipient, however, asked for a story about Pa, and at first I was a bit nervous because I hadn't really thought of writing him, but she had a great request, and the more I thought about it the more interested I got.

Title: A Land So Wild and Savage
Characters/Pairings: Gen, Charles and Caroline Ingalls
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Word Count: 1519
Summary: He spends his savings on a tall horse and gathers his belongings into a bundle. He's heard there's land out west for the taking.

(he dreams of empty spaces)

I wrote this four months ago, and it's always interesting posting something a while after you've finished it, because you look back and think, wow, here's the stuff I would do differently. I think it's more fragmentary than I'd like - I was going for sparse, but ended up sort of disjointed. I do think it's funny to compare it to the other (agh, only one?) story I wrote last year, which was Between Stars, which is quite similar in terms of syntax, diction, and even overall structure, but much more connected (perhaps overly rambly?). I don't know, just two rather similar fics on the opposite ends of the continuity spectrum. I think once I have time to write again it will be time to experiment with other styles.

Male Fantasies, Male Creations: e.g., why I don't like Dollhouse

2009-04-05T00:52:51Z

I wasn't going to write this now, but then wanderlight said that she would be interested in hearing my Dollhouse rant, and I started composing it in the comments, and halfway in I decided it might as well be its own post. It got slightly longer than I had intended, but I don't know why that even surprises me anymore.

Warning: This is a rant.

I wanted to love this show, I wanted that so much. I wasn't watching television when the first three Whedon shows were around; I discovered them all retrospectively, after much of the squee was over. I love watching shows simultaneously with other fans, I love the squee and the meta and the picspams and the excitement, and I wanted to have that with a Whedon show. The premise didn't immediately appeal to me; I mostly watch television for character development, and don't really see the appeal for amnesia. But I thought there was a lot of potential in terms of questions of identity. What makes humans human, apart from their memories? Can you create a character without a consistent personality who still emerges as a unified, compelling character? (So far, the answer to this one seems to be, no.) There's also a lot of room here for a meta-textual awareness as well, with Echo and the other dolls standing in for actors, and the Dollhouse staff as writers/directors/creators. As problematic as it is, the premise wasn't without potential.

Unfortunately, it hasn't gone in any of these directions. It seems to keep trying to be a show about empowered women, in a format that really undercuts the whole idea of agency and empowerment. Each individual episode aims to be an arc about how victimized women are empowered, and that that seems to be serving as the 'feminist message'. But these 'empowered' female characters are created by men at the beginning of each episode, and at the end of each episode they're wiped and erased. These empowered women aren't women at all, they're male creations, imaginations, fantasies. Sure they get to play at being real, at overcoming obstacles while looking hot and sexy and scantily clad, but it doesn't count as empowerment if you stick them back in the box at the end of the day, remake them in the morning.

A recurring Joss trope: womens' strength consistently arises out of their victimization. I think Buffy (mostly) evades this problem, or at least moves beyond it, but the other shows fall into it over and over again. I could pull a number of examples from Angel (Cordelia's vision-suffering, Fred's cave, "Billy"), but it's much more evident in Firefly and Serenity. We get glimpses of child-River, but mostly we get River post her trauma, we get broken River, we get broken River drawing on her trauma and using it for her own ends, using it to become strong.

And it's not that this is necessarily a bad story to tell, the woman who is victimized and overcomes and rises above it. But more and more, this is the only story about women Joss seems willing to tell. River in Firefly is one of several female character arcs. River in Serenity is the main character arc. And then we get Dollhouse, which is all about this trope. And moreover, it seems to be wallowing in the act of victimization. (rachelmanija has a very interesting post: Why I would not have greenlit Dollhouse. Fascinating from a television perspective, but also points out that the structural problems of trying to tell this kind of story in this kind of structure. I might be willing to sit through a segment of female victimization in a movie, where the subversion of that system is always approaching - in the show, though, this exploitation is stretched out and stretched out, with no resolution even in sight. I don't need that.)

Buffy worked so well for me because it was about taking a trope of victimhood (the pretty blond girl who dies in a vampire movie) and completely subverting it. The very first scene in the pilot episode plays with our expectations; two characters sneak into an empty building to make out, a nervous shy girl and a confident guy who coaxes her along. But it's Darla who's the vampire, the guy who was the first of the series' (many, many) victims. Buffy takes the assumption of female victimization and moves on, subverts it.

Dollhouse takes the assumption of female victimization and explores it. How many different ways can women be exploited in the space of a few episodes? Even apart from the exploitation of the Dollhouse, within the space of the first three episodes we have: child rape, a bloodthirsty man who sleeps with a woman and then hunts her through the forest, and a singer who is exploited by her manager until the point that she is willing to allow her male stalker to kill her, onstage, for the enjoyment of her fans.

Okay. You know what? Female exploitation and female-directed violence exists, I get it. I'm afraid to walk home alone at night, I've been explicitly heckled on the street, I've been 'casually' touched in inappropriate ways by complete strangers, I've been threatened, I've been followed home, I've had a man try to grab me and pull me into his car. And I feel privileged, because nothing worse has happened to me. I am privileged, in that my only experiences with sexual violence have been ones of potentiality, implication, fear. I have friends who have not been so privileged, who have had that potentiality erupt into action. (And that's just going into direct acts of sexual violence, not to mention other forms of social exploitation.) I get it, Joss, WE get it. We live with this, the constant threat of male violence. Whether or not and to what degree we have experienced it, we live with that fear, every day at school and work, walking home every night.

I want a show that takes this premise of female-directed violence and moves on. Buffy moved on; Dollhouse is stuck in the constant reenactment. And the thing about reenactment is that you can't depict something like rape on a screen - you can't watch something like that - without entering into it a bit. Especially coupled with the way the show has been advertised, the way it's presented as "sexy Eliza Dushku doing different things every week" instead of even being a show about identity and overcoming victimization. It's pretty clear what kind of viewers Fox is trying to attract. Hint: it's not us. Their target audience for a show about female exploitation is male.

The thing is, Joss kept on talking about network interference, and I read and enjoyed the original pilot script that got scrapped. I kept on coming back in hopes that it would get better, that it would manage to get out of the network's attempt to make it about sexy woman and become the show I wanted it to be. And Joss kept on saying, just wait a few more episodes, it gets better, the sixth episode is the show I really want to make. So I gave up for a few weeks and then tuned back in for the sixth episode.

I hated it. I thought it was gratuitously and unredemptively violent. It may be (may - I'm not entirely convinced that it is) possible to depict rape on film in a way that is constructive, that in some way deals with the repercussions of not only the filmed action, but the act of viewing that action. This wasn't it - rape isn't redeemed when the woman suddenly gets superpowers and takes out her attacker, particularly if those too powers are programmed, imposed on her without her will. Maybe if her sudden powers had been depicted in the same light as the violence of the attempted rape, maybe that would have been justification for showing it.* But even so, that wasn't something I needed to see on my television, that brutal scene of violence and rape. Particularly coupled with the Fox ad campaign that seems to be glorifying rather than problematizing Echo's exploitation.

*There's a great vid out there somewhere that compares Echo and River to make the point that Echo's sexual exploitation and River's physical powers/programming both result from the same kind of male manipulation, and that maybe this trope of the 'female fighter' that is so prevalent in Joss' work is exploitative in itself - I'll see if I can hunt up the link for that. ETA: My Medea, by yunitsa. You should check it out even if you haven't seen any of Dollhouse, because it deals with a kind of female exploitation in Firefly/Serenity that tends to go more unnoticed. Read her notes, too. Plus, it's just a great vid. (Vienna Teng, too, for those of you who love her.)

In all fairness, I should point out that despite vowing never to watch the show again, the good reviews of 107 lured me back in. I thought it was a pretty good episode, and it dealt with some of the consequences of 106, actually dealt with some of the aftermath of the rape scenes, gave Caroline some agency. It certainly wasn't perfect, but I wanted to like this show enough that I was willing to give it another chance. But I hear that last night's episode wasn't very good, so, bleh. I'm just about willing to give up at this point, except for I REALLY REALLY LOVE ALAN TUDYK, so I might come back for him. Even if it goes against my better judgment.

Heh, I SO did not have time to write that. Too late now.

(Icon used with a certain sense of irony.)

maria who, I say

2008-11-13T05:34:26Z

Okay, so, the Sarah Jane Adventures. They try rather too hard to be simplistic and child-appropriate, to such an extent that they're sometimes ridiculously watered down (honestly? I think kids are smarter than you think. Plus, if you give them good stories, they will get smarter!). And the writing is often clunky and expositiony, and they are constantly skipping over the parts that I want to be emotional payoff (I mean, Luke telling his friends that he was created by aliens? You would think it would happen onscreen, yes?).

That said, I kind of love it. Which surprises me less than it might, because despite its weaknesses, it really is my sort of show: three kids, they get to be friends, and then they go on adventures! Happy!me.

(Also, they save the world with mobile phones. Repeatedly. This amuses me to no end.)

Anyway. I'm watching 207 instead of writing my paper. And although the issues I mentioned are still there, this episode was kind of awesome.

- Doctor Who reference! "Aliens? You mean, like those Dalek things?" So apparently, they are living in a post-alien world, and I didn't even know it. Though I guess... it's been post-alien since the Cybermen, hasn't it? (At some point, people are going to have to stop being surprised at the existence of more alien races. Or so you would think.)

- This is very clearly the "Clyde is deep" episode. Father issues and a secret love of drawing, both in the same episode? (Oh, and the cooking? Kinda cute.)

- But oh, Clyde, this whole father thing is going to end badly. Go home and be with your lovely mother, who is, by the way, lovely. I hope they keep her around even after Clyde's father goes back and is creepy in Germany (and let me guess, they're going to use the alien device to make him forget everything).

- Clyde and Luke, you two are the CUTEST THINGS EVER! Clyde's insistence that it Isn't A Sleepover. But it totally is. Oh, boys, how are you so adorable?

Clyde: It's not a sleepover, you're just staying the weekend.
Luke: And I'll be sleeping over. Therefore, it's a sleepover.
Clyde: I never know whether you're being serious or not.
Luke: I know.

Luke's face when Carla started mothering Clyde!

Luke: Did you draw those?
Clyde: Me? No. Well, yeah, alright, but don't tell anyone. Mrs. Taylor said I had a... natural talent or something.
(Yeah, he wasn't trying that hard to keep it a secret, was he? He's actually kind of proud of it, you know.)

The exchange of goodnights, and then both saying goodnight to Carla at the same time? BFF, I'm telling you! Also, Luke's right, it was totally a sleepover. Complete with Luke staring at Clyde's foot in the morning.

- For a show that tends to be a bit clunky, the scene with Rani's father was brilliant.

Rani: You'd die if you could see this.
Mr. Chandra: You want me to die?

Have I mentioned that I love Mr. Chandra? I wasn't sure at first, but that scene last episode when he thought his wife was playing with him, and then got scared and put his arm around her? That's when I sort of fell in love. Though this episode was kind of hard on him! They just ran off and left him doing pushups, really?

- The hologram to Maria! Clyde is being all cool, and then Luke bounces in and is all dorky and waving and "hi, Maria! We miss you!" Clyde: "We don't miss you. We've moved on. You're gone and forgotten. 'Maria who?'* I say." The little glance, and then Luke just waves again. Haha, boys!

*Ah, see, they are pandering to my conviction that Maria is a baby!girl!Doctor.

- Also? I miss Maria. Rani is very nice, and to my great surprise I like both her parents very much, but... I want Maria back. Plus, she and Rani could be friends and it would stop this from being Yet Another Fandom where all the BFF relationships go to the boys. (Two Maria references this episode, the hologram and Clyde's drawing. That's one place that SJA and DW have been very good, giving due respect to characters who have left.)

- Clyde's father could not have been more obvious in his mercantile scheming. Show, this would have been a good place to have a twist. Instead... *sigh* But oh, Clyde, this is not going to end well.

ETA: So then I watched the second half.

MARIA!!! Maria! I LOVE Maria! And Alan too. Sleepy!Alan! "Your computer is... beeping. Stop the beeping." (Though honestly, if he's a computer expert who can hack into UNIT, shouldn't he be able to take care of an internet phone call?)

Oh, and then: "They want to talk to me? Cool. ... Uber-cool." OH ALAN, I love you! Can we have them both back for keeps, please?

Clyde's had a hard few episodes - this is is second time being mind-controlled, isn't it?

I am sad that there are only four more episodes (aka, only two more stories).

Now I really have to finish that paper.

Yuletide!

2008-11-13T01:30:53Z

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi! First of all, thank you so much for writing for me. This is my first Yuletide and I’m unbelievably excited about all of my requests. I’m about to ramble on in extensive lengths about my preferences, but that is mostly because I’m verbose and like to explore things. I have complete confidence that I will love any story you write with the chosen characters, and my rambling is in hopes of assuring any worries you might have about my preferences, and possibly giving you a place to start if you're the type of person who likes to have something to work with. Really, I just enjoying flailing about my fandoms.

Gen, het, or slash – all are fine, though nothing explicit or smutty. I love reading about relationships, whether romantic or not. Characters who care deeply for each other (platonically or otherwise) make me very happy.

I’m leaning towards happy endings in all fandoms, though if you want to do something bittersweet, that’s lovely too; I do prefer a bit of hope, though.

Things I like:

As I said, romance or gen; I love stories that focus on best friends, or best friends falling in love. I read for relationships much more than I do for plot. Though I do enjoy a good adventure story in the more adventurey-type fandoms.

I love watching my favorite characters be worried over, and the other characters getting protective. I don’t like it, however, when it comes at the expense of my favorite character being helpless and inactive; I’m all for proactive characters. (This is especially true if the character in question is female; I love watching the characters around her be worried and/or protective, but only as long as she gets to be strong and self-reliant at the same time.) I have a tendency to fixate on a single character, and I love seeing them loved. I think my enjoyment of whump and pining stems quite simply from the fact that I want to see my favorite characters being needed. I want to see how the other characters depend on them, miss them, worry over them, are happy when they are around, etc.

Also: pining, eventually-requited pining, obliviousness, friendly teasing/snark (particularly among siblings), jealousy*, unnecessary jealousy, protectiveness, unnecessary protectiveness, best friends, characters that can laugh at themselves, platonic love, whump, sacrifices, insecurity, longing (and I don’t mean this in a romantic sense – that’s pining. Longing is for anything else: an adventure, or a piano, or the ocean, anything. Wistfully wanting, perhaps I should say), self-reliant characters, wanderlust, guilt, forgiveness, characters with a great capacity for forgiveness, banter, misunderstandings that are eventually resolved, weather, familial love

*I do not like jealousy when it gets icky and excessive and leads to relationship angst. For established relationships, I only really like minor jealousy, where maybe the jealous party knows he is being silly and is half ashamed when coming out with "but you just kept talking about him/her", and it ends in laughter and "I can't believe you thought I was interested in him/her!" I particularly like jealousy in non-established relationships when it leads to snark or pining or being mildly rude to poor, oblivious third parties who have no idea what they did wrong. But creepy jealousy that leads to fighting and breaking relationships and people suspecting each other of cheating? I do not like that at all.

Things I do not like:

cheating, smut, excessive humiliation, deathfic, incest, genderswap, mpreg (for these fandoms? I can't even imagine!,character bashing

In terms of specific fandoms, let me repeat the warning that I have been very rambly (especially in regards to The Five Little Peppers. Eek!). Please take this with the understanding that I just get excited about my fandoms, and don’t think that I’m hoping for you to fit in everything I mention. If you already have an idea, go ahead and write it without worrying about my further details – mostly they’re just there in case you need a starting point and want to know my take on the fandoms.

Hornblower: Horatio, Archie

Archie-Horatio friendship; slash or gen are both lovely, though I’m not a fan of smut. Other than that, I’m up for pretty much anything: adventures on the high seas! or boys getting to know each other! or if you’re in the mood for romance, stoic bff pining! I have to admit a fondness for stories in which Horatio worries over Archie, nor am I averse to a bit of whump. I don’t care if the story is set before or after “Retribution”, but no character death, please.

I am head over heels in love with Archie, so it should not be hard to satisfy me here. During or after the series, both are great – post-“Retribution” is fine, though I’d rather not have a ‘fixit’ story. If you want to after the series, go ahead - I’m willing to take the fix for granted without too many details. I’d rather have something that deals with a plotline of its own rather than something that’s wrapped completely around an existing episode (though if you want to use an episode as a starting point, or refer heavily back, that’s fine – I’d just like exploration of stuff that doesn’t happen in canon, as well).

When I say plot, btw, don’t worry if you’re not up to writing a high seas adventure with ocean battles and captured ships and continental spies or whatever (though that would be awesome). Also awesome, though, would be a plot that is relationship focused. Overall, relationships are what make a story for me, as much as I may enjoy adventure-plot trappings. Archie being able to make Horatio laugh like no one else! Banter! Obliviousness! Or, on the angstier side, coming to terms with past or present traumas (Simpson, I’m talking about you. or Spanish prisons. Or whatever. We’re certainly not lacking in trauma to choose from)! Whump! Worry! Pining! Misunderstandings! How Horatio really does need Archie! If you want to get dark or serious, great! If you want to keep it fun and light, great! If you want to have some of each, even greater!

I have a rather extensive post here, with some squee about my love for Hornblower, which may be helpful if you’re still unsure of what I like. But please know that I’m pretty much guaranteed to like anything if it has Archie and Horatio being best friends.

I should warn, this next section turned into an overflowing of fannish love. I’ve never had an outlet for my love for these books before, so apparently it decided to erupt now. Please excuse the length.

Five Little Peppers: Polly
I love how Polly is the glue holding everyone together, so anything about her, particularly if it focuses on her relationship with Jasper, Ben, or Joel. Polly and her brothers and the transition from poverty to the Kings! Polly/Jasper friendship or romance! Measles!fic! If it extends beyond the Victorian ideology of the books, all the better – looking at how they were actually effected by issues that the book skims over, poverty, or class, or historical events (this isn’t necessary, though – anything within the scope of the books is lovely, too).

This is pretty much the fandom where anything you write will make me happy, because I never dreamed I’d get Pepperfic, ever. These were the characters of my childhood, though, so nothing highly rated, please. I realize this might be a tricky fandom to write, mostly because of certain outdated ideals and Victorian entrenchment, not to mention the do-goodish-ness that the books are rife with, so I’m just going to ramble a little about what I love about the characters and hope that gives you a place to start:

As I said in the prompt, Polly was my childhood favorite, and I really kind of love her. She takes care of her family so staunchly. She plays piano on the table and she tells stories, and she loves nice things. She wants so badly for everything to be just right, and takes the little failures hard. She’s warm hearted and cheery and has a temper that she struggles to control. She grows up so quickly, cooking and making do and taking care of her siblings, but in other ways she’s still so young and earnest and ideologically innocent – I imagine that the transition to the Kings’ house must be a very surprising one for her, more than is shown in the books. Oh, and I know it’s a little bit Mary Sueish, but I love that everyone loves her – because really, how can you not love Polly?

As for the other characters, well, again, I’m particularly interested in them in relation to Polly. The Jasper of the books is pretty much the ‘perfect character’, the befriender, the comforter, the educated, knowledgeable one. I love him dearly (he was early on my list of fictional boyfriends. I was, like, six) but I’d love to see some of the uncertainties we don’t get in canon. How does he react to the differences between his family and the Peppers? What is it like for him, child of privilege, to come into contact with their poverty? How does it affect his relationship with Polly? Oh, and canon does give him one weakness, which I love: his jealousy for Polly. Not just his unnecessary and unwarranted jealousy when faced with her potential suitors – he gets all polite and honorable and sometimes a little bit snarky and you know he’s just bristling with jealousy underneath, and I kind of love it (oh, Jasper, like Polly was ever going to end up with anyone else!); but also the way he always chooses her over everyone else, is jealous of her company because he can’t think of anyone he’d rather be with.

Ben! Ben is staunch and loyal and he’d do pretty much anything to make Polly happy (and she’d do the same for him). He goes all quiet and gruff and unassuming and he often falls into the background, until he comes out and does something startlingly sweet and wonderful, and you just want to hug him. I love Ben. He kind of recedes in the later books, but he’s honorable and dutiful and pays Mr. King back for everything instead of finishing school, which... oh, Ben. If you go the Ben-Polly route, it’s all about the sibling love. Worrying about each other, taking care of each other, shouldering each other’s burdens, teaming up together to fix things… so many possibilities. There’s also room for Jasper-Ben friendship, or! Jasper-Ben-Polly friendship!

Joel. Joel!. He’s the harum-scarum wild one. He’s all over the place, bouncing off walls and getting into trouble quite by accident, even in later days when he’s learned better how to harness his energy. He and Polly have a lot in common, I think, both impetuous and earnest, and so eager to Do The Right Thing, even though they very often can’t figure out how. One of my all-time favorite scenes book scenes is from Phronsie Pepper, when they go into the Little Brown House and Joel has filled it with candles, just the way Polly wished in the beginning of the first book. He remembered that wish over all these years, and when he could fill it, he did. Oh, my heart! (I also love when Polly breaks her arm in FLP Grown Up, and he’s at school and his first thought is to drop everything and go to Polly. I was very upset at Davie for talking him out of it.) Their relationship is underexplored in the books, but they have so many fascinating character parallels, and such a strong bond.

In more general terms: I’m a huge fan of stories that expand past the original Victorian scope of the series, looking at the elements that couldn’t have been dealt with in the canonical context. For example: the Peppers are portrayed with a Victorian understanding of being idyllically poor, but what are the realities of this poverty? How does it affect their relationship with the Kings? What about questions of class mobility? Or if you’re historically minded, placing the characters against a backdrop of historical events could be interesting; the books were written between 1880 and 1916, so there’s plenty of leeway in terms of date (and honestly, I don’t care if you stretch that). Or, social themes aside, just taking the stories farther in terms of content is lovely too – exploring the serious sides of issues or relationships or what-have-you – I’m all for that. Though this is also a fandom where I’m leaning toward a happy ending (though if you end up going down a bittersweet path, that’s fine too – as long as there’ s hope in the end).

And… wow. I didn’t know I had that much to say about the Peppers. Again, I feel like I should reiterate, I’m just tossing out ideas here. I won’t be disappointed if you go off in a completely different direction, and I certainly don’t expect you to include everything (because that would be epic-length fic)! I’m just tossing out ideas in hope of sparking creative juices. Because, seriously, I mean it when I said that I’ll love anything. Especially if it contains people loving my Polly.

Note for anyone else who may be reading this (because I'm always trying to advertise my fandoms): the Pepper Books were written for children by Margaret Sidney at the turn of the century. They’re hardly at the forefront of children’s literature of the time; they’re moralistic and at times overly saccharine and pedantic. That said, I fell in love with the characters at a very early age, and I really, truly love them. (I had no idea exactly how much deeply rooted fannishness I had for these books until I started rambling just now.) If you’re interested, several of the books are available online at Classicreader or Project Gutenberg. There is also a resource page here

Wind in the Willows: Rat, Mole
Oh, this is comfort fic. Ratty and Mole, BFF. What I love about this book is how Rat loves the river, and Mole loves him for it, and Rat loves Mole enough to go away from it. Anything focusing on that dynamic will make me wonderfully happy. Or something about Rat’s wanderlust versus his love for his home – with Mole in the role of the best friend, of course.

Ratty and Mole are BFF forever. I mean it when I said that anything focusing on the dynamic of their friendship would be brilliant. I’m leaning toward something gentle, nothing too dramatic or serious or angsty or anything, just comfort and love and some bittersweetness in the form of longing (not romantic longing, I don’t mean, just longing for the things they love, each other, their home, the river, the sea). Ratty and Mole making house and getting comfortable with each other. Rat loving the river and making up poetry, and Mole loving him for it. Mole’s whims, and how willing Rat is to drop everything and indulge him. Rat’s bouts of wanderlust, and Mole steadying him through them.

Or, a different track: the Sea Rat wasn’t listed as a character, so I couldn’t ask for him, but if you wanted to do something with him, that would be lovely as well. The tension between love of peace and love of travel is central to both him and Ratty; they are torn between the wandering life and the idea of a home, and I love them for it. I also love that Mole is the reason Rat doesn’t go; that if it weren’t for Mole, Ratty would have followed the Sea Rat down the path and onto the ships – but he stays, because Mole reminds him that he loves this place, loves his home, loves his friends, loves the river. So, if you want to go down that path…

I got carried away while flipping through the book just now, and started typing up my favorite parts. If you’re feeling in need of further inspiration, my favorite quotes are listed here.

Casson Family
I’d love some Caddy/Michael, set anywhere in the series, or perhaps after the last book. Caddy is brilliant and crazy and wonderful, and Michael is hopelessly in love with her but not sure that the feeling is mutual. Michael loving Caddy, and Caddy figuring things out! Or, if that’s not up your alley, Michael and Caddy’s adventures after she catches up with him. Bonus points for the rest of the Casson family, especially Rose.

Comparative to the others, I don’t have that much to say about this prompt – which is not to say that I’m not just as eager for the story! I love the Cassons, especially Caddy and Michael, who have been my OTP since the first book. “Don’t call me darling! I’m a driving instructor!” Hee! I love Caddy’s wild exuberance and vivid flightiness; I love that she appears to be quite brilliant underneath it all. And I love Michael’s gruff reluctance, and how it segues into being head over heels in love with her. So… anything about them will make me really happy.

That is probably the length that all of the other parts should have been. Sorry.

Again, dear Yuletide Writer, thank you! I hope my ramblings haven’t scared you off. Really, I am very easy to please, I promise. And I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

with all the south in your face

2008-11-12T03:47:02Z

I'm currently working on my yuletide letter. (And my lovely Yuletide Writer, if you happen to read this: First of all, hi! Secondly, thank you! and Thirdly, I promise my letter will be up soon.) It's going quite slowly, mostly because I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be elaborating preferences and such, and instead I keep on getting swept up in tides of fandom love. Most recently for Wind in the Willows. So I just thought I'd take a moment to say:

I love this book. I love this book so incredibly much. I love Ratty and Mole, and Badger, and Otter, and the Sea Rat. And oh, the wanderlust, the yearning in this story. *clutches heart* This is actually not a book I read as a child; I was probably sixteen or so the first time I picked it up. Despite that, I fell instantaneously in love. Everytime I reread it, I fall in love again. I opened it up just now in the attempt to find a favorite quote to use in my Yuletide letter. Instead, I ended up typing out a large chunk of the book before I'd even realized it. Um, yeah, sometimes I just randomly start typing up books. No idea. It helps me think.

Anyway. If you love Ratty and Mole at all, there are quotes for you under the cut. If not, you should peak under the cut and see if you don't fall in love a little bit.

‘Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in all my life,’ [said Mole].

‘What?’ cried the Rat, open-mouthed: ‘Never been in a – you never – well, I – what have you been doing, then?

---

‘This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.’

---

Toad, kicking out his legs, sleepily said, ‘Well, good night, you fellows! This is the real life for a gentleman! Talk about your old river!’

‘I don’t talk about my river,’ replied the patient Rat. ‘You know I don’t, Toad. But I think about it,’ he added pathetically, in a lower tone: ‘I think about it – all the time!’

The Mole reached out from under his blanket, felt for the Rat’s paw in the darkness, and gave it a squeeze. ‘I’ll do whatever you like, Ratty,’ he whispered. ‘Shall we run away to-morrow morning, quite early - very early – and go back to our dear old hole on the river?’

---

‘Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,’ [the Rat] said presently. ‘O, Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet.’

---

‘If you’ve got to leave this pleasant place,’ [said the Rat to the swallows], ‘and your friends who will miss you, and your snug homes that you’ve just settled into, why, when the hour strikes I’ve no doubt you’ll go bravely, and face all the trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that you’re not very unhappy…’

‘No, you don’t understand, naturally,’ said the second swallow. ‘First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circling by day…’

‘Couldn’t you stop on for just this year?’ suggested the Water Rat wistfully. ‘We’ll all do our best to make you feel at home. You’ve no idea what good times we have here, while you are far away.’

‘I tried “stopping on” one year,’ said the third swallow… ‘It was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I took wing… It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me…”

‘Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!’ twittered the other two dreamily. ‘Its songs, its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember –’ and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while he listened, fascinated, and his heart burned within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new sensation and thrill him through and through with it; what would one moment of the real thing work in him – one passionate touch of the real southern sun, one waft of the authentic odour? With closed eyes he dared to dream a moment in full abandonment, and when he looked again the river seemed steely and chill, the green fields grey and lightless.’

Oh, that whole scene. That whole chapter, really. *sigh*

---

‘That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,’ [the Sea Rat] remarked… ‘There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you’re a fresh-water mariner. Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it!’

‘Yes, it’s the life, the only life, to live,’ responded the Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.

‘I did not say exactly that,’ replied the stranger cautiously; but no doubt it’s the best. I’ve tried it, and I know. And because I’ve just tried it – six months of it – and know it’s the best, here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, the life which is mine and which will not let me go.’

---

Lastly, in his waking dream it seemed to him that the Adventurer had risen to his feet, but was still speaking, still holding him fast with his sea-grey eyes.

‘And now,’ [the Sea Rat] was softly saying, ‘I take to the road again, holding on south-westwards for many a long and dusty day; till at last I reach the little grey sea town I know so well, that clings along one steep side of the harbor… There, sooner or later, the ships of all seafaring nations arrive; and there, at its destined hour, the ship of my choice will let go its anchor. I shall take my time, I shall tarry and bide, till at last the right one lies waiting for me, warped out into midstream, loaded low, her bowsprit pointing down harbor. I shall slip on board… and then one morning I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sailors… and the voyage will have begun! As she forges towards the headland she will clothe herself with canvas; and then, once outside, the sounding slap of great green seas as she heels out to the wind, pointing South!

‘And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure, heed the call, now were the irrevocable moment passes! ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forwards, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company. You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and light-hearted, with all the South in your face!’

---

Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things; but how could he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion? How recall, for another’s benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him, how reproduce at second-hand the magic of the Seafarer’s hundred reminiscences? …

Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached mid-winter, its hearty joys and its snug home life, and then he became simply lyrical

By degrees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eyes brightened, and he lost some of his listless air.

Presently the tactful Mole slipped away and returned with a pencil and a few half-sheets of paper, which he placed on the table at his friend’s elbow.

‘It’s quite a long time since you did any poetry,’ he remarked… ‘I’ve an idea that you’ll feel a lot better when you’ve got something jotted down – if it’s only just the rhymes.’

<3333

elanne @ 2008-11-10T14:51:00

2008-11-10T20:57:26Z

Real post later, but this is just to say: if you have any interest in Yuletide and haven't checked it out yet, now is the time to do so. Signups end at 9:00 EST tonight. A list of possible fandoms can be found here.

There are currently 1482 people signed up, which is a pretty good chance of finding someone to write in your obscure fandom. I'm excited. Also, I think you all should sign up, so we can give each other moral support. *pokes*

\o/

2008-11-05T08:59:12Z

"Hello, Chicago."

Oh, you guys, I will post pictures as soon as I can. But. I am in awe right now. Watching that, surrounded by everyone, and there was screaming and singing and crying and jumping up and down. It was quite incredible. Afterwards, the streets were absolutely flooded with people, for as long as you could see, and every few minutes everyone would burst into a spontaneous cheer.

I've only done a quick glance over my flist, and found what I expected - a lot of happy flailing, with a few cautionary notes. I understand the caution, I understand that Obama's not going to be able to swoop in and fix all our woes, that he's neither all-powerful nor perfect. And yet, watching him up there, watching the people around me (all sorts of people, all ages, all colors, all backgrounds) - it makes it so easy to believe. And even if Obama isn't - can't be - the cure-all that some people are perhaps expecting, I think that belief is wonderful. It's time our country has something to believe in.

the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideal

<3

join we now this yuletide carol!

2008-11-03T03:16:53Z

Yuletide signups are up! I'm not signing up tonight because I still need more time to think, but I'm very excited. I clicked on the link an hour or so ago, right after it first came up, and only seven people had signed up. Now, it's up to 148. I'm very much enjoying watching the Fandom Requests page turn colors. Also, someone offered to write Five Little Peppers! Which I nominated! I'm not sure if I'll end up requesting it, because there are so many good things to request, but I'm happy that other people are attached to those Peppers too.

Anyway. Signups go to the 11th, I think. You should consider doing it. If you're wavering, you can go look at the Fandom Requests page to see what's offered, and that may pique your interest.

let me tell you something about america

2008-11-03T01:00:16Z

Lots of earnest celebrities want you to vote, please! Harrison Ford and Neil Patrick Harris and ~~Marshall Erickson~~ Jason Segel and Jennifer Aniston and lots of other people, including Orlando Bloom, even though he's British and therefore I have no idea what he's doing here, other than looking all pretty and earnest. I am amused.

Amusing celebrity advertisements aside... it's almost Tuesday. This is very exciting and scary.

Between Stars (James-Lily-Sirius, PG)

2008-10-27T00:41:06Z

So. It appears that I'm posting fic. Shocking, I know.

About five months ago, I did the fic I'd never write meme, and aiseiri_47 suggested (among other things) Sirius/Lily. And contrary to appearance, I did not forget about the meme - I was just slow. I'm not even sure that it counts as a proper Sirius/Lily fic anymore, though you can read and decide for yourself.

Title: Between Stars
Characters/Pairings: James/Lily, implied unrequited Sirius/James/Lily. Sort of.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word Count: 5082
Summary: It happens this way: Sirius is friends with James first, and Lily is friends with Severus. Everything else unfolds from there.
A/N: Remus seems to have disappeared almost completely for the purposes of this fic. I know, I'm as baffled as you are. I love him terribly, but there just wasn't room. So in that sense, I guess, you could call this an AU - at least in terms of my usual sense of canon.

With huge thanks to blackclaude, who betaed (despite the lack of Remus), encouraged (as this grew from a quick one-shot to a monstrous 5000 words), and convinced me to finally finish and post.

Between Stars

It happens this way: Sirius is friends with James first, and Lily is friends with Severus. Everything else unfolds from there.

Until then – before the train and the Chocolate Frog Incident and the pillow-fight that first night in the tower and everything that came afterwards, before all that – Sirius was alone. His world was bounded by the walls of his mother’s house, grey walls and locked doors and empty rooms. There were dozens of empty rooms in that house, but somehow there was never room enough for him – nothing but edges and corners, the shadows of a noisy house where no one ever spoke.

Here is a story his mother likes to tell: Sirius was born silent. She likes to say that the thirty-second pause (the flurry of the healers, her own panting breaths) was the last moment of peace she ever had. Sirius imagines that the silence stretched out under the healer’s gentle hands, that the screaming began the moment he opened his eyes and met his mother’s expectant gaze. (He has been screaming, silently, ever since.)

Years later Sirius tells the story of his life to a young boy with a scar on his forehead; he starts with the beginning, tells him, this is how I met your father. The time before that he doesn’t count as time, the hours lost behind hollow walls, indistinguishable from seconds, days. He allows them to blend, pushes them away like dim memories from a forgotten life – the years he did not live, the names (brother, cousin, son) which were never his to start with.

He never wanted those names, anyway.

Once, his uncle came from far away (which was Leeds, which was outside, which was Elsewhere), and for a few days Sirius was nephew. Uncle Alphard smiled at him, spoke of inconsequential things like pudding and salamanders and stars. “You were named after a star,” he told Sirius, who hadn’t known.

Sirius thought that, just maybe, nephew was a name he wanted to keep. He told Uncle Alphard that he hoped he would stay forever. Uncle Alphard frowned, and said things about “work” and “your mother” and “the Committee for Domestic Apparation”, and then he went away for five years.

The night his uncle left, Sirius looked up at the dark sky, at the stars shining bright and fierce and so, so far away, and he thought yes, I am like that.

Then came Hogwarts, which was Away, which was a thousand firsts and most of all James.

If Sirius had met Lily first, maybe the whole story would have been different. (Maybe it would have been the same.)

This is how he misses Lily and meets James:

That first day there are two dangerous boys on the platform with black hair and shaded eyes and mouths full of curses. Their mothers meet, smile. “Sirius, Severus, you two run along now.”

On the train he moves away from Severus, because everything about today speaks of new beginnings, and Severus is old old old, the pale reflection of everything Sirius has ever been or known. He walks away, eager to start over, and so – quite by accident – he watches from a distance as a girl tumbles her way into the compartment in a tangle of long limbs, eager and awkward and unlike anyone he’s ever seen. She is bright with possibility, she is the promise of a new life (she is the first thing he ever loves). She is gawky and freckled and smiling, smiling, smiling for Severus.

No one ever smiles for Sirius.

She does not see him standing there. She walks away, Severus’s hand in her own; Sirius is left nameless and alone.

Then he meets James. (This is where his life begins.)

James explodes into the train, trailing bags and boxes and last minute gifts from the family that is standing on the platform to see him off. James has an entire trunk full of chocolates that he doesn’t mind sharing. James has been to Siberia, Norway, South America. James has bright eyes and a split-second smile, and he likes Sirius best of anyone at Hogwarts – he tells him so on the second day.

Sirius has never had a best friend before (he never will again), but it is the first name he ever keeps. (He will keep it forever, even in the cold and the dark when the fear has stripped all the other names away.)

James is the second thing he loves. From that moment on his days are caught up in James James James, because Sirius has never learned to give his heart to more than one person at a time.

He thinks he could be happy, maybe.

He meets Lily properly two weeks later. It happens like this: where James goes, Sirius goes, and when James decides to reform that girl who is friends with the Slytherin, Sirius follows. James explains the historic Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry with flailing gestures, in turns earnest and eager and oblivious. Lily throws her head back and laughs in his face, open and honest and uncaring. Watching, Sirius sees Lily’s bright hair and James’ dark eyes, and they are so alike that it makes him ache to watch them together, both so quick and bright and beautiful.

This is the beginning of their war, this is the beginning of their love, this is when everything starts to end.

They fall together so inevitably that Sirius almost doesn’t notice, the three of them caught in a strange sort of friendship, James and Lily constantly fighting with Sirius caught happily in the middle.

Third year James won’t stand anywhere near Lily, because she’s taller than him and it rankles. Sirius points out that everyone is taller than him, even Peter, and James says, “Well, she’s particularly tall,” which is sort of true. He makes a point of avoiding her, until she follows him around asking what she’s done to result in complete castigation. Then James grins in satisfaction, and Lily raises her wand and chases him, and Sirius laughs and eggs them both on in turns.

Fourth year James has a growth spurt. He is finally taller than Lily, and he crows about it for two weeks before she finally tells him to get stuffed, Potter, and hexes his ears green. Sirius teases him about it for days, just to watch James glower, and when James finally breaks the hex, he helps him retaliate.

Fifth year, of course, James realizes what Sirius has always known, that the past four years have been about Lily Lily Lily, and he sets out to fall in love properly.

Here is the story James tells at his wedding: It was fifth year, late September but still summer, so hot that they spent their days fanning themselves by the lake and there was absolutely no point to even attempting homework (or so they tried to tell the professors). James, in a fit of inspired stupidity (as Remus labeled it, years later), stole Lily’s Herbology notes. She chased him, half-angry half-amused, and pushed him into the lake before diving in herself in a desperate attempt to save her notes. (She didn’t – they were spectacularly ruined. Lily was spectacularly angry.) That was the day James fell (rather spectacularly) into love.

It was one out of a hundred lazy not-quite-summer days, but even at the time Sirius, watching, perceived it with a certain degree of inevitability – Lily flushed and freckled, James laughing and triumphant, how they landed in the water, James’s surprised splash and Lily’s neat dive. He remembers the day in details – ink blurred on parchment, Lily’s mouth twitching despite itself while the water dripped slowly from their soggy robes – and every detail seemed like a promise of what was to come.

Sirius knew, then, or maybe he had always known.

The past five years had been perfect, scraped knees and bruised dignities and all – five years spent arguing and hexing and stuffing each other into broom closets and having the times of their lives. Sirius would have given anything to keep it that way forever, but in the middle of this September afternoon, James, pushing his sopping hair out of his eyes, looked at Lily and discovered he wanted something more.

James declared his undying love later that evening, first to Sirius, and then to Remus and Peter, and then to the common room at large, and then, finally, to Lily (this last was judged by all and sundry to be a mistake). Remus raised an eyebrow. Peter laughed so hard he fell off the couch. The common room at large stared and then returned to their work. Lily hit him with an itching hex that took two days to wear off.

And things went almost back to normal.

This is what changes: sometimes, when James talks Lily Lily Lily (which grows more and more often as the years pass by), Sirius listens, breathing hot and cold and hopeless. James babbles on, animated and oblivious; looking at him, Sirius hates him and loves him and wonders how anything can ever be right again. He leaves, invariably, because he can love James and he can love Lily, but sometimes the whole thing makes his head hurt, and he leaves James to his babbling and gesturing, flees to the Astronomy Tower, or the lake, or Hogsmeade.

It is on one such day that he kisses Lily; later, he finds he cannot remember when it was, only that it was winter, and that James had been reading up on Muggle poets, and that Lily was wearing a red scarf.

This is how it happens: the autumn air is brisk, and he is thinking about James, and suddenly Lily is there, rubbing her arms and half laughing as gales of wind buffet them back and forth along the lake’s edge.

They meet quite by accident. She is cold, and he is tired, and maybe she just leans in for the warmth, maybe he just wants a comforting touch. Soft words like sighs spill across his neck; he shivers. On her mouth he tastes the remnants of the afternoon’s dessert, her lips spicy with cinnamon and pumpkin, and he breathes into them; her body is soft and mysterious and sweet against his own.

He loves her, then, and he pulls away, because this kiss (the sweet tang of her mouth and her gentle hands on his back) is both too much and too little. Because Lily is, maybe, everything he has ever wanted, but not like this, not with James alone in the castle, not with a kiss sealing the two of them together. He can feel how it might be – Sirius and Lily wrapped up together, no room for anyone else, only James flickering around the edges.

Sirius spent all his life being nothing – not brother not cousin not son – until James came and made him friend; that is all he wants, all he has ever needed. His hands slip away from Lily’s shoulders and she watches him with fragile eyes as he whispers apologies into her ear and walks away.

Back in the dormitory James is hanging upside down over the edge of his bed, reciting bad love poetry. When Sirius enters, James gives him a mournful look and clutches his heart before falling dramatically off the bed. Sirius looks at him, splayed out on the floor, tangled limbs and glasses askew, and even though his lips still taste like pumpkin, even though the pang of walking away from Lily still lingers in his chest, he grins.

(In another world Lily is his best friend; they walk by the lake and have deep conversations about life and poetry and Quidditch. In another world he is happy.)

He is happy here, too.

As Sirius passes, James reaches out a foot and trips him, affectionately. Sirius lands in a heap on top of his friend, and they roll around on the floor for a few minutes, until Remus comes in, all exasperated and amused, and teases them that he’s worried their animal forms are rubbing off. Sirius lies still. There’s a rapidly forming bruise on his chin, where James clipped him with a flailing arm, and James’ hair is tickling his nose; he can feel James’ panting breaths rise and fall against his chest, while Remus stands and stares down at them.

Perhaps everything could be summed up like this: he kissed Lily and he tackled James, and what he meant for both of them was, I would do anything for you.

This is better, maybe, to have both of them a little. Perhaps he’s never really wanted them any other way, only to catch them like this forever, together, messy hair and freckles, bickering and quarrels and all.

He has them together, right now, and it makes his heart leap and his chest ache. They position themselves around him, use him as a barrier in their protracted conflict. He lounges on the couch, with Lily on one side and James on the other, their sharp words and quick retorts sailing over him. He throws an occasional sarcastic comment into the air, but mostly he enjoys the feeling of being surrounded. Lily grazes his nose with her arm as she lobs a pillow at James, James accidentally elbows him in the ribs as he throws it back, and all Sirius wants is for this to go on forever.

It ends in the final week of their schooling, like this:

NEWTs are over, and in five days the seventh years will leave Hogwarts to head out towards jobs and families and war. Some of them are scared and some of them are sad, some of them never want to come back (and some of them never will), but for now they are enjoying their final days of childhood, the summer heat browning their backs and warming their smiles. (If they know what lies around the corner, it only makes them laugh louder in these, their last days.)

On the edge of the lake there is a patch of mud, three meters long and almost a meter deep, left over from Tiberius Biggle’s Aquafication project gone horribly wrong. Someone (quite probably James, but possibly Tiberius himself) saw the potential of the situation, and levitated a long, narrow pole to hover several feet above the mud. As the younger students finish their exams, some of the seventh years spend the morning attempting to balance their way across to dive into the clear water at the far side. James is the only one to make it across successfully; he’s cockily proud, and conspicuously mud-free.

Basking, as always, in the admiration of the others, James can’t stop showing off; Sirius wipes mud off of his face and sits back to enjoy the spectacle, watching him walk casually over the wooden beam, feet bare and confident. James is halfway across for the fourth time when Lily shows up; she looks hot and amused and more relaxed than Sirius has seen her in weeks, months (ever since the first set of raids). Sirius takes his eyes off James’ endeavor to wave at her. Unfortunately, so does James.

“There’s no balance like Potter balance,” James has said many a time, but he looks back and sees Lily watching, and suddenly his arms are flailing wildly as he tips over the side, his surprised face still half-cocky as he falls.

Sitting on the bank, Lily laughs. She laughs and laughs, and when James climbs shamefully out of the mud hole, she laughs even more.

“I didn’t fall because of you,” protests James. “Really, really, I didn’t.” He tries to wipe the mud out of his eyes, but his hands are filthy, and he only succeeds in smearing it.

Lily does not attempt to hide her smile. “Did you fall because of me?”

“Most definitely,” admits James, who has never, ever learned to lie to Lily.

Sirius doesn’t know quite how it happens (though it has been seven years in the happening), but suddenly Lily moves and James moves and then they are pressed together, bodies close, and James’ hands are getting mud all over the back of Lily’s neck. She doesn’t seem to care.

Of all the things that happen in that final week, the triumphs and the games and the final goodbyes, what Sirius remembers most are the streaks of mud in Lily’s hair, and how James’ surprised eyes close, slow and content.

After that the war starts in earnest. They aren’t students anymore, but even as members of the Order of the Phoenix, they can’t fight all the time – there are still moments of peace, entire days of normality, and some things (sleeping and baking and how none of them ever have any clean socks) go on the same as they’ve always been. There are parties at Sirius’ flat, and Remus and Lily schedule weekly Scrabble tournaments, and James starts a communal laundry drive, and sometimes it seems almost the way it used to be, just the three of them, James and Lily with Sirius on the side, and he is happy, still.

James has a flat of his own, now, even if he’s never there, and it has a postage-stamp-sized garden out back, barely big enough for the three of them to lie on the dry, spiky, end-of-summer grass. Yesterday the Death Eaters raided Diagon Alley, and tomorrow is the day the Prewett brothers will die, but tonight is warm and the stars are bright in the sky above. The days are short, and they are all three young, and the stars feel eternal, unshakeable.

James points out Roderick, the Hungry Rhino, and Lily asks how long it took him to figure out that the constellations his cousins taught him were completely wrong; Sirius says that he kept a copy of James’ first ever Astronomy exam, if she wants to see it.

He can feel their bodies shaking with laughter next to him. The night seems almost like a dream.

Lily waves her arm, pointing out a Muggle constellation. James reaches up his own hand to follow hers, and Sirius watches their fingers intertwine, dark against the sky. He throws his own arms out, heroic and alone under the stars. “How epic,” he says, feeling extravagant.

“Cassiopeia?” asks Lily.

“Me and Lily?” suggests James, at the same time.

“Neither,” says Sirius, and then, “Both.”

“We’re epic like the stars,” James says, and his grin is audible. “That’s us, Lily, me and you. Someday, the Astronomy Professors are going to be pointing us out to first years. Potteropeia, they’ll say.” James puts on a deep, officious voice. “They used to be Hogwarts students, they did. That James Potter, brightest boy we’ve had in a good few generations.”

“Oh, come off it,” Lily laughs.

“Stop hitting me,” says James. “I wasn’t finished yet, but if you don’t want to hear what they’ll say about you, fine with me.”

“What they’re going to say,” says Sirius, “is, my, what a big head that James Potter had. And also, how on earth do you spell Potteropeia?”

“It’s spelled exactly as it sounds,” answers James, annoyed to be broken from his stride.

“What they’re going to say,” interrupts Lily, “is, you see that constellation up there? That’s James, the Eternally Unsatisfied Stag. And they’ll shake their heads sympathetically, and warn their students about the dangers of a swollen ego.”

“Oh, you know you love me and my swollen ego,” says James, contentedly. Then, “Ow, stop it!”

What follows is a pinching war, but Sirius lies still despite the squirming bodies next to him. Last year, last week, he would have joined them and gotten in a few good pinches of his own, but now he feels strangely quiet, almost solemn. The night seems fragile, fleeting and quick, and it hurts him to think that it will not go on forever like this, James and Lily and Sirius lying in the grass and looking at the sky, bodies pressed close and warm and together.

Perhaps the same thought lingers in the air, because the fight dies down much more quickly than usual, until at last all three of them lie still again. “How beautiful,” says Lily at last, and next to her James nods. They are, both of them, looking at the stars.

“How beautiful,” Sirius agrees. He means Lily and James (he means all the things he loves but can never have), and when he looks up towards the stars, all he can see are the empty spaces in between.

It is late, now. The stars begin to fade. They lie in the garden until morning, and wake to Remus standing over them, face worn and grey, to tell them that the Prewett brothers are dead.

James sits pale and still for hours when he hears, and that day a line starts to appear on Lily’s face, a worried crease right between her brows. Sirius watches them, and wonders when they all grew up, how it happened that they have become soldiers. He sees the way Lily’s mouth tightens whenever James is gone too long, how James paces when Lily is on a mission, feels his own shoulders relax whenever either of them returns (another day, just one more day, safe).

“I’m going to marry her,” James says frantically one day, pacing back and forth across the tiny kitchen. (Lily is two hours late, and Sirius is beginning to feel sick.) “I’m going to take her somewhere tomorrow. The Astronomy tower, maybe, or that little restaurant in Diagon Alley where we had those exploding crepes. I’m going to ask her to marry me.” He turns sharply, and on his face Sirius can see love and desperation and promises, and how very, very afraid he is. “We’ll have cherry ice cream, I think. Lily loves cherry ice cream. And fireworks – there have to be fireworks.”

What really happens is this: the next day they are sent on an emergency mission. It is rainy and dark and bone-chillingly cold, and the Death Eaters attack from the forest.

Everything is a mess of blood and mud and screams, and Sirius shoots out spells and frantically watches for the dark forms of his two best friends. He is dueling a masked opponent when he realizes that he has been edged to one side, away from the people he would give his life to protect. He turns sharply, just in time to see James slip in the mud and go down, and Lily dive to protect him.

What happens next is lost in his mad scramble through the mud to get to where James and Lily are, and the thudding of his heart says that he cannot live if they die. When he reaches them he throws up a shield, shining and silver, and turns away before he can see the first spell bounce off it. What he sees instead are Lily’s muddy hands tracing their way through James’ hair, feeling for injuries, and James pulling them both to their feet.

The spells hitting the shield break and reflect back in myriads of color. It’s almost like fireworks, but James and Lily don’t have eyes for anything else.

“Marry me,” says James.

“Only if you promise not to get yourself killed,” says Lily.

They turn for long enough to include Sirius in their conspiratorial grin before diving from under the protection of the shield, eyes bright and wands raised.

When it’s all over, there’s clean-up to be done, and reports to be made; more Order members Apparate in and bustle around making sense of things, but Sirius trudges through the mud until he finds James and Lily. They are both caked in dirt, and Lily is bleeding from a scrape on her cheek. James has his head on her shoulder, just leaning there, and they are holding each other so tightly that Sirius finds it suddenly hard to breathe.

“That last spell,” whispers James, “I thought… You were… I was so scared. Lily, I was so scared.”

“I know,” answers Lily. “Me, too.” She raises one hand to his neck and holds it there, comforting. “As long as we both shall live. That’s how it works.”

Sirius’ chest aches, but at that moment it is all he wants – for them both to live. And if it hurts to see them wrapped so close together, as if they were the only two people in the world, he thinks he can bear it. He loves them so much that he can bear them loving each other more; he can bear anything, as long as he can keep them, both of them, even just a little bit – to stay James and Lily (and Sirius), for ever and ever and ever.

When at last James raises his head, and his grin is wavery but bright, and he meets Sirius’ eyes over Lily’s shoulder. “We’re getting married,” he announces. “Hey, Sirius, did you hear that? Lily and I are getting married!”

“I think everyone heard that,” says Lily, but she is smiling too.

“Sirius will be the best man, of course,” says James, flushed and triumphant. “I mean, will you, Sirius?”

“Oh, will you?” asks Lily.

Sirius swallows once, twice, and then he nods. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, yes, yes.”

They are both his best friends. It is all he ever knew how to want, all he ever learned to ask.”

(He walks home alone.)

The Potters throw an engagement party. Their house is open and airy and crowded with people, Order members and friends from school, people they love and trust. They raise a toast to the unfilled seats, the ones who have already fallen (and they look around and wonder, who will fall next?), and they are happy, almost.

The wide room where James and Sirius used to play Quidditch in their summers has been cleared, the carpets thrown aside; now the room is full of dancers. Sirius watches from the side, and thinks how many people he has come to love over the past eight years. Peter ambles by with a smile, Remus dances with a dark haired former Ravenclaw, McGonagall raises a glass at him from across the room. James and Lily are wrapped tight together, the other dancers parting around them. Sirius leans back heavily against the wall.

He’s more than a little drunk, the heady champagne making him breathless and dizzy (or perhaps it is the sight of Lily and James, spinning so quick and bright on the polished floor of James’ father’s house). He is drunk and James is smiling and Lily is laughing; for a moment he sees the whole thing with painful clarity, and he stumbles outside to where the air is cool and the stars are beginning to come out.

When he feels the gentle touch on his shoulder, he knows it is Lily even before he turns.

“Are you all right?” she asks, wrinkling her forehead in concern.

He wants to say that he’s always all right, that he’s never been all right, that the sky tonight seems very full of stars, but instead he turns and kisses her.

She tastes like champagne and strawberries. His hand snags on the pale silk of her dress and comes to rest on her bare shoulder, where the freckles spread like fine dust under his fingers. When she pulls away her hair flutters against his neck, soft and intimate, like a sigh.

Lily looks like she might cry. “Sirius,” she says, but her regretful eyes say James, and can’t, and sorry.

Sirius tries to smile. He scrubs the back of his hand over his wet eyes and says things like “I shouldn’t have,” and “it’s the champagne, that’s all,” and “it won’t happen again,” and then he flees from Lily’s sympathetic gaze. She stands in the moonlight for a moment, and then turns and goes back inside. Through the window, he sees the way James turns the moment she enters the room, how easily their hands slip together.

It’s better this way, he tells himself. After all, he’s never really known how to go about loving either of them, not the way he’s supposed to, quantifying his love into separate compartments, Lily-love and James-love, a different emotion for each of his two best friends.

They will have a child someday, he tells himself as he watches, and the thought hurts and it doesn’t hurt, because he imagines that the child will have Lily’s freckles and James’ messy hair, will be bright eyed and quick to laugh, will grow up like Lily and like James (and nothing at all like Sirius), confident and cheeky and oblivious and unafraid. They will have a child, and the child will be Lily and the child will be James, and maybe then Sirius will be allowed to love them the way he has always loved them, together, green eyes and messy hair and quips all bound up together in one small package.

James comes to him later, hair tousled, smiling. Sirius might feel guilty, but he has had too much champagne and too little hope, and Lily is too beautiful, James too radiant.

He gives a toast that night, raises the glass of champagne high, the alcohol lending him eloquence. He kisses the hand of the bride-to-be, calls her Mrs Almost-Potter, embarrasses James with stories of his three-year courtship, even pulls out a scrap of poetry, scavenged from under James’ bed in fifth year and saved against just such an occasion.

No one listening thinks his laughter is forced. (It isn’t.) In all his life he has only loved two people, and it seems only sensible that they should love each other as well.

He will laugh at the wedding, too.

As people start to leave, the remnants of the party trickle out onto the veranda. It is dark and cool, and Lily kicks off her sandals to dance with James on the bare grass. Over Lily’s back, James catches Sirius’ eye and waves an excited hand. Sirius smiles back at him.

He is still smiling as he picks up a new bottle of champagne and winds his way out into the depths of the Potter’s backyard. The garden smells like lavender and laughter. Things are very quiet now.

Back on the veranda, James and Lily are still dancing. Sirius can hear their whispers, but not their words.

The night is black, and above him the stars burn lonely and extravagant.

back to the days of christopher robin and pooh

2008-10-21T21:03:10Z

View Poll: #1282816

For any of you who have not heard of it, Yuletide is an obscure fandom Christmas fic exchange. These fandoms can be books, comics, tv, movies, mythology, historical, you name it. They can be older fandoms that have faded into obscurity, modern fandoms that have yet to produce notable amounts of fic, books that have never produced fandoms, etc. etc. Really, this can be anything:Anne of Green Gables or The Great Gatsby or Chariots of Fire or... you know, anything. A master list of all fandoms that have ever participated can be found here.

I'm posting now because nominations have just opened up. If you have any interest in participating, you should go check out the website, or yuletide/yuletide_admin. And then go over and nominate six fandoms you might like to request. Because Yuletide is your chance of requesting fic for that random fandom that for some reason no one writes in but you can't get out of your head. (Those of you who have mentioned wanting Thief fic, here's your chance!)

Personally, I'm heading to Yuletide for two reasons:

a) I tend to discover fandoms five to ten years too late, after all the buzz has died down and half of the interesting-looking story links are dead. So, the resurrection of dead fandoms!

b) I have an unexplained longing to see fic for my favorite childhood stories. Anne, Ratty and Toady, Mary Colin and Dickon (OT3 of OT3s), etc. I think it comes from the fact that I spent hours every night composing massive stories for them in my head, and I love seeing them from a grown-up perspective. What happens to them next? What levels of the story were ignored to make it a children's story? What kind of adults do these children make? And (especially for the older stories) how do they react to the historical events that would occur in their timeline? Perhaps I'm suffering from the inability to let go, but I love these stories!

Now I'm trying to decide what to nominate. And you know what I really want? Five Little Peppers fic. I want it SO BADLY. This was possibly my First Ever Fandom, even before Narnia - I composed epic stories (future fic, adventures, AUs) in my head for years. Polly/Jasper! And Joel! And Ben! And Pickering (whom I loved for the sake of his unrequited Polly-love)! Only I do not think that this is a story I will find even through Yuletide, because I have never met anyone in my entire life who has read The Five Little Peppers, a series of children's books written between 1878 and 1916, chronicling the adventures of the five children of the Pepper family. I do not know what brought my mother to read these to me as a child, but I grew up on them. If I ever find so much as a Five Little Peppers drabble, I will be Deliriously Happy.

Oh, you know what else I was ridiculously fannish about as a child? Eight Cousins. I wanted to be Rose. Archie was always my favorite cousin, and I was rather OTF about Archie and Charlie, I think. (*sniff*)

I could go on like this for a long time. I will stop now before this turns into a huge post on fannishness in children's literature. Though perhaps that will come along eventually.

pretty pretty boats and boys

2008-10-18T06:06:43Z

I've been (sort of) inadvertently teasing blackclaude for a while now with the promise to post about my new source of fannish squee. And now I am delivering.

Those of you who've known me for a long time may remember that I first discovered television several years ago. I remember feeling quite conflicted about it at the time; I'd never watched tv growing up, and I was quite proud of that fact. Also, many years of living with my mother (in addition to an understanding of television that came from the daytime soaps that played at work) had given me a deep rooted conviction that television was a vastly inferior form of entertainment.

If you've met me more recently, this may amuse you, since I've clearly recanted this view. Partly I'm attempting to chip away at my own cultural snobbery, but much more than that, I've completely fallen in love with television. At some point I want to make a post about that, about falling in love with characters and what that has meant to me over the course of my life, from my first mysteries to television series - but that will be later, because right now I'm brimming over with a more specific form of fannish love.

When I fall in love with a show, I fall quick and hard and deep, and consume as much as possible in a short amount of time. Usually, classes put a limit on this consumption, but when I was stuck in bed last month I had a lot of free time in which to discover new source material. I tried and gave up on quite a few, and to my surprise, the one that stuck wasn't really a show at all, but a series of television movies.

Honestly, though, it should hardly have come as a surprise. First of all, there are boats. Pretty boats. Pretty boats and high seas and it's no secret that I love the ocean.

Secondly: pretty boys with epic friendships. Can you see where I'm going with this?

This is where I'm going:

See? I told you they were pretty.

So. Horatio Hornblower.

As a literature major, I pride myself in the fact that I privilege books over film (so, I guess I haven't eradicated all of the cultural snobbery yet...). Here, however, is an exception. The eight television movies (released in groups of two over... I don't know, ten years?) are based on a series of books written by C.S. Forester written in the forties and fifties. The books chronicle the adventures of Lieutenant/Captain/Admiral Horatio Hornblower during the Napoleonic wars. Which is all very well and good. Yet, the movies have one huge advantage over the books, and that is Archie Kennedy. Whom I will get to very shortly. First, however, you have to meet Horatio.

I ran across Hornblower as I usually run across television; I was scrolling through fic recs, ran across a Hornblower fic with an interesting summary, fell in love with it, and half an hour later was looking through the library catalogue to see if they had the movies.

I have to admit, the first one I watched ("The Duchess and the Devil" - the third out of the eight movies) got off to a slow start. Well, not slow in terms of action - there were swords and guns and a group of sailors sneakily boarding a French ship, and it was all very plotty. But I was pretty much watching solely for the sake of the boats:

and for Ioan Gruffudd:

Isn't he pretty?

He plays the title role, that of Horatio Hornblower (and yes, the name is made fun of even within the confines of canon). Horatio is intelligent, talented, idealistic, socially awkward, duty-bound and very concerned with upholding his stiff notion of honor. To quote:One of television's most absurdly likable heroes, Horatio is grim yet adorable, brainy yet nubile, a Barbarella of the high seas, minus the hot pants. Classically trained and possessing 67% more eyelashes than a regular human being, Gruffudd's screen credits prior to Hornblower include small roles as an officer in Titanic, in which he demonstrated his ability to look fetching in a naval uniform, and as one of Stephen Fry's lovers in Wilde, in which he demonstrated his willingness to take off his clothes for the sake of his art. These two qualities have served him well as Horatio.

Despite all this, and the absurd prettiness that is Ioan Gruffudd, I was not captured. About halfway through (40ish minutes in) I was almost ready to forsake canon and turn back to fic. And then, suddenly, Horatio and his crew were captured and thrown into a Spanish prison. Sure, Spanish prison, okay, I was still about to turn of the computer - until Horatio threw aside a ratty blanket and uncovered the form of one Archie Kennedy.

This is Archie:

When I first met him, he was starving in a Spanish prison. From that point on, I was hooked.

And no, it's not just because of the extreme amounts of prettiness on the screen, though that is a definite plus factor. It's that Archie is everything Horatio is not, and he refines and changes Horatio, turns him from a stiff and stuffed paragon-of-duty and follower-of-rules, into a real person. Archie is snarky where Horatio is polite, charming where Horatio is shy, wounded where Horatio is strong. He starts out as a fairly minor character in terms of screen time, but even from the very beginning it's clear how important he is to Horatio. This turned out to be a double-edged sword: the writers, recognizing this bond, gave him an increasingly important role; however, the estate of C.S. Forester objected to the elevation of a character not prominent in the original books, and insisted he be written out for the final two movies (which, therefore, I have not seen).

Archie has been sailing for several years before Horatio shows up in the first movie, and canon strongly implies that he has undergone significant trauma in the form of the violent Midshipman Jack Simpson (who serves as the antagonist in the first movie, "The Even Chance"). Though Archie is ebullient and merry at other times, Simpson's presence throws him into a panic and even, at points, triggers his epilepsy. (Fandom, as you may imagine, has seized on his angst and served it up with a giant spoon. Do you mind? I certainly don't.)

Especially towards the beginning, Archie appears very much as a fallible sidekick - he is the weaker one, the one who doesn't come up with brilliant plans, the one who doesn't stand up to the bullying of Simpson, the one who makes mistakes. However, I've always had a thing for the sidekicks, and I find Archie - with his fearfulness and struggles and inability to be the person he's trying to be - rather more compelling than Horatio's automatic assumption of the role of hero.

However, most compelling of all, of course, is when you put both boys together.

Even when Archie is at his most sidekicky, even when the writers are clearly portraying him as the fallible foil to Horatio's classical hero, their friendship is inescapable, and redeems, for me, a trope (sidekickism, if you will) that I find in other cases unbearable.

And he does grow, over the course of the five movies in which he appears; by the end, he is every bit the hero that Horatio is, and it could even be argued that the final two are as much about him as they are about Horatio.

Horatio: [on a suicide mission to blow up a Spanish fort] What are you doing here? Are you mad?
Archie: Quite possibly, but we thought you could use the company!

I mean, how can you resist?

There is dragging each other across burning bridges:

Carrying each other to safety:

Nursing each other back to health:

"Drink."

Relaxing in the sails:

Willingly accompanying each other to prison:

Jumping off cliffs!!!

*Scene: clifftop*

Horatio: She's sailing away!
Second Lieutenant Bush: Well, look's like that's it, gentlemen.

Horatio: No it isn't, Mr. Bush. Archie?

Archie: I'm afraid I think you're right.

Bush: What?
Horatio: We're going to jump.

I can think of two fandoms that involve the gleeful jumping off of cliffs, and I can guarantee that it will send me into raptures of fannish squee, every single time.

Horatio: You're the bravest man I know, Archie.
Archie: *laughs* A little prone to panic.
Horatio: Archie. You're the one who jumped off a cliff with a man who can't swim, and another whose afraid of heights.
Archie: So I am.

Intense glances shared in spoilery moments which I refuse to spoil:

If the early movies tend to show Horatio as the benevolent giver with Archie as the needy one, by the time you get to the end you realize exactly how much Archie has given Horatio, how much Horatio needed Archie in order to become the person he is in the end.

Archie: Poor Horatio. So quick to give. So slow to accept the simplest gift... Please take what I offer.

Talk about pretty ships (not to mention the meta-ish punning which so easily arises when shipping in an age of sail fandom):

To be completely honest, the movies are far from perfect. I will lap up anything they give me with Archie and Horatio, and the sight of the ships tends to send me into paroxysms of excitement, but the going can get slow in between. Of the five movies I've watched, there has been only one truly interesting female character (Kitty Cobham, "The Devil and the Duchess"). There are moments when the dialogue is brilliant (the ending of "Retribution" is probably one of my top five television endings), but as a rule it's neither as snappy or as profound as the dialogue usually is in my favorite series - it's certainly not a dialogue driven type fandom. And yet, I am completely in love.

I haven't even really mentioned anyone other than Archie and Horatio. That isn't to say there aren't other attractions.

There's Captain Pellew, the gruff, demanding, heroic captain and father figure to Horatio:

And there's Second Lieutenant William Bush, who shows up for the last four movies - I haven't seen the last two, and I had to overcome my resentment that he, being a sufficiently canonical character, is allowed to take over Archie's role once Archie is written out. However, once I did so, I embraced him as another wonderful character, and perhaps I'll even watch the final two films.

He has an element of snark as well:

Canon: *explodes*
Bush: I know what happens when metal overheats - my uncle was a blacksmith.
Horatio: I believe they call it the coefficient of expansion, sir.

Bush: Oh, well, I call it bloody dangerous.

Archie: *cracks up*

Horatio: *looks on jealously*

(Seriously, I never found myself leaning towards slash pairings before, but all this "romantic friendship" stuff, especially combined with the unarguable tendencies of fandom at large - it does put thoughts in one's head.)

And then there are the sailors serving under Horatio, a bantering threesome that despite being relatively minor characters, nevertheless manage to develop marvelously over the course of the movies. Except Oldroyd, who disappears mysteriously after the fourth. Matthews and Styles, however, stick around and are loyal and brave and have amusing conversations at the most inappropriate times.

You see how it's all about comradery?

That's absolutely the only reason I'm watching this, yes, the comradery, and the ocean, and...

you know it's all about the pretty - pretty boats, pretty friendships... pretty men. Sometimes I feel shallow. But I present my evidence:

Forgive Archie's hair, he's in convalescence, and Horatio is forcing him to study Spanish.

Wet!Horatio.

Wet!Horatio.

More wet!Horatio.

(I'm not even including the on-deck water-spraying scene, which is wet!Horatio rather lacking in clothes. If you want that, you'll have to watch it yourself.)

No, they're not about to kiss. But you can see where the OTP slashers get it, yes?

As I think I said in a very recent post: I do love a man in period costume.

you sat up all night and you watched me

2008-10-14T02:23:18Z

1. In no world would I ever vote for someone based on their appearance. That said, don't you think the Obamas would look awfully pretty on the White House postcards? I've been thinking about that ever since they all went out together at the DNC.

2. Ha! I just remembered what inspired me to post in the first place. I was scrolling through del.icio.us looking for something light to read while I drank my tea, and the following summary made me laugh for several minutes: Rodney and John go missing for 3 days, but for them it seemed like 3 months. During this time, an Ancient outpost accident makes John become a horse with 2 horns. The only thing that saves John's sanity is that he can telepathically communicate with Rodney. He transforms back somehow and they make it to the stargate and back home. But they can still communicate telepathically. They wind up together and then.... yeah.

*I feel compelled to point out that this is a fandom that routinely produces very good stories with ridiculous summaries, so I'm making no judgment on the story. It still does not fail to amuse me.

3. No, wait, I'm still laughing.

4. I do not understand the Stargate fandom. The show itself is so ludicrously outrageous that I couldn't bring myself to watch it even when I was stuck in my apartment for three weeks with absolutely nothing to do. And yet, there is a lot of really, really brilliant fic out there - which is the reason I tried to watch the show in the first place. Which leaves me musing on the subject of a fandom which consistently produces better material than its source text.

5. Assuming that a "text" is any form of canon: book/television/movie/comic/etc., and a "fandom" is the productive (fic/art/vid/meta/...) community surrounding it:

View Poll: #1278136

6. I am very interested in the relationship between fandom and text, so probably this poll will recur at some point in a more developed form, but I meant to just ask the first question and started getting curious.

is this a kissing book?

2008-10-12T02:33:15Z

Double posting, but:

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Oh, and:

"Murdered by pirates is good."

/quoting

I do love that movie. I used to have an icon. I seem to have taken it off. :(

we'll dive no more for pearls

2008-10-12T01:59:15Z

I meant to do this at the end of the summer, but never got around to it. But I'm mostly caught up on my reading for next week, so I figured if there is to be a time, then it is now.

Recommendations from my summer reading:

What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn
I read this off a recommendation from joonscribble, and it was probably the best book of my summer. The story is set in a small, suburban English town called Green Oaks, and it revolves around a shopping mall. Ten-year-old Kate is determined to be a detective, and she goes to the mall daily to take notes on suspicious behavior and attempt to solve a crime. The first half of the story is told in a sweet, almost childlike manner, as Kate makes friends with Adrian, an older boy who works at his father's shop, all the while planning her detective career.

The second half of the story picks up twenty years after Kate's mysterious and unsolved disappearance, for which Adrian was the main suspect. The narrative mostly follows Lisa, Adrian's younger sister, who is now working at the Green Oaks mall, and Kurt, a security guard at Green Oaks. I don't want to give away the story and I can't possibly convey all the subtleties, but the story becomes an exploration of the way Kate's disappearance affected everyone else. After Kurt believes he sees Kate on his security monitor, he and Lisa begin investigating the disappearance themselves, and start to unravel the reality of the mall at Green Oaks.

It sounds like a mystery, but it's not, really - though it does contain, perhaps, a subtle commentary on mystery stories for children - but really, it's all about character development. From Kate, who is developed wonderfully in the first section, to Lisa and Kurt, who are both caught in unsatisfying jobs and stagnating lives, to all the other characters who wander in and out, the author has a brilliant sense of character. And it's all brought together in the idea of loss: the heartbreaking loss of a child, but also the loss of other things over the course of the characters' lifetimes, hopes and love and self-respect. The setting of the shopping mall works perfectly, as a place people go to wander around and try to replace what they're missing - and if you've ever worked in retail, you should read this book, because it captures the frightening monotony of the shopping mall perfectly. The story is tragic but hopeful, because it's not just about things lost, but things found. This is the book at the top of my Christmas wish-list, and if I were to recommend to you one book from my summer, this is it.

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith.
I think it was bornofstars who recced this to me originally, though a lot of people immediately agreed. And I really enjoyed it. Cassandra's narration is lively and original, and all of the characters captured me. The story revolves around seventeen-year-old Cassandra, who lives with her older sister Rose, her father (who wrote one brilliant book and never published again), and her stepmother Topaz, in a house built onto the side of a castle ruin. All the characters are engaging (though I did get fed up with Rose at points); I particularly enjoyed Topaz, who is an unabashed romantic who likes to wander around finding beauty in things and baring herself to the elements. The plot takes a stock arrangement and plays with it; two American brothers inherit the nearby castle, and their arrival is an opportunity for change for Cassandra and Rose, who have up till now led a very quiet and private life with very little chance for anything more, as they grow increasingly poor and their father retreats into his study. Smith takes what could have been a very predictable plot and keeps it interesting. Rose struggles with the prospect of staying poor or marrying for money, and yet manages to be a sympathetic (if sometimes slightly annoying) character. I knew it was a romance before I started (two brothers, two sisters), but I was never sure which way the pairings were going to play out, which was very well done on the part of the author. I kind of wish that Cassandra had never fallen in love, which seemed to me the weakest part of the storyline; I would have preferred seeing her external view of Rose's position, and her sudden realization didn't have a particularly strong foundation, IMO. That said, the book did keep me guessing, and just as I was starting to think it was getting a mite too predictable, everything got shaken up again.

In summation, I loved the narration, I loved the characters, and I would definitely recommend the book.

Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson
This was a 2008 Newberry Honor book, and easily the best children's book I read this summer (and yes, I did read kind of a lot of them). Set in the 1970s, the narrator Frannie and her friends are not quite sure what to do with the new student in their class: a white boy in an entirely black school. On the day he arrives he is nicknamed, "the Jesus boy", and the name sticks. If I had the book I'd quote a little instead of giving a review, because there's far too much going on in a very short book to do it any justice. It's the kind of book that you expect to have a single, strong theme: children coming towards an understanding of race, for example. But all the themes are complicated and interwoven, beautifully subtle rather than declaratory, which makes for wonderful reading and poor summarizing. There's Frannie's best friend, Samantha, who begins to think that maybe this new boy really is Jesus - because if miracles happen, why shouldn't Jesus appear in their classroom? There's Frannie's brother, who is deaf, and her mother, who has had two miscarriages and is pregnant again. It's about loss and belief and growing up, all bound up together by the new boy and the Emily Dickinson poem they read in class - hope is the thing with feathers. And it's subtle and interwoven and really, really beautiful, and now I think I have to go to the library and check it out again.

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett
I don't have all that much to say about this book - I found a copy while sorting through books in the basement, and read it on a whim, because Neil Gaiman is always on my list. It's an apocalyptic adventure, of sorts, and it's snarky and irreverent and very, very funny if you're up for a bit of Biblical humor. If you know my reading tastes at all you know how much I love unlikely friendships, and Crowley and Aziraphale were loads of fun - and rather reminiscent of Remus and Sirius, to my mind. Both have been living among humans since the creation of the earth. Crowley is a devil who has grown quite fond of the better things in life - he enjoys music and cares passionately about his car, which has been kept in pristine condition since the 1930s. Aziraphale is an angel who owns an antique book shop and always pays his taxes on time. When the Antichrist is given into their keeping, they inadvertently misplace him, and then come to the decision that they're not ready for the end of the world. Meanwhile, the Antichrist grows up quite normally as a little boy named Adam, and he has some ideas about the end of the world himself. It's a very fun book, though not one that had me riveted; it took me about three weeks to finish it because I kept on getting distracted by other books, but I did keep coming back.

The Dreamhunter Duet: Book One: Dreamhunter, and Book Two: Dreamquake, by Elizabeth Knox
I did not read a lot of new YA fantasy this summer, which was unusual for me, but this is one I picked up randomly out of the library. The first book had me totally enthralled. Laura is the daughter of famous dreamhunter Tziga Hame; she lives with her father, her cousin Rose, and her cousin's parents, Chorley (a wealthy man of good family) and Grace, also a dreamhunter. The fantasy setting was wonderfully developed and also quite original: it takes place in an early 20th century world, like ours save for the existence of The Place. The Place is a mysterious aberration in the geography of their country; there is a precisely drawn border that most people cross without consequence, but which leads a select few into a strange, dry land where dreams can be caught. The dreams, once captured, are then performed, like operas; the world Knox created is wonderfully complex and detailed as to the way dreaming has become a profession. Even more fascinating than the details of the world, however, are the complex relationships between the characters. As I said before, I love complex relationships, and this book certainly provided. There's the friendship between Tziga and Chorley - the tortured dreamhunter, and the carefree dilettante - that pervades the background, but even more satisfying is the strong bond between Rose and Laura. There is not enough strong female friendship in fantasy literature, and I was afraid when I first began to read that it would soon take second place to romance, but it remained strong and complex throughout the book.

The beginning of the book is focused on leading up to Laura and Rose's "Try", the attempt they will make to see whether or not they can cross over into The Place. Rather predictably, one of them succeeds and the other fails, but I love the way Knox explored the ramifications of this, on each of the girls and on their relationship. Also fascinating is the idea that pervades the whole book - how the characters react to watching their friends go places that they cannot follow. More magic is introduced as the book continues, leading to the creation of Laura's sandman, Nown. Once again, the relationships here are fascinating, between a human and a creature of earth, and how they go from being a creator and a servant to being friends.

As you can see, I was absolutely enchanted by the first book - I read it in about a day, and when it ended (on a cliffhanger), I chomped at the bit for the two days it took before I could get to the library and get the next one. Unfortunately, the second book turned out to be a disappointment. I loved the exploration of Nown, and the gradual discovery of the truth about the Place, but Laura began to increasingly make decisions which upset me. Rose and Chorley continued to be Awesome, but their Awesomeness was overshadowed by Laura's romance, which I didn't mind when I saw it coming, but when it happened completely squicked me. The governmental involvement and the bureaucratization of The Place was interesting, but then there were some unresolved subplots, most notably the conflict between the Church and the government's Dream Regulation Body, which never really got explained, much less resolved. And the ending was hugely rushed, an immensely complicated plot wrapped up in the space of a chapter. I finished the second book with a feeling of extreme dissatisfaction.

I'm including it on the list of recommendations anyway, just because I enjoyed the first one so much. It's a quick read, and I'd recommend it if you're interesting in intricate fantasy settings, or are up for enjoying characters without being too put out by poor endings (or if you don't mind skipping the second book entirely). But if the effect of the whole matters a lot to you, this might be one to avoid.

Those were the notable books of my summer, as I remember them; there were loads of others, of course, but none that particularly stand out in my mind - though it's very possible that in five minutes I'll be remembering something brilliant that got left off the list, and I'll have to come back and add it. But for now, those are my summer recommendations.

Summer books still unfinished:
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (I was enjoying it, but still haven't found it. I could check it out from the library, but have a heavy enough reading load at the moment, so it will probably have to wait.)
- Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh (Halfway through, will finish as soon as I have time)
- Whose Body, by Dorothy Sayers (I got about halfway through while waiting in the ER, but then had to return it to the library. Fortunately, my mom found our copy and sent it to me, so, again, I'll finish as soon as I have time.)

Oh, and on the subject of reading: I picked up The King of Attolia as my breakfast book this morning, and couldn't put it down - I ended up reading the whole thing. Unexpected use of time, but I can't even beat myself up about it because I love that book so much. If I could write books like anyone in the world... well, that's a hard question. But Megan Turner would be high on the list. (So would Ursula Le Guin, I think.) But both The Thief and The King of Attolia come pretty much ahead of everything else in my mind when I want to look at an example of good writing in YA fiction. So... not a summer reading rec, but still a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED book. It's nice to see people on my flist gradually discovering it, so if you haven't yet... you should!

summertime is falling down

2008-09-27T04:47:03Z

I spent way too much of my afternoon playing with my layout. It's all autumn-y now. I'm not sure if I'm happy with it - I couldn't get the colors to work right - but I've given up for now. The header, though, is a picture I took in Scotland, and it makes me think happy thoughts.

This might very well be my favorite meme ever. It took me longer than I was expecting, but it was so, so fun. Answers underneath the cut.

The character list:
1. Remus Lupin
2. Bill Weasley
3. Hoban Washburne
4. Tenth Doctor
5. Sam Seaborne
6. Charles Gunn
7. Captain Hammer
8. Eugenides
9. Kaylee Fry
10. Martha Jones
11. Minerva McGonagall
12. Willow Rosenburg
13. Luna Lovegood
14. Faith
15. Zoe Washburne

For piartemis18:
Characters 3 [Wash] and 14 [Faith] are on a road trip. How would they interact?
Faith keeps on turning the music up loud and pressing random buttons in an attempt to drive Wash crazy, but he just grins and keeps driving - he's too used to being the loud, eccentric one himself to be bothered. (What really bothers Faith is that he won't let her drive.) Faith gets restless after a few hours and tries to get Wash to stop at a rest-stop so she can buy a soda and maybe slay a vampire or two; he tries to buy her off with dinosaurs, at which point she snorts and puts her feet on the dashboard, just to annoy him. But later, he catches her patting the head of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Characters 8 [Eugenides] and 7 [Captain Hammer] are involved in some sort of physical fight. Who would win?
*chokes* Is there any contest? Captain Hammer has the brute strength, but Eugenides easily outwits him. And even if Captain Hammer does manage to hold his head in a water butt for a while, Eugenides is used to it and by no means phased, and takes his revenge by stealing unmentionable and embarrasing things from Captain Hammer, and leaving them in inappropriate and public places.

Which character(s) are most likely to live to old age?
Well, McGonagall's already made it. Actually, the Doctor beats everyone. Apart from characters who have already made it to old age and/or have the ability to spontaneously regenerate: this is actually a pretty hard question. Not Remus (*sigh*). Bill and Martha are perhaps too prone to dangerous situations, and Zoe and Faith and Gunn are very prone to combat situations, so we'll discount them. Not Wash (*sigh*). Kaylee or Willow, maybe, except for Whedon's propensity to kill off innocent characters just for the sake of it (*sigh*). Probably Sam Seaborne - comparatively, politics is quite safe (this is where it pays not to be fantasy character).

For bornofstars:
What favourite book might 2 [Bill Weasley] and 10 [Martha Jones] have in common?
Some sort of thrilling mystery-adventure. Amelia Peabody, perhaps (the adventures of Victorian woman turned Egyptologist, who solves mysteries, too). They meet in a (Muggle) bookstore while looking for the most recent publication, and Bill admits that Amelia might have influenced his career choice, and Martha says that Ramses - in all his brilliant arrogance - reminds her an awful lot of this man she knows. Then they start trading stories, Bill about Egypt (trying, but not succeeding, to leave out all the magic bits) and Martha about traveling with the Doctor (trying, but not succeeding, to substitute earthly locations for various planets). And they each think the other one absolutely crazy, but also wild and exciting. Both are very sorry to leave without exchanging addresses/owls, but they know the relationship couldn't possibly work because next week they will be in Egypt/alien galaxy. (But later, the TARDIS malfunctions and absolutely refuses to stop in England, and Martha says, oh, that's fine, just drop me off in Egypt instead.)

...Now I totally want to write Bill/Martha.

Where would 1 [Remus] and 4 [the Tenth Doctor] travel together, and what would they do?
They hit all the historical sites that Remus has always fantasized about - they see the Great Wall of China being built, and Julius Caesar invading Britain, and the fall of Troy - and they never ever land on the night of the full moon, until the time the Doctor takes them way forward into the future to a place where they have a cure for lupine wavelength haemovariform. After that, Remus goes home - he hates to leave the Doctor, but there's a war to fight and friends to meet, and suddenly he feels younger than he has in years (since he was seven). The Doctor keeps traveling.

5 [Sam Seaborne] and 6 [Charles Gunn]: who has more Deep Angst?
Sam has the angst of a politician whose ideals are constantly being thwarted. Gunn was orphaned at a young age, killed his sister after she turned into a vampire, and was stabbed by his best friend after inadvertently bringing about the death of the woman they both loved. So... no contest, really.

Could 9 [Kaylee] and 11 [McGonagall] ever fancy the same person?
Ha! Um. Not if they meet at their canonical ages.

12 [Willow] and 13 [Luna] switch roles for a day. How would they fare?
Not badly at all. Once Luna convinces the Scoobies that Willow isn't in any current danger, she manages to make herself quite useful, what with the wand and all. And even if in the initial confusion someone makes a snide comment about how they don't need any more crazy around here, by the end of the day they have come to find her quite endearing. As for Willow, she has a great time gallivanting around Hogwarts, exploring the library and copying out pages of spells (for herself) and prophecies (for Giles).

And the example questions, because, why not?
Remus [1], Kaylee [9] and Zoe [15] are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from Ten [4]. Do they succeed?
Of course they do! The Doctor has come up with one of his usual brilliant plans to save earth from invading aliens, but in his zeal and anger and arrogance (and possibly because he is currently without a companion), he sets off the beginning of a series of catastrophic events which will lead to the earth's destruction. Zoe keeps the aliens at bay long enough for Kaylee to rig up some brilliant machine to stop the explosion that will end the world, and Remus hunts down the Doctor to convince him of his error and enlist his help. Then they all go off in the TARDIS together.

Under what circumstances might Sam [5] and Kaylee [9] fall in love?
We'll wave away the time difference and say that Sam is a passenger on Serenity, visiting some of the rim planets in hope of bringing about political change to the Alliance. And Kaylee thinks he's sweet and idealistic and so very, very pretty, and he thinks she's the best thing since mashed potatoes, and after a lot of cuddling and some very rambling conversations they fall in love. Only there isn't all that much work for a speechwriter on Serenity, so they settle for a long distance friendship; Kaylee sends Sam care packages, and he writes her idealistic letters full of plans for helping the rim planets. The Serenity crew roll their collective eyes at the whole thing, but that doesn't stop them from making the occasional addition to the care package.

Which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?
If they're zombie aliens, then the Doctor. If not, probably Zoe - she's just so unerringly competent.

In other news... there isn't really any other news. I babysat this morning, which involved a lot of reading out loud, which is my favorite kind of babysitting. (The little girl, while bossy, was a very good reading partner - she listened extremely attentively, and cuddled wonderfully. The little boy just wanted to sit on the floor and screech happily the entire time.) As for the reading material: is it just me, or is Curious George just begging for some post-textual exploration? Perhaps I've been reading too much fic, but I want to know what's up with the Man in the Yellow Hat. Also, the strangely endearing best-friendship between Man and Monkey. Curious...

I also came to a revelation about serial children's books and television while reading Berenstein Bears, but that can wait for another time, because it's going to make me go all meta-y, I can feel it.

so I'm sailing for tomorrow

2008-09-25T18:22:30Z

I don't want to continue on in last night's angsty vein, but I have nothing cheerful to say. Therefore, go forth and meme.

But first: there was a metafandom post about titles, and it got me thinking, because I do love good titles. So.

ETA: I don't think I put enough space to answer the last question - at least, none of my answers fit. So if you have a last line you really like that doesn't fit, post it in the comments.

View Poll: #1266850

And the meme:

1) make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment. (that way you're not leading the questions asked to fit the characters.)

2) ask your flist to post questions in the comments.

for example:
'one, nine and fifteen are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from four. do they succeed?'
'under what circumstances might five and nine fall in love?'
'which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?'
'six and three are in a buddy movie. who is in charge, and who likes to blow things up?'

3) after your flist has asked enough questions, round them up and answer them using the fifteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.

I have arbitrarily made characters 1-8 male, and 9-15 female, so you can take that into advisement as you wish.

so it looks like the end of the world

2008-09-20T23:14:14Z

Today was miserable in so many ways that I don't even want to think about it. Then this happened:

Last night I was talking to blackclaude about the title of my story the yellow road lies sleeping. Which is in itself a long story. I wanted to check a line, but being lazy, I didn't feel like hunting down the link, so instead I just googled "yellow road lies sleeping". Seeing as it's a pretty unusual title, I clicked on the first thing that came up, and it was a rec to the story, and there I was. But I didn't close the Google window.

This afternoon, discouraged by various things, I saw the open window and wondered what else the search had brought up. And I found this. Someone translated the story into Czech! How cool is that? I just wish they had told me - I don't mind that they didn't, they gave me credit and linked back and everything - but it's just the kind of thing I think is pretty amazing, and also a nice ego boost. Anyway, that's fun.

I used the Google translate tool, just to see if it really was the story. And I know translation tools are dreadful, but I love seeing my story having gone through Czech and back to English. I wish I could read Czech, because I want to know how it reads without the stiff internet translator. I've always been fascinated by translation, which has to involve a certain amount of changing the actual words to come closer to the overall sense.

The first line, retranslated to English, reads: So it looks like the end of the world. How much do I love that?

Other lines I particularly liked:

Now I do not recall to Peter, no, but never forget the way in which James smiled

And time is less and less shards

Něžná death comes as a whisper of wind, as long hug oplakaného friend, as a welcome home.

I am so gleeful. And I'm aware that it seems rather egotistical to be gleefully quoting a translation of my own story, but seriously! Language is a wonderful thing. And there's something really fun about seeing your own words reflected like this.

Doctor Who Fic Recs

2008-08-30T23:23:46Z

And the fic recs! This took me ages, but there's quite a lot, so enjoy. Mostly Doctor/Rose, but also some Jack and Martha.

Doctor/Rose:

Flowers for the Doctor, by loneraven
Rose/Mickey, Rose/Nine
The Doctor is in the gardens at Versailles; he is at the centre of the galaxy; he is on the beach eating chips; he is at the end of the world; he is back on Gallifrey on the day he was born. He is everywhere and everyone, at the beginning and and at the end, he is the last of the Time Lords and he is lonely now. A seventeen-seconds fic, the might-have-been before the Doctor came back to invite Rose for the second time.

Signal this strong, by orange_crushed (Also recommended - anything else she's written.)
It's not about living. It's about dying. And shoelaces. And frostbite. He just doesn't know it yet.
Short and incredibly beautiful; after Rose is gone, the Doctor goes back to watch her.

and that's it, then, by andsheloves
"Well, let's get married, then!" Nine ways the Doctor and Rose could have agreed on marriage. I'm not usually a fan of Doctor/Rose marriage stories, but this just works.

The Troubles of Domestic, by miladyhawke
Ten/Rose
The TARDIS breaks down in 30th century New York, and the Doctor and Rose have to adapt to a domestic life for a few months.

Leaning Right, by shinyopals
'Maybe not, Doctor. You're growing old, after all. Sooner or later you'll be wearing cardigans and socks with sandals and going on cruise holidays.' He spluttered, apparently unable to formulate a reply. 'You might even-' Rose leaned forward to whisper, 'start voting Conservative.' The Doctor and Rose find a forever they can live with.

Seven Things Rose Tyler Did After Being Reunited with the Doctor, by goldy_dollar
On the third day, Rose was kidnapped by a horde of genetically mutated alien hamsters and dangled over a volcano as a sacrifice to their god. The Doctor attempted to rescue her with the sonic screwdriver, but after he was disarmed and tied up, he settled for yelling threatening things like: “I AM NOT LOSING HER AGAIN!” and “JUST WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS FREE.” Fluffy and fun, and Martha and Donna are both wonderful.

Le Quattro Stagioni, by Carlisle Cooperative
“You know, Rose,” he said, sounding a bit irritated, “it hurts even my ego to be told that you interpreted my seductive wiles as an illness.” In which Rose is oblivious, and the Doctor is the one to do the pursuing.

Deshabille, by sangga
Her mum always told her to dress for the occasion. It just takes Rose a while to figure out what the occasion is. I am not a reader of smut, and this story is completely and totally PG - and yet. Sometimes less is more.

http://themonkeycabal.livejournal.com/130550.html, by themonkeycabal
"You know, this life is a little weird sometimes." Snippets from the life of the Doctor and Rose.

He Plays with Threads, by rosa_acicularis
“I’ve never wanted you to be anything but what you are,” she said. “Not once.” This is short and so, so powerful, with a kicker of a last line. Rose won't ask for more from the Doctor, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to give it to her.

Jack and Rose:

Missing, by misachan
During the year she's missing Jackie never stops looking for Rose. One night she gets some unexpected help. I have a soft spot for Jack looking in on Rose's past, and this is a lovely one.

The World and the Child, by ignipes
He doesn't think he'll recognize her. A century and then some, a lifetime and more, and there are days when all he can remember are flashes of laughter and terror, like discarded scenes from somebody else's dreams. Jack watching young!Rose. Yes, another one.

Doctor-Rose-Jack:

Theories Of, by pyrebi
“Was I dead?” she asked. He was glad he was already sitting. Reunion fic in which Rose turns out to be immortal, too, and then she and the Doctor go fetch Jack, and the three of them travel around the universe for the rest of time, for ever and ever amen.

Deluded, by wendymr
The Doctor disappears, leaving Jack and Rose behind on a planet. Jack thinks he's abandoned them, and Rose thinks he'll come back, but in the meantime, they have to survive on their own. The links goes to chapter four, which links back to the first three.

Steal Me Away, by themonkeycabal
He'd looked in the face of this myth, and, for the first time in years, Jack Harkness had felt ashamed. Reunion fic.

The Doctor and Martha:

Ten Calls, by serrico
She answers the phone while searching the kitchen cupboards for tonic water. "There'd better not be an alien invasion within the next hour," she begins, "'cause it takes at least that long to get chocolate icing out of the carpet." Ten times the Doctor calls Martha.

Where Ever I May Roam, by irenak
“You've got Martha's phone. Message away!” More Martha-Doctor phonecalls - they never fail to amuse me.

Three stories about companions (one for Rose, one for Jack, one for Martha), and how they grow beyond the Doctor:

Most Likely Kill You in the Morning, by hotelmontana
Rose, Mickey, TARDIS
“Instead of waiting around for him,” Rose finally said, “what would you say about trying to find him on our own?” I don't know what to say about this story without giving away its utter brilliance; it's an AU spin off The Girl in the Fireplace, where the Doctor doesn't come back. It has a wonderful characterization of Mickey, but the heart of the story is Rose, who is brilliant and strong and wonderful and sets out on a quest of her own with the TARDIS for help.

Everyman, by basingstoke
Jack; bit of Jack/Martha/Ten
It starts on a beach and ends in a city. This is, perhaps, my all-time favorite Jack fic. It takes him from the Valiant to the end, and it's so sparse and gorgeous and haunting, as he becomes older and wiser and less and less human. (It also reconciles me to the implications of the nickname he reveals in the end of season three.) This is canon, in my head; this is what happens to Jack. There is a little bit of explicit content, but if you're like me you can just skip over it.

Valentine's Day, This Year, by koshiroryuu
Martha Jones is one of the very few people who remembers the first time this year happened, the first time the world had a Valentine's Day this year. Because Martha is brilliant, and she saved the world, and has a whole year of memories all to herself; this is a gorgeous and heartbreaking story dealing with the implications of that year that no one else remembers.

There you go. And that's only about half of them, but the rest will have to wait for another time, because that took me ages.

Doctor Who Vid Recs

2008-08-30T20:01:33Z

I've been meaning to do this for a long time, and then bornofstars posted asking for recs, and I decided, why not now?

To start with a vid that I cannot rec highly enough:

Handlebars, by flummery
I'm the Doctor. Look me up.
This is a vividcon vid that has been on every vividcon recs list I've seen, and with good reason. For all that we love to see the Doctor being geeky and goofy and brilliant, he is after all a 900-year-old alien, and this vid captures everything that is wild and dangerous and downright terrifying when the last of the Time Lords is left to play god in a world of susceptible humans. This is where "Journey's End" started to go, before it backed down; this is all the darkness and terror of the doctor, the childish male arrogance combined with the unstoppable power, the man who can do anything he wants.

It's such an incredibly powerful, well-done vid that my instinct is to recommend it even if you don't watch Doctor Who, except I'm afraid it might scare you off or give you the wrong impression (the show very rarely strikes this note). Or maybe catch your attention - I'm not really sure. It certainly captures the alien-ness of the Doctor, the darkness and dangerousness and wildness and power, in a way a lot of vids/fic (and quite often even the show itself) fails to do. Anyway. If you watch Doctor Who, you should watch this vid. If you don't, you might consider watching it anyway.

Shut Up and Drive, by laurashapiro
I don't have much to say about this vid, other than to copy the author's summary: Martha > you.

The Lonely People, also by laurashapiro
What is the cost of a better life?
This is a wonderful look at Rose's time with the Doctor, the joy and excitement and desperation and danger. What really makes it for me are the shots of her family, watching her from home as her travels grow increasingly wild and frantic, all the way down to the heartbreaking ending, which from her family's perspective seems to have been inevitable all along.

Touched, by humansrsuperior
This is a very Doctor/Rose OTP vid, though not the sort I usually favor. The Doctor and Rose are not a pairing I go to for angst, generally preferring to see them happily rollicking around the universe for the rest of time. This one is all about separation and despair and doesn't really show anything from a new angle (unlike The Lonely People), but it's well put together and very pretty to watch, so if you're feeling like Doctor/Rose angst, you'll probably enjoy it.

The Wanderer, by melinafandom
He's looking for company, won't you please say yes?
I never liked Jack in Torchwood nearly as much as I did in Doctor Who, (and don't even get me started on Torchwood - they killed my two favorite characters!) but this is a vid which captures so much of what it is that I do love about him that it makes me want to rewatch. This is the Jack who has been all over the place and seen all sorts of things, is older and lonely and sad and trying as hard as he can to hold onto the people around him. Really gorgeous.

I was going to do fic recs too, but I'm being called away so that will have to wait for a bit. I'll try and get to it soon, though.

I've been all the way to Biscayne Bay

2008-08-29T17:55:57Z

If you had me under your command and could make me write anything, regardless of whether or not I know the fandom or if anybody even writes fic in that fandom and no matter how crack-addled it might be, what would you love to see me write?

I'm not volunteering to actually write anything, since I'm still working on the fic from the last challenge meme I posted (and yes, I am working on it, really - all 4000 words of it!). But I like memes, and am curious.

what a tale my thoughts could tell

2008-08-27T16:04:19Z

I'm blaming it all on Due South that I'm apparently developing a taste for Canadian folk music. Despite the fact that Gordon Lightfoot tends to just repeat the same verse over and over for an entire song, there's a couple of his songs that have really grown on me. Possibly because I have a great love for songs about shipwrecks. Who knew? Well, actually, if you know me, I suppose it's not that surprising. I also discovered that Gordon Lightfoot wrote "If You Could Read my Mind," a favorite song of mine that I have never before heard sung by any one other than Johnny Cash (of all people). I have to say, I like this new version better.

I'm at work, and I have nothing to do. Fortunately, I'm not working tomorrow, and Friday is my last day. This makes me happy. So does LJ.

Therefore, meme! Stolen from thunderemerald.

Pick a fandom and I will tell you who:

1. I would bake cupcakes for:
2. trust with the keys to my car:
3. put thumbtacks on their chair:
4. have a crush on:
5. pack up and leave if they moved next door:
6. vote for President:
7. pick as my partner in a buddy movie:
8. pair up:
9. vote off the island and into the volcano:
10. wheedle into fixing my MP3 player:

Recs

2008-07-29T01:13:49Z

rosawrites asked for Bones recs, so I scrounged up some of mine. And then I was talking to our_innocence about Bones, and I figured that since I'd already compiled them, I might as well post them for other people too. So even though it means posting yet again, here they are:

Five Things, by myinadequacy
Five People Bones Has Never Met; Five Things Hodgins Lies About; Five Pop Culture References Everyone Would Be Surprised to Know Bones Actually Understands.
The author has some other lovely stuff too, if you care to go poking about through her tags.

Lines (Make Me Want to Cross Them, by nekare
When it happens, like it was supposed to because there has always been a certain degree of inevitability with them, it happens like this.
A gradual coming-together story.

Five Awkward Moments, by fahye
She looks exactly like she's going to start lecturing them both on stress fractures, her eyes alight with knowledge and mischief, and Booth clenches his hand around a cushion and thinks: I love this woman more than cars, and life, and pie.
Short, sweet moments of Booth/Brennan.

Seeley Booth's Bones, by dsudis
They're good, sturdy, solid bones. They would have lasted Booth another forty years easily.
This is technically a death!fic, but it's told long after the fact, and it's more melancholy than tragic, more of an acceptance!story than anything else, and absolutely beautifully written.

Knight in Dented Armor, by hematitebadger
Working with Zack was like suddenly having a preadolescent younger brother dropped into his life fully formed and without warning.
Gen story about Booth and Zach; light and cute and fun.

The Hang of Thursdays, by sophia_helix
"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"
As with a lot of Bones fic (and sometimes even Bones canon), I feel that Booth is not given quite the respect that he deserves. Nevertheless, it's Booth and Bones meeting the Doctor, and can it get much cooler than that? No real spoilers for either series.

An Equal Temper, by carlyinrome
Cordelia again found herself virtually unhirable. She had a very specific skill set that didn’t exactly fit well into the day world – “I can only type thirty words a minute, but my swordsmanship is really coming along nicely!” – and all her references were dead.
Cordelia/Booth. Post-Angel (though somewhat AU), no Bones spoilers. It gets off to a bit of an expositiony start, but keep reading; each section gets more gorgeous. It's set in the aftermath of Not Fade Away, and the whole thing is sad and sweet and wistful.

elanne @ 2008-07-28T18:57:00

2008-07-28T23:28:13Z

I posted several months ago and said that I was going to cut down my friends list. Then I didn't, because I hate the thought of it, and I don't want to hurt anyone. I've realized, though, that I really need to do it - I don't have time to keep up with LJ as it is, and I'm trying to do better, but I need to trim. It's gotten to the point that I put off reading my flist because it's exhausting, and I don't want LJ to become a chore.

I put this off for a long time because I was afraid of hurting people. I really doubt anyone I take off will be hurt, because I'm only taking off people I have had very little interaction with - people I friended because of SPEW and then never talked to, people whom I've never talked to either by comments or by AIM, or people who don't seem to use their journals anymore.

If I cut you and you think that we have serious friend potential, go ahead and comment (comments are screened) - if I think we have a shot, I'll add you back. But please don't do it out of a sense of obligation, or because it feels bad to admit that we never really got to know each other; it does feel bad, and I'm sorry we didn't, but maybe it's okay.

My fics are all unlocked, and lately I've been leaving things that are purely fannish and/or meta unlocked as well, so if you've friended me for that, it will all still be there.