Polymorphous Perversity

USA national poetry month

mific — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 12:47:09 GMT

So another of my poems.

Lines

I draw a line in the sand

Good is on this side, evil on the other

This is my line, you will have to draw your own

I draw a line in the sand

I am on this side, you are on the other

It is easier to hate you now

I draw a line in the sand

These people belong here, those are outsiders

We will keep it that way

I draw a line in my thoughts

These thoughts are normal, those are disquieting

I will not think them

I draw a line in my work

This, I will undertake, that, I cannot stomach

I may have to change jobs

I draw a line in my life

That was my old life, this is my new life

It will all be different now

You draw a line in the sand

You are on that side, I am on this

I am shocked by your bigotry

I draw a line in the sand

Men come with guns, they make me cross the line

I am not free to draw lines

My line in the sand is moving
Has the world changed, or have I?

It is more difficult than I had thought

I draw a line in the sand

But the line is crooked

I draw a line in the sand

But I am unsure where it should go

I draw a line in the sand

The sea erases it

I draw a line in the sand

The wind blows it away

I will not draw lines in the sand

on the AO3

International poetry day at home

mific — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 08:59:24 GMT

As ever I'm a day late if not a dollar short - hey, I'm in a different timezone. We're fast down here in New Zealand! So I'm pretending it's still International Poetry Day where I am.

I've been musing about this for a while, unsure what to do. I fell headlong into fandom 8 years ago, but before that I had a poetry writing jag, the second major one since my teens. Being in love with fandom put paid to that of course. I was doing a lot of trips to Aussie at the time, and I used to scribble the poems on the back of airline sick bags (the Air NZ ones were a nice plain white). I collated my "midlife" poems into a decidedly slim volume and gave it to friends and family back then, but I haven't done much else, except sometimes writing fannish poems or incorporating poems in fanfic. But I think I'll post the ones I like best here, occasionally, and I might set up a new AO3 account for them - I'd rather keep my original stuff and fannish stuff separate over there. Anyone know if it's still seen as okay to post original works to AO3? I vaguely recall a rumour that maybe the policy on that might toughen up. I don't expect anyone will read them, but it's an archive. I'd just like to archive them.

So, here goes. Many of them are a bit gloomy, but here's a lighter one. Sadly, still oh so true, although these days more from failure to get rid of stuff than ongoing accumulation.

Things

I have too many things

Books

Clothes

Disks

Junk

Things stacked on things

Things stuffed in things

Bowls of things

Things of things

Things teeter in piles, they mutter in corners

Things plot and congregate

Multiplying secretly

Broken things reproach me

Big things need little things

Electronic entrails, add-ons and doo-dads

Symptoms, not trophies, debris of addiction

Things pimped by catalogues, shop windows, television

Things have gone feral, sharp cornered, toe crushing

Things bark my shins, trip me up and assault me

Got to do something, some radical cleansing

Things weigh me down, hem me in and oppress me

I will do something, a clearance, a voiding

My home will be spare

Unencumbered

Then I will be able

To display my new things

To advantage

Writing, Possum, and fandom invades RL

mific — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 14:19:02 GMT

Last week was pretty grueling, with a massive exam I had to write, involving an all-nighter. I'm way too old for all-nighters, well, except that my sleep pattern's so muntered I often do stay up most of the night. It's the all-dayers after the all-nighters that do me in. Having emerged somewhat scathed from a few days of sleep deprivation, leaving me with a 2-day headache and annoying tinnitus, I'm now trying to muster the creative juices this weekend and attack my SGA-Reversebang story (a largely gen Ronon and Radek friendship fic). Managed a detailed outline today anyway, so that's something. Other projects on the go are my Ante Up Losers fic (suburban crack), and my story for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang - a fantasy AU, and my first ever fic in that fandom, so wish me luck. :)

I'm also starting an . . . unusual . . . work project that's dear to my fannish heart. My trainees have to write up a 10,000 word case documenting a year's worth of psychotherapy they've done with someone. It's not easy to get right and the standard's very high, so they've been asking for samples. We're leery about using real cases, even though they're thoroughly de-identified, so I've decided to write two sample cases myself, one about a year's therapy with Mr. Spock, and the other for Princess Leia. I chose those characters as tributes to Leonard Nimoy and Carrie Fisher, and as they're both huge fandoms that I think almost everyone will know, as opposed to SGA or due South which'd be easier for me, but less well known by today's youf. Well, I say youf, but half of them are in their 30s-40s and from Korea, Iraq, or Bangladesh, so fuck knows what they'll make of it. Probably end up with two bits of writing that are too dull for fandom and too weird for my trainees. But there's lots of material - I mean, with Spock there's his Vulcan/human heritage and attempts to repress his emotions (he goes to therapy as he's failed at that and wants to learn how to suppress them better. An unusual challenge for the budding therapist!) Then with Leia there's persecution and almost getting it on with her brother and having DARTH VADER for a father, not to mention the trials of a relationship with Han Solo. Anyway, if anyone could stand to read a formal psychotherapy case history about Spock or Leia to critique my canon research, any help'd be welcome.

Possum was being cute in the weeds today - my place mostly runs to weeds (survival of the fittest mode of gardening). Lush, as our summer dry spell broke with torrential rain storms, and now there's an autumnal edge in the air, which Possum's enjoying. He's too furry for midsummer in Auckland. I think he's eating a little better now it's not so hot and humid. He loves the rain - one day I had to dry him off six times in succession. He's always so pleased with himself when he's wet; it's hilarious.

A proverb riddle, musing about fusions, and fic recs

mific — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:03:58 GMT

Here's a proverb riddle - which proverb has changed its meaning over the ages to now mean the exact opposite of what it initially did? Answer at the end of this post . . . :)

I'd also been pulling together some ideas and recs about fusion-tropes for a while, and coincidentally, esteefee posted about one of them on tumblr

So, Fusions (i.e. actual media-based fandoms in their own right, rather than non-fandom tropes like 'sharing a bed') that have become tropes: When does a fusion become an actual trope?

I think, when it's very popular and people write the fusion across a number of fandoms, and when the stories are definitely fusions i.e. "the way it's always been" - not crossovers. Sometimes especially when the original was written in a certain time-period or medieval/fantasy setting, and people update that and set the core idea (the trope) in the modern world.

Definitely fusion-tropes:

The Sentinel (TV) - sentinels and guides. Many examples in SGA, like esteefee's Redemption series or her Finding the Path (H-50)
Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass books - people have daemons. Daemonology (SGA) and Cleave (MCU) by trinityofone
A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette - psychic bonding with wolf brothers and sisters. This has been written in several fandoms now as a true "always been this way" fusion: like dira's amazing Generation Kill Every Marine a Wolfbrother series, and vass's excellent fusion with Imperial Radch - Mouth of the Wolf', and the truly wonderful The tameness of a wolf by petra - a Slings and Arrows fusion in which Darren, as ever, is utterly impossible.

Somewhat:

Ursula Le Guin's (A Fisherman from the Inland Sea) - sedoretu foursome relationships are definitely a trope, I think, but these fics are rare. A wonderful example is luzula's due South fic Puzzle Pieces. I wrote sedoretu-fic in SGA, but it was a crossover not a fusion, as I wanted team AR1 to react to the foursome culture as an alien experience, then gradually give in to it and form their own. An earlier famous sedoretu fusion is Imperfectcircle's An Ever-Fixed Mark (Merlin).
Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books - the trope of psychic dragon-bonding - although most of these don't update the trope but set it in McCaffrey's medieval-style 'verse. Such as Winging It by harrycrewe (H-50), or the Weyrwolves of Pern series by rainproof (Teen Wolf). This Cam/John SGA one is an updated fusion though: With Wings Spread Wide by skieswideopen.

Probably still mostly a fusion (because there isn't a single core trope as such - more a whole world):

Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos - It's certainly a common fusion in many fandoms. One great and hilarious example is Strange Geometry by ancarett where Mike Holmes of 'Holmes on Homes' has to block off an arcane portal. You don't need to know the canon.

Any more fusion-tropes you can think of?

***

The proverb is "a rolling stone gathers no moss". Once upon a time staying in the same place was seen as a good thing, secure and steady, allowing one to 'gather moss' (wisdom? Nah, probably money). In the changing modern world, the proverb's now used to mean that movement and change (rolling on) are good things, that stop you from getting mossy, overgrown and stagnant.

And so to bed . . .

Art Calendar finished

mific — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 13:03:45 GMT

Work's been a bit hellish this week, so I got the art calendar posted to AO3 in time for Romancing McShep, and forgot to do a final post here. Click for full size pic.

AO3 post is here

It was an interesting project, but not one I'll repeat. I'm too impatient and I work on an artwork obsessively until it's done, so rationing out the task to a small bit each day just frustrates me. But, fun to have tried it.

Back home and pottering

mific — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 08:46:21 GMT

Here's the penultimate posting of the art calendar - one more update to go on the 28th.

Possum was delighted to see me and seems none the worse. I'm somewhat the worse however for my Melbourne trip, having managed to pull a calf muscle. Melbourne airport was like an inner circle of hell with the endless queuing and shuffle-standing - my lower back disliked it intensely. And joy of joys, a few days after braving the general populace, I've got a streaming head cold. Bleh.

I was going to say, flist! (or dwircle!) - why did no one tell me that DW now has image hosting? Then I discovered that a) you can't post the images anywhere except to DW or a very similar journal where you've set up crossposting, like LJ, and b) there's no way to sort your images into folders or via tabs. So it's effectively useless for organising and posting fanart. Denise says they're developing a folder or tagging system as phase 2, but that DW doesn't have the bandwidth to allow free-for-all posting to the internet, e.g. to AO3, although they'll see once they've analysed the usage of the new hosting service. I suspect best not to hold your breath. So, still posting new stuff to Mediafire, and thinking about moving my old stuff across there from LJ.

I had some other thoughts, but, streaming head cold. Will save them for next time.

Art calendar update, and other stuff

mific — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 11:14:13 GMT

Aaand another update on the art calendar. I'm spreading them out a bit as I'm off to Melbourne for a few days from tomorrow. Three days of meetings, joy. Have to get a dawn flight and what with how late I always get to bed, there's no point trying to sleep at all, really. Maybe on the plane.

I posted a not very SFW naked cuddling piece of art as another thing for Romancing McShep, A Room With A View. The summary's not massively romantic I guess, but there's a lot of tenderness in their poses, and given a choice between sappiness and humor, trust me to go with humor.

I was looking for trinityofone's SGA fics on the Wayback Machine as I'm sure I used to have that link bookmarked but couldn't locate it. But the only snapshot on Wayback that functions at all has hardly any working links when you click through. Does anyone out there have a better URL for all the rest of Trin's fics that aren't on AO3? Neither of the fic-finding comms on LJ really work for asking about all of an author's work. It's not really a genre.

Art Calendar Update

mific — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 06:11:17 GMT

Well, this is a series of ready-made reasons to post, at least! Plus, lots of fun even if it is difficult to restrain myself and only do a little each day.
Here's the past 3 days of art squares completed, so up to day 9. I think you can see where it's going now *grin*. It'll be a Romancing McShep entry for me as they're taking those from 14th through to 28th February.

I suddenly got bitten by a plot bunny and belted out 700 words of my Ante Up Losers fic, which was upcheering. Of course, in the to do list it's not at the top so that's another well-constructed schedule down the gurgler. Only a few thousand more words to go, sigh. It's supposed to be humor, so we'll see how that goes.

Off to Melbourne for work meetings next week which I'm not looking forward to. I'm hoping Possum will be okay with my cat feeder coming in each day with fresh food, but that's another reason I don't want to go. The agenda is: no sleep, drive to airport before dawn, catch red-eye after endless walking through airports built for an alien race of giants, tedious queuing and walking at Melbourne end despite only having hand-luggage, 3 days of moderately dull meetings but nice to see a few acquaintances, a chance to catch up with latest movies in the hotel though which is good, late flight home on day 3 which gets in after midnight and then trundle on home to fuss over Possum.

I need to walk more. Seriously, self, just fucking do it.

Art Calendar Progress

mific — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 15:56:20 GMT

All caught up - just one part a day from tomorrow. I decided the night sky needed more stars so that meant a small adjustment, and I'm just crossing my fingers that I can get their faces to work out okay.
Here's what it's looking like now.

Also, I realized that this can be my contribution to Romancing McShep once it's done, as that festival runs from 14th-28th Feb, so that makes February a bit more doable challenge-wise. Phew.

Feb Art Calendar Meme days 1 and 2 (Alien City at Night)

mific — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 02:43:01 GMT

I'm jumping on this bandwagon as well - it's fun! I'm playing catch up so it'll be 4 days of 2 squares filled in per day, then 1 a day.
darthneko's invented a kind of advent calendar for doing art - small parts of an overall work that you complete each day across a month until it's done. Here's the post about it - there are 2 templates that can be used in a link in the comments.
sholio's doing one as well - over here, and here. goss is doing one too, and doubtless others are giving it a go.

I like how different they all are. Me being me, mine's in colour and done digitally, not with traditional media. It'll also end up G-rated slashy (I hope!). This one'll be SGA - if I do more I'll do a different fandom each time.
A bit scary to see if I can link up the shading and get the overall drawing to look vaguely okay, especially when I get to the hard part - the people! And no, I haven't already drawn it all out - seat of the pants, I'm afraid.

Click on the thumbnail to see where I'm at.

In other news, I finished my Apocalypse Kree apocafic, yay! (concludes my series 'The Rapture').

Now only Romancing McShep, Pic-for-1000, SGA-Reversebang, the Ante-Up Losers exchange and the Captain America ReverseBigBang to go before June. How did that happen? *hides*

Fiddling while Rome burns

mific — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 12:21:52 GMT

I should be finishing my apocafic, and I will, right after this (honest). Also, this is probably the worst time to be writing about apocalypses - coffee shop AU, anyone?

Anyway, I was thinking about the different types of apocafic I've read.

Plague apocalypses. Everyone dies and as well as civilization crashing and burning, the world's empty. Like rheanna's amazing The Hard Prayer. The protagonists are almost the only survivors so it's about surviving alone, or as a couple or small team. Isolation, fending off despair, going nuts, etc. They're sometimes heavy on character studies, as there are relatively few characters.
Break-down of civilization apocalypses where the tech still works. A sub-section of these are political melt-down apocalypses, then there are weird ones like the AU I'm working on. If it's a post-nuclear-holocaust scenario there's usually a massive population reduction, plus, y'know, wastelands and mutants. There are quite a few political chaos ones in Stargate fandom, often due to declassification of the program, but few are truly apocalyptic - one is Providing the Flame, by sharkie (more destabilisation, not really an apocalypse). These apocalypse scenarios are complex as there are still lots of people and it all gets pretty 'Lord of the Flies', with the main risks often from other survivors. (Why the everloving heck did I decide to write one of those! *tears hair*. Plus, endless goddamn roadtrip, courtesy of google maps).
Break-down of civilization apocalypses where the tech/infrastructure stops working or for some reason everything reverts to a medieval state. Such as the S. M. Stirling series Dies the Fire. I'm working my way through these and enjoying them even though they are pretty macho, despite the Wiccans, but the main interest with these is the contrast of people raised in a high-tech society now forced to survive in medieval fiefdoms. Swords, bows 'n arrows, massive population reduction due to societal chaos with the tech gone, and over-optimistic notions that herbal medicine will step up and replace antibiotics just fine. Yeah, right. I think this series will get less interesting as the world becomes more truly medieval, after the old people who remember "before" die off. It's the clash of cultures aspect I like best.
Environmental disaster apocalypses. These depend on how extreme the disaster is. If Earth's habitable but vastly changed, they tend towards type 2 (John Christopher's The Death of Grass). If Earth's uninhabitable you get the basis for Firefly, and "Earth That Was".
Alien invasion apocalypses. Another Stargate fave. The Ori win. The Goa'uld win. The Wraith cull Earth - the brilliant At the Hour When We Are Trembling by frostfire.
Zombie apocalypses! A favorite of mine. Combines massive population loss, civilization break-down and the ultimate Lord of the Flies survival scenario. Small bands of plucky survivors! But wait, is that blood on your collar? Some nifty examples are Final Order, by velocitygrass and Blame the Apocalypse by esteefee.
Then there are 'abandoned by Earth' ones or just 'left behind' or 'cut off'. One excellent one is mrshamill's Pegasus Purgatorio, but they're only really apocalyptic if Earth's gone or lost, rather than just not taking Atlantis's calls.
I'm less familiar with supernatural apocalypses as an SGA fan - mostly get those in Supernatural fandom or Buffyverse. Maybe in Vampire fandoms as well? an e.g. is Seperis's amazing SPN/SGA/SG1 crossover And All the World Beneath.

Rec me some more if you have favorites. Okay, enough slicing and dicing of apocafic. Back to writing.

( This post brought to you in the spirit of "so you think this is bad?" )

Art, yes, Writing, no

mific — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 09:52:00 GMT

Well, I finished my mini art blowout for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang (they allowed submission of up to 3 pieces, and I did 3) and I should be writing apocafic furiously, but haven't been getting quite enough sleep lately so I don't think it's a happening thing tonight. I hear about people writing as a therapy for stress but I can't do that - I have to be in a reasonably good space to write, and not too tired. No more power outages but my internet connectivity's still crap.

The news from the USA is grim of course, so that's not helping. Can't help but wonder if there's some sort of Shock and Awe (well, Shock and Horror, anyway) tactic of Trump & co. attacking on multiple fronts bam bam bam with some notion of exhausting the democratic opposition. However, attributing any kind of organised strategy to The Pufferfish seems unwise.

Possum is doing okay, eating just enough although less overall than before, but he's active and cheerful. Here he is deigning to look at me mid-grooming.

</br>
Oh, and I was able to gain points for my pub quiz team by knowing the colour of Spock's blood. I told them how I knew as well, giving rise to some hilarity - because runpunkrun reblogs all this fanart on tumblr and you know it's not just Spock's cheeks the fanartists show flushing a delicate green . . . *G*

Reasons to be Cheerful

mific — Sun, 22 Jan 2017 02:47:19 GMT

a belated More Joy Day thing - belated for reasons as in the poem below, that I wrote yesterday.

Drifting Cheerfully in the Black

There's a gale outside,

Wind howling, trees lashing.

The power went off an hour ago.

My cat Possum's outside; he's weird that way.

Likes rain, likes getting the wind up his bottom.

Mum used to say that.

I'm inside, listening to rain drum on the corrugated iron,

Smug and snug, like a bug in a rug.

She used to say that, too.

I light candles, the camping gas lamp and the burner;

Living out here you learn to plan for outages.

I make tea, grab a snack.

Possum pounds in, bedraggled and excited.

I towel his wet fur - he likes that.

If I were a cat I'd lick him dry, but this'll do.

I sit in my favourite chair, feet up on a footstool.

The phone's dead but my pad's filled with ebooks and fanfic.

By chance it was fully charged when we lost power.

Lost power: I feel like a spaceship in the black.

Engineering, report! The sublights are down but we're working on it, Cap'n!

In a spaceship there's no rain; my engineers aren't so lucky.

Outside, the storm thrashes and I'm browsing through titles.

Possum smells of damp cat, warm and purring in my lap.

I'll read till the pad dies, then we'll head off to bed.

I touch a story.

***

CapRVB, geek fistbumps, and a topical rec

mific — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 08:41:17 GMT

I'm doing art for the Captain America reversebang (on tumblr here) - not jumping ships, I just like reversebangs!

We were chatting on slack about ship-names, and @portraitoftheoddity pointed out that they fall into three main categories - smushes, poetic ship-names, and puns. My older fandoms haven't played around with ship names as much - most are smushes, like McShep and Shex, although Sticks n Snark is a more poetic one (Teyla/Rodney), and Sparky just . . . happened and is uncategorizable. :)

MCU has a lot of variants. For Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson there's 'samsteve', 'stevesam', 'freebirds', and 'capfalc', maybe more. Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes has the main one, 'stucky', but also 'starbucks' and 'barnes and noble' and maybe 'wintershield'.

A great one for Tony/Steve/Bruce is 'Stark Spangled Banner', and to illustrate the categories, Steve Rogers/Loki, can be Stoki (smush) or Frostshield (poetic), and sometimes Capslok (pun).

Maybe we should think up a few more for our older fandoms? Like for SGA, how about Lean and Mean? Bit unkind to Rodney, I guess. And how come Fraser and the Rays in due South never got pairing names? What with the Ray-Ray confusion, they'd be pretty handy. There probably are some out there and I just don't know them! Um, Benray, maybe, for Fraser/Ray V? (as Ray V calls him Benny) - Bengay being too nonspecific. Or for Fraser/Ray K, a combo of the poetic and pun categories: Mount Greatness. (it should really be Mountie Greatness of course but you lose the double entendre that way). Heh.

****
On the home front, I had Reuben, a mobile tech guy from "Geeks on Wheels" in today to clean up my PC and laptop - buckets of cruft removed, but it hasn't solved my crappy internet connection (way worse since a power outage yesterday) or the useless landline. Back to arguing with my telecoms provider again, sigh. Oh, but hey - the tech guy (on the cusp of 30 I'd guess) asked what I used the devices for, other than RL, and I said "art, podfic and writing". "Great," says Reuben. "What sort of writing?" . . . "Fanfiction," says I, a little nervously. "Cool!" he says - what sort? Guess I shouldn't ask that. Er, what fandom?" "I'm old school - Stargate Atlantis," I say. "Yay," says Reuben, "Me and my wife are SGA fans. You know, I think Atlantis was a better show than SG1, although I know a lot of people..." and so we had a nice fannish chat. I'll be using that company again!

****
And, in light of events in the USA and people talking about going on protest rallies, time to re-read a favourite:

The one where they're antiglobalization protesters (8190 words) by sapote (AU)
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex
Summary: The Wraith are a metaphor for globalization. I go from there.

Ludicrous craft project completed

mific — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 06:46:49 GMT

So . . . I may have a tendency to collect kitsch, and a fondness for steampunk. Put those together and we get (taadaa!) the steampunk toilet roll holder! It came in black so of course a coat of gold paint was required for a brass-like finish, and for maximum ludicrousness. It works brilliantly (not the gauges, but the appropriately suggestive rod with the knob on the end holds the rolls very well).

This is a welcome addition to the bathroom, as the old toilet roll holder's been broken for a while. I'd been reluctant to replace it as it was a wall-mounted radio cum roll-holder, in fetching white plastic onto which I'd glued numerous stick-on jewels. A hard act to follow indeed, but the steampunk one's a worthy successor. If the gauges worked I'd be over the moon but you can't have everything.

Writing, plotting . . .

mific — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 04:10:10 GMT

I'm bad at finishing series, or rather, I'm too ready to promise that something's the start of a series, and then not deliver on the sequels. They're not WIPs as the stories are complete in themselves, but they feel like the start of a 'verse or a bigger story. Then I get distracted by challenges, and work, and the new shiny, and . . . yeah. Before you know it a few years have passed and how in hell did that happen?

So for Apocalypse Kree this year (deadline's the end of January), I'm determined to finish my John/Ronon Rapture series that started with After the Harvest. When I first started it I was planning to have the series become John/Ronon/Rodney after Rodney joined them, but that'd take vastly more words and plot, so I think I'll have it just as John/Ronon and keep Rodney as their buddy. I do have the final part outlined, but I'm at that stage where you look at the outline and it feels like a hell of a lot of work to get the characters from (in this case) Vegas to Colorado.

Especially when you get whammied by another, shinier plot bunny! Well, it's only shinier because it's newer, but OMG, I'm having such fun with the outline. It'll be for Romancing McShep so it has to wait until I get the apocafic done, but I really really want to play with it now (pouts). I have some medical background and I've wanted to do a medical AU for a while, to use some of that stuff, but it's always felt a bit OOC for Sheppard, although I've read some great short AUs with him and Rodney as ER-type doctors. Then there's Rodney's attitude to "voodoo" medicine. But I suddenly thought of the perfect solution - a Doc Martin AU!! (Do USA-folks know the UK TV series Doc Martin?) So Rodney's the irascible genius ex-surgeon with no bedside manner at all who develops a blood phobia and is forced to relocate as a family doctor to a small coastal town, where he meets John (probably a local police officer I think, but definitely not the neurotic one from Doc Martin who fretted about his tiny penis!). And all the usual suspects transposed into (non-sci-fi) AU roles. I think I'd set in in in coastal Maine, as a vague correlation to Cornwall - a made-up town very like Boothbay Harbor. Rodney's going to be ideal as the Aspergery Doc Mac, antagonizing everyone and diagnosing the hell out of them with House-like accuracy. BUT NO. I MUST BE STRONG AND SET IT ASIDE FOR NOW. Damn.

Westworld meta

mific — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 10:14:14 GMT

I'm up to ep 7, so spoiler warning, if you aren't there yet. Also, warning for discussion of violence, rape and body-horror - seriously; this show could be really triggering, especially if you were vulnerable to dissociation.

I never saw the original Yul Brynner movie, so I don't know where this remake is similar or deviates. That's probably good, as I'd rather not know how it's going to end.</p>

I'm enjoying it. I'm fascinated by ideas about consciousness/artificial intelligence and how it comes into being, and you get a lot of that with androids. Some things are developing the same way as Blade Runner: in a future world that can make androids so perfectly that even their insides replicate humans exactly (to the naked eye; I imagine the space-age white stuff is some kind of futuristic polymer, and the "blood" won't actually be blood), how can you ever know who's an android and who's human? And of course, how can the individuals themselves ever know? Seems like you only find out when it turns out you can be mind-controlled by a programmer and switched off. Remembering your life history is no protection as the androids are programmed with a lifetime of memories with each iteration.

There are plenty of horror themes. The Park itself is an id-playground and human guests have full licence to kill, rape and torture any android in the place. That's one area there's a plot-hole, as there's no way the park's staff could stop the human guests killing or raping each other - the androids are programmed not to harm humans - so I guess we're supposed to assume that the same handwavey futuristic science that stops bullets finding their mark (how??) would stop humans killing humans. Dodgy. Then there's the routine body-horror of seeing naked humans (androids) manipulated and dissected by the staff in the testing and rebuild areas, or lying in bloody heaps awaiting repair. That part's more horrific than the mass-slaughter gunfights because of its casual ordinariness.

Create a place where there's no moral code stopping "guests" from acting out every base instinct (on androids indistinguishable from humans) and a "wild west" culture that encourages adventurers to "be everything you can be", and it's a recipe for general murder and rapine. So there's also a theme of evil humans and good androids - the humans after all are supposed to have free will, whereas the androids, like Jessica Rabbit, are written that way. That's linked with the theme of the androids "malfunctioning", which actually means they're becoming more human and thus unpredictable and dangerous/evil.

I like the way the series plays with notions about freedom and reality. William (the nice guy in love with Dolores) who's a guest and thus human (but is he??? Are any of them human? Am I human? Am I even watching this show or is all this a storyline? - shades of The Matrix!) says his "real" life outside seems dreamlike and unreal, because in that life he wore a polite, false mask for society but in Westworld he can "be himself". Also he's found true love with Dolores, so that's altering his perceptions, like you get.

Underlying it all are dark themes about human ambition and abuse of power. Some staff at the park get their rocks off by physically and sexually abusing the androids. For such a high-tech place that seems pretty easy to get away with. Ford, one of the park's original creators, is constantly playing power games and making illegal androids in a high-handed, godlike manner. "The Board" - shadowy corporate controllers - send a representative who casually uses an android bandito for sex while politicking away. She also says the Board's only interest is in the android-tech intellectual property, not the barrels of cash from the adventure park itself. So the usual wheels within wheels - if the park itself isn't the point, why would this shadowy corporation with dodgy morals want to be able to create hordes of programmable people? Why, indeed? (shut up, Donald).

And what will our heroes find at the end of their quest, at the heart of the maze? The door to the outside? A Matrix-like revelation? Human consciousness? A soul?

I hope there's going to be a satisfying answer. It's been quite a build-up, reinforced by gorgeous production values and visuals, in the scenery and the actors. Oh, and it's nice that the two "hosts" striving for consciousness are women.

Storing Fanart and Pics in the post-LJ era

mific — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 10:16:27 GMT

Since the dread news about LJ, I've been fretting more about where to host all my fanart. They're on LJ scrapbook now, which is an okay interface and pretty easy to use, but who knows what they'll do to it next?

Ordinary photo-sharing sites are no good as the file size is too low, they aim at making your art readily trawled by all (not always what I want) and I also worry that if I opt into a cute new site it'll go belly-up after I've gone through the hassle of moving everything.

What I want in an art storage site:

Free - even if I upgrade my experience for now, say to have the interface ad-free, if I can't afford a fee in future I still want all the links to work indefinitely (ha, hubris. Well, until the zombie apocalypse, anyway).
Easy to get a direct link for embedding in AO3 or DW etc. And it needs to provide a 'clean' direct link without a heap of site-GUI-crap and/or ads all around the edges, like tinypic and photobucket do. This is as I often post a smaller version of a pic and link to the full-size version, and I almost always do a link anyway even for smaller pics - this is for pads and mobiles, as otherwise the pic won't display fully.
I don't create many ginormous files, but for the few I do, the site needs to be OK with that.
Lots of free storage so I don't run out.
Easy to organise my art - easy to make folders, name and rename them. Photobucket also allows on-site artworks to be named, which is nice, but it's not crucial to me as I only use the site for storage so as to embed works elsewhere.
Ideally I need a site that doesn't care if I store some explicit images. I don't worry about that too much though, as mine are rarely super-explicit, and I figure I'll find another solution for the tiny few that are if LJ goes bust. Meanwhile I'll leave those ones on LJ.

I commented about this here and there recently and I thought for a while that Photobucket was going to be okay. But the links that I figured would give a clean direct link with no GUI-crap turned out not to do so, so that's a bust.

In the end, and partly because of this discussion from Adam Savage's Tested, I'm going with Mediafire. It does all the above and focuses on storage so people aren't as likely to trawl through the site's images and accidentally hit my porny one of Remus and Sirius barebacking :) It's not hard to get a direct link to paste in for immediate display and also to link to - you do have to click on the thumbnail to call up the actual image, then R-click on it to get "copy image url", but that's no more work than with LJ.

Notes:

the top choice from the Adam Savage site above was actually Minus - but the article dates from 2012 and Minus doesn't seem to exist any more (cautionary tale there). Mediafire, on the other hand, has been around for ages.
another good thing about Mediafire is that the link doesn't alter if you reorganise and move the art to another folder later on (I tested this). So no need to edit the AO3 or DW post. This is a big plus over LJ, where it would break the link.

So that's where I'm at with this. I haven't actually moved many pics across so if anyone out there knows anything better, or sees flaws in this cunning plan, please set me straight!
(Test sample: Here's a sample of an M-rated dS post to AO3 using mediafire links. Let me know if you can't see the pic for any reason!)

Ante Up Losers - Dear Creator letter

mific — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 01:16:35 GMT

Hi there - so in the sign-up I asked for:

Jolene/Pooch (Art, Fic, Podfic, Remix, vid - any rating)
I've asked for something featuring Jolene/Pooch. Would love them being badass, especially Jolene being badass, and/or maybe something set in the future about them and their kid or kids. What I wouldn't want is infidelity. No break-up please, or not a permanent one. No permanently sad or tragic ending for them and their family either, please. If you're up for an AU it'd be great to incorporate Roque as a black-sheep family member of some sort or an ex of Jolene's. You can go dark with Roque and/or kill him off if you like - I can handle it with Roque! But feel free to rehabilitate him as well. :)

First off - the main thing is that you should have fun and do something you enjoy. I like all the Losers characters so I'll be happy with whatever you want to do, I promise! I do like Pooch and Jolene, though, so something featuring them would be very shiny, if you can manage that. I've read the comics as well as seeing the movie and I like both canons, so you don't have to stay in movieverse if you'd rather take the comics route. Below, I've copied my likes and don't-likes for exchanges generally, but don't feel too constrained as I'm pretty un-squickable and eclectic in my tastes, so I'll be thrilled with whatever you'd like to make, just because you went to the trouble to make it! :D

Things I like:
Competence, common sense, found families and teamwork, plot and adventures, humor, traditional fandom tropes given a breath of life or inverted or just done well. Among those, I'm a sucker for amnesia, robots/androids, AMTDI, aphrodisiacs and drunk or drugged characters. I like characters to be smart but not unrealistically brilliant unless they're geniuses in canon or whammied by tech or somesuch. I LOVE worldbuilding, be it an alien world, or fantasy, or the past or far future. I also love crossovers and fusions - check out my AO3 for fandoms I've ever written in, for ideas there. I like AUs in general, as long as the characters stay in character. I'm happy with any rating, will read any kink if it's done well, and like gen just as much as NC-17. I prefer high-rated aspects of a fic to serve the story and not just be PWP or gratuitous, and am just as happy with slow-burn and UST, or a romantic outcome rather than a sex scene. Kissing! Kissing is always good but please, please, please, no mouths/teeth/lips clashing together - it makes me wince and worry about chipped teeth. I love slash, am happy with femslash, or het (depending on the pairing) but am just as happy with strong friendships. Bro partnerships and women being best buds and fabulous together are great.

Things I don't like:
(none of these are triggers, as I don't really have any, but I'd prefer not to get them)
Extreme hurt-comfort and whump with very little comfort at the end, emo-porn (by which I mean excessive angsting with not much plot), characters who aren't woobies in canon portrayed as weak and woobiefied, any seriously OC depictions of characters, partner betrayal, deathfic and very tragic endings - mostly. But that depends on the challenge - in apocafic I can handle it. Also not a huge fan of very routine Harlequin romances, extreme fluff and extreme crack. I'm an atheist so while I don't mind reading about characters being religious or having spiritual experiences I'll probably be eyerolling (unless they've been snaked or otherwise mind-controlled). Alien religions depicted as part of worldbuilding are always great. I'm not keen on stories that haven't been beta-read which have lots of typos and malapropisms, or bad-porn language like cum rather than come.</div>

Hope you have fun with the exchange, and looking forward to seeing what you come up with - thanks!

From the flamingo notebook

mific — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 16:16:39 GMT

I've never been great at tidiness, and as time passes it just seems too hard to keep battling entropy - or rather, I'm picking my battles. I also have TOO MUCH STUFF. So there are things everydamnwhere (I wrote a poem about that a few years ago before the fandom bus totalled me. Will post it here when I locate it).

Not surprising then, that among all the things, stuff gets overlooked. Yesterday I happened on a partly-filled-in Audubon notebook of my Mum's (I still have her ashes, and Dad's, in little wooden boxes sitting next to each other in a cupboard, and good intentions to scatter them both at Arthur's Pass in the South Island as requested. I just never get around to making the trip). So, I discovered that towards the end of her life, Mum recorded some of her favourite poems or quotes in this notebook with a flamingo on the cover. And I'm going to post one occasionally - the ones I like best.

Some background - my parents met at age 15 in high school and had a happy marriage until their 80s, although the last few years were tough due to Dad's dementia. Also, for many years, Mum was a librarian.

The poet is noted as being Maureen Julian-Miles. I can't find her on the net, so she may be a New Zealand poet: Mum collected things from The Listener, a magazine here. ETA: I located her in the National Library of NZ - she's definitely a NZ poet, and it was from the Listener.

The Librarian's Wife

by Maureen Julian-Miles

Beloved he says
let me bind you and cover you
catalogue/index but not
issue you

let me
examine your text
interrogate your databases
establish finding aids
on your skin

I want to make an inventory
of all of you

he sighs
he kisses her neck
if I were an archivist
I would arrange and describe you

beloved, she says
show me
the Library of Congress.

...

P some of the DTM

mific — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 14:44:07 GMT

Hi everyone - one spin-off of the LJ servers moving to Russia and tumblr being a time-suck is a consolidation of friends here at DW. Nice to see the busyness. There's no way I can manage a PEDTM right now, but I'd like to try posting more, and more randomly rather than just catch-ups.

So I happened on a Captive Prince songvid using all fanart, then found another, so it's a Captive Prince vids post. I really like the cumulative effect with the fanart ones, esp. Coming Down. Total fail at embedding, as can't seem to locate the thing on youtube to get the embed code. Anyone know?

Coming Down by MockingJamie
Hurts So Good by kyungsoohorat
Carry Your Throne by rhea314
heart's a mess by Essie Spiros (features TW Derek as Damen!)
Damen & Laurent by paquim (exceptionally pretty Laurent here)

Wherefore art thou, internets?

mific — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 10:36:40 GMT

Whoa - so many comments I need to reply to, and end of the year round-ups and such, and my wireless is a mess. Something's wrong with my telecom connection which is making it very slow and intermittent, so I don't have no internet, just REALLY GODDAMN ANNOYING internet. Half the time it doesn't connect - I have to hit reload 3-4 times on average. Posting's bloody difficult - definitely need to save the html first, until it finally goes through. Posting to AO3 is a nightmare.

I pulled out of Yuletide early on, and haven't been quite as invested in it this year, but am reading a little. I enjoyed thefourthvine's Losers fic Solid Copy in which Cougar and Jensen accidentally get hit with telepathy. The story I should have written (Steerswoman fandom) was done by a pinch hitter and at least I can be happy that they really enjoyed writing it and it's a far better fic (The Steerswoman's Trail by keerawa - a very definite rec) than I would have managed with the headspace I was in back then, with Possum not eating. He's not full of appetite these days, but he's eating enough to get by and I'm just trying to enjoy him a day at a time and not think about it too much.

Not gonna do a full-year's round-up, but we had the reveals today for the two seasonal exchanges I took part in.

I got a great story All Men Dream (But Not Equally) by aivix in SGA Secret Santa, and wrote Something New for mimm (Gen, Sheppard and Michael). At the last minute I also wrote a pinch hit: Helter Skelter for randommindtime (McShep).

In due South Seekrit Santa, I got a lovely fic Wouldn't It Be Nice by mizface and wrote Communication for feroxargentea.

From time to time, about once a year, I have something of a blow-out with a challenge or festival. This year I had two - a main fic Hamlette, Princess of Denmark and three "madness" treats (Sisters - Macbeth, Titania's Revenge - MSND, and Couple Counseling - Othello) in the Shakespearean fic exchange Stage of Fools, most in blank verse, which was fun.

Then I did several dSSS treats in the recent Seekrit Santa. Four artworks and one short podfic with cover art, for a variety of people.
Podfic of Translation by wagnetic (Fraser/RayK)
Person of the Year (Elaine Besbriss, SFW) (and the linked)
That Goddamn Cover (Elaine/Frannie) SFW
Just Do It (M) - some kinky RayK art, and
Thank You Kindly (G) - a seasonal cartoon for the mods, pinch-hitters et al.
I also looked up the wrong dSSS year and did 1960s-style RayK art (G) for a 2015 request - Just Like Steve McQueen.

And last night, in the holiday spirit, I whipped up a New Year's Eve artwork featuring John and Rodney: Cheers, in which they've clearly survived the giant Halloween pumpkin from Oops - it's as below.

I'll end with my annual New Year's card this year, featuring cats, of course.

~ Happy 2017 to you all, and big hugs to everyone~

Crappity crap

mific — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 02:16:09 GMT

(Warning for sick cat angsting)

I just had to default on my Yuletide assignment, so I feel crap about that, even though, this early, there are no real penalties.

Well, I guess I didn't have to, but I decided to. Although I love the Steerswoman fandom, I was flat out of inspiration with no real outline, and am struggling with two other assignments for Santa exchanges. Normally I can pull stuff out of a hat with very little time, but I'm battling a general level of anxiety about Possum, my 15 year old cat (read only child for that). He's not eating very much, and although he's still active and not looking like a sick cat, and although the vet said he couldn't find anything obvious and his blood test was OK, there must be something wrong. It's probably the start of kidney failure, which carried off all my other cats across the years.

On top of that, builders have started work replacing my front door, thus exposing the fact that my entire house is crumbling away. It's an old, WWII-era weatherboard house in a damp, bushy area, so no surprises there. I've been exercising denial about the general decrepitude, but the front door got to the stage it was hard to shut or lock, and apparently there's no quick fix - it needs a massive removal of the surrounds including a swathe of rotten weatherboards. Going to cost me $14,000 just for a goddamn front door. Also they have now removed it, boarded it up with ply and now say it'll be unusable for up to 2 weeks, and I have no other door I can lock from the outside, except a fused-shut back door off the kitchen. Joy. The lack of his usual front door and presence of noisy builders isn't thrilling Possum, either.

I haven't commented about the US election - hard to know what to say as an outsider except well, fuck. Everyone I know on the internets is far more affected and distressed than me and I can't berate the people who voted him in as I don't know them - a pointless exercise anyway. But it adds a general gloominess about the way the world's going.

I'm reccing Cthulhu/SGA crossovers this month for Stargate ficrecs, so here's an amusingly creepy story I discovered on-line, by Neil Gaiman, I Chulthu.

I'm listening to S. M. Stirling's 'Change Series' apocafic novels as audiobooks, and enjoying them, although despite various SFCs, they're pretty macho. Hoo boy, in a post-apocalyptic world like that, I'd definitely be dead within a week or two. It's kind of bizarrely cheering.

Oh, and you'll know him I'm sure, but I recently discovered Jim Jeffries, the Aussie stand-up comic - especially his great diatribes about gun control in the US. Wonder if he'll do one on Trump? Jim Jeffries Part 1 on Gun Control + Jim Jeffries Part 2 on Gun Control

In better news, my SGA Santa fic is almost done, and and I do have an outline for my due South one, if I can get over the damn anxiety and get cracking.

TYK

mific — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 06:12:14 GMT

Someone at work wrote 'thank you kindly' in an email back to me today COMPLETELY UNIRONICALLY.
I love it when that happens. No they weren't Canadian. Heh.