Nyssa23's Garden of Earthly Delights

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thank you for taking this challenge on. I almost didn't sign up this year, and by the time you finish reading this, you may wish I hadn't. But here goes!

Request 1- The Big O: I'd like to see just some downtime with Roger & Dorothy. No sex, please.


Request 2- Red Dwarf: Here's where I'd like it slashy, between Rimmer & Lister. Or if you're not into that, any other fic about them and their time onboard the Dwarf (pre-series 7 please.)


Request 3- M*A*S*H: Would love some Hawkeye/BJ slash, or Hawkeye/Trapper, or heck, even Winchester/Klinger.


Request 4- Ready Player One - Ernest Cline: Would love to know what's next for Parzival/Wade and Art3mis. Aech is a badass & I'd love to see her too. Surprise me!


Again, thank you so much for doing this. Have a great Yuletide!

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thank you so much for taking part in this year's adventure! Here's a few notes on my requested fandoms.

1. All Creatures Great and Small is one of my oldest and dearest fandoms, a fond memory of adolescent days, which is why I would prefer gen (although I trust that if you take it in another direction, it will be fantastic too!)

2. I really loved Brave, and it left me wanting to know more about the characters! I would love to read a story in which Elinor tells Merida something about her past, or perhaps a story set after the film with a more grown-up Merida.

3. I've only recently started getting into Father Ted and I love the characters. Really, surprise me! Nothing's off the table as far as the characters, situations, etc. are concerned.

4. Sapphire and Steel is such a unique series, I'd really just like to see something else involving the characters. How did they meet? What happens after the series finale? A "missing" scene from one of the stories would also be great.

I don't have much time for writing and I suspect you don't either, so that makes this yearly fic exchange that much dearer to me. I hope you enjoy writing my fic as much as I will surely enjoy reading it!

Happy Yuletide, N23

Last night I dreamed of my late father--for once, not a nightmare.

I was looking through a tall clothbound book that, I was told, was a collection of his memories. I noted that there was a list of three women he loved better than my mother, although I cannot now recall who they were.

He peeked at me, smiling, finally catching my downcast eyes. And I held his hand and told him that I missed him. Because, ridiculously, despite everything, I do. I miss him, his smile, the flash of his teeth in his dark face.

But I also miss the idea of a father. I miss never being walked down the aisle at my weddings by my father. But I don't know if he would even have wanted to do things like that. There's so much about him that now I'll never know.

And I just now remembered that today is his birthday. He would have been 67. But he never even made it to 60.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for participating in this challenge! I hope you love it as much as I do.

I'm sorry to be vague, but I'm really pretty much fine with whatever you want to write in each of my fandoms. My favorite fics, though, are ones that fit into canon, like they happened just out of sight of the cameras/author. I love slashy stories but prefer meaty character studies to PWP.

I'm just getting into Grimm, so I'd love to read something about the friendship between Hank and Nick, or between Nick and Eddie. Or maybe a story about just Nick, or just Eddie. (See what I mean about vague?)

The Big O is another newish fandom for me: I just wanted MORE of the story once it was over! I especially love the relationship between Roger and Dorothy, but will gladly take anything in this marvelous, mysterious 'verse.

Anyone who knows me knows that Deep Space Nine is my favorite of the Treks. Here, my favorite characters are Garak, Odo, Quark, and Bashir, with favorite combos being Garak/Bashir and Odo&Quark, although again, any story having to do with these folks would be welcome.

In M*A*S*H, my favorite pairings are Hawkeye/BJ and Klinger/Winchester, but I love a good visit from Sidney Freedman too. Fun and light or angsty and dark, it's all good.

Well, I hope that's not too frustrating! *laugh* We're all busy folks here, and I really just appreciate your taking time out to make something for me. My thanks and best wishes.

Love, N23.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

Hi everybody! Sorry for the delay between posts.

Divorce is final. J and I are very happy together. It's nice to not be miserable and/or lonely at home.

Kids are doing well, although we've decided to have them see a therapist soon just in case.

I continue to love my job and have even secured a promotion (with wee little raise included.) However, we continue to hemorrhage money & staff and I worry about whether the job (or the organization) will last another year.

Working 6 days a week at 2 jobs is exhausting and threatens to burn me out.

Other than that, though, things are great!

How have *you* been? :)

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

Wishing a wonderful and meaningful birthday to kass, who means so much to me.

Sorry today isn't going quite as you'd hoped, but just remember you are a blessing to all of us who know you, every day!

P.S. Your birthday gift & card are late again, as per usual. Me=planning fail.

Love always, N23

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

Celebrating MLK Day this year by reading Bruce Watson's Freedom Summer, about the Freedom Riders and Freedom Schools that forced the racism and violence of Mississippi into the spotlight and helped get the Civil Rights Act passed. It's a fascinating book and I highly recommend it.

It's weird to think that all of that happened not so very long ago at all. My mother remembers being made to use the "colored" bathrooms and water fountains as a child in the small Texas towns through which her family traveled as migrant farm workers. When I tell my white friends this they are stunned too. Wasn't that all over with a long time ago?

I remember and honor the sacrifices of the brave men and women of the civil rights movement who stood their ground and fought back, who in too many cases gave their lives, so that I might be educated in white schools, so that I might walk down the street with a white man without endangering my life or his.

Let us never lose sight of the work that still must be done to ensure human rights for all people, everywhere...and let us never lose hope that, if we stand together, we can help make it happen.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

I woke up this morning thinking of my mother, which made me cry. Because my mother always ends up making me cry one way or another.

I haven't spoken to her in months and the only phone number I had to reach her at is disconnected. We've never been close, as faithful readers will recall, and I have felt these past few years like she really has all the family she wants since my brothers and sister and niece and nephew are all still living with her. I was always a bit too much my father's daughter for her taste.

It's stupid, I know, but this is the time of year when wish I had a family to gather with and celebrate. I have a chosen family of sorts--the cappers--but they're all so far-flung you have to be the proverbial cat-herder to get them together. Besides macgeek427, who is my rock and absolutely the best thing that's ever happened to me outside of my children, there's no one here that I can call up and say "Hey, I've missed you. Let's get together and have coffee or lunch or something."

The people at my temple come close, but there's a real class divide between me and them for the most part. I don't always feel comfortable around people so much more well-off than me, and sometimes I feel palpable waves of pity coming from them: they're comfortable casting me in the role of plucky single mom who's drawn a bad hand from life and struggles through anyway. That's fine for a Lifetime movie but there's more to me than that.

Robert Frost once famously said, "[h]ome is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." I don't have a place like that. I don't have a place where I can look around and say, "I'm home." I am lucky to have an apartment in which to live and where all my things and my little family's things are stored, but it is far from feeling like my home. My marriages vouchsafed me entry into families for a while, but I found myself doubly alone when those marriages ended. Each time, I suffered not only the loss of a loving relationship but also the loss of support from a family which closed ranks around its son and reminded me that I had all along been only a visitor.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.

Everyone knows that it's rare for a sequel to be as good as the original. And for a sequel to exceed the original is almost unheard of (except for maybe "The Empire Strikes Back," but that's another review.)

Don't believe the negative hype about "Tron: Legacy." This is a truly amazing film that brings to fruition the digital world whose edges were only glimpsed in the original, expands what the movie screen can show--and also tells a timeless story about fathers, sons, and, yes, legacies.

The review below contains spoilers. Short review: See the film in 3D.

( The Spoiler AbidesCollapse )

HOLY SHIT HOW IS THERE ONLY ONE MORE WEEK LEFT FOR YULETIDE I DON'T EVEN.

...Um. My story's awesome AND TOTALLY WRITTEN. How's yours? :D

Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can comment here, or there using OpenID, or hell, both places if you want. It's all good.