sgarec - teacher's pet 11 by miss porcupine

Okay, so.

Almost two years ago, I asked miss_porcupine to write a fic from the pov of the military side of Atlantis, since that was my weakness and to get John through his unfortunate period of not-adult, he'd need it. And blah blah blah a while later (over a year, say), she blew my mind.

Teacher's Pet 11 by miss_porcupine, Evan Lorne, John Sheppard, Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, Ronon Dex, etc, gen, 19,000 words of awesome.

It's--actually, it's kind of unbelievably good. I literally hounded for updates, utterly amazed at the detail she put into Lorne, into John, and into all the things they have to do to get John ready for his life. It's amazingly thorough, brilliantly written, and everything, everything I wanted and pretty much everything there is no possible way I could have written myself. And better, it's just a fantastic story.

I love how Lorne's seen the team, Weir, how he marks out all the things that are still going wrong and tries to work out how to fix them, and his utter desperation in fighting for Sheppard's future as well as his past. It's remarkable, and it's logical, and it's sympathetic to pretty much everyone, and I'm still not entirely able to really express how this obsessed me and that I really, really felt I had to finish Teacher's Pet because this had to be read and appreciated.

I just--I just love it. It's amazing.

Read now. This is pretty much the epitome of what wonderful, complex writing and characters are.

meta recs by wistfuljane and impertinence

Meta recs:

On bandflesh and anonymity in fandom by wistfuljane. It makes an interesting argument about the reasons for anonymity and the pitfalls.

If you as a community of bandfleshers are willing to allow things to be said without facing retributions then you must, I think, be able to accept things said against your community without punishing those who said them.

On the other side:

re:bandflesh by impertinence. This one is pro-anonymous and I like her explanation of the attraction and why it works for her:

Have you ever posted something, went to bed, woken up and thought OH SHIT WHY DID I DO THAT D: but known it was too late to stop people remembering you as "that chick who posted that opinion I REALLY HATE"? Yeah, me too. But on bandflesh, no matter how dumb you are, there's always the chance for forgiveness, because you're anon. People's grudges might last into forever, but they're not grudges against you and don't color further interaction.

I think wistfujane comes closest to my feelings; it can't be a one-way street. The problem isn't wanting somewhere to post that's anonymous; stripping away individual identity is freeing as hell and allows people to say what they don't feel they can say otherwise, or that they feel they will be reviled for, or heck, as impertinence states above. That's why anonymous memes are so popular.

But, at least for me, giving up individuality to a group does, in fact, mean you take responsibility for asshattery that happens in the group. That's part of the trade you make for that freedom.

ETA: The Place With the Thing by quettaser. I liked this one too. Also in defense of anonymous comm, etc.

weird lj comment thing

Okay, is anyone besides me having weirdish lj comments issues? They're timestamped correctly but they come in clusters of a few instead of when posted?

I'm beginning to wonder if this is lj or my email being odd. It's done that before with email in general.