i wish physics had been a little clearer

Recs

When I'm 64 by nymphaea1, SGA, Sheppard/McKay - I will say up front that I might be a tiny bit unobjective, as she wrote it for my birthday (MY BIRTHDAY! I HAVE NO WORDS FOR THE LEVEL OF AWESOME OF GETTING FIC FOR MY BIRTHDAY! FOR ME ME ME! I'LL STOP NOW.), but if I'd picked this up randomly off of the newsletter, I'd still have utterly loved it. It's domestic, established relationship and first-time, their future and how they got there; it's warm and gentle and washes you along in how they make an ordinary, extraordinary life together.

This is one of those that needs to be experienced, with tea, and cookies, and a pillow, cuddled under a blanket, warming from the inside out. It's lovely.

Randomicity

Script with the right generic has returned me to zen. I am very zen, so zen I sat up for way too long after eleveninches, damn her dark soul, pasted the link to ONTD about Britney and I am seriously refreshing going, WHAT NO WHAT THE HELL PAPARRAZI, YOU STALK HER AND YET CANNOT GET ME USEFUL INFORMATION?

I have never been so ashamed. But luckily, my parents are worse; when I told my mom, her first reaction was to run to my dad and discuss the situation thoroughly. I don't even know how to deal with that.

It's odd; I didn't realize how much it was screwing with my mood until today. I keep smiling and I wore makeup just because, and I pulled out my boots and walked into work feeling confident and pleased, like I could learn anything and do anything.

Work

Boring work stuff under the cut.



Testing this program, or set of web programs, is actually both a lot harder and a lot easier than I thought. The method is fairly straightforward; there's actually a program that you use to record test steps, take screencaps, etc--freakishly cool. The testing tool, as it is called, is a large, elaborate program created for the sole purpose of creating, storing, and recording different test scenarios.

I want to know everything. I run out of things to do and ask for more, read through tests to see if I'd write it like they did, what I'd change, what's a test that can be used again, the requirements of each one and why those conditions for the test were chosen. I watch queries to the SQL database and squee softly as the steps of query are explained, the structures of the tables inside, the commands to retrieve the information we need. So much can go wrong; I'm only getting to the point now where I can see the edges of how many ways a single change can totally fuck everything else up. It's deeply terrifying.

It's amazing.



The Universe Only Mocks Because It Loves

I don't actually believe that, but I am getting a little bitter my best fic and meta ideas are regularly hitting me between eleven and one in the morning, when I'm most inspired to do and least likely to be able to type that much. Best is a subjective term that amuses me, because seriously, I am no cathexys when it comes to meta; my entire conceptualization is the idea there is a vast pool of answers out there that I just have to ask the right question to access.

I was thinking actually about this saying, "Still waters run deep", which is usually in reference to small children or people who are quiet, with the general suspicion that one day, they will erupt into megalomaniacs bent on world domination. Not that I do not look forward to my eventual jackboot world conquerer, as I have no desire to be first against the wall, but it always struck me as weird. I was a talkative child; I'm a fairly talkative adult once I'm settled in my skin. And you know, awake. I resented very much the idea that my depth was measured by the seconds of my silence, because damned if I was going to stop narrating my life anytime soon. And when I added the imaginary lives of imaginary people--really, why be quiet when there's so much to share?



Stillness and depth; something huge and motionless, held captive by its own inertia. It's like trying to move a planet with a rope. Once you hit critical mass, movement is less an option than a chore. There's so much there and maybe some of it wants to move, but some of it doesn't. Let's call it the weak and strong forces, the balance that holds an atom in check. It takes something extraordinary to make it move, fall apart, separate into component parts. It takes something extraordinary to move a mountain, shift a planet, start the heat death of a star.

I was thinking about something entirely different when I was reading through different posts on a thousand different things in fandom--otw_news, nostairway, the random this and that of meta over this, that, innovation, awards, change.

Fandoms are large now, and we don't like to move. And a part of me thinks it's not just fandom anymore, no matter how we think of ourselves in our container (or containers) of fandom. FOAF has stripped away our illusion of islands in the mist, or it should have; you are your lj island, but your island is like, three oceanic steps from another one, and another one. And the closer we come, the larger we are, and suddenly, the less we want to move.

Move is change, from something as simple as where we post, what communities we stay in no matter how much they annoy us, to the archives we read, to the zines that are treated like something brand new and not older than we are. If it's new, different, not what we're used to, we tend to--flinch.

I was reading posts, and over and over, there was this: it's wanky, it causes wank, it will end in wank, don't do this, do that, it will never work, this hasn't been done before/has been and failed/has been and succeeded and it was bad. Look at the potential to go boom. No.

Incestfic. RPS. Non-password protected slash. Fanfic on the web. These were the stuff of flamewars once upon a time, the writing an act of potential wank, the posting throwing a gauntlet and waiting for someone to pick it up. We did it anyway. It was change, and we changed because someone wanted it and argued for it and dear God did they get flamed for it.

It's not that every idea coming up is good--Jesus God, not all of them are good--but I'm worried that we're at a place where anything with the potential for explosion is bad. Because seriously, that's a hell of a lot of ideas we're throwing away on a glance, and some of them, I'd kind of like to see tried. Sure, flamewars and hurt feelings and flounce is all wrapped in them, waiting to be broken like a pinata....but sometimes, it might be worth it.

Comments

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

In relation to your last point: "If you're going to make an omelet, you're going to have to break a few eggs"?

*offers to share omelet, peaceably*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I love omelets.

*takes half*

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

I haven't finished the whole post yet, but happy (belated? I'm so bad at this) birthday and thank you so much for being born so we could have that excellent fic and you know, you.

I wanted to point out that it's the babbling brooks that wear down mountains, and carve the Grand Canyon, irrigate fields, slake the thirst of the needy, wash clothes and bodies, help the wild salmon find mates, soothe the tired to sleep with their music and twine together to make mighty rivers.

Still is boring. Still is for rocks.

And yeah, you can be too careful.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I want us not to be so afraid that any change is bad, everything is potential disaster that can't be risked. Just reading in the last few months nailed it down for me; I don't want to keep being so scared of failure, of being wrong, of what other people will say. That can't be a reason not to do something, not to want something.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Aww, and thank you for the birthday wishes!

[cofax7]

I'm worried that we're at a place where anything with the potential for explosion is bad. Because seriously, that's a hell of a lot of ideas we're throwing away on a glance, and some of them, I'd kind of like to see tried.

Yup.

Fandom will survive. Fandom reroutes. And nothing OTW or nostairway or FanLib can do is going to stop fandom. So... why not try something once in a while?

Just think how awful our lives would be if shrift and nestra decided that the wank-potential of a big multi-fandom recs site was too high? ::gets chills at the thought::

[cofax7]

ps -- happy birthday!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That is the stuff of nightmares. May the great rec site live on for eternity.

There's so much we could try to do and it's just--we don't. I don't think it's because there are fewer ideas or even because there's nothing new; I think it's even more than keeping status-quo because we like it; it's like we're so terrified of losing that we won't even make the attempt anymore.

You know, or ridiculed. *sighs*

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

OMG...considering that my meta muse has been MIA for a good long while, I do appreciate it but have to totally protest :)

Thanmks for the rec...that was lovely and totally didn't hit my domestic squick, which I appreciate, b/c there's a kink there for me that's a very thin line :)

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Also, in re to your actual meta: I commented to a friend today that there was this moment where I really idealized LJ because it represented to me a community where we TRIED to communicate...not to say that we didn't fail often, but when I went into a journal I felt like everyone was trying together to come up with thoughts/ideas/agreement....these days, all I see is aggression. And that sounds like good ole times and it's really not. I just think there may have been a small ideal moment in this interface...or maybe it was just that for me??? These days I rarely venture beyond my narrowest filter and often prefer the locked posts...I feel so exposed otherwise...

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*thoughtful* Sometimes I wonder if fandom communication changes go in cycles of this--we innovate, renovate, change and change then we get to a spot of vague comfort and stop for a sec, and then inertia holds us there. It feels like anything that's moving is shot down on sight, and it's frustrating because we'll never know if this idea, that idea, whatever idea would have, could have worked if it had been given the chance.

I mean, the Cult of Nice has nothing on the Cult of No.

[zillah975]

Also, we're right in the middle of a big ol' Mercury retrograde cycle. One day -- I swear, one day -- I'm going to go through Fandom Wank and its sister comms and make a chart showing the number of wanks during Mercury retrogade periods vs. those not during Mercury retrograde periods and see whether it really does line up like it seems to.

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

I kind of wanted her to die just so you'd have to call your parents.

[nymphaea1.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the rec. I am, again, vastly pleased that you liked it. The sad, sad thing is, it was actually meant for your last birthday, but I only had a half-dozen scenes even started and it kept getting bigger in scope.

I feel like with OTW and the like, it's maybe not change people fear. Or perhaps not just change. I think in the last year or so there's been a lot of people trying to define fandom, whether it's from the outside looking in or otherwise and people just resent the idea of anyone at this point telling them who they are or what they're doing or why, even if it's meant well.

I do think you're right, though, and that we could afford to be more charitable with each other before we start complaining.

drive-by-comment...

[issuegirls.livejournal.com]

I keep smiling and I wore makeup just because, and I pulled out my boots and walked into work feeling confident and pleased, like I could learn anything and do anything.

My first thought was: wait, because of Britney? *blinks*

[alias_sqbr]

Hi here from metafandom just to say that
(a) You make a good point
and
(b) your title and the blurb they gave made me think this was going to be about how people are too afraid to post stories with real physics/ actual explosions in :D

Of course the reason that there's very little physics-based fanfic is that noone but me wants to read it (and I don't write fanfic) but you know, the idea intrigued me :)