I feel I should be clear that I in fact do support Your Kink Is Okay as a fandom and social movement as it strives to make us all better at a.) accepting other people's kinks or b.) flocking and filtering the hell out of our secret horror, y'know, whichever, it's only provable hypocrisy if someone sees it who doesn't agree with you. I approve of this.

But I realize now there are what we might call drawbacks when you are unashamed about your particular kink(s); before, due to, well, shame, you didn't actively seek it out, or at least you were kind of crappy at it because every so often you'd have to see the keywords you typed into google and/or an archive full text search and close the browser abruptly in terror, and while secretly you thought there was nothing wrong with it, you could also convince yourself that the reason there was so little of it was twofold:

1.) you weren't looking due to shame (false, google history doesn't lie)
2.) shame is what kept people from writing the shit out of it (oh God, false)

Two is going to kill you. Because as you may find out, you now proudly surf the kinkmemes of the world and realize either internalized shame is a real problem and:

a.) sulk
b.) rant in your journal (recommended!)

Or realize, hey, perhaps it's just this is rather specialized, and now that you're unashamed, your appetite wetted, and there is nothing out there, which what the hell, people, free your mind or something.

This is in some ways worse when all your kinks are very to fairly common, which is Yay! but not so much together, and not that this happened to me or anything, you are surfing along and suddenly The Fic of Five Common Yet Strangely Rarely Combined Kinks (FCYSRCK for short) appears, like a miracle, and you realize you were wrong, it's out there, and this is a sign that the world is a better place, and thank God that entire shame thing ended.

You may forget, however, to read the warnings, which--to put it bluntly, if you need to add extra warnings to a FCYSRCK, read the fuck out of those first because you might say--hypothetically--each of those very common yet rarely combined kinks qualify as a warning in themselves, so when the warnings are a paragraph long in addition to the tags blazing unshamefully across livejournal, I feel that's something that one should pay attention to, because seriously, a paragraph of warnings on FCYSRCK.

Let's say one did not do that, and the FCYSRCK proceeds along apace until you are blindsided by one of those ignored missing warnings. Which you stop there and backbutton forever--lie, it's FCYSRCK and it may be the only one in creation, so you deal, and also, let's face it, the author definitely surprised you with that one, and it doesn't occur to you that surprises are bad and also, this has two parts and you haven't finished part 1 and yet again, when you weren't looking at the header, the number of lines for warnings was greater than or equal to six in what seemed to be very small print.

You also still completely neglect to read the warnings, even though you realize you should, because at this point, you want to be able to work with plausible deniability--you had no idea!--and not that you were just that goddamn desperate.

You will later go back and look numbly at the warnings that spelled out all the reasons you will never sleep again, in your life, or look at existence the same way, then check them off as reasons nothing will ever surprise you again, or that could be the fact you have burned out your finer feelings during part 2, which you remember in a series of perfect flashes that narrate a kind of wistfulness for the days you were ashamed, because wow, what the hell was that.

So how was everyone else's weekend?

It's rare I'd rec a meta on the sheer beauty of the language, but even if I disagreed with this, and I don't, I'd still rec it for the sheer density of the prose. I admit it, I put out for someone who can use words with this kind of richness and formality in a very informal way.

On the Responsibilities of Writers by wemyss

I can't hope to reach those heights of literary eloquence, but my views on writing are more complex than WRITER RESPONSIBLE or WRITER LAISSEZ FAIRE. And I think my contention that writers only have a duty to the story they tell, which I believe and practice, is confused with the idea that all stories that end up being written are equal no matter how horrific their baseline philosophy may be.

Sometimes? Writers write shitty stories with a shitty philosophical background. Even well-written, thoughtful stories can be horrific in the service of some people's misguided morality. And I avoid like the plague when a work offends my sensibilities, beliefs, or the existence of human rights and good taste.

The writer is responsible for the story, for writing it as true as they can. My responsibility, as a reader, is to either read it and enjoy it, run far, far away, or meta my ass off on everything I feel is wrong about it. Or possibly, to say, I think the story is wrong.

I'll get back to that.

It's not that I'm particularly uncomfortable with making universal judgments, because I do that every day in what I choose to read and not, who I choose to interact with, and who recently I moved to a no-read filter so I can cool down after someone says something I find offensive. No writer, in herself (or himself, I suppose), is obligated or responsible to anyone else to write the way or with the philosophy of any or all readers.

A story doesn't have to reflect current thought on sexuality, racism, sexism, etc. It doesn't have to be politically correct, whatever the fuckall that means. The story has to be true to itself. And if being true to itself means bilge that would make most of us nauseated just looking at the cover, there it is. And I think where we all stop short is that arguing this comes into the realm of saying "I respect this" when fuck no, it does not.

It means, literally, you can totally write your glorified misogynist racist piece of shit and be as true to it as you feel you must be, because that's the story you wrote, that's the one that was true, that's what your vision/muse/secondary personality demanded. You have no responsibility to me or to anyone else to reflect anything but what your story demands.

You created this. You worked on this. You spent nights slaving over it. You invested yourself in it. You loved it and named it and posted it/published it/sent it into the wilds with your fingerprints all over it, and it may be true, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong, and it doesn't, of all things, mean that you don't have to answer for it.

So be prepared for someone to ask why you thought the story was true.

This is vaguely in relation to the culture shock thing I was having in dS, but also something I was pondering due to the ten million or so conversations in there in community influence.

Meta, to me, is mental fanfic of a kind--you take the ideas (characters) and work out a reason for interaction (plot), then use what you have read (canon) to hold it together. Occasionally other people's theories as well (fanon). In a very loose way. I am not good at it, because I don't read it often enough to get into the flow of ideas (ie, I am not part of the fandom of meta). I am an interpretive community of one (tm cathexys), so to speak. I have no idea how to generalize outside myself as a.) wow, bad idea, b.) no, seriously, bad idea and c.) I can't explain the ocean.

That's why I can't explain this.

For me, community plays a key role in pretty much everything, from how I view the text, read the text, discuss the text, to how I argue against the text. Depending on time, place, the state of caffeine in my bloodstream, and whether I've had this argument before, it can influence how I interpret the text via fanfic. It's not so much agreement by majority, though I won't lie, majority is freaking influential both consciously and unconsciously. Leather pants fic hit every freaking fandom for a reason, no matter how strange. Every. Fandom. Has Leather Pants fic.

That's community influence. Leather pants.

So that long lead in to this: I'm weirded out that I got hit, extremely hard, in that epic way fic does when you just live and die on it and want to rec it everywhere and talk about it with everyone, by two fic that I ran across that was linked from a rec page but did not say "Also, this is going to be that one fic you have been looking for" which I find unfair. And I'm not at all sure why. Because for me, as a rule, I require both personal input (god that was good) combined with community involvement (and everything that entails).

It's not that I've loved every fanfic that broke fandom. But I don't tend to collapse over fic when there is a total lack of any kind of community context. A fic usually hits for me in this particular way because it's fantastic, because it is being discussed (so I can indulge myself), and because it speaks to the fannish community in the text in some way, in whatever arguments the community is having over whatever. Like thete1's Past Grief (apocafic, an evil Superman, debates over good and evil and his actions and/or lack of actions in the text, blah blah blah), or samdonne's Cowboys fics (Sheppard's motivation, personality, right and wrong, limits of family and friendship, the list goes on), and etcetera.

So I was really surprised to find two dS stories that had that effect when I don't have community context to work with or against, or heck, have anything to work period since I'm not part of the community either at the time of writing or technically, right now. I have to think there's some universal theme going on that they are speaking to in a very big way, but for fanfic, for me, they shouldn't without context.

And because I'm sure someone wants to know, below cut are the fics in question.

( one, two three )

You know, this is far too much meta in two weeks. I need to return to porn now.

Until now, I didn't realize there was such a sharp demarcation between fandom pre-livejournal and now.

I'm having a moment, and it's very weird, and I'm not sure I can explain it without sounding like I'm having a close and personal experience with some sort of hallucinogen. It's not fanon or tone or even style, except it's all of those things, and it's the underlying set of base assumptions that feel like I'm reading in a foreign language.

One hundred fifty something stories and it's--okay, five million years ago in SV, I was talking to this chick who had been writing since the beginning of time and there was this fic and a flamewar going on, which normally I'd go into but not relevant except for the fact I might not have ever gotten on the subject except flamewar, so we were talking about anything else, and I asked about this fic.

I have no idea how to explain how off-balance I am. But trying.

It was a Smallville fic, and it felt wrong to me, and by that I do not mean bad. I mean, I walked out of a perfectly good fic feeling like this: we were watching the same show. Exactly. And we were in the same fandom! Except in completely parallel universes that were exactly the same except her color blue was my azure, does that make sense? I could not connect with it at all, and that was the year 2002 where I met this fic so you see I remember very vividly that strange sense of disorientation, because at that point I had read everything that was posted to SSA so it's not like I didn't know my fandom. Yes, I even read the really bad stuff. I was a glutton for punishment. I'd read things that I still try too block from my memory, and for that matter, have, but I'd never read a fic in my fandom, in my pairing, that was good, that had nothing wrong with it, that I did not understand.

So far in Due South, proportionally speaking, I'm hitting ten percent where I'm not disoriented, and this is after I reduced my sampling size to authors I've read in at least two fandoms and at least once wanted to marry. It is not helping.

To return to my charming anecdote (the SV fic of strangeness, you don't have to scroll back up now), the person I spoke to gave me this long explanation that I don't even remember all that well (would that I did), but I came out of it with the vague idea it was Some Kind of Convention of Slash That I Did Not Know, Not Being a Slasher of the Old School You Poor First Slash Fandom Person or something, which is in retrospect kind of patronizing, but I could be misremembering that, since you know, 2002.

However, recent experience suggests she was kind of right, at least in the fact that the disassociated feeling is actually not a fluke and not the result of reading in a different fandom after SGA monogamy.

It's very, very disconcerting.

ETA: People, if I knew what this feeling was called, I would be explaining without analogies. I'd reduce it to a sentence.

The one thing that's hard for me to admit in fandom is, ironically, my shameless love of the classic bodice-ripper. I mean, as a woman, they hit my non-con and etc buttons, but--there's this part of me that wallows in the delicious rippling pecs of the Viking warrior as he kidnaps the tiny buxom Saxon maiden from her father's keep and takes her to his mountainous fortress for hours and hours of ravishing. Hours and hours of ravishing.

It's like, not only am I going to hell in a handbasket, I bring the tea and scones along with me.

I really, really want more of this in fandom.

( and this wasn't supposed to get this long )

Okay, so finally I sat down to sort through my bookmarks to read discussion on cesperanza's new fic--because I have done my homework. (Really. I mean, not all! But you know, some random amount.) So I deserve a reward. And chocolate milk.

Except--um. Is anyone discussing it *not* a member of academia or just really conversant with the themes of that? This is odd--but this is the first time in fandom I've felt my sheer lack of a degree in anything this strongly, because I am seriously *not able to follow* or really get into any discussion I've seen so far. But mostly, I just don't get what's being discussed. Okay, it's more the 'why' of what is being talked about. But it's also the feeling that I'm reading something in German but in this case, even throwing it through the translators isn't helping, as I have no translators and seriously. What are you people talking about?

It's very--I don't know. I wish for squee, but no place is squeeing on a level of "oh my god this is so awesome remember the part with the chair room" but mostly on the "did you notice the dissertation and footnotes of the x, y, z, it reminds me of that time back when I was teaching Very Horrifically Difficult Literature..." I am on a different squee range.

Er. That's kind of an exaggeration, but mostly not, because I'm serious, ,I am seeing in otherwise accessible ljs this entire--I don't know. It's like I'm missing some huge chunk of context. I keep having to fight down the urge to ask "WHY ARE WE DISCUSSING FOOTNOTE FORMAT" or something, because oh my God.

If I ask for an explanation of the squee range, is that going to show just dreadfully my terribly non-high-literature-inclinations so much that all will lose respect for me or something? I'm seriously kind of dazed by how inaccessible I'm finding a lot of these conversations.

Help? I'm kind of moving from dazed to the 'frustrated and annoyed' place and that can only end in staring resentfully at my laptop and eating way too much haagen-daz.

ETA: I now have people doing threads of squee and non-academic meta discussion. I have found nirvana. Yay!

Okay, I have never pretended I have a deeply intellectual side that goes beyond, fire pretty, John pretty, sex pollen awesome. I also like mass murder and destroying worlds, leaving them in a thousand year darkness. Etc.

Responsible Fanfiction by heatherly, which I saw linked around like everywhere, but honestly? Essay title threw me off being interested. Thinking deeply is what I do when balancing policy questions and practical consideration of state benefits, and honestly, it's been a rough few weeks in fandom. I'm on subsistence-level fanfic reading and that is pretty exclusively devoted to anything ltlj puts out or mmmchelle posts.

I think the problem emerges in that I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from it.

There's nothing in it, to me, that I didn't know before. I think I missed something in translation. And reading comments? Did not help at all. Mostly, I was:

a.) not terribly interested in how mainstream sees me. So what the hell do I care if they have some kind of strange freakout. Mainstream are the people who turned Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal into bestsellers and movies. These books are in my work's trading area. They turned American Psycho into a bestseller with a detailed how-to on rape and explicit torture in loving detail. Forgive me if I can't take seriously the idea that "mainstream" has a leg to stand on in sitting judgement on our subject manner.

Beyond that? I. Do. Not. Care.

(but I totally reserve to everyone else the right to care all you want. Honest.)

b.) realism in fiction is right up there with realism in art. When someone can put into terms how cubism or Picasso or post-modern *anything* is actually a dead-on photograph of the world, I will totally take it back. But seriously. What does fiction have to do with reality? The only thing I've ever asked of fiction is that they use good characterization and please stop using wonton. Otherwise, go crazy. I may not read it if it doesn't fall in my specific set of interests, but diversity leads to categories like mpreg, and really, what would we be without mpreg? In a sad place, I wager.

(and I totally reserve to everyone else the right to go the realism route. I'm just saying. My two most popular fic ever involve a.) serial killing mass murders taking over Atlantis and b.) Clark Kent as a *god*. It's like the hypocrite calling the Republican blue.)

(this is a joke, I swear. the Rebublican thing. true of democrats as well. really.)

A very real part of me thinks that the essay is meant more as a guide to those that *do* want to work with more realism than trying to make a point that all of us should gently move away from our lighthearted hooker fics and romantic aliens-made-them-do-it. And I think--think being the operative word--that the murmurs since LJ Strikeout 2007 have been toward the idea that if we are going to be seen, we should make sure we're dressed well and use more base to cover up the more unsightly bits of what we're doing.

It's very--disconcerting. I'm not even close to the more extreme ends of fandom in terms of what I write, and I'm *still* feeling vaguely unsettled by the idea. There's something very uncomfortable in the idea that we'll turn on each other, in groups, as individuals, to claim our normality by condemning them (whoever 'them' may be) for the sake of a nebulous "mainstream". That we allow those outside us to set the rules we are to follow to be accepted. Whatever the hell accepted is supposed to be.

Actually, I'd like a defintion of all questionable words in the above paragraph. I think that would clarify a lot.

I could be totally reading way too much into recent debates. This is what happens when I haven't had coffee. Very tragic.

Does anyone remember the context of Slash Fiction Is Like a Banquet? I read it within a year of it being posted--probably around 2000, a bit before I started writing slash.

One of the first qualifiers I ever learned to use, and now use obsessively, is "I think". "To me". "From what I have seen". There are a lot of reasons for this--most notably when I was very new in fandom and I'd participate in discussions that I had zero context for but was interested in, but wanted to, you know, not get my ass flamed for saying something incredibly stupid. I mean, sure, I still got singed once in a while, but the habit's been set and I think how I interact with fandom in general now tends to be influenced by that. And a lot of the things I've had problems with over time has been the absolutism of some kinds of meta, whereas I like the open-ended question best. More--I like the fact there's no single right answer, that most of the time there isn't a right answer, and that most people tend to be comfortable aware that their own way of thinking or interacting with fandom is not necessarily the only one.

So Hummus, in and out of context.

I always read it as less a 'stop writing x' or even a 'you should be writing y', but instead as a kind of challenge to writers, and readers, to expand their reading and writing into places they usually wouldn't go.

( variety is only sometimes the spice of life. sometimes it causes indigestion )

I'm going through a depressing country music phase, where I want to listen to breakup and death songs. My music tastes are almost constantly at odds with what I want to read. Lemme tell you, anytime the rotation includes one song about murder, two Johnny Cash, and this? There's something odd going on with the playlist.

Currently on the rotation--What Hurts the Most, Rascal Flatts. The video is wrenching as hell.

Work

I had an interview on Friday. It was kind of bad, in that way that bad romantic comedies are bad. They told me one, but teh calendar said two. I assumed that meant they'd changed it--it was Friday, people go to a late lunch. It's the state. It happens. But no, it was one, leading me to run desperately to my computer and print out the calender function off Outlook and shoving it into the interviewer's cubicle with a desperate expression. So the interview went off at two, and the question and answer portion was fine. I'm good with those.

Then came the practical.

I want to give you an image. Let's go with a Stargate image, because hey, it's my lj, I can do that whether it's relatable or not.

You are given a series of copies of something in indistinct patterns written in Ancient and told to creat a spreadsheet from all twenty something pages. Some of the time they black out the name and claim number, sometimes not. Those two things are the only parts of the entire damn thing you understand. MBI number? Account? (Okay, I know what account is). A dizzying variety of acronyms. Some things that refer to money. Some--you have no idea. There are dates. You look at them like they're nuts.

It's STAR and STAR+ and Medicaid related, in case you're curious. You're probably not. Unless you work the programs, I cannot imagine a more boring topic of conversation. God, you should hear our jokes. Even I sometimes shudder in horror when I realize I'm laughing hysterically when someone makes a Medicaid/Medicare misnamed acronym joke. On the other hand, if you work with the implementation, you find yourself feverishly interested in the monthly policy updates, changes to providers, and being deeply and personally invested in whether or not you need prior authorization for non-generic medication.

Okay, what I said above would be very funny to one of us. You see why I don't really talk about my job much anymore.

Anyway, the pay is nice. The fact I'll be doing something new is nice. I had a horrific moment of comprehension today when I broke into my boss' office to reorganize all the personnel files that are about six months to ten months behind, or basically stopped being updated since I was his admin. I am that bored. The height of entertainment....

Wait. I was talking about the interview.

Well, the best part was, we had forty-five to do the spreadsheet (were they *fucking with me*?), the questionaire, and a letter that--God, okay, a letter to a clinic's owning company explaining why we wont' cover something. No, really. I have this--weird and strange need to--do the hardest thing first. I did the questionnaire really fast, but the spreadsheet fascinated me. I had never seen so many sheets of paper in legitimate English composed of such nonsense. Contextually, they were rejections of billing due to third party insurers--I can see people's eyes glazing already, but seriously, this is the height of chic social chat at the office--but mostly, they were long rows of acronyms with monetary value assigned. I read through it all in horror, worked out I was looking in the face of hell, and went back and looked for commonalities.

I'm good at pattern recognition--this is why I interview well for the state. I can usually figure out what they're looking for by paying attention to the wording of questions. This is why I was a good caseworker. That's all pattern recognition in policy. The problem was, it's pattern recognition of a foreign language. And some of the commonalities--like name and claim number--were blacked out on some and not others. I pulled everything that appeared on every sheet, named it something that sounded like I knew what I was talking about, and set up the spreadsheet. I was half way done when my interviewer came over at the thirty minute mark and asked if I would be willing to do the rest on Monday.

I almost laughed. Sure, I said, because seriously, it's not like I'd figure this out without a character map even if I had the whole weekend. I did hte rest today. Didn't finish the provider letter. Didnt' really care. I wasn't qualified for this job when they asked me to interview. No, really. So that I got the interview at all was a surprise. Mostly, I tend to rest a lot of my value on the fact that I'm always good at my job. This isn't bragging. This is boredom. If I'm not good at it, the days pass a lot longer than they should. Being good is being given a lot to do, and look at that, five comes fast.

Work II

Short version--in 2005, the state sold off a lot of their social services to a private contractor, Accenture, better known under another name as the people who worked with Enron. No. I'm not kidding. I kind of want to cry, but this is typical of the current administration, so whatever. This included caseworker jobs. I was one of those, and changed jobs before they could start pink-slipping us. Well, as predicted, they made a mess of it. A huge mess of the CHIP program, the Medicaids, the--well, name it, they fucked it up royally. Tuesday last week, my mom called me while I was resting my feet in Millennium Park to tell me that the contract had been severed.

I won't try to explain my glee. It's hard to describe without going into strange, surreal comparisons to the Rapture, but suffice to say, there's a level of joy going on here that defies description. It's like--I don't know. I'm ombudsman--I know the level of fuck-upedness going on in the state due to both Accenture and the fact that the state, in prep for the rollout, started pink-slipping like crazy and we lost the best and brightest of our caseworking staff. The tenured. The ones that knew policy backward, forward, and sideways. The ones that coudl do the work. Leavingn the entire state with underqualified trainees in temp positions--so we weren't getting, in some cases, the best people. We were hiring people who knew how to read. Maybe.

Just suffice to say--I am very pleased with the universe.

Fandom

I had this thoughtful topic on gen, slash, and het, but I'm still overthinking my instinctive response to the treatment of non-canon slash and non-canon het unequally, which was hostile. I'm less comfortable with diametrically opposing points of view than I really thought I was. Over-emotional reactions to stories, sure, I know I go places there, but that at least makes sense to me--it's *fic* and the point of fic is emotional engagement. A sudden hostility to a meta surprises me. I got over it quickly, because above and beyond that, it was interesting and thoughtful and brought up some questions I've been asking myself on the blurry lines between slash, het, gen, and the canon that rules them all.

Here abyssinia4077 talks about het, slash, gen, and labeling stories.

A part of this the way I set up my flist; I keep myself fairly isolated from things that really annoy me, so I'm unused to being highly annoyed unless I'm linked or someone points it out to me. A part of me does wonder if we lost something in switching to lj and being able to, in essence, pick our mailinglist mates, instead of having to deal with the annoying people daily and building up a certain level of tolerance for it. Or it could be just me; I'm getting more fixed in what I'm willing to deal with and what I'll blow off because I just am not willing to listen today. Etc. Etc. Etc. Which is a sign of either creeping intolerance or sheer laziness. I'm not sure which. I think I prefer the laziness.

( interpretations of canon, etc )

Singing along to Buffy the Musical soundtrack. God. It's so good that no one is close enough to have their ears start to bleed.

Child felt poorly, so stayed home today. Weird side note: I am apparently most inspired to write apocalypse-fic while I'm at work.

That is funny. Admit it. That's *hilarious*. I'm sitting there in my cubicle writing stuff like this:

Dean hasn't seen a calendar in years; he knows the seasons by the movement of the sun, the feel of the earth shifting from warm to cold. The world tastes like September, and Dean remembers west Texas in flat land stretching in marker-thick strips of vivid brown and black, the yellow tops of maize waving in pre-autumn winds, threshers moving complacently through the fields with drowsy men in hats waving at the road. He remembers green and gold fields of cows placid under the sun, half-year calves running on the outskirts of the herds. He remembers these were what he saw between jobs, lives being lived that had nothing to do with creeping twilight and sleeping only behind salt circles and ritual wards.

*****

Words, words, words

One of the things I perenially repress and encourage is my sheer love of building pictures through words. I fight it off for periods of time I like to call phases of insanity, because going too deep that way ends you with stuff like Flight, which I leave up at my website as a constant reminder never to let my passion for overwriting overcome say, writing an actual story.

*eyes it* I swear, I'd use that sucker as a teaching exercise in everything you should never do in writing. Right up there with writing about sex without once ever letting the reader know anyone was having sex and not just a really intense acid flashback.

I was thinking about how I tend to categorize writers into fairly distinct camps. These camps--or you know, groups, what have you--have less to do with fandom, skill level, ability to punctuate properly, or even style. It's--hard to explain except by this idea that there are some writers, good or bad, who write from a place I can comprehend and some from a place I can't. It's a style thing, but it's also something else entirely. It's almost like the equivalent of realizing that your light spectrum isn't theirs. It's has nothing to do with intrpretation of canon, characters, pairing, or even tone of the story, because all of them have and did and will write my OTP at one time or another. It's something they bring into the fic that's more than I didn't see it before they wrote it; it's that before they wrote it, I never knew it was there. More than even that, there is no way as my mind is shaped that I could have seen it. I guess it may have a lot to do with style, but it's more than even that. They're seeing a world I don't, and I can't, not until they show me. And they see it in a way that I never could.

I'm trying to put together a short list of writers and fic that gave me this start of shock, but putting it in words is a lot like trying to describe a visceral reaction--I can't explain my claustrophobia, just tell you it's there, and it will make me go nuts in fairly short order. I can tell you they blew my mind writing the most mundane things in such a way that I saw a brand new world, but honestly, that sounds creepily like some kind of orgasmic-religious experience.

Okay, got one. Below the cut.

( basingstoke, 3jane, kharessa, rachel sabotini )

When I think of Jane St. Clair's Tom Paris in Kiev, I sometimes think of John Sheppard in America. Seventeenish, after Rodney brought him back and brought him up and couldn't let him go. Awkwardly antisocial and still filled with memories he only finds in his dreams of alien skies and worlds his feet have never stepped foot on. Of people that are growing to be more memory than reality when Atlantis went silent one horrified day and Rodney broke down in his office when John came home from classes.

When they told Rodney that the gate wouldn't engage and Atlantis was lost to them.

I think John took it badly.

Hmm.

fairestcat was asking inclusive fandom events of het and slash and gen writers on and off of lj. This has very little to actually do with that--I got caught up with amireal's comment down in the threads.

Okay, first, a story. Because I always start with a story. It clarifies my point. Okay, it clarifies my point to me.

( bias )

This week is Public Service Recognition Week, in which we, and by we, I mean, we public servants, are rewarded with hot dogs. Well, hotdogs, cookies, chips, soda, and assorted things. Let me say, I am *all about* being rewarded regularly with large amounts of food. If this happened weekly, I can almost guarantee morale would go up.

Next part of ltlj's Deflection is up here -- for those of you who live beneath huge rocks in a galaxy even more distant than Pegasus, it's--well, I have no idea. She's asked no one spoil or spec in her lj. I am asking the opposite. Please, in comments, give me your theories. I have like, two or three and many many pointless asides, but all have huge holes that one could easily fly a good size Wraith cruiser through and therefore, we should all gather together to speculate.

You realize that the next part, if the pattern continues, does not go up until Friday? Okay, I'm tense enough about House--this is too much stress.

General fangirl rambling

I had a fit of vague paranoia last time I updated my recs, partially from that thing where everyone discussed recs again, and no, I don't mean, oh those monsters, they hurt my tender budding rec feelings--more like, hmm, I wonder if I do those things? There were several things listed, and I agreed with most.

( i really need to be given more work at work )

Okay, now will you tell me what you think is going on in that story? Seriously. House stress. I shoulnd't be this tense over two different wips in two different mediums.

Nothing new with the file cabinet.

Recs

Scrabble Fic by josselin. Heh. Brian and Justin play Scrabble. Cuteness. Very.

Re-Rec

Because I can. I really have nothing better to do. Isn't that just sad? To be creative about it, one per fandom I've been monogamous with.

Queer As Folk

The Color Series by Triskyfic -- see, I did this one an injustice the first time I read it and again when I recced it. I still have problems with the way she themes throughout with color, but that's a personal quirk, and the more I read it, the less I notice it, because it's good. I'm especially attracted to the past/present/future mix she does--you'd think it would be confusing, and it *is*, but in the addictive, right way it's supposed to be. Teasy-like. It's extremely solid, and it's fun, and kano may be my new favorite word.

Smallville

And Dark Our Celebration Was by Hth. See, this is where it's nice when one gets perspective after short periods of time hiding from one's home fandom. I really, really hated this story in every way that can be considered a positive--beautiful writing, dark in that hopeless, deathless way that's like you need to talk yourself off a ledge after, but subtly so. Kind of like an ice pick to just left of the heart, so to speak.

It's hard to explain.

"I don't call it sleeping with you. If this is what you consider a perfectly acceptable sexual encounter then I have to say, I don't think much of the quality of people you've been dating lately."

I just love that line.

*grins* I think I may re-read Immortality next. For those unfortunate few who remember my temper tantrums after *that* one was released, feel free to send scathing email about being discreet in public. God, I miss Grail muchly. *sighs*

Annnyway.

X-Men Movieverse

One that isn't on my page, one that is. Vic gets short-shifted from me most of the time--I *know* her and therefore, the entire contempt of familiarity kicks in, but this is one of my favorite stories by her and in retrospect, one of my favorite re-reads in X-Men, it's so damn timeless. And reminds me I have thirty eight X-Men stories i've kept meaning to add to my page and never have. Crap.

A Harbor in the Tempest by musesfool -- there's a lot to like about this story that has nothing to do with its genealogy, and five pages in, you know it's Casablanca With Mutants, so just go with it. The movie is classic, the story is too. As a mutant-world safety zone, with Logan the cynic and Jeez, poor Jean, it starts off clean and keeps going. Vic does immaculate prose, so you really can just get yourself lost in the story. And you may think you know it, but trust me, you don't. Read it.

A Place by Sandra. I have this hope that I'll run into her again cross-fandom, which considering the rate LJ spreads, possibly isn't too far in the future, or so I can hope.

There's a place.

A place where an old man's voice isn't whispering tenderly when she quietly grieves. Where she can run and the voices aren't shouting after her, in her, telling her there are starved, scared wolves lurking in those dark, hushed forests.

Most writers can't pull off rhythmic, stylized stories brilliantly. Hell, a majority can't pull off readable grammar, but that's not the lecture for the evening. This story is the one, single, shining reason why I actually still believe that any subgenre of fiction can be done brilliantly, because this is one of the most beautiful single pieces of fiction I've read in my life.

I'd quote more, but frankly, there's no way to do it and make it nearly as perfect, as shattering, as it does when read straight through. And that would be *now*, because seriously, this is why X-Men was my addiction for over a year and why I can quote by memory from this one. It's *good*.

Star Trek: Voyager

Ah, I miss you sometimes.

Mirror Images by Dave Rogers. See, I still get chills from re-reading this one. It's simple in-canon fic--gap filler, if you will, reaching across from Vis a Vis through Demon, and for perfect capture character, there's nothing better in the fandom.

Wordlessly, she stood up and strode into the office, where the E.M.H.
sat quietly and discreetly. Tom's mirror image could not hear what
passed between them, but she was back in minutes.

"Listen, whoever - whatever you are." She spoke rapidly, in short,
clipped sentences. "She won't know about the Maquis. Break it to her
gently. Help her through it. She won't know about the Hirogen. She
doesn't need to. And she won't know about Steth. Don't you *ever* let
her find out."

"I don't understand." His face was frowning, but his eyes were bright
with hope.

"The Doc's beamed a sample of my DNA to the surface. She'll be waiting
for you."

"B'Elanna, I...", he stammered, jumping to his feet. "Why? I thought
you hated me?"

"I do." She turned away. "But not that much."

Gets me every time.

What the heck. One more.

Comicdom

And think, I know *nothing* about the fandom or the canon, but whoo, this story...

This Is How by Siarade. Again, when style is done well, I'm pretty much an easy lay, kay? Non standard use of timeline, which I applaud muchly, lovely pov, and this beautiful, intnese examination of grief.

When you talk about the dead, about dead things, talk with someone who knows. People who don't know can't talk about the dead. They expect death to be a jump from alive and vital to cold and empty. Not even a jump; that implies movement, when they expect it to be a snap ì once one way, now the other, a momentary switch that has no levels or gradation.

And the eternal seconds of watching someone die.

Why This Sudden Backtrack

seemag asked what stories scarred you (in a good way), and mentioned Iolokus, which to go with it, HELL YES, but since I wasn't ever even within a breath of being intimately involved with that fandom, I think of it differnetly from a fandom I wrote and participated in. Just the depth of commitment.

Scarring though. That's a weird one. And also kind of funny, since jaymalea asked me last night what my favorite slash story was and I couldn't tell her.

( story blatherings )

An Annoying Autobiographical Moment

After over a decade of faithful use, my parents' television blew out. Strangely. Rather undramatically, come to think. During my sister's fiance's video game, no less.

The interesting problem of the television came into being.

We are, all and sundry, complete idiots with electronics. No, really. Since around, oh, birth, I've been the one that did the VCR and later DVD programming, setting the times and the channels, learning what all the buttons and little slots do, etc etc etc. That doesn't mean I know what I'm doing or have any actual natural sense about it--it means even as a child, I found vast entertainment sitting in front of the television with the remote control, hitting things just to see what happened. Which really does say a lot about how I got my kicks as a kid. But anyway.

My father, and I love him, knows even less about electronics than I do. If it uses a circuitboard, he's just not getting it. This does not, however, stop any of us from this strange belief that if we disassemble it, we can figure out what is wrong, even if we have no idea what we are looking at. We don't trust other people. Keep in mind I was doing my own repairs on my computer and all the upgrades for years and still do, despite the fact I have an iron-clad warranty. Not because I have a clue. But because, genetically, we all honestly to God believe we can figure this stuff out just by staring at it long enough.

It's very weird.

So, Sister, me, Dad, and Mom all gathered around to disassemble the television. Using power tools and a duster (it's dusty in there! Maybe that's the problem!) and look blankly at the array of wires and board available for our perusal. My sister camps down with the flashlight and the diagram of the interior of the television pasted into the interior of the case, calling out strange things like "J453 is the thingamabob" and we all look carefully to find the thingamabob that we're not sure what is for, but has to have some purpose we can divine by sheer will.

And one and all, my family? Lots and lots of will.

"That's a fuse," Dad states triumphantly, and we all nod and agree, indeed, that IS a fuse. I've never actually seen one, but again. Remember. We WILL it to be a fuse. Pulling it out (I can see people laughing already), we study it carefully. It's a fuse, definitely, we decide, using the hieroglyphic diagram that tells us that in the general vicinity of what we were studying there DOES exist a fuse and fuses, as a rule, are removable. Holding the tiny glass thing, we all wonder how to figure out if it works. Or how. Something.

"Wrap it in tinfoil," Dad decides, and we all nod agreement. Tinfoil is produced, wrapping the glass, and it's stuck back inside. Plug in television. Little strange, alien beeps, then nothing. Hmm.

Using the diagram, we mark out places of interest--apparently, shielded areas where there exists X-radiation (no, seriously, did anyone know that televisions use x-rays? I didn't!), with a warning to only do things with that part in some kind of special lab. We all note the wires and the places where we could die slowly and painfully and think about taking THAT apart, because again, we're idiots.

The interesting problem of the television has been shelved, since a new thing was found to disassemble--a seventies movie editor, from when film was on strips. Such a beast I knew not existed, but there we go. We stared into the most bizarre screen I've ever seen--seriosuly, people, I was wondering if the cavemen did their home movies on this sucker--and marveled at our ability to make a piece of film run through this. Marveled even more we made it work.

This brings me to the happy memories of when my VCR went out. Which is the proof of my genetic inheritance of insanity.

I love my VCR. It's gone everywhere with me since I got it for graduation. Everywhere, literally. Well, no surprise, it's about seven years old, it's time it was allowed to die. But no, not on my watch. I grabbed screwdrivers of varying sizes, some duct tape (stop laughing!) and disassembled it once upon a time (er, six months ago) and sat staring into the array of stuff inside in awe.

Then plugged it in and started hitting things until it started working.

It's working now, btw. I think it's scared of me.

Again, keep in mind. I have no actual ability here. But I did get a kick out of the reaction of a friend of mine who came over while I was gleefully shoving tapes in and poking with the screwdriver.

"JENN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"

"Will you LOOK at this? Watch!" I hit rewind and watched in awe as the little thingers winded the tape around. It was beautiful. Friend promptly showed me the case, where it says, quite clearly, that what I'm doing will in fact lead to my ultimate demise. Right. Like I'm going to believe PROFESSIONALS who DESIGNED the thing and KNOW what it can do. Sure.

"Jenn, unplug it."

"But--"

"Unplug the VCR and put it together. It works now. You don't have to torture it anymore."

She had a point, and my VCR still sits on my television, doubtless dying by the second but determined to hold out until the bitter, bitter end, just to avoid me and the screwdriver.

What makes this more fun, of course, is that Child is as addicted to this as we are. For his third or fourth birthday, after he had learned how to disassemble his walkie-talkies with butter knives in the back of the closet, my dad got him his own tool set. Not being completely lost to reality, I took away the tiny saw and this poking thing that vaguely reminded me of somthing out of a horror movie about evil children, but the hammer, the screwdrivers, and the needle nosed pliers stayed.

There's this stereo that got blown out. Vaguely newish, and I'm not sure who owned it, but it was donated to the cause after we caught Child looking in interest at my computer and fingering his toolbox meaningfully. I set it up on the floor, put his toolbox beside him, and told him to go at it.

He had every screw out of that thing in about three days. I still find them on the floor around the house. Tiny little things. Everywhere.

Stripping the case, Child got to the serious business of getting the CD tray apart then the tape deck, by, again, force of will and one Phillips head screwdriver that still hasn't completely recovered from it's duty. After the pieces were out and admired, Child took teh hammer and started banging away at the case until i twas so many tiny bits of plastic that, like glitter and roaches, will never go away and never die.

Since most of this was done in VCR's view, I'm going to guess that, just maybe, it's also just about as scared of Child as Me. I've been looking at some simple electronics for kids at teh Discovery Zone, but I'm not sure Child can downgrade to tiny circuits when he's been demolishing entire circuit boards.

Fandom

sullensiren goes into some interesting places here about romance and happy endings.

When you read through friends lists, fanfiction rec sites, etc you start to see how much Angst is out there. There's fluff, true, but I think the angst may outweigh it. There may be more suffering and darkness than there is fluffy sweet sex and giggles.

So why? I'm obviously not the only one who doesn't like Happy Endings. God knows my real life friends whine about them as much as I do. We don't want the girl to end up with the boy, or Cinderella to wave goodbye from her Pumpkin coach.

After some thought, I think it's because Happy Endings make us envious, on some level. Things never end happy in real life. There's no such thing as happily ever after. There's happy moments, happy days, happy weeks - if you're lucky, there's even happy months. Times when you have a new love, or a job you love, or some great success. But they always end. There's always something gray at the end of it. And when stories end on a happily ever after, it leaves us with this faintly resentful feeling that doesn't like it.

Now THIS is intersting. She also discusses the appeal of romance novels, etc.

Of course, I think about this kind of thing too much.

( romance )

Lalala four days to first day. Nope, not worried. REPRESSING.

Recs, the short version

Admit One by Gigi Sinclair. I ran across this on someone else's rec page and it's FIC I MISSED! *shocked* From A LONG TIME AGO! *grins* Anyway. Fun bit of Lex pov to read and enjoy. The movies just went so very, very wrong.

Four Things That Could Possibly Happen by dystocia. I love the Five Things challenge more every day. Four AUs, all of them so DAMN cool. Special atttention to one and three. Wow. Seriously, wow.

Found by spyhop. Sequel to Seeking, and so cute. *happy sigh* Makes me happy.

*****

The lovely carlanesses sent me the prettiest cover for Fetish. Seriously, this is so cool. SV attracts the best manippers I have ever seen anywhere.

*happy sigh* I just like looking at it for long periods of time. Guh.

( cover for Fetish )

*more happy sighs* I love the world.

*****

In Which I Do My "Koi Is a Goddess on Earth" thing, or, Why I Think the Kents Were on Crack the Day of the Meteor Shower

Having ignored my friendslist for twenty four hours to focus on getting myself caught up, I went to look today, briefly, I swear, and lo, Koi had posted. As this is a blue moon sort of thing, I sat down to read and of course, it's on Mercy. Because this is a good week, God is kind, and apparently, I'm getting wishes granted ALL over the place.

For reference, Mercy. Revised, overhauled, and beyond excellent.

You know, the fic I consider the best SV's ever produced and part of my personal trifecta of fics that need to be read to reground myself in everything Smallville fanfic (or fanfic in general) can be when the author is superlative.

Right, you've heard me talk about this before? Consider this redux.

But first, without a doubt, read Mercy Redux, Part I and Mercy Redux, Part II, where koimistress goes over what she revised, why, and what she was thinking when she wrote this. Incredibly interesting, insightful, and fascinating stuff.

( Mercy, the Kents, and aliens among us )

*****

How I Spent the Last Few Hours

I started this entry before I went to get dinner, and that was three and a half hours ago.

What, one must think. Whereas does she live, that she must gather food that far from home?

Funny story.

My sister and I decided to get dinner at McDonalds and Mr. Gattis tonight, so wandered off to do so after a diaper run to Wal-Mart. Blah blah blah somehow it's my fault (it's not), but the keys were locked in the car.

At McDonalds. With a one and a half year old girl and a six year old boy. It's cold and windy outside. It's very bright inside. They don't let these kind of experiences happen in PRISON, becaue it's cruel and unusual. My sister went looking for something to open the door, thus leaving me with The Children. Then she went looking for a cell phone.

Of course, no one we know is home. Because it's Friday and people have lives.

Anyway, long story short, one sundae, two orders of fries, a cheeseburger, a medium sprite, and a coffee later, (not to mention the giggling of an entire damn fast food restaurant when they figured out what had happened AND a kind of gripey yet strangely amused sister) my sister's fiancee brought the spare key and we got home safely.

But here's a couple of things I learned.

1.) Children can't cry when their mouths are full of ice cream and fries. Very valuable.
2.) The car antenna is a lot harder to get off than you might think.

Right. This has been a good night.