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And here's the fic index.

(Discussing the Stargate movie)

hilarytamar: So, let me recap here. We're doing speculative linguistic reconstruction of a revision to a translation of an unknown text found in a fictional universe, yes?
Me: yes, right
hilarytamar: You were saying something about loving fandom?

She gets me. She really gets me. I love her to absolute pieces, y'all, and I don't say that enough.

(I also mentioned to her, and I'll throw it out here, that what's stopping me from doing the Mobius fic is not having any clue where to start on the research. I'm just saying that if you can point me to "daily life, with a particular exploration of gender, and also religious impact on daily life, in pre-dynastic and early dynastic Egypt" I would not turn it down. ETA: Got recs already. Wow.)

Assorted random from the last three days:
1. Am now officially cross-posting, in case anyone needs to tidy flist/reading list.
2. Jason Momoa as Conan! I seriously dreamed last night about Jason Momoa being smart and sarcastic and cunning while in a very little loincloth wielding a very big sword.
3. Jon Stewart a little more equal-opportunity than usual recently? First smacking down Rachel over politicizing Haiti (She deserved it. I love you, Rachel, but please try to deserve it less.), and then that inspired, hilarious, spot-on total destruction of Keith Olberman. Wow.
4. bdblack made me this. I have never had anybody make something out of one of my quotes before. I feel special.

This entry was originally posted at http://dragojustine.dreamwidth.org/113689.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

GIP: My new "lust" icon! (or: guess what I just re-watched?) Oh James Marsters, how do you just drip sex like that? The only other character that's ever matched you is Purefoy's Antony.

(Possibly unpopular fannish opinion: I hear people say this about Barrowman, but he doesn't do it for me like that. I mean, sure, Harkness is all sex! but it's big-smile happy-go-lucky we're-all-horny-here-no-worries pansexual boy-scout sex, all cheerful and open and wholesome. Which is why I love him- I mean, how fabulous is that kind of completely non-judgmental healthy-and-good-for-you "yaay squelchy activities!" thing?

But Marsters? It's dirty. Spike on his knees like that? It's dirty-filthy-bad-wrong and hits you right down in your gut. I want to do things to him, and it's all reptilian hind brain, no wholesome boy scouts here. That boy isn't all cheerful lovable innuendo- he wants to get fucked. The only time Harkness did that to me? The barfight with Hart, of course.

Ooops, I'll just go tucking my id back in, there.)

Is anybody else stunned by the size help_haiti grew to?

My new favorite visual summary of Twilight.

Can anybody succinctly spoil the new White Collar for me? Please?

(Every once in a while I do this utterly irrational thing where there's a fork in the road for a show and I so desperately want them to go one way and not the other that I just cannot cope with watching until I know.)

ETA: I am rescued! Thank you! And, uh, spoilers in comments. Obviously.

help_haiti! Go here to snag a $25 Nordstrom gift card on the cheap, or here to bid on my beta services.

***

A very brief moment of pissiness in my life: Sarah Connor Chronicles just created a transgender character only to kill her off within the hour to further Sarah's personal development. Grrr. Then, just to make that even better, I had to go a brief round of conversation with C- you know how it goes, when you go four or five dialog exchanges and they keep saying "he" and you keep saying "she" and hoping the other person catches on? Until you finally actually say something? And then they say "He is a he and I'm going to call him that!"

And then, in this case, I say "I don't want to have this argument," and give a little moment of silent thanks that I can, you know, decide not to have the argument and move on.

Oh, Sarah Connor Chronicles, up until the middle of this season you so clearly loved me and wanted me to be happy- do better?

help_haiti! Go here to snag a $25 Nordstrom gift card on the cheap, or here to bid on my beta services.

Festivids just went live, and I come with recs!

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is for Slings & Arrows, and it is gorgeous. This is exactly why we love Geoffrey, that he feels this deeply, even melodramatically. This vid perfectly captures his sheer blinding intensity of emotion- of course, for him, the story of Geoffrey and Ellen and Oliver was grand epic. They were Romeo and Juliet, they were Antony and Cleopatra, and how- how could reality ever compete with that? That is what Ellen gives him, what perhaps all three of them gave each other. The vid is sad, because no love story can be that intense without being at least a little bit a tragedy, but also beautiful.

Lullabye for a Stormy Night is for Sound of Music, and if you have any emotional attachment to Sound of Music at all, you should watch it. Just so much love between all the characters, and the song is so beautiful.

Of Monsters and Heroes and Men is for Gladiator. This vid is long and meaty and seems to be carefully constructed. I'm not sure I Get it, but I like the attention paid to Juba, and I like the honor paid to Marcus Aurelius in the first verse, and I adore the song (never heard it before, but it's going on the ipod), so I'll at least watch a few more times and see how much I can find there.

Le Disko is for The Neverending Story, and it makes you wanna dance. So much fun! But also, Neverending Story was at base a meta tale, and this vid works on that level as well- this is exactly how it feels to be ten years old and reading really good fantasy.

I'm a little sad these vids aren't downloadable- hopefully they will be after reveal? But in any case, fun fest.

1. Fandom auction for Haiti may get off the ground in the next few days- signal boost.

ETA: You just know you want to bid on my beta-reading services. Come on, you know you do.

2. Kripke should learn that Good Fourth Walls Make Good Neighbors

3. The Boy was here. And lo, it was Very Very Good. I sort of love tour-guiding around my city. And we saw Sherlock Holmes again, which just gets better every time. I am still all happy-smiley.

4. Oh my god I need a job.

5. Somebody just got accepted to Berkeley and NYU. They like me! They really like me!

This is not the Best Thing Ever, but it is at least in the running. (NPH and Barrowman stage a massive Twitter war. Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and Alyson Hannigan side with Neil. Gaimon sides with Barrowman. Whedonesque and SyFy weigh in. After Elton has pictures. Of course After Elton has pictures)

Look, I voted for Sir Ian McKellen several days ago and if I were to change it, it would be to George Takei. I'm just saying.

But if John and Neil really want this resolved once and for all, I'd say naked wrestling is the way to go.

Happy palindrome day, all!

The writing round up (because all the cool kids are doing it):
( lj-cut is very disappointed with my output )

In lieu of any kind of decade-in-review, I present to you this fantabulous chart.

I got three lovely Yuletide presents! Such are the fruits of going out on the pinch-hit list.

Seekingferret wrote me The Last Temptation of Eve, which takes that Last Temptation of Adam song and genderswitches it AND POV flips it, possibly breaking my brain in the process.

Thedevilchicken wrote me Rome fic, To Please the Gods, in which it is Saturnalia and Pullo's easy carnality is difficult to resist. And lastly there is Orders, in which sithwitch13 displays a mastery of character voices (for Pullo, Vorenus, and Antony) that makes me wild with authorial jealousy.

So my Yuletide fic this year was so niche. I am absolutely shocked that anybody other than the recipient commented on it. It could be read as historical fiction, in Athens late in the Peloponnesian war just after the overthrow of the four hundred; but the characterizations and writing style both come from Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine (the syntax so much so that it's practically pastiche).

Let me pause to pitch this book, for re-reading it was a wonder and a joy. The Last of the Wine may be difficult if you don't remember your Greek history or your Plato, but I consider this a hell of a recommendation for it; the narrative sinks us into the first-person POV of a man who speaks to us as he would another Athenian. Every page is drenched in his cultural assumptions, rich and natural, and there is none of the distance or foreignness that would be required if he tried to explain things to us. And so the book is both oblique and completely immersive; it's also sensitive, tragic, beautiful, and lyrical, a story of war and philosophy and joy. It is a coming-of-age, a boy's quest to understand the horrors he sees around him and shape the man he is becoming, a story about the pain and difficulty and importance of living well and rightly, and, above all, a story of transcendent love.


To Learn and to Teach
Last of the Wine- Phaedo and Plato
Gen, G, 1400 words

( The Four Hundred are gone, and Kritias with them, and possibilities open up. )

My sga_santa fic! Originally here. For scrollgirl, who asked for John/Ronon, slice-of-life, and episode tag. This is so totally Not My Pairing, so when in doubt, write porn. I ended up rather pleased with it.

Wardrobe
John/Ronon | NC-17 | 2300 words

( On his first trip to earth, somebody at the SGC gave Ronon jeans. He didn't think it was a big deal, at the time. )

I adore fic exchanges.

The problem is that fics get posted in a flood, and I find (IMO) that they seem to get less feedback than they would have if they were posted outside the exchange. So I try really hard to do recs for exchanges.

I am so not fully caught up on sga_santa, and I won't be reading any more until after the Yuletide rush subsides (OMG you people have I said how much I love Yuletide? Highlight of my year), but here's a first-pass rec list! These are recs from among the shorter fics posted in the first half of the exchange. There are tons more I can't wait to read, after the New Year.

( lj-cut is stealthy! )

And anybody who is not hilarytamar and guesses my sga_santa fic totally gets a drabble.

I love Christmas so much! My sister went on a mad decorating spree a few days ago, and besparkled the whole house. It turns out the stuff does not come out in the shower. I ended up going to a job interview all a-glitter.

Just sent out my New Years cards (because let's face it, if they go out after the mail has been picked up on the 23rd? No longer Christmas cards). I just realized after all the envelopes were sealed that I addressed them to either a person's lj name OR their real name, completely at random, and I signed either my real name OR my lj name, also completely at random. Yaay fungible identities in the modern world. Nobody laugh at me too hard.

Have been hanging out in #yuletide and betaing like a mad thing. You guys, the Yuletide mods are the hardest working bunch of awesome people in all fandom, I swear. This is the highlight of my year, and watching them deal with two server slowdowns and the Great Pinch Hit Kerfuffle of 09... it's inspiring, is what it is.

The lj big bosses are being stupid again. Raise your hand if surprised. Full rundown, with linakage, at synecdochic's here.

This time? Removing the "unspecified" gender option and making gender mandatory at signup. I'm going to assume I don't need to go on at length about the at least three reasons this is really fucking annoying at best, discriminatory and marginalizing at worst? Right, good.

Please consider doing some or all of the following:
1. Changing your gender to "unspecified"
2. Sending feedback (sample here)
3. Signal-boosting

ETA: Dude, that was fast. This change will not go live.

In happier news, everybody with even the slightest affection for Christmas music needs to watch this ( embed under cut )
I have an itty-bitty crush on the dreidel guy.

Am not dead, just still doing the depression thing, hence the two-week turnaround time responding to communications, and the lack of Christmas cards. But I still love you all and miss you, okay? And I wrote my sga_santa fic, which turned out better than I expected, so that's made me happy enough to post.

Also! I got shiny snowflakes! You guys are so incredibly awesome. Big hugs to amara_m (I want to see you again, hon!), cormallen, rejeneration, advection, and adelate (You rock!).

A while ago I asked for SGA Big Bang recs, and got resounding silence. Plus, lots of the really good stuff I've been reading has had virtually no fb, and that seems like a sad, sad, sad thing to me.

( SGA Big Bang recs )

It's Black Friday. I think we all know what that means.

Let me send you a card! (No, really. Please)

The Christmas wish-list meme. (I haven't read my flist consistently for the last little while, so do point out if I missed yours)

I am a little disappointed at the uneven quality of the SGA Big Bang fics. Anybody have recs?

On the other hand, the Jack/Daniel cliche-a-thon over at jackdanielpromptfic has produced some beauties.

White Collar: I have been banging the drum on Matthew Bomer's ridiculous hotness since Chuck. He lands right smack in my tall, slim-hipped, luxuriant-haired sweet-spot. Plus, the rat pack vibe and costuming for him (that they seem to be pulling back from, alas) fill me with joy. Seeing that man from behind in the slim pants and cinched-in vest? Yeah, he's just shaped nice. Plus, of course, the dynamic between Neal and Peter is perfect, and Peter's slightly befuddled, exasperated, straight-man play off Neal is both entertaining and actually interesting.

That said, they haven't managed to get enough past procedural fluff to make me really attach, and (and this is my real point) I still haven't forgiven them for disappearing the lesbian non-white agent after her cracking good show in the pilot. Just vanished her, without a word, to replace her with a straight white woman who would swoon appropriately over our hero. The fuck? To be honest, I don't see myself ever forgiving them for that, and it makes me much angrier than it would have if the show was all straight and whitewashed from the start. I know pilots are odd and changes happen when shows get picked up, but that's just... egregious in its obviousness, you know?

TMI: The female reproductive system is definitive disproof of intelligent design.
TMI pt 2: Why is it that right when an orgasm would be most helpful- ie, when you're all cramped up- is when it's hardest to make happen?

So, back when I posted sexy pictures it used to get a good response. I just found a new source for them, so let's go! This one with more women than my normal ( pic-dump )

I have been reading. Then today at lunch I wrote! It sucked, yes, but still. If all goes according to plan, one day I may actually be a real fangirl again. (OMG I MISS IT. There is this whole whiny angsty post in my about frustration and procrastination and the problem of knowing what I want to be doing with my time but not being able to get from here to there)

I have my Yuletide canon to review, and my SGA exchange assignment, which I have no clue about. I defaulted the last time I tried to force myself to write via exchange, but Christmas is different. I can do this.

( Recs! )

Oh god, is it that time again already?


Dear Yuletide Author,

First of all, thank you SO MUCH for agreeing to write me a present! I picked four fandoms I just love, and I know getting fic in any of them will absolutely fill me with glee.

I know writing exchange fic can be problematic- remember, optional details are optional. All fannish things on this journal are unlocked. Feel free to browse. Note that I am difficult to squick and adore dialog and banter. I like having concrete starting bunnies, so I will throw you some, and I'll also try to tell you what I like about these fandoms... but you can also stop reading right now if you like, and anything that really speaks to you will be wonderful.

( Cut! )

-DragoJustine, excitedly