One More Grouchy Refugee

Fic: The Water Grinds the Stone [SGA] Complete

2008-08-26T22:20:53Z

The mods have released the ~~hounds~~ writers and artists to post their Big Bang efforts elsewhere, so I'll be posting this to my fic site and Wraithbait eventually.

The Water Grinds the Stone 2008 SGA Big Bang link

gblvr's accompanying art

Codes: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Vala Mal Doran, Sam Carter, Cam Mitchell, Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c of Chulak, Chuck Campbell, Evan Lorne, numerous canon supporting characters, OCs, slash, angst, rated Explicit, ~242740 words, 1527 KB, 8.20.08, standard disclaimers apply.

Notes: Written for 2008 SGA Big Bang. Betas by rez_lo , mirabile_dictu , and dossier . Art by gblvr .

Summary: War and peace, ebb and flow, love and loss, damned duty and dearest enemies, end and begin and come around again. When the Stargate Program goes public, old loyalties are set against new ambitions for the Atlantis team.

Anyone who has already read this or was on the writing filter? Anyone, actually, if you're interested in nuts and bolts of it, whether you read the story or not. If you have questions about the writing of the story or just something in the story, ask me here. If I get enough, I may put together a post on the process. May.

random

2008-08-25T23:08:42Z

Last night I dreamed I had a brand new, tricked out, white SUV. I ran down Horatio Caine in it. Splat. Good times, people. Good times.

I don't want to gloat, but I have been enjoying the fruits of my fruit tree the last week. I'm sure you all know that there is little in common between canned peaches and fresh ones. What many of you don't know is the difference between the commercially grown and harvested peaches from the market or even a road side stand and the one plucked from your own tree (in fact a tree I planted as pit - hahaha to all the assholes who told me it would never grow or have fruit). This is like the original variety of peach introduced from China, not an Elberta or Cling or sure as hell not any kind of freestone.

My peaches are divine. Explosively sweet yet faintly tart at the same time and as refreshing as eating an orange, with none of the cloying quality that sometimes characterizes peaches. Everything about them is a pleasure. They're heavy. They feel like velvet. The color of the skin is deep amber and maroon, with just a haze of pale fuzz, while the flesh inside is gold shading to orange and crimson at the center. Juice runs all over your hand the instant you open one up. They are an utterly sensual experience.

mirabile_dictu has been posting things that make her happy each day on her IJ.

In that spirit, these peaches make me happy. They satisfy some visceral instinct because I go and pluck them from the tree myself. They remind me of my dearest Aunt Pat, possibly the most generous woman I ever knew, and they just taste good.

They're actually too good to cook with. I keep meaning to make cobbler but just eat them instead, because spices and sugar would only dilute their magnificence.

Am doing nothing today. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Am currently contemplating watching the Shrine tonight, but feel I should watch Ghost in the Machine first. Post Big Bang ennui continues.

This morning:

M: Do you know what you're wearing?
Auburn: Yes.
M: You're not wearing a shirt.
Auburn: Yes.
M: You're wearing a rag.
Auburn: It's cool.

Sometimes I think a little too much like a guy. I contend that as long as there is a higher cloth to hole ratio I can still wear it. Also, I betray the rest of my gender by liking the Three Stooges.

Tis hot and the Big Bad Yellow Thing in the Sky is far, far too bright.

I don't have a peach icon, so this'll have to do, in honor of the apple trees, which are bearing too.

drvsilla: Peachy fleeeeeeeeeeesh! You'll have to torch me when I kick it.

Currently reading Brethren: Raised By Wolves a gay historical pirate novel. Will report on it when I finish. So far, so fun, though I have a couple of nitpicks already. Still, there's rum, sodomy and the lash.

There are so many fantastic fic writers that I don't think I measure up to that I forget that I'm not too bad compared to a lot of the stuff being printed and sold.

I wonder if I might find someone interested in publishing some gay space cowboys?

SCIFI? Auburn SMASH!

2008-08-21T02:53:06Z

[redacted for obscenities, insert your own]

I spend four hours uninstalling and reinstalling programs because my ISP says its my problem I can't connect and finally get the internet back and the first damn thing I see is SciFi is cancelling Atlantis after this season. Jesus am I glad I never gave in and got satellite to get their stupid channel. I hope the very worst thing they can imagine happens to them: the business goes belly up. And someone embezzled all the stupid CEOs' golden parachutes. The only thing they deserve is golden showers.

It's not like I have a problem with closed fandoms. I'm about fifty-fifty. But that channel doesn't have much to recommend it and they're dropping one of the only enjoyable, fresh shows they have? Flat out stupid.

Well, you know what? I hope they don't tie it all up by the end of the season. Fanfic can take the whole thing a lot farther and better.

And I hope Flanigan, Hewlett, Luttrell, Mamoa, Staite, McGillion, Nykl et al all snag new roles in bigger, better shows. That I can receive without paying for SciFi.

Temptation, thy title is

2008-08-18T05:20:58Z

Oh, please, someone stop me before I name my (still unwritten, but now with outline) zine story Bros Before HoHos.

Or even Bros Before Hoes.

grrr frustration

2008-08-17T03:56:32Z

Does anyone know of a download manager that works with gmail? I've used YSIGet for years now, but it won't work for anything sent to my gmail account, which is being bitchy about large attachments and stopping the downloads before they're finished. I'm sick of starting fresh three or four times before getting lucky.

YAY \o/ SGA Big Bang is Live!

2008-08-15T03:18:28Z

Oh, seriously, I am so happy here, you can't imagine. So many stories, so much art.

Gorgeous.

SGA Big Bang 2008

You can comment on my story in the sgabingbangfb post here. Yes, I may be jumping the gun a little, it's going to take a while to wade through my entry. I'm so happy see it out there though I'm nearly incoherent. Or possibly the heat has finally fried my fevered brain.

Speaking of a fevered brain, I could have sworn I had credits to my beta readers in the submission form, but don't see them now. Crappity.

The whole monstrous thing wouldn't exist without the day by day help of dossier, who beta read, brainstormed, and cheered me on, along with my two other wonderful beta readers, rez_lo and mirabile_dictu. All inconsistencies and typos are all on my head, of course.

And, oh my God, tell gblvr her art is incredible! It's, look I spent four months on that story and she's got it all there, all the scenes I wished could be illustrated, and the way you have to scroll fits the progression of the story, the way the past is still there, but out of sight. It's a metaphor for the way the story covers so many years and I think she's a genius.

Oh, dear little gods, how do I pick what to read first? How, how? This is like having too many groceries to fit in the pantry.

do-over please

2008-08-09T03:42:41Z

Not a good day, just..I'd like to erase, rewind and try again. Without the homicide inducing shit.

Wow, that sounds crappy and ungrateful. Several people were very kind and generous to me today. thady gave me a virtual cupcake, my darling eretria gave a gift of beautiful art I'll admire all next year, mirabile_dictu knows just what I'll enjoy, drvsilla wrote me a a lovely bit of M7 fic. enname made me grin with her florid prose. *Waves at all of you* Thank you, thank you, each of you brought a smile to my face today, and desperately needed it.

Tomorrow will be better. It better be or I'm getting a refund.

Luckily, I have that cheesecake I promised myself.

I don't actually need cheering up here, I just need an hour of peace and quiet and no new disasters. I wish Big Bang had posted today like last year. I guess I'll watch the rest of the opening ceremonies instead.

book review: Always by Nicola Griffith

2008-08-06T02:04:23Z

Less review than reaction, maybe, I'm not going to deconstruct and analyze the book in an academic fashion, but mirabile_dictu expressed an interest when I mentioned reading it and between it and another book I'll mention I've had a thought float through my head.

Always
Nicola Griffith
Riverhead Press
2007
hc
463 pages
ISBN 978-1-59448-935-8
[buy]

There's nothing science fictional about Always, though I had thought of Griffith as a science fiction writer. Always is mystery noir, with a classic tough guy lead character, Aud Torvingen, who happens to be female. Aud is also an ex-cop, a self-defense instructor, daughter of a Norwegian diplomat, well educated, and wealthy. Very, very wealthy (my greatest nitpick is in fact her wealth). She also detached, lesbian, and a little on the cold and unforgiving side. She values perfection, control and efficiency and struggles to be patient with those who do not see the world through the same clear glass she does. She's also a good deal more vulnerable than she thinks she is or appears to be to others.

The narrative POV is Aud's which lets the reader identify with her; Griffith is skilled enough to let the reader infer what other characters are thinking of Aud through Aud's observations while she remains oblivious in many cases because of her emotional detachment.

Aud is in Seattle to meet with her recently remarried mother and new stepfather and check into why one of her properties is suddenly no longer generating the revenue it should. She becomes involved in the fate of a movie being filmed in the warehouse, seeking to find out whether the sabotage going on is aimed at the movie makers or at devaluing her property further. In addition, in classic mystery fashion, Aud is intrigued and attracted to one of the movie crew, Victoria 'Kick' Kuiper, current caterer and former stuntwoman.

The attraction to Kick is handled as smoothly and unremarked upon as any heterosexual one would be. Aud likes women. It's no more or less important to her character than her paranoia or her taste in clothes. I liked this aspect of the book a great deal. Always is sort of post-gender studies, post-feminist, with an attitude of 'of course some women sleep with women, so what, everyone knows that'.

There is no commentary on the lesbian thread by anyone in the book, which I suppose could be interpreted as science fictional. Either it's happening in a parallel universe or in the future, because accepted or not, in ours, there would be something said by someone. Not even the bad guys address this aspect of Aud's life, though. I'd like to live in that world, or have that facet of that world be reflected in ours. It's a little pie-in-the-sky though for me, a little too easy, like Aud's wealth, which lets her do so many things so easily. Need a new laptop? Ask the concierge go pick up one for you and put it on your bill that your financial adviser will handle.

In fanfic, we'd call Mary Sue and wish-fulfillment on that. Aud isn't a Mary Sue, but she has a few of the traits: she shares certain skills with her author, which is often a telltale. On the other hand, Griffith is writing what she knows. Aud's so far from perfect I'll let it go because Griffith provides plot and good prose.

Interspersed with the present narration of Aud's navigation of Seattle, glimpses of the real woman her mother is, rather than Aud's image of her, the relationship with Kick and her friendship with Dornan, who accompanies her to check out the city's coffeehouses on the face of it, but is obviously along to provide her with friendly support in the face of family, is the sixteen weeks she spent teaching self defense to a group of women the year before. You know from the beginning that something went badly wrong for one of these women and Aud, that she was overconfident and now badly shaken.

Griffith was a self-defense instructor herself and the descriptions of the classes are marvelous. Useful as well. I enjoyed reading about the classes, but at the same time, I disliked the structure that told me in essence they were leading to a disaster of some sort. That undermined every theme and message of the women in the class learning to stand up for themselves.

Of course, I've developed a huge spoiler quick lately. I'm at the point I don't want to read story summaries often and am consciously avoiding recs because even a few lines sets me up with expectations or destroys any suspense. Thus I'm being quite purposely vague about what happens in the book and saying probably not as much as even the dust jacket does. I think most people would enjoy reading the classes with that informed outsider angle, so that they could be on the look out for the clues Griffith subtly provides.

I will say it has a plot that hangs together, the prose is technically proficient and entertaining, the characters are engaging and grow thanks to the events of the story and with the exception of my above caveat over the bad thing that happens in regard to the self-defense classes, the themes were satisfying.

Now, all that, that is in context.

Context is everything.

Context is the weight of the book in my hand (surprisingly heavy for its size), the color of the dust jacket (PURPLE), the texture of the paper, the density of the prose, and the size of the text (a wee bit small, I had to set it aside two evenings or suffer an eyestrain headache).

Context is also what I bring to the book. Mood, experience, prior knowledge. In this case, I've read two other books by Griffith, Ammonite and Slow River, I haven't read the two previous books about Aud, The Blue Place and Stay. I remember reading many years ago in Locus that either Griffith or her partner Kelley Eskridge were being jerked around by the US government over living and working in the states, no doubt because they were *gasp* lesbians and writers, and thus I am inclined to sympathy and buying their books just because that sort of shit makes me pissy and contrary, even though both women now reside in Seattle. Just knowing they live in Seattle affects how I read a book that is set in Seattle, as does knowing that Griffith was diagnosed with MS in 1993. I can't read the book like I don't know these things.

I can't read any book like I don't know the things I know, haven't read the things I've read before it, haven't had the experiences and absorbed the lessons of my life.

This came to me while I was thinking about why I wasn't half as impressed with one of the stories in Kelley Eskridge's Dangerous Spaces as I felt I perhaps should have been. The story was Alien Jane and when I read it I thought I should be knocked over by this, but I'm not, so why? Eventually the answer came to me that it didn't impress me that much because the theme, the lesson, whatever, was one I had already internalized. Alien Jane offered no new light, no sudden epiphany. It was a story that would have been extraordinary if written in the nineteen sixties or if I had read it somewhere between sixteen and twenty-five. But I'm a woman grown, and I know other women will fail me sometimes, and I'm beyond being angry about that, because I accept the other women are only human.

I would still recommend Dangerous Spaces though for its title story, for The Eye of the Storm and for And Salome Danced. All stories where the author is more concerned with a good story than a good message. Ironically, the themes in those stories are stronger, for me.

Always, always, with that rider, anything I say about a book is 'for me'.

Because context is everything and everyone's context is different.

My context is that both these books make me think of Berkeley. It's been long enough I don't even know if Dark Carnival is still in business, much less still on Claremont Street, but I used to escape into its dim, hole in the wall stacks like an otter into water, and these were the sort of books I brought away with me like shining silver fish, prizes I could never find on the shelves of bookstores nearer where I lived.

On a final note, because Dark Carnival and Berkeley are inextricably linked to him in my mind, how far above the price of anything is a father who would drive his daughter down into the traffic hell of SF and Berkeley on a Saturday, after working at construction all week, chauffeur her to a dozen bookstores, hand her cash, and let her loose in those stores? With never a question or any rules about what she bought? That was our routine for a decade. The only question he ever had was, 'Did you get everything you wanted?'

In the context of that bit of reminiscence, and that it may make me a wee bit kinder toward Always than I would be otherwise, I recommend it as a very good read if you like mystery noir, lesbian characters, female protagonists, and a satisfyingly long book.

Wow, that went long and veered off into personal land, but that's what I'm talking about: every book you read is personal to you.

The Fanfic To-Do List and other stuff

2008-07-20T05:07:52Z

2008

Go outside, lie on my back and look at the red, red moon.

Finish final proofreading of The Water Grinds the Stone. Did the first hundred thousand words today, but my eyes are crossing at this point and my concentration is shot, so the rest is slated for tomorrow. Finally did that up front trim one of my betas advised while I was at it. Cut 3424 words of pointless tangents. Fun stuff but it didn't move the story forward.

~~Finish redrafting Mira's story. Revise first part.~~ Done. ~37000 words

Finish revising the rest of Mira's story.

Finish writing the rest of Mira's story. Only seven months late. ~????? words.

Do not feed Flashpoint plot bunnies. Hugh Dillon, babies, Hugh fucking Dillon. Looking indecently hot with the shaved head and I never noticed those eyes when I watched Hard Core Logo (probably because I was always staring at Callum Keith Rennie). No, Ed Lane does NOT need to meet Billy Tallent. *Stamps the damn things into goo.*

Write the third Sam/John/Rodney story with [Bad username: eretria.] Started. ~1500 words.

Birthday. There will be steak. I am not vegetarian. I want my steak and cheesecake, damn it!

Zine gen SGA canon-type story first draft due Sept. 14. (No plot, no ideas, no nada, ack, ack, ack, run in circles, flail and wail and flap.) Target word count: ~5000-6000. Present word count: 0000. That'll teach me to say no. Alternatively to writing, change name and flee to ~~Peru~~ Scotland.

Eclosion (sequel to Helical) aka STAMPEDE fic: outline and write. Possibly with eretria.

Red dress thing.

Kiss short fic for enname.

Thoughtcrimes fic: plot, outline and write. Exactly why Welles thought Brendan Dean would be the perfect partner for Freya. Also, possible Alias crossover. Brendan is absolutely Project Christmas material.

Cyberpunk SGA au: plot, outline and write. Selling meatsuit time and the ghost rebellion.

Space pirates SGA/SG-1au: plot, outline and write.

~~Neckar Squares and Ferris Wheels~~: Heave-ho.

~~Wires aka Rodney to the rescue:~~ toss it too, there's plenty of other stuck in a virtual reality stories in SGA already.

SGA Secret Santa. 'Cause I know I will.

2009

Red Ribbon au sequel: plot, outline and write.

Equestrian SGA au: plot, outline and write. Yeah, this was supposed be done for the Olympics. Laugh, clown, laugh.

There's just an alarming number of AUs there. So while I apparently have said all I have in me to say about Atlantis stories, I haven't said all I want to about John and Rodney.

pain in the foot

2008-07-01T20:11:06Z

My damn heels are burning. Now I know it is likely the result of skuffing around the hot, gravelly bare ground without shoes, but it's annoying and kind of disturbing too. Usually a little lotion to the skin and my feet are fine.

Mainly I'm posting this to have a record of when it started if it doesn't go away.

Getting old(er)(ish) sucks. Every damn thing seems to be symptom of something bad.

I'm baaaaaaack

2008-06-25T02:53:49Z

Safe, sound and much, much more sane.

Of course, I arrived home in time to hear fire, fire, fire! Wildfires all over the north state. The news channels down south were not covering what was going on here at all. All they could talk about was the Solano fire.

Anyway, the hotshots are down from Oregon to try a controlled burn and keep the nearest fire from jumping the highway and rolling through the mountains here (or more of them, there's about seventeen different fires burning in a four county area), and the town up the road got a reverse 911 evacuation notification, but I think I'm okay here. Frankly, the smoke isn't any thicker here than it was in Yolo County. Most importantly there are no significant winds to fan the fires.

Anyone of you who know my actual address and are worrying, don't. I'm fine and really think I will continue to be. Hope for the best and, if you have to, evacuate with the rest.

I'm itching to get back to and finish my Big Bang story. I haven't written for five days! I never had any time to at all. I didn't even think about it. I'm kind of shocked, because I've been living and breathing it for so long. But I feel so much better for my break from everything. I have got to do this more often.

running away

2008-06-20T05:54:15Z

At least for a long weekend. FREEDOM! I know I shall return to utter chaos and the dog will no doubt need extensive therapy to get over the separation trauma, but I do not care. I stood in the kitchen today and thought to myself, tomorrow I will be somewhere else. It really didn't matter where (provided it wasn't the hospital or jail and really even those are looking better all the time).

So, ta and all that. I will have no internets until I'm back, so if you have anything to say to me, I'll check the email in the morning before I leave. After that, anything will have to wait until Tuesday. Or later depending on if I decide to never come back. What? I might.

Richard Siken

2008-06-11T22:06:48Z

Crush
Richard Siken

2004 Winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Richard Siken 1967--

Then maybe I have time yet to do something great?

USPS got me my copy from Amazon today and instead of doing anything else, I've been obsessively reading poetry, because it is beautiful and sad and fierce and damaged. And makes me want to make my words into something more than just conveyances.

I love the internet and social networking so much and so should publishers, because I read Siken's poetry for the first time two weeks ago in one of the poetry comms on LJ and had to order the book immediately so that it can slot in between the Eliot and the Joyce on my shelf of things I reread.

Visible World

Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow

flat on the wall.

The dawn was breaking the bones of heart like twigs.

You had not expected this,

the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light

pummeling you in a stream of fists.

You raised your hand to your face as if

to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light

streamed straight to the bone,

as if you were the small room closed in glass

with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,

the mystery is that there is something to keep the light

from passing through.

Aaaah, procrastination

2008-05-31T03:03:01Z

Because what should you do when you find out you're losing a week of the time you thought you had to finish that hundred thousand words of Big Bang Thing?

Procrastinate like a mad thing, of course!

Ask me a question about one of my stories. It can be absolutely anything in ANY fic and I will tell you the honest-to-God answer. Don’t hold back. Ask about posted fic, WIPs, series, or things I've only briefly mentioned, and I will do my best to answer. All my fic is here.

The What's in Rodney's Bathroom Distraction

2008-05-29T03:30:07Z

I'll break it down into couple of different questions. Answer in seriously or in fun.

What's in Rodney's bathroom in Atlantis?

What's in Rodney's bathroom at his apartment on Earth?

What does Rodney leave in John's bathroom?

Bonus question:

What does John keep in Rodney's bathroom in Atlantis or back on Earth?

I should probably change this

2008-05-26T05:04:23Z

Really, I should probably change the name of my fictional resort with the rental cabin. Because I reread the paragraph with it and boggled. Now, if this was original fiction, being read by people who aren't quite so porny minded as fandom is (myself among you), I'd leave it. But, yeah, I know where my mind would go with this if I read it in someone else's story.

Dry Poke Resort Lodge.

Ouch.

Anyone got any amusing or good suggestions to replace it? Or should I just leave it for the easy snicker?

Imagine this is sort of a hunting/ski/hiking resort somewhere unspecified in Colorado within a day's driving distance of Colorado Springs. Sort of middle of the road, not Motel 6, but not a rich man's getaway either.

Dry Poke. Wow, Freud lives.

bah who can think of subject

2008-05-24T03:25:54Z

Life sucks, then you die. That's the good part.

So, obviously, I'm in a light and fluffy mood, reflecting how wonderful I find my existence. If I see or hear one more patronizing news sound bite on how to save money doing things I've had to be doing all along, I'm going to go postal.

Then I ran across something in passing that's been festering ever since, though I'm not sure if it was meant or I just took offense over nothing, but 'working-class people who got Internet access' just put my hackles up. What, did we crash your country club party? Never mind. I'm just being sensitive. But I want to say as someone born and raised working class, that the Supernatural discussions going on about Dean and Sam calling women bitches and whores annoys the everlovin' fuck out of me. See, no, that isn't working class. That's no class. You can hear it from guys, all right, but not the working class guys. You can hear it if you hang out in the college towns and listen to big asshole (little pecker) frat boys going to school on their middle class parents' dime.

Yes, it has been a crap week, I do have a headache, my teeth are powder from being ground, and my concentration is shot.

I'd like to know who I fucked over in my last incarnation. Maybe it would make things just a little more worth while.

Whinge, whinge, whinge.

Random:

I finally got around to joining OTW. At least I think I did. The money left my account and wafted its way to PayPal and so forth; I filled out the form and clicked send. If there was something more, I missed it.

I'm disappointed in Sasha.

$240.00 dollars for book? A vampire book? I wouldn't pay that much for anything less than a tome bound in the skin of virgin albino flying fish that would imbue me with power over the entire universe just from opening it up and looking.

SGA fandom? Do you have something against actually writing about the characters in their universe as opposed to AUs?

I have a JournalFen account now. Why? Why not? I'm not me there, though, and I'm completely unsure what I'm going to do with it. Maybe I'll post the Thing Wot Should Not Have Ever Been Written there.

I have no will left to write.

melts

2008-05-18T01:07:07Z

Big Brown won the Preakness and made it look pretty easy. Though the rest of the field weren't exactly distinguished competitors, yanno.

Too hot to write.

Am going to go pour myself into the bathtub and possibly sleep there.

Also, I forgot and ordered a book from Amazon, even though they always ship UPS, which means i have to drive to fucking Redding to get my packages. Stupid Amazon. Stupid UPS. Stupid me.

Later, babies.

Things that have annoyed me today and badfic mocking

2008-05-08T22:11:06Z

People who cannot grasp the idea of using an on/off switch and unplug things instead. I'm not against unplugging. It's good, it's great, it's saves money, it's really, really safe.

Unless you leave the switch set to ON, so that the next person who plugs it in overloads a breaker, burns out a compressor, or burns themselves.

It's a fucking switch, okay? It isn't hard to use. It isn't multiple fucking choice, there's no essay question.

It takes a hell of lot less time for you to use it than for me to find the plug, plug it in, then check its status.

Subset annoyances: people who jerk out cords so that the wires inside come loose instead of grasping the damned plug.

People who step on cords.

People who don't plug them in all the way.

People who run over lawn hoses

People who can open a gate and close it, but are too lazy to close the damn padlock.

People.

Also, stains that won't come it in the wash. What the fuck was that? Did I sit in the ichor of Cthulhu?

There was something else, but I can't think of it, because I'm too annoyed.

People who forget what they started to say.

Ooh, yeah, people who write fanfic and in the first sentence misspell a name. Nay, not just a name, but also a well known mythological personage, that any spell check would flag, provided you were unable to access the internets and ascertain how it is spelled in canon.

It's Daedalus, not Deadalus.

By the way, you're supposed to italicize ship names.

Second line of annoyance:

“Will you stop yelling at me?” he yelled.

Third (God, I'm still on the first screen):

“No. You know what? ‘I’m sorry’ is just not going to cut it this time. I’ve given you a second chance. I’ve given you a third chance. Hell I even gave you a fourth chance to prove yourself; but obviously you can’t. That’s it okay? Thank god I’m not going to have to work with you again, and don’t even think about coming crying to me to fix your idiotic mistakes Andy. You got that?” Without waiting for an answer the slender, petit redhead strode out of the room.

I know commas cost money, but invest in a few more anyway. Also, petite, not petit. Petit makes me think of petits fours, so now I'm hungry for little bitty cakes and imagining said slender redhead coated in robin's egg blue icing.

“Bri, what’s wrong?” the brunette asked, setting her book aside to rest her hands in the long red hair.

“Nothing Lil” the fair skinned beauty answered, burying her face in the tan girls exposed stomach.

Commas, apostrophes, all gone. We need to file a missing grammar report.

I'm kind of glad they're OCs. It would hurt worse to see characters I know and love and read the comm this was posted at to get more of treated like this.

Epi-fucking-thets. Drink!

Hazel eyes bored into the pale skin on the back of her neck, and Bri shifted uncomfortably, wrapping her arms around her lover’s waist.

rez_lo broke me of using eyes when you mean gaze, but I never mistook them for tools used in carpentry even before. The image of a couple of unattached eyeballs on this pale skinned neck, spinning until they drill into the fair skinned beauty's spine is quite impressive. If you're scripting a Cronenberg movie.

“Andy” she murmured after a while. Lifting her green eyes to meet the glowing hazel eyes of her partner. “He fucked up again. I can’t in good conscience even let him step onto the city if he can’t even do something as simple as this.” She buried her face again, this time twining her legs into the other girls.

Saving money on commas again, I see. Maybe the author will invest in a book on grammar. And the detached eyeballs are now glowing. This can't be good. Possibly they're radioactive. Not that the fair skinned beauty will be able to tell, since she's taken her own eyeballs out and introduced them to the ones making holes in her neck. Wait. Other girls? How many people are in this room? And how are they merging molecules? This could get messy. The CGI for this Cronenberg movie is going to cost money, damn it.

“Well what did you ask him to do?” The brunette asked softly, rubbing the red hair spread across her stomach and thighs. “Are you giving him things to do that he is even capable of?”

Epithet! Drink!

Do you think it would help if she shaved?

Slivers of emerald green peaked out from under eye-lids, and the sleepy girl murmured “Go ‘way, sleepin’.”

Epithet! Drink!

I guess now we know what is left after you take your eyeballs out. Mountains of emerald.

Where, oh where have all the commas gone? Here, comma, here, comma, come to mama!

Dear Person who posted. Stop.

There are betas. Get one. Listen to her. Stop.

McKay/Sheppard. McKay/Sheppard. See the McKay part? There is not only no slash in this, there's no McKay. No Rodney. No Meredith. Maybe he ran away with all the commas.

Not to mention no plot.

In conclusion?

Stop.

Drink!

this is where I talk about anything that crosses my mind

2008-05-05T04:17:17Z

I am so heartily sick of feeling sick every single time I eat restaurant food. It doesn't matter where or what. Within a few hours (this will be tmi for many of you), I am desperately grateful to have a empty bathroom at close hand. I feel like I've been hosed out, only with bonus cramps.

Thirty minutes into not watching Cold Case (Mom is watching, I'm hearing it intermittently from the bathroom), I have already predicted the plot twist. --eta, I called it.

What happened to Kayuda? Admittedly, I hadn't used it for anything for over a year, but I clicked my bookmark and nada. I had to find me another mindmapper, which annoyed me and meant more time not writing. Though, procrastination was today's motto anyway. Really, the dog needed to play fetch. (Hannah's the only dog who has ever consented to actually fetch for me. I like to encourage her.)

Poem posted so I don't lose track of it. The last lines fit the scene I'm writing so perfectly.

The Quarrel - Linda Pastan

If there were a monument
to silence, it would not be
the tree whose leaves
murmur continuously
among themselves;

nor would it be the pond
whose seeming stillness
is shattered
by the quicksilver
surfacing of fish.

If there were a monument
to silence, it would be you
standing so upright, so unforgiving,
your mute back deflecting
every word I say.

word count

2008-04-26T07:44:51Z

Too tired to screw around with the counter that shows progress.

77099 words.

Headache all day. Mom sick again. Slow going. John may be crying. It's hard to tell. Rodney can't see. Got rid of Landry but he got his last licks. I already dislike Reynolds.

Note to characters: just because you're in a relationship and having sex all the time, don't expect me to keep writing it. I'm trying to finish this before July. You two are not helping. I swear to Bog that if you keep jumping each other, I'm going to hurt you both worse than I'd even planned.

last day of post every damn day month!

2008-04-01T03:23:53Z

I think I did it too. Hell, sometimes I posted more than once a day.

This poem I've been intending to post all month.

F.T. Prince
Soldiers Bathing

The sea at evening moves across the sand,
And under a sunset sky I watch the freedom of a band
Of soldiers who belong to me: stripped bare
For bathing in the sea, they shout and run in the warm air.
Their flesh, worn by the trade of war, revives
And watching them, my mind towards the meaning of it strives.

All's pathos now. The body that was gross,
Rank, ravening, disgusting in the act and in repose,
All fever, filth and sweat, all bestial strength
And bestial decay, by pain and labour grows at length
Fragile and luminous. 'Poor bare forked animal,'
Conscious of his desires and needs and flesh that rise and fall,
Stands in the soft air, tasting after toil
The sweetness of his nakedness: letting the sea-waves coil
Their frothy tongues about his feet, forgets
His hatred of the war, its terrible pressure that begets
A machinery of death and slavery,
Each being a slave and making slaves of others: finds that he
Remembers his old freedom in a game
Mocking himself, and comically mimics fear and shame.

He plays with death and animality,
And reading in the shadows of his pallid flesh, I see
The idea of Michelangelo's cartoon
Of soldiers bathing, breaking off before they were half done
As some sortie of the enemy, an episode
Of the Pisan wars with Florence. I remember how he showed
Their muscular limbs that clamber from the water
And heads that turn across the shoulder, eager for the slaughter,
Forgetful of their bodies that are bare,
And hot to buckle on and use the weapons lying there.
And I think too of the theme another found
When, shadowing lean bodies on a sinister red ground---
Was it Antonio Pollaiuolo?---
Painted a naked battle: warriors straddled, hacked the foe,
Dug their bare toes into the soil and slew
The brother-naked man who lay between their feet and drew
His lips back from his teeth in a grimace.

They were Italians who knew war's sorrow and disgrace
And showed the thing suspended, stripped, a theme
Born out of experience of war's horrible extreme
Beneath a sky where even the air flows
With Lachrimae Christi; and that rage, that bitterness, those blows,
That hatred of the slain, what could it be
But indirectly or brutally a commentary
On the Crucifixion? for the picture burns
With indignation and pity and despair and love by turns
Because it is the obverse of the scene
Where Christ hangs murdered, stripped, upon the Cross: I mean,
That is the explanation of its rage.

And we too have our bitterness and pity that engage
Thought, horror in this war. But night begins,
Night of the mind: who nowadays is conscious of our sins?
Though every human deed concerns our blood,
And even we must know what no one yet has understood,
That some great love is over what we do,
And that is what has driven us to this fury, for so few
Can suffer all the terror of that love:
The terror of that love has set us spinning in this groove
Greased with our blood.

These dry themselves and dress

Resume their shirts, forget the fear and shame of nakedness.
The freedom of our crimes. Yet as I drink the dusky air,
I feel a strange delight that fills me full,
A gratitude, as if evil itself were beautiful;
And kiss the wound in thought, while in the west
I watch a streak of red that might have issued from Christ's breast.

the state of the story and, oh, poetry

2008-03-31T05:05:43Z

I had a post in mind earlier, but couldn't log in and now it's gooooooooooooone.

Rather like my mind, actually.

I am one scene away from having the first part of the Big Bang story finished (first draft). I'm at 24000+ words. I should be relieved right? Over half way to the 40K minimum. Uh huh. Well, like I commented in the check in, numbers lie. Because that's only about seven percent of what this story should end up weighing in at.

Someone hold my hand?

Naomi Lazard
Ordinance On Winning

Congratulations.
The suspense is over. You are the winner.
The doubts you have had
concerning the rules of the contest,
about the ability and fairness of the judges,
were illfounded. The rumors
pertaining to a "fix"
have been exposed as nonsense.
The contest is fair and always has been.
Now that the results are in
your prize will be sent to you
under separate cover. Be sure to have
your social security number
or other proper identification
for the postman.

Upon receiving it
contact us immediately
in order that you may be notified
of further developments, ensuing publicity,
other honors which will be forthcoming.
If by some chance your prize does not arrive
as scheduled, do not bother to inform us.

Our responsibility is discharged
with this announcement.
In the event that you do not receive
your prize, there is no authority
to whom you can turn
for information or redress.
We advise you to wait patiently
for your prize
which will either come or not.

Plot bunnies I wish someone else would write

2008-03-30T04:09:37Z

Snagged from bedlamsbard over on LJ.

We were discussing how sometimes we have plot bunnies that we don't so much want to write, but we want to READ. You have those? Let's talk about them!

Pick 3 plot bunnies for stories you'd really like to READ, but don't have time to write, or don't feel qualified to write.

Well, we weren't discussing, I was innocently reading her journal and not commenting, but oh yeah, this is a good meme.

Stargate Atlantis/Stargate SG-1: An AU in which Daniel got the address for Atlantis wrong and the expedition, which included Daniel, ended up in the Ori galaxy. They find themselves in the ruins of the civilization that stood last against the Ori and stranded. When they find their way to village and attempt to trade for food and information, the villagers take them prisoner. After their military escort is killed, a prior takes Weir, Sheppard, and Daniel across the plains of Celestis (Sp?) to discover where they've come from. Ford escapes back to the camp. Weir gives up that they came from the Milky Way. John gets priorized, but Daniel half ascends (like Anubis) and they escape. The expedition sets about figuring out a way to stop or destroy the Ori, led by McKay, Sumner begins a guerrilla war bent on sabotaging the ships the Ori begin building to invade the Milky Way, Daniel has to keep possessing people because his body is sort of vaporized but he isn't completely ascended, Weir gives birth to the Orici, and Sumner sidelines John since he's got the prior powers and may just ascend and join the Ori at any minute. John and Rodney end up working together along with Daniel. And I don't really know where it goes from there. Maybe they eventually find the Ark of Truth or they manage to hijack one of the Ori ships.

Thoughtcrimes: Brendan Dean realizes that working with Freya has begun making him telepathic too. Welles reveals that there were more reasons than his psych profile why they paired him with Freya. Lots of back story for Brendan, mucho angst, and maybe a nice espionage plot to go with it. (This one might get written, just because I'd like to take a break from SGA after Big Bang, but wow, I'd rather read a good version of it by someone else.)

Stargate Atlantis (or any damn slash fandom): the one where one of them convinces the other to try bondage or d/s and it just does nothing for him. Maybe even is an active turn off. And then, instead of trying to convince his partner to try it again, or tying him up in hisr sleep, or any other iffy consent scenario, the partner that initiated the idea accepts that and they have satisfying sex without any special kinks. Just because it would be a different scenario, not because I have anything special against kink or pwps. Or a story where one of them does tie the other up, ignores the 'no, I'm not into this, let me loose', takes it way farther than he should, and sees the relationship in ruins afterward, as the other guy walks out on him. Hi, my name's Auburn, and I have an angst addiction. Not exactly front page news at this point.

Okay, the last one isn't really a plot bunny just a tired thought I had the last time I read about Rodney tying John up.

No poetry tonight.

I did tick over 22000 words on the Big Bang story today. With a sex scene which I dare to hope is moderately hot (and doesn't involve any rope).

I miss eretria. Though I suspect I might not be getting as much written if I had her around to whine to about it.

Howard Nemerov

2008-03-29T04:31:57Z

Will be happy to see the end of this month, though it has been interesting in a way, posting each day. Thanks be to poetry, for the days when I have no words left, though.

Howard Nemerov
The End Of The Opera .

Knowing that what he witnessed was only art,
He never wept while the show was going on.

But the curtain call could always make him cry.
When the cast came forward hand in hand
Bowing and smiling to the clatter of applause,
Tired, disheveled, sweating through the paint,
Radiant with our happiness and theirs,
Illuminati of the spot and flood,
Yet much the same as ordinary us.

The dive, the soubrette, the raisonneur,
The inadequate hero, the villain, his buffoon,
All equalled in the great reality
And living proof that life would follow life . . .

Though back of that display there'd always be,
He knew, money and envy, the career,
Tomorrow and tomorrow––it didn't seem
At that moment as if it mattered and ours
As we wept about the role, about the real,
And how their dissonances harmonized
As we applauded us: ite, missa est.