Posting here largely for record-keeping purposes, but hey, maybe someone will be interested in reading. :)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and The Doctor Blake Mysteries are set near enough to each other in time, space, and topic that it's pretty easy to imagine these worlds intersecting (though people don't do this nearly as much as one would think/wish). Both shows feature an awesome redheaded queer female pathologist. (Okay, Alice is not canonically queer, but...she also obviously is.) And suddenly this felt like the most obvious and awesome pairing in the world.

To Make the Wounded Whole, Alice Harvey/Elizabeth Macmillan, post-canon for Miss Fisher and pre-canon for Doctor Blake, 3600 words, rated T.

So I have achieved 2018 fic as well as 2017 fic. Woo continuing to fangirl actively and all that.

(Though the flip side of active fangirling: someone totally plagiarized one of my Call the Midwife fics! Which actually has never happened to me before, at least with this kind of egregiousness. Possibly I went a little bit English professor on her ass, and possibly she did not take that particularly well, but she did take down the story.)

And in other Doctor Blake news, gabolange made me a Jean icon for Galentine's Day! *points* Quite possibly my favorite Jean face of all the many excellent Jean faces. (She has an exceptionally good face.)

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

I've been thinking a lot about Farscape fandom lately. (Mostly as a contrast to Call the Midwife fandom, which is...a very long story that you can see some of, if you care to, by poking around on mine and gabolange's Tumblrs, and also on her journal. But as someone who has been around that fandom for a while confirmed to me yesterday, it really is the Stepford fandom.)

But anyway, my experience of trying to enter Stepford/twilight zone fandom, and sort of falling on my face a bit, because the floor isn't where you think it is, has made me think of Farscape, and what a tremendous fandom that was to join. I was late to it--the show had finished--and I was never in the thick of things like so many people were. The fandoms that brought me my lifelong friends were mostly not that one, though of course I know for many people their Farscape crew was what my BSG crew became to me.

But that didn't matter, and that's the brilliant thing. Even a bit on the fringes and late to the party, there was still that recognition of that--thing--that on one hand is true of all fandoms when they grab your heart but was somehow so much more true of Farscape. I'm never going to love anything ever again like I love this. Maybe it's because Farscape is so weird and uneven, and so many people back right out the door, that when it clicks, when it becomes your One True Show, that kindred spirit thing is strong. Back then, someone would discover it and post their first OMG Farscape!!! post. Some friend who was already into the show would see it and call in the puppy pile, and suddenly all these people were flailing about in your comments, showing you where the good fic was, and welcoming you to the fold.

And the fic. God. No other fandom I've known has had such a high proportion of astonishingly brilliant fic. Sure, there was also plenty of bad and mediocre fic, but there was SO. MUCH. good fic. So many amazing writers pushing the envelope at every opportunity, pushing it even further than the show itself, which is saying something.

For me it came at exactly a moment in my life that I needed to fall down that particular wormhole. And maybe if I'd found it at another time it would have been a little different (though I can't imagine any version of me not adoring it). But I'm never going to love anything ever again like I loved that. And I loved it alongside some really amazing people who felt the same way.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

Really, nothing but Call the Midwife thoughts, these days. gabolange and I talked on the phone last weekend for over two hours, and probably an hour and 45 minutes of that was CtM. It's nutso. Active fangirling! Who knew we still had it in us!

So season 6 has now concluded. And partly--thank god? This is the first show I've actively fangirled during a currently airing season in a looooong time, and it was stupidly stressful. I would say that Tumblr is the worst, but actually, I think the UK media tabloids are the actual worst, and then Tumblr just magnifies it. So much crazy sensationalized spoiler stuff leaked to the press so far in advance of the episodes!!! And if some intern at Radio Times didn't get fired at some point, there is no justice in the world.

If my feelings about the experience of watching in real time were largely negative, my feelings about the series itself were ( spoilers!Collapse )

Interestingly, I dealt with my feelings about the Turner plot by writing a story that jumped the queue of several things I'd already been working on, and isn't actually about my own feelings by the time it all got transformed, but it was therapeutic nonetheless. And, um, I wrote a fic. For real, with beta and all that jazz--first time in a very long time. It feels good!

In case anyone is interested: Over the Hills and Far Away, gen, Timothy and Shelagh on family and change, post 6.08.

And because this thing is totally a team endeavor, gabolange also just published a fic that does some season 6 fixing, and it's excellent: Mercy of the Fallen, four conversations that should have happened during 6.04 (Patrick and Timothy, Trixie and Tom, Delia and Shelagh, Shelagh and Patrick)

Of course, gabolange has also been writing me the season 2 Sister Bernadette and Doctor Turner are sneaking around AU, first two parts here and here. In case I'm not the only one who needs really hot and slightly OOC nun sex fic in their lives.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

Last of the writing prompts, a few days late. (And at this point I've sort of given up on both the fic prompts, sorry! daybreak, we shall see on the Sister Bernadette thing. It tried to become a proper fic, and then I realized part of that, but not the part you actually asked about, was actually part of a different fic in the queue, so maybe the part you actually asked for will see fit to become its own ficlet one of these days. But mostly the point of this is I'm actually writing legit fic and have a queue, wtf?!?!? Party like it's 2008, apparently.)

But the last of the prompts not requiring excessive creative juices: gabolange asked for the top five places I'd visit in the world and why. This is surprisingly hard? Partly, I think, because my travel bucket list is as much about regions and combinations and time spent and all that. But hey, why not talk about that, too, I guess! In no particular order:

New Zealand
Because it's gorgeous and you don't have to choose between beaches and mountains! This also feels like a medium-sized, reasonably doable trip? Like, obviously it takes 20+ hours just to get there, so you want to stay for a couple weeks to make the jet lag worth it, but I don't know that it needs to be more than that. Couple days each in Auckland and Wellington, then to the south island for the hiking and the views and the beaches. Ideally there would be whale-watching.

Southern South America
gabolange and I were actually going to do the Peru part of this this summer, before her hip got borked. (Now we're going to Chicago instead--but we're seeing Hamilton, so that's practically like a bucket list trip, right?! :P) But when it comes to South America, I don't actually care a bit about jungle things. I'm sure Brazil is great, and I wouldn't not go, but it isn't a priority. However, Peru, Chile, and Argentina: yessssss! I would love to do a big trip that managed to get in the Andes and the Incan ruins, then Argentinian wines and Buenos Aires, and then total bucket list trip to Patagonia, mostly because it's gorgeous and would be cool to say I'd been to Patagonia. Could probably swing both whales and penguins. In reality this is probably two trips--the Peru trip we were already planning, and a separate Argentina trip.

The Mediterranean Grand Tour
Retirement or sabbatical bucket list trip: minimally across the south of France and Italy, the particularly awesome version would start in Spain and end in Greece, maybe. This is the slow, lazy trip with everything: food and wine, wandering around cathedrals and scenic little villages, cycling in the mountains, more food, more wine, more mountains. Some beaches. More wine.

Nepal
I love mountains. I would like to see the Himalayas before I die.

The Arctic
This has always been a funny fascination for me, because I hate the cold. But of course it isn't winter all the time, and summer in the Arctic has always seemed amazing. The wildflowers and the impossibly huge open spaces. The caribou, the sun that never sets. Narwhals! Among other whales. Various versions of this hold different appeal. In Canada I knew people who would drive from Vancouver to Whitehorse and/or on through to Alaska. I love a good road trip, so that one has always seemed like it would be pretty epic. On the other hand, hard to see whales on a road trip, so there's also a version of this involving the Hudson Bay, or Greenland and the colorful houses, and boats and terrifying little planes. There's also the much more accessible version of this, which just involves going to Alaska like normal people go to Alaska. But that feels perfectly plausible and less bucket-list-y? I would like the bucket list version of this trip to involve thousands of caribou, at least three kinds of whales, and zero overcrowded cruise ships full of tourists.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

Happy Galentine's Day, all my people!!!! This is absolutely my favorite made up holiday of the year, even if I've mostly been too busy today to appreciate it.

Today for my writing prompt, runawaynun asks me to "Describe the perfect Galentine's Day celebration."

Hmm. On one hand, I'm so easy. Girlfriends, travel, wine. I mean, gabolange and I have actually done this, more or less, the past two years, heading for warmer climes in the winter (Mexico two years ago, and I think we actually hit Galentine's Day that time, Vegas last year, a couple weeks later). So seasonally, travel to warm places seems to be the thing. (This year we're waiting until April and going to Chicago, but whatever.)

Since this is supposed to be "perfect": I don't know, y'all, what warm sunny place do we want to lounge around in some February? I would suggest grabbing gabolange and chaila and runawaynun and beccatoria and all the gang, and going to...Hawaii, maybe? It is peak humpback whale season in Maui this time of year. And there could be hiking and outdoorsy things, for those who want them, and loungy beach things, for those who want that, and brightly colored fruity beach drinks, but also good wine and good food. And whales. So yes. I think girlfriend trip to Hawaii in February would be my perfect Galentine's Day!

**

In other news, I said I would get in the habit of doing Call the Midwife reviews this series. ( spoilers for 6.04Collapse )

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

Hey, I made it a whole week before getting behind schedule! This feels like an accomplishment? Yesterday for writing in February, daybreak wanted an ep review of Sunday night's episode of Call the Midwife. But I've been sick this week, and that just absolutely wasn't happening yesterday. Fortunately, today was an empty day, so I'm now caught up!

So today we are going old-school with a DW/LJ episode review! Party like it's 2008, babies!!! ( spoilers for Call the Midwife 6.03Collapse )

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

Hey, I'm writing in February! Prompts continue to be welcome, if you'd like!

My dear gabolange has started with what has turned out to be a doozie: What is the sexiest story you've ever read and why?

Some backstory: gabolange and I have rather a long fannish history of reading and writing meaty character stories, which maybe sometimes are sexy, but often aren't. But then we fell into Call the Midwife Turner fandom, which is the most vanilla PG fandom I've ever seen, and it's so weird because there are almost no cliche PWP fics, and things aggressively fade to black, and just...whyyyyyy??? And suddenly this genre that we took for granted and therefore didn't care about is rather glaringly absent and we find ourselves plotting to write cliched nun sex fic. Call it a fannish midlife crisis or something.

So in the context of thinking about this genre of stories lacking in this fandom--sexy stories!--what are my criteria for a good sexy story?! Turns out, this is a far more difficult question than I would have thought.

Probably 90% of the time, I just skim the sex scenes in fic. Like...it's the same thing over and over again, get on to the character stuff, please. Also I think a lot of fic I read tends to go in one ear and out the other, more or less, even when I like it. So what happens in the 10% of the time when I sit up and pay attention. I think a) it's really well-written, b) it is part of the character stuff, c) it pushes my ship buttons hard and d) I happen to read it when I'm really into a particular pairing. I've had trouble laying my hands on anything that really fit all those criteria right now--because the well-written character stuff I loved back in the day is for pairings that are only hitting my nostalgia buttons, not my obsessively thinking about them right now buttons. And there is basically no fic hitting current buttons c) and d) that is also well-written and in-character.

(An aside about ship buttons: never fail is "we are crazy about each other but can't act on it because [we work together / one of us is a nun / we used to be married but one of us was a Russian spy who betrayed the other one / one of us is trying to save the world from Skynet and the other is the FBI agent trying to catch her / one of us is the head of a multinational media conglomerate and the other is her assistant and also Supergirl / and so forth]." Desire + chemistry + obstacle = bulletproof ship buttons. The problem with the current ship, of course, is that while the obstacle exists (she's a nun!), there's really no way to do in-character sex, because, yeah, they just wouldn't. So is it possible for a), b), c), and d) for Sister Bernadette and Dr. Turner? Probably not. This is perhaps my other problem with this fandom...)

So basically, the "sexiest story I have ever read" is going to change over time if I'm no longer all that pressingly into that pairing. Is this weird? Does this happen to other people? I guess I should also add that sexy stories don't necessarily have to contain sex (and obviously I don't tend to think the vast majority of stories with sex are all that sexy). It's complicated, basically!

Some permutations:

The first thing I thought of when I considered this prompt was No for Yes by Yahtzee. Alias, Jack and Irina, basically the Jack and Irina story. But on rereading it, I'm not sure it's necessarily a sexy story? It's an excellent, excellent character story. It's well-written. It contains sex (though sex for character building more than sex for sexiness, which is probably an important distinction). I love this pairing forever. So we'll call it one of my favorite stories ever, but not perhaps the sexiest story I've ever read.

Then I thought of thassalia, who always wrote the beeeeeessssst John/Aeryn back in the day. (Farscape always breaks the rules, doesn't it. John and Aeryn do not really fit my desire + obstacle pattern--I mean, there are various obstacles at various times, but it's different--yet they are always and forever going to be the sexiest otp ever.) And Thea would write these gorgeous little PWP fics that were well-written and in-character and super hot, and they do hold up. Things like Canthas and Against the Grain. So probably these have a much better claim on "sexiest story I've ever read," but at the same time, much as I will love John and Aeryn forever, rereading them was more about remembering when I did find those stories amazingly sexy than feeling that at the time. Nostalgia sexy, not present sexy.

Which leads me back to criterion d) I am really into the particular pairing. And to the one CtM fic that pushes my pairing buttons at this moment when I really care, and is at least moderately well-written and in-character. So possibly the answer to this question for me at this moment, despite having been a fairly discerning reader of fic in a number of fandoms for well over 15 years and therefore having many, many options to choose from, is an unfinished wip on the pit in which there is no sex, and everyone remains excessively well-clothed, but Sister Bernadette and Dr. Turner do a lot of sneaking around to make out and then feel really angsty about it: Whatever Will Be by newyork24-7. IDEK. Possibly I have come back from my accidental hiatus from doing fandom actively for the past few years with my brain slightly broken.

A postscript: the right Sarah Connor/James Ellison story still feels like it would win this contest for all time, but to my knowledge it doesn't exist. Maybe it's the fact that it doesn't exist that keeps the hope alive as presently sexy and not nostalgia sexy. But damn, they are just so hot and perfect.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

I'm stealing from chaila (and probably some other people) to get back in the habit, I hope, of engaging here. Pick a date in February, give me something to write about, and I'll talk about it: fandom, TV, books, work, dog, travel, life, maybe politics depending on how well I'm dealing with the dumpster fire on any given day, whatever. No promises because I'm REALLY rusty with the fic writing, but if you give me a fic prompt you might even get something of that sort (chances are higher if this is about Sister Bernadette/Shelagh Turner, because that's where my fannish brain is at the moment, but you never know!). Will lock anything personal, but I'm happy to grant access if you don't have it (and you don't seem like some creepy person I don't have some logical fannish connection to!).

So leave a comment with a date and a prompt (or plural, I guess, if you have more than one), and I'll update this post to keep track of everything, and hopefully this will be good for writing habits and engagement here, and so forth. I'll try to keep everything straight across platforms, because I know a number of people are still only at LJ, but if you're in both places, I'd be happier if you comment on the DW post.

February 1:
February 2:
February 3:
February 4: gabolange - What is the sexiest story you've ever read and why?
February 5: de23 - Tell us all about your current position.
February 6: daybreak - Last night's episode of CtM!
February 7:
February 8:
February 9: kernezelda - What was your most recent pet-related delight, or alternatively, what was the most recent thing or happening that made you grin like a happy loon, and laugh out loud, and brightened your whole day?
February 10: reserved
February 11: chaila - I would really enjoy if someone, hypothetically you, wanted to write us a bit of Cat/James subtext, maybe when she promoted him, or in a perfect world where she never left. ;) Or you know I'm alllllllllways down for some Sarah/Ellison post-canon.
February 12:
February 13: runawaynun - IT'S GALENTINE'S DAY. Describe the perfect galentine's celebration.
February 14: daybreak - The day Sister Bernadette took her vows.
February 15:
February 16:
February 17:
February 18: chaila - I am actually very curious about the new job! I know generally what it is, but what's a typical day like? Or if there's no typical day, a representative day? (I feel like I never know what people actually do at their jobs, and it's interesting to find out).
February 19: fallingtowers - Have you got any cute pictures /anecdotes of your new dog that you'd like to share?
February 20:
February 21: siljamus - A favourite work of art
February 22:
February 23:
February 24: siljamus - Talk about 'home' and what it means to you.
February 25:
February 26:
February 27: gabolange - Top five places you'd like to visit in the world and why.
February 28:

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

So, Supergirl. I've been watching, enjoying, loving Cat Grant liek whoa, because obviously, but it hadn't totally grabbed me. I was really loving what this show was choosing to be, yet somewhat underwhelmed by the balance and execution (could we have a show that is 80% Cat and Kara being badasses in their respective way, 10% James looking really pretty, 10% the rest of it?).

Then I was reminded, a few days ago, that I actually never watched the most recent ep that aired a few weeks ago. And lo, it was awesome, and ( spoilers for 1.08Collapse ), and I thought, hey, I wonder if there's fic, and THERE IS because sometimes fandom actually does have all the same buttons as I do.

This hasn't happened a lot lately: a recent attempt to get into The 100, for instance, was completely thwarted when I realized my buttons were at odds with fandom and the direction of the show. But y'all, there is a burgeoning little Kara/Cat femslash community (aka SuperCat, because oh fandom, never change), and I have now spent the past two days reading all the fic. Also, it's SuperCat Week, apparently, and people are writing challenge fics to really awful cliches, and it feels like it's 2005, at least in my fandom world.

And beyond the silly fandom cliches, have a rec for a story that isn't that, and isn't actually shippy, particularly, but is about their power dynamics and the ways they are protective and threatening in their respective ways, and a fallout to the most recent episode that feels more realistic than what seems like is going to happen on Monday: I Had to Find the Passage Back (To the Place I was Before).

But here's the other thing: my fangirl has been broken for a while. I've watched things, enjoyed things, had short-lived excitement that even led to wanting to read a little fic or something, but nothing that has really sparked that desire to write or be thinky or finally join Tumblr so that I can have an endless stream of pretty pictures of Calista Flockhart at my disposal. And it's too early to tell whether this one will do that or just be a flash in the pan, but, um, I'm reading really bad fic and watching the five available youtube vids over and over again. So this feels like a good/bad sign, right???!!!

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.

It felt more important to write another post (writing practice!) than to answer comments, but xoxoxoxo to you all for comments on the last post. People are still around!

Surgery is WEDNESDAY, which is exciting and a little scary and stressful all at once.

But enough of health stuff.

Last night I was scrolling through Netflix, feeling generally dissatisfied with all of my options, and I suddenly decided that what I needed to do was rewatch some late-season, Doggett- and Reyes-featuring X-Files. IDEK, except I always did love Doggett and Reyes, despite generally being of the opinion that the show would have done better just to end with season 7, or possibly earlier. Nevertheless, I watched a few of the episodes that I remembered as being less terrible than others, was kind of nostalgically charmed by them (though wow, is Annabeth Gish a bad actress, yet I still love Reyes liek whoa despite it).

The more interesting thing, though, was that this made me want to go find some old fic. Of course the particular things I was looking for never made it to Gossamer, and were instead on an old Tripod site that did not get sufficiently archived on the Wayback Machine, so I ended up spending my morning wading around in the archives of an old Yahoo Group, circa 2002. I'd been lurking for a while at that point, but this particular Yahoo Group--XFMU, appropriating Mulder's crack about being the FBI's most unwanted to refer to the X-Files' most unwanted characters, Doggett and Reyes--was the first time I talked, interacted, made friends, wrote stuff. And it's all still there, though I first had to convince Yahoo I wasn't trying to hack my own account, since it had been years and years since I'd signed in.

Those were my first wave fandom days, before LJ, and certainly before this current fannish diaspora where everything is mainstream across a million platforms and no one actually seems to do anything except post shiny pictures. All those arguments about what posts were appropriate to the list versus how OT (off-topic, for those of you who don't remember the lingo) was acceptable. The fights between the advocates of DSR (Doggett/Scully), DRR (Doggett/Reyes), SRR (Scully/Reyes), and so forth, so earnest and yet even at the time so aware that these were just faint echoes of the great shipper/noromo fights of X-Files years past. Spoiler space in posts that involved actually hitting return a couple dozen times, in the days before cut tags. Everyone promoting her own geocities fic site. And my personal favorite, the network of people mailing VHS tapes around the country to people who weren't able to catch the episodes for some reason.

Yet of course by 2002 this phase was already waning. People were moving to LJ, were starting to take advantage of platforms that required less coding skill and produced prettier results, not to mention that blurred the lines between fandoms, personal and fannish lives, and what was and was not OT. The heyday of the lists and the geocities sites were the late 90s, so there's something already nostalgic about those early 2000s lists that figure so prominently in my personal fandom nostalgia.

The fic I was remembering was bad and cliched and yet still great fun to reread after forever. The conversations were as they ever were, and continued to be, up until the point fandom stopped having proper conversations about things. (I gather that some of this sort of happens on Tumblr? Yet also not?) And in the intervening 13 years, fandom has changed a lot, as has the internet, as have I and no doubt all of the other fangirls (and a handful of fanboys) who used to populate those old lists. We used to have a great secret about how much we loved these shows and these characters (even the ones that no one else seemed to love--and perhaps it was the joy of finding those other people who did love Doggett and Reyes, despite all the hate, that made that particular list such a favorite of mine), and part of the great joy was finding these people out there in the world who shared that secret.

And I wonder if, in this current great fervor we have for rebooting old fannish hits--new Star Wars, new X-Files, new Gilmore Girls, new Star Trek--we're trying to recapture something of the way we loved those things, more, perhaps, than trying to recapture the things themselves. My great first fannish love, The X-Files, was as much about the experience of loving it with other people as it was the show itself: the great revelation that other people also felt this way, the shipper wars, the mytharc guesses and analyses, and so forth.

And I will DEFINITELY be watching the new episodes, but is there something lost in the fact that everyone else will be, too? In the fact that there will now be paid critics at highbrow organs of journalism leading the discussion rather than fangirls on a message board or Yahoo group or LJ community? I want to hear the opening music again, to see Mulder and Scully replay the same beloved scenarios, and so forth (Mulder will believe, Scully will be skeptical, Mulder will get depressed and question all he's ever known, Scully will declare she believes in him if not in the paranormal, Skinner will be awesome in the background, the mytharc will make no fucking sense whatsoever, and at some point they'll wave some flashlights around a dark room--if this is not the substance of the reboot, I'm taking my toys and going home). But will it really be the same if it's a major multinational phenomenon acted out specifically because of the nostalgia for something we know we've lost? Of course not. But it won't stop us from hoping, I suspect (and wailing that we knew better if it's terrible).

In the meantime, I'm trying to decide whether the selective XF episode rewatch should extend throughout the whole series. Or is that, too, better left as is.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments. Comment here or there.