netgirl_y2k | Reading

a very british disaster movie: the kettle seems to be broken. but we keep calm and carry on - i'm making myself some tea in a saucepan.

my own personal tragedy continues as there is a boden sample sale (i have just been told) on this wednesday and thursday, and my stupid JOB is preventing me from going as i have a lot of very important meetings those days :( trying to work out whether i can get there on Wednesday before it closes at 7.

i'll obviously just buy another kettle later today.

Crossposts: http://aralias.livejournal.com/803352.html

misbegotten

Here are the icons (including the ones I didn't post before) from the 31 Days meme. As always, feel free to use, though a comment if you're taking one would be nice. :)

Total Icon Count: 87

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misbegotten

I like making lists.

aralias

just threw dignity to the wind (there's an unfortunately much-aired video of me as a zombie-overlord who never got to the raising zombies part of the movie, in which i utter the lines 'dignity? dignity? fuck you!' - i didn't write these lines, but someone i'm the one in our friendship group who has the piss taken out of them for it. anyway), and emailed my ex-boss hopefully still-current mentor about 2k of words about what had happened in my team since she left. no better way to start a saturday morning, eh, emma? pretty sure you must miss us.

so - that's what i've done today so far. i also read a bit more of 'corpse marker' by... chris boucher! they reissued it ages ago and didn't tell me, so you can get it on kindle for £3.95! (which i did). the paper copies still seem to be very expensive - was it a limited edition? if so, why, bbc? why would you do that? rather excitingly as well, they've done an audio recording that's out in march read by none other than........ david collings! i'll have finished it by then, but i will consider getting that version as well. really enjoying the book thus far, though carnell was in the first scene (giving the thing the odd impression of being a blake's 7 novel that suddenly remembers there's a picture of tom baker on the cover - well, not of the kindle one) and has not come back yet. i am very much enjoying it, of course.

but - just come back from reading a lot of amazon reviews of this and chris's other novels. the general consensus seems to be - dull, not much goes on (not just in this, but the others). this troubles me because now i don't know whether to seek them out or not. the chief complaint which is that there are no more creepy robots couldn't bother me less - i like the way the robots look, but what i like in robots of death is stuff like 'i heard a cry'/'that was me'. so - maybe i will finish the book and see what i think. and then maybe read another one. do PDA fans and i share the same ideas of what's good or bad? do they even share the same ideas with each other?? (psi-ence fiction has some particularly contrasting reviews). mind you, i do think what chris does best is dialogue (and character creation) so it doesn't surprise me that his powers are somewhat dulled by the novel format where dialogue is only part of the stuff he has to write, instead of all of it. his kaldor city episode is definitely worse than anything he wrote for blake, but it's also much better than the other episodes of kaldor city that i heard (and i haven't heard them all). i think. my faith in my god is shattered! or is it? i am really enjoying this book.........

anyway - i haven't posted that meme thing. i feel today's question 'Five things you can’t live without' can be pretty much answered by looking at Nine things you do everyday. also - i could live without most things except food, oxygen etc, but i'd prefer not to obviously.

1. my bb
2. cat
3. extended support network, including work people
4. the internet
5. the nhs

although to be fair to that last one, three months ago my doctor sent me for an appointment that i had to take time off work for last tuesday (i.e. it had finally come round). by the time i got there, the very cheerful greek? surgeon (who was being observed by two silent medical students) said - 'oh, seems to have cleared up... temporarily anyway. you'll probably have to come back later but for now - go home and forget about it. what are we like in the nhs? ha ha'. and i was like o_0 i defended you!

Crossposts: http://aralias.livejournal.com/803127.html

likeadeuce

1. This is one of those realizations that falls somewhere between 'epiphany' and 'no duh, you're just noticing this?' Which is that my creative energy ebbs and flows a lot -- the energy involved in just being enthused and inventing things, but also the follow through to sit down and put things into words. And when I'm in a high-energy stage I run around and commit to as many things as I can think of and if it's something I can do immediately, great, but if it's not I end up in this energy ebb and I'm super over-committed and I just want to hide. So -- that may explain to some of you the way that I tend to approach projects, and how if I'm really keen to work on something on or discuss something with you and then drop off the map, I wasn't faking and I don't hate you, I'm just bad at portioning out brainspace and creative time. For me, it means -- well, being more aware of the commitments that I make when I'm on the high-energy point of a cycle, but also to understand why the part of it where I want to hide happens and not beat myself up for it. Just learn to account for it.

2. One of the things I did when I was being energetic a while ago was sign up for the Blue Christmeth Breaking Bad fan exchange -- and I got a very lovely Gus/Max in Chile backstory fic btw, The Sea Left Behind, which you should read if you love tragic queer South American drug lords (my favorite detail is that Gus basically gets into drug smuggling because it exasperates him to realize other people are doing it so inefficiently and, you know, one of the reasons I love Gus is his fierce competence in the midst of the "Walt and Jesse Suck at Doing Crime" show.)

But anyway, before I defaulted I did rewatch a lot of late-season BrBa and I have totally plotted a canon divergent story where Skyler and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle sneak off to a creative writing conference and have an affair. (Seriously, I described the logistics of the thing in such detail that

bessiemaemucho asked me whether I am currently having an affair; in any case, we concluded that I am better at crime than either Walter or Lydia, though probably not Skyler, who is the one of the three I would least like to match my wits against.) Anyway, the story would be from Skyler's POV, and Lydia exasperates her and drives her crazy by being tense all the time, but also, Lydia's tension is something she can actually do something about in a way she can't deal with Walter. I don't know, I can't figure out whether this was serious or crack fic-y or whether I should even try to reconcile with canon, but it did make me think about what it is I like about Lydia. Skyler and Marie are sometimes exasperating but still really flawed and complicated and interesting women and Lydia is. . .basically not, she's the Evil Corporate Bitch stock villain, yet (partly because of Laura Fraser's performance, which is somewhat mannered but also very precise), her manifest anxiety, the way she copes or doesn't cope with it, is something that looks very personally familiar to me, and that we don't get to see in sympathetic characters. Lydia on paper really isn't that complex, and she's certainly not morally defensible (even relative to Walter and Mike and Gus; she's better than Todd and his gang maybe in being not an actual Nazi that we know of, but essentially she's a completely indefensible person).

3. I recently watched all of My So-Called Life and somebody must have written some meta about how Jordan Catalano and Jesse Pinkman are basically the same character trapped in very different genres. Also about how obviously Brian Krakow wants Jordan to fuck him.

4. The real actual fannish Renaissance thing I want to talk about, though is movieverse Howard Stark, who showed up on Agent Carter this week and engaged in a fairly massive retcon ( spoilers for Agent Carter, though I'm pretty sure I'm gonna talk about this one outside the cut before long )

5. I briefly tried to use tumblr again, but I can't even figure out how to search for a tag and find stuff I like anymore? Like, I type in "Howard Stark" (shut up) and get a lot of texty posts thrown at me in a vaguely table-ish form and I don't know how to parse them. I'd ask people to help me use tumblr better but then the stuff I want to read wouldn't be there :(. [ETA: okay, I sort of get it

6. I also got a playstation 3 and a cat, and

stultiloquentia has me watching Glee and

spuffyduds is sort of moving in. I should post more.

Crossposts: http://likeadeuce.livejournal.com/1376910.html

metanewsmods posting in

metanews

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glinda

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Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Elbow - One Day Like This

tamsin posting in

girlgay

Half a Moon is a fourteen day multifandom challenge celebrating female characters, which will run from February 1 through Valentine’s Day.

We have some really cool stuff planned like a Friending meme, daily prompt posts, a rec meme, a podfic anthology...

Halfamoon is on Livejournal, Dreamwidth and Tumblr.

Hope to see you participate!

calliopes_pen

Never Will I Ever meme: Name three fics you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I may attempt to write a snippet of one of them.

Crossposts: http://calliopes-pen.livejournal.com/961996.html

paranoidangel

When you see this, share 3 lines from each of 3 WIPs.

Technically speaking I saw this a week ago, but I didn't have 3 WIPs then. Now I do! They are all first drafts, though, so a bit terrible and when I come to do the rewrite and editing stages these bits may not survive. I am taking the '3 lines' part liberally.

Lynda Day at the Chalet School
Lynda shrugged. "I have an important question to ask you."

Miss Bettany looked almost amused at that, but found an empty classroom and perched on the edge of the teacher's table, waiting. She didn't have to wait long.

"Why is Sarah editor of the Chaletian?"

"So that's what this is about." Miss Bettany's eyes twinkled. "Why does it matter?"

"Because I wanted to do it."

The Librarians sword fighting fic
"I see you fight with the traditional [something] technique," Flynn said, his blade moving wildly, yet somehow always seeming to be in the right place when he needed it to be.

"It's working very well," Jenkins said calmly.

"But you're not beating me." Flynn was gradually pushing Jenkins backwards.

"But I am expending less energy. How long can you keep this up?"

Sarah & Harry fic for onlyonebed
"I'll sleep on the floor." He wouldn't able to stretch out, but it wouldn't be too bad if there was an extra blanket in that wardrobe.

"There's not enough room," Sarah protested.

And, it turned out, no extra blankets, when Harry looked.

"Look on the bright side," Sarah said. "Maybe we'll be attacked before bedtime."

Mirrored from my blog.

escritoireazul

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bookgazing posting in

ladybusiness

How to tell your fake boyfriend you would like to become a robot:

1. Tell him, "I would like to be a robot." You can also say, "I am really a robot, not a female-bodied biological machine," because that is closer to the truth.

2. Do not tell him anything. If you do, you will also have to admit that you think about ways to hurt yourself so you have an excuse to replace body parts with machine parts.

3. Besides, insurance is unlikely to cover your transition into a robot.

A Merc. Rustard's "How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps" reminded me strongly of last year's Hugo contender "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love". Charming, quirky, artfully secretive, and with a similar melancholic emotional pull to Rachel Swirsky's story, "How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps" is for everyone who enjoys literature, robots, and crying in inappropriate places.

( Read more... )

"How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps" is available for free at Sciegentasy magazine.

Other Reviews

Susan Hated Literature

umadoshi

Well, my brain tried to hare off and do everything else it could think of rather than focus on writing the timeline that I really need for my psychic wolves fic, but via the judicious application of tea too late at night (around 12:30 AM) and

wildpear letting me cry at her on Twitter while I worked on it, I finally have a timeline written out (and emailed to her).

And gloriously, the time frame leading up to where the story actually starts overlapping with Feed is less of a probable clusterfuck than I thought, in terms of Georgia and Shaun's age and wolf lifespans and reproductive cycles and whatnot. (I've been looking up numbers for gray wolves and will blithely adjust them as needed for trellwolves--it's not as if the circumstances in the Bear/Monette books make for an ideal lifespan for the wolves or anything.)

Alas, things get fuzzy as soon as it reaches the overlap point, which is kind of funny since about half of the current 23,000 words are after that point.

It's a good thing I'd thoroughly let go of the idea of finishing the fic for the fest next month, since the act of assembling the timeline added a whole potential subplot that will likely take quite a lot of words to deal with. I'll see what

wildpear thinks. Mostly I'm pleased by the Potential Subplot, but I do want to get this done so I can get back to my mermaid AU.

...remember when I wrote fic that actually fit into canon? Me too. I also really want to get back to that. (But I love my mermaids. And I love Georgia's wolf in this one.)

Current Mood: sleepy
Crossposts: http://umadoshi.livejournal.com/556484.html

misbegotten

Gabriel is still my favorite Supernatural character.

frayadjacent

Current (Escapade) vid is the total and complete opposite of What's Mine is Yours. I have little trouble finding the clips I want, and matching them to the music is damn near effortless.

I did have a moment of "OMG this vid is terrible, I need to stop now", but it was because I was trying to force it into a structure that neither the song nor the footage supported. Lately when I get new vid ideas, my brain!vid is a lot less focused on imagining a few specific clips to a few specific moments in the song, and a lot more focused on how I'll structure the vid. "This verse will be about X, the chorus will be about Y", etc. It makes listening to my vidsongs on repeat a lot less fun than it used to be, but it's a helpful stage in the vidding (and idea elimination) process.

But with Current Vid, I was much more entranced with how the song made me feel a lot like how (certain aspects of) the source made me feel. And I wanted the vid to capture that. But then when I started vidding my brain went immediately to "structure! Which section is for which thing?!" and that was kinda ruining the vid. Last night I had an epiphany that this was the vid I'm always saying I want to make, a vid that's less about an argument and more about a feeling, that's less about coherently distilling something that struck me about canon (characters and/or relationships) and more about why I find this source so sexy.

inlovewithnight

Checking interest in a no_tags round for this year.

I finally typed up the fic bits I had handwritten; now I have to, er, write the rest of the story. crap.

I'm having a hard time staying awake so I guess that's all for tonight. xo

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/2098826.html

settiai

I made it into work today, but my head was pounding by mid-afternoon for a variety of reasons so I left an hour-and-a-half early. Then I went home and went straight to bed.

Let me state, for the record, there is nothing more disorienting than waking up a little after 7pm when you're used to waking up around 7am every day. It took me a minute or so of panicking before I realized, no, I hadn't slept through the entire night and still had plenty of time to actually do things. Like poke at Tumblr and do work for Part-Time Job.

Also? I'd like to know what on earth caused that dream about me driving to New Zealand (presumably from Maryland so, yeah, I don't even know?) in four hours to meet fannish friends (no idea who they were -- they didn't look like anyone I know in person from Vividcon or the DC scene, and I don't remember names), having my car towed, and then them not giving it back because of "green reasons" such as the fact that the ice machine only produces water (wtf, brain?) and that the brake lines were obviously cut years ago (seriously, wtf?).

On the positive (negative?) side, I looked up the conversion rate between the US dollar and the New Zealand dollar after I woke up, and apparently that part of my dream was scarily accurate.

Current Mood: drained
Crossposts: http://settiai.livejournal.com/2031394.html

umadoshi

--The suboptimal stuff first: it's been a not-great couple of days here. My current rewrite is going slowly (it's very text-dense), which is a bit stressful, and poor

scruloose was home today because he slipped on a badly-cleared icy patch when going in at work yesterday and wrenched his back. :/ We're really hoping it won't cause any problems when he goes in (again) for his tattoo tomorrow.

--We have another winter storm warning, with the forecast calling for it to hit late tomorrow night and carry over into Saturday.

--For anyone who's sad about Porn Battle not happening this year and who hasn't heard, there's going to be a "golden oldies" round at

pbam from February 15-25th, using prompts from prior Battles.

(For other Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant fans, yesterday I posted a consolidated list of all of the prompts for her books over at

aftertheendtimes. Most of the prompts from those previous Battles are for the Toby books and Newsflesh, but there are also a few for InCryptid and Velveteen vs.)

--As my "WHO NEEDS SLEEP?" brain reminded me the other night, I really do need to do up a timeline for the Newsflesh psychic wolves AU (which also really needs a title, because surely the title would be shorter than writing that out). Part of me is resistant, though, and I think it's because an actual timeline, even a draft version, will probably drive home how fast and loose I have to play with the time frame to make the story work, and "fast and loose" isn't exactly one of my strengths. I may post separately about this at some point and seek input (general fannish/fanfic circles sorts of input, not series specific, I don't think) while I try to nail down a bit more of it.

--As I mentioned a few days ago,

wildpear does this magical thing of assessing a story or draft that's a tangle in my head and sifting out what I'm actually doing and what impressions she has about what I'm trying to do, which is a lifesaver when I'm messed up about something. She did that for my psychic wolves last week, and this morning I woke up and found an email where she'd written it out for me, and just having that to look at helps. ^_^ (My conscious feelings re: this fic are along the lines of "Ack, this whole thing is a mess and traumatic and characters are hurting and What Does It All Mean? And why is it so fucked up?" [The answer to "Why is it so fucked up?" really does just start with "...take a moment to consider the canon you're drawing on for the wolves."])

What did you recently finish reading?

Most recently, Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl and Attachments, with Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest in between. I really enjoyed all three, although I'd say Fangirl worked best for me. It and Attachments are very different books, which fortunately I knew going in. And where I bonded with Fangirl almost immediately, Attachments took a lot longer. The premise there is inherently skeevy, and self-aware about it, and deals with that as well as possible, I'd say. I did wind up clicking with it fairly strongly about halfway through. But I think I'm far more likely to revisit Fangirl. As for The Darkest Part of the Forest, I'd say it hasn't dislodged The Coldest Girl in Coldtown as my favorite of Black's books, but it was a good read, and I was unsurprisingly pleased by the Newsflesh nod. (It'd be pretty obviously a Newsflesh nod even with no outside context, but lest anyone think I simply see it everywhere, she confirmed it on Tumblr when someone asked.)

What are you currently reading?

Nothing!

What do you think you'll read next?

I'm not sure. I have some graphic novels out of the library (vol. 1 of Velvet and three Marvel volumes, including vol. 1 of Ms. Marvel), so I need to read those fairly soon. I was vaguely planning to pick up The Goblin Emperor next, but right now I'm feeling a bit more like reading something set closer to our own world, so I'm going to have to look over the to-read bookcase. (Reading from my shelves of purchased books for a change is turning out to be quite lovely.) Maybe I should tackle Sinner. Or maybe none of these things will be next!

(I don't own either of Rowell's other two books, so while I want to lay hands on them reasonably quickly--especially since

wildpear read Eleanor & Park last week--they're not high contenders for the immediate future.)

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://umadoshi.livejournal.com/556154.html

paranoidangel

Chalet School was my most requested topic. And had the questions that required the most thought, so I left it till last, so I could think about it. Which meant that I started thinking about it when I started writing this.

Despite reading some boarding school stories as a child and loving them, I never came across the Chalet School. I didn't discover it at all until a few years ago when I decided to re-read some children's books I'd liked as a child. Someone mentioned Chalet School (probably hhertzof). I went into one of the charity shops in town that had a room full of books and found an omnibus of the first two for 25p.

I then ended up reading the rest of the series from a combination of cheap paperbacks I bought, paperbacks and hardbacks borrowed from selenay (who rudely moved to Canada when I still had one to go - I had to go out there in order to read it) and transcriptions. I've since read some of the ones written by other people and published by Girls Gone By.

It is infinitely crossover-able. Any female character who could have been around during the second half of the 20th century could have been a pupil there or taught there. Male characters are more tricky because they didn't have many male teachers and most of the men in the series were doctors at the San.

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Mirrored from my blog.

summerstorm

Welllll, so much for that! The thing I was working on for the agency was put on hold while their parent agency did something else, so I'm back at my Starbucks in Belsize Park without two grand in the horizon anymore. I invoiced for £250 a day instead of £200 because it was less than five days, but I haven't heard back from them yet so of course I'm freaking out about that, too. I'm supposed to get paid for the two days but I don't want there to be any complications because I'm charging them a bit more. I think it's fair considering they booked me for two weeks and then sent me home. Good thing I was too paranoid to buy a travelcard (and that the travelcard was more expensive than paying as I went anyway).

I am incredibly sad, which is of course not great. I do feel somewhat encouraged by the fact that I was able to get so much work done in the past two days, because it means I can do more in a day than I thought, if I don't get out of bed in the afternoon. Which... I did today, but it was before 2 PM and I'm depressed both clinically and in the emotional sense, so whatever. I brought my own coffee to Starbucks. I'm not in a different position than I was Friday before I got this gig, but I'd got so excited about being able to fucking BREATHE by being two months ahead on rent that I just. I'm so SAD. They said they'd call me back when things were back on track but it wasn't a promise so I'm pretty much assuming they won't.

It made me want to get a part-time job, this whole thing. But I want a part-time job that pays decently, and I have to fix up my CV and I don't really have money for going places for interviews and I'm just so goddamn sad I want to hide forever.