netgirl_y2k

After chopping and changing almost hourly for the last fortnight I made up my mind in the voting booth. My head said vote No; you've made your point, and they're offering Devo Max, which is what you would have voted for had it been on the ballot. My heart said what the hell; fortune favours the bold.

So Yes it was.

Then again, in the last general election I voted for the Lib Dems, so I've got form for voting for people who talk the good talk then turn out to be lying liars who lie.

Not unlike Jon Snow, I know nothing.

Although I'm not sure I should really be allowed a vote. Last night I drank two huge bottles of 7% Belgian beer on an empty stomach and strong antibiotics, and accidentally bought three hundred quid's worth of non-refundable flights to Munich.

This was because my beloved dog Eustace was put down yesterday because of a brain tumour. Eustance was -- I want to say he was a good dog, but he really wasn't. I've had dogs all my life and Eustace was genuinely the worst dog I have ever owned. I'd rescued him, and he was a menace from the day I brought him home and he tried to eat next door's prize winning pomeranian to last week when he decided he'd like to live in the car. Despite this, or maybe because of it (I was the only one who loved him, so I had to love him all the harder) this has really, properly devastated me in a way that no other pet I've lost has.

I know it's boring looking at pictures of other people's dead pets, so I'll put it under the cut, but it's a cute picture of him and there's a mug on his head, so...

( Read more... )

So I'm off to try to cheer myself up in Munich. Whether I want to or not, really. Did I mention these tickets are non-refundable? Anyone know the city? Things I should see/do/drink?

-This week I got suckered into teaching my younger sister how to drive. I think I have given the finger to more people this week than I have in ten plus years of driving, or indeed the whole rest of my life. I am kind of appalled and amazed at the number of people who think that, if someone is obviously new to driving, say because they are in a car covered with L plates, and they get flustered at a junction and stall the car, then the thing to do is rev right up behind them, flashing your lights, and holding down your horn. I mean, it's not going to fucking speed up proceedings, is it?

I've never had road rage; but I seem to have driving instructor rage.

It's going quite well. The only thing is, my sister, who has many otherwise stellar qualities, is one of those people who has difficulty accepting that she is ever in the wrong. And she will patiently explain to you why she was right, and actual, objective reality was wrong. Over the years I have learned to mostly tune these explanations out-- but, 1) it really would be better if she didn't insist on explaining these things to me when we sitting in the car trying to get onto a roundabout, and 2) you are in a toyota hatchback, and he is in an articulated lorry; this is the very definition of a might makes right situation!

-I went to see Maleficent, which I loved! I liked lots of things about it, particularly I liked that it was less than two hours long and not part one of whatever. It has become a bit of free entertainment amongst my friends, of an evening, to get me started on my genuine and lasting bitterness about Desolation of Smaug.

We went for a drink after Maleficent and I was talking away about how much I'd liked it, and how feminist retellings of fairytales were pretty much my bag, anyway. Always a bit of a risk - one of my dearest friends is a wonderful woman, kind and funny, she's prone to baking me red velvet cupcakes when she thinks I need bucking up... she also uses the word feminazi un-ironically. So I got to talking about the scene where ( spoilers ) And I was accused of being a pervert for reading such things into a children's film. Not in a horrible way, really, just in a 'oh you, with your feminism and overthinking things, bless'

It was just interesting because I realised I was talking to my mates in the pub as though they were, well, you guys. It was a weird moment of inadvertent crossing the streams.

Also, I thought pervert was kind of a strong word. Many years ago we used to share thin-walled student housing. I know things about some of these people that no self respecting homosexual should know.

-I have been writing further tropey fic(lets)! I have now written 10k of tropey ridiculousness in a fortnight; let us never speak of this again.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart (LotS; Cara/Kahlan, Kahlan/Richard; 1200 words)

Is it still a soulbond AU if the soulbonds are more, er, guidelines than anything else? Also, I still can't write Cara/Kahlan without significant wailing and gnashing of the teeth over Richard. In my defense, Richard is a precious puppy.

Practice Makes Perfect (GoT; Sansa/Margaery; 2000 words)

I'm going to call this a sixth form college AU, because that way I feel better about having written what is essentially a high school AU. Also, I am ridiculously fixated on the idea of Sansa as a lesbian; as an identity, I mean, not just an excuse for femslash.

No Gravity, No Fallen Angels (Merlin; Gwen & Morgana; 1900 words)

Um, behold as an atheist attempts to write an angels & demons AU without ever alluding to god or religion!

Today I had to change all the locks in my house. Not for reasons of crime, or anything, but just because they were old and sticky and getting to the point where I could no longer brute-force-and-ignorance it. And I'm here to tell you, that is not a job that's reassuring in it's complexity. Twenty minutes and one screwdriver was all it took. I'm seriously reconsidering taking up a life of crime.

*

The rarewomen archive opened today (yay) and I have read shamefully little (boo) but it looks like there's a lot of awesome stuff there, and I have bookmarks coming out my ears of things to get to when I have a little more time.

I wrote my fic about Arianne Martell, a character I got progressively more interested in as I wrote about her, so that was neat, even though I think the fic itself is a little throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, you know? On the other hand, I finally managed to write something where there literally is a queen in every corner. So.

The Sun's Daughter
A Song of Ice and Fire; PG-13; 5115 words; Arianne Martell/Tyene Sand, Arianne Martell, Asha Greyjoy, Arya Stark, assorted Sand Snakes and Dornishmen

Arianne is her father's daughter, her uncle's niece, and the first Princess of Dorne since the days of the first Daenerys to not bend-her-knee to the Iron Throne.

*

As much as I would love to stay up and read more Rarewomen fic, or even wait for the remix archive to open. But I have to get up a five tomorrow morning, so I really must go to bed.

Five a.m. Bloody hell, only grown ups have to get up at five a.m., and if I'm a grown up why have I had cheese on toast for my last five meals running?

One of life's eternal mysteries.

Salvage - Alexandra Duncan
The King's Peace - Jo Walton

Salvage is a dystopian YA, sort of. It's about a girl who's grown up on a deep space colony ship which has developed this deeply patriarchal culture, all the men have multiple wives, and a lot of the young boys get left behind planetside; I couldn't help but think of them as the space mormons. And when the protagonist gets kicked out of the space mormons she's got to adjust to life on Earth, both the culture, which is totally different, and the gravity, which is so much higher than she grew up with, first on a giant inhabited island of garbage in the Pacific, and later in Mumbai.

It's good, not massively subtle, but then, since when has dystopian YA ever been subtle. And all the different settings were pretty fascinating.

The King's Peace is a hold over from March that I finished in April; it's an alternate telling of Arthurian legend told from the POV of one of the king's female knights. It took me a long time to get into in, the plot meandered a lot. But I did end up liking it, certainly enough to read the rest of the trilogy. I think part of the reason it took me so long to get into it was that it was Jo Walton's first novel, and it's always a little frustrating to read an early effort by an author whose later works you adore. It reminded me a lot of The Deed of Paksenarrion, so if you liked that one--

I'm still dipping in and out of The Doomsday Book as well as Life Mask by Emma Donoghue, which I'm really liking.

*

I read so little this month, which I refuse to feel bad about. Books being one of the delights of my life which I refuse to attach feelings of guilt to. I also like scotch and cake; hard not to feel at least a little guilty about scotch and cake.

On the other hand I have finished my Remix and Rarewomen fics early, which isn't at all like me, hurrah!

I also did the Merlin remix, which I must confess I signed up for with less than the optimum amount of enthusiasm (if I have to write Merlin/Arthur I can always write five hundred and one words and then orphan it, I thought). But I'm glad I did because I ended up being quite pleased with the fic I wrote, which I can't talk about yet, but what I can do is rec you the awesome remix of my fic:

The One Where a Bear and a Dragon (and Morgana) Save the Ending From Being Eaten By Canon (The Grimm and Bear It Remix)

Which takes a daft wee OT4 fic I wrote in S2 and turns it into everything I could want about Morgana and Aithusa and the possibility of a better destiny.

*

The other things is, I've said that I'd been referred to a counsellor type person for some cognitive behavioural therapy, didn't I? So I've been doing that for the last couple of months, and my last session was yesterday.

I am now officially totally sane and normal... Well, at least as normal as NHS Scotland is prepared to pay for me to be.

I do think it's helped, though I was sceptical at first. I don't exactly feel like a bird on the wing, no, but I'm also not as paralysed by anxiety and my various neuroses as I was a few months ago. The most surprising thing is that I'm drinking a lot less now, I guess I didn't realise how much I was using alcohol as a crutch until I didn't feel like I had to, you know?

I have been in a sulk all week because of a really shit job interview I had on Monday. Of course I was asked about the fact that I've been out of work for a few years now, which is a fair enough question, and gives me the chance to go into my "As you know, Bob..." answer about being a carer, and how it was unplanned, but ultimately improving and character building, and the many things I learned doing it that could be applied to paid employment. All fine and dandy, until the interviewer asked if there was anyone they could call to verify that I really had been a carer...

It wasn't even that they asked, not really, it was they way they asked, the assumption that of course you were a liar until proven otherwise. I mean, I have my flaws, and I am not above the odd white lie - but I would not make up a loved one suffering from dementia to cover up the fact that I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Anyway, I didn't get the job. Which is rather a relief. At the risk of sounding like someone David Cameron would like to see shot on the village green, I didn't really want it, I just wanted the interview practice. I would prefer not to work in a call centre again unless I'm really up against it. Plus, I've worked places where the management have that distrustful us-against-them attitude towards the staff and the atmosphere is invariably toxic and awful.

The other thing I have been doing this week is reading my way through the Dangerous Women anthology, which like a lot of people I was mainly reading for the new ASOIAF novella in it. I could have just skipped the rest of the book and read The Princess and the Queen, but it was the very last story in the book, and that would have felt, in some obscure and difficult to articulate way, like cheating.

My absolute least favourite story in the anthology was Diana Gabaldon's contribution, which was an overlong story about Jaime Fraser's manpain, and did nothing but reassure me that never reading the Outlander series has been a good life choice. It left me annoyed not only with Diana Gabaldon, but with the editors for not insisting that a tacked-on afterthought of a subplot about a woman thief didn't really count, and they would keep her in mind if they were ever putting together an anthology called faux-Scottish manpain. Indeed, a few of the contributors seemed to have missed the point (or, at least, what I wanted to be the point) writing stories about dude protagonists being led astray by femme fatals. Joe R. Lansdale and Lawrence Block (whose contribution was a protracted snuff-scene, eww) were particularly guilty of this.

But that's the nature of anthologies, isn't it, that you'll like some stories better than others. I unsurprisingly enjoyed the Brandon Sanderson one, and I really liked that Jim Butcher's contribution was a Dresden Files story from Molly's point of view. I still read and enjoy the Dresden Files, but one of my biggest nitpicks with it is that Butcher creates all these powerful female characters then seems to go to some pains to show how they are all less powerful than Harry, so it was refreshing to see Molly in her element and from her own pov. The Lev Grossman story was another example of how I like Lev Grossman's writing, but that he has never written a single character that I didn't think could be improved by the application of a partially defrosted haddock to the face. The Joe Abercrombie and Robin Hobb (dottie old women getting a new lease of life in an AU dystopia, squee!) contributions made me want to give both authors another shot.

I ended up really enjoying the historical fiction stories about female Russian fighter pilots during WWII, Constance of Sicily, and Nora, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine (not in the same story, obviously). I think that part of the reason I've been having so much trouble getting into what I've been reading recently, is that I've been reading SF/F almost exclusively and I really should read more historical fiction, or literary, or crime fiction, just to break things up a bit. On this note, if anyone has any recs for fiction about interesting women of history (real or not) I'd love to hear them.

The Princess and the Queen --

Okay, obviously anyone suggesting that we should chain GRRM to a keyboard and only feed him if he meets a minimum daily wordcount is being an arse and should kindly shut up. But. But, if he's writing anyway, and he's writing in the ASOIAF universe anyway, and he's got the show coming up behind him (I know S4 is only covering the latter part of ASoS, but the trailers have reminded me how little the plot actually advances over the course of AFfC and ADwD) then I really think he ought to be spending that time writing The Winds of Winter.

But if he was going to write a historical novella I would much rather have had this than another Dunk and Egg instalment or heaven forfend, The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion bloody Lannister. Because I was interested in The Dance of the Dragons, and fascinating Targaryen women are one of my niche interests in this universe. Maybe Aegon isn't a fake? Maybe he really is a Targaryen dude? Maybe that's why he's so utterly, utterly uninteresting to me?

But mainly two things:

1) Writing it as an historical account written by a maester years later was an interesting exercise in structure, but also made it seem like any halfway decent fanfiction writer could have tackled this, and seriously, George, Winds of Winter?

2) The dragon-riders, and the way the dragons were used in battle was a bit Temeraire-like, Temeraire-lite? And I had always liked the idea that the dragons had died out over a century or so as magic left the world and they became increasingly difficult to hatch. So the reveal that despite being nigh on un-killable, they were, to the last dragon, killed off in this super convenient Targaryen civil war felt a bit... contrived.

So, yes, it was good from a completionist point of view, but mainly... Winds of Winter?

Firstly, there is no reason for any human person to drink sambuca. Ever.

Secondly, bloody ouch.

Thirdly, I hope this marriage my best friend is undertaking sticks; partly because I think his future wife is terrific and I wish only for their happiness, but mostly because another stag do might be the end of me.

I have always had mostly straight boys as friends -- partly because a lot of my mates are holdovers from our student days, and at uni I sneered at the idea of the gay society and seeking out friends just because we shared a sexuality (I was an arse back then), and partly because having spent the latter part of my twenties as a full time carer, I ended up mostly socialising with straight couples because the people I knew with very young children were the only ones who were keeping the same sort of hours as me and didn't mind that I was gently rattling with stress and always looked like I'd recently been crying, because that's how they felt too.

And anyway, they're all individually great chaps, but I usually hang out with them in ones and twos, or with their partners. I'd forgotten how much being the only woman in a crowd of straight guys can feel like hard work, even if you're being treated like one of the boys, especially if you're being treated like one of the boys. There were a couple of guys there that I didn't really know, too, cousins of the groom, and a bit more, ahem, laddish than I would usually spend time with, so that made it a bit harder to relax, because I couldn't shake the feeling that I was about to do a midnight set at Chuckles, you know?

I mean, the stag do was fun. Amsterdam was lovely, I'd like to go back someday and see it properly when I'm not trapped in a vortex of "banter" and flaming sambucas. Fun was definitely had, but I do feel like I need a weekend away to recover from my weekend away.

I apparently wrote 21,000 words of posts this December. That's-- I could have written a big bang fic, or a novella or something. I mean, I wouldn't have, obviously, I'm just saying I could have.

I posted 28 days out of 31, which was really cool, and it's been lovely chatting with you folks more regularly. I rather dropped the ball on the posting meme this last week, and that's been for a couple of reasons 1) my acquiring the first season of Breaking Bad, followed swiftly by the second season of Breaking Bad, and 2) I've had a bit of a spiral of anxiety, and insomnia, and toxic thoughts these last few days.

I'm not making any new year's resolutions this year, partly because talk about setting yourself up for failure, but mostly because my best friend is getting married in January, and I've got the stag weekend to get through. Just before you are spending a weekend in Amsterdam with a bunch of straight boys is not the time to be swearing off wine, women, and song.

But there's one thing I have to do early in the new year, and I shall post about it here so you can hold me to it: I have to see a doctor about this anxiety thing. It's been a problem for over a year now, sometimes cripplingly so, sometimes manageable. And I have various ways of dealing with it, from at least knowing that it isn't rational, it's the brain weasels playing silly buggers with me, to singing Sex on Fire at the top of my lungs, because you try having a panic attack while singing Sex on Fire at the top of your lungs. The downside of this is that you are singing Sex on Fire at the top of your lungs, and people think that you're peculiar with dubious taste in music.

I went to the doctor in the summer and was prescribed some heart medication for the worst physical symptoms of the panic attacks, and they were great, I've even squirrelled the last of them away to get me to Amsterdam. I figure once I get there I'll be able to avail myself of some, ahem, alternate methods of coping.

Quick aside, note to self: stop with the self-medication malarky, this is how people get themselves into bother.

But that was only meant to be a short term solution - like, two weeks short term - and did nothing for the underlying brain weasels. I need to find out if there's something I can take on a longer term basis, or to get on the waiting list for some kind of therapy. Because this paralysis, of my life, of the spirit, can't go on.

Because the other thing I need to do next year is apply myself more thoroughly to job hunting. I was incredibly fortunate, in that when my grandmother passed away she left me enough money that I could spend this year doing odd bits of temping and freelancing as they appeared or appealed to me, but otherwise live off my inheritance. But this was never meant to be a longterm strategy, even if it was a financially viable one, which it isn't. It isn't that kind of inheritance; I'm not a character in an Agatha Christie novel. And I think the though of this - of signing on, of explaining the massive gaps in my CV (I was a carer, and then I was having a low level nervous breakdown), of explaining that no I don't want to stack shelves in poundland for free - is what has prompted the brain weasels to do a number on my rational brain.

Anyway, I also want to read good books, drink good scotch, and meet interesting women, and possibly discuss good books with them while drinking fine scotch; but first I shall investigate the possibility of better living through pharmacology.

I've talked before about how my family tend to go abroad for the holidays, all except me; and the wealth of little orphan annie jokes that I could, and have, spun from this.

This year, everyone's at home. Guys, it's awful. Spending the holidays with your family only works if you aren't together the rest of the year. I mean, my family are pretty close, and we rub along together very civilly, generally speaking. But these last few days, it's the sense of confinement, and enforced jollity, and the atmosphere of passive aggression so thick I'm surprised it hasn't set the smoke detector off. We're all stuck in, having an unofficial competition to see whose stress induced ulcer will gnaw through their stomach lining first. And making tea, passive-aggresively.

Which makes this the perfect day to talk about my favourite places to go alone.

I go lots of places alone, not a in weird, anti-social, trainee serial killer type way, but in comfortable with my own company, I have different interests and keep different hours from many of my friends type way.

Like, I don't understand people who won't go to the cinema alone. You'll be sitting in the dark, not talking. It's the very definition of Company Not Required. Actually, I really want to go to the pictures soon, just to get me out of this house, I'm probably the only person in the world who looked at the runtime for Desolation of Smaug and went: Well, that's just not long enough! I go to see bands by myself too, for similar reasons, it'll be dark and you'll be watching what's going on on stage anyway. This does require a sense of timing, so that you get there just as the music starts, and don't have all that standing around the Glasgow Barrowlands drinking by yourself awkwardness.

I do go to the pub by myself, not in a creepy daytime drinker way, or on Friday or Saturday nights because that's what my friends are for. But if you find yourself with an unexpected free hour on, say, a Sunday afternoon, and you've got a newspaper or a book, there's nothing nicer than an empty bar.

I could spend hours by myself in a bookshop or library. I'm that visitor who comes round your house and makes a beeline for your books; I'm not judging you, I'm coveting your possessions, slightly less creepy. Somebody once managed to seduce me using just a room of books; and it was a rented house, they weren't even her books.

One of my dogs is a bit anti-social, loves people, a bit unpredictable around other dogs, the first week I had him he tried to eat next door's prize winning pomeranian, I don't want to talk about. So I spend lots of my dog-walking time traipsing around bizarre places, up hills and down dales, where I hope not to run into other dog walkers. One of my favourites is walking up by the windfarm out of town, which lots of people say is an eyesore, but I think is strangely beautiful. Clears the mind marvellously, me, the dogs, and nobody else in sight. Of course, given the way the weather's been these last few weeks, I'm starting to think that I'm not a dog person after all, I'm a cat person who's made a huge mistake.

Let's see, I like world-building. And not even just super-detailed world-building, although his coherent magical systems are a big part of why I've liked every Brandon Sanderson novel I've picked up, and that Jacqueline Carey's world-building spans the globe is one of the more impressive achievements of the Kushiel books -- although in the latter books, I do wish she weren't so determined to show me every last inch of it, you know?

But what really floats my boat is internally consistent world-building. Harry Potter works according to the rule of puns and boarding school adventures; Discworld is amazingly coherent considering it was made up as Pratchett went along according to the rule of funny and current social commentary. It's part of why Merlin was a mess, because it didn't even know what its own rules were. I just think you pick your rules and then you have to play by them -- nothing will throw me out of narrative faster than a universe contradicting its own established mythology: if there's no magic, there's never any magic; if your vampires can't go out in daylight, don't tell me later that they can with sunscreen and a heavy coat; if you can't travel back into your own timeline, etc.

It ties into the Doctor Who thing; it would be one thing if a female or non-white Doctor was going to contradict the established mythology of the show, but after you make it canon that Time Lords can change sex and race, you shouldn't be surprised when people want to know why the Doctor always has to be a white guy.

I like stories that start from the middle, and parse out the exposition once you're already knee deep in the plot. This doesn't work at all with stories that start from the end, because that removes any sense of jeopardy for me.

I like third person limited much more than third person omniscient; I blame fandom entirely for this.

I like stories that play with things like identity and memory and losing and finding yourself; the Stark sisters and their various identities, Theon, bloody Theon. I always wanted Once Upon a Time to do more with the fact that almost every character has two identities and two sets of memories in their heads. Given this, you'd think amnesia would be a big kink of mine in fandom, but -- eh, a head injury serious enough to leave you with no memory, but without any other symptoms is one of those things that always stretches my suspension of disbelief, and even when its magically induced amnesia it's hardly ever done with the characters and pairings I'm into. I did think that there would be a darkly hilarious story in latter series Morgana forgetting everything after about mid S1, and it freaking the fuck out of everyone.

I like remixes and retellings of well-known stories; fairytales, mythology, Shakespeare; Wicked, Lavinia, The Penelopiad, things of that ilk. I like dragons as an integral part of any fictional world; Temeraire, Tooth & Claw, A Natural History of Dragons, etc. I will crawl on my belly over broken glass for a princess/lady-knight dynamic; all while wondering why Brienne/Sansa isn't a thing in fandom. Recs for any of these kinds of things greatly appreciated!

I like female protagonists, and actually pay much more attention to that than whether the author is a woman; which I'm pretty certain is an arse backwards way to go about actually changing things.

And comes in the form of a list.

-My favourite pizza topping is the thoroughly unimaginative pepperoni and mushroom.

-I am an occasional vegetarian. When I first came out as a lesbian I thought vegetarianism and cunnilingus were both compulsory. I still sometimes go six months to a year without eating meat and not really noticing or missing it, and sometimes I miss the fuck out of steak. Note: this time frame only applies to the vegetarianism.

-My favourite food is cheese, my favourite cheese is brie, and were there not a history of heart disease in my family I would eat it by the wheel.

-I can cook. Not well, but well enough that should the microwaves revolt and decide to starve us out, I'd scrape by.

-I learned to cook when I first went to look after my grandmother; she'd been in hospital for months after a broken hip, had hated the food, and lost a lot of weight. As a result a lot of the things I can cook are the sort of things you should be eating if you are elderly, and frail, and need feeding up.

-I make a treacle tart capable of making grown adults weep.

-I can make liver and onions that my Gran always said tasted exactly like what she had as a girl in the twenties and thirties. I never figured out of this was a compliment or not; I always found the bloody stuff inedible.

-I cook a very creditable medium steak. I actually like my steak rare, but I'm afraid of poisoning myself and dying.

-I am the queen of putting things on top of toast and calling it a meal. For example, for tea tonight is egg, spinach and pesto on toast, which I shall then present as florentine toast.

-I am trying to learn how to cook new things, though. My recent googling has included such things as "how do you make pâté" and "how to spatchcock a chicken", interspersed with such things as "how long does human blood take to congeal" and "how to dispose of a corpse using the Edinburgh night bus service". Um, those are for something I'm writing. No real world applications, I promise. It looks like the search history of someone who'd kill their partner, if only they could decide what to have for tea afterwards.