In case anyone's been wondering what's going on in my head lately, here! Have the panicked ramblings of a madwoman.

So of course I sign up for Yuletide and then think, oh man, I love this fandom I received as a request, but man, I really wanted to write in THESE fandoms, too. And now I've ended up writing three Yuletide stories at the same time, only one of which was actually requested. And of course that story is the one that I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO WRITE WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MYSELF. It's just such an amazing source and I don't have the slightest idea if I'm doing it justice or not! Brb, weeping into my keyboard.

And then there is ghostfic, and I am steadfastly stuck on this one scene that I already wrote, which got deleted by my computer, because it hates me. There is no other explanation. Skynet is here, and it is Vista. And don't even get me started on my Temeraire high school AU, which began as a fun OT3 piece and somehow has devolved into a Roland/Laurence kinkfest. That is definitely a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, but it has also totally derailed my plot. /o\ DAMN YOUR SEXY EYES, JANE ROLAND.

Of course, there is also my new source of madness and delight, the From the Ashes RP community I joined recently. It is a bandom HP AU and guys, I cannot get enough of it. I spend gleeful hours composing comments and picking out icons and scouring everyone else's threads. I could easily spend MY ENTIRE LIFE playing this game. It is wonderful in all ways and you should all go read it immediately, but omg, I have so many other things to be doing! I set out to have a productive day and instead I find myself spending hours hopefully refreshing my inbox and daydreaming about porny interludes for other characters.

And! In case you didn't think I was crazy enough, I also had this Cunning (ahaha not so much) Plan to write a ficlet for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. I am deeply afraid this is going to be a massive failure, as are all of my creative endeavors of late (SELF, JUST FINISH SOMETHING, WHY ARE YOU STARTING TEN MILLION NEW PROJECTS?).

I need to get back in a successful writing groove. I need to post something and have it out there and be like, LOOK, SELF, YOU CAN IN FACT COMPLETE THINGS. In fact, flist, help me out! Take a vote!

( "Pro cras" means "For tomorrow" in Latin. Good to know, eh? )

So, yes. If I do not post whatever it is I should be posting by next Friday, please poke me with pointy sticks.

But HOMG, WTF is up with most of my icons suddenly turning into red x-boxes? I AM GREATLY DISPLEASED.

So, I was playing around in clex_monkie89's Changing Channels meme, where people have been submitting all sorts of brilliant ideas for AU fics based on the latest Supernatural episode (5.08, fyi), and I wound up actually writing one for Due South. Because clearly I am not supposed to be hard at work on at least twelve other things. Er. *shuffles feet*

Still, it was fun! If you like Supernatural, I encourage you to go play. There are so many awesome prompts and hilarious fics! It is like a smorgasbord of AUs. What is not to love, I ask you.

But yes, I am reposting mine here for posterity. If you read this, please keep in mind it is highly un-betaed and totally and utterly ridiculous.

Off the Map
PG
DS/SPN wacky fusion

( My name is Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I have remained, attached as liaison officer with the Canadian Consulate. )


Then hrhbunburybrought up the excellent point that I was missing a Dead!John, and so this was born:


( FRASER: My father said something that's always stuck with me, Ray. VECCHIO: Your father never shut up, did he? )


Yeah, I know. There are basically no redeeming qualities there. Still. There's no good clean fun like Canadian fun, am I right?

A list:

( i've got troubled thoughts )

So yeah, on the balance, my life is pretty amazing. Now, off to go look like a leper in public. Did I mention the blister makes me lisp? I'm such a catch, guys, seriously. And I'll probably be procrastinating like mad on cleaning tomorrow morning, so it's a safe bet I'll be fiddling around online. Sorry again for being such an e-tool, friends. I will try to make it up to you, honest. *pokes at several Word documents hopefully*

I am normally not a meme person, but my resolve has crumbled lately. Stolen from 42footprints, here's a meme about how much I fangirl all of you. ♥

Comment on this entry, and I will:

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, a word etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favourite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

You know you want to play! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. Etc.

LOVING YOU IS EASY 'CAUSE YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL. Seriously, I can't decide whether to laugh hysterically or be painfully turned on. MAYBE BOTH. BRILLIANT, SIR. BRILLIANT.

Mmmm, how better to procrastinate on life and my faux-Big Bang than with an icon meme?

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose. (ETA: I am using thesoftlyforgotten variant, in which you write a story snippet instead of talking willy nilly.)
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

softlyforgotten chose my icons with what I feel is a slight degree of malice, but I will sally forth anyhow.

( Some are original, some are snippets from WiPs, and some are entirely blasphemous and likely to get me struck down dead by divine wrath before dinner.  )

ETA: WHY DOES EVERYTHING I WRITE WIND UP TEN THOUSAND TIMES LONGER THAN I INTENDED. SERIOUSLY, GUYS. WTF.

So, the following entry is bound to be entirely self-indulgent and rambling. I doubt it will make much sense. I just finished watching Generation Kill for the second time. For those not in the know, Generation Kill is an HBO mini-series based on Evan Wright's book on the Iraq War, and the First Battalion Recon Marines who were there at the start of it. This is not at all my typical fare. I am not a military buff. Any yet, and yet. I am not entirely sure what prompted me to watch this series--a flist of a flist had a fic posted, and I got intrigued by the small but passionate fandom. Plus, not to be entirely shallow, but the actors are, in my humble opinion, painfully gorgeous. But as I think many of us know, you don't actually have to watch/read the source material to enjoy a fandom. But I did anyway, and by the end of the first episode, I was irrevocably hooked.

( To anyone that happens to read this: watch Generation Kill. )

And if all that's not enough? The show's also slashy as hell. So get you hence, gentle readers. It's pretty fucking ninja.

GUESS WHO JUST PASSED HER MASTER'S EXAMS. GUESS.


:D


I am sorry I have been neglecting comments and emails and things; I promise I will catch up as soon as I have finished swooning into a pile of alcohol and sleep deprivation. I can't even believe that just happened. GUYS. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF.

I have a very important question to share before I get back to my various tasks for the day.

Y/N: Amanda Fucking Palmer as Jane Roland?



Proof from my camera:






Proof from the wide, wide internet:

( who needs love when there's law and order )

Okay, so that was just a filthy, dirty excuse for me to picspam Amanda Palmer. Whoops. But the point still lies! I bet she would be an AWESOME Jane. She's totally got the voice and the laugh and the OHGODHOT. Just, you know. I think sexy, independent, strong--my mind automatically goes to Amanda Palmer. And from there to sex. Um. NNNRGH. Plus, the idea of Amanda Palmer telling off  the Duke of Wellington makes me die a little inside with pure joy. Feel free to offer corroborating evidence and/or other candidates in the comments! Also, if you have somehow mysteriously missed listening to Amanda Palmer's music (solo or otherwise), I suggest you rectify that at once, because HOT DAMN. I can offer you SEKRIT LINKS if need be.

Annnnd back to revising.

So, t_lyrical  last week posted this stunningly, painfully hot picture (scroll down a bit past the other awesome pics and check out the colored version) as a birthday present for softlyforgotten, and I found myself constantly going back to admire it. This, I thought, this deserves a commentfic. LOOK AT IT. So I started writing, and then I kept writing, and kept writing... Then I stopped for a moment, and thought, 'Huh. You know, I don't think this will actually fit in the comments. WHAT HAVE I DONE.' I admit, I am incredibly nervous about posting this--my first public porn fic! I want a party. And a plaque. But then, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised this fic went into NC-17 territory, given the picture that inspired it. I'll give you a moment to go look at it again. AREN'T YOU INSPIRED? FILTHILY INSPIRED? TELL HER. MAKE HER DRAW MORE. So, yes. This is unofficially set in the alt!BPW 'verse softlyforgotten and I created in her comments, but I think it probably can stand alone. Still, you should probably read the ficlets preceding this (here, here, and here), because Mik's Laurence and Granby are not to be missed.

ETA: I would also like to thank fictionalfaerie , who I forced to read this at like 3 AM, even though she knew none of the characters and was fairly drunk, and she still assured me it was hot and that I was an idiot. THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR, GUYS. <3

Again, I am super nervous about posting the porn, so constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated and doted upon.

Title: Uncharted
Fandom: Temeraire
Warnings/Ratings: NC-17 threesome. Yep
Disclaimer: Not mine in the slightest.
Word Count: 5600
AN: Dedicated to t_lyrical  for being ridiculously awesome, and to softlyforgotten for talking me down from a ledge and gently convincing me to take out the occasional purple prose that wandered in.
Summary: Tharkay watches; Laurence and Granby notice.


( so i will walk without care, beat my snare; look like a man who means business )



SO YEAH, THAT HAPPENED. Now, back to the epic AUs which I have been neglecting. GUYS, STOP INSPIRING ME, SERIOUSLY. I will never get anything done at this rate.

So what's your favorite incident of internet tomfoolery today? I have several candidates myself. One in particular being the awesome site that lets you put sparkly unicorns all over your browser. I use this a ridiculous amount while reading dry functional morphology papers. It's hard to be worn down by statistics and graphs when there is a purple unicorn galivanting over a rainbow in Fig. 3. Today, though. Today it gives you SPARKLY KITTENS OMG. I wish it did this every day.

But my personal favorite is probably this one: Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink. Seriously, the giggling gave me physical pain.
I started laughing again just C&Ping that. AHAHA. Oh, Guardian.

This was also relevant to my interests: Fiction World Rocked as Woman Claims No Sexual Attraction to Neil Gaiman.

Gaiman twittered about it. Obviously. Also I would totally buy that Britsexgeek book. Um. DON'T LOOK AT ME.

BWAHHH. YES.

...annnnd back to editing/working. /editing. /porning. So yeah. What lulz have you guys found, o faithful flist?

It just so happens that when softlyforgotten and I ramble and glee at each other, it tends to spawn ficlets. And it was getting unwieldy going back through our epic conversations to find the bits I wanted to reread, so I thought, okay, fine. I'll just steal them all and put them in one convenient location. THERE MAY BE SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING SNIPPETS, SO DON'T CONTINUE READING UNLESS YOU HAVE AT LEAST FINISHED BLACK POWDER WAR. OKAY? OKAY.

softlyforgotten got us started by quoting a passage from BPW:

For a moment Laurence wavered on the verge; then his first lieutenant, Granby, was pulling him away. They staggered back together, Laurence half-blind and nearly falling into Granby's arms; his breath would not quite come, rapid and shallow, and his eyes were burning. Granby dragged him partway down the steps, and then another torrent of water carried them in a rush the rest of the way, to fetch up against one of the forty-two-pounder carronades on the forecastle.

Followed by her saying "I am CONVINCED that what actually should have come after that was some desperate kissing." At which I leapt in shamelessly and said OMG YES DO IT OMG. And then she did.

( It begins... )

( It continues... )

( Still going... )

Next, there was a discussion about how Laurence would probably be fairly shameless and up for anything once you got him through that "OMG GAY SEX THE HORROR" stage, and we somehow would up talking about how Laurence would be the smugest, most possessive boyfriend ever. Which of course I could not leave alone:

( And going and going... )

( Like the Energizer Bunny, in a way... )

Then there is a random pining!Laurence snippet I wrote which could be slotted in wherever, I suppose. It's very random. And full of pining.

( And there's still more... )

BUT IT DOESN'T STOP THERE, LADIES AND GENTS. No, that was all from only ONE BOOK REVIEW POST. We are prolific in our commenting, and in the next post, we sucked t_lyrical down with us. MUAHAHAHA. I mean. It was totally unintentional. ...yes. You can see her AWESOME CROSS-DRESSING GRANBY here.

Also within this post, we began discussing the always-a-girl!trope, with me expressing doubt and softlyforgotten urgently and convincingly campaigning for its awesomeness with snippets such as this:

( And then it switched genders! )

( Twice, even. )

( IT NEVER STOPS, THE COMMENTFICCING. )

So, unless I have missed something, those are the Epic Fic Conversations of softlyforgotten and novembersmith , immortalized in all their glory and typos as one massive post. All shall marvel at our crack and despair. :)

ETA: I FUCKING HATE HTML AND THE RICH TEXT EDITOR AUGH OMG. If you guys see any egregious errors, let me know. I'll be over here gibbering quietly.

GUYS I AM WRITING THE MOST SHAMELESSLY FILTHY PORN. I AM USUALLY A FADE-TO-BLACK GIRL. WHAT THE FUCK. IT IS FREAKING ME OUT. I AM EMBARRASSING EVEN MYSELF.

SEND HELP.

In other news, I am still running around like a madwoman and having doubts about my career choices. Which, uh, I suppose is a more pressing problem, so I will focus on the porn instead. OMGWTFBBQ. But yes. How are your lives? Tell me about your WiPs, your hopes, your dreams. Etc.

ETA: Since the porn is not for my bandom friends, I can only offer this as a consolation: some slightly lame icons of my ONE TRUE OTP FOREVER OMG AND IT'S EVEN CANON REAL:

     

NOTE THAT THEY ARE ALL CUNNINGLY OF THE SAME THING. o.o

I had the perfect birthday ficlet in mind for softlyforgotten . This is not that ficlet, unfortunately. This is not even her birthday. What this is an utterly self-indulgent crossover that got entirely out of hand, but I dedicate it to her anyway, since she is likely the only one that I can shanghai into joining the tiniest, most ridiculous fandom ever. This is set towards the end of Victory of Eagles, in a very, very vague way.

Title: Three Candles Lit
Fandom: Temeraire/Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (I KNOW *facepalm*)
Warnings/Ratings: PG-13 and entirely unbeta'd
Pairings: Laurence/Other, Laurence/Granby/Tharkay


( not long, not long my father said/not long shall you be ours )


( and for your edification, the eponymous ballad )

Today was an Icon Day. I did a lot of scooting around on the internet, collecting icons and squirreling them away and probably spending way too much time coming up with the appropriate keywords. Then I thought, "Self, what you are missing is a dragon icon." And it dawned on me that I actually had some dragon pictures that I'd taken way back in the day. I fretted a while and eyed the computer warily and finally decided to bite the bullet, take the plunge, and other cliches besides those, and make an icon MYSELF. I know, it surprised me too.

What that boils down to is this: I wound up going through all my folders of photographs from Thailand and Vietnam and West Africa, and made a few icons. Don't ask how long it took me. Because the answer is: EMBARRASSINGLY LONG. I didn't even do anything fancy! I just made pictures smaller and more square and it was somehow the most difficult thing ever. Grad school has nothing on this nonsense. You people that make icons with text, and things that move! I am boggled, and also suspicious that witchcraft is involved.

Anyway, these are probably a bit crap, since they are my first, fumbling effort, but you guys are welcome to have at:

( i love the whole world, it's such a brilliant place )

So yeah! That happened. I thought about writing long and involved stories about each picture, but I wound up tearing my hair out trying to get it to format correctly. WHY IS EVERYTHING ON A COMPUTER SO INHERENTLY DIFFICULT. But yeah, if you want to know more about one of the icons, just ask and I will ramble at you incessantly about buddhist temples and Ficus benghalensis and James Bond. *g*

There aren't even any words for how bad I am about to destroy my own life through sheer, stupid incompetence.

Exams tomorrow. Covering the entirety of paleoanthropology, primate functional morphology, behavioral ecology, taphonomy, evolutionary theory, and reproductive life history.

*sobs quietly in corner and makes another pot of coffee*

INTERNET IF EVER YOU WERE TO INITIATE A ZOMBIE INVASION, NOW WOULD BE THE TIME.

A FREAK TORNADO WOULD ALSO BE NICE. OR AN EARTHQUAKE. OR A TARDIS.


ETA: If I have been ignoring any of your guys, I am seriously sorry-- I promise I'll catch up on things this weekend. Ish. Sometime. IF I'M NOT DEAD.

So I have massive end-of-my-life exams this week. How does my brain deal with this?

Apparently by concocting the worst nightmare of not only my life, but any other. Behold:

So I go into my qualifying exams and they tell me I'll be interpreting the life history of the spider-mouse based on observing them in tanks at different age intervals. They show me into the room, give me a clipboard, some goggles, lock the door behind me. I approach the first tank, and inside is a clutch of eggs, glistening a bit in the terrarium, and I think--wait, mice don't lay eggs. I've been had! And then the eggs hatch and they're slimy and strange and I don't look too close because I'm started to get weirded out, so I turn to the next tank and FUCKING SHIT.

I don't even know what is wrong with my fucking brain. A spider-mouse doesn't sound that scary, does it? Oh, but just think on it a little further. It's got the head of a mouse, wide bulging black eyes, and bitey square little teeth chomping at the air, and from the neck down, the bristly translucent brown legs of a fucking death spider. Tarantula-sized. Pawing at the glass of the terrarium and snapping its teeth and there's like twelve of them, swarming around each other. In the next terrarium they're even bigger. And then a terrarium tips over and they're everywhere and they're CLIMBING UP MY LEGS, and I'm screaming, "JUST FAIL ME, I DON'T CARE, JUST FAIL ME AND THEN SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD OH GOD."

Subconscious, you are On Notice.

18,000 words and I have achieved only platonic snuggling. /o\

So have a snippet from an entirely unrelated story which I may or may not continue. Tharkay's introduction in Black Powder War from his POV.

( The dining room went queerly silent after Tharkay entered, as though someone had dropped a china plate or set a crystal glass ringing. )



LITTLE DID HE KNOW. Anyway. BACK TO TRYING TO GET THE BOYS TO KISS.