I've generally been avoiding spoilers as much as possible, but I decided to read this interview with Rachel Luttrell (warning: spoilers!) and wanted to squee about one thing in the interview.

( Discussion of one Season 5 spoiler )

Shockingly, I'm actually watching other shows besides LoM! Amazing, I know. I just keep forgetting to post anything about them. Mostly because I haven't really been blown away by anything dazzling.

I went into my thoughts on the "Ghostfacers" episode of Supernatural in this comment thread over here. Now we're caught up on the latest and ... I kinda just want to write this season out of my personal canon. This wasn't a bad episode, but it's gotten to where I'm so braced to cringe when I watch the show that I'm not even enjoying the good bits anymore, especially since the show seems determined to live down to pretty much every low expectation that I have. And, no, I don't know why SPN is getting to me so much worse on the race & gender stuff than most of the other things I watch. But it is.

( NCIS is enjoyable, but not great )

Is that all I'm watching right now? I guess it is. Of course, I'm also re-watching LoM again from the beginning, so it's not as if I'm suffering for lack of entertainment.

One more thing and I swear I'll stop spamming for tonight!

aqwt101 has translated some more of my stories into Russian! They can be found here:

http://aqwt101.livejournal.com/26199.html - Safe Harbor

http://aqwt101.livejournal.com/26454.html - All That Glitters

http://aqwt101.livejournal.com/26697.html – one of the Valentines ficlets

http://aqwt101.livejournal.com/30853.html - The Killing Frost (available for download as a .doc file from Sendspace right here!)

Thank you again aqwt101 for putting in all your hard work to make these available to Russian SGA fans! :D

I had actually completely missed that I'd won "overall best" in the SGA fan awards until several people pointed it out in the comments of my last SGA post. I am such a dork. XD

... but, seriously, that just boggles me, in a stunned and blushing and really amazed kind of way. There are so many brilliant authors in this fandom that I would never have expected anything like this. Thank you, thank you, to all the voters and readers, everyone who nominated me and voted for me. (I'd also like to thank the Academy and my mother. XD) I've had a really wonderful time in this fandom so far, and, my last post notwithstanding, I don't expect to be wooed away from the Atlantis bunch anytime in the foreseeable future. (Though I may have a side dalliance here and there.)

I haven't had another serious fan-addiction in the two years that I've been in SGA fandom. I've realized this because I'm currently in the middle of a full-blown, reading-every-fanfic, brain-swamped-with-plotbunnies Life on Mars addiction. No worries, I really don't see myself dropping out of the SGA fandom. I have too many stories to finish (including my Big Bang one with naye), and too much love, time and friendship invested in the fandom to just walk away; besides which, even if I do get a bit apathetic for a while, I have no doubt that Season 5 will refresh my interest. However, if I'm a bit scarce in SGA-land for a little while, it's because my brain has been taken over by the boys (and girls) of A-Division.

I'm also learning to use del.icio.us, since the launch into a new fandom seemed like a good time to explore its features. (The idea of trying to bookmark all the SGA fic I've read and enjoyed makes my brain explode -- there are 900 stories in my SGA fanfic stories folder on my hard drive, and those are just the ones I felt were good enough that I wanted to save them in case they ever disappeared off the Internet!) Anyway, the only thing that's given me a little trouble so far is that I'm so used to comma-delimited tags in LJ that I keep trying to separate my tags with commas and ending up with duplicate tags with commas on the end. Luckily that's easy to fix. My del.icio.us username is, of course, friendshipper if you want to watch me flail around trying to find a tagging system that makes it easy for me to go back and find stuff.

Also, a vid rec!

Devotion by cherryice
This is a stunningly gorgeous vid to "Devotion" by Tracy Chapman - season 1 footage, no major spoilers that I noticed. For me, at least, it does a really beautiful job of capturing the feeling of the series, of Sam's life and all of the characters' struggle to keep their soul and sanity intact in their violent world.

All I have to say about Life on Mars right now is: OMG. :D :D :D

Well, no. I have a lot more to say. Babbling and squee and random character observations ahead!

( Big spoilers for both seasons, including the ending of the series )

Right here!

Congratulations to all of the winners. You are awesome! I don't think I've read all of the winning stories, either. Most, yes, but not all. Must remedy this!

(And I did win some too. Thank you very much to everyone who voted for me. You are awesome, too!)

That sound you hear is my fangirl soul being sucked down into another black hole. :D

We've just mainlined the first season of Life on Mars (thank you, Derry!) and it's awesome. It's like CSI: David Lynch with a nigh-impenetrable Manchester accent.

( In which there is squee )

I'm currently avoiding fan sites so as not to be spoiled for season 2 until we get done with that (which, at the rate we're going, shouldn't take very long), but if any LoM fans on my flist could point me to good fic or vids that are safe from S2 spoilers, that would be lovely!

Edit: And this probably goes without saying, but I thought I'd mention it because I have had to enforce my "no spoilers" policy lately -- please don't spoil me for S2 in the comments if you can help it. I won't kick you out, but I'll be very unhappy. I'm sure I'll be done with it very soon and we can talk about it then. :D

It's snowing (SNOW! ING!) and has been doing it all day, though it's slightly above freezing so we've only accumulated a couple of inches of very wet, heavy snow. Still, the less said about that, the better.

My plan for today was to spend a few hours outside, sitting on the rocks and writing (in longhand!) in my shiny new writing journal. Seeing how the rocks are now covered with snow, I've been huddled at the computer all day instead, banging my head against the rewrite of one of my original novellas.

Something I've been wanting to start a topic about, over at writers_lair, is the difference between writing fanfic and writing original stories, for those of us who do both. Except I can't seem to get my brain together enough to actually make a coherent post on the topic. I've been thinking about it, though, as I'm scrapping scenes and rewriting them from scratch, because I really don't do that in fanfic very often, and when I do it's almost always plot-driven and not character-driven, if that makes any sense. In other words, I'll scrap or rewrite a scene in fanfic because it doesn't work with the plot, but very rarely will I end up seriously reworking a scene in order to display a character in a different light or show a different side of them, which is exactly what I'm doing here. Maybe it's the difference between characters that come pre-packaged, as those in fanfic generally do, and having to wing it on every aspect of characterization, as one does in original fiction; I find that in fanfic, I can "hear" the voices very easily and I don't really ever end up totally reworking a characterization in the middle of the writing process. *glares at novella*

And speaking of writers_lair, I'm not a mod over there or anything -- I'm pretty sure kriadydragon and bratfarrar run the place -- but it is a nice place for chatting about the writing process; I've been enjoying the discussions and finding plenty of tidbits that are applicable to both my fanfic and original writing.

And while I'm plugging things, sheppard_hc is running another remix challenge while we wait for the new season to begin -- sign up in this thread to make your stories available to have missing scenes and tags written for them. I wrote this and this and, oh hey, this last year; it was a lot of fun, and I've made all of my stories available again this year. (Technically, they're always available for that sort of thing, just so you know.)

As the mod, I feel vaguely guilty about reccing anything from sga_genficathon ... plus, I feel as if once I start, I should be reccing everything. There were so many good stories that I hardly know where to begin! I was going to put together some themed rec lists (e.g. Ronon stories, John/Rodney friendship, etc) but other things keep taking priority, and besides, the list of stories by genre kinda does that anyway. Since I can't get to the longer version, though, I'll try to find the time here and there to throw out recs for some of the stories that really caught my eye. No slight to any of the non-recced stories is intended; there are many I haven't even had a chance to read yet!

Bright Wings by snarkydame - This is a gorgeous AU, a vision of a vibrant, living Atlantis, where flying messengers on crystalline wings swoop between its spires, and merchants from dozens of worlds bustle in its streets. The core characters are salvagers who dive in a modified puddlejumper to search the sunken towers of the "Old City" for artifacts. In addtion to the beautifully realized setting, I loved the story -- there's friendship and danger, double-dealing and self-sacrifice, and I would love to see more in this 'verse someday.

Exposure by wneleh - Ronon tries to make amends for a crime he committed while he was on the run. There's a simple elegance to this story in the quiet ordinariness of its events, the lack of good guys and bad guys, the carefully developed culture with its believable trading and cultural ties to other Pegasus cultures we've seen in canon.

Light Up, Light Up by briar_pipe - a day in the life of the Atlantis scientists, and their friends and co-workers. It's a delightful look at the city as a whole, and the ways that "team" means a whole lot more than just our four main troublemakers.

The Law Is An Ass by derry667 - My sense of humor is so completely five years old sometimes, and this is a nonstop barrage of ass jokes that nearly killed me as the team delivers one of those mission reports that's probably one step from driving Elizabeth to heavy drinking.

Syzygy by naye - Rodney and Ronon are caught in a flood, separated from the others and wind up, injured and disoriented, as the guests/prisoners of a subterranean civilization. The Rodney and Ronon voices are just perfect as they alternate between verbal sparring and worrying about each other while trying to find their way back.

The Seat of Talents by xparrot - What would you give up to save a friend? This was written for the "self-sacrifice" prompt and it's just an incredible take on it. If I weren't already halfway in love with John and Rodney, this story would have tipped me right over the edge; what really gets to me is that they're so totally themselves, and there's nothing sappy or sentimental here, just incredibly deep, heartfelt emotion that broke my heart and turned me into a puddle of goo.

Figurative Hell and Literal High Water by tipper_green - Fast-paced action/adventure starring Jennifer and Rodney! What's not to love? This is the Jennifer Keller of "Trio" and "Quarantine" -- uncertain yet determined, scared but funny, brave and stubborn, an ordinary woman stuck in a very extraordinary galaxy and surrounded by crazy people who eat danger for breakfast, while she's just trying not to drown.

Don Juan McKay and Other Universal Improbabilities by liketheriver - a wonderful, fun, rollicking story of the team getting caught up in another planet's revolution, their exploits being distorted over time into legends that open each chapter and make an entertaining contrast to the actual events.

As a non-baby-enabled individual, I have a question for moms.

My cousin is having a baby, and I've been tasked with getting my nephew's old high chair out of storage and cleaning it up for the new baby. It's kind of nasty - they didn't clean it before putting it away, so it's going to need some serious cleaning to be baby-ready. It's made of wood.

My question is this: what's a good baby-safe disinfectant that can be used on wood without damaging it? I'm a minimalist sort of housekeeper (read: lazy); all I ever use in the kitchen to clean things are bleach and baking soda, so I'm not at all familiar with different cleaning products and disinfectants, let alone ones that are safe for small children. I'm also not sure if Pledge and similar sorts of furniture polish can be used on baby furniture, especially an item that is probably going to spend a lot of time in contact with a baby's mouth.

Advice?

Now that sga_genficathon is done (but don't forget you can still write bonus stories for any of the prompts! See here!) I'm going back and getting caught up on my flist, answering comments, etc. So if you suddenly get a comment on an entry that you wrote two weeks ago, or a reply to a comment that you don't remember leaving ... that's why!

Also, this is the funniest thing I've read in ages (warning: "not politically correct" is the understatement of the century here; also, quite long) and I'm adding OH JOHN RINGO NO to my personal fannish lexicon because it's just so perfect for so many situations. (Also, I believe John Ringo has just joined Stephen R Donaldson and a few others on my personal list of authors whose books I will never read even if I'm trapped on a desert island and withering away for lack of reading material.)

Edit: Although, if this comment is actually John Ringo and not a sock puppet claiming to be him, I may rethink the whole desert island thing, because it sounds like he's a) entirely aware of what a screwed-up fantasy world he's created and b) perfectly willing to roll gracefully with being made a laughingstock on the Internet. I like that in an author.

This is probably a terrible time to post yet more fic considering that there's a metric buttload of new fic over at sga_genficathon, but, well, this was inspired by this comment on one of the stories over there, and my brain took the concept and wouldn't let go until it made TOTAL CRACK out of it.

Title: Knights Errant
Rating: Is "cracktastic" a rating? Oh, all right. PG.
Word Count: 5300
Summary: "Technically, the project is code-named the Weir Industries 2000, but unfortunately it shortens to WITT and that just sounds silly."
Notes: Knight Rider fusion. I AM SO SORRY.

Just in case you have better things to do with your brain than remember plot details from 80s TV shows (though I imagine pretty much everyone remembers the car) -- Michael Knight, a.k.a. Michael Long, was shot in the face and presumed dead, but in reality was given plastic surgery, a new identity, and a high-tech experimental car with an AI in it, the Knight Industries 2000 or KITT. Which makes no sense, but, hey! Talking car.

( Crack this-a-way! )

The master list of stories and authors is up! (And thank you to naye for the help with editing the posts, and to everyone else for support and hand-holding and offers of help. If I do this again next year, I have a much more realistic idea of my own capabilities, that's for sure!)

I wrote four stories for the ficathon, my original story plus three pinch hits. (Which means I have oodles of feedback, which I'll be responding to over the next few days! Please don't feel neglected if it takes me awhile to get to you!)

The Pegasus Galaxy Darwin Awards - another picture-fic, a retrospective of canon and non-canon near-death experiences.

The Great Pegasus Train Robbery - I saw the Illegal/AU prompt combination and I had to do a "team SGA as outlaws" AU. It was marvelous fun.

Even Bonnie and Clyde Had Off Days - because it's about dang time that Teyla and Ronon had their own Sheppard-and-McKay-esque comedy of errors road trip. Also written because I thought (inaccurately, as it turned out) that the Friendship category would be dominated by Sheppard-McKay stories and I thought it would be nice if there was something else for variety.

Luck of the Draw - a very last-minute pinch hit that puts the team plus Ford in a college AU setting. Hey, everybody's got to write one at some point in their fanfic career. *g*

Edit: And I forgot to mention that the sga_genficathon is now open for all to post stories for this year's genres and prompts, until the end of April.

Okay, I know there is an LJ backup tool that works for Macs, because I've used it, but now I can find neither the website nor a bookmark for it, and even Google isn't helping. I believe the one I'm thinking of is entirely web-based and does not involve downloading a client; it backs up your journal as a giant PDF. Anybody got a link for something like that? Or any other backup tool that doesn't require downloading a Windows client?

naye and I have cracked 40,000 words on our Big Bang story!

... too bad we're nowhere near done. *g* In fact, we haven't even made it to the plot point that was supposed to be the start of the story.

I've been reading "Science Fiction in the Real World", a collection of columns by Norman Spinrad, which I bought after reading his fantastic, thought-provoking essay "The Emperor of Everything" in an old issue of Asimov's that we found at the dump; this is the book in which that piece is collected. As much as I enjoy literary and fannish meta, I also think most literary criticism is elitist and very often completely full of shit, which Spinrad certainly exemplifies a lot of the time; but then he'll point out something about contemporary science fiction and cultural mythology that goes "Click! Oh, wow!" in my brain. Incredibly smart guy with whom I disagree on a whole lot of stuff, but then there are moments of genius. The "Emperor of Everything" essay ought to be required reading for every aspiring science fiction and fantasy writer; it draws fascinating parallels between Star Wars, Orson Scott Card, The Hero With a Thousand Faces and Hitler's Third Reich, as bizarre as all of THAT sounds, and it deconstructs the local-boy-saves-the-world trope in a way that may have seriously impaired my ability to read fantasy quest novels ... but in a very beneficial-to-me-as-a-writer sort of fashion.

I can't rave too much about this songvid by gnine. It's really one of the best-edited vids I've ever seen in this or any fandom; normally I'm not enamored of special effects in vidding, but in this case, the effects are beautifully integrated into the video -- it's *fantastic*. It's Rodney-focused and contains spoilers through "Last Man", but I recommend watching this vid even if you're not specifically a Rodney fan. It's a beautiful encapsulation of the last four seasons of the show.

Another thing that's delighted me lately is this gorgeous AU image of the team by leyna55. What can I say, I'm a total sucker for all things steampunk, and this is beautifully rendered and made me desperately want to read about their adventures in the AU-verse!

There is nothing I can say outside this cut that wouldn't be a spoiler. Sooo...

( Torchwood 2x13 )

I've been practically too busy to turn around the last few weeks, it feels like! Thank goodness I'll be able to go back to my beloved part-time work schedule next week and focus once again on my original writing and the sgabigbang story that naye and I are writing (sadly neglected, of late). Stories continue to trickle in for sga_genficathon, where they will be updated every day from now 'till April 20th. And there are some great ones so far!

Speaking of ficathons, team_sga's AU Fest will be going on this month -- one of many ficathons this spring that I've been very sorry to be too busy to sign up for, because it looks like an absolute blast! The fandom really needs more all-team AUs. Here is the posting schedule. (I should note that for gen people, OT4/poly stories will not be warned for, according to the posting guidelines -- which is perfectly fair, of course, but just so you know. I imagine the ratings will be something of a giveaway, though...)

EDIT: Forgot to mention that team_sga also has a list of April Fool's crack mini-AUs here, as a warm-up for the actual fest itself. Fun!

Another ficathon I ran across recently that looks fun (note to self: still too busy to sign up for anything) is majoritython, the Majority Rules Challenge-a-Thon. It explains its mission thusly (copied from the into post):

... to celebrate the possibility that (at long, long last) either a woman or a person of color will be the next American president by producing fanworks about people of color and women in positions of political power.

This could include:
1. Slash, het or gen fic about a woman and/or person of color in any fandom who holds elected or appointed civil office, or who governs or rules a country, planet or federation.
2. RPF about a historical or contemporary person of color and/or woman who holds elected or appointed civil office, or who governs or rules a country or sovereign territory.
3. Icons, graphics and vids about any of the above.

SGA is, of course, ideally suited to something like this, since nearly every leader on the show is actually a woman, and in one case a woman of color. (This is a rather cool thing about SGA that I'd never really thought about until encountering a cartoon awhile back that pointed it out ... and, yeah, we've got Teyla, the Wraith Queens, Larrin and Elizabeth/Sam, which is very neat!)

Also, apropos of nothing having to do with fandom, my cat bit me pretty good yesterday, so if I suddenly vanish from the Internet for a couple of days, it's because I'm having emergency hand surgery and can't type. *g* (Seriously, apparently cat bites are highly prone to infection; nothing can freak a person out like looking up first aid advice and finding a bunch of horror stories of people having to rush to the hospital for emergency surgery and antibiotic IVs. With pictures! Gah!) I grew up on a farm and I've spent my whole life surrounded by animals, and this is the first time I've ever been bitten by anything, which just figures it'll be the one that turns into a septic pit of flesh-eating bacteria, wouldn't it? My tetanus shots are current, though, and I've been keeping it thoroughly disinfected, so we'll see.

As well as just being interesting in general, I thought this article on how the U.S. military handles deployed married couples might be of interest to fic writers who pair off military character on Atlantis:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080331/ap_on_re_us/combat_marriages

Living arrangements and public displays of affection are discussed. Apparently it's only in the last two years that married couples sharing living quarters in the field has even been an option, and there still are not nearly as many private accommodations as there are couples requesting them.

(Obviously, too, this is yet another area where gay couples get screwed -- or not screwed, as the case may be.)