a conspiracy of cartographers

I don't know how I find time for anything else these days with all the fic I seem to be writing.

In any case, today is my polybigbang fic posting day! It's Undercover, which is not, in fact, the F/K/V AU I was talking about this summer, but is instead a different F/K/V. Nevertheless, I am fond of it, and also if I never write Kowalski that unable to articulate his feelings again it will be too soon. It comes with an absolutely fabulous mix by sionnain, which I may have been listening to for about two days straight now.

(Actually I am going to go to the gym and listen to it right now! I hope you are all having good and perhaps slightly less rainy weekends than I am.)

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE WAYS IN WHICH TODAY IS AMAZING.

+ Despite still being only about 60% of a functional Aria, I've done all the work I needed to do. (Except the reading for the racefail class, but that's, um, my self-prescribed naptime tomorrow. :D?) Basically I am a ninja of accomplishment.

+ My pants are starting to fit again! Now let's see if I can make them fit for real by going back to the gym when I am at least 90% of a functional Aria instead of, say, just subsisting on soup and ginger ale.

+ I am suddenly wildly excited for the due South Seekrit Santa. (Have I mentioned that I love how it's spelled "seekrit"? Best fandom ever alkdfkkdsfjs.) I have been asked to write a story I did not know I desperately wanted to write until I was asked, but wow, I desperately want to write it.

+ I have yet more new Hugh Dillon music. Did I just say best fandom ever? I mean it. Best. fandom. ever.

+ There is another Sherlock Holmes trailer. I could continue this masquerade of insisting that I will be watching this film behind my hands, but let's be honest, I've spent the last few weeks unironically enjoying the High School Musicals and Eastwick and the Plan. I have no taste. More importantly, THEY'VE BEEN FLIRTING LIKE THIS FOR HOURS. I don't care how much weirdass gothica steampunk supernatural whatchamahoozit aesthetic this film has, it also apparently has the Holmes/Watson subtext turned up to eleven.

+ And, of course, my perennial Wednesday night joy, Eastwick! ( Storytime with Uncle Badtouch! goddd I love Roxie. )

Today I watched The Plan! I like it in much the same way that I like good fanfic, although giving supplemental material the "good/bad/&c fanfic" clause is not always as descriptive as it could be. I mean, season 8 Buffy? Post-series fic that I choose to ignore. The Plan is a different animal, and by different animal, I mean holy shit, did they actually give me two hours of missing scenes with Cylons?? IT'S LIKE IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. ( Mostly pleased things about the Plan; not terribly coherent because I am still ill. )

Yuletide nominations:

Diane Duane - Young Wizards series
Eastwick
My Life as a Dog (tv)
Slings and Arrows
Susan Cooper - Dark Is Rising series
Whip It (movie)

IS THERE PERHAPS A PATTERN HERE. (And do I desperately want Bliss/Pash fic? Why yes I do! Bliss/Pash is the new Jess/Jules, guys.) There are a million and one fandoms I will actually end up reading for Yuletide, but the Young Wizards and Slings & Arrows fics are always uniformly fantastic, and all the others are ones in which I want to read lots of uniformly fantastic fic, and I think if required to I could cheerfully write for any of them.

In I-really-hope-is-unrelated news, I don't think I should be listening to Hugh Dillon's new album so soon after watching High School Musical. I have been playing Reel to Reel on loop, and every time I do, my mind conjures without prompting a big technicolor vision of Hugh Dillon and Paul Gross singing and dancing to it in sparkly top hats while CKR plays the piano.

I really -- I don't know, but I'm going to watch Eastwick now.

I have written a lot less fic than I desired to over the long weekend (there is still a day left! I could absolutely be irresponsible and write crossovers!) but I have finished one, for ds_flashfiction's penguin challenge. Dief chasing cars! Ray with a penguin plushie! Fraser getting a clue! It is all very exciting. Follow Without Pride.

Ugh, today instead of doing analysis for two shows I am going to try to just do analysis for one. I'm trying an experiment in "realistic optimism (??)" instead of best vs worst case scenarios. SO, EASTWICK. ( 1x03: In which Paul Gross has giant scissors. Also, if you stand too close to him, you'll catch his habit of being haunted; it must be some sort of weird disease. )

But that's not important. What is important is that after the first episode I needed Darryl and Fraser to hang out in a joking way, but now I need it like burning. I want temptations! quotations! seductions! the ability to keep breathing while contemplating this! Seriously, I have a bit of time this weekend; I just might write this thing.

I am beginning to think that my DW/LJ posts consist of only three things, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future: posts where I try to talk reasonably about life post-undergrad without having some kind of meltdown; posts where I talk about attempts at various creative endeavors; and posts where I talk about the rubbish TV I watch. This is the third kind!

( Merlin 2x03, Finally Morgana Gets An Episode )

Has the Groundhog's Day plot been done in due South fic? Y'know, the one where someone has to live the same day over and over and over until they get it right?

(I ask this specifically because ghost!Fraser somewhat distresses me and I think that once I finish writing that fic, I would like to write one where Ray gets to save Fraser from dying and I get to use that fun plot at the same time. I do also ask because I love that plot and if it's been done in dS I want to read it for the sake of reading it, too.)

Things I should be worrying about:
+ learning Spanish verb conjugations
+ writing this week's scene of play
+ not stabbing myself in the face with a pencil from frustration whilst I do perspective drawings
+ making a serious list of professors I want to ask for grad school recommendations

Things I am actually worrying about:
+ whether killing Fraser in order to write Ray/Ray is an exercise in the I Killed The Threat To My Pairing cliché if [a] Fraser is a ghost and still one of the main characters in the fic and [b] Fraser is in all ways imaginable not a threat to my pairing because my pairing is usually Fraser/Kowalski and sometimes Vecchio can come too
+ whether I'll have to break up with Flashpoint, courtesy of [SPOILER]; I have not yet seen the new episode, so maybe breakup is not eminent, but I am Quite Displeased, not least because I've only been casually dating Flashpoint for a few months now and this seems needlessly cruel
+ how hard I will have to avoid the impending shipping wars in Merlin fandom, because I think Merlin is not quite magical enough to skip the shipping wars

Speaking of, quick thoughts on yesterday's Merlin. ( 2x02, Gwen and Tournaments and Leeches, Oh My! )

A few things that have been percolating in my brain:

i. I'm writing a fic with ghost!Fraser haunting Kowalski, which is fun in a slightly horrible way, but as always when I write things that distress me I'm simultaneously tossing around other fic ideas in my head (ie at this juncture ones where Fraser is not dead). The idea-in-the-shower du jour is a due South/Young Wizards fusion, because if anyone in the universe is the posterchild for a YW-style wizard, it's Benton Fraser. I think it could be a genuinely fun and weird and engaging story, too -- he first comes to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father, of course, and because I think it would be brilliantly hilarious, obviously Welsh and Vecchio are the Chicago area's Advisory wizards. I'd probably age Fraser way down to being in his late teens so that he can still do his action-hero thing, and maybe Kowalski can be a teenage wizard too, and likes to go to Vecchio's house and yell at him when he's stressed out about his current assignment. Obviously Frannie cannot appear in this story because she would be stunningly indistinguishable from Carmela. Anyway, that's for another day, when I am not writing upsetting things about Fraser being a ghost.

ii. Slightly relatedly, I am way too excited about Eastwick airing tonight. Ask me about how I love horrible tasteless silly things! Seriously, I pretend to have taste sometimes, but for whatever reason I caved and watched High School Musical for the first time ever yesterday, and really loved it in a hiding-behind-my-hands going "why god why" way, so ... I think my excitement about Eastwick is a related animal. Of tastelessness.

iii. And in news that is hopefully unrelated to my tastelessness, what I have been more seriously percolating in my brain is the idea of getting a tattoo. This has lots to do with various of my friends going "DO IT" and even more to do with the fact that I recently realized that since I was about nine I've had the same answer to the "What would you get if you got a tattoo?" question, which means I am obviously pretty damn sure of the design. (The Elvish script of the One Ring poem around my ankle, to be specific. Because -- pretty, unobtrusive, and the Lord of the Rings was my fannish place before I even had one, and will always be really important in a way that doesn't have much to do with my various mayfly-attention-span fandom enthusiasms.) This of course means the new questions are not of the are you sure/wouldn't you regret it/&c variety, but instead questions like, "Aria, tattoos are pretty expensive, aren't you supposed to be worrying about funds for grad school?" and "Aria, don't you hate, say, needles and pain and introducing foreign substances to your body, which by the way includes ink?" I believe those are the pressing questions. THOUGHTS PLZ.