a conspiracy of cartographers

It is before noon and I have already done all the grocery shopping and paid rent! I am well pleased, and also cradling a cup of tea so I don't end up faceplanting into the keyboard. I've been up for ages because I crashed at Amiel's after contra last night, and oh my god, contra continues absolutely amazing. I am pleasantly sore today, and maybe I should try to properly take up yoga so I don't end up stiff and tottery over the weekend.

Mostly I'm just absurdly happy: contra, and this weekend at the harbor there's some kind of exhibition of tall ships, and on the 4th Polaris and I are planning to watch Independence Day and 1776, as you do when you want the weirdest double feature, and to have a cookout in the back yard (where we will presumably meet some of the neighbors, because I doubt we're the only ones with this idea). And in case I haven't mentioned it lately, I love my housemates so much, see: aforementioned 4th of July plans, and the bit where when I got home today I found that K had left me the most adorable and terrifying gift ever. We're in season four of Babylon 5, and in ... celebration, or possibly to freak me out, K made a plushie Drakh Keeper, a tentacley alien neural parasite. It is SO CUTE, and buttons around one's neck! I plan to wear it like a scarf, and if I misbehave I will claim that the Drakh made me do it.

In other news, I just happily sailed through Runemarks by Joanne Harris, the basic premise of which is that Ragnarok happened five hundred years ago, Asgard fell, the gods are dead or imprisoned in various realms of the World Below, magic has been outlawed, and a dystopic Order reigns, so of course our fourteen-year-old magical heroine has to go on a quest to renew the world, and ... basically has a fantastic road trip with Loki. I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH. It occurs to me that I love most iterations of Loki not because he's played by Tom Hiddleston (because ... mostly he isn't, though I think in this he was) but because he is tricksy and saves the world a lot while loudly telling everyone that he's just in it for himself. (I may have imprinted on Howl from Howl's Moving Castle at an impressionable age.)

I also think I want to make a list of Books That Do Fun Interesting Things With Norse Mythology, but at the moment the list is limited to Runemarks, DWJ's Eight Days of Luke, and Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants. (American Gods doesn't make this cut cos it's about Norse mythology a bit but it's also about a hundred other things.) I am very much up for recommendations! Lots of Loki a bonus but not specifically required.

Now that I am doing an idle Lex-Luthor-bits-of-Smallville watch, and unsurprisingly shipping Clark/Lex like burning, I have had the same conversation with a handful of friends. It goes something like this:

ME. And I love Lex! Oh my god, I love Lex! But Clark is, uh ...
FRIEND. Boring?
ME. Yeah! And this is becoming a pattern. Like, okay, take Highlander --
FRIEND. You love Methos, but Duncan is boring?
ME. ...Yes. Or Star Tr --
FRIEND. You love Spock and Kirk is boring!
ME. You are a mind-reader!

...although I have had this conversation with three separate friends, so in this case it's probably just that my friends know me. Anyway, it led me to imagine what would happen if I just eliminated the things that are boring, which incidentally leaves me with the mental image of Methos, Spock, and Lex Luthor in a room together. I am a little worried they would clean up nice and then take over the goddamn world.

Of course, then my brain took "What could possibly be more awesome than Methos, Spock, and Lex Luthor in a room together??" as a challenge, and I hereby submit for consideration the notion of Nyota Uhura, Kara Thrace, Zoe Washburne, Susan Ivanova, and Cordelia Naismith going on space adventures together. That is what is more awesome.

It is thunderstorming today! Quite reasonably, my desktop weather widget had a picture of lightning. I still stared at it in puzzlement for a good ten seconds, thinking, "It's ... cloudy with a chance of Quickenings?" /o\

And then, sitting down to work on my Highlander fic, I was quietly plot-outlining in my head when I was brought up short by sudden guilt. And it wasn't obligation guilt: I know enough about my writing process that I can prioritize a due South AU and a Babylon 5 rewatch and an Avatar season and &c &c as much as I want, but if I sit down and a Doctor Who fic comes out instead, that's what I'm damn well writing. So trying to write Highlander fic wasn't making me think, "Why am I doing this when I should be doing x instead?" but rather "Why am I writing Highlander fic at all?" and this brought me up short: I was feeling self-indulgent, and that apparently made me feel guilty. Uh, what? Fic-writing is for funsies and not profit, after all; it is by definition wonderfully self-indulgent. Apparently, the problem is that it's Highlander.

( Cut for length; on fannish guilt, comparative 90s shows, active fandoms, and id-fic. )

Obviously the solution is to just write my ridiculous Highlander id-fic, not least because enthusiastic self-indulgence usually produces the best fannish writing. But I still feel weird and apologetic about it. OWN IT, SELF, OWN IT LIKE ALL THE OTHER AWESOME RUBBISH YOU LOVE.

I guess I was wrong about not having internet! I'm still a nomad, though. I am just an exceptionally wired nomad.

1. I love Feminist Hulk so damn much that I am beginning to be tempted to get a twitter. I mostly have not done so already because I'm not much good at short things, and I don't really have enough free time for these newfangled fripperies anyway, and I get really easily addicted to shiny things. So I don't know! Those of you whose lives I follow anyway, do you have one? do you recommend that I join your twitter cult? if I did, would I get cool updates on your life that I can't get from Dreamwidth? Feminist Hulk alone cannot tip me to the tweet side, but it is possible you can.

2. I have managed to get my hot little hands on Babylon 5: The Gathering and the first bit of season one. Um. It was already madness to do episode meta on all of due South; there is no way I should do it for B5. Feel free to point and laugh if when I do a Gathering post this evening. /o\

3. KINK BINGO. I have been eyeing kink_bingo for about, mm, two years now, and not signed up because, IDK, I was doing things like Doctor Who season projects and due South commentary and Cliche Bingo. (The last of which, incidentally, I ended up writing Fraser/Kowalski bondage porn for anyway.) So this year, I actually signed up. ( My card! & um lots of talk of tentacles even though I do not have a tentacles square. )

Know what I'm doing instead of packing? I'm reading all the G'Kar/Londo fic on the AO3. I haven't come across any tentacle porn yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time, considering the probable Venn diagram of Centauri biology and fandom sensibilities. Possibly someone needs to save me from myself.

To save this post from pointlessness (too laaaate) it is time for a poll, because I am genuinely curious as to how many of you know how much of what I'm talking about when I start nattering on about various fannish things. (I am not necessarily asking if you are fannishly involved yourself, nor even if you have seen the shows in question, just if you are not lost when I start talking about them.)

LOLWHUT. I just hit an episode in Babylon 5 where a scary, scary interrogator had a strangely familiar voice. "He sounds like the guy who played the philosophical Bolt brother in Red White or Blue!" I said to myself, and lo, IMDb says that it's the same guy. I am starting to think that Fraser got off really easy. Yikes, interrogator guy.

Apparently I can play mid-90s awesome TV show bingo? IDEK.

Two unrelated happy things:

i. OH MY GOD WHAT, THESE PHOTOS!! I cannot believe I have somehow missed seeing this before! It's a bunch of pictures of Stephen Colbert at the winter Olympics; he rides a moose! he waves a Canadian flag! he hangs out with Johnny Weir! he wears a Mountie uniform! HE WEARS A MOUNTIE UNIFORM WHILE RIDING A MOOSE. I think important parts of my brain just broke from the awesome.

ii. Three years ago, I started watching Babylon 5, really loved it, got through the first three seasons, and then stopped because the semester had ended and I no longer had access to my friend's DVDs. We started rewatching them together at the beginning of this semester; I've now borrowed her complete season three and, because my week is scheduled in a kind of wacky and awesome way, I'm ... pretty much mainlining the entire season tonight. I'm sure I'll sleep eventually?

( Cut for ... vague spoilers, possibly? Mostly it got long. )

I am not actually ready to have real discussions about this show yet! But apparently I needed to get my joy out there. Also I am curious if anyone knows what I'm going on about or if I'm talking excitedly into a void. (If I am talking into a void? I don't know if the show jumps space sharks at some point, and the alien prosthetics are occasionally hilarious, and the special effects are low-budget early-90s, but WATCH THIS SHOW, IT IS GREAT.)