a conspiracy of cartographers

Last night I dreamt that I was writing poetry about Spock. I am actually more or less incapable of writing poetry, and I expect that if I'd remembered the words upon waking they would have been not-very-good words, but at the time I thought it was decent. Now I'm a bit sad I'm not devoting my day to poetry about Spock.

On the other hand, after that I dreamt I'd turned into girl!Ten, and my pinstripe suit was fabulous. Apparently in my brain, David Tennant is a hot lady. So that was excellent.

I have always possessed a weird sort of envy for those entries on my flist that say "You guys are all fired for not telling me about [x]!" I'm not sure why; maybe it's a weird mix of delight that my own flist does tell me when cool stuff is happening, and envy that this person's flist usually does the same. Or maybe it's just a great sentence! Either way, I finally have the opportunity to use it.

You guys are all fired for not telling me about The Ship's Closet. I distinctly recall at least a solid two weeks at the end of August when I would talk about almost nothing but Star Trek TOS and Kirk/Spock, and somehow I didn't come across this! The Ship's Closet is a YouTube show by brittanyksduh; she goes through bits of TOS Trek, some of the films, and occasionally things Roddenberry has said, and analyzes them for Kirk/Spock. Now, some of the things she says seem self-evident to me, or she hammers a point home for slightly too long, but I will allow that this is because I have been queering the text for ages and she doesn't have to do a lot to convince me. She also has great comedic timing, made me repeatedly choke with laughter, chooses some excellent clips, and argued some points that I hadn't thought of before. Let's face it, my analysis was mostly limited to, "And then they exchanged another LOOK, it was AMAZING," whereas now the glass in Wrath of Khan is even more likely to get me to burst into tears, and all of Amok Time is even more likely to make me clutch at my face, because HANDS, guys, HANDS.

This has put me in a very good mood, compounded by the fact that we've just had a blizzard blow through, the world is gorgeous, and I have barely crawled out of bed all day. My mum called a little while ago to find out how much snow had come through; I ended up telling her that we've had about six inches and that I was watching someone explain the Kirk/Spock love story to me. I don't know if she thought this was a perfectly normal way to spend my evening because she knows me or because Kirk/Spock is self-evident, but either way, I'm ridiculously happy right now.

Things that are making me stupidly happy:

+ The Enterprise pizza cutter. If I had cash for superfluous things and/or an urgent need for a pizza cutter, I would buy the hell out of that thing.
+ The Foresmutters Project, which warms my archival heart and brings me Kirk/Spock from the 1970s. I am a bit stupidly in love with it.
+ TOS on YouTube. All of TOS is on YouTube! I don't think I will ever have the wherewithal to watch ALL THE STAR TREK, but I am accidentally making a go of it anyway, because TOS is right up there with due South and select Highlander epiosdes for stupid comfort telly.
+ Kirk/Spock fic sometimes has mindmelds AND alien anatomy! I mean, so does Doctor/Master occasionally, but the latter does not usually give me a fuzzy happy feeling inside. And I would read so much more G'Kar/Londo if they also had mindmelds. And if there were more than eight G'Kar/Londo fics on the internet. ...Man, I have so many OTPs with aliens in.

In COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NEWS, I am engaged in an epic email brainstorming session with oliviacirce concerning a Highlander/White Collar fusion. Look, Mozzie has a loft and a dojo, and Neal clearly ran with the Rat Pack too back in the day. It was pretty much inevitable.

i. Today I finished Mockingjay. Then I went searching for reaction posts, as you do, and was mildly pleased to discover that pretty much everyone had the same reactions I did, even unto the numbness at the end. ( Brief & spoilery. )

ii. Which means I am in need of uplifting things! Thankfully my brain is still full of Star Trek (and THEY ARE NOT THE HELL YOUR WHALES, which I think is my new cheering-self-up mantra); today's offer is Ensign Sue Must Die, a 32-page webcomic about Ensign Sue, mirror!Ensign Sue (who is omg SO EVIL), and the completely bewildered crew of the Enterprise. I came away from it with the strong desire for a plushie Spock in that comic's design.

iii. My father informed me the other day over the phone that he has a new TV show obsession! Considering that most of the TV my parents like has been introduced to them by me (namely Slings & Arrows, Life on Mars, Firefly, and in my mum's case White Collar; what they all have in common is that my parents enjoy the characters) I was seized by slight trepidation. The show? Heroes. Oh my god, I can't even. My dad reportedly loves Claire and Hiro, neither of which are surprising; he is always in the market for kickass blonde chicks, and he's obsessed with time travel. In the throes of Star Trek love, I asked excitedly if he'd met Sylar yet! What the hell, I don't even care about Sylar. I did tell him to stop watching after first season, but ... apparently when I visit my parents next week, I will be watching Heroes! How is my life so strange.

iv. In other things I am looking forward to: tomorrow were_duck and themeletor and I are going to see Adam Lambert in concert! I am mildly fond of Adam but mostly I feel like this is an ~important fannish experience~ and I am RIDICULOUSLY excited about it.

Hmm. This entry still feels kind of weird and disjointed, probably from the combination of Mockingjay and the suddenly cold cloudy weather. Still: webcomics! My father watching stupid telly! ADAM LAMBERT WITH FANGIRLS! I believe now is the time to listen to string quartet versions of Lady Gaga and un-numb myself.

I am tearing joyfully through Star Trek! I am fascinated. (Yes, thank you, Spock, you can stop providing my internal narration now.) I don't know exactly what switch flipped in my brain to make me suddenly mainline TOS; when the reboot film came out last year, I loved the hell out of it, because it was a genuinely fun movie, and I had enough fannish osmosis and cultural inheritance to ping on pretty much every one of the callbacks -- but I read a couple of fics, watched part of The Naked Time on YouTube, and wandered off on my merry way.

Now I can't even fathom not finishing The Naked Time. It's one of the greatest things I have ever seen, not comparatively but on some weird absolute level where I sit in a joyful daze, wondering how the hell this ended up on my screen. Whatever switch has been flipped, it's been flipped hard, and I am really, really enjoying watching my fannish inheritance.

I'm also enjoying it on two levels. One of the levels is the one where I watch it with what I call my Little Kid Brain. My Little Kid Brain, weirdly, doesn't usually work for children's movies; it works for things that are not necessarily aimed at children at all, but are so fucking absurd that I have to shut off critical/cynical brain functions in order to enjoy it. And Star Trek suddenly becomes amazing: it doesn't matter that there's no science in the science, that the walls are made of Styrofoam and cardboard, that the tribbles are inanimate fluffballs that cost a penny a pop, that internal logic is often completely fucked (which is why Spock spends a lot of time looking mildly pained at the proceedings) -- because it's pure idfic on screen! There is hurt/comfort and mind control and so much crying and unnecessary dramatics and ridiculous-looking aliens! My Little Kid Brain loves this shit.

The second level is my fascinated-by-fandom level. Obviously there's overlap here, because I am having the pure weird enjoyment of witnessing the first instances of, oh, Aliens Made Them Do It and sexpollen and sci-fi mind control and all that tasty goodness, and sometimes I can't actually believe they managed to get this stuff onscreen, let alone in the '60s. It's just fun spotting all the clichés and having that vertigo moment of realizing that, no, these aren't clichés. They started it. It's wonderful.

And, on that note, highlights of this crazy show: ( The Naked Time, Mirror Mirror, Journey to Babel, This Side of Paradise, Patterns of Force, Plato's Stepchildren, The Menagerie, & Turnabout Intruder. It's like I CAN'T STOP WATCHING. )

And on that note, I'm putting a brief hiatus on my watching, first because I'm also trying to do about five other things at the same time, and second because I clearly need to write that fic right now.

In terms of what I have taken away so far -- apart from the ficcing urge, quelle surprise --is that I have discovered is that Spock is one of my favorite characters ever. I was going to try figuring out where in the continuum of Favorite Character Traits he was, and then I realized that Spock is extremely intelligent, pretty weird, reads fairly queer, isn't strictly human, and is terrible at talking about emotions, and ... well. He was even evil that one time! I think Spock and Methos and Eleven should hang out. They'd have a good time. I bet Spock would love their historical anecdotes. Anyway.

Writing writing.

Having now watched The Trouble with Tribbles, these are my deep and serious observations:

( Cut because it got a bit long! Mostly inconsequential squee. Apparently I really love this show, which should surprise exactly no one. )

Also, two alternate versions of the episode: We Has Tribbles and Also Troubles and The Trouble With Tribbles by Edward Gorey. The latter pretty much does sum up my feelings on Tribbles. Their purring does not work on me. PERHAPS I AM KLINGON.

Haha dear god today in things I never want to do again: drive a car, for the first time in a year, at night on unfamiliar roads in a TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. I am alive and not too many people even tailed me, but that is seriously not an experience I want to repeat.

Today in things I do want to do again: watch the Star Trek film! which is what I in fact just did do again, and why I was out driving at night in a rainstorm. I have to say, though, upon a rewatch I am very happy for the Spock/Uhura shippers and the Kirk/Bones shippers and the OT3-ers and any other shippers that I haven't yet seen come out of the woodwork, and me personally I am there for pretty much any crew combination you want to give me, but honestly? I just want more Kirk/Spock. (Including recs! I have been too lazy to track down almost any fic, but I think I want some now.)

Now I am going to watch the thunderstorm. :D

Kicking off the blog's inaugural fandom post with wingfic is kind of weird (particularly because except in special cases I don't really get the intrinsic appeal), but what the hell: I think it is very important that I rec Lift, because in my determined read-through of the entirety of ds_flashfiction's archive, I've hit the Reality vs Whimsy DS Match and am very much in love. Lift is about Ray Kowalski waking up with wings, except in this one they're there instead of his actual arms and are actually a horrible impediment; it's also a Ray/Ray fic that turns into a Fraser/Ray/Ray one partway through, which is how I am discovering I really like my OT3.

Tangentially, I am in the midst of a DILEMMA. It is not a very terrible dilemma, because it is about ... how I will waste my time watching tv ... but it goes: I had this wonderful plan wherein I would get out of school and promptly spend my first week or so of relative freedom mainlining a rewatch of due South. I want to do this [a] because I love dS but I suspect I do not give Vecchio enough of that love, and also there is something horribly wrong with a world in which I can quote all of Mountie on the Bounty but none of Call of the Wild, and [b] because then I can take Really Epic Notes (probably to be inflicted shared here) and consequently finish any of the roughly ten due South WIPs I have lying around. On the other hand, the stupid Star Trek film has filled me with Star Trek love, and I have seen about a total of zero Star Trek ever -- so I am equally tempted to go track down all of TOS on YouTube. Me & silly sci-fi are good buddies, and possibly I am not a very good geek if I only know the vaguest things about Star Trek. Also, wintercreek was kind of evil and linked me to a site which includes historical notes with some of the oldest known slash; it should be unsurprising that this phrase turns my knees weak with joy.

So what is better, Epic Due South Rewatching or Epic Star Trek First Watching?? IT IS A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION.