a conspiracy of cartographers

I finished A Wizard of Mars! I think I absolutely loved it; but then, at least half the time when I read a new Young Wizards book it is instantly my favourite for a while. (Deep in my soul, A Wizard Alone is still probably my favourite, even though Wizards at War is the perfect storm of everything-I-love-except-lots-of-Tom-and-Carl.) This one is way up there, though.

( The rest of this reaction post is made of spoilers! It's also a bit long, kind of introspective, & has a Doctor Who crossover suggestion because that's how I roll. )

I want to write so much fic now! I want to write shippy fic, and crossover fic, and just roll around in this universe some more. Of course this urge comes in the middle of essay season, and I also have other fic projects that need to take precedence, and Doctor Who is back this weekend, ahhhh; but hopefully I will get to it eventually.

In the meantime, a Spirit-eye-view panoramic shot inside Gusav crater. Gorgeous.

Today I bought my copy of A Wizard of Mars! I'm only about fifty pages in, but it's already made me do things like look up the domesticated fauna of Barsoom (because I hit page 12 and immediately went "What the hell is a thoat?"); it is also, I suddenly realized, the first Young Wizards book that has come out since I was in high school. I'm having the strange experience of reading about Kit's history class tribulations and remembering, This is what I was like as a teenager, and I just -- I love it. These books have my heart.

I finished the third season of Babylon 5 last night. I am now quietly FLIPPING OUT because I need to know what happens next; I am also, somewhat to my alarm, beginning to think about the show in what I recognize to be my fannish patterns. I want to write Sheridan/Delenn ficlets! I am wondering how much Londo/G'Kar fic is out there and whether any of it is as complex and awesome as it could conceivably be! (I may have just caved and looked at the pairing stats on the AO3; there are in fact 25 Londo/G'Kar fics, but more to the point there is a Delenn/Sheridan/Sinclair fic!! Shut up, I know that logistically it would never work, I want it anyway. Ohgod there is Lyta/Kosh fic! I need to close this browser window now.) I want to work out if any of the events in the show are fixed points in time, what would happen if the Doctor turned up on the station, and most importantly how exactly Gallifrey-Vorlon political relations work. I DON'T NEED ANOTHER FANDOM. But I think it may already be too late.

Perhaps relatedly, at least while I'm on the subject of fandom life choices, I signed up for Remix Redux 8. I have never done a remix challenge before but I've wanted to for years. (Fandoms I have enough fic written in to qualify for: two guesses, and they both start with the letter D.) So I have that and my due South big bang this next month!

I have no graceful way to end this entry, so here is a picture of Ambassador Kosh. He does not have a pancake on his head, because Vorlons do not eat pancakes.

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.