Cabbages and babble and shit.

Aha, LJ seems to want to remind me of Hallowe'en. Unlike last year, though, I don't think Balliol are doing anything for it - which is a shame, because last year the Master held a combined Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes party outside with lots of fireworks and free food and bonfire and effigy in Trinity colours, and invited every member of the college and their friends, partners, and children. It was really rather wonderful. This year I've heard nothing about it, so I guess there won't be a repeat of it. Nevertheless, Maria and I are going to carve a pumpkin. I've never done it before, and I'm childishly excited about it. (Just like I get childishly excited about baking, too; I never baked stuff when I was little and it seems to be much more fun as an adult, because you can make whatever you like and lick the bowl and ignore the recipe wholesale.)

Anyway, I didn't actually mean to start talking about pumpkins and cakes again. I have had a long, long, long day, because I got up ridiculously early. In fact, I am just three hours short of having been up for twenty-four hours, and this wasn't supposed to be the intention. Claire came banging at the door in the morning, because I did ask her to, but I was still silently furious when I tramped into the kitchen looking for coffee only to be laughed at by medics for whom consciousness at half eight in the morning is a regular occurrence.

But I didn't go back to bed, and in the end I went to a class. I'm never good with classes; I never seem to get much out of them, and this one wasn't any exception. There were too many people - eight, plus my rather nice Ethics tutor - in his study, and I had the comfy armchair and kept having to stop myself from dozing off. I only really perked up near the end, when Sagar was trying to explain an obscure point in favour of projectivist morality. It was actually a really good, subtle point, so I leaned round in my chair and watched him put the formulation up on the whiteboard. I can't quite follow formal logic, due to having crashed and burned so spectacularly last year, but I managed to parse the syntax well enough to notice a mistake. He was trying to show something about all properties x, where x indicates a natural property, but the argument pre-formalisation hadn't worked like that. The example they were using was x as a property of action A where A is "pushing someone out of a window." If natural property x is "the state of being an act of defenestration" then the argument fails. (I don't remember why. I'm telling this story for a reason, honestly.)

Then someone else complained about the agent of the act, and why it had to be a moral agent. It could be an inanimate object. "I mean, it is not morally wrong to throw a cabbage out of a window."

Ater almost three hours of this, it was like waking up after a long dream. I could feel the stupor draining away through the room, as everyone's wtf? centres kicked back in. As for Sagar, he put down the pen like it burned, burst out, "Cabbages! Defenestration! Shit, this is nuts!"

And the assembled masses rose and went out. I will do an essay on non-cognitivism during the Christmas vac. and hopefully will have entirely repressed the memory of this class.

I suppose the moral of the story is that I have thrown off the weird grey mood far enough to survive classes and do reading, but for some reason I keep running out of energy in the middle of conversations. It's a bit silly really. I went to steerpikelet's gathering tonight and talked to people and drank some wine and ate some cake and was social. That was a good idea. absinthe_shadow came up with me and drank tea in the kitchen and we talked for hours about nothing very much. Very good fun.

Er... other news. I have finally finished watching season one of Supernatural, and, er, whoa. Good show. Actually, a show with a few obvious flaws, but I love it regardless because it is marvellous. Much love, and now I'm not as afraid of being spoiled I've been able to devour fic like a mad thing, and that is always good. A couple of recs, while I'm here.

Firstly, an odd little titbit. One of my to-write projects is a more serious exploration of girl_doctor - perhaps in the vein of "Insomnia" - which draws more on the characterisation of Ten. Basically, the idea is that girl!Doctor will realise, as time goes on, that she can use sex as a weapon, just like she uses everything else that comes to hand. And being new to this, and a little naive, she wouldn't realise at first that using people to get what she wants is a cruel thing to do. But when she does realise, she won't stop. Because, like Ten, she's ruthless; she wants what she wants, because she thinks it's best and she thinks she knows best, and she'll use her sexuality as cruelty and it will all be gloriously fucked-up.

One would think, though, that such a specific idea would be unique to me, and could just wait on my to-write shelf until I get around to writing it. But I was wrong. I just read "How Am I Gonna Keep Myself Away From Me", (Supernatural, Dean and girl!Sam) by ethrosdemon, and loved it, because yes, yes, this is what it would be like. And I wouldn't want it to be, because hell, I love Sam as a character, I really do. But this plays out with such truth that it's... yeah. Read it. (But, er, it is porny and incestuous. Read it anyway, it's fab.)

And also, "Violent World Our Fathers Bought" by likethesun2 (Supernatural, gen). Quite apart from being one of my favourite people, she's one of the best writers around, and I haven't shared a fandom with her in literally years and omg, read this fic. I betaed it, because I am luckier than you. It is gorgeous and evocative and it has deliciously understated themes and angst and also plot. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. Go, read, stop listening to me babble.

Because oh dear, yes, I have been awake a very long time now. Sleep is in order.