o tempore o mores

Was woken up this morning, as in, shifted out of eleven-am-somnolence, by text from chiasmata. She's in Bangkok. I have to admit my life is not so exciting at the moment. But, still. Last night there was an awesome pridehouse party of awesomeness, for which the blurb was: Saturday April 19th, 2008 1968, 8pm. Martin Luther King has just been killed. Tomorrow, Enoch Powell will make this speech. They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworth's, man. The revolution is coming, or possibly the apocalypse. So. In a feminist separatist lesbian commune off the Cowley Road, it is the Summer of Love.

I approved mightily of this. It was, indeed, the Summer of Love, barring the part where it was cold enough to see your breath and we had to build a fire in the garden. But there were beads and hippie clothes - I was wearing my second-favourite skirt, a Janpath one that's covered in elephants - and many many happy people of joy and wonder, and, yes. Highlights included the fire, which was blisteringly hot and made everything thick with pine-scented smoke; astonishing hippie lentil stew; jacinthsong's costume, which featured a burning bra adorned with the immortal words, ^{[citation needed]}; my telling absinthe_shadow that, you know, rhetoric is good, and um, so is linguistics, and I might be drunk, had she thought of that; recasting Gaudy Night with ourselves (I get to be Harriet Vane, I am better than everything); and the entire party dancing to the Indelicates until their heads fell off.

Also. slasheuse (who is a delight, by the way; a sweetly hilarious drunk and altogether lovely human) telling me and shimgray very seriously and apropos of nothing, "When you have children, I will come and exterminate them."

I flailed momentarily - actually more than momentarily - wondered about what and how and ohgod-the-fuck and finally settled on, "Why?"

"Because," she said, "they'd take over the world."

"....why?"

"Um. They would be really clever but not allowed near pointy things."

(It bothers me on many explicitly-defined levels that more than one person has independently reached this conclusion.)

(slasheuse also phoned me later, at three in the morning, to tell me that a) apotropaios and osymandias had been Being Very Gay, and that the word "ejaculation" had been involved, and b) she had found a plum. Then she had thrown it away. It was not the plum she thought it was, alas. I stopped laughing when I started to worry about the possibility of an aneurysm.)

Um, yes! Joy, and dancing, and music and flames. While we were around the fire singing, apotropaios stood in the doorway and told me, "You know what I'm doing?"

"What?"

"Being liminal."

lizziwig and I looked at each other and laughed ourselves into total hysteria. I should probably note that at the time he said it, he was wearing a very pretty green dress and looked bizarrely like Penelope Keith. It was that sort of party.

Actually, I did not start writing this post to tell the denizens of the internet all about my faintly ridiculous social life. I started to write this post to talk about remixredux08. I really shouldn't spend an entire afternoon on the archive - not that I was planning to do this, not at all - because, argh, work, etc., but briefly:

The story that was written for me was: The ACME Judgement Company (the Uncloseted Remix), and I love it. I was surprised - I forgot to mention M*A*S*H as one of my fandoms when I was signing up, and, well, it's still the archetypical small fandom. My original story was written in 2002 - ohgod - when I was fifteen. The less said about it, the better. The remix is long and thoughtful, plays with themes and langage with slow, effortless control that really shows up how young I was. I'm very impressed, especially as the odds are slim-to-none that anyone remembers the episode with Carlye, so you can read it as a piece of interesting original fiction and get lots out of it regardless. I like it, very much.

A few others I've read (undoubtedly, there will be more):

Every Farthing of the Cost (Dingoes Ate My Baby Remix), Buffy/Harry Potter crossover, Remus and Oz.
This is a remix of a story I have loved for years, so there is that, but this is a lovely story in itself. Slow, quiet, full of unspoken things.

Nothing Exciting Happens Here (the Feels Like Home Remix), Doctor Who, Rose/Sarah Jane.
Short and sweet. Lovely vision of Sarah Jane, too.

Goodbye (Strange, What Is Still Here Remix), Harry Potter, Harry and Teddy.
This is beautiful, and with perfect narrative voice.

My own story is, indeed, also up in the archive. There are clues in it indicating it's mine, both for people who know my writing and people who know me. Usually, I would offer a ficlet for anyone who guesses; this time around I will, also, offer ficlets, but rainchecked until May 28th, if nobody minds. Go forth and guess if you should so desire.