all of this can be broken

[raven]

I spent Easter weekend meeting a great deal of shimgray's relatives, and it was rather tiring, but on the whole, not bad; if anyone forgot my name their minds wandered charmingly through the Western Isles. For reference: I have no objection to being called Islay or Skye, but draw the line at Rum, Muck and Eigg.

I am back in Liverpool for the time being, and today my to-do list says "sort life out". (Srsly. One day I shall consider myself a grown-up - it'll be the day I stop making to-do lists that say that.)

Here are the songs of the moment:

Laura Marling - Alpha Shallows
and the grey in the city is too much to bear

Laura Marling - Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)
winter will leave us / goodbye, old England, until next time there's snow

Laura Marling - Hope In The Air
there's hope in the air / there's hope in the water

The Corries - the Mingulay Boat Song
(Look, I spent a lot of time this month being seasick between remote islands.)

Death Cab For Cutie - Meet Me On The Equinox
(I tried SO HARD not to love this song, and I still do. In my defence I succeeded in not downloading the New Moon soundtrack. People who are Death Cab fans, tell me which of their other songs I should be listening to.)

And here are some Amy-Pond-is-awesome fic recs:

and swallow fireflies, by paperclipbitch.
Amy, Rory, and the Doctor, in seventeen parts. This is very, very nice, and full of good lines and nice characterisation, and a lovely ending. I am actually ridiculously impressed by it, to be honest. [hat-tip to forthwritten for this one]

every story has a start by such_heights.
Amy, the Doctor, and Sarah Jane. Lovely.

(My own effort was last night: let it always be known that I was who I am, which is short and maybe gen and maybe not.)

(Actually, can I go off on a tangent for a moment? More and more, I'm starting to dislike how fic is always classified as gen, het, slash, or het&slash if you're lucky. I am a fairly versatile writer - not as much as some - in that I've written love stories and dramatic angstfests and slice-of-life snippets and silly comedies and overdone farces and wistful ponderings and plot-heavy adventure flicks. I like writing, I like trying new things, it's inevitable.

But I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I've sat down and thought, yes, I am writing a story about a relationship. This is one. This is another. I have no problem as classifying the first one as a het & slash story, and the second as slash. But, I don't know, what about all the times I wrote a fic about Sirius being afraid of growing up, and one about Martha trying to understand the Doctor, and Geoffrey finding his peace, and because it makes sense for all those characters' relationships to be part of their lives, they're dealt with as part of the fabric of it all in the stories - but that's not what the story was about, and characterising them as het or slash just distorts them, rather than having any meaning.

It makes me wonder, also, how many great stories I scroll by because I read "het" or "slash" and think, eh, don't feel like a relationship story, and miss the point without clicking.

Okay, I'm done.)

Now I'm doing some work and not looking at pictures of Karen Gillan on the internet.