fail fail fail banana daquiris fail fail
Dec. 8th, 2010 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenFlist, I am having a terrible day, the law school is on its collective last marble and the weather forecast says that next week it will be minus sixteen degrees.
However, I wish to point out to the universe at large that "Spock's Brain" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" have the same plot. I think this is very profound.
Stop looking at me like that. Anyone want a drabble? 5000 words of this bloody paper left to go (out of, yes, 5000), I could do with the distraction.
However, I wish to point out to the universe at large that "Spock's Brain" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" have the same plot. I think this is very profound.
Stop looking at me like that. Anyone want a drabble? 5000 words of this bloody paper left to go (out of, yes, 5000), I could do with the distraction.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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on 2010-12-09 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-10 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 04:37 am (UTC)And any Martha drabble if you're so inclined.
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on 2010-12-09 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 02:35 pm (UTC). . . you have just BLOWN MY MIND.
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on 2010-12-09 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-08 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-08 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 12:04 am (UTC)Alternatively, something Little Mosque on the Prairie and COLD WEATHER. Choices. ;)
You do mean -16 celsius, right? Or does it even matter at those temperatures? I am ignorant!
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on 2010-12-09 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 12:08 am (UTC)I am clearly not smarter than a Canadian Fifth Grader and probably need to spend some quality time with Google before they unleash me on the world.
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on 2010-12-09 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 12:13 am (UTC)-16 F is -26 C and -40 F does happen sometimes. And although it doesn't kill you instantly, it does make you (where by you, I mean ME) WISH you (I) were dead.
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on 2010-12-09 12:07 am (UTC)(drabble coming up, yes)
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on 2010-12-09 12:00 am (UTC)I hope your day gets better!
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on 2010-12-08 11:58 pm (UTC)......................................
I. cannot. even.
*CRIES*
If you like, I would take, hmm. A Sports Night drabble, about anyone you like.
12/24
on 2010-12-09 01:24 am (UTC)"Guess we're walking somewhere," she says, after a moment, tapping ash on the side so it flakes down towards the water and becomes a part of the swirling murk. A minute later the cigarette-end joins it, a momentary beacon in the black.
"Guess we are," Natalie says, but she can't find it in herself to be too sad about it. The car's a rental and the cold air is bracing, and they're dressed for it. She feels like a kid again, excited about the prospect of adventure.
"They say you should sing, to keep your spirits up," Dana says thoughtfully, as they start walking.
"When?" Natalie asks. "And who's they?"
"At times like this, and I don't know, just they. You know. People. People on TV."
"Well, people on TV don't know that much," Natalie says, grinning. "I guess this wasn't the Christmas Eve you had planned, right?"
Dana shrugs. "So I don't have to go home and listen to my mother talk about how women my age are statistically more likely to die alone and be eaten by rabid wolves."
Natalie grins. "What do you like? Traditional, or what?"
They have a truncated try at "Good King Wenceslas" and an even more unsuccessful attempt at "Jingle Bell Rock", but something clicks on "Angels We Have Heard On High". Other people are following their example now, leaving cars banked up by the side of the roadway, letting the snow take over, giving in to the elements. There's something comforting in it, Natalie thinks: not to give in, but to have faith that there can be other plans.
They walk on across the water, towards the distant gleams of the city, singing gloria, gloria in excelsis deo, and they make their own light.
Re: 12/24
on 2010-12-09 04:51 am (UTC)Re: 12/24
on 2010-12-11 12:22 pm (UTC)Re: 12/24
on 2010-12-11 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 12:07 am (UTC)A Casson family drabble would be lovely, if you have the time.
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on 2010-12-09 12:30 am (UTC)(Casson family, hmm! I've never written them before.)
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on 2010-12-09 12:38 am (UTC)(If you would rather write something you've written before, Ned and Verity from To Say Nothing of the Dog being adorable would also be lovely.)
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on 2010-12-09 12:16 am (UTC)If you are not too busy. I know you are very busyful. Oh God, why do I inflict my Mordecai love (MORE THAN ONE, also Mordecai in Daniel Deronda, whom no one else IN THE WORLD loves) on everyone. Bad me.
I'm sorry your law school is banonkers. <3 *virtual valium*
grace
on 2010-12-09 07:10 am (UTC)It's autumn now, the long parliamentary recess and the school holidays are over, and the castle is slowing coming up to speed. When it comes, they'll do Christmas in fine style, like they always do, wreaths and stockings and trees with an abundance of magical decorations and Chrestomanci presiding over it all like some latter-day St. Nicholas. But Millie got worried, a few years back, and got Mordecai and Rosalie and Conrad to help, and now the people of the castle celebrate a few other things as well. New Year's Day, of course, and Samhain and Easter, but also a few formless days in the year, ready to be filled up with the celebrations of those enchanters who come from countries or worlds where the calendar or the religion is entirely different.
This day is a day of thanksgiving – not any one cultural celebration in particular, but it's something that crops up again and again in the stories enchanters from other worlds tell, so Millie marked out a day for it and dared Chrestomanci to complain. It tends to fall in September, and while they don't do anything special for it, lessons are cancelled, work is suspended, the castle's mood is reflective. This time around, there's the lingering end of an Indian summer, and a cricket match. People in whites are fluttering around the grounds like cheerful birds, calling to each other. "Mordecai!" Millie shouts, using magic to make absolutely sure he hears. "Hurry up, we need you!"
Wandering out to join them, Mordecai thinks he's got rather a lot to be grateful for, really. There's Rosalie. There's Flavian. There's love in all its casts and guises. There's the fact of the autumn afternoon, the castle grounds, the worlds of Series Twelve where he can walk freely, as a man and as an enchanter. There's the way people's eyes linger on his olive hair and skin, linger, and slip off, forgetting. On the outside, at least, he's not forever marked as outsider; he's not forever marked as bound.
And if he must be bound – and Mordecai has had enough years to reflect on it to understand that's what it was; he's read about the arcane subtleties of a binding through magic many times since, but he remembers the moment of it with the ferocious clarity of an internal breaking – he can acknowledge that even then, even then there's more than one reason to be grateful. He looks across the smooth lines of the turf and there's Millie teasing the children, Roger at bat, and Chrestomanci a little removed from the others, sitting and half-leaning against a tree, watching the game with hooded eyes; and well, if Mordecai must be bound, he was bound to the Dright, first, then to Ralph Argent, and then there wasn't freedom, that's not how it's works, but there's been twenty-five years of grace. He's grateful for Christopher.
"Lemonade," Millie says, and pours. "You're excused fielding. But in the next innings..."
Mordecai smiles and takes the glass. If all a binding does is create a bond, he thinks – looking at Millie, at the children, at Conrad keeping score, at Julia and Cat running into the deep field – then he's in good company.
Re: grace
on 2010-12-09 07:18 am (UTC)The cultural negotiations in this ficlet seem to me pitch-perfect - happier than our world, perhaps, but such is DWJ's world for all its sorrows, so it's spot-on. And that lingering tinge of sadness in Mordecai, and yet, and yet - the LOVE that just glows in this piece. It's all wonderful. You just got inside him, with such insight and perception - I don't know how you do it, I suppose it's just great natural skill (and, indeed, grace). I know I will be coming back to re-read this often.
Re: grace
on 2010-12-10 04:34 am (UTC)Re: grace
on 2010-12-09 07:24 am (UTC)OH MORDECAI. I love this. A lot.
Re: grace
on 2010-12-09 08:58 pm (UTC)Gorgeous stuff!
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on 2010-12-09 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-09 01:42 am (UTC)::dies laughing::
Also, there you have it -- Star Trek/Doctor Who-- go!
:-)
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on 2010-12-09 09:41 am (UTC)<3<3<3
(I don't know about banana daquiri, but I have Hendricks gin to ease my fall into decrepitude xxx)
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on 2010-12-11 06:42 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-12-11 12:31 am (UTC)&OHMYGOSH YOU'RE LISTENING TO TOM MCRAE! Ahem, sorry, but I love him a lot.<3 Just Like Blood is my London in Winter album, the two go together perfectly.