Diwali

Oct. 25th, 2011 09:15 pm
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (stock - diya)


[image of small tealights in coloured holders on a table]

Happy Diwali, flist. May it be full of light and promise.

I don't have much of a celebration planned this year - quite by coincidence, dinner with friends tomorrow night, and I shall take sweets in for my colleagues - so here's something for y'all. Four little stories, each on a general theme. Enjoy, and pretend there are sweeties.


mysterious ways
M*A*S*H, gen. Mulcahy, Hawkeye & co.
boy, bear, agnostic )

watch
Discworld, gen, Carrot, Angua and Vimes.
the regulation breastplate and sword )

emergency
Sports Night, gen, Dana, Dan, ensemble.
every light in the building )

night driving
X-Men: First Class, gen, Charles & Erik.
light all the way )
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (nemi - sleeeeepy)
Seriously, what is it like to be able to sleep at night? I'm genuinely interested in knowing. What do you do with all that spare time?

(On a related note, this story made me FURIOUS, quite possibly irrationally, but still, how dare they basically imply that depression is your fault for going to bed too late. If you just went to bed early you'd be happier! It's essentially "early to bed, early to rise....", isn't it, and the people who say that are always heading for justifiable homicide. I'm maybe just cranky, but it's six degrees below, I have no heating, I cannot use the kitchen because the fuses have all gone so none of the lights are working, and I can't sleeeep, waaah.)

Anyway, a brief note: I want to make a post about various new-year things, but before that, a quick and final [livejournal.com profile] yuletide note. I wrote these:

Advent (Connie Willis' Oxford time-travel universe) for [livejournal.com profile] scintilla10
This was my assignment, and it was hard work, but in the end I was pleased with it. (Especially with the pun in the title, because I'm a dork like that.) My recipient wanted a story about Verity, but I had read Doomsday Book much more recently than To Say Nothing of the Dog, and the finished product had something of a sense of gloom. Interestingly, last year's story was also a story about Verity, and although I do try not to repeat myself, I can't resist writing all my stories in the same universe. Once again, [livejournal.com profile] shimgray sorted out the plot holes for me very nicely indeed.

Oh, and! It has a cameo by [livejournal.com profile] absinthe_shadow in it. I was trying desperately not to make it too obvious, but finally bowed to the inevitable, asked her permission and wrote her in.

Prawn Crackers (dinnerladies) for [livejournal.com profile] lilka
dinnerladies is not actually a fandom of mine - in the sense that, I love the show very much and think it's wonderfully written, but I've never wanted fic for it. Only, a few weeks ago I went over to see [livejournal.com profile] lilka, we had a lovely evening drinking wine and watching the Christmas episodes, and when I saw her request drift past I couldn't help myself.

(Also, a little of this story may have been drawn from life. Just a little.)

Boy Trouble (Discworld) for [livejournal.com profile] duckgirlie
This one was the definition of a last-minute treat. I wrote it the night before the deadline, the hour before, even - I wish I'd had time to make it longer, actually! - and enjoyed myself far too much in the writing. On a serious note, it was fun to write the "ordinary" Discworld women (i.e., the ones who don't have the benefit of being able to do magic), and show up their small human awesomnesses, and on a truly frivolous note, I had great fun with the jokes. I had a vague sense that the joke in the first paragraphs isn't translating very well - if it helps, British hen parties traditionally involve L-plates. No one knows why.

Ingenué (Slings & Arrows) for beautifulside
Again, I wish this one was longer. I had as much again written, and it was becoming a story of sorts, about returning and going home and other overdramatic themes like that - but then it was the night before the deadline and I didn't want to scrap it, so I rescued these 500 words and realised I liked them by themselvs, after all. I do love Kate. And Geoffrey, but that goes without saying.

I'd like to apologise, also: I really, really appreciate (and, indeed, encourage!) the feedback I've got on these stories on AO3. But I just can't reply to comments right now - I am trying to take a bunch of exams and apply to grad school simultaneously this week, which is sort of why I'm awake at 4.58am - and so in lieu, I am just saying thank you here. Thank you all.

Onwards and upwards, I guess. I do wish I could sleep.

Swine flu

Oct. 13th, 2009 09:36 pm
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (politics - war is not healthy)
Urgh. I am dreading the 9am start tomorrow more than, well, just about anything. One might say, then, go to bed, but being the sort of person who doesn't sleep at night means, hey, you get wound up about not sleeping at night, and then you don't sleep at night. Sigh.

It does, however, beat swine flu, which is nowhere near as fun as advertised. I am about ten days post-diagnosis now, and feeling every day like some large wheeled vehicle hit me the night before. (It gets smaller. It was a truck. Now it's an articulated pram.) And, really, it was no fun at all. I cannot emphasise this enough, but I am blessed with an immune system that is usually pretty sound, and my notion of "ill" is "a bit off, and you can still watch TV". I started revising this opinion on Friday night, when all I could do was shiver, and then a little further on Saturday when all I could do was shiver and wail about the opening chasms in my head, and then, on Saturday night, round about where the "mild case of symptoms" I was supposed to be having, being an able-bodied adult, was supposed to be kicking in, I woke up in the midst of vague dreams about sushi on picnics with my entire extended family, and thought: aha, I need to go somewhere.

And woke up again, some minutes later, because Shim was picking me up off the floor, and noticed from very far away that his pupils were so dilated that his eyes had turned black as pitch in his face, and then thought: isn't it funny, that's the last thing I'm going to think before I die, and then I probably passed out again. Apparently, This Is Your Brain On Swine 'Flu has a turn towards the melodrama. Shim looked after me beautifully throughout,, but probably never so much as just then, and regardless of anything I never wish to faint on a hard wood floor again. After that things were never so bad, but I think I'd like to register a general complaint: I should have, at that point, started on anti-virals, given that at that point a) they were still effective and b) Shim and I don't live together. Technically, I live alone, and my own bathroom floor is harder than wooden. But as I was slightly conditioned to think, hi, I am an able-bodied adult, I sort of assumed that my case of flu was, indeed, mild.

...okay, now I realise it wasn't. After that I had all the symptoms of the flu, but consecutively, so I had dizzy-and-fainting and then splitting-headaches and then muscle aches and then, bizarrely, a sore throat and blocked nose. (Which were the worst; nothing like being told by all, including the out-of-hours GP, who has been persuaded to call and help only after much shouting down the phone by people who are not you, that you'll "pick up in a day or two, drink fluids" when you can't drink fluids, you can barely get anything past the back of your tongue. Urgh. Urgh, I say.)

Now, I am lots better, but am told by said GP that the general feeling of ennui will not pass very easily; that I should expect to feel tired and ill, especially in the evenings, for weeks yet. Which is not a thought that fills me with hope and good qualities, but it can't be helped. And much as I do complain about the NHS in my particular case, I would like to point out, for the record, in reference to some recent debates about US healthcare in particular: I was ill. I was too ill to function. The NHS helpline told me to stay in bed, drink fluids, and rest, and send someone out for antivirals. They told me not to panic, and that there would be plenty for everyone. (In their FAQs, they did not include "will I have to pay for them?", this presumably not having been asked frequently enough.) When I went to see my GP, he asked if I had an employer whom he could write to to explain why I would be off my work for a while. When I said no, he said not to be tempted to jump straight back into studying; rest, rest, and rest some more.

In short: I caught the flu. My government told me to rest, drink fluids, and take the drugs they gave me, and feel better before I went back to work. Why, those evil pinko commie bastards.

I have very little else to report. I read Unseen Academicals while I was ill, and while I liked it, I didn't like it quite as much as I wanted to. spoilers )

The grand Deep Space Nine watch continues; I just finished "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", and as well as getting episode-title-win points, it also spoilers ) Also, Alexander Siddig has lovely eyelashes.

Maybe I ought to go to bed. I know I ought to. Sigh.

edited to add: just as I clicked post - [livejournal.com profile] yuletide nominations are OPEN.

son of eta: Okay, guys, I want to nominate Connie Willis' novels for Yuletide again. Thing is, though, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book have been nommed as separate fandoms in the past, and that makes no sense to me. If you were nominating the two of them together, plus the novella, Firewatch (and, presumably, the 2010 novels will be included for the Yuletide after this one), what would you call the universe as a whole? I cannot think what the fandom is actually called.
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (Default)
Last night I drank a lot of Pimms and wine, and [livejournal.com profile] luminometrice and [livejournal.com profile] triptogenetica were wonderful hosts, and when we turned up with a duck the size of Jupiter they cooked it, and it was eaten with pancakes and hoi-sin sauce, and it was a lovely lovely evening, and Shim and I stumbled drunkenly home at one in the morning singing "Barrett's Privateers". ("We were let down", he noted, "by the fact I only know half the verses and you don't know any of them at all.")

Today I have mostly been too depressed to do anything. C'est la vie. However. There is a point to this post, before I GO FOR A WALK OMG, because IT IS HEALTHY OMG. I have five Dreamwidth invite codes. If you would like one, please comment and thou shalt receive.

Oh, also, have two more [livejournal.com profile] lgbtfest recs:

Something Old, Something New, by [livejournal.com profile] such_heights, Merlin.
Arthur, Merlin and Gwen figure things out. There is politicking and hangover cures. It's sweet and kind of awesome.

That Sort of Thing, by [livejournal.com profile] hathy_col, Discworld.
This is FABULOUS. Vimes attempts to Explain Things to Carrot. Carrot stays resolutely unexplained. I love this a lot.

Dreamwidth invites. Speak now.
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (Default)
Hi, I am a crazy person. I spent Thursday afternoon sitting by the river, under the bridge where the people take their canoes down, watching the geese and the pleasure craft and the occasional solemn, athletic canoeist. One of the large passenger boats from Iffley had cut power and drifted into the middle of the river in order to turn around; there was also an elderly, very fit man sculling furiously. Backwards. After the shouting and crashing were over, I sat back against my tree on the bank and though, huh, I am the only person in the world who saw that coming, maybe I should have said something.. And then started cackling like a loon. I related this story to my long-suffering headshrink dude the next day, and he noted that was very healthy, sitting by the water watching the boats go by. I may have, um, shouted at him.

Basically: I am not very well, I am in that place where you don't think life is worth living at all, blah blah blah whatever.

There are still quite a few days of posting for [livejournal.com profile] lgbtfest, but I thought it was worth noting a few of my favourites while we go:

We Few, We Happy Few by [livejournal.com profile] toujours_nigel, Harry Potter.
Aurors, and institutionalised homophobia. This is stylish.

Time (of change), by [livejournal.com profile] soft_princess, Merlin.
Uther prefers not to father bastards. It's all very logical. Unexpectedly sweet and lovely.

The Rules, by [livejournal.com profile] gilesonnen, Discworld.
A new wizard at Unseen University has questions about the celibacy policy. Ridcully is very literal. The story is a gentle, rollicking delight.

Love Like A Djelibeybian, by [livejournal.com profile] gehayi, Discworld.
Ptraci is enjoying being queen. But people have strange ideas about what handmaidens ought and ought not to do.

And these two you must read, if nothing else:

Modern Love, by [livejournal.com profile] penknife, Discworld.
Show me something of Penknife's I haven't loved, but this is special. This is the Disc's dwarfs getting used to gender, and sex, and not getting used to it, and embracing the human notions, and rejecting the human notions, and it is... not beautiful, but right, and shaped perfectly into a few thousand words. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece of writing, and something I hope Pratchett nods at, later.

The Pattern of the Process, by [livejournal.com profile] raedbard, The West Wing.
This is about Toby's babies-who-come-with-hats, Huck and Molly, only they're not babies, any more - and more than that I wouldn't want to say, because this story is perfect and complete and self-contained. It's immaculately thought-out and immaculately executed, and at something like 19,000 words, an astonishing achievement for a few months' work.
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (doctor who - in bed together)
The last couple of days have been marked by mostly, let us say, incompetence. Yesterday I got up far too early, went home, went back to bed for two hours, felt much better, and was just congratulating myself on my being up and chirpy and in good time for lectures when I locked myself out.

Today I got up in plenty of time - my sleeping habits have taken a dramatic upturn lately; today I woke up before my alarm, god help us all - and went to a ten am lecture on the institutions of the EU, which was marked by the fact the module handbook has been misplaced, and as such we were being told to turn to page 33, oh, see the diagram at the top of page 27, and you might enjoy the reference on page 101, and mostly sitting there staring into space. Also, the lecturer - who is none of the ones mentioned so far, and is so far only notable for her staggering incompetence - is a great fan of visuals, and as such, keeps trying to show us educational videos on YouTube and loading them in five windows at once so they start at ten-second intervals and turn the lecture theatre into this sort of echoing trance space. And then she tries to turn the lights off, and fails at that too. It's rather sad.

(It was at this point in the lecturer where I looked up from my desk in a huff and noticed, to my sudden delight, three saffron-clad Buddhist monks running serenely past the window after a bus. Clearly, this is the way to go.)

(Also, the European Union - yes, that one, the actual supranational body of twenty-seven member states - has its own section on its website for educational videos. What's it called, I ask you. What name did this august and worthy body choose?

...EUTube. I despair.)

It was made apparent to me later that I had to do some work out of this module book that I didn't have, and, accordingly, Nice Girl On Course and I went across the hill to try and find a copy. On the way, I was telling her about Harriet-the-cat, she who was bequeathed to us as a female and is usually referred to as "she", but nevertheless might have testicles, and explaining that we'll probably keep calling her Harriet regardless.

"Oh, that's all right," said my friend, "you've got a few years before she's sitting on a couch saying, 'They lied to me! I always knew I was different from the other girl-cats!'"

Through our joint attack of the giggles, she went on: "Maybe, when we're around everyone else, we should try and pretend we're normal."

"Yeah," I said thoughtfully. "Maybe that would be best."

The moral of this story, dear friends, that there are geeks everywhere, even on postgrad law courses, if you only know where to look.

I eventually got home, sans module-book (they've lost them!), and fed myself and the cat lunch, and realised all at once that a) I was about to fall over and b) this would be because I forgot my pills again, so I prised one out of the packet, went to get some water and was back just in time to stop my nine-week-old kitten swallowing down ten milligrams of citalopram hydrobromide.

Yeah. Sort of epic fail, today. (Although I'm not the only one. The European Parliament building in Strasbourg, my lecturer explained, is architecturally precise; the circular shape embodies the EU's values, its emphasis on strength, on unity. We were going to take you all there on a visit, she went on, but the roof fell in.)

I don't know why I tell you all my litanies of woe. Have a drabble.

translations, not a play by Brian Friel, 100 words. For [livejournal.com profile] hathy_col, who wanted Discworld, the Librarian, translations of "ook".

ook! )

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