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Today, I did answer some email and do some washing-up, but mostly I wrote. Only three stories, but in my defence two of them got longer than expected:

-For musesfool, who wanted CJ Cregg meeting Margaret Houlihan;

-For hedda62, who wanted something about Night Vale's actual weather, if you lift your eyes I am your brother (at the AO3; Cecil, Carlos and Dana coming home, 1200w)

-For forthwritten, marymac and philomytha, all who wanted stories about Nightingale from Rivers of London (!), a spell against the lonely (at the AO3, Nightingale and a queer life, 1500w).

To bed, to bed, etc.

I had a surprisingly eventful day, considering I didn't talk to anyone and didn't get up until two. (Hi, brain, not useful, thanks.) Here are my purimgifts recs:

First of all, these three stories were for me:

Caifornia Girls, Code, Midnight Radio, gen, Star Trek (2009).
These are about Gaila and Uhura, apart and together, and I really, really like them; they're very simple snippets, but the writing is so elegant, and the execution so neat. Also, Gaila and Uhura = win.

And from the others:

A Certain Slant of Snow, gen, Sports Night/The West Wing.
Amy Gardner meets Dana in an airport bar. This is so great; so smart, so much like them, and I really enjoyed it. It's the first of three, and while I did like the other two, I haven't seen enough Sports Night for them to make entire sense to me, so the rec's limited to the first. But it's great: sharp and fun.

I'm Blushing on the Inside, gen, The West Wing.
Ainsley likes hamantaschen. Also pwning people. Lovely.

End of the Rainbow, Gaila/Kirk, Star Trek (2009)
Gaila has some questions to ask Kirk. I really, really like this for the depth it gives to Gaila, and to Kirk as well for that matter, but to Gaila: it thinks through her motivations with such clear-eyed writing. I like it a lot.

Moving To The Country, gen, Star Trek (2009).
Sulu shows Chekov around San Francisco. Really understated, really nice.

The Final Message, gen, Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
When the people of the Milky Way Galaxy first heard that God's Final Message to His Creation was being displayed, the Jews of the Galaxy were among the first to seek it out. This is... highly strange, and strangely nice.

Untitled (day 1, day 2, day 3), gen, Vorkosigan.
Helen Natalia, the daughter of Count Vorkosigan, has worked something out: she is the best-placed person to take on the countship. Cordelia and Gregor help, in their own ways. It's a lovely story, this, just right in style and tone.

(Also, I was reading this and thinking, huh, it's a complete three-part story, I wonder why the author didn't give it a title?

...then I thought, this is a story about a woman trying to take on a countship, which she doesn't have at the moment. Aha.)

1 Kings 12:3-15, Exodus 7:8-13, Esther 6:1-5, gen, Good Omens, Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible, with the amendment of a certain angel and a certain demon, and a certain amount of judicious snarking. The style of these is ludicrously, effortlessly seamless; the biblical language is resonating along, ringing from the rafters the way it always does, and then suddenly the dark scribe didst grin widely, saying unto him, Trust me, this shalt be one for the books. If they weren't a gift for daegaer I would have thought that she wrote them; as it is, they are a delightful mystery.

That is all. My heart hurts, I hate advocacy, why do people need defending in court anyway.

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 lgbtfest, but I thought it was worth noting a few of my favourites while we go:

We Few, We Happy Few by toujours_nigel, Harry Potter.
Aurors, and institutionalised homophobia. This is stylish.

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

The Rules, by 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 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 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 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.

Conversations With My Father, Take #894758:

"D'you know, in the last three days we've watched fourteen episodes of The West Wing."

"...what?"

"And one of Slings And Arrows."

"What?"

"Really."

"It's midnight."

"Mmm?"

"In eight hours I have to do a Caesarean."

"Right. 'Noel'?"

"Tomorrow."

Other than this very productive use of my time - it is productive, it's my degree subject, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it - I have spent today thinking up creative levels of my very own hell. How it happened I don't know, but because I am great and marvellous, I somehow arranged it so my passport, driving theory certificate and Young Person's Railcard all expired in the same week. I have spent my afternoon on the phone to three separate government organisations and my evening primal screaming.

Which intensified somewhat upon the discovery that someone, in the last two days, had left the freezer door open. We now have four drawers full of an appealing, aromatic frozen-pea-vanilla-soup. Ick. And to put the crowning touch on a wonderful day, I am finding it impossible to apply to American universities for post-grad without accidentally labelling myself as a high-school dropout. (Also, as I realised this afternoon, the reason I can never write about my "activities and achievements" on application forms is that I've had one consistent hobby since I was thirteen and it is profoundly socially unacceptable. If I'd spent all that time learning a musical instrument or volunteering at the RSPCA or doing t'ai chi, I'd have something to write about.) I win at life.

Hence all the watching of television. I finally finished Slings & Arrows yesterday after a few days of trying my best to stretch it out, but alas, there are only eighteen episodes and now I am bereft. I wanted to sit down and write lots about it, but I can't. I'm trying to put my finger down on what it is I love about this show - it's the writing, it's the passion for the subject matter, it's Geoffrey Tennant - but I can't do that either.

I guess, first of all it's a black comedy that actually works as a black comedy. You get to a point where you're watching ( spoilers for s3 ), and you sit back and ask yourself, why the hell am I laughing? And you are, and you continue to laugh at ghosts and drama queens and Bolivian counter-revolutionaries and lesbian pot-smoking stage managers. And you laugh at madness, because it is, in a dark way, very funny. Geoffrey's mental illness is played for laughs, usually, and that works, because he is a drama queen, and because the very few times it isn't done that way, it becomes automatically much scarier. ( spoilers again, for s2 this time )

What is it about me, narrative, and mental states, I wonder? I certainly have a thing about the topic in general: the only piece of non-fiction I've read this vacation is, bizarrely, about Freud, and I loved philosophy of mind. I love philosophy in general, of course, but mind particularly, because it's that old philosophical trope of questioning our fundamental principles taken to the next level, questioning how we can question, what we question with, reducing us to first principles to how we think about how we think. And it's all about dry science of cognition, except it isn't: it's the quiet question of why is there a whole universe of outside and a space inside that's just mine, why do I have my own dark behind my eyes?

How can you not love that? Quoting directly from the exam papers here, what would it be for a Martian to be a person, or an angel? What is a mind? Are you reading this question? How do you know it's you?

And it's probably something about this fascination of mine that makes me like Asimov's Robot stories (and not the Foundation - I much prefer Susan Calvin, Baley and Daneel) and Ian M. Banks' Culture (which I really need to read the whole of one of these days, rather than just re-reading and re-re-reading Look To Windward). But it doesn't extend so far as explaining why altered mental states are just my bulletproof narrative kink. With Geoffrey, the appeal is that he, too, seems to enjoy the philosophy of it - you can't quite discern, sometimes, which is real mental illness and which is his refusal to let his mental processes be any way influenced by society's expectations.

I remember some time ago absinthe_shadow and I discussed doing an altered-mental-states ficathon, having made a list of examples in fandom: Remus and the wolf in his head, Josh Lyman and his PTSD in "Noel" (and, arguably, the Ninth Doctor in "Dalek", and Ten's god complex ever after, and John Smith), Daniel Jackson forever being committed, Buffy in "Normal Again", Hawkeye in M*A*S*H, and, of course, Geoffrey should be added. I still want to do a multifandom ficathon of this sort, with the subversion of sanity as the main theme, if a) there was sufficient interest and b) I figured out the logistics.

I have some recs to post, as I turn the internet upside down and hope the Slings & Arrows fic falls out, but not now. Sleeeep.