There are some books I've read that I've known, from the very first page, I was going to love. Middlesex is one of them. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not. I actually said to walkawayslowly, "Is there a point at which I am suddenly going to start loving this book?"

"I don't know," Merrin said. "I sure hope so, since it's one of my favorites!"

I emailed her from a train in Germany to say, Have started to love this book. Emailed her again to say, NO REALLY IT IS 100% AWESOME.

When I got back from Europe, she said, "When did you realize you were going to like it?"

"On page 62," I replied.

Merrin laughed at me -- "On page 62? What??" -- but seriously, this is where I first got the sense that I was going to like this book a whole lot, and it is indeed on page 62 (of my copy, anyway):

She had been a virgin when she married and had humbly submitted to her husband's brutal love. His brutality early killed all of her latent desires. Yet she could understand the fierce love hunger that made girls--as people put it--go wrong. She understood how a boy who had been driven from the neighborhood for rape could still be a good boy at heart. She understood why people had to lie and steal and harm one another. She knew of all pitiful human weaknesses and of many cruel strengths.

Yet she could not read or write.

And this is where I began to fall in love with this book (pages 72-73 of my copy):

And the child, Francie Nolan, was all of the Rommelys and all of the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely's mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely's cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy's talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan's possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie's soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all of these good and these bad things.

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.

She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys or the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only--the something different from anyone in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life--the one different thing such as that makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

Wow, my life is weird. I've kept starting to write posts and then never posting them because by the time I finish, the things I was going to write about before are not as relevant as they were a day ago. For instance, I had a whole post where I was writing about how I was spending all of my time confusing the crap out of the Swiss through acting extremely strange (spending five hours in a copy shop, carrying thirteen personal-size pizzas through the streets of a ritzy resort area, etc.) and when I am not paying for my internet in an airport I should probably still write that all out because, you know, it was entertaining, but I have somewhat bigger news now!

It's really extremely likely that within the next few months I am going to be moving to Frankfurt.

HOLY CRAP.

I was on a business trip in Switzerland for the past week, and one of the higher-ups in my company's Frankfurt office was there as well. Turns out the Frankfurt office is in desperate need of someone with MY EXACT CREDENTIALS (speaks German and English, has experience in my particular department, is enthusiastic) and apparently I really impressed this higher-up, so yesterday I went and met the Frankfurt people and checked out the office and um, wow, it would be EXTREMELY different from working in New York (I'd be going from 25 people in my department, largely recent college grads, to me and one other person, and she is a cute grandmotherly type) but I've been talking about wanting to work for one of my company's German offices for ages. I asked my assistant boss about it a while ago and she said that people have done stuff like this before, but that it was really rare, and generally only was possible if a specific position arose that someone was uniquely well-suited to . . . which, HI, that happened.

I feel like it would be hard to pass this up! Anyway, my paid internet is about to run out. More later!

I've realized that the main problem with me and LJ these days is as follows: half the time I am at work constantly and not reading my flist and not commenting and not posting because I have no free time; the other half of the time I am NOT at work constantly, and AM reading my flist but am not commenting and not posting because . . . I am a lazy shit. The thing is, you can't actually TELL which of those phases I am in, because there is no difference between them in terms of my LJ conduct. I am either not posting or ALSO not posting!

There's really no excuse for it when I have free time. When I am at work constantly, my excuse is that I am ridiculously paranoid and flat-out refuse to go on LJ because WHAT IF THEY DISCOVERED MY PORN. Terrifying.

It's pretty sad, though, because I end up writing emails to walkawayslowly that are thinly disguised LJ posts.

Exhibit A, from a couple days ago:

I was walking to work this morning (in the nasty pouring rain) and I thought, you know what? It is a glazed donut kind of day. And so I bought one.

And then I got into work and my coworker said, "I think I am going to go to the caf, do you want anything?" I said I was good with the donut, but then he returned and told me how they had the sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches, which I had been craving for DAYS (they have not come through for me on this count!).

And then I said to myself, can it really be both a glazed donut kind of day AND a sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwich kind of day?

Why yes, is the answer. Yes, it can.

Sausage, egg and cheese sandwich + donut day was a good day, might I add.

Anyway, I am going to make an effort to post more! Even when I am working constantly! This is why I am posting at 1:30 a.m. on a Monday morning -- because I am working fairly constantly. Really, no complaints, though -- the thing I am working on right now (a.k.a. the thing that made me disappear in November and also in March) is EPICALLY less stressful than it has been in the past, and is also leading to me spending the better part of two weeks in Switzerland starting Wednesday night! Working constantly, but you know what, I'd much rather be working constantly in a vacation town on a lake in Switzerland than in my office in New York.

Speaking of New York, what the HELL is up with the shitty weather, month of June? By the time I get back, New York seriously needs to get its act together and stop trying to be friggin' England.

I should really go to bed, but I'm all psyched for this trip now in a way that I wasn't a couple of days ago when I was stressed as hell and trying not to panic over how this project just was not working and I didn't have the tech skills to fix it. And I'm sure I'll be stressed as hell again before I leave (possibly even by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, though I sure hope not) but right now I am in a good place. This is because I am packing. I love packing. This will mark the first time that I have checked a bag on an airplane since I flew back from spending a year in Germany in 2007, though, because I have to pack for about two weeks, and I have to bring business attire. WILD. (This is the point at which I thank God that my mother insisted on buying out Ann Taylor's petite suits department a year ago, when I was interviewing for jobs in New York. Otherwise I would be in deep shit!)

I've really gotten packing light down to an art when it's just traveling for fun (see: Europe for one week in a school backpack; New York for five days in a purse) but this bringing along suits thing is really cramping my style. Whatever; I have big plans. When (if?) I get to travel around for a couple of days after the business side of this is over, I intend to ditch the big bag and WHAM break out the little backpack. It'll be great. The big suitcase will stay in a train station in Switzerland somewhere, while the little backpack and I will zoom off to Germany or other parts of Switzerland or who the heck knows where. It'll be awesome.

The only problem with this trip is that after it is over I have exactly zero excuse not to be studying for the LSAT all the time. And since I signed up to take it in September and September is not actually that far off once you hit mid-July, that is kind of a bummer.

I went to Borders today and bought two books. One of them was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, because it is one of walkawayslowly's favorite books, and I have never read it. I was all set to call it a day right there, but then decided I wanted another book. Two seemed like a good number.

Out of Merrin's set of favorite books, the other two I could remember were The Time Traveler's Wife (which I have read and love), and The Sparrow, which my local Borders totally failed to provide me. So I bought The Demon's Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan (sarahtales) instead.

Here is how much of a fandom geezer I am: I was reading Sarah Rees Brennan's stuff back when she was writing as Maya and had just finished posting Draco Malfoy and the Amazing Bouncing . . . Ferret? on Schnoogle. I remember being delighted by that story at the time, but also, I was fifteen. I've greatly enjoyed her stuff more recently than that (she was the last HP writer I still read), although, as discussed with dark_reaction, her Draco was pretty much always exactly the same from story to story.

I didn't come into The Demon's Lexicon with super high hopes. I've been burned by other ex-fandom forays into original fic (see: Havemercy, by ladyjaida and danibennett, which I read all the way through, and the Mortal Instruments trilogy by cassandraclare -- what was with dropping the i in Claire, btw? does Clare actually make it look less thirteen-year-old? -- which I would maybe be willing to give another chance on a really, really strong recommendation, but thus far have not been able to get into). My main complaint about The Demon's Lexicon is that the dialogue is a little too clever in the way that Maya's Draco was always too clever, but it's entertaining, and I'm having a good time with it so far. Also, it's got a little SPN thing going on (brothers! on the run! demons!), if that's up your alley.

Also, this evening, my roommates and I entertained one of their friends from college, who is a boy who is dating a girl. This girl: a) is his roommate; b) has a boyfriend; c) is bisexual and mostly interested in girls; d) has a brother who is the third roommate in their apartment; and e) is the only one actually on the lease, and therefore the landlord in this situation. "I think this is kind of doomed from the start," the boy said. "But you know, one second we're just friends, and the next second we are stone cold sober making out."

Of course! These kinds of things happen to me ALL THE TIME.

This boy also once dated three girls simultaneously, and was delightfully befuddled about how it had come to pass. He's sort of an accidental ladies' man. I think this would make for an excellent romantic comedy. Bonus points: he was also a very good sport about watching the second season premier of True Blood with us, which is the guilty pleasure that has taken three-quarters of my apartment by storm. Possession of HBO On Demand is a very dangerous thing.

Only my roommate and I would go to a lesbian bar with the expressed purpose of making out with girls and both end up making out with (very attractive!) Turkish boys. A+, us!

I'm hanging out with one of my roommates and her tiny adorable gay friend, watching flashes of lightning through her floor-to-ceiling windows (it may not have a closet but her room sure does have some perks), reading Star Trek meta and awesome Kirk/girl!McCoy genderswap (I thought I was all done with genderswap a couple years ago when I wrote this but apparently I am not), drinking wine and typing up a truly craptastic scene from walkawayslowly's and my Big Bang that I am going to rewrite probably before I even show it to Merrin, and wanting something, I'm not sure what. Something.

The summer before I started college, I was jittery all the time, a little nervous -- not about the idea of entering into college exactly, but at the idea of all the possibilities that were in front of me: that I was going somewhere completely different, that I could turn into a whole different person, that I might fall in love at any moment.

I feel that way a little now, too -- not jittery or nervous, really, but on the verge of something. It's a warm and humid night, after a day that felt like full-on summer, and humid summer nights make me think of kissing on porch swings or in hammocks, of the possibility of falling in love (though I never have), and summers have always been that in-between time for me (and everyone, I guess) -- the time before I left for college, for Germany, for New York; the time before I had to figure out my life. I'm taking the LSAT this fall, though I'm not sure that law school is what I want to do; I have no idea what it is that I want to do. I'm not sure that I'll ever be sure. I think a lot of life is about just picking something that seems like it could be what you want and going for it, seeing if it fits. In the summer it just feels like the possibilities are spread wide open for me, like I could fit into all these different versions of my life, in endless ways.

*

My roommate just held up a stuffed animal and twisted it around and said, "Flipping llama!", apropos of nothing. You know what, I think this is a sign -- the universe is telling me that the best choice for this evening is Get Drunker.

I intended to go to bed a while ago, but instead got caught up in archiving a relic of true genius. Maybe it's in honor of my new and rather ridiculous love for Star Trek, but ladies and gentlemen, I give you a work of science fiction goodness by me, age nine. And by me obviously I mean Dixie Walters, because that was my pen name. Oh yes.

Totally unedited, and presented in all its original glory:

Zodiac
by Dixie Walters

"Lyna! Where are you?" My energy tank was running low. Even in Xeeksor's low gravity, it's no fun to run out of energy. That would mean I couldn't talk to my friend. If I took off my lycron tank to try and talk to her that way I would die from lack of air. "Lyna! We have to get to the energy charger! I'm running low!"

Lyna nodded. She barked for me to follow her. We bounded quickly in Xeeksor's low gravity. Lyna had seen an energy charger. Dogs on Xeeksor have much sharper eyes than Xeeksornians. One of the best (such as Lyna) can see a grain of sand two miles away!

I checked my bank again. Oh no! It said I had five minutes! The closest charger was six minutes away. Luckily, I remembered about light speed. I switched it on fast. So did Lyna. We zoomed to the charger. I charged up and we headed home. Phew! That was close!

( continued )

I spent far too much of my day reading old xkcd comics and spamming my friends at work and walkawayslowly with my favorite ones. This is all my friend S.'s fault, for linking me to this one yesterday: The Race, Part 1 (Make sure to read its sequels, too!)

That one is directly related to my extreme delight over Firefly, which I still have one episode left of (plus Serenity). Randall Munroe, the creator of xkcd, is kind of my hero. Tragically a lot of the math jokes go right over my head, but that does not stop me from loving the stuffing out of it. He has awesome things to say about everything!

Driving is fun: Google Maps

The truth about Han Solo: Improvised

The Klingon language is everywhere: Impostor

(Speaking of the Klingon language, I did not mean to end up on a forum that was discussing the likelihood of Klingon getting you laid, but um. Apparently that happened. MOVING RIGHT ALONG.)

"Now you just put on that shark suit, Jimbo, and you see if it hurts when they bite you": Outreach

And finally, things we have all experienced: Bored with the Internet

And how very sad and true that is.

I also recommend just hitting the Random button and reading everything ever, because they are pretty much all hilarious.

ETA: I suck and forgot to mention this -- walkawayslowly also made icons, including this one, because she is awesome!

Today I said to my roommate, "I have officially lost all respect for myself," and she said, "Does it have anything to do with Klingons?" And when I had to answer that yes, it did, I lost even that tiny last bit of respect I did not know I had in reserve.

But but but. The linguistics of Klingon is really INTERESTING, okay. I'm a total linguistics nerd; this is not news! I should just probably . . . think about directing that interest toward something else. That is not Klingon.

Epic sigh. Here, cunningly I distract you with a rec:

How to Avoid Kicking Puppies and Other Valuable Lessons in Leadership by sparky77
gen with lots of UST all around | R | ~2,000 words
I was amusing myself by imagining Kirk attempting to be an authority figure and this is what happened.

I'd been forlornly trolling the LJ waters for days in search of fic that hit on the way the movie does truly hilarious banter, and this is that fic. It's gen, but a) it's short, and b) everyone wants to bang each other, you can tell.

Also, it is one of very few fics I've seen that has approached the kind of characterization of Kirk that I loved so much from the movie, which is to say, a Kirk who has hints of truly awesome leadership skills down there somewhere, but is also like:

KIRK: You know what my favorite thing is?
MCCOY: Boobies?
KIRK: I was going to say pissing Spock off, but yes! Boobies.

Read it, it's awesome.

I spent last week in Freiburg, Germany; Bad Ischl, Austria; and Salzburg, Austria. It was pretty darned awesome. I wandered around Freiburg being all nostalgic and hung out with a lot of people I hadn't seen in a year and a half or more, and just generally had an excellent time.



( +5 behind the cut )

Some things that happened:

+ S. and I got growled at by a swan. It swam all the way across an Alpine lake. We thought it was pretty cool until it started making monster noises, and then it was not cool at all. I had not realized that swans were capable of this!

+ S. and I hiked in the Alps by a lake along the side of a highway. "There's supposed to be a nice path around here somewhere!" S. said. "We just can't find it!" We did eventually, after a very necessary roadside ice cream stop.

+ I hung out with a friend's sister's 12-day-old baby. You know how tiny babies are usually kinda weird and wrinkly? Not this one! This one was super cute.

+ I learned that while my German is quite good when it comes to Hochdeutsch and a little bit of Badisch, it totally sucks when it comes to random Salzburg-environs Dialekt. Yikes! Too bad, too, because of the group of guys who approached me and my friends at Augustiner Bräu in Salzburg, the cutest by far was the one sitting next to me. Who spoke exactly no Hochdeutsch.

+ I watched most (but still not yet all) of Firefly. HOLY CRAP, Y'ALL. Both S. and walkawayslowly have been trying to get me to watch it for years. I've had it on my external hard drive since early senior year of college, i.e. the better part of two years, and I really did intend to watch it before; I just never quite got around to it. Oh my God, Mal Reynolds. I did not know what my life was missing without you in it. Also, now I can go back and reread sevenfists' Dean/Mal 'verse and actually know the characters. Sweet.

Also currently happening in my life? STAR TREK. Saw it last night with the roomies, loved it, and going to see it again on IMAX this Friday with roomies and some friends from work. One of my roommates was trying to describe why it's appealing to the lone roommate who has not seen it yet: "Well, it's nerdy, but it's not THAT nerdy, and also it helps that they are really hot." And it's FUNNY. I figure you have all seen it already, which is excellent, because that means you are all writing fic. Right??

Oh! Haha! I could have posted about this last one a week or so ago, but I was kind of distracted by being in Europe, damn me! BIG BANG REVEAL. Merrin beat me to the punch by about a year, but hey:

RPS97.
Authors: causeways and walkawayslowly
Artist: sillyshy
Title: Mildred: A College AU
Rating/Pairing: NC-17/J2
Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jared in possession of his heterosexuality will immediately switch teams upon enrollment in college and first contact with Jensen Ackles.

Personally, I think Mildred: A College AU is the best title ever, because seriously, what else do you need to know? It is a J2 college AU. Its name is Mildred, which came from this conversation with Merrin. We are hilarious people. Now we just need to edit. Haha good times! Especially since the ending currently reads like something Stephenie Meyer vomited. Whatever, we will prevail.

Over the past couple of days I've been rewatching Band of Brothers again. I love that series like burning. This is probably the fourth time I've watched it all the way through, and yet I can never remember characters' names beyond, like, Col. Winters -- which is not saying much, seeing as he's the central character. I've never been able to, not even the first time I watched the thing and then immediately rewatched within the same week.

It's always really bothered me, but I'd assumed that I was just not paying enough attention or something, so it was extremely heartening to find, when I was looking at the Wikipedia page today, that the Washington Post review at the time it came out mentioned that "few of the characters stand out strikingly against the backdrop of the war. In fact, this show is all backdrop and no frontdrop. When you watch two hours and still aren't quite sure who the main characters are, something is wrong."

I don't think it's NO frontdrop, but it's definitely backdrop-heavy. And I don't mind, really! I think the backdrop is damned awesome! I just do wish I didn't come out of every episode being like, "Shit, who was that guy from two eps ago?" and thinking I need a fandom primer just to keep track.

BoB is one of those shows I've never felt any particular interest in seeking out the fanfic for, partly because there's never been a pairing I've shipped all that hard. I mean, okay, Winters and Dixon are doing it, have always been doing it, and will always be doing it, but that's just such a no-brainer. Beyond that? ( spoilers for later eps in the miniseries )

Any thoughts? Like I said, I don't really have an OTP or whatever, so if there is some totally seminal work of BoB fiction that I have yet to run across, hit me up!

I don't think I can handle that JoBros crossover thing, though. I kind of hate my life that when I got back into watching BoB and thought, "But have I seen any BoB fanfic anytime recently?" that was the first thing that came to mind.

Speaking of war miniseries, I still have not seen Generation Kill. I've heard lots of good things about it; clearly I should watch! Also, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are collaborating on another WWII miniseries, The Pacific, which might be enough to kick me into springing for HBO. It's meant to be coming out sometime this year, and I want it. Also, Entourage comes back sometime this summer, I think. MUST HAVE. I told my roommate I was thinking about getting HBO, and she was all, "Oh yeah, I would be down for that. It's really hard to find The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency online." And then she realized what she had admitted, and I laughed and laughed.

Two further points vaguely related to BoB, war movies, and general badassery:

1) I am all kinds of psyched about The Hurt Locker. You can see the trailer via the link. The movie in general looks like it is right up my alley, but in particular it's got Jeremy Renner! Who was super hardcore and awesome in 28 Weeks Later! HOT.

2) I think in some part of my brain I had known this, but I had not paid a ton of attention: the guy who plays Guarnere in BoB? Frank John Hughes? Oh yeah, he is also on 24, and therefore is on my TV EVERY WEEK. Woohoo, powers of observation!

And one last point related to how my roommates think I am an enormous tool:

The final book in Sarah Monette's Mélusine series, Corambis, is out, and is in my hot little hands! However, it is in my hot little hands sans cover, because this is its cover:



I swear it looks like something out of a Harry Potter fic back in the day, like, when every story absolutely required that Draco wear leather trousers. In fact, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure this could be the cover of Cassie Claire's Passionate Trousers. All you ex-HPers know EXACTLY what I'm talking about, don't lie.

Uh, anyway. There's a good reason I'm reading this book without its jacket. This is a better series than bad romance novels, I swear! Even though I'm sure that at some point the scene the cover art depicts will come to pass, I feel like a better human being leaving the cover art hidden on my bookshelf.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I am very sorry to say that I was just walking out of work as it turned to March 17th, after having been at work since 9:30 in the morning! This is the resurgence of the project from November which caused me to not post for a month straight. Not that not posting for a month straight would be that unremarkable at this point, as infrequently as I'm around these days, but anyway, if I seem to be around even less than usual, it's because I'm at work until the end of time, or April 3rd. Whichever comes first!

(Also, 7+ months into this job I continue to not check LJ at work, because I am just that paranoid.)

Anyway, I missed rawkin_ur_sox's birthday a few days ago, which is just pitiful, since there was that one time not too long ago when I called her from Brooklyn and talked her ear off about Harrison Ford and she very kindly put up with my rambling. It occurs to me, as I type this, that that was Valentine's Day, and that was more than a month ago. Haha, I'm good with time. Obviously. ANYWAY, happy belated birthday; hope it was lovely!

My roommate texted me a couple of hours ago to say that she had a surprise for me when I got home -- turns out she'd gone out to dinner in the West Village with one of her friends from high school, and had brought all of us back cupcakes from Magnolia. So now my bed is littered with chocolate cupcake crumbs. DELICIOUS.

I've been telling myself that I wasn't going to post again until I had fic, but HAHA I thought I was going to have this Merlin fic done two weeks ago and it is still not done (in spite of being approximately eight words long), so never mind. Fic coming soon! Just hopefully not in the way that, like, the MTA says "Second Avenue subway, coming soon!!!" and then immediately afterwards it says, "In 2015!!!" and has, apparently, been saying it's coming soon since the '70s. My new goal: being speedier than the MTA. I set my standards REAL HIGH.

I've been reading a lot of Merlin fic, as one does, a good bit of which has been modern day AU. I really love modern day Merlin AUs. (There are four fics in particular that I love like burning; two of them are still WIPs, though, so I think I'll save that rec post till they're done.) And I've been thinking about other Merlin AUs I would want, and there is one that I have not seen and am pretty much dying for.

I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how much I would love to have a Merlin footballer AU. Normally if I were dying for something I would at least consider writing it myself, but since in this case I know shit nothing about football, I am not even close to the person who should be writing this. Clearly someone who knows football should make this happen. Arthur the international man of mystery football star! Merlin the . . . sort of incompetent keeper who manages to make these saves out of NOWHERE and it just doesn't make a damned bit of sense and maybe he is slightly magic! (This is another thing I love -- when Merlin's still got magic in modern day AUs.)

I don't have a fully fleshed-out plot or anything, and just in terms of not knowing British/football culture I do NOT feel like I should be writing this -- I think it would be a much better and richer story written by someone who does -- but anyway, the idea was inspired by this blind item on Dlisted a while back*:

Which star athlete is having an affair with one of his teammates? In the macho world of sports, homosexuality is rarely discussed. However, these two teammates - one much more high profile than the other - have been practically joined at the hip for the past several months. Both are married, and both of their wives are in for a nasty shock if they find out. Team managment does know, and is seriously considering trading the lesser player to prevent a full-blown public scandal that might diminish their star’s reputation and ticket sales.

*How much do I LOVE Michael K, btw? SO MUCH. Never has anyone managed to gross me out so consistently in so many new and hilarious ways.

I would cut the line re: the marriage and the wives, and just leave it as "Arthur is the huge star and Merlin is the teammate," but anyway. If this kind of AU already exists and I just missed it, clearly you need to link me now. Otherwise, fly free, little footballer AU idea! Fly free!

Oh and here, have another couple of ideas for stories in other fandoms! Two first lines for stories I am never going to write:

Sam/Dean: In Stone Creek, Alabama, on a night when it's too hot to sleep under the covers, Dean pulls Sam's boxers down and licks up the length of his cock.

John/Rodney: Not that Rodney was opposed to being bathed in milk and honey, exactly, even when the milk came from cacti and the honey was the secretion of a creature that looked a lot like a yak. The women doing the bathing were all kinds of hot, and in the next tub over Sheppard definitely looked like he was enjoying himself.

I don't care if you credit me for anything above, but do shoot me a link if you do anything with them, so that I can see these stories actually existing in the world. ESPECIALLY THE FOOTBALLER AU.

And okay, hopefully this won't be confusing: now for some stories I AM writing!

Post a single sentence or two extract from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations.

Some original fic, some fanfic. A couple of these are rather less in progress than more, but they're all in some state of partial completion. And again, these are the stories I'm currently writing myself, so these ideas belong to me (and in one case, also to walkawayslowly). They are not up for grabs! (Although personally, I think the stuff above sounds way more exciting. FOOTBALLER AU.)

1. The rental house sprawls over its beachfront lot. It's a Cape Cod, two gables, cedar shakes and a widow's walk; it's not a beach house, it's a mansion.

2. Charlie's proximity brought me great comfort. And there were other benefits, too, to this arrangement, beyond the warmth.

3. An army is only as strong as its weakest man. Uther had drilled this into Arthur's head repeatedly, until it stuck; until it was the only thing Arthur could think about when he was on the training pitch until supper each night—that he would not be that man.

4. So Jared tells him about the dining hall, and then he remembers that he never got to tell Jensen about last night either, so he backtracks to tell Jensen about that, and then goes back to the dining hall, and ends with knocking over the trays and having the dining hall lady glowering at him as he knelt in the middle of orange juice and left over eggs.

5. The taxi dropped Jared off on Jensen's street before, but the West Village is a rabbit warren of streets.

Oh, little Merlin story, be done already.

I spent a long time reading RaceFail '09 entries last night. This is a good place to get a very short overview, along with this.

For more, look at rydra_wong's post here. There are a lot of links; it can seem overwhelming. sheafrotherdon has good stuff to say about that here: One white person to another.

Pick one of the links, and open it. Start somewhere. deepad's I Didn't Dream of Dragons is another good place.

I'm reading, and I'm thinking. It's a start.

Hahaha, okay, I can hear SPN fandom going LALALA and scrolling past now, but WHATEVER.

So I have a Colin Morgan beard sweet spot. It is shown in this picture, which um yes I am reposting, because it is my favorite.



sweetestdrain and various others just posted links to these Colin Morgan pictures where there is a rather good bit more beard in evidence. I think he's hotter with less beard, but that is not really the point here. He's still really stupidly attractive, but that is also not the point:

Colin Morgan + the extra beard = I HAVE HOOKED UP WITH THAT GUY. Like, not ACTUAL Colin Morgan, obviously, don't kill me, internet. But seriously, this guy Adam I hooked up with my sophomore year? KIND OF A DEAD RINGER. SCRUFFY BEARD AND MESSY DARK HAIR AND EVERYTHING. He was from Santa Fe and very much not Irish, and after we hooked up I kind of freaked out and never spoke to him again, and DEAR GOD was I dumb at nineteen. As sweetestdrain pointed out, I could have had a Colin Morgan lookalike of my very own!

Oh, right, the real point of this -- I looked at the extra scruffy beard and my first thought was, "I wish he'd trim that a little." My second thought was self-inserty and involved Colin and his beard doing filthy things. GOD, Colin Morgan.

First, and most importantly, today is notthequiettype's birthday! I think we all know I love Ash, but in case that was not clear: I LOVE ASH. Hope Disneyland was fabulous. <333

Inexcusably, I forgot to mention ignited's birthday a few days ago, what the hell was that about. I love Stef toooooo!

I finally finished the Gossip Girl RPF! Jagged and Endlessly New (JC/Chace, Chace/Ed), which is the sequel to Some Surreal Country (JC/Chace). About damned time, too! It's really disconcerting to have your brain eaten for a couple of weeks by a fandom you are in no way in and that does not, in fact, really exist.

Now I can actually write Merlin fic instead of just scribbling notes down about it at work while watching the series from the start . . . again. It's Colin Morgan's ears, okay. They make me do crazy things.

Today I also, ahaha, started watching the Christian/Olli clips from Verbotene Liebe, aka That German Soap Opera With the Gay Boys. I told myself I was doing this because I can feel my German getting worse every day that I am not actively using it, and because last night, while well into the third pitcher of beer at a dive bar with my roommates and their tiny gay friend from college, I spoke very earnestly about wanting to move back to Germany (and also about wanting to marry a lawyer and/or Irishman, whatever, I blame the drink!). So clearly my German needed work. Also there are like 29837473 years of gay angst. I kind of wanted to stab myself in the eye about half of the time I was watching parts . . . 1-35 of 130-some, omg, but the other half of the time there were boys being really in love and freaking out about it, and who doesn't love a good gay freakout?

I was looking through my works-in-progress folder the other day, as one does, and discovered an Entourage recs list I put together back in, like, JULY, and never posted. What the hell! Let's fix that.

( seven Entourage stories I put on this list back when, and one crossover I'm adding to the list right now )

This took WAY longer that I thought it would when I started writing it. That's because it's been rewritten like . . . four times. Thrilling, I know. Anyway, this is pretty different than the story I thought I was going to write when I started it, but it still ends up in the same place. So, cool.

Title: Jagged and Endlessly New
Author: causeways
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: JC Chasez/Chace Crawford, Chace Crawford/Ed Westwick
Word Count: 4,054
Disclaimer: None of these men have ever had any sort of homosexual relations with each other whatsoever.
Summary: "I think I'm moving out of my apartment," Ed says one afternoon on set. They're huddling in Chace's trailer between takes.
Author's Notes: This is the sequel to Some Surreal Country, but it should stand alone pretty well. walkawayslowly would have betaed this if she'd been around.

( Jagged and Endlessly New )

Also, I can move on now. THANK GOD.

A number of random things!

1) If you are ever on the Lower East Side and looking for French brunch: ( Cafe Charbon, 170 Orchard Street at Stanton )

Prix fixe was $14.95 with a mimosa or a Bloody Mary, $11.95 with coffee, and every single thing my friends and I ate was 100% delicious. Also, the maitre d' was French and cute and saucy. I am not a fan of the tiny mustache, and yet it WORKED for him. Especially when he smiled and flirted.

2) Possibly I might have mentioned that Merlin ate me. I blame this guy:



HI COLIN MORGAN. Can we talk about how very much facial hair is REALLY, REALLY WORKING FOR YOU? (From here, and you should totally click that link because there are two other pictures there that are really vital to your existence.)

Also there is a big fat Colin Morgan picspam/lovefest going on at franticsga's journal, here, which contains even more things that are necessary like BREATHING.

3) I have recced this before; I will rec this again.

Drastically Redefining Protocol by rageprufrock
Arthur/Merlin | NC-17 | lots of awesome words | modern day AU

If you are in Merlin fandom at all, eight pages of comments say you have probably read this already, but let me just mention that I convinced my roommate to read this story, and my roommate has not been in fandom of any description for YEARS. You know why she is reading it?

Because it is just like The Prince & Me if it were better, hotter, and gay. Also this story has GOSSIP BLOGS. You do not need to be in Merlin fandom to read this story. You just need to be ALIVE.

I should say, because this is a fairly frustrating point for people who get really into stories and want them to be perfect, that the pacing gets a little wonky at the end. Regardless, I have a whole lot of trouble caring, because it is quite possibly the best universe ever. Have I mentioned the part where Arthur is the GAY PRINCE OF WALES yet? Because oh yeah. He is.

4) This is a placeholder for the massive Merlin recs post that I obviously need to make, because Merlin fic is pretty much how I spend all of my time. Yikes.

5) walkawayslowly is out of town and mostly internetless for approximately 982734 years, and it is driving me a little crazy. We were talking about how we missed each other, were getting very sappy, etc. and I said she'd better freaking call me soon.

causeways: Otherwise you'll come back and find me gnawing on my own leg and writing 24 gen fic out of desperation. If only Merrin had been there to stop her, they'll say!
walkawayslowly: Haha!! My aunt just asked me if I like 24. :) There is no reason to turn to 24 gen! Or I'll start adding some h/c into our Big Bang. That'll be the whole plot.
causeways: HORRIFYING.
walkawayslowly: Haha!! Don't threaten me with 24, missy.
causeways: JACK BAUER DOES WHAT JACK BAUER WANTS.
walkawayslowly: THE SAME COULD BE SAID FOR THE HURT/COMFORT.
causeways: JACK BAUER CAN BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF HURT/COMFORT.
walkawayslowly: AND THEN IT WILL COMFORT ITSELF.

So if you open our college AU in June/July/whenever and it is nothing but 40K of Jared being hurt and Jensen comforting him or whatever, you will KNOW that I am bound and gagged somewhere while Merrin gleefully took the fuck over. SEND HELP.

6) If I post again before finishing the fucking Gossip Girl RPF, slap me around a little, 'kay? AND NOT IN A HURT/COMFORT WAY.

I have had two goals for this week.

Goal #1: Finish watching Merlin.
Goal #2: Finish writing the JC Chasez/Chace Crawford, Ed Westwick/Chace Crawford fic that's been rolling around in my head since September.

I have completed one and a half of these goals! The one: I watched the last episode of Merlin earlier and, well. I enjoyed myself. I'm not the most in love with the show itself, but I think Colin Morgan is SUPER CUTE, and I am DEFINITELY all over the fic. And the writing of the fic. I have big plans for the writing of the fic!

(But not until walkawayslowly and I finish our J2 college AU for Big Bang! Which continues to move right along nicely. Jared knows he's gay now! PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE.)

The half: I thought the above-mentioned fic was one fic. It was not. For the three of you who care about how JC and Chace got it on and all the blogs knew it, Some Surreal Country (NC-17, 3,125 words). Yay! And for the other three of you who care about how Chace and Ed actually for serious live together in TriBeCa in a den of love, that fic will be here ALL TOO SOON.

The other thing that has eaten my brain, in addition to Merlin and totally random fic-writing? THE EXTREME ATTRACTIVENESS THAT IS JORMA TACCONE.

This past Saturday's SNL was one of the best I've seen recently, like, pretty much EVERY skit was dead-on hilarious. I spent all day at work on Monday quoting lines from "I'm On a Boat" in emails with my brother. Anyway, this led to me watching "Jizz in My Pants" repeatedly as well, and MAN, Merrin thinks I am super lame for this, but I don't even care -- JORMA TACCONE. IN THAT VIDEO. A++ WOULD DO IMMEDIATELY.

I know I am not the only one! rawkin_ur_sox agrees! The shirtless dancing is kinda bizarre, but it's not getting in the way of my love.

ETA: Hahaha, also. I have sort of combined AU modern-day Merlin and Jorma Taccone's "Jizz in My Pants" character in my head, like, Merlin's wearing pretty much that EXACT outfit and living in London (I need a few things from the grocery / doing things alone now mostly) and Arthur is very attractive, etc., and basically what I am talking about is how you should all go read Drastically Redefining Protocol by rageprufrock if you have not already. It is amazing! And the rest of it will go up this weekend! I am BEYOND THRILLED.