(Much-belated, ack! Sorry!)

This is my first time doing yuletide, so this is my first whack at a letter. Let's see. Okay, first off, you have to know, I haven't done many fic-exchanges, but I've loved the ones I've done. And I'm absolutely tickled by the idea of somebody writing a fic - a whole fic! For me! Which means that whatever you write, it's going to make me giddy and squeeful.

( Rambly notes on general tastes )

( Fandoms: Red Dwarf, Sapphire & Steel, Death Gate Cycle, The Abyss )

So, there you go...I hope this helps jog the creative juices, if nothing else! And if you already know what you're doing - go ahead with that, and know that whatever you write, I'll enjoy it!

(And now, back to the NaNo - only at the halfway mark, oh dear...)

While I'm not really fanning, I've been enjoying this season of Supernatural - angels in trenchcoats are a major button for me, so the increased Castiel presence is much appreciated, and otherwise the show seems determined to not so much jump the shark as pole-vault over it with a rocket pack, which is if nothing else entertaining - better a bang than a whimper, no?

Concerning the latest episode, 5x09: ( Spoilers )

And then there was the new Doctor Who, "Waters of Mars"...( yup, more spoilers! If vague ones. Including mention of the X-mas special preview )

Tonight the OTW's Archive of Our Own enters Open Beta! \o/ There'll be an invitations queue you can sign up for, and I'll hopefully have some more invites to pass on soon. Or else just drop by and browse; it's growing fast, 750 fandoms and counting. I've been on the tag wrangling and testing teams for a few months now (what can I saw, organizing tags makes me all tingly!) and while there's still some bugs to iron out, everything there - tagging, bookmarks, mass auto-uploading from other sites - is pretty dang cool!

(And if you have any questions or comments or notice any bugs on the Archive, whether or not you're a signed-in user, go ahead & send them feedback - I can assure you that it's all read, and we want to know what everyone thinks/wants/fantasizes about! And if you've got any specific questions about using the archives, or AO3 tags especially, you can always ask me, too...)

Meanwhile if I'm incommunicado for the rest of the month, I went and signed up for NaNoWriMo - the first time I've done it since 2003, but with my lack of success finding gainful employment otherwise, I figured what the heck! Only I didn't actually decide to go and do it until a few days into the month, and at only 10K words now I seriously gotta get cracking! (am working on original fic, a novel featuring Quest & Cale and their world from my Shousetsu Bang*Bang stories.)

(PS: Much belated thanks for the birthday wishes! <333)

Finally finished something new! I started this one over the summer, only just got it done. And I can has writted sexings! ...Erm. Rather ridiculous sexings. MUNCLE brings out my silliest slash impulses.

MFU: Significant Effect {~9,000 words}
R/NC-17 for explicit consensual and slightly ridiculous sex; Napoleon/Illya, Illya/others
Illya is going to drive Napoleon crazy. One way or another.

( 'I have had sex before. It's not like that.' )

So an exchange with copracat (on the new DW N:LA comm!) inspired a comment-fic. (It's weird to write even something this short in a brand-new fandom; it's all so unsure. What if it's totally OOC? What if it's Jossed next episode? What if we've already seen Sam's apartment and I've forgotten? But it's good practice for Yuletide, and hey, the Sam/G's not going to write itself! ...probably. Though given the way the show's been going...)

( Cleanliness Is Next To [211 words, NCIS: LA, pre-slashy] )

I got into a discussion elsewhere about female characters, how they're often not as well-written as the guys. But that gets to be a depressing topic. So rather than talk about how female characters lose out, here's some winning female characters!

10 fandoms' worth of awesome women:

( pics below! )

PS. Yuletide nominations are open! I'm gonna be signing up for the first time...should be fun!

All slashers on my flist, y'all are watching NCIS: LA, right? Seriously. You ought to be getting on that. I expect output, in a reasonable time *taps foot* (Sam/G is obvious*, but I will accept Sam/Nate or Sam/G/Nate in a pinch.)

* By obvious, I mean ( spoiler quotes )

Also see Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J proving that their flirting is apparently not acting. The bicep-grabbing! (not that you can blame him. My god, what a body.)(and his smile. Man, LL Cool J must save a lot on electricity: he doesn't need a lamp to light up a room.)

I also have started watching Criminal Minds at gnine's insistence. I have a problem in that I find smart sexy, and find psychological Sherlock Holmesian reading of people super-smart, so yes, they are all SO SMART *_* (Also Mandy Patinkin is awesome, wish they'd make an excuse for him to sing. Plus, teaminess! so weak to teaminess.)

ETA: Also I ♥ Garcia. She's got such a wicked tongue. Also wicked glasses!

Just read a comment on my flist by copracat in which she made a fascinating point about character bashing in fanfic, which I wanted to expound upon.

It's a well-known phenomenon in fandom, that any character who comes between a pairing will be hated by some fans of that pairing. While it's not the only source of character hate, hatred of the interloper is perhaps the number one reason for char bashing. Sometimes the hated characters will simply be absent from fanfic, or otherwise ignored. But sometimes the chars will be bashed - portrayed in extremely negative, often wildly OOC ways, as scheming, selfish shrews out to ruin love affairs. When it comes to m/m pairings, such romantic interlopers are nearly always female characters (since almost all slashed male chars are canonically heterosexual, so their only canonical romantic partners are female. The reverse can be true with femme-slash pairings; Joxer was hated by some fans for being a potential threat to Xena/Gabrielle.)

copracat points out that such interlopers are a standard trope in romance fiction. ( How this carries over into fandom... )

Did anyone see this article about Ichiro and Ken Griffey Jr. from a few months ago? Let me state for the record that I don't follow baseball (or in fact any sport) - the only reason I even know who Ichiro is is because after three years in Japan it would be hard not to...in fact I think he's the only current baseball player I know. (Oh, and Matsuzaka on the Red Sox, for the same reason.)

But it seems I've been missing out, because apparently baseball makes Merlin and Smallville seem straight:

A happier Ichiro? Mariners can thank Junior

TICKLING!

Have done a batch of ficlets for my open "drabble" season (though not a single true drabble among them.) Still working on the others (and yup, it's still open, if you're interested.)

I have learned two things from this: one, my flist is inspiringly creative and also nuts (oh, the crossovers! <3 you guys) and two, I write for way too many series. Some of these characters I haven't hung out with for a while; was fun to drop by...

Gen and slash, humor and other; comment-fic, 100-800 words

( SGA, One Piece, SGA/One Piece, NCIS, MUNCLE, Who/Numb3rs, Saiyuki )

I'm plugging away at the drabbles commentfic - thanks much for the great prompts, and if you want one for your very own, all you gotta do is ask!

As for NCIS 7x01:( spoilers )

There's also NCIS: LA, which I haven't watched yet...got enough other shows on my plate, and I hate getting into things in their first season, when their future's uncertain. But let me known how it goes!

The past few weeks I was back visiting my parents and old friends; had a fantastic time, but now vacation's over and I've returned to Seattle to find a job. Oh joy! Meanwhile gnine has abandoned me and is setting off to London for grad school today. But I get the brother - hah! (right now we're alternating watching Futurama with Red Dwarf, which is somewhat brain-breaking (if not up to the Twin Peaks/Kodocha standard gnine and I set a few years back.) It's quite satisfying to finally see all of Futurama, and being one of the deprived who was never exposed to Red Dwarf at an early age, I am proud to report that I can now warble the theme song in the shower. I also flatly deny any allegations that I have been secretly googling for Lister/Rimmer because that would be WRONG and I would never do such a thing. Never. Nope.)

But that's neither here nor there. What is here is that I haven't written hardly a word in going on a month, and desperately need to get back in the writing saddle. So, for a limited time, it's open-drabble season - give me a fandom/characters/pairing (whichever, and it can be any series I know, whether or not I've fic'ed for it) and a prompt (single word, quote, sentence, whatever) and I will attempt to produce a drabble, ficlet, or other arrangement of words with a vague semblance of fic.

ETA: Until I say otherwise, requests are still open! No guarantees, but give it a go and I'll see what I can do...

Want to get in touch with me but don't have a livejournal? Just leave an anonymous message here, no account required. All comments will be screened, so have no fears about leaving your email address; it won't be publicly posted anywhere.

You can also email me; my gmail account is xparrotx.

Thank you!

My first cliche_bingo fic, for "rare pairings". Stretching the prompt a bit, because some of these aren't rare, but some of them probably are? Warnings for more cliches, pure crack, and, er, other things.

I've had this one in mind for a while, because let's face it, it's fun to pick on poor McGee.

NCIS: 5 Nights McGee Can't Forget {~4,800 words}
PG-13; het, slash; humor, crack
This isn't the first time Tim's had this dream...

( He has to admit, it was one of the more memorable variations. )

So here is my card for cliche_bingo 2009 - let's see how this goes!

( my card )

Regarding Torchwood: Children of Earth: Um. I don't know. Ask me later.

For now, a drabble. Jack Harkness, post-CoE, so spoilers (if oblique ones).

( The Limits of Infinity )

So mfuwss is holding a Bulwer-Lytton style worst-opening-sentences challenge, and since I cannot resist any excuse to extrude outrageous purple prose:

Illuminating was the day when Napoleon Solo's milk-chocolate-hued orbs did happen to lift from the blizzard-like expanse of paradoxically white red-tape covering his desk, and fell upon the pulse-pounding vision of Janet St. Claude, his most recent flame in a libidinous and continent-spanning candelabra, with her lithe arms encircling the sable-suited shoulders of Illya Kuryakin, his steadfast partner in profession and comradeship alike, and also, so the surprising stab of jealousy's searing hot poker occasioned Napoleon to realize at this singular instant, his one and only true love--excepting, of course, his still-mourned wife, the tragically married Clara, that THRUSH scientist chick who (it occurred to him in passing) he'd quite forgotten the name of, even as she had forgotten everything but his own name; and perhaps a dozen other women and a couple men of unsurpassed fairness and virtue--but really, the important thing was the unexpected epiphany that he wanted in Mr. Kuryakin's off-the-rack but oddly flattering trousers at the nearest possible opportunity, and Miss St. Claude would have to wait (until tomorrow morning at the very least.)

OTW announced the preliminary stages of an archived zine collection: The Fan Culture Preservation Project. To me this sounds incredibly awesome - it's not a zine lending library (which I'd really love) but it's a chance for older zines to survive for future fans. Considering my current beloved MUNCLE has some 40 years of fic, but the vast majority of it is only available in zines, and the earliest of that has pretty much vanished without a trace...yeah, awesome!

Reading the comments on the posts, however, it seems like a few ziners (er, if that's the term?) are really distressed by the project's existence. ( trying (and failing) to get a handle on this )

Just signed up for the new multi-fandom fic-writing challenge, cliche_bingo - like Kink Bingo for the kink-impaired. Yay, cliches! If you've been looking for fic inspiration, come join in! Should be fun. *crosses fingers for h/c prompts*

Also wrote a few 6-word MUNCLE fics. Those are as addictive as drabbling!

Now, back to ficcing. (...would anyone out there be interested in cheerleading a WiP MUNCLE angst-fic?)

So the Quest for more David McCallum has lead us from Sapphire & Steel (worth watching - check out this non-spoilery picspam for more details. Now I'm trying out the radio plays, even if they are sadly McCallum-less - David Warner does a bang-up job as Steel, though, and I do like his voice) to Colditz and the '70s Invisible Man TV show.

Colditz is a '70s BBC two-series show about a WWII POW camp, mostly adapted from a true story--The Great Escape with much less action and much more Serious Talking. It took a bit to get going but now we're quite enjoying it, though it is terribly British, dour muted atmosphere and upper-lips so stiff one could hammer nails with them. (DMc's own upper lip is adorned with a mustache (sigh) as hot-headed young Flight Lieutenant Carter; it cracks us up that as far as we can tell the char's meant to be about thirty, when he was forty at the time - he doesn't have trouble pulling it off.)

The Invisible Man is in attitude like the otherwise unrelated SciFi Channel show of the same name, mostly comedy-action, though not as clever; it's pretty much a bad show across the board, if generally innocuous. It did, however, surprise us in the first episode. So DMc is the main character, the scientist who turns himself invisible. In the pilot he's happily married to a fellow scientist, and they're obnoxiously adorable together, calling each other "Doctor Westin" and snuggling and such. Naturally we spent the whole episode waiting for her to die - which she failed to do; instead of becoming the woman in the refrigerator, the wife becomes his partner, and for the rest of the series they run around doing missions together and having lots of happy marital sex (at least twice an episode, I'd say - she's married to David McCallum, who can blame her?) It's ridiculously cute - why isn't there more scifi with adorable married couples? Mmm, I love me some established relationshipping...