The Tradëscan Codex

So I missed the six-year anniversary of my LJ on Sunday because I was busy at minimerlin on Sunday morning and early afternoon and then after I got home I crashed and made up some of the sleep I didn't get over the course of the weekend, what with not staying at the hotel and all. Guys, I slept for seventeen hours. I mean, some of the hours were heavier than others--I remember checking my alarm clock and/or computer at several different points over the night--but I did not leave my bed, did not turn on the lights, did not actually go on my computer, only rarely even opened my eyes.

In other words, minimerlin 2011 was the blast that minimerlin always is and I love you all that were there (or at previous years) and helped make it that way! I'm looking forward to 2012 already.

While I was too busy to celebrate my LJ anniversary on Sunday, apparently tinypinkmouse wasn't, because that's when she posted an audiofic of my fic Road to Emmaus (Firefly, Book, gen)--doubly appropriate since we're less than two weeks from Resurrection Sunday itself.

There are new things under the sun.

I've posted before about how all the hits on Google for "Cuckoocest" were for me, or for "Marscest" were either me or Ari. (For that matter, the fact that all the hits for "Alixtii" are me is itself worthy of note.) I like to google for other phrases that may or may well be uniquely mine, and find out whether they are. As of right now, "cest goggles" is only said by me (although of course many journals aren't indexed).

There are a number of people--although unsurprisingly, most of them are on LJ, ranging from people on my flist to ones I've never heard of before--talking about unabbreviated "incest gogles," though.

Apropos of nothing, you know that you don't have to wait for Yuletide to write one of my Yuletide requests for me. Well, apropos of the fact that I've been updating that list recently, I guess. I'm really sort of intrigued by just how clear a picture of my narrative kinks that list creates for me. It's a little disturbing, actually, but hey, I own my kinks, so it's all good.

And of course I have eight months to decide which four of those prompts I actually want to submit to Yuletide.

I have some media which I have not yet consumed (in the sense of "watched once"), and I'm not sure which to watch first. So I thought I'd throw the question onto the wisdom of the flist.



ETA: And I just realized that Stargate SG-1 Season 8 is up on Hulu finally, so that's in the running too now. Which is a good thing, because I think it's been over a year since I saw "The Lost City, Parts 1 and 2" for the first time.

Four years ago on this date, I created my LJ.

For some of the greatest hits of the Tradëscan Codex, see last year's LJ-versary post. For a comprehensive fannish biography of Alixtii O'Krul V, see my Fanlore user page.

For four years, this LJ has been an integral part of my life. Some of you I've even known longer than that, whether from the time I was reading LJ before creating a journal of my own, from the time I spent at FF.net or the City of Angel boards, or offline in high school or college. (ladyphoenixmage still wins the award, though, since I've known her over half my life.) I love you all and I thank you sincerely for bringing me so much porn joy these last four years. Here's for another four and beyond, whether here on LJ or on some other vehicle.

I do plan on getting a Dreamwidth account at the end of the month. This promises to be a time of heavy turmoil for me in my personal life, though, so I'm not sure how I'm going to use it. If I have the time, I'd like to create a filter on LJ for mutually friended friends who haven't navigated over so I can still read flocked posts, then read everyone else from over there while crossposting. But I might be forced to stay put out of necessity.

I've been spending some time lately re-reading some of the great chaptered fics I've encountered during my time in fandom, so I'm going to use this space for recs. These are all at least moderately long, plotty, and fun, with healthy helpings of the will-to-power. Some are pulpish with occasional lapses into OOC-ness; others really are deathless prose. They all always reward a re-read for me, though, so I thought I'd share the list as part of the anniversary celebrations. A lot of these count as classics, or at least should, but it's possible that not everybody knows about all of them.

( the list )

Today's also Good Friday, so here's a link to my Good Friday ficlet "Mystery." And here's the audiofic version.

The thing about notebooking is that it's so frakking easy to lose the notebook. Especially me.

I'm still mad at myself for losing the notebook which held in it the second part to The Eyes of Love, which is part of the reason why I still haven't gone on to reconstruct it and/or write a totally new second half.

Anyway, I was in a Borders Express in the mall the other night, and they had a 90% shelf.

Ninety frakking percent. (I seem to be using the word "frakking" a lot tonight.) As in, move the decimal place one place to the left and you get the new price.

Over the course of three different purchases, I spent nearly twenty dollars on almost two hundred dollars worth of books. They were mostly various "classics" for about a half-dollar each after discounts, although I did pick up Deathly Hallows for $3.50 (I have audiobooks, from undisclosed sources, of 1-6, but not 7), and a few other random books:

( new books! )

It says "random books," but they're really the 16 books I bought the other day (although admittedly, it's a pretty random bunch even for so many of them being "classics"); I played with the code to change the content, but I'm not sure how to change the header.

But where I'm going with all this is, after the first of my three purchases, I found myself bringing my bag of brand new classics (well, you know what I mean) back to my car . . . and realized I wasn't carrying my notebook.

So I went to the bench where I had actually been doing the notebooking, and it wasn't there. And I glanced in the bookstore as I passed it in the mall and looked at the 90% off shelf. 'Twasn't there.

Which meant I was going to have to ask the cashier and--hello, social anxiety.

But I mustered my courage and went in, and they had my notebook, which is good because otherwise 44 handwritten pages (well, less than that, some of them were written in the mall after that exchange) of what is supposed to be Riley/Cameron would have joined the conclusion of "The Eyes of Love" in oblivion.

Yes, I said what is supposed to be Riley/Cameron. It isn't, or at least not yet, although I still hold out hope. The thing I've found that I like notebooking is that I'm not rushing to the conclusion so I can have a whole story completed and can posted, that I can take my time, let the story linger. There's no rush; I can take it slow, letting the characters do what they need to do naturally and organically. This allowed The Art of the Possible, which I notebooked last semester, to grow to be, at around 7,000 words, my third-longest completed story, after School of Lost Souls and of course my novella Divine Interventions, both relatively recent works. I think that added length helped me add substance I wouldn't have been able to if it had been 1,000 words, even if I didn't always quite know where I was going with it as I wrote it.

The frustrating thing about notebooking is that I can take it slow, letting the characters do what they need to do naturally and organically. I've written 44 pages and Riley has only just admitted to herself that maybe she finds Cameron hot. I swear, if they don't start having sex by the end of the scene I'm currently on, I;m not letting them out of the room until they do. John and Riley, on the other hand, have done wonders towards repairing their relationship, and I don't even particularly like that pairing. Oh, well. I am hoping to get it to John/Riley/Cameron eventually.

I closed my eyes, just for a few seconds, at 11:20 p.m. last night . . . and opened them at 12:30 a.m. this morning, Jan. 1, year of our Lord two thousand and nine.

Oh, well. Happy New Years, flist.

Three out of four down!

I uploaded my prettylightsfic last night; I love RPF so much, you guys. I look forward to the archive going live, too; I can never figure out whether to expect people to be able to identify which story I wrote or not. Plus RPF written for me!

Plus there's fic(s) in the yuletide archive written by me, of course. What's been going on in terms of comments has actually been quite interesting, and I'm not sure what to make of it, though I'd be perfectly willing to trade in "interesting" for another "wins yuletide" of the Requiem at Reichenbach sort. Everything I've written has at least one comment on it now, though, which is reassuring. And there's definitely still something to be proud of in being #33 to upload back in November.

And of course there's my Catchallthon fic, The Art of the Possible. I've been wanting to say something about it for awhile, but in the chaos (Hail Eris!) leading up to Christmas I never got the chance. I offered to write VMars since that's one of my fandoms, but of course when I got matched up the request was Logan/Veronica, which is so not my pairing, cf. this post where I wish Logan were a Cylon or even this one where I fantasize about a show sans Logan or Dick. I always believed the pairing in canon, though, dysfunctional as it was, even if I wasn't all that fond of the two of them together, so I just had to manage the balance between the dysfunction and the romance in such a way that I could be true to both the spirit of the request and to my muse. It wouldn't be fluffy long-term OTP happy ever after, but I didn't have any reason to necessarily think my recipient required that, so long as I respected the pairing. There's a line between recognizing the dysfunction and bashing, and at the end of the day it's not even all that fine of one.

As usually happens, I think the extra challenge made for a better fic.

So I had a structure: Veronica and Logan reunite in a one-night stand which recognizes what they had as real but also necessarily impermanent. The first draft of the fic had this happening not only in the context of Logan/Hannah, but also Mac/Veronica (they had a kiss in the very first section), but the latter pairing just made everything needlessly complicated in that I would have to sell not just one but two infidelities. The finished fic as written still has rather strong Veronica/Mac overtones, though, I think. If I were to write a sequel, I'm actually not sure where to take the story next--to a Logan/Hannah/Veronica threesome, or to Veronica/Mac femslash.

I did put in as much continuity porn as I could--not just the Logan/Hannah, but also making Lauren Sinclair a major character.

The Veronica-in-politics idea has been one I've been playing with for a while now. I might still write it in its original form: an AU where Cassidy Casablancas is a crooked POTUS, Mac is First Lady, and Veronica's the VP.

Oh well. In any case, I need to finish my 3_ships fic(s) by midnight tomorrow.

The local public library called. My ILL order is in. Based on what I've recently ordered, it's either ( this book ) or ( this one ). Either way, exciting!

It always amuses me to watch people kneel to an empty tabernacle.

. . .

Other than that, I still don't have much to say; there's no ficlet (yet; maybe next year, but I doubt I'm going to have inspiration in the next two hours for this year) for Holy Thursday and I can't say I'm feeling particularly spiritual. Hopefully I'll get to watch Jesus Christ Superstar tomorrow to fix that. I was thinking I might make a post about why I find that musical so spiritually fulfilling, but I don't think I'll have the time or energy to make the post.

I will be seeing ladyphoenixmage tomorrow, though, so yay about that! And I'll get to give her back her comics trades (a couple of New X-Mens, Morrison run, trades that really aren't worth my buying since their Cuckoo content is minimal but which I was glad I got to read) which makes me happy because it makes me uncomfortable having responsibility for them.

. . . I forgot to ask her if she wanted anything in return. Well, I'll just show up with what I think she'd be interested in. Astonishing, probably.

. . .

Fic rec: Phallocentric, by mmmchelle. SGA, John/Rodney. Rodney can't let John suck his dick, because it's a phallocentric sex act which means their sexuality has been warped by the patriarchy. Or not.

I love how these characters (their fanonical versions, at least) lend themselves so well to this sort of meta-point-making fic. Porn (well, the lead up to offscreen porn, at least) in defense of porn, slash in defense of slash--what's better than that?