write like you need it to survive

Remember that time it took me 7 years to finish a Stargate fic? Yeah, odds are against me finishing a 30 day meme in anything like 30 days, but I will persevere. Probably.

3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Okay, well, I listed 49 fandoms on day two, so answering this exactly as asked would get seriously out of control. Instead, under the cut, my favorite characters to write from what I semi-scientifically conclude are my top ten current and past fandoms.

( Playing favorites! )


( All 30 questions for your meme-repeating convenience. )

A mere two weeks late, my story for the Dead Zone Photo Challenge is finally up.

In addition to apologizing for lateness, I feel I ought to apologize for duplicating the name of Journey's well-known and lovely due South story: unfortunately, it's the only title that worked here, and this story has been ornery enough that I am not prepared to argue with it in such matters.

My assigned photos were these: photo 1 and photo 2.

Family Portrait (54k)
Johnny/Walt/Sarah. It was nothing like the way you actually felt when you watched home movies.
Warning: violence against children.

Oh my Lord. I got the BEST YULETIDE STORY EVER this year (except maybe for last year's).

Dead Zone! Johnny/Walt! The Definition of Stupid is 28k of brilliant, funny, plotty, sexy fic, and you should all go read it RIGHT NOW.

Thank you Yuletide Santa! YOU ROCK!

As promised, Dead Zone genfic. A post-"Finding Rachel" tag, to be precise. Bruce and Walt have a little talk.

Beta thanks to the one and only iuliamentis, hand-holder and comma-wrangler extraordinaire.

( Do What You Have to Do )

So my Dead Zone season three torrent finally finished, and I have now watched the first three episodes, and OMG. ( I will cut tag in the quaint belief that I am not the last person alive to see this. )

A bit of context, in the form of what I suppose are the things most occupying my attention right now:

a) This presentation I have to give tonight, on an article written in 1977 emphasizing the individual and human side of library use. The author talked quite a bit about where people are on their individual "time-space continuum" and spent a couple of paragraphs repeating the phrase "living, breathing human" in every sentence. I was rolling my eyes pretty hard, and then I had a flash of insight: She sounded just like Hutch (remember that episode in season one where he refused to answer to "Zebra 3" and insisted on addressing the dispatcher as a "fellow warm human" or whatever?) - this was a 1977 thing! And once I put her in her appropriate historical context, the article was much less irritating. Except for the part where I have to present it tonight.

b) The Dead Zone. In fact, I finished season two yesterday (omg squee!!!!) and intended to watch my first downloaded episode of S3 last night before bed--except that I couldn't get the spiffy DVD-ripped .avi to actually play on any of my media viewers, so I had to trash that whole torrent's worth of episodes and find another one, and the only other option turned out, as of when I went to sleep, to be glacially slow (it has since sped up respectably). So I went to sleep a bit anxious about my next DZ fix.


Which is the only explanation I can come up with for the dream which featured, among other less-well-remembered elements, Starsky and Hutch standing in a ditch on either side of a crashed PT Cruiser painted red with a familiar flaring white racing stripe.

So I'm sitting in the kitchen, doing some reading for my Thursday class, because the kitchen and living room, while technically shared space between me and Roomie, really tend to be left strictly alone by both of us. Or, now that I've taken over the living room for high-volume Dead Zone watching and the kitchen for homework, by Roomie, anyway. In any case, it's generally quiet and Roomie leaves me alone, as I do her, so I can do my homework at the kitchen table with no interruptions generated from outside my own brain.

...Except for the occasional loud burst of music from Roomie's room (the kitchen is bracketed between our bedrooms). And not just any music. Savage Garden. Apparently she is partying like it's 1999. Halfway through the track, she abruptly turns it back down, and there's just a faint babble of what sounds like TV. I go back to my reading. Ten minutes later, another, different Savage Garden song blares out. I sit and stare at the wall. Once again, halfway through the track, it's abruptly turned down.

Anyway. Due South fans! Identify what is wrong (or right) with this sentence that made me laugh out loud in the middle of a fairly dull study about helping engineers effectively use libraries, c.1968.

In those intances where this was not the case, the librarian's approach is that the inquirer (a) knows what he wants, (b) knows more than the librarian, and (3) is aware of the search strategies necessary to satisfy his need.

...the italics, which are in the original, are a lot funnier out of context.

My reading also included a brief discussion of the problem of empirically determining whether a user seeking information finds it "passively" (by consulting his/her own memory) or "actively" (by consulting an external source). This led me to stare out the window for several minutes contemplating whether Johnny Smith would be said to acquire information "passively" or "actively" when he touches someone, and whether it changes if they touch him, and what visiting libraries is like for him. Hi, I'm a big, big dork.

Halfway through watching season one of Dead Zone with lyra_sena, I finally recognized the niggly resemblance thing: in certain angles and with certain facial expressions, Anthony Michael Hall was somehow managing to bear a striking resemblance to Michael Douglas. When I started watching season two, I had a whole new niggly resemblance sensation, and now I've got it: Tim Robbins. Which only makes me love Johnny more.

Also? I LOVE JOHNNY A WHOLE LOT.

But! Not as much as I love whoever's responsible for continuity. That person, I want to have their babies. Holy God the continuity is a thing of beauty here, people.

Also also, if I have to watch one more episode where Johnny's two boyfriends trail around after him exchanging those looks that say, "Why do we put up with this again? Are you sure the sex is that good?" I MAY VERY WELL DIE OF THE SQUEE.

I'm just saying.

PS - Not that this is my number one happy pairing threesome choice for this fandom, but--where is the nastyhot Johnny/Dana/Max? Sheerly as a matter of intellectual curiosity, of course.

Am home from spending the night at lyra_sena's, and happily Roomie was not around when I wandered in at 4pm, unshowered and wearing 75% yesterday's clothes, carrying most of a six-pack of Molson in a plastic bag, so I didn't have to have that conversation.

So, here's my fannish timeline of the last few days:

Thursday night: download astolat and cesperanza's Dead Zone vid, since everybody was talking about it. Watch vid. Thirty seconds into vid, think "I bet this show is on Mininova." Begin download of season one.

Friday morning: Determine that download is complete. Decide to just check the first file, to see if the quality if viewable, before I hop in the shower and go out to run errands. Watch entire pilot episode (the VERY FIRST EPISODE starts with CHILDREN PLAYING HOCKEY. CHILDREN. PLAYING HOCKEY. I HAD NO CHANCE.) before finally taking shower. Start download of season two. Finish reading book instead of running errands. Watch second episode.

Friday evening: Tear self away from Dead Zone to go to squee meeting at molly_o's, hang out with Molly and cmshaw and smaragdgrun and rubyrosered and Ruby's friend whose lj name I didn't catch. Learn that people who write dirty HP chan-porn are TOTALLY NOT SHOCKED when you talk about Numb3rs and incest, yay!

Late Friday night: Get home around 2am. Watch just one two episodes of Dead Zone before going to sleep.

Saturday morning: Run overdue errands. Sit down at computer to reward self with YET MORE DEAD ZONE episodes, but receive IM from lyra_sena asking if I want to come hang out.

Dira: I, uh, just started downloading a couple of seasons worth of Dead Zone, so I've been watching that a lot.
Lyra: OMFG
Lyra: DEAD ZONE!!!!!!!!!!!!

So Lyra rented the second half of season one, and I went down there and watched it with her YAY. Two very entertaining things happened in episode eleven: Johnny said "It's a good thing I have a king size bed," (yes, Johnny, YES IT IS) and I determined that in the course of his career, Callum Keith Rennie has played characters named Johnny (Johansson, speaking of injured ex-hockey players...), Walt(er "Duck" McDonald), and Bruce (Spencer, in that one episode of Forever Knight). It's probably only a sign that Callum works a lot, and that I'm easily impressed by stupid coincidences when I've had a couple of beers. But YAY!

Sunday morning: Lyra observed that she had Netflixed the first six episodes of the 4400. I suggested that we should watch it. We both sat down saying "Y'know, I need another fandom like I need a hole in the head." Four episodes later, after we'd both gotten choked up at least once, I finally tore myself away to come home.


So, yeah. Two new fandoms in four days, and the sad thing is I don't even think it's the first time I've done that.