write like you need it to survive

I am on what could be Day 13 of a streak of writing at least 750 words every day, thanks to 750words.com - apparently all I needed was a sticker chart and some funny statistics! Hooray, positive reinforcement for nerds. (Every day it analyzes my writing and two days out of three it tells me my writing is mainly concerned with Death. Including the time I was writing about The Doctor cuddling a baby while chatting with Rose. IDEK.)

Anyway, the downside of this new spate of writing arrived last night, on Day 12, when I realized that this seems to accelerate the rate at which I write myself into a corner/decide everything I am writing is a terrible idea/come up with even more terrible ideas I could be writing instead.

( And so a poll, so I can go get a soda and some drugs for my headache and the rest of you can already be pretending you don't know me when I get back. )

(Icon irrelevant except that Amy is even awesomer than this fic and tomorrow is Saturday which = DOCTORDAY. AGAIN. AND EVERY WEEK FOR MANY WEEKS.)

Ahem!

The awesome fic is Harry Potter fic which I totally assumed, upon reading the title, was Harry Potter fic where Harry is raised by Vulcans, and you know what? I was not entirely wrong. This really is, I think, a lot like the story of what would happen if ten-year-old Spock found out he was, incidentally, also the Boy Who Lived. Or if Jim Kirk had been raised by Sarek and Winona Amanda after losing his parents and then found out he was the Boy Who Lived.

Uh. This was meant to be a fic rec, not a horrible-plot-bunny generator. MOVING ALONG.

This story also, not coincidentally, reminds me a bit of--was it synecdochic's?--story of what SGA might have been like if they had just turned the stupid-generator off. And God knows the world needs more stories of that variety, so here:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

...Yes, it's on ff.net, and yes, it's a WIP, and you know what, I don't care. But for my own fic-following convenience, I have attempted to turn the RSS feed option into a DW feed: hpmethods_feed. That should update when the fic updates. The link it serves up goes to the author's profile, where notes for each new chapter will appear, so I think that makes sense.

(The last time I attempted to create a feed of a blog it wound up bringing me every comment posted to that blog and I had to open a service request and let denise sort me out, so now I'm really skittish about feed-creating. But this one seems okay, so far.)

It's not just me, is it?

The only rational response to this post at Celebrity Baby Blog, once you finish making little heart hands and going DAVID THEWLIS ILU, YOU ARE MY FAVORITE, is to start reading Stealing Harry again for the embarrassingly-large-numbered time.

Right?


Although "I don't have Celebrity Baby Blog bookmarked, so this doesn't come up" is probably also a valid response. I guess.

So up until yesterday, I hadn't even gotten my vacation time for vividcon approved, nevermind bought plane tickets, and I kept thinking that it was waaaaaay at the end of the summer when it is, in fact, about six weeks from now. So. Um.

Anybody need/want/have room for a roommate? I'm quiet, I promise! YAAAAAAY giddygeek!!!



Also, I've just spent most of the day finishing rereading sam_storyteller aka copperbadge's Cartographer's Craft. It's massive (the .pdf version is 581 pages, including the, you know, poems--no, shut up, they're brilliant!) and takes place post-Half-Blood Prince, and basically I don't even want to read book seven now, because for one thing it will be missing all the sexy bits. And, you know, probably Sirius. It's one of the smartest, best, most breathtaking pieces of fanfic I have ever, ever read. And I really want a t-shirt that says ( Cartographer's Craft Spoiler! )

So, I don't know if you know this, but I have a weakness for kidfic. And today copperbadge posted, pimping the Raising Harry Ficathon, for fic in which Remus and/or Sirius are in a parental role toward Harry, be it AUs or in-series godfatherliness. The website includes a link to domus_felicus's 'Remus and Sirius raise Harry' fic listing, and I've been reading my way through it. I'd already read copperbadge's Stealing Harry saga, and quite enjoyed A Promise Worth Keeping, by Cas. But another of the stories, further down the list, included one of the more unfortunate instances of the misuse of spellcheck autocorrect that I've seen in a while.

"You know what she’s been saying the whole period?" Ron nearly shouted, spinning around to face his friend, furiously gesturing with his arms. "Oh, well, Harry probably shot the Avada cheddar at Voldemort ... "

*facepalm*

( Okay, they got me. )

And in other news, the Red Wings rock (sorry, Wild fans!) and I love them so much there are no words to describe it. And, despite circumstances, I didn't start trying to mentally hook up our recently-divorced goalie* with any of his teammates until late in the third. Very late.

Things I love less than my guys include: the gents of Section 203B, row 23, who divided their time between insulting a veteran defenseman (tip: if you have a problem with players pushing the absolute limits of career length, don't watch the Wings) and pointing out hot chicks to each other (sample dialogue: "Just below the rail, white top, white top! She's not playoff material, but it's a Monday night, you gotta make do." "Oh, yeah, I'll take that. Hey, game's on. Get off the ice, Murphy!") and, oh yeah, chit-chatting about their wives and an upcoming wedding for one of the party. I was torn between a) wanting to hit them, b) wanting to make sure they weren't checking me out, and c) wondering what, exactly, is so great about guys anyway.


* - Speaking of recently divorced goalies, can anybody name an unmarried or divorced NHL player other than Sergei Fedorov (and Manny Legace, but I'm guessing most of you couldn't name him anyway)? I'm excepting the guys under, say, age 25, who just aren't married yet, since "Sharing a downtown bachelor pad with a teammate and spending off days playing video games" seems to be a normal part of the pro hockey player life cycle. After that, they seem, to a man, to get married and produce broods of adorable children, but maybe my sample is just skewed somehow.

For those with a toe in the Potterverse, I found this theory really interesting: Knight2King. There's obsessive textual analysis and one really quite interesting theory about how it's all going to shake out based on the chess game in Philosopher's Stone as foreshadowing of the Second War. The analysis does therefore ask you to believe that not only does JKR know exactly what she's doing, but she has known since she wrote book one. Personally, I find myself willing to buy that part, and for the rest... really interesting.


Also, I've been thinking about the HP books a lot lately. Specifically about OotP, which didn't hit me quite the way I thought it would. I was wrapped up in it while I was reading it--scared for the twins, and everybody else I was briefly convinced was about to die--but when I hit Sirius' death it just didn't register. Which is weird, because if you'd told me beforehand, I'd have expected to be really broken up over it. Maybe it was the way it was presented - much like Anya's death in "Chosen," it was very wham-bam-good-bye-secondary-character-whose-death-was-foreseen-by-all-who-paid-attention - but, still. Sirius is dead, like Anya, like Spike briefly was. And Sirius has been my favorite character since September of 1999 when I read PoA, so what gives? Why don't I care, and why didn't I ever?

I think the answer, or part of it, is that the books aren't really authoritative anymore, in my mind. That is, JKR's version of events is just that: a version of events, one I can cheerfully set aside in favor of Resonant's or A.J. Hall's or, if I'm having that kind of day, Helen's. Rowling might well say Sirius is dead, but I don't have to take her word for it.

I don't know precisely how common this view is, among people who read and write HP fic, but I suspect it's not just me.

Last night at work I hit a new third-shifting low: dozed off crouching on the floor. Now, I've fallen asleep sitting down in odd spots before, at other jobs, but crouching? Not cool.

Spent a lot of my shift hoping that I'd get a phone call about the job I interviewed for and be able to quit before tonight's shift, but it's looking like no. Still, there's always tomorrow.

I figured out why I keep killing characters: it's because if I didn't, I'd be That Girl Who Keeps Writing Kidfic. I think I'd rather be known for killing puppies, honestly.

Which is to say: wouldn't it be cool if Due South had a story like Small Fry or A Nick in Time? Ray and Fraser as themselves in four-year-old bodies (there's really nothing about that scenario that's not funny and adorable), or returned to their seven-year-old selves, memories and all (I bet seven-year-old Ben would be as bewildered by Chicago as seven-year-old Harry was by Hogwarts, and I bet pre-adolescent Ray still proudly introduced himself as Stanley and told people he was named after Marlon Brando...) It would be really, really cute. And I don't even want to think about how many puppies I would kill to make up for it if I actually tried to write it, so no.

But, y'know, if it was out there, I'd be first in line to read it.

So, now I've read Order of the Phoenix, and I want to read some HP fic, which I'd never gotten into much before. Naturally, I'd really, really like to see post-book fic, but there are some pairings I'd be happy to read older stuff for, if I could just find it. I've been to fictionalley.org, and ... what is going on? How do you actually find things there? Haven't they ever heard of search engines? I suppose I'm just spoiled by DSA and 852 Prospect and all the nice easy-to-use slash archives I read at, but this wackiness with forums and threads and all that is making me feel old.

(Trying to cover my eyes and ears at the same time)

I haven't heard HP:OotP yet. My copy dispatched from England sometime yesterday, and projected delivery date is sometime around July 2. So. Thanks to everybody who's using cut tags. I'm rereading Azkaban, and trying to talk to my American-version-reading baby brother as little as possible. Spent three hours today sitting next to him at a minor league baseball game while he read it - bursting into laughter and at one point closing the book and making a horrified/saddened face. Argh.

On the other hand, I'm spending a lot of the time I'm not spending reading, writing. The kidfic is up to 11,200 words, and within another few scenes or so, Fraser, Ray, and the kid will all be in the same country! I, um. Seem to have a thing for setup.