Flutterings

Over in a friend's locked journal, there's a meme prompting one to recollect one's First Sue, Longest-Running Sue, and Honorary Sue.

I don't recall scribbling down any of my fandom-inspired fantasies as a child, but if I had, the First Sue may well have been a vision of myself as one of Encyclopedia Brown's gal pals (i.e., a less tomboy-ish variation of Sally).

My Longest-Running Sue is as Sherlock Holmes's extremely low-profile sister (to the extent that when I joined the Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem, I chose "No Sister of His" as my canonical name).

Honorary Sue: Harriet Vane. Though again, my tendency through the years has been to imagine myself as a character very dear to the protagonists but very behind-the-scenes and between-the-lines in terms of presence and influence.

In terms of publicly available fic, only two Ribbons-based Sues spring immediately to mind -- the messy-haired swot in the University of Chicago French class chez D'accord, D'accord, and the Asian wizard (again in Chicago, come to think of it...) in Outskirting the Dark. I'm more likely to amuse myself by inserting characters who happen to share distinctive traits with the designated recipient; that pretty much started when I was drafting A Face of Faith for the very first Snupin Santa fest (Ellid's love of quilting and singing being an irresistible springboard for the landlady's personality).

[Via kass, snottygrrl, and others. And also my damn ears: I woke up at 3 a.m. in part because a couple of people next door were shouting at each other, which was not cool, but it happened to be good timing, since I was due for my next dose of bacteria-be-gone (said bacteria still making things teechy in my right ear, among other areas. Grumpy kitten iz grumpy).]

Anyway, here's what other people have been reading. (Thank you all - I remain very grateful. To borrow what they say on airplanes, you have so many choices about what (else) to read, so I am honored whenever you choose to spend your time with my words.)

1. "No Life Save When the Swords Clash" / Haru wo Daiteita / 7,885 words / 874 hits

2. "Not as Dumb" (and not yet complete, sigh) / FAKE / 19,638 words / 624 hits

3. "Hidden Intelligence" / Lord Peter Wimsey / drabble / 597 hits

4. "The Ties that Do Not Bind" / FAKE / 2,303 words / 472 hits

5. "The Second One Is Love" / RPF - tennis / 10,297 words / 455 hits

6. "The Cafeteria's Got Everything" / Dar Williams's "Alleluia" / 1,871 words / 434 hits

7. "Someone Who Understood" / Lord Peter Wimsey & Vorkosigan saga / drabble / 415 hits

8. "Everything Necessary to Procure" / RPF - 18th and 19th century politics / 332 words / 413 hits

9. "Running, They Never Run from It Away" / Lord Peter Wimsey & Vorkosigan saga / 181 words / 398 hits

10. "Holding One's Own" / Vorkosigan saga & The Dark is Rising / 359 words / 392 hits

http://archiveofourown.org/users/ribbons

[Via salinea]

Tagged by psyfic...

( songs, words, film, anger )

5. Favourite book and why?
This changes every three minutes. Two minutes ago it was volume 4 of FAKE, because I was spot-rereading it: it contains some of my favorite episodes, I'm almost 1000 words into drafting Part 5 of "Not as Dumb," and it makes me nostalgic for Chicago because I bought it at Myopic Books and read it while staying in a nice hotel while attending a convention where I met too many fun people to list and discovered that I loooovvvve dancing with ravenna_c_tan, and I remember reading the last page of volume 4 and going, OMG, I've got to find the rest of the series now (I'd picked up v2 and v4 because that's what the bookstore had, and lore had said good things about the series in her Coming Out of the Yaoi Closet post right before I'd left for Chicago), and whenever I think about that trip I also remember all the faxing I did (I was in the process of selling my mother's house) and marginaliana and valis2 bursting into laughter when they saw my face after Quidditch in Grant Park and the beautiful collage marginaliana later made of a poem I wrote, and sometimes I also remember the giddy e-mail musigneus sent me after drafting Not About You and I feel all "Toi and Moi" bouncy about having lured her into reading the series. :-)

(In short, it's not just about the book, it's about the places and people twined into my memories of finding, reading, and revisiting it.)

( And ten minutes from now it will be the CMOS... )

Seen first at schemingreader's and most recently at aunty_marion's: When you see this, post a poem in your journal.

"Invisible Work"

( the unseen / unbelievable effort it takes to live )
- Alison Luterman

So, so tired, and yet more middle-of-the-night bug-chasing anticipated. On the plus side, having to be on standby online all damned day resulted in some catching up via e-mail (which in turn resulted in some rearranging of my language-study plans -- it turns out I'll be attending a wedding in Israel this fall, so Hebrew just leapfrogged over Mandarin. I'm loving the library's Pimsleur CD series, by the way...) and the writing of a New Year's Resolution fic:

Title: Deserving
Fandom: Haru wo Daiteita
Characters: Yoshizumi, Iwaki, and Katou
Rating: PG
Summary: "What the hell am I in the middle of now?" Yoshizumi doesn't know what to think when he lands a starring role opposite Katou's Iwaki.
Wordcount: 1054
Written for: glass-icarus, who had specified that "possessiveness is a giant thing for me; thus, obviously, when I mentioned Yoshizumi, I didn't mean a threesome. :P Katou and Iwaki being sweet are fabulous, Yoshizumi calling them out on it is also fabulous, Yoshizumi poking fun at them or talking to them about their relationship (in passing or not), any combination of the three of them bonding over acting..."
Link: http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/87/deserving.html
(I'll repost in this journal in a couple days or so - the file's on another machine)

* * *

( twenty first lines meme: arguably spoilers for FAKE and Haru below the cut )

Patterns? Um... That I tend to write longer sentences than most of you is probably not news (*waves at westernredcedar, who wrangled with this firsthand when she recorded "The Hounding of the Baskervilles"*). That I often start out stories with characters in media thinkety is likewise Not A Revelation. Beyond that... aaah. At the moment I wouldn't be able to recognize a Fibonacci sequence if it smacked me with a slide rule. I think it's time to go check on my cauldron of tomato stew and then either kick a sonnet closer to shape or succumb to another two-hour catnap.

I forget what the phrase is, but you know how one might meander along, mulling over something in a vague-ish way and then someone on LJ neatly articulates it?

What matociquala said:

...people expect characters to act in accordance with stereotypes, not with actuality--and if they break those stereotypes, the writer often has to find ways to defend or shore up their behavior. I run into this fairly frequently with first-readers in the Eddas, actually, because one of my base assumptions is a modern (sort of steampunk, actually, or post-Cyberpunk, maybe) world without Christian influence. So the mores--social, political, and sexual--are those that have developed from a Norse ethical system rather than a Christian one.

Not so much, this world, with the forgiveness and redemption as privileged values.

You know how hard it is to explain that stuff to a reader when none of your characters have any idea that forgiveness and redemption "ought" to be privileged values?

Word.

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Gacked from swooop:

( survey-sheepery )

Gacked from mrgeddylee:



Submit your own plea to Cthulhu!

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Rented Being Julia from the library. Could not take my eyes off Bruce Greenwood whenever he was onscreen. Didn't have time to listen to the entire commentary, but there was a fantastic section where Jeremy Irons rabbits on for a while on how there's a balance to the things God made (e.g., bunnies and deer being swift but also easily visible to predators) and seguing from there into an extended conversation with Annette Bening on stage technique vs. film technique, conjuring emotional nakedness out of necessarily artificial surroundings, and what it means to listen. Mmm.

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Dinner tonight: tilapia (coated it in matzo meal and then pan-fried it), yellow squash with onion, naan, and a glass of Conundrum (white table wine). Going to bake apple brown betty in a bit (need to melt some more butter, having burned the first stick's worth).