Horses are good company -- The Witcher

I have been struggling for the last week or so with rib pain, asthma, and congestion. Yesterday the extreme cold snap broke, which seemed to help quite a bit. Abbie and I were able to get out to the dog park for the first time in maybe 2 weeks? Which really helps my mood and hers. Acclimation is a real and amazing thing; 17 degrees F feels balmy, and I was sweating in my layers of clothes. I've been doing just about everything I can think of for the rib pain and asthma, but not much is making a dent really.

I still don't have my Enbrel and I've been too sick to work on anything except taking care of myself and the dog.

I listened to a couple of old favorites from the SGA fandom:

This Gun's For Hire by Helenish, read by Helens78. If you want the text version of this, you have to use the WayBack machine, but the podfic is on the Ao3.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/602672

Healing Station Argh, by toft,
https://archiveofourown.org/works/205871

A friend sent me the podfic, since the link for that is currently broken.

Day 17 - A vid you wish you had made

I'm not a vidder. I don't know anything about vidding! I admire the talents of all vidders.

So I'll answer this question with two vids that speak to me very personally lately, from an emotional and aesthetic level.

Compass Points by newkidfan. SGA.

I haven't yet read the fic that this goes with, so my my interpretation of the vid is as a dream that Rodney is having. I love the color and focus changes, the feeling of slow exploration interrupted by quick moments of expression. What a gorgeous vid.

Evening on the Ground by hollywoodgrrl. SGA, John Sheppard character study.

It's amazing how many John Sheppard vids I have in my folder. That means a lot of us (myself included) see ourselves in this character. This vid is about John's guilt, and it's pretty intense. It has some rapidly flashing images that line up perfectly with the rapid, building music, evoking a life that is desperate, on edge; that John is hanging on for dear life, that he is afraid of losing even more people than he already has, and he feels a tremendous responsibility to prevent that from happening. There is just so much emotion here, under the surface.

First I would like to signal-boost rydra_wong's idea: Post something to a comm on DW!

And now, a meme. From thingswithwings:
comment and I'll give you three of your fandoms, then copy and paste the questions onto your journal and fill it out.

If you want to play this meme leave a comment saying so!

( Buffy )
( BSG )
( SGA )

I have a cold or something. >:(

I have giant posts I want to make (drafts of which are in my notebook) but no energy to type them up. I hate not having internet in the house.

Well, aria did ask me and were_duck the other week when she was visiting, "What is it about Stargate Atlantis?" Aria's more of a Due South person, conversant in SGA, and we were wondering why one fandom really pings you when another doesn't. She posted her answers here in depth!.

Well, I'm tired and out-of-sorts, but I'm going to try and type of some of my own reasons. I will say that I'm in it for the fandom. I would never have invested much time in this show without fanfic, which is a good argument for how fandom is a promotional tool (I now own all 5 seasons and some action figures). I don't recommend the show to people who aren't interested in the fandom. But I do think there are some good episodes and good things about the show despite this.

*I love the setting: it's a place I can escape to in my head and easily imagine myself living. In this way it's similar to Deep Space Nine (another favorite show of mine) and dissimilar to SG1 (I hate that freaking concrete bunker). I like the color palette, all those greens and blues with hints of gold. I like the airy spires and the contrast of the deep undersea chambers. The set design is great. I mostly like the costumes too, except Teyla's outfits, obviously there are issues there. The people are gorgeous, too, obviously. I think I crushed on Rodney first! Even though he's not the most traditionally good looking. And then only later I realized, John, OMG, and it kind of went in sequence like that. What I'm saying is, there is a lot to look at here.

*I love many of the characters wholly: the team plus Zelenka and Lorne. I have passing fondness for most of the others (Weir, Carter, Woolsey, Ford, Keller, Carson). I don't hate anyone-- usually I reserve my hatred for the writers who write them wrong. I think they fail to write women well; for instance I like Cadman, who was in 2 episodes, better than Keller. Despite the fact that I am fond of Jewel Staite. So they had to work hard for me to dislike Keller. ANYWAY, I digress: I think fanfic can and sometimes does work to address these failings, the sexism, racism, and colonialism of the show. (Oh! I also love Halling.)

*I mainly read John/Rodney (McShep), but also OT4 (team), and other pairings. About John and Rodney in particular, I like their middle-aged-ness, that they are adults (but still boyish, bantery, fun). So many stories we are exposed to are about young love, and these stories are about adult love. McShep appeals to me for reasons I don't entirely understand; certainly fandom has worked hard to convince me that their love is epic, that it saves galaxies and exists across universes, that they are destined for each other. Something works for me in this pairing on a very deep emotional level.

*The fandom is fucking incredible!! I mean, just watch lim's vids or art by newkidfan or Speranza's fic, just as a beginning.

*I said to aria, that when I got into SGA, it was also me getting into slash. That is not entirely true: I had specifically been seeking out fantasy books with queer main characters, so I knew it was kind of my thing on some level. What was new for me was reading erotica.

(Tangent, I'd also been in Earth: Final Conflict fandom some years previously, and read fanfic that was G-rated, Taelon/human romance. And the Taelons were genderless. WHO KNOWS. Which leads me to my next point.)

*I enjoy the WTF quality of fandom in general, the wild creativity, the alternate universes. There's a lot of that in SGA. Some of it's based on canon-- there's time travel and AUs on the show.
I enjoy science fiction a lot and always have; I love the SF-ness of the show and the fandom. I have a time travel narrative kink; I love people meeting their alternate selves; I love biological weirdness, aliens, dire situations, sentient technology etc. I could go on. In fact I wish there were *more* and *weirder* aliens on most SF shows. Probably I should go back and finish Farscape one of these days.

*Clearly I have a lot to say about SHOW and FANDOM and there will probably be more of this later.

Title: Escutcheon
Authors: anatratrope and sasha_feather
for kink_bingo: "tattooing" square
A wedding gift for anna_bird
Stargate: Atlantis
Established relationship OT4 (McKay/Sheppard/Dex/Emmagan)
Warnings: none
Contains alcohol and drug use, tattooing, light bondage. Also, escutcheons.
Rating: adult
Word count: ~7,000
Disclaimer: not ours, for fun not profit
Betas: jesse_the_k and wintercreek (Fiddled with extensively post-beta! Remaining mistakes are ours alone.)


( Read more... )

The Kindle's text-to-speech feature reads "Teyla" as "Tee-la". And it reads p0rn in a pleasant, uninflected robot voice.