Nenya Kanadka

For anybody on my flist who's watching Discovery and wants people to talk to, there's a brand new shiny ST:DSC comm over at spacefungusparty. It's like three hours old and we are all giving our serious/ridiculous/??? plot predictions. You should come play.

(So far the show has got me going "Aahh what will happen next??" which is a major step up from my deep dubiousness after the double-pilot. Michael is fantastic, Lorca is a dick but pretty riveting bc Jason Isaacs, and all the supporting cast are great. It's pretty clearly a counter to the "shoot first, torture everyone" school of thought, Vulcan is fuckin' gorgeous, and the trees are the right height the starship corridors are the right shape, so the moral of this story is that either it doesn't suck or I'm super easy for Star Trek. I'm enjoying myself, either way.)

Apparently it's a forest fire. (Near enough that we get smoke, not near enough that we're in danger.) The sky looks like someone put a yellow filter on everything in Photoshop. It's fucking bizarre. Before the sun got fully obscured, it was a small orangey disk in the sky, smoked over so much that you could stare right at it without hurting your eyes. Very apocalyptic.

We do need rain. Not something one often says in the PNW, but we really do.

Despite this the strawberries and raspberries (and lettuce, oh God the lettuce, the paidhi is awash in lettuce) are coming in handily. Mucca's mum is our prime gardener and she's back after several weeks in town, but in her absence I seem to have elected myself chief berry-picker. It's about two pints of strawberries every 2-3 days. So far we eat that many between the four of us, but soon we may have to consider freezing or something.

Park warden, his wife, and small child are visiting. Eight-month-olds are delightful. Baby's mum is aces at Settlers of Catan; wiped the floor with us twice. :D

Finished Kate Mulgrew's autobiography Born With Teeth. I envy Mucca who has it on audio read by Kate Mulgrew herself. ( cut 'cuz Mucca is still reading )

Watched The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug last week, and didn't hate it. It had the usual unnecessary Jackson orc troops and fighting scenes and leaving behind cast members for bonus drama, but most of it was a fun ride anyway. I love that Gandalf is getting his own scenes off at Dol Guldur finding out about the Necromancer--and that Radagast gets to come along for that! Quite liked Tauriel, thought Orlando Bloom was showing his age, developed instant crush on Bard, still don't see Bagginshield as a ship.

30 pages from the end of Doctor Who: Shada, having gone back to that after several other novels. Have a book about NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter up next, and then I should probably finish up the last of my Hugo reading.

Happy Canada Day, America Day, and Pride (WHOO gay marriage nationally in the US, squee!) to all. <3

Sci-fi drinking games night last night with muccamukk, artemis_rain, and a couple other friends. It was a lot of fun. I don't think I'd actually played a drinking game before, and found that taking all the sips as mandated somewhat interrupted the flow of the plot, but then again I'd already seen three of the four episodes already.

We watched

Star Trek TNG "Disaster", the one where Picard is stuck in a turbolift with children, Deanna Troi and Ro Laren argue over how to save the ship, and Keiko O'Brien has Worf as a birthing coach.

Star Trek TOS "Mirror, Mirror" because the Star Trek drinking game rules said to make the Terran Empire salute whenever anyone said "Starfleet" onscreen, and also we had a newbie who had only seen the reboot and we thought she ought to be exposed to the touchstones of the genre. <3

Xena: Warrior Princess "Warrior...Princess", in which Xena impersonates a look-alike princess for graet justice.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Band Candy", the one where Joyce and Giles make out madly under the influence of magic chocolate bars that make adults act like teenagers. (Hello, Hedronn Ethan Rayne, that shade of red is looking particularly fetching on you tonight.)

Conclusions:

1) Would do again!

2) The problem with drinking games is that, especially in one's thirties, one loses the inclination to poison oneself long before the inclination to watch more sci-fi.

3) The Star Trek drinking game rules were the most comprehensive.

4) Needs more crossdressing Sam Beckett.

5) Always reblog Deanna Troi and Ro Laren having the classic optimism vs practicality debate and passing Bechdel with flying colours, though I feel like some of the emotional punch gets lost if you don't know their respective histories.

6) Dear little baby Chekov, trying to be evil! I'm sorry, you need thirty years and some telepathy for that, sweetheart.

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

And while I'm actually posting here, a video I've been meaning to rec.

Jadzia Dax, ladies, gentlemen, and honourable thirds!

Jadzia Dax: Loosen Up

In this vid I tried to capture what I love about the character of Jadzia Dax: her sense of fun; her relationships with Ben, Quark, a whole bunch of Klingons, a few Trills, some more Humans, Bajorans, and other aliens; and her exquisite skill at the game of tongo. --thirdblindmouse

And she succeeds brilliantly.


*wanders off mumbling about how Tumblr has spoiled me with its reblog function*

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

Okay, so, two months is certainly not the longest I've gone without updating LJ, but for someone with over a hundred icons, it's rather ridiculous.

Between having post-holiday-fest writer's block and getting an ereader for my birthday, I've been reading a lot more than I've been writing lately. It's been Actual Books more than fanfic, for the most part, although GrabMyBooks and the AO3 download function mean I can read just about anything on the Kobo. Which means I can read longfic on work breaks or on the bus, instead of just at my computer. Hurray for portability!

Back in February I decided to watch all the Lost episodes with Danielle Rousseau in them, because I like Mira Furlan but didn't think the show itself was all that interesting. So over the course of a couple of weeks, muccamukk saw me go through the Lost fan's emotional arc, highly condensed. ("Oh, interesting!" "Neat characters!" "...WTF are they doing to Sayid?" "Who with the smoke monster what now?" "The hell, Ben?" "WTF Jack's emo beard of manpain?" "I hate this island so much but I can't stop watching!" Mercifully, the finale intervened at that point. I still don't get the finale. But I like Claire and Charlie and Sayid and Danielle and Kate.)

I then inhaled all of bachlava's post-canon AU fixit fic for Danielle and Alex, because seriously, show? That was Tasha-Yar-and-the-giant-oil-slick levels of pointless character death, there. (No, I don't care about Ben's drama over getting Alex killed. Cult leader = dnw.) Lovely, lovely fic, hit a whole bunch of my narrative kinks for characters surviving certain kinds of trauma and taking care of each other afterward.

I also finally got around to reading both Redshirts by John Scalzi and Ana Mardoll's Pulchritude, which I'd been meaning to for a while. I'd probably rate both of them a B+.
( Cut for spoilers/reviews )

Other things I've used the ereader for:

--the PsyCop novels by Jordan Castillo Price (featuring a gay medium (as in psychic) cop, and a LOT of fanfic-level NC-17 slash sex)

--Dark Mirror by Diane Duane, in which Picard, Troi, and Geordi La Forge (with the help of an OC who is totally a wizard from the Young Wizards universe) run into their evil counterparts in the Mirror Universe. Evil!Troi realllllly likes putting people in Agony Booths. :/ But our!Troi and Geordi save the day and it is lovely.

--The Practice of Barrayaran Sex by Philomytha (Aral and Cordelia's wedding/wedding night)

--221B Barrayar by Wandering (Lord Auditor Sherlock Holmes and Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan take a case together, whilst Watson and Ivan share identical looks of admiring horror)

Writing-wise, I'm ignoring all my WIPs in favour of something with OCs that exactly one other person on the planet cares about. It's, er, better than nothing? But then, Mucca's in town; when Mucca's in town I tend to watch more canons (see above: we're also following Elementary and doing a TNG rewatch) and write less. Maybe when she buckles down to her latest fest-fic, I'll Kitten War my way to victory.

Title: A Hard Landing
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Pairing: Elim Garak/Julian Bashir
Rating: PG-13/Teen
Summary: For redsixwing, who wanted "Garak/Bashir," and hearts_blood, who wanted "Garak/Bashir, Cuddle; behind the sofa" for the Kiss/Cuddle/Sex meme. Things go bump in the dark.


"So you were involved in the Andorian coup!" Julian grinned triumphantly over his Tarkalean tea, and sat back in the corner of his living room sofa with smug satisfaction.

"My dear Doctor Bashir, you leap to the most extraordinary conclusions." Garak favoured him with look of bland innocence.

Julian narrowed his eyes. "The level of detail in that story you just told me is more than even Starfleet has on it. The tunnel layouts alone--"

"Ah, but you would be surprised, and I am afraid to say quite distressed, to know how many people and entities know more than Starfleet does on a remarkable number of subjects."

"Including a simple tailor, no doubt." Julian made an ironic salute with his coffee mug.

( Garak shrugged eloquently... )

Title: The Life That Is Waiting
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Author: lunabee34
Character/Pairing: Kasidy Yates, Kasidy Yates/Ben Sisko
Length: 2105 words
Summary: At first, every time the wormhole opens Kasidy holds her breath and waits for Benjamin to appear. She spends most of her free time on the Promenade with Jake, one arm around his shoulders and the other cradling the curve of her belly, watching the cosmos fracture again and again through a viewport. But Ben never comes.

lunabee34's someone I know a little from ds9_rewatch, but I've never read her fic before. This has been an oversight!

A few of you may remember me playing kasidy_yates about seven or eight years ago. This fic fits extremely well with how I see Kasidy: a skeptic about Bajoran religion and a little uncomfortable with the whole Emissary thing, but warmly attached to her friends in the Bajoran sector. Also very capable--a spaceship captain, a smuggler for the Maquis--and thoughtful and a woman of principle. This fic also features some great little notes about Kira and Ezri and Jake, and the ending makes me smile. Go read it if you're at all interested in DS9 season 8!