My limited edition Ten doll came today. And if you’re my friend on Facebook, you already know that I freaked out and channelled my inner Guinness. The SECOND I saw that damn FedEx truck, I jumped up and ran to the window. When he stopped in front of the house, I jumped up and down and yelled, “IT’S HERE! IT’S HERE!”
And then I did what any good grown up would do when faced with a limited edition (and very fucking expensive) collectible doll of one of the Whovians favourite NewWho Doctors: I took # 721 / 1,000 out of the box and played with him. I changed his hands. I gave him his sonic screwdriver. I put his glasses on his face. And. It. Was. Awesome.
He’s on the same shelf as Katniss and some of my more sentimental toys: Dad’s mooses, the platypus that looks eerily like my most, most, most favourite British man (and yes, you are my favourite), Cute Printer Boy’s devil duck, the minion L gave me… yeah. My toy shelf just got a new family member.
With that out of the way, I decided to go to Albany tonight for a Black Mountain Symphony show because, well, DUH! It’s time to par-tay!
Dog is in the heavens and all is right in the world.
For now, at least.
——
I want to get a sneak peek of the Cabin Pressure OTP Challenge off to my proofreader before the holidays, so I should probably stop stalling and work on it…
Today started out great, went downhill ridiculously quickly, was redeemed, and then, I don’t know what to call this mood I’m in.
Melancholy?
I woke up EARLY because I was so excited! I was supposed to get my limited edition David Tennant as Ten doll today. (Oh. Shut. Up. He will look awesome next to Katniss!) Stupid weather delayed the flight from Memphis to wherever the fuck it was supposed to go on its merry way to me.
Then, in my long-running, never ending battle with iTunes, we came to an impasse. I was trying to download Star Trek Into Darkness so that I could watch it on my iPad when I travel, and it kept maxing out at 4.0 of 4.44GB. I couldn’t figure out why and it was pissing me off. I got in contact with iTunes Tech Support and - even though I told them a thousand times that my library was on an external drive - they found a few things wonky with the back end of my account, but nothing that would fix the download issue.
Today’s email was, “Sorry. You’re completely fucked. Here’s 15 song credits. Good luck trying to use them!”
I screwed around with my laptop (which I’ve never used iTunes on) and came to the conclusion that, while the major problem was FINALLY gone, I still can’t download directly to my iTunes library.
So, I called AppleCare.
Guy figured it out in under an hour. (Seriously, there was MUCH rejoicing in the kingdom. Dancin’ and hootin’ and hollerin’.)
My stupid hard drive is formatted FAT 32, and can only take a file that is 4.0 GB or LESS.
Fuck me.
I emailed iTunes back and let her know. They either didn’t have access to that kind of information, or the AppleCare guy knew it from somewhere else. Either way, I’m moving my library to a hard drive that’s less fussy.
So redemption.
Then, I made the mistake of watching “Third Star”, which is a Benedict Cumberbatch film where he plays the lead character. A guy dying of cancer out on one last trip with his friends… Yup. Pretty much went the way you’d figure it’d go. The ending’s a no brainer, but the journey he takes to get to that point? I was in tears. Ugly, messy, snotty, tears. The film broke my heart. Shattered it into itty, bitty pieces.
Then, I was feeling all… I don’t know… Christmassy?
It’s a weird feeling. I never get into Christmas. NEVER. It was ruined for me a long time ago, and now it only makes me sad. Wistful. Melancholy. Depressed. Disappointed at how my family disintegrated and fucked me over.
Whatever.
Christmas just fucking sucks and it’s my least favourite time of the year.
I have to build up to the 25th all fucking month, and during that time, I avoid everything Christmas like the plague. I’m dead serious. Christmas carols are not allowed until the 24th at the earliest. I tolerate a tree early in the month if only for the lights. (We can’t do ornaments. The dogs and cat would destroy them. Which is a good thing. The majority of my ornaments are sentimental. I have very few that don’t mean anything - emotional fucking land mines in that box. I mean, all the feels, kids. All. The. Fucking. Feels. But I like the lights, so the tree’s OK.)
At any rate, during one of my test film downloads (also thoughtfully provided by iTunes), I bought “Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas”.
This was my favourite Christmas film growing up, and I do still have a soft spot for it. Even after all these years, I remember watching it with my dad on HBO, sharing a bowl of popcorn, and how he’d whistle some of the songs for days afterwards.
It’s the only thing about Christmas that my mother never fucked up. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is. Emmet, Ma, Wendell, and all their friends, live in this little bubble that she was never able to pop… and I love that fucking film like I can’t even tell you.
So, I thought I’d watch it.
Not my best idea.
Normally, I can feel my father when I watch it. Smell the popcorn. Hear his whistling.
Gone. All of it.
*poof*
So there I am washing dishes and watching “Emmet Otter” like the sad suburban housewife who is trying desperately to cling to her youth I’ve obviously become.
Is it January yet?
——
I caught shit because I write my dates “12 December 2013” when I fill out paperwork unless I have to use mm/dd/yyyy… This is all Martin at DGO UK’s fault. (Dude I used to work with in the dark ages… ) He would make fun of my American way of doing things and once we both got fucked up with a date that was like 03/12/14. He thought it was December. It was March. We reached a compromise, if you want to call it that, and I’ve been writing it out in words ever since.
I also almost got in trouble because I called my new workplace the “[something] Centre”. It’s CENTER. Of course it is. I’m an American living in the US. There’s no reason for me to spell it the British way, but writing almost 80K words of fan fic based on British shows will make it a habit. If I had done my Johnlock using the British spellings, I’d be at close to 100K words. Yeah, I could write in American English, but I’ve found it’s jarring to see American words, spelt the American way, when British characters are speaking. So. I’ve gone as British as I can without a brit-picker and it’s starting to show. A lot. Apparently, it makes me ‘poncey’. Which I needed to look up, thankyouverymuch. But, hey, one day I’ll live over there and it will be normal. So suck it.
——
And finally… found when I was looking for a EOJBC quote:
Title: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
Year: 1977
Synopsis: Young Emmet and his ma, Ma, are super-duper fucking poor, thanks to their dead dumbass father/husband, who they deify even though he was a failed snake oil salesman who left them with nothing but a broken-down shack, a toolbox, and a slide. Ma washes clothes and Emmet does odd jobs, but since they’re both so “nice”, they have problems obtaining fair payment. They hear that there is a talent contest at the Frogtown Hollow City Hall, for which the winning prize is $50. Since O. Henry can’t sue for copyright infringement, Ma sells Emmet’s toolbox for a pretty dress, and Emmet drills a hole in Ma’s washtub to make a bass. They each want to win in order to buy the other an instrument for Christmas (clothes and food and college savings never come up). They both perform well in an poor-man’s-Allison-Krauss-kind-of-way, but a group of hoodlums called The Riverbottom Nightmare Band proves that evil, i.e. electric instrumentation, always wins. On the way home, Ma starts singing with Emmet’s band. Doc Bullfrog, the owner of a riverside restaurant, overhears them and offers them a job. They happily head into a future of entertaining at Frogtown’s equivalent of Applebee’s. Since Ma was a week away from giving handies to swamp animals at $2 a throw, it’s probably for the best.
I went to the office today to fill out my new hire paperwork. Why wait until the last minute, right?
I met the other staff accountant (my roomie!!!), filled out that paperwork on the couch in my office, and basically had a good morning.
Seriously.
Pinch me. I can’t believe this is real.
——
I’ve been reading MASSIVE amounts of fan fic, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. I mean, what else do I have to do all day?
I’ve been writing MASSIVE amounts of fan fic, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, either.
But it surprised me when I wound up with two books about fan fic on my Kindle.
AO3 was having a ‘fundraiser’ of sorts where if you bought a copy of this non-fiction book about fan fic (Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World, by Anne Jamison - AO3’s affiliate link), they’d get a cut of the action. I was kind of ‘eh’ about it until I saw that Atlin Merrick (whom I absolutely adore) was quoted in it. I’m struggling to read it, but I’m not sure why.
It reads (a bit) like it’s written by a Sherlock fan fic writer. There are word choices that seem to fit the Sherlock fandom very well… I don’t know if anyone else would notice, but I’ve been picking up on them. I think that’s kind of why I’m distracted. I keep looking for things that may or may not exist. And, I’m so lazy that I’m not even looking to see if she’s a Sherlockian, which is making it all very interesting.
It reads like an academic essay about the lure of fan fic and why it’s taking off, which is what it is. It delves into Star Trek slash (the ‘start’ of fan fic as we know it), and mentions the Sherlock fandom since it’s been around forever. (Remember, there was ACD canon long before Moffitt’s.) AM’s little bit was right in the beginning and she writes in the same voice she delivers her Johnlock in. I loved it.
And, sadly, that’s as far as I got. I’m just not interested in that kind of heavy writing right now.
But, while I was on the reading about fan fic train, I picked up “Fangirl” by Rainbow Rowell. That was a quick read and it was fun.
I read so many reviews where people bitched that the characters weren’t fleshed out, where the main character didn’t have anything to lose… and honestly, I guess I’ll never be a book reviewer, because I didn’t see any of that.
Maybe it’s because I read so much fan fic? Maybe because I write fan fic?
We get lazy - there’s no reason to flush out the characters because we already know who they are. If I say “Sherlock Holmes”, you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with the BBC show to know who I’m talking about (although it helps.) It’s obvious that the main character is a fangirl of the fictionalised “Harry Potter” franchise, and that she’s a relatively famous fan fic writer in that realm.
In terms of needing to be fleshed out? She’s an antisocial, socially inept, college freshman who lives in a fantasy world. (Even without the fan fic, I was very much the same girl my freshman year, so I identified with her right off the bat.) She’s not close to her twin anymore. She never really gets close to her roommate until the very end. She even struggles to get close to her potential love interest(s). She’s distanced from everyone because she’s so invested in her fan fic world and THAT’S ultimately what the book is about. So, no. I really didn’t give two shits about the people she’s surrounded with.
What does she have to lose? I think a lot more than you’d assume.
On Facebook, I’m open that I write Sherlock fan fiction, but I don’t generally say WHAT I write about.
Here, of course, there’s a little amount of anonymity, but I’m starting to share what I write because certain friends have asked for it to be here. I’m also keeping a running list of all the comments I get in an entry that gets updated every time something hits my inbox.
On AO3, I hide behind a pseudonym and an avatar of Benedict Cumberbatch.
I’m not comfortable telling people outside my circle that I ship male/male relationships, whether they’re platonic, romantic, or merely fuck buddies. For the record, I also ship male/female relationships like EverLark and Shenny, but not nearly as many. Mostly because my favourite things have strong male leads and secondary female characters.
And I’m DEFINITELY not comfortable telling people that I read m/m fan fic in a majority of kinks. (And no - not all kinks are kinky. I don’t do AUs like Wing!lock, Ballet!lock, etc., I’m never going to read mpreg, alpha/beta/omega verse stories, and forget tentacle porn… No. Just. No.)
Telling people I write M/M fan fic? I’d rather die a horrible, painful, drawn out death than tell people I what I write. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s because telling people you enjoy gay relationships to the point where you obsessively write about them is a little uncomfortable?
To circle back - it’s scary telling people you write slash. An eighteen year old girl who writes slash coming out to friends in college? I’d never do it.
I get it. I get her.
I don’t need a heavy plot.
I don’t need character development on lesser characters.
The story is about the girl, her relationship with her fandom and her first year of college and how she eventually ties the two together.
The fallout from the new series 3 trailer has been intense, so cue the adorable David Tennant and a bunny.
From the Mary Morstan hate, to the Harold hate (John’s stache has it’s own name. Shut up.), to the jumping out of the cake jokes, the BBC has killed us all.
Dude. Seriously. The shit on tumblr right now has reached Hellatus levels of crazy. I am loving every minute of it… even the stuff I’m not completely cool with.
All I can say is - the entire fandom seems to believe that Sherlock spent his years after the fall watching/checking in on John whenever he could, generally via Mycroft’s CCTV access, and we WERE WRONG. We were so. fucking. wrong.
I think it’s actually kind of brilliant that he doesn’t realise* John’s moved on with his life. It seems so perfectly in character despite every thing we saw in series 2. I mean, like without John to ground him, he reverts back to series 1 Sherlock, and I think that’s great. (*Let’s save the Aspie!Sherlock conversation for later. I don’t really care either way.)
Some of the clips we’d seen before this were obviously taken out of context and seeing them placed in the narrative flow also destroyed about a thousand different head canons. The way Sherlock smiles in the restaurant? Maybe it’s because he does see John (and Harold), but I think it’s more the high after the deduction. (Hell yeah, bitch. Your wife’s going into labour. Called it. I’m back, fuckers!) Maybe I’m wrong… who knows.
I’ve watched it a zillion times already and I’ve already read half a dozen fan fics based on the trailer… I don’t know how I’m going to survive until January.
I seriously don’t.
Sherlock returns on the first and I start my new job on the second… it’s a double whammy from hell and I’m not the most patient person in the world… and I still don’t have anything to do during the days to distract myself.
and there was much screaming, flailing, and rewatching
Because I’m so excited - and someone asked for a sneak peek - here’s day 4 of the 30 Day Johnlock OTP Challenge. It’s still a draft, so be gentle.
4 - One gets sick (a 221B)
“JAWN! JAWN! Lestrade just called! They pulled another headless body out of the Battersea Power Station! We need to go before Anderson contaminates the crime scene!” When John didn’t come running, Sherlock headed up to the older man’s room.
He opened the door carefully, took one look at the feverish doctor and decided that he’d stay home. John needed him. “Sh’lock? Gimme five minutes. I’ll be right down.”
Sherlock watched as he tried to sit up. “Don’t move, John.” He was at John’s side in two quick strides, and placed his hand on John’s forehead. “You’re burning up. What should I do?”
“Hot broth and paracetamol. There’s a can of chicken broth in the cupboard where I keep the teabags. All you have to do is empty the broth into a pot and and bring it to a simmer. You should know where to find the paracetamol.” He smiled weakly.
Sherlock reached out, brushing John’s fringe off his face. “I’ll be back. You just rest.” He pressed a kiss to John’s forehead before he left the room.
This case easily rated an eight on his scale. He really wanted to be at the crime scene, but John was more important than The Work. While he waited for the broth to warm, he texted Lestrade: “John’s sick. Staying home until he’s better.”