The Playthings of Her Life

Kyle aspirated again yesterday morning. Fortunately, he hasn't gotten as sick this time. He started the antibiotic within the hour. Yesterday his T-max was 101 F. Today he hasn't cracked 100. He's congested but not horribly so. He says he feels well enough to work tomorrow; I said no way. There's a three-day weekend coming up. He can go back next Tuesday, after a week of rest. Good grief. What is he trying to prove and to whom?

WE ARE LEAVING FOR PARIS IN LESS THAN THREE WEEKS.

I am still having back pain. But it feels not-too-bad today, thank goodness. I am lying on my bed in a semi-reclining position to type this.

( Boring Stuff about my feet )

( Less Boring Stuff about My Fucking Thyroid Gland. Cut for possible triggers and mentions of the C-Word. )

The next post will be more positive, I promise.

"Different decades of one's life bring with it different levels of discomfort, and the overriding thing to remember is that the only constant in life is change. And the only thing to do is keep showing up, being the best version of yourself you can be. And the rest is out of your hands completely."

~ Gillian Anderson, from her Reddit AMA.

When I read that, I felt like she was speaking directly to me.

I am still having back pain. As long as I don't sit for more than half an hour at a time, the sciatica is manageable and (I hope) slowly improving.

( medical stuff, mostly whining about my feet )

My sciatica is back. Has been back. Which is why I'm not updating or writing or doing much of anything that requires sitting, bending or lifting. So no writing, very little reading, not much television either. I can walk and I can lie down.

xf_book_club is probably going to die due to lack of attention. It's a discussion forum. If I can't post or discuss what I post, there isn't going to be a community there for long. This is where having a co-mod was helpful. I'm going to try to post something there this afternoon or evening.

I defaulted on my unconventionalcourtship story. I can't write if I can't sit. The mods said I could post it whenever it gets done, so that was nice.

To anyone who is waiting on a story I am supposed to beta, I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN YOU.

Someone at tumblr is having an auction to benefit AO3: Fanfic Authors We Want You. Obviously, I'm not signing up, but maybe you can.

I'll be back here when I'm better. I'm trying to read and comment when I can.

Hi! My absence is due to my inability to sit for longer than 15 minutes at a time. The reason: sciatica from a pinched disc in my lumbar spine. It's getting better but I am taking no chances.

Kyle is doing fair. He's back to work but still feels exhausted.

Zombies, anyone? Go leave some prompts, preferably short, non-serious and for fandoms I could write.


March 31st, The Dead Will Rise! @ zombi_fic_ation

I was amazed to see that both Joan Watson and Olivia Dunham made it into the next round of f_march_madness. I'm voting for both of them, while hoping they don't end up pitted against one another. Nothing those mods do would surprise me. They misspelled Molly Hooper's name!

My fifteen minutes of computer time is up. If I was a better typist this could have been a longer entry.

For a multitude of reasons, which would only bore everyone, I don't care for the Oscars. They do put people to work and contribute to the local economy, so I'm not opposed to them. Usually, I don't bother, but the television was already on after the Laker game ended so I did watch part of the broadcast last night.

It was even worse than I'd expected. This piece in The New Yorker expressed it well: Seth MacFarlane and the Oscars Hostile Ugly Sexist Night

I loved her performance in Silver Linings Playbook, (the movie—haven't read the book, don't plan to), so I was pleased to see Jennifer Lawrence win the Oscar, although it might have been better for her if she hadn't. The backlash began even before she'd won. I was sad to see her trip on that ballgown Dior put her in, since that's the clip people will keep playing over and over and over again. This continuous "news" cycle culture just eats people alive. She's only 22, for heaven's sake. And she's just an actor, a very, very good one, but still. I'm worried about all of the attention being focused on Quvenzhane Wallis, too. There was Twitter nastiness focused on her and she's a nine-year-old. God help us.

I wrote two treats for purimgifts, but only posted one. The ficlet for my recipient needed more work and my beta is in a different time zone, so I'll post it in a few days, and just link it to the others in the series. It might turn into a longer fic. Because I don't have enough unfinished writing projects.

I loved the stories and art work I received. Tomorrow I will link everything here.

Kyle is finally getting better. He hasn't run any fever so far today. He's still very tired but realizes it takes time to get well from pneumonia. He is staying off another week and has a consult scheduled with gastroenterology. I am very grateful for everyone's support and well-wishes.

My ankle sprain from last summer? It is healed at long last. No more pain. Still some swelling but, hey, I'll take it.

purimgifts is live: Purim Gifts Day 1. My contributions were completed and posted on time. There are excellent ficlets there, in fandoms as diverse as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and C.J.Cherryh's Cyteen. I even spotted a Lost Girl story. I've liked everything I've read so far. I'm working on a treat; it remains to be seen if it will be completed in time to post with the collection.

Have a great weekend.

Dear Purimgifts writer,

Hello and welcome! First, let me apologize for getting this up late.

If you matched one of these requests, we already have something we love in common. What else do you need to know about me? Let's see. I'm not a shipper in any traditional sense, not even in my primary fandoms. Unless a sex scene is integral to the plot, I'll probably skip over it. I don't like reading hurt/comfort fic, or stories that contain graphic descriptions of rape or torture. Story-lines that humiliate and embarrass the characters will make me feel unhappy and uncomfortable too.

What do I like? I love poetry and prose. I love a well-plotted mystery. I like alternative universes and stories about time travel. I like snappy dialogue and banter. I like stories about friendship. I like stories about love.

I'm an optimist. I know life is hard. Bad things do happen to good people. However, I like reading stories about how people cope with adversity, how they get through the hard times and come out on the other side, transformed in some way by those experiences.

My requests:

1.) thirtysomething

This fandom is so rare, I hesitated to include it. But it's so perfect for this community, I had to put it in my request. There are four main characters who are all women: Hope Murdoch Steadman, Nancy Krieger Weston, Melissa Steadman and Ellyn Warren. And there are two canon Jewish main characters, Melissa Steadman and her cousin, who is also Hope's husband, Michael Steadman. I'm most interested in stories about friendship. Canon relationships are fine, but otherwise, I would prefer not to read slash. It's just not how I see these characters.

My husband and I watched the series back when it first aired. We had a baby nearly the same age as Janey and an old house in need of constant repairs that we couldn't afford. We loved Hope and Michael Steadman in part because we were Hope and Michael. Re-watching thirtysomething, I find myself awash in nostalgia. I've come to love all of the characters, even the ones I found annoying back in the day. We only knew them for four short years, but they have an entire lifetime ahead of them which would be wonderful to explore in fanfiction.

It's out on DVD now so you could download it, she wrote hopefully.

2. The X-Files RPF

If you are up for it, how about crackfic? "My Secret Marriage to David Duchovny by Gillian Anderson." Otherwise, a nice gen story about how--awkward--their working relationship was would be adored. If you find yourself at a loss for ideas (unlikely if you signed up to write this), you could head over to SHIT.BETWEEN.US and pick an entry.

I'd love it if you wrote a ficlet from Gillian's POV where they're not friends and they're not lovers. They just work together. Sometimes they don't speak for weeks at a time except when they're in character; yet, somehow they end up having real affection for one another. It's—complicated.

A story imagining what it was like for Gillian to come back to work less than a week after having a c-section would be unique. I'm sorry. I always have the most odd-ball ideas.

These are only suggestions. I love Gillian Anderson (and David Duchovny and The X-Files) and love this tiny fandom, so I'm sure I'll adore anything you write.

3. The X-Files

If you matched on this, we probably already know one another. Okay, well, you know how much I love the series. I particularly love these characters: Dana Scully, Diana Fowley, Melissa Scully, Teena Mulder and Samantha Mulder. If you love them too, I'm sure anything you write about them would make me happy. I know Fox Mulder is listed on the Jewish character list as a maybe and that David Duchovny stated that until someone tells him otherwise, Mulder is Jewish. I can go either way with it, but for the purposes of this exchange, that's more than fine with me. Stories that are set before the series begins are relatively rare. I like genfic best but canon pairings are good, too.

One last request: please don't write me a story in which you kill William's parents in order to reunite him with Mulder and Scully.

4. Fringe

I love all of the women characters, regardless of universe or timeline. I like gen stories best, but canon pairings are fine.

True confession: I secretly shipped Olivia/Astrid in the Amber!verse before Peter magically reappeared to dash my hopes. Another doomed ship! Brown Betty Olivia/Astrid would be great, too. My favorite season is the third. My favorite universe is the Red!verse.

I wish we had learned more about Etta before they killed her off. Let's be real. You could write a novel filling in the plot holes for seasons four and five, and there is no time or word count for that.


5. All-of-a-Kind Family

This is a wonderful children's book that was a favorite of mine in childhood. It's about a close-knit Jewish family, with five daughters, living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan around the turn of the twentieth century. Another long shot, but it would be perfect for this gift exchange. The author is Sydney Taylor; the first volume is available in used bookstores through Amazon, and the entire series is probably at your public library.

( cut for some spoilers for Elementary )

If anything I've written here is useful to you, that's wonderful. But the most important thing to me is for you to enjoy the process, to have fun with it. The spirit of giving that these exchanges inspire is one of my favorite things about fandom.

Thank you again for taking the time to check out my journal and read my letter. And thank you in advance for your gifts.

The stories are posted at galentinesday. All of my worry was for nothing. Mine looks fine. The saintly amadi let me resubmit my story revision an hour before she began posting the stories last night. My gift is Some Stranger's Hand, a surprising and unexpectedly hot story about Diana visiting Mulder while he was attending Oxford. I've already read it three four times. *cough* There are eighteen stories up, all about women characters.

ruuger is having a friendship ficathon at her journals on LJ and on DW. All fandoms, all characters, all genfic. You can leave prompts and fill prompts. I should be all over this but instead I'm plotting a David/Gillian romance novel. Go figure.

But I am also working on my stories for purimgifts. I needed to have the graphics already picked out and finished before I could begin writing. I'm not supposed to talk about it. So I'm not, okay. The hard part for me is going to be keeping the stories under a thousand words.



In honor of Valentine's Day, on DW, I have switched my journal style to light pink and my default icon to roses. I might leave it that way, too, at least for awhile. I like pink. On LJ, I switched to my first and probably my shippiest Mulder/Scully icon. I might keep that, too. It matches the journal nicely. I doubt anyone cares but me, but I now have a new journal style and custom banner up at xf_book_club, courtesy of scholarslayouts.

I finished my story for galentinesday. I handed it in Sunday evening and already I have thought of things I'd change. I just hate that I can't edit it. It's like Yuletide back in the day. The best thing about doing gift exchanges on AO3 is that the writers can keep tweaking their stories. There should be a rule. For sure, next year fringe_exchange will be on AO3.

I like it very much. I think my recipient will like it, too. However, I have some anxiety about it being compared to an earlier story about the same character written by a much better writer, which nearly kept me from even attempting my own. Does anyone else ever think that but me? One of the reasons I'm so resistant to writing romance is that there is so much of it out there. And I don't think of myself as a romance writer; I'm a gen writer who occasionally writes romance.

Speaking of romance, I would like to boost the signal for a new community: unconventionalcourtship. The sign-up is now until I have no idea when. It will run from March 15 through April 14. Each and every day now has someone writing for it, and many days have two people, so you can have any day you want. I chose March 31. It's for all fandoms, all pairings. The story has to be at least 1000 words.

The only catch is you have to pick your summary from a Boones and Mills/Harlequin Romance novel (or combine two or three), substituting the names of your characters, and the pronouns, of course, if needed, and write that story. The mods are really easy. You can change the setting, the plot, etc. As long as you hold to "the spirit of the summary," it's all good. I think that means as long as there's plenty of steamy sex, you're fine. What is cracking me up is the name of the community. What exactly is unconventional about these courtships if hundreds of thousands of these novels have been written and read? If you want to signal boost this yourself, there are dozens of these banners already made. Perhaps there is one more relevant to your interests; if not, the mod will make one for you if you supply a photograph.


That photo! I've been wanting to write fic for that photo ever since I saw it on Tumblr. (Sometimes I think all Tumblr is to me is an endless stream of fic prompts.) In fact, it has been my contention that my tiny Yuletide fandom could use an AU (or two or twenty). If people write them for J2, why not for RPF:The X-Files? If I don't write RPF, I suppose I'll write a Mulder/Scully AU, but I think it would be easier to write an AU romance for DD/GA. They're actors, they can play anyone, right?

( The romance summaries and another pretty picture of Gillian with her hair up behind this cut )

One last thing, and then I'm moving on, I swear. My husband had this to say about the galentinesday story, "I have to hand it to you, babe. Once again you have taken the worst source material and turned it into something moving and meaningful." He gave me a hug, too. So even if no one else likes it, I have pleased my number one fan.

Now I can get to work on my purimgifts ficlets and graphics.

I signed up for purimgifts. I'm very excited.

There is another friending meme, and this one is right up my alley.

~We Love Women! Multifandom Friending Meme~


If you love the awesome women in fandom, come on over and make new friends!


rarewomen is in the accepting nominations phase. I made nominations last year (and will this year, too) but didn't sign up as it turns out my favorite characters (Diana Fowley *cough* )are too unpopular even for rarewomen. LOL. But you never know!

14valentines and halfamoon have started up, and will run through the 14th. I'm not doing an essay for 14valentines this year due to bad timing, but I'm going to try to post something after I finish my fic for galentinesday. It was supposed to get finished last weekend but life intervened. That's okay. I got to discuss the story with Kyle since he was home and it might end up being better as a result.