Take a breath, it's Friday

[bironic]

I find it funny that six years ago, I started reading Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic and found it a fantastic distraction from schoolwork, and now I am supposed to be finishing a paper on Angel (among other tasks) and have instead been reading House fanfic.

Recs post forthcoming. But not till after the conference.

* * *

The plan was to take the remaining cassette of the RSL-narrated audio book of Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia into the house with me today after the commute home and finish it off either tonight or tomorrow night as a bedtime reward for a good day's work. However, there was so much traffic that I finished the next-to-last tape on the first stretch of highway and then nearly polished off the entire next one by the time I got to my street, so I idled and listened to the last chapter.

I'd never cried while driving at 65 mph before. Or in a car at all. Or during the day, really.

I pretty much knew what was coming, but... ow. There's something about children's books -- the pure, raw emotion, the honesty, the novelty of it all, the way you see and feel and touch and taste again in them -- that makes the grief that much more unbearable. This, and Tuck Everlasting, and Narnia, all medal winners, all awesomely, quietly powerful.

* * *

After gaping at thewlisian_afer's 1sentence fic for a while, I signed up to do one of my own, also Wilson-centric. There's no deadline, so it's okay. Really. I certainly didn't start brainstorming for it at work this week.

I haven't found too many entries that piqued my interest while trolling through the community -- I don't know most of the fandoms -- and because of the way the format puts one's writing skills to the test, the quality seems divided between the awful and the fantastic. An example of the latter kind features Giles and Ethan Rayne of BtVS, here. We have the same theme set.

* * *

Back to work and intermittent commenting. *waves*

Comments

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I'd never heard of it before. Probably if we'd read it in elementary school or if I'd noticed it in the library, I'd've done what you did.

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

I've never read Bridge to Terabithia, but I absolutely agree about children's books. You're right about the sheer honesty of them, as well as the immediacy and vividness - there's something so uncompromising about well-written children's books. They're not afraid to deal head-on with the really big stories - love and loyalty and death and adventure - that adult novels often feel they have to treat with ironic disdain.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ironic disdain, well put. Which has its place, and I love it a lot of the time, but returning to children's lit is like a microcosm of what I want resensitization to accomplish.

P.S. When you're through with exams, if you like, I can endsay the audiohay ookbay to you, electronically.