bironic

News: Excited to see Joshua Oppenheimer (who made the brilliant documentary The Act of Killing; the next film from that project is coming out soon here) and Alison Bechdel (of the Bechdel test) on the list of MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipients this morning.

Music: Tuned in to my favorite NYC folk & indie station yesterday because the office was noisy, and promptly picked up some new favorite songs. Now listening to Hozier's From Eden on repeat. Love the chord progression in the chorus, especially when he adds harmony at 2:09.

Movies: I keep meaning to do proper posts about these. That doesn't seem to want to happen. So:

( Really enjoyed Tiger Eyes )

( 'Meh' on Guardians of the Galaxy )

Fic: Does reading this stuff make me feel angsty, or do I gravitate toward it because I'm feeling angsty, or do they feed on each other? Whichever, I was re-re-reading that old Hermione/Remus WIP and poked around on the AO3 again in case something new had appeared.

Ended up browsing Remus/Tonks, a pairing I'd never really explored before. No surprise that penknife's stories were great; I read Worldly Goods (actually, more [past] Remus/Sirius than Remus/Tonks) and Easy to start. Right now I'm enjoying Grow in the Openings by mindabbles, which has Remus/Tonks in it but is really Remus/Sirius. It's nice.

Checked out the Twelve/Clara tag (Doctor Who), too. Not much there yet, unsurprisingly. It may be tough to find what I'm looking for even as the collection fleshes out; in addition to having strong personalities and voices, there's a certain frisson they've got, a certain way I'd want to see the tension break into action, that I can't even quite articulate yet but is often hard to find in pairings that don't have a large volume of fic, because half the stories seem to be well-written, well-characterized, non-explicit or gen fic and the other half seem to be generic or OOC jump-right-into-it sex. Not that I don't also love those categories; it's just that sometimes you want something that combines the best of both. For now, Into the Deep by kassrachel will do just fine.

Any recs for any of the above media?

synn's writing process is not unlike the way nature makes diamonds. There's a long period of intense pressure spent in darkness, sometimes bits of carbon crack and flake off, and then, at last, a gem emerges into the light, small and compact and meticulously constructed and beautiful.

This time it's Thrice Turned, a Snape/Harry story—sort of—set at the end of Deathly Hallows. Look, Snape/Harry makes me run away hiding my eyes, but this one works for me, a lot, even though I still shudder at phrases like "Potter's [fill in the sex word]," in part because Ginny is in the mix as well—again, sort of—and because of the distanced, understated tone. There's also genderbending and bodyswap, but not in a way I've seen often before. The setup is fascinating and the execution doesn't leave Snape or you with easy answers. The whole thing is rich enough to read like the start of an AU. An original, thought-provoking story, and probably even more enjoyable if you like the pairing normally.

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I have been stressy and grumpypants and insomniac lately, but today had many lovely things in it. For instance:

• we went for an Indian buffet networking lunch,
• my department director said she's trying to get funds approved to offer me an extended contract in a project management position,
• I talked for an hour and a half with a really interesting man I'd only gone down to see to check a fact with,
• the bluegrass station played a peppy version of Dylan's "Señor,"
• the impromptu lemon-margarine-pepper-corn starch sauce I made over a handful of frozen shrimp and scallions turned out super-tasty, and
• I went swimming for the first time in the rooftop pool my apartment building was supposed to open in May but only finished and got county-inspected a couple of weeks ago.

Then I got a blatant scam message in reply to a Craigslist housing item that was too good to be true, but whatever. A) I could tell right away, and B) swimming.

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I think I know which line I'd like to complete for kink_bingo. It involves finishing that Rodney/Katie consent play WIP and waiting for the SGA S5 DVDs to arrive so I can make a tentacles vidlet. What music goes with tentacles? I'm serious; I can't figure out what to set it to. newkidfan once did a wordless vidlet set to a heartbeat sound, where John stopped hearing Rodney give a presentation because he was focused so hard on Rodney's hands. Maybe something like that to imply the hotness.

…Or nothing could happen and I'll finish the round with one square done plus the anthropomorficlet that wasn't long enough to count for another.

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Another few recs to close things out:

- thedeadparrot's Star Trek II/III vid, Searching. Haunting stuff. She calls it slash. As a TOS slashphobe, I call it bursting with the care Kirk and Spock have for one another. ETA: Or maybe it was just haunting to me, since the music sent me halfway back to that feeling, on a night where I was feeling on edge for hours.

- Lullabies in a Minor Key by penknife. An aching portrait of Rodney and Jeannie growing up.

- A Long Gold Sliding into Dawn by synecdochic. This has been around so long, and recced in so many places, that I was sure I'd read it. Turns out I hadn't. The characterizations may not be quite canon, but it's brilliant in the way fanon can be more brilliant than canon—a look at what a lifetime of war can do to someone, and longing for but resistance to intimacy, and John not understanding what he wants or what he has until Rodney pushes him hard enough to see.

- The vid Cure for Pain by verbal_kint10, via blackmare_9. House's pain, in drug-staticked visuals.

My suspicion that today would be a waste was confirmed when I arrived at work half an hour early and was already slacking off at 9:10, reading today's issue of Salon. One of many film reviews was for "The Old World," the pretty-looking one about Pocahontas with woodland chases and bare-chested natives; the review was soundly negative but made me laugh when it said "At one point high muckety-muck David Thewlis is summarily executed for being a jerk." I trust that wasn't an upsetting spoiler for any of you.

It really was a terrible idea to make us work all day when clients were clearly not in their own offices to call us. By early afternoon I'd given up and started skimming Sam's archive at sam_storyteller, the shorter stuff, all Marauders- or Remus-centric, mostly things I hadn't read already (though I gave "Pilgrimage" another go because I'd liked it so much back in the paper-writing days when I didn't have the time to appreciate it properly). I liked this little bit from a Remus/Lily story, "The Bowl of Lilacs":

"Father!" James announced proudly, turning to them.
"Dibs on godfather!" Sirius shouted.

It struck me as very Sirius, and a lighthearted but entirely plausible take on how he would have reacted to the news. But, being tired more than anything, I gravitated towards the more melancholic stories, and bless Sam, he portrays humor and sadness with equal skill. This passage stood out so much that I wanted to share it with you specifically. From a quiet post-OotP story called "You That Have Whetted Consciousness":

Crouched that way, eyes searching for something, Lupin looked like Harry imagined he did at school -- happier, full of mischief like his father and Sirius, young. James was twenty-one when he died, which means -- adding Harry's age onto that, less one -- Lupin is only in his thirties to begin with. Everyone his father's age looks older; Snape from bitterness, Sirius from prison, Lupin from his disease. A wrecked generation, Harry will think later, though for now he merely thinks it weird.

Good fic like that pulls at my chest in the same way the half-unaddressed tragic Marauder moments do in the books. If anyone has quiet, melancholic MWPP recs, not tipping into angst if you can help it, please pass them along; I'm in the mood.

Off for a hopefully rejuvenating Friday night with Hogfather (thanks, Cat, for the rec) and Jeremy Irons' syndicated radiocast from the Salzburg Mozart festival.

ETA: Oh yes. Also in Salon this morning, Wil Wheaton wrote in an editorial about the War On Christmas as seen through the lens of his annual family get-together that he is one of many people who "use 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Holidays' and 'Season's Greetings' interchangeably, hoping that the recipient of my good wishes will understand that I'm really saying, 'I'm not religious, but I hope you have joy and love in your life, good health and happiness.'" That's what I hope each of you to whom my belated holiday cards are soaring through air mail at this very moment will understand if you open them up and discover that my sincere, if stilted, messages sound like they belong on a Hallmark product (or whatever the equivalent prefabricated greeting card company is in your area). The holidays, even if not celebrated by all of us, for me are a time to indulge in some healthy sentimentality, and if that means getting sappy on a card, so be it. I love you all and want you to know it.

Good night and happy holidays!