My gift Ladyhawke fic was written by Emmzzi. I don't know anything about Emmzzi EXCEPT that s/he mentioned matching up with me on B7, but becoming intrigued by Ladyhawke and writing that instead. Which s/he did beautifully, as I mentioned in an earlier post. *cuddles baby Goliath*

This was my assigned Yuletide story. It's gen minion-fic backstory & was for whatever reason, really hard to write. I am GOING to put my thanks to my beta readers on it. I had it on, and had to take it off because the notes were visible & would sorta give away my identity.
Where Honor Lies (Ladyhawke) for Aleksanteri

I surprised myself by managing two last-minute fics. This one started out to be a short treat for someone who didn't have a story yet- the archive CRASHED just as I'd put the story in for preview, which meant it'd be visible with my name, etc. And because it'd been slow, and I'd kept trying to post it, I wound up with *THREE* visible copies that I couldn't delete. I kept trying for a fractional window of use and deleted all of them.

Then I waited until the archive was running again, and saw the recipient still listed as having no full-length story. So I fleshed it out to comfortably more than the mininum for full-length, and wound up very happy with it. It's gen and evil in pretty much the way the TV show was. They got away with a lot by being serious about not being serious. This got quite a few very kind comments, which warmed my Addams family evil heart.
Charming Women (Addams Family- 1964) for Vivien

And I could so not resist the prompt for this. Visualize young Sean Connery in this. It made me giggle the whole time I was writing it. It's slash, on about the same level as the het was in the early Bond flicks.
Golddangler (James Bond- book- Crackfic) for Sidrin

We were with Tim and Claire for Christmas - New Year sees us with Nick, Brenda and the 4 boys -



Joe (7), Andrew (14), Tom (10) and Dan (12)

Current Mood: chipper

Happy Birthday shatteredfuture  ... may you have a real day of blessing and know God's guiding hand on you this coming year.

Current Mood: cheerful

Now who's going to vacuum up?

And this is the pinch-hit I did. I'm afraid I didn't take as much care with it as I ordinarily would have, because I was writing very quickly, but it seems to have been fairly well-received. It got more comments than the other one, and at least one rec.

Title: It's the Thought
Fandom: Venture Bros.
Summary: The Monarch buys Dr. Girlfriend a birthday present. As usual, she fails to conclude that she's too good for him.
Rating/Warnings: I called this one "mature" over on the archive, but I'm thinking it's probably not more than PG-13, really, for non-explicit het sex.
Length: 1,075 words.

( It's the Thought )

Current Mood: So much to do this morning!

Yuletide stories have been revealed! The awesomely angsty Pretender fic I got turns out to be by Dayblaze, about whom I know nothing, other than that they give good Pretender fic. My heartfelt thanks!

Me, I wrote two Venture Bros. stories, which was a new and exciting thing for me.

First, there was this one, which was my regular assignment. It was written for cadetdru, who left a wide-open but useful prompt/request mentioning, among other things, bodyguards, backstory, interpersonal relationships, and unrequited love. That seemed to me like a license to indulge my weird fascination with Myra, and the rest of this, whatever the heck this is, grew out of that.

Title: Every Bodyguard Loves Somebody Sometime
Fandom: Venture Bros.
Summary: The emotional attachments of the Venture family bodyguards.
Rating/Warnings: This is at least a PG-13. There is definitely some violence here, but it may be a little too cartoony to really qualify as "graphic," and while there is a frank mention of canonical pedophiliac tendencies, there is certainly no underage sex. Really, if you're OK watching the show, I don't think anything in this story is going to be remotely shocking for you.
Length: ~ 1,100 words

( Every Bodyguard Loves Somebody Sometime )

Current Mood: semi-awake

I've just done my annual creation of a PDF of my LiveJournal for the past year.

It is free to do it at:
http://www.ljbook.com

UK users should remember to change the paper size to A4, and if you want things like your moods
and music choices showing, you have to click the boxes.

As is traditional at this time of the year, I have taken stock of the last twelve months, considered the directions in which those months have taken me, what significance they have had for my life and the lives of those I loved, and what changes it would be meet and right to make in the coming year. And having thus passed review, I have made the following resolutions:

I will go out and get pissed a great deal more often
I will engage in more risky behaviour
I will spend more of our overdraft on unnecessary luxuries
I will go to bed later


That should do it.

Thank you debris4spike for the lovely bearhug! Best wishes in 2010 for you, DJ and Jiffy too!

I hope I did that right....

Current Mood: chipper

Happy New Year to all my LJ friends!
Hope 2010 bring everyone everything they wish for!

Current Mood: awake

Happy New Year, all! It's still 2009 here, for a short while yet, but as it looks like I'm probably not going to finish any more books before the month and the year are both over, here's December's book log.

This was, in a lot of ways, a disappointing month in books. Among other things, I made a point of grabbing a number of books off the To-Read Pile that had been sitting there for a long, long time, only to discover that there were probably good reasons why they'd been on there so long. Fortunately, there were also some very good books to make up for it, and the month's reading ended a lot better than it began.

By the way, my comments on Stand on Zanzibar are mostly taken from maximumverbosit, since I talked about it there while I was still reading it, and my opinions didn't change in the last 100 pages. Also, as usual, I've tried to avoid any significant spoilers.


( A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick )

( Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner )

( Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live by Ben Thompson )

( Something Missing by Matthew Dicks )

( Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich )

( The Very Slow Time Machine by Ian Watson )

( The Atheist's Guide to Christmas edited by Ariane Sherine )

( Society of the Mind: A Cyberthriller by Eric L. Harry )

( Love: Ten Poems by Pablo Neruda )

( Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo )

Current Mood: relaxed

I hope each and everyone of you have a happy, healthy and wonderful New Year!!!

Current Mood: cheerful

It's amazing how many chronological and other conundrums can be solved by the simple knowledge that Mrs Hudson is a Time Lord. This first became apparent when watching Granada Holmes, and noting the anachronistic Brasso advert visible from the 221B (TARDIS) window. It all becomes clearer when you realise that Mrs Hudson is not of this earth, and that dealing with Holmes's irregular eating habits is so much easier for one who can travel through time. All the dating puzzles melt away, and the fact that her lodgers are known as The Doctor and The Master respectively becomes ever more suspicious.

Aaanyway, windiain and I were watching the very strange Granada film The Eligible Bachelor, in which Holmes is wandering around blathering about goodness knows what and having prophetic dreams about his future case. Well, this makes bugger all sense...until we remember that Mrs H is a Time Lord! Clearly the entire case happened in Holmes's relative past, and Mrs Hudson was forced to erase his memory to prevent his future self running around after his past self and cocking the whole thing up. Clearly the erasure was imperfect, hence all the flipping out at the sound of women's shouts, dreams of future events, etc...it all makes sense now.

Or maybe it's 02.30.

I just had a lovely phone call from tptigger! Definitely a cheering-up thing.

Cross-posted to http://kerravonsen.dreamwidth.org/620320.html.

Current Mood: thankful

And a special gift for those who have been reading the Perceptions and The Ends stories...a New Year's character dialogue which didn't quite come out the way I expected, but the sentiment is still there...somewhere... ;)

( New Year Celebration 2010 )

Sigh, keep forgetting stuff. Corinne is now in the picture.

And, thanks to the wonderfully talented vilakins for all the lovely pics :)

*kicks the old year in the arse*

It just occurred to me that I never mentioned the gift fic I received on Yuletide! I did comment on it, so the author knows how lovely I think it is, but there are people on my flist who might love it, too, so here's a last second opportunity to read it before you know who wrote it.

It's gen. If you ever saw the movie Ladyhawke you'll appreciate what a perfect piece of backstory this is for that movie, in which we are really given very little insight into how the protagonists met. This rings very true. And I love baby Goliath. EEEEE!!

First Sight

In case I'm too drunk to post by midnight, happy new year (and decade) to all my flist.

I shall start by echoing the message on James' FaceBook -

As the clock strikes 12 midnight around the world I wish each and every one of you a very happy, healthy and safe New Year. Happy new decade - 2010!

So true - I do hope that everyone has a special year ahead ...

Glitter Graphics - GlitterLive.com

Current Mood: hopeful

I have been watching "The 100 Greatest Musicals" off and on today ... hasn't finished as I type this ... and guess what came at #13 -

Once More With Feeling!

Yes, above a huge amount of well known and popular films.

So - Well done BtVS!

Current Mood: happy

Happy New Year

If House was an optimist, would his motto be "It's never Homo Homini Lupus"?

I know the pattern has a proper name, but to me it can only be a stellated dodecahedron.

How do you feel about your name? Do you like it? Does it feel like you? If you had to give up your name and choose another, what would it be?

Well, I rather did give up my name and choose another. Until I became an interpreter, I was phonetically Christine who spelled her name Xine. Folks would talk to me in only ASL for years and call me Xine, so they didn't know who this Christine person was when she came up. That was when I started introducing myself to people in English using the name Xine.

It does feel wrong to introduce myself to people voicing the name Xine. It feels every bit as wrong to write out the name Christine. There's no easy way to reconcile that dichotomy. Both names feel like me, but I'm much more possessive of Xine.

I do think of myself as a one-named individual, like Liberace or Cher.

It's almost 2010 here ... let's make it fabulous!  I'm wishing for health, wealth and ...something that rhymes meaning writing success!
Thanks for a wonderful year, f-list!

Actually, I did about 1/2 of this last night, while we watched "Around the World in 80 Days" ... and finished the last 30ish pieces this morning.




I did tell you I like the more unusual pictures.

Current Mood: pleased

I'm experimenting with Sprixi - it's another photo site, but it only lists photos with a Creative commons licence.

Like this one:

www.sprixi.com/i/4675089992

I like the fact that you can add extra tags to pictures and also rate them as to whether they are useful for the tags that they already have.

The main problem is that tagging is addictive.  I may have to stay away from the site, because I can't stop myself from classifying all the morris dancing photos.  (yes, it was me who added the 'Cotswold morris' tag to that particular photo...)

It's now 2010 here, so:



All I can say is, I hope it's a lot better than 2009.

Peter Jackson and Patrick Stewart have been knighted in the new year honours, so that pleases my geeky heart.

Welcome to the new decade!


What's it like in the 'Teens? The rest of us have to wait for a bit to find out.

Current Mood: sleepy

New Year's Eve: God sent his own fireworks. Well, I think lightning is more exciting than fireworks, and we could do with the rain.
I've been standing in the dark by a partly open window, enjoying the show and the wind.

If you've noticed I haven't been around, well, I'm sitting in a spoiler-proof bunker because I still haven't watched Doctor Who yet. Tomorrow. It better be tomorrow.
And part of my busy-ness is that I'm converting my website over to IkiWiki. And it's taking a long time. I discovered to my amazement that there are over 5000 (five thousand) pages on my site!

find htdocs -name '*.html' | wc -l (for those geekily inclined)

And there are lots of PmWiki smarts to write IkiWiki plugins for. And some things don't work quite as well, and other things work better; swings and roundabouts, as they say.
( Read more... )
But for now, I think I'll go back and stand by the window again.

Cross-posted to http://kerravonsen.dreamwidth.org/619898.html.

Current Mood: hopeful

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Sorry this is a bit late. Have a steampunk cake to make up for it!


(click to see full-size)

Here's my compiled episode rewatch reactions for Farscape season 2. And, wow, my verbosity levels were all over the place... As before, there are likely to be spoilers here for the entire series, not just the relevant episodes, so read at your own risk.

( Mind the Baby )

( Vitas Mortis )

( Taking the Stone )

( Crackers Don't Matter )

( The Way We Weren't )

( Picture If You Will )

( Home on the Remains )

( Dream a Little Dream )

( Out of Their Minds )

( My Three Crichtons )

( Look at the Princess )

( Beware of Dog )

( Won't Get Fooled Again )

( The Locket )

( The Ugly Truth )

( A Clockwork Nebari )

( Liars, Guns and Money )

( Die Me, Dichotomy )

Current Mood: tired

( Happy Birthday imzadi )

( Happy Birthday Leonie )

Son-in-Law happened to mention that he wanted to visit the National Memorial Arboretum when he was down with us and asked how far away it is. It's less then 20Km and Eldest said he thought it only closed for Christmas Day. So we went there as a Boxing Day outing for some fresh air.

We couldn't get to all the memorials we wanted to see as most are surrounded by grass and it was waterlogged. Here's a small selection and we'll be going back in the summer when it's drier.

( Eight photos )

O good heavens! Thank you! Thank you! I've given it to everyone. :) :)