To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

After hearing about Jerry Doyle's death, I feel like I should add some words to my Ivanova and Garibaldi try to have a honeymoon but end up foiling a plot to assassinate the Earth president fic. RIP.

Hehehe, awww, it's my OTP almost twenty years on! (Plus Bester haunting them, which is...rather appropriate.)

One day I'll get around to finishing that "honeymoon turns into dangerous presidential intrigue in St. Petersburg" fic for my AU. Maybe once I learn how to write convincing intrigue...

Some links:

Found on Tumblr. Awww. The tiny part of me that ships Ivanova/Franklin (because I ship Ivanova/basically everyone) squeed a bit.

Overheard on airplanes (The Oatmeal). Both because it's funny and in honor of the airplane- and spacecraft-related WIKIPEDIA BENDER I've been on for about forty-eight hours now. I went to look up one tiiiiiny little nugget of information on the space shuttle I could extrapolate on for my space pilots story, and I now know everything Wikipedia can tell me about a dozen different models of Cessna, Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell-Douglas; how airfoils work; how piston-driven, turbo-prop, and jet engines work; what a glass cockpit looks like; what a flight engineer does (well, did, really); what a preflight check entails; and how to fly the damn plane. Well, okay, I couldn't fly a plane, but I can tell you what the six major flight instruments are and what they do.

(Uggghhh, I am getting bogged down in technical details for this story. They don't need to be there for plot comprehension, but my narrator is a techy sort of fellow, and to get his voice right, I need those details. My inner perfectionist won't let me get away with technobabble that has no relationship to physics and mechanics, but my last physics class was ten years ago, and my mechanical aptitude extends to checking the oil in my car, so this is...research-intensive.)

(Also my aviation research led me to remember that Netflix has most of Wings up on instant watch. Which is not research, but it is entertaining. Why was there never fic written for this show?)

O Flist, I've found myself watching some Northern Exposure episodes of late, and I'm contemplating a complete (well, complete through the first six episodes of S6, anyway) rewatch. Anyone feel like joining me? (P.S. If you like quirky, charming, intelligent, unexpectedly moving dramedies, now would be an EXCELLENT time to discover this one!) I've given a thought to making a rewatch comm, although I only lasted until the end of S4 on the recent B5 rewatch. Then again, NX only had fifteen episodes total for the first two seasons, so it wouldn't be quite as long as five seasons with a show that had 20+ episodes each year.

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In other news, JMS is trying to re-acquire the rights to B5. What for, no one's sure.

My first reaction is OMG REBOOT REBOOT REBOOT!!!!, but I'm not sure how one would change the story significantly enough to make it worth it.

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Finally, a poem I recently read and loved:

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Query: Since three is sacred to the Minbari, does that mean they really, really like waltzes? (Someone should write that fic.)

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Ideas for two vids are poking me, but they would require rewatches of the entire runs of BSG and the X-Files. Since both are on Netflix Instant, this is in theory not completely impractical, as I could figure out which episodes I need clips from and then just have those discs sent to me to rip from, but that is a LOT of TV, even if I just do one of the vids.

The first is a Six- and Baltar-centric BSG vid to "Calling," by Leona Naess. I think of it as a Six-and-Baltar vid largely because of the second half of the chorus, because both could be such unpredictable characters at times. (Also, of course, there's the line about angels, and, well...) I can see it in my head; in addition to maybe fading to white with each transition in the second half of the chorus, I would make sharp cuts to highlight the emphasized beats that come right before the last syllable of each line of the chorus's first half, and I think it would look really cool.

The second is a Scully vid to Hem's "Leave Me Here," because she is really just so tragic sometimes, and has kind of a horrible life, but remains still so very, very strong. I can't see it as well in my mind as I can the first one, but I think it could be pretty. It's just that there are NINE SEASONS of the show to wade through if I ever make the vid.

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Someone has written CSI fic set...at my undergraduate institution. I...um. Somehow, these two things just do not co-exist in my head. I've never watched CSI, but I'm reading these fics where the characters are running along the Gap Trail and see the old steam engine, or go to the butterfly garden at the BFEC and then haul themselves up the hill to campus to visit the market, and my head is kind of exploding. I've read, like, X-Files fic where Moose & Squirrel come to Nashville and not had this kind of reaction. I think here it's perhaps because Gambier and Kenyon are so small and off the beaten path that it's hard to imagine people who are not me and my friends there. Lower Broad or Centennial Park--eh, hundreds of thousands of people pass through there every year. It's easy to see fandom characters there. Middle Path, NOT SO MUCH.

(Also, oh god, I just did a search at FFN, and there are like five Twilight fics set there. I don't even want to know.)

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And in non-fandom-but-related-to-that-last-bit things: Allison Janney and Josh Radnor, both Kenyon alumni, are starring in a movie about a liberal arts college, to be filmed at Kenyon. The plot sounds like unwatchable hipster tripe of the highest order, but hell. I think I have to Netflix this when it comes out.

Fandom stockings have been revealed! Yay! I received some lovely graphics and recs for poetry and books which look interesting indeed.

I volunteered as a pinch-hitter (pinch-stuffer?) and thus ended up doing more than I thought I would for this fest; specifically, I wrote twelve fics and made one vid. Here's everything I wrote/vidded, with links to the AO3 because it's simpler than chasing down comment threads, especially for those that are broken into multiple comments. (Unless otherwise stated, these are 1,000ish words or fewer. All are, at most, PG.)

Babylon 5
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall for perverseparagon – Londo's life is full of mazes now.

If Equal Affection Cannot Be for rivendellrose – Five poems Marcus Cole knows by heart. One-sided Ivanova/Marcus.

Soldiers for bessemerprocess – In which Susan Ivanova and Olivia Dunham meet in a bar. Angsty and apocalyptic. Crossover with Fringe.

Castle
...In an Elevator for debirlfan – Castle and Beckett, stuck in an elevator. UST.

Murder Most Kindergarten for soobunny – Five-year-old Alexis writes a story. It gives her father cause to worry.

Corner Gas
Baby, Baby for livii – Someone leaves a baby on the steps of the Dog River Police Station. Chaos ensues. Everyone appears, but it's Karen- and Davis-centric. (3,000 words; also at LJ.)

Doctor Who
Second Star to the Right for jenavira – Eight, Charley, and a low-gravity planet.

Follow the Fleet
Side by Side for idharao – Sherry and Bake are having a trying Christmas, but they make the most of it.

Fringe
Soldiers for bessemerprocess – In which Susan Ivanova and Olivia Dunham meet in a bar. Angsty and apocalyptic. Crossover with Babylon 5.

Northern Exposure
I Feel the Sky Tumbling Down for oxoniensis – An alternate explanation for Maggie's vertigo in "I Feel the Earth Move." Joel/Maggie, Ruth-Anne.

The Reality of Experience for juniperphoenix – Roslyn and Cicely share a life lived through books.

Slings & Arrows
All in a Day's Work for wiliqueen – An all-too-typical day for Anna Conroy.

Sea-Changed (vid) for loneraven – A vid about Geoffrey, the theater, and even Oliver. Set to "Full Fathom Five," by Hem, feat. Audra McDonald and Anne Hathaway. 1:30 long, 19 MB Quicktime file.

X-Files
The Heart of Saturday Night for ruuger – "John Doggett requires a cautious, quiet approach, like sneaking up on a bird or squirrel to take its picture." Doggett/Reyes UST.

One of the many things I like about this pairing is that some of the gender expectations are swapped: Susan is often the more practical one, while Michael, though he keeps it under wraps, is more traditionally romantic/sentimental (c.f. Dodger in "GROPOS"). This is the first fic in my AU from Michael's POV, something I've been wanting to do for a while, and it was fun to play with that here.

Title: With Paper Wings
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,900
Timeline: Spring 2263
Summary: Michael and Susan are pressed into babysitting duty and as a result, while ostensibly talking about the past and present, wind up having a conversation about the future. Fluff. (Though of course with them, there's always angst lurking in the corners...)

( You realize this looks remarkably like a dog playing fetch with a tennis ball, right? )

Title: Later Stars of Dawn
Pairing: Ivanova/Delenn
Rating: G/PG
Word Count: 1890
Summary: A year after the events of "Sleeping in Light," Delenn takes Susan stargazing. As always, she has an ulterior motive.

( Unsurprisingly, it also involves a ritual. )