To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Paper Aeroplanes is a Welsh boy-girl band I've been listening to lately. Imagine Stars, if Stars were fronted by Zooey Deschanel.

Several songs I like:
My First Love
Red Rover
Cliche
Make a Wish
Winter Never Comes"

*

Another thing I want to rec is a due South fic: "The Great Northern Maple Syrup Adventure," by nutmeg9cat. It's novel-length gen with a few hints of Fraser/Thatcher UST, and it reads just like an episode, with a good mystery, wacky Canadian hijinks, and excellently characterized versions of Fraser, Vecchio, Thatcher, and Diefenbaker. Seriously, go read it now. It makes me want to write dS fic again!

P.S. On this note, please, someone talk me out of writing the AMAZING horrible AU where Fraser and Thatcher are pairs skaters. Or where they have to solve a crime via skating. Skate America is held in Chicago and they get caught up in a judging scandal which takes out the Canadian pair who were in on it, and at the last minute they have to step in FOR THE GLORY OF CANADA, maybe. Hey, they're Mounties, I'm sure they're good at something wintery and outdoorsy like ice skating. Anyway, their skating somehow breaks the case open, because the corrupt judge reveals him/herself in scoring them. Turnbull sews their costumes (red, possibly with maple leaves, naturally) out of some stretch fabric they have lying around the Consulate for undisclosed emergencies. Vecchio and/or Kowalski make disparaging comments about figure skating throughout the whole thing, but then are the loudest cheering section during the actual event.

...I AM NOT WRITING THIS.

Not yet, anyway.

Fandom stockings have been revealed, and I got amazing things! I received a podfic of a lovely Northern Exposure story, some nifty photos from Rouleau, Saskatchewan (aka Dog River), a sweet Michael/Fi-centric Burn Notice fic, and IVANOVA/GARIBALDI FIC OMG OMG!

This year, I didn't write as much as I hoped to, but I did write three things. All are rated G and under 1,000 words.

due South
Glad Spirits - Meg meets her father-in-law for the first time. I guess it could be set in the same AU as "Down the Rabbit Hole," although it doesn't have to be. Fraser/Thatcher.

DS9
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) - "The thing is, she thinks when Julian hits on her yet again at their weekly breakfast together, part of her would like to say yes." My first Bashir/Jadzia Dax fic in...twelve years? Thirteen? It's been over a decade, anyway. Baby's first OTP! The e.e. cummings title may be a fandom cliche by now, but I swear it's relevant.

Fringe
A Very Good Year - Happy birthday to Astrid. Teamy, fluffy S2-era gen.

Awesome crossover idea: A serial killer is on the loose somewhere in the US, and the characters of Castle, due South, Bones, Body of Proof, and Rizzoli & Isles have to team up to catch him or her. Some or all of the following happens:

( I have obviously given this FAR too much thought. )

You know what would also be amazing? If Mary McDonnell were to guest star on BoP as, like, Bud and Sam's lieutenant/captain, or one of Megan's old med school mentors or neurologist colleagues or something. Anything where she and Dana Delany would share several scenes. I think my screen would implode from that much awesome on it.

(ETA: Come to think of it, DD did guest star in an episode of BSG ("Sacrifice"). I should rewatch that and see if they were in a scene together...)

Okay, I appear to have inadvertently cobbled together a sort-of-not-quite series, and I suppose I should explain myself. This is very loosely set in the same universe as "This Gray Spirit Yearning" and "Snow Day," but it's not in any way essential to read them as a unit. I do actually plan to write a thematic sequel to "Gray Spirit," set a couple years after the events of this fic, but again not necessarily making an explicit series out of anything. Plus there's room for all kinds of little fics and ficlets in between any of the ones that already exist, so...yeah. There will probably be more. :)


Title: Sine Qua Non
Rating: G
Pairing: Fraser/Thatcher (established)
Word Count: 1000
Summary: That without which we cannot live does not always remain constant.

( It's spring in Chicago, and change is in the air. )

Because we got snowed on again today, oh god, here is a bit of fluff I wrote basically to cheer myself up about it.

Title: Snow Day
Rating: G
Pairing: Fraser/Thatcher
Word Count: 1400
Summary: "There are occasions, albeit rare, when we might have to subdue a criminal through the use of snow-based projectiles." Set a couple of months after "Perfect Strangers."

( I'm suggesting, Fraser, that we've both been cooped up in court all day, wearing these infernal dress uniforms. I for one feel like I've spent plenty of time being professional today. Let's go play in the snow. )

Or, in which I commit crimes against unorthodox readings of "Ulysses."

Title: "This Gray Spirit Yearning"
Pairing: Fraser/Thatcher UST
Rating: G
Word Count: 1750
Summary: "For some time now, she's been his favorite subject to observe, to collect and file away facts and impressions of, sorting through them and piecing them together, puzzle-like, in daydreams and idle moments—not that he would ever admit it. Those are hardly the kind of thoughts a junior officer should be having about his superior."

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. – Tennyson, "Ulysses"

( He's always prided himself on his observational skills. )

Grar. There is a longstanding bug in iMovie that will unmute audio tracks on individual clips if you use too much slow/speeded up-motion in any given project, and it has been the bane of my existence for the past couple of days. The way I usually fix it is to export the vid with the bad audio, re-import into iMovie, delete the audio track and replace with the song I'm using, then re-export, but iMovie ALSO likes to screw with the timing of your project if you have too many transitions, and oh, look, apparently this one has too many. So I have been cleaning up all the little spots where the video is suddenly going faster than it was in the original file, and you know, I do find it very soothing to match video to music by fiddling with the individual frames, but this is ridiculous. I guess it's Apple's way of getting you to pay for Final Cut Pro. Too bad I don't have a spare thousand dollars lying around.

In other news, lyssie is running a hand-kissing commentfic promptfest, and I left one for Fraser/Thatcher. (Of all the pairings I ship, they seemed the most likely to do anything involving hand-kissing. Well, maybe Mulder and Scully would've.) So if anyone's interested... :)

Meanwhile, I'm writing this strange thing that kind of fuses what really happened in the finale with certain events from the original finale script that made the LJ rounds a couple years ago. At the moment, it basically exists as an excuse to get Thatcher doing fieldwork, which is never a bad thing, IMO.

Finally, I discovered that if you join her mailing list, you can download four unreleased songs by Karine Polwart for free. It's totally worth it for "Maid of the Loch (You and I and the Sky)," which is currently my favorite song. The others aren't bad either.

Earlier this year, magsyb requested established relationship Fraser/Thatcher fic. I doubt this was quite what you were expecting, but hopefully it's entertaining nevertheless. :D

Title: Down the Rabbit Hole
Rating: G-ish
Word Count: 500
Pairing: Fraser/Thatcher
Summary: "Marrying Benton Fraser had certainly ensured she would retain an interesting perspective on the absurd."
Note: Sincerest apologies for my crimes against geography.

( We are going to be so late. )

So in the course of writing this dS/S&A crossover, Geoffrey Tennant has kind of moved into my head. This has, if nothing else, done some very interesting things to my vocabulary. If I had a sainted aunt, I would be apologizing right now.

At any rate, I am very much enjoying writing him (cf. 4,500+ words in under 48 hours, which is huge for me, OMG), and kind of sad that I'm nearing the end of the first draft of the fic. I have about four, maybe six paragraphs to go, because Ellen decided she wanted to be involved in this one as well.

Because I am narcissistic enough to think others will find said fic as hilarious as I do, a snippet:

( Don't you think that, for example, the scene in Much Ado About Nothing where Claudio, Leonato, and Don Pedro trick Benedick into believing Beatrice loves him, while admittedly not the most moral way of going about things, shows a remarkable facility for working together to make and carry out a plan of action? )

I finished my Slings & Arrows rewatch today. I am such a sap, but even though it's my third time through, I cried when ( spoiler. )

I also started on that dS/S&A crossover that I'm still pretty sure is a terrible idea, and as, uh, preparation, I watched a couple dS episodes today. Thatcher's character gets screwed, especially in the later seasons, but...okay, something about her and Fraser just bypasses all the logic channels in my brain and makes me squee uncontrollably. They are SO. CUTE. *squeak* The eggs! The kiss on top of the train! Semaphoring compliments! *falls over*