The Tyranny of Socks

On Sunday I went to my first ever baseball game. (It was also A and Spartacus' first ever baseball game, but that is perhaps less surprising with the whole living in England thing.) We sat up in the nosebleed seats and it was great! Our team even won, which given their record this season was not the most likely outcome.

You may wonder how I have lived so long without ever attending a baseball game, so I will tell you: both of my parents are from Brooklyn, and my father was a Dodgers fan. He never forgave them for moving to LA, and in fact never watched a baseball game after they did so. My dad was a champion grudge holder. Baseball was never on TV when I was growing up, never on the radio, and almost never acknowledged as a real sport that existed in the real world, except to be polite to some of our friends who were big fans. (Does the intense relationship of Brooklynites from the 30s and 40s to the Dodgers show up in Steve/Bucky fic? I know that if someone had suggested to my dad that he could support one of the remaining New York teams he would not have taken it kindly, but see just above about his grudges.)

In other news, we have some free Apple+ and are working our way through For All Mankind, which I like so far (we're most of the way through S2 -- the marines on the moon have, in a development no one could possibly have foreseen, shot two cosmonauts.) And we have renewed our Disney+ subscription, so we have a lot of catching up to do. We're starting with the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, and I guess then might go on to some of the Marvel shows that started after we let the subscription lapse last time.

Also, I had a very happy and successful crossworks exchange! I received something I had been sure I would never get -- a 12 Monkeys/HL crossover! History Unfolded, by Tarlan mixes the two fandoms together perfectly, and I really loved the Methos characterisation in it.

I also wrote something, The Shining Air, a crossover between Mansfield Park and the Master and Commander movie. It was a lot of fun to write, and I basically convinced myself as I wrote it that Fanny/Tom Pullings is a great ship, but it also meant that I have not been able to mention anything I've been reading for the last month or so, since that has basically been (a) Mansfield Park and (b) pretty much the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, and I didn't want to tip my hand! I tried not to root it too firmly in the book universe but I needed at least some background detail, especially because the movie is so visually strong, but I was writing a story and needed some words.

I wrote something for the crossworks exchange!

On Providence (6299 words) by Vaznetti
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis, Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: T. J. Lewis & Colin Templer
Characters: T. J. Lewis, Colin Templer, Christian Stewart
Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, TJ has a theory about time travel, hints of Francis/Christian, the siege of Haddington, Colin's single-minded obsession with Polly, Samuel Harvey's confession
Summary: "I can't get you to the Blitz," TJ said, "but if you want to go to Scotland in 1548 now's your chance." And he didn't let Colin go alone, either.

It is really the most obscure thing ever to write a crossover between two such rare canons; the number of people likely to read this is probably in the single figures, but I really enjoyed writing it! And I got to send TJ back in time and let him show off how incredibly super-competent he is, and also rescue Christian Stewart from her canonical fate. This is the second time I've written something focused on the events of The Game of Kings after years of not even bothering to read that book (my re-reads used to start at The Disorderly Knights) and I had forgotten how enjoyable it really is.

I have almost 500 words of my Yuletide story written and am now much more panicked than I was when I had 0 words. I have to keep reminding myself that my overly-convoluted desires for this story are not the same as my recipient's much more straightforward desires for this story, and so I will not need to write those extra 5,000 words about that completely irrelevant thing.

In other news, since I never managed to get tumblr to work for me (somehow nothing I ever posted ended up in the tags, and I liked reblogging things but found interacting their difficult) I am just as happy to say goodbye and go on to the next thing, whatever it is, or indeed to come back here, although I admit that I will miss looking through other people's gifs.

In further "should have posted about this ages ago" news, I wrote a story for Crossovering! It was an MCU/ASOIAF crossover with Loki and Bran and Rickon, with the unfortunate title Fallen Princes (I really wish I could have thought of something better!). I am left wondering why I never wrote Loki before this, because he is exactly the sort of too-clever-for-his-own-good moron I like best. In the meantime I am keeping an eye on x_ship, a crossover ship exchange, in case anything interesting turns up there.

I am watching and enjoying the new season of Doctor Who. Usually it takes me about a season to warm up to a new Doctor, although I really love Thirteen already; instead it's taking me a little while to warm up to a new showrunner, although I am pretty sure that I will eventually. As with Star Wars, this is a canon I like too much to actually "do" the fandom.

Hi! So it's been a while and I have a lot to catch up on.

I have written a few things since last I posted.

For Alternate Songs, the ASOIAF/GOT AU exchange:
The Battle of Storm's End: Arya, Sansa and Aegon Targaryen IN SPACE! With sentient direwolf spaceships! Having spent a long time being snobbish about only liking canon-divergent AUs it turns out that I was totally wrong and everything is better IN SPACE!

For the multifandom drabble exchange I wrote a pinch hit & two treats:
Wolf in Hiding (ASOIAF; Sansa Stark) a drabble sequence about Sansa and the wolves which are and aren't with her.
Re-cognition (Westworld; Dolores Abernathy & Bernard Lowe) where Bernard and Dolores talk about tragedy.
The Second-Years are Probably Expendable (Oxford Time Travel Universe; James Dunworthy, Badri Chaudhuri). No living second-years were harmed in writing this drabble.

I thought a while about signing up for the AU exchange but in the end wasn't really excited enough about it despite my newfound love for putting everything IN SPACE, and I am so glad that I didn't because crossovering is back! This year I am absolutely going to nominate to make sure that all the fandoms I want are there!

And finally, I am namesquatting over at pillowfort here but have no idea how it works and haven't filled out my profile or posted anything, and it seems like the whole site is about to self-destruct in some kind of tumblresque purity wank anyway.

a. I stopped reading The Power for a little, and started to read Neil Stephenson's SevenEves, which proceeded to keep me up at night because it was so completely depressing and horrible, but in the compelling Neil Stephenson way. I read it very quickly because I just skimmed through all the stuff about physics and spaceflight, and have finally reached part 3; A suggested that I would really like the last 200 pages or so of the book, so I am somewhat hopeful. I am also perpetually interested in Stephenson's ongoing attempt to write female characters who are more than their cup sizes (see earlier comments on Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and Reamde; I bounced off the Baroque cycle). I guess I find it interesting because on the one hand I admire Stephenson for trying, and think he should be given credit for doing so. He doesn't have to: there's a perfectly good market for books in which the female characters are basically walking brassieres. But also because I think his failures are interesting. As A put it here, he is trying really hard here to prove that he can write lots of different female characters, and mostly succeeds until he suddenly reduces them all to archetypes. And I find the limits of what he thinks possible interesting, too -- as with pure theory in Anathem, for example -- because here is a guy who is actually very imaginative, but htere are still really clear limits on what he is capable of imagining. And there are things here about women and power that I don't like, but again, I find it interesting that Stephenson can't escape from certain ideas about women and femininity.

It will be good to get back to The Power after this, because of the ways that book does understand gender as a social construction, and power as ungendered.

b. I am 2000 words into my crossovering story and... the main characters have met, at least? I can see that this will be a story where I have to get that very rough first draft written before I can go back and add in the emotional stuff that will make the whole thing work. I hope!

c. I have thoughts about the last season of Game of Thrones, mostly to do with pacing and plot logic. Here is one thing about the Winterfell plotline: ( under the cut )

4. On a completely different note, my Florida cousins, whose usual hurricane preparedness involves vodka and junk food, are clearly a little worried about this one. So I am too, on their behalf.

1. I am pleased about the new Doctor -- as much as I am ever pleased by cast changes on Doctor Who. Normally I spend about half a season not sure about the new Doctor or Companion and then decide that I love them. I will certainly miss Moffat and his addiction to ridiculous time travel shenanigans and Time Lordish female characters, but I expect that Chibnall will be fine, and will bring something new and interesting to the show.

2. I am, as usual at this point in the challenge, eying the crossovering tag set and wondering about signing up for it. I haven't yet, but who knows, maybe this will be the year for it! There are certainly many interesting possibilities there. The problem with crossovers is that there are stories I want, but I want them in a very specific way.

3. GAME OF THRONES IS BACK!!! ( and I am feeling all the love )

4. I am still rereading old XF fic. Thank goodness, there is a lot of it, and a lot of it is still worth reading. I do miss Krycek, that cranky, violent, uncooperative asshole (to quote a friend). He was fun to write. (On which note, self, do not write your Thomas Nightingale/Alex Krycek crossover idea. It is not a good idea. No one will read it.)

5. A crossover people would read: Tony Stark and the Westeros Starks. In New York? In Westeros? There is a lot of good crossover potential in the MCU/ASOIAF thing.

Someone should write the crossover in which somehow Jaime Lannister and Luke Skywalker change places. But would it be comedy or tragedy? I think melodrama.

I almost forgot I had this icon.

Long long ago, hossgal asked for Bobby (SPN) and Wesley (AtS) in that great crossover meme. And I was thinking about it off and on, and finally came up with this post-AHBL snippet.

( whiff of sulfur )

I had other thoughts, but who knows what they might have been. And oh, how can summer be over already?

Among the many things I'm poking away at in my inefficient way is an XF/SPN crossover, despite the fact that it becomes ever clearer that not only was XF a television show in the SPN universe, it was one which the Winchesters watched as often as humanly possible. Yes, all of them, even John when he wasn't off hunting things, although he had the bad habit of nitpicking mid-episode. In fact, there were a few years in the mid to late 90s when the hotness of Dana Scully was the only thing that all three Winchesters agreed on, until John got contrary and decided he didn't agree. (Not because he actually didn't agree, but because he's contrary.) And there was about a year when Dean secretly thought Krycek was pretty cool, but then he changed his mind and was really relieved he never mentioned that to Sammy, because Sam would never have stopped teasing him about that EVER.

But somehow I just turn off the part of my brain which has all that (and more) as its personal fanon, and go on thinking about the crossover. The nice thing about fandom is that it allows you to believe all kinds of mutually contradictory things, if possible before breakfast.

New SPN! Croatoan! ( spoilers and profanity )

And on a mostly unrelated note that I hope will amuse a handful of you, I leave you with the following thought, because I have been re-reading McKillip. John Winchester and Mathom of An -- separated at birth?