The Farmstead

The hot day yesterday has left me massively craving salad and fruit, yet all I had was chocolate and noodles. But now I am literally working my way through a punnet of tasty only-worth-it-from-the-UK goodness. (Because Waitrose, where even basics become luxuries. I should write taglines. But seriously, the premium is so worth it; these are like confectionery they're so perfect.) All I want is a decent milkshake recipe and these things in one of those giant diner glasses... Or just more of them. They're on 3 for 2.

But I shouldn't let the tastiness distract me from the fact I also wrote fic! For this week's sb_fag_ends prompts 'Land Rover' and 'A Sudden Sandstorm', but it all got a bit long. If you happen to remember the sort of stuff I wrote in the early-mid 2000s, you'll realise that this shamelessly pulls from the same wellspring - we have Buffy post-Chosen, deserts, dreamscapes, cameos from the First Slayer, Spike in one way or another and a certain ambiguity of whether it's angst or fluff. It was fun!

Here on the sb_ashtray, soon to be on AO3 or else below! AO3 will get a summary when I can work it out; post-Chosen Buffy can't work out whether she wants to grieve or not, whether she is grieving or not; drives around and has a dream. She's hearing Spike's voice, but that's probably not him. PG-13, because there's swearing and it's a bit sad; c.3500 words. Boom, plz enjoy!

( Sunstroke. )

.

But I thought I should check in again! Thanks for all the birthday wishes last weekend. Life continues, and I have got into jogging and (bizarrely) Beauty (at least in terms of spending ages browsing shit and then buying nail varnish) as ways of destressing.

But on a shopping trip today I also bought this album, which made me very happy:

Electronic 80s 2 from the Ministry of Sound's Anthems series

I don't know what crap they had on the first version - this just keeps giving. I didn't even realise when I bought it that New Order's True Faith was on it, nor White Wedding!

I also have some Deep House Euphoria and a Maison Kitsune compilation of 'new faces'. But those are to think about later!

I also bought fruit. *is anticipating the nectarine season*

Sometimes I think Laurie Penny talks completely out of her backside (or more likely on three coffees at three AM before a deadline when she actually can't think of anything to say), but sometimes she's great and this was nice:

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/01/sherlock-and-adventure-overzealous-fanbase

( Sherlock spoilers(ish) )

All of these things are significantly less plausible than gay sex. I’m just saying.

What is significant about fan fiction is that it often spins the kind of stories that showrunners wouldn’t think to tell, because fanficcers often come from a different demographic. The discomfort seems to be not that the shows are being reinterpreted by fans, but that they are being reinterpreted by the wrong sorts of fans - women, people of colour, queer kids, horny teenagers, people who are not professional writers, people who actually care about continuity (sorry). The proper way for cultural mythmaking to progress, it is implied, is for privileged men to recreate the works of privileged men from previous generations whilst everyone else listens quietly. That’s how it’s always been done. That’s how it should be done in the future, whatever Tumblr says.

But time can be rewritten. Myths can bend and change. Something new and exciting is happening in the world of storytelling, and fans are an important part of it. All kinds of fans, from obsessive cupboard-dwellers to the shouty social justice crowd to livejournal perverts who just want to know what Sherlock would have to say about the chemical composition of personal lubricant.

On this and other matters, it doesn’t do showrunners any harm to pay attention to their fans. We are living in a world of stories where thousands of new voices from diverse communities are speaking up, sharing ideas and creating new worlds out of the shadows of the ones we knew as children - but so far, a handful of professional chaps still get to make the decisions. Now, where have we heard that one before?

(To put my cards on the table, I haven't been watching Sherlock this series, but I wandered through a few times when my parents were watching it over Christmas to see the bit I quote LP's description of and thought it was dead cringe + just an insult. In general I went off Sherlock last season and haven't heard anything to make me think it's got any better/any less like Doctor Who... But the piece is still nice.)

Sorry; should have said that ages ago. Suffice to say the second of half of term was very busy and various things were/continue to be quite stressful. Currently I'm dealing with it via profligate online spending... :/ But given we live in times of miniscule interest rates and moderate inflation there's naff all point saving anyway, right? And my job hunt for next October might be successful...

Not much news otherwise. Main bit of spending was on a beautiful new work laptop, because my old one was held together by sellotape and tended to crash all the time anyway. Technically it was mostly bought with the money I earnt teaching this term, though I sort of went over-budget after getting seduced beyond my means... Also, I didn't factor in that in the last three years Microsoft have changed their licensing on Office to make them all single-use unless you already have Office365. Since my PC just has normal Office 2013 I also had to put up another hundred quid for that. :( But I'm writing on it now and it's lovely!! I continue to be the only person in the world who actually likes Windows 8, and now I've got to grips with SkyDrive, I quite like that too.

I have also decided I'm going to try growing the dye out of my hair (which has been henna'd red for at least the last seven years and with a box before that), because I decided the red was making my face look even redder. I'm hoping with age and experience what I remember as mousey brown might read as ash blonde this time around, or else I might help it along a bit anyway. The plan is to look pale and interesting, rather than an angsty teenager, which the red reminds me of being. We shall see.

My fandom output has been minimal, continuing to be limited to javascript web doodles for sb_fag_ends - but do make sure to check out our advent calendar! Especially tomorrow, if you get a chance, or before the end of December. Such javascript plotting is indeed relevant for something else bogwitch and I are working on, but that's still officially unannounced, so don't watch this space.

Finally, many thanks to curiouswombat and speakr2customrs for the Christmas card! It did indeed manage to traverse the far reaches of space and time; I was very impressed. Merry Christmas to you (glad to hear everyone's OK) and extra merry Christmasses to everyone who wants one!

But we had a great Halloween challenge on sb_fag_ends, not that I was much help with it. (Still not... *waves at co-mods feebly*) seasonal_spuffy is back again, so make sure you catch up with that too!

My SS day, of course, is Sunday... I was basically stuck on things to do, then came up with an idea during my walk to and from the faculty or maybe when I was reading Seuils in the shop and eating porridge (neither of these things bear relevance to the idea). Unfortunately there is now limited time to produce this idea, which is still possibly without a point and will almost certainly want to be longer than I can possibly produce. Sigh face! Also, I'm so out of practice for writing fic that I keep shifting tenses into the present. I used to wonder how the heck anyone did this because it seemed like such an unnatural pattern of thought, but it turns out that if you are very much in the habit of writing in the present tense then your ideas start coming out that way even though you don't mean them to. I think my problem is that the plot I want to do isn't really a medium for dealing with the theme I think I'm writing about. I have no idea what a plot would be for that. Especially to make sure it's a Spuffy plot. Why does everyone else seem to be able to come up with stories when all I ever come up with is puzzles!

Blergh. Ill. Might got to bed now. Tired.

Although one ETA: Housemate and I watched The Fugitive last night and it was excellent. I miss that film's prevalence in Christmas schedules.

I seem to have been nominated at the Sunnydale Memorial Fanfic Awards, so just wanted to say thank you to whoever nominated me - you're a peach! I'm up for gazillions of things on behalf of the Spikeid, which is lovely of you, and also a drabble I wrote years and years ago, which is also extremely flattering.

This really doesn't make up for how dry wot my pen haz been all year, but never mind. Story! Spike in S6; bit of swearing, not really much violence. Moody bollocks about ethics. Etc.

Here on Fag Ends, or else below.

Idealism.

"Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness." - Immanuel Kant

Spike could never really get his head around the point of Angel’s soul curse. All those shiny morals, heaped on the baddest of the bad to keep him down the way no chains ever could… But then that ridiculous little get-out clause. Perfect happiness? In conception the whole idea was a walking pile of bollocks, let alone a worthy guardian for the depths of depravity turning and slithering in that wanker’s heart.

But then maybe that was the point. ( ... )

Buffy in S6, for an sb_fag_ends prompt that I picked specifically from the poetry wot I like on my shelf, so I didn't really have any excuse anyway. This is the link, or below the cut:

( Flashblind )

In other news, it's been a while since you've had a Nigel Kennedy video, so have another:



Sound quality's ever so slightly better on the Radio 3 website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01g9vvg - but the embed doesn't work because the BBC have never fixed that...

So, the sad news is that I had to take my spiky shoes back to the shop, because they were too tight and as it was I wasn't going to wear them enough that such discomforts in the name of IMPACT were worth it. However! The good news is that I have bought some other shoes instead... They are less exciting, generally, but intrigue me because they break a number of my general norms:

1. They are casual heeled shoes. I don't generally wear these, but I thought it was time to try (again, since terrible attempts in 2008). Because I'm grown up and shit / AW13 (which is looking very nice BTW) makes me think it's time to be a bit more dressy.

2. They have a big block heel like it's 1997. And a platform! (They are ankle boots, just for more horrors of such styling.) Now, when I was ickle and into the Spice Girls, I did indeed admire their stompy platform shoes. However, by the 2000s I like any sensible person realised that block heels are pretty bloody ugly, and never intended to find myself in anything that wasn't tapered nicely (don't like straight stick stilettos anyway... and that 2004-5 foray into sculpted heels that go in and out again is best left forgotten along with the T-bar brogues... yes; we can see why I don't really buy heels - and why I have to break rules if I'm ever going to buy anything.)

3. They aren't even real leather. And considering I was just harping on about this to Boggles, I think we can all appreciate how great a sin this is. Or how rarely serious my whinges are. Either way; they were the nicest style and they were cheaper, so I'll feel less bad if I banish them in the spring for being a huge mistake.

Anyway, I like them! And they do make my legs look very nice. The only problem is my skinny jeans - at least the burgundy pair I'm wearing now - are a bit obscenely tight, and while I usually just pretend that no one will notice that my bum and thighs are basically right there in people's faces, walking around with everything elevated off the ground a few inches seems a bit grotesque. Considering these four pairs of skinny jeans are (not even joking) the only bottom halves I have to wear on a day-to-day basis, I either need a lot more bum-covering tops, or some other trouser-based options. (But I tend to have issues with trousers, because my thighs are apparently large for the rest of me, so everything always clings awfully or I can't sit down or whatever... At least with the jeans it looks intentional - and they're stretchy.) I think midi/high-calf skirts are in and I kind of like the idea of them again. (Maybe a leather one. A vintage leather one!) But... Nowhere's selling them. Because apparently shops don't work out the implications of what they stock? Topshop have just got a bum-length jacket in, and if they had a nice material at some point I could probably live in that all winter. But there is danger ahead!

Oh, but they look really good with a coat I picked up on holiday that I may or may not have mentioned. So that is aces. :P

PS. I saw a teenager today doing the high-waisted-turned-up-baggy jeans with little trainers and a crop top (+ long sleeves) look today... She looked really great and I was jealous. :'( Not that I would have ever worn that look at 15 anyway. Although those jeans might well be the fashionable equivalent to big black Criminal Damage silly jeans...

PPS. The doctor reckons I have athlete's foot. :(

But I think I would have been too stressed travelling around this weekend, not least because I skived on Thursday to go to the Proms! We stood for the first one, but my mum managed to get some jammy tickets to the Nigel Kennedy who was aaaaaaaaaaaamazing. Check it out on iPlayer if you can! (It's Prom 34.) Was very excited to see in some publicity article for it in the Times (wot my Mum reads) that the Nige is doing a collaboration with Massive Attack on another version of the Four Seasons which is meant to be released in the Autumn. It's going to be epic.

I also just bought some shoes. They are... Characteristic?

http://www.office.co.uk/view/product/office_catalog/2,10/1163391601