Selenay's Ramblings

AKA the Wangxian Strictly AU :D

Week 3: Samba

This fic is so much fun to post. And editing it is much more fun than I expected, even when I'm having to rewrite entire scenes to make them suck less 😂

Last week's Strictly was also movie week, and I had so many feelings about the group dance and John and Johannes dancing a paso to Pirates of the Caribbean. It should have been awkward and awful, camp in a way that didn't suit the dance at all, AND IT WAS NOT. It was scorching. Brilliant. It tipped them over into being my favourite couple. I shall riot if they don't make it to the final.

Ahem.

In other fic news, I wrote the final words on the first draft of my MXTX Big Bang fic. It's just shy of 64k words and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I've got six weeks to tear it apart and get it into posting quality, so that's a nice bit of breathing space.

Also, I saw one of the pieces of art for it this morning and I'm blown away. It's going to be so exciting getting to share the fic and art with everyone - I really hope everyone loves the art as much as I do!

Hello, yes, I'm actually having a good fic writing year. Thank you, Untamed fandom.

The Yuletide deadline is later today! Ish. I think.

I posted mine to the collection yesterday. It needs more editing and a better title, but I was hit by a bus this afternoon, I wouldn't be afraid my recipient was getting coal, so that's good.

I do love Yuletide :-D

I also love the way my brain is still trying to make me consider writing treats, even though I have no idea how I'd find time for that. I'd been thinking about having some kind of comment-fic-prompting-palooza here, but now I'm thinking the more sensible plan is to do that in January when we're all feeling a bit of a post-Christmas low and need something fun to do.

I looked at AO3 when I was posting and noticed this is only the third fic I've posted this year. Wow. I can see what kind of year it's been! I think this is my lowest number of posted fics for many years. I'm hoping next year will be more inspiring and less exhausting.

I have a completed Yuletide draft that passes the bus test. Hooray! And with plenty of time for editing and beta-ing, which is particularly awesome.

Every year, I'm sure this will be the year when I end up defaulting, but every year I don't. This is my eleventh Yuletide and I'm still maintaining my record for not dropping out.

I'm slightly stunned that this is my eleventh Yuletide. Where did all those years go?

I am seriously considering doing some kind of tiny fic promptapalooza next week. Maybe. It might be a fun way to keep my writing muscles working for a while. It's something I used to do on Tumblr way back when I was actually using it and it was good fun, so if there's any interest, I'll do it.

I mentioned in my last post that it's been a weirdly mild winter. So mild, in fact, that I went for two long walks early this week. Usually the weather isn't good enough to do that until April! They might be my only March walks (hopefully not), but that's still odd.

It did feel good to get outside and walk in the fresh air. I've missed that. I'm sure it's why I slept a bit better this week, despite having the kinds of days at work where breaks and finishing on time just don't happen.

Today I've got someone coming to fix the window. Last week, a new freezer arrived to replace the dead one. I thought the rule of threes might take effect (broken soffit, broken window, broken freezer) and things would stop breaking, but no. Last week, my furnace died. Thankfully we have a service plan so someone came out within a couple of hours and the repairs were covered by the plan rather than costing us EVEN MORE MONEY on a house we're selling soon. But it took the repair guy a long time to fix the furnace because it had died so spectacularly and he did comment that it's getting a bit old and might be due for replacement soon...

Argh. No, we're not replacing it. The new owners of this house can do that if they want.

One of my uncles in England was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few days ago. It's been caught incredibly early, because he's been getting regular check-ups, so he should make a full recovery.

(Any men reading this - please get yourself screened and checked regularly!)

The main reason he gets so much screening and checking done is because he has a severe form of osteogenesis imperfeta (brittle bones) and he's one of the oldest people with this type. He wasn't supposed to live past his teens, so his generation of people with it are the first to reach this age. Nobody knows what effect the disease will have on them as they age, so he gets lots of tests and baselines and screenings done as a precaution.

So thanks to the OI, his prostate cancer got picked up as early as this stuff can be. But the OI is also causing complications for treatment. Due to his fragile bones, radiotherapy is not recommended. They don't know for sure what effect it would have, but it can cause bone loss and his bones are weak enough already. It's not a risk they're willing to take.

Uncle P is 4'2" tall and has odd proportions due to his OI. The surgery for prostate cancer is done using robotics now, and the robotic arm is calibrated for 'normal' sized men and can't be adjusted to his size. Apparently the surgeon got very uncomfortable as he tried very hard to delicately talk around the fact that P is the wrong size for surgery. P found it rather amusing. If the surgeon knew P better, he'd know that P wouldn't take comments on his size (in this context) personally.

So the third option is the one they'll have to go with: doctors will create some kind of radioactive 'seeds' and implant them in the tumour. The seeds will kill the tumour from the inside over the course of a few months. It will take a few weeks to make the seeds and he'll need monitoring after they're implanted. P and his wife have a holiday booked in May so he'll start treatment in June. Apparently the cancer isn't doing anything exciting right now so they've got lots of time and the survival outcomes are excellent at this stage.

Even though I know he'll be fine, it's brought home to me how relieved I am to be moving back to England. Missing my family is the main reason I'm doing it, and this kind of illustrates it. My uncles (and parents) are getting older and things will happen. I don't want to regret all the time I didn't get to spend with them when things happen. I'm always picking and choosing which relatives I have time to see when I visit and there's never enough time for all of them, or for more than a couple of hours with the ones I do see. That's not enough to feel connected and it won't be enough when the time comes and I have to start saying goodbye to them. So I'm relieved to be going back, because I'll be able to see all these people I care about regularly, instead of maybe getting supper with them every other year.

I'm trying to find a less depressing note to finish on. Hmm. I finished a short fluffy Berena fic yesterday, so it looks like I might actually post fic soon. Go me!

Sometimes, I despair of my fellow fic writers. I get an RSS feed of new fics
at Teaspoon, just the titles and summaries so that I can take a look at
what's being posted. I don't have access to Teaspoon at work so I just
browse the titles and mark anything for follow-up that I might want to read
at home.

It is often painful in the extreme, but this morning's gem? "My Night with
the Doctor". Erp. Smutty fanfiction is one thing, but I really do not need
to read other people's porny fantasies starring themselves. Part of me hopes
that it was a humourous, ironic fic that is the polar opposite of title and
summary. The other 95% of my mind knows fic writers far too well.

When DW fic is done well, it really is some of the best fic out there. Sadly
it's just like every other fandom in having a 90:10 dross to gem rate and
the dross in DW can be truly terrible. It's at times like this that I
half-wish people had to get a licence to publish fanfic, except I'm not sure
that would actually weed out the bad fic because I experience bad drivers
every day and someone somewhere gave all of them licences.

Also, obviously, it would end up being totalitarian state thing and that
would be Bad. It's nice to dream, though :-)


In other thoughts, I've been thinking some more about Stolen Earth.

( More spoilers ahoy )

The packers arrived bright and early this morning - 15 minutes early, in fact! Thanks to all our hard work yesterday we were able to just point them at the stuff and let them have at it. Mum and I sat in the lounge knitting and chatting, only moving to make tea and confirm odd questions.

It was a much needed break after yesterday! There is still a bit of sorting out to do because we need to move a couple of bits into this room so that I have somewhere to put a bedside lamp and store the remaining clothes, but everything is looking very empty and echoey. Photos will follow as soon as I've found my card reader. It all looked very cool :-) And there were metres and metres of bubble-wrap! I was good and didn't pop it all.

The plan for the day is lunch, then hit town to investigate the big new library and eat cake. We didn't expect them to be so fast so we have half a day that we didn't expect to have. Woo! Mum and I then plan the re-arrange the study downstairs to our liking now that the piano has gone and present Da with a fait accompli on the new arrangements *pokes tongue out at general direction of Father's office*

My femslash08 assignment arrived this morning and I was very pleased to discover that there are a number of pairings that I feel I can write. Woo! I will be writing a little note to my person later, when I have recovered from the general packing exhaustion.

Right now, I'm just feeling oddly relieved that it's done. I waved good-bye to my stuff for two months and it was a little sad to see the van disappear into the distance, but also incredibly satisfying to know that this huge job that's been looming over me for months is actually done. The packers were fantastic. I'll let you know what happens at the other end, but right now I'd definitely recommend them for international moves.

I've been having a poke around my iPod and it occurred to me that I could load fic to read on it as well as fic to listen to. Does anyone have any experience with putting text files into an iPod? And can folders be created when doing so to enable better organisation of the stories? I could even download text file classics from the Guttenburg project if I wanted to!

( Cut for musing on the reasoning behind choosing ship/slash pairings with specific reference to fanfic tastes )

In shallower thoughts...

Less than twelve hours now until episode 2 of Torchwood. Yay!

I have been watching The Hand of Fear (Classic Doctor Who) and I have one very important question: who thought that wardrobe would be good for Sarah Jane?? Loving the adventure so far (one and a half episodes in) and Elizabeth Sladen is doing a great job with it, but she's fighting a costume that makes her look around ten years old or possibly auditioning for clown school. Why?

This morning I thought of something that I wanted to say that would cause my f-list to explode. Now I cannot remember it. Woe.

I haven't seen any LJ commentary yet on Heath Ledger, but I can imagine what I will find. For some reason, hearing that news on the radio this morning felt like a big shock. He's not an actor that I thought about much except for "yup, very good" when watching him in films yet there is a little part of me that can't quite express itself except to say shocked.

I have a fairly impressive headache. While I will admit that smacking my head on my desk while attempting to retrieve a bottle of water didn't help, I don't think this is the root cause of the headache because I had one before colliding with the desk.

Yuck.

It seems oddly unfair after getting suckered with a migraine already this week.

I shall be going downstairs for a meeting in a few minutes so I may grab a cup of peppermint tea. And maybe some chocolate :-)

crack_van I love you, because you have sensed my distress and included Torchwood as a recced fandom this month :-)

Holby City you are fabulous crack and I love you. Particularly now that Connie is back in all her bitchy fabulousness.

And now I must away to the trenches for another hour. Hoorah! Yes, the hoorah was sarcastic :-)

Monday has been a nightmare and my back hurt like you wouldn't believe all day. The motorway was insane so I got trapped in traffic queues with a back that hurt like you wouldn't believe.

I felt that a nap when I got in was totally justified.

Mum made cauliflower cheese with mushroom and bacon in. It's great comfort food.

I also spoke to historyterry and yragg, which was enormously cheering even though we mostly ranted about my crap job and Terry's house issues.

During the frequent pauses while things ran and everything locked up, I poddled around with Notepad and the next Teyla/Weir Crossing fic. I've been working on it for a week, it's nearly finished...and it might be the longest fic that I've written for over a year. I.e. it's over 2000 words. Yay.

Just gotta write the, ah, fade-to-black love scene and then I'm done. Who wants to take bets that this is where I get blocked for the next two weeks?

I'm going to watch Sarah Jane Smith and knit, seeing as I'm still completely knackered from a nasty day.

That Brigadier Bambera 5 Things fic I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? Just needs another read/edit session and then it is all done :-)

The bad thing is that I then have to post it somewhere. The Haven is currently set-up for me to write Buffy, Stargate and Atlantis fic. Nothing else. So I shall be doing a little bit of reorganising over the next couple of days to enable the organisation of fic for other fandoms. Quite a radical departure and possibly one of the biggest visible changes since I added Stargate/Atlantis fic. That database project was huge for me, but wasn't quite such a big change for site users.

Erf.

Why didn't I consider that I might branch into other fandoms when I was re-organising everything five years ago?

I may also chuck the fic up on Teaspoon as a just in case archiving thing.

Heh.

Today I had a nice holiday to recover from my Tour de France exploits. I have been going college work, watching movies, editing fic and now I am going to eat before watching more cycling. At some stage this week I need to re-watch Goblet of Fire before seeing Order of the Phoenix at the weekend.

Tomorrow I shall be back at work. Bleh. Must try not to think about it. The only good thing to come out of work for the last couple of weeks was some rather yummy chocolate brownies. We had people giving away samples and I managed to snag two small boxes. They are like heaven in a plastic wrapping. Sometimes, working for a major retailer has its advantages.