Amatara

Title: Be My Homeward Dove
Fandom: Twin Peaks
Characters: Sarah Palmer, Albert Rosenfield, Harry Truman, Audrey Horne, Dale Cooper.
Summary: Five goodbyes in Twin Peaks which really aren't goodbyes at all.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2100 words

( Be My Homeward Dove )

Just returned from our annual end-of-year get-together with friends; tomorrow we'll be celebrating New Year's day with the family. But first, bed. *craves*

Wishing you all the very best for the coming year! To borrow someone else's words:

May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.

Thank you for being here; you're all precious to me. *hugs* Happy New Year!

The Yuletide 2011 collection has opened! I wasn't an official participant this year, but my recipients liked their respective Yuletide treats, which made me happy. I do intend to sign up again next year, if I can - I missed the squeeing over assignments and the obsessively checking the 'gifts' tag at AO3 and the joy of opening one's present - but I had a good time!

Off to eat leftover Christmas turkey now, and little pears filled with dried cranberries. :)

And a number of quick Yuletide recs, in random order:

From the Dirt - Carnivale
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Clayton Jones, Ben Hawkins, Sofie Bojakshiya
Summary: 'The lights glittered in their eyes, reflecting the new and strange visions their minds hadn’t dared to imagine.' A glimpse of the world as seen from the base of the Ferris Wheel.

By Narrow Domestic Walls - Twin Peaks
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Dale Cooper, Albert Rosenfield, Gordon Cole
Summary: Albert doesn’t believe in ‘meant to be’. They don’t naturally mesh: Cooper wanted to do over the guest room with reed matting and make a meditation room; Albert wanted to make an office. So they built an office with a Zen garden. Albert appreciates sleek, modern furniture; Cooper likes Eastern antiques. So now their apartment is decked out in sleekly modern furniture imported from Tibet. Albert prefers quiet when he sleeps; Cooper drifts off listening to Tuvan throat singing. Albert has gotten used to earplugs. At each turn, one or both of them have seen their way through to a solution. The result is not so much a ‘normal life’ as it is a life that’s right for them, and insane for everyone else.

Better With Tentacles - Galaxy Quest (1999)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Fred Kwan/Laliari
Characters: Guy Fleegman, Jason Nesmith, Alexander Dane, Gwen DeMarco, Fred Kwan, Laliari (Galaxy Quest)
Summary: Guy has found religion, Gwen has found shippers and Fred will, eventually, find his pants.

Persuasion in the City - Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Samuel Vimes, Angua von Uberwald, Jane Gordon
Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a text in possession of more than a passing reference to a certain literary work that shall not be named, must begin with the phrase 'It is a truth universally acknowledged'.

(Entirely meme-unrelated thought first: I now have finished drafts for TWO Yuletide treats, yay! Both of which are comfortably over the 1000-word mark, so maybe I should have signed up anyway. Dang. No reason to be glum, though, I'm sure I'll enjoy all of the lovely fic written for others just as much! *counts the days longingly*)

Now, as for the meme (via selenak, among others):

Tell me a fandom and I will tell you my

Favorite character:
Least Favorite character:
5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):
Character I find most attractive:
Character I would marry:
Character I would be best friends with:
A random thought:
An unpopular opinion:
Canon OTP:
Non-canon OTP:
Most badass character:
Pairing I am not a fan of:
Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):
Favourite friendship:
Character I want to adopt or be adopted by:

1. The online fannish experience. Never mind all my angsting over readership, popularity, being remembered and recognized, or the occasional oh-my-god-am-I-a-good-author-or-not panic attack, please don't doubt this for a moment: every single reader, every comment or bit of feedback that I receive is precious to me. Every single person I get to interact with online, whether it's in a deeply philosophical discussion or just to exchange a tiny random little fact, is precious to me. I may be writing primarily because I love to write, but I'm posting because I love the interaction and the company, and I'm grateful for every friend and/or acquaintance I've made here. Don't you doubt it.

2. Babylon 5(*), for tempting me back into the fannish fold as an adult, about a decade after having (supposedly) grown out of it sometime in my late teenage years. Turns out I hadn't grown out of it at all. On the contrary, my love for certain fandoms and characters is much deeper now than back when I was still a teen crushing on Captain Kirk. *g* I love the kind of shared fannish experience that isn't just about squeeing over a show (even though it can, and should, be that too!) but also about bringing one's personal thoughts and opinions to a fandom, trying to make sense of it and enhance it and turn it into something personal, something that can be a lot more than, to quote the famous William Shatner sketch, "just a TV show."

(*) Most specifically, Peter Jurasik, Stephen Furst and the late Andreas Katsulas, for bringing to life their characters in a way that made me absolutely, unconditionally and fully, fall in love with them. Without them, I might never have had the impulse to come back to fandom at all.

3. BBC 2, for having aired the original Star Trek back when I was thirteen or so, which was what turned me into a sci-fi fan in the first place. Much as I've grown attached to the online experience, I'm also grateful for having been a fan in the days before the internet and DVDs, when all there was were magazines and VCR, and people still had pen pals, and the only way I ever got to buy Star Trek novels was by traveling to London and paying a visit to the Forbidden Planet. Not because those days were so much better, but because to have known a time where every scrap of fannish material you found, be it as small as a newspaper cutting, was a squee-worthy discovery, only makes me appreciate fandom in the internet age that much more!

4. Conventions. Specifically, living within a 300-kilometer radius of mainland Europe's best (as far as I know) and, these days, only, large sci-fi convention, being FedCon in Germany. It may be less spectacular than the USA's mega-cons, which I've never had the chance to go to, but it's friendly and atmospheric, and they always have a number of great guests. For instance, I saw Leonard Nimoy there, and Nichelle Nichols, and Brent Spiner and Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew; right after the BSG finale they had E.J. Olmos, Michael Hogan and James Callis, and the year right before that Mary McDonnell. My biggest frustration is still that they had a heap of Babylon 5 guests just a year before I discovered the show: there was Stephen Furst, and Julie Caitlin Brown, and Bruce Boxleitner and Peter Jurasik did a joint panel there, for heaven's sake, and I didn't even knew who the guys were! I was like: why is the audience going wild for a guy who played a middle-aged alien with a ridiculous hairdo? Gah, how ignorant I was... :)

5. In terms of specific fannish experiences to be grateful for: having lived though the Harry Potter rage first-hand. I'm not going to claim they were the best novels I've ever written or the best movies I've ever seen, but it was the most memorable fannish phenomenon I've been part of so far, and I loved every moment of it. I loved buying the books the moment they came out and then reading until the sun came up; I loved seeing the movies as they were being made, with all the long waits in between, and all those young actors growing up throughout them; and I loved how it all ended last year, not with a whimper but a bang. I wouldn't want have missed it for the world.

I'm baaaack! My darling Internets, never leave me again! *clutches laptop with newly reestablished connection to chest*

In the interim, judging from all the Dear Yuletide letters floating around, it seems I've managed to miss Yuletide nominations? Which I'm okay with, actually, because I was considering to skip this year anyway, so this saved me a considerable amount of angsting over said fact. :) It's not that I'm skipping because I didn't enjoy it in the past - I did, tremendously - but that to take on any kind of fannish commitment is probably not a good idea right now, RL being as hectic as it is. Which doesn't mean I may not end up writing someone a treat anyway, if a prompt catches my fancy. Just no official signup for me this year.

Oh, also - draft version of the help_japan Lyta/G'Kar story is finished, yay! So at least I spent the Internet-less days being productive. :)

Now... I believe I have some catching up to do. *scoots off happily*

Title: That Dubious Honour
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape
Rating: G
Word Count: 200
Note: For dueltastic, who wanted to see Minerva and Severus training their duelling skills.

I couldn't manage 100-word drabbles if my life depended on it (well, compact writing is not exactly my forte) but I was able to stop at 200, at least. So – yay? *g*


( Drabble: That Dubious Honour )

Why, yes, it is narcissistic - but I've never done this particular meme before, and seeing as I'm still not managing any writing at the moment, this would do both my spirits and my ego a world of good:

If you'd like, please quote a bit of my writing at me. Find that one story of mine that you really like, find a sentence or a paragraph that presses your prose-buttons in the right way, and comment here with it. In return I'll do the same for you!

Also, any news on the fannish front? Recs, fics, anything worth taking a peek at? If so: yes, please! *craves*