Peering out at the Infinite

So as of this morning, I am done with Finals FOREVER (or until grad school, but that is Not Being Thought). All that's left is student teaching, but the sitting and taking tests and everything is FINISHED!!!

Fannish bits to recommence as soon as my brain recovers.

Things I liked about SciFi's ( Alice )

The procrastination is becoming almost pathological. Every time I type a few sentences, or scribble a few notes, I suddenly feel the need to clean the table, or reheat my tea, or go out and check the mail. WHY DO I NEED TO CHECK THE MAIL? IT IS 20 DEGREES OUT AND SNOWING!

I have four projects due in four days, and do not have time for this kind of crazy.

Also, as a public service announcement: Do not donate blood when you have higher level thinking to do. That blood is taken directly from your brain, and you will be USELESS

And there goes the last day of my last teaching practicum. On the bright side, such an occasion gave me an opportunity for procrastinatory baking, so I brought in math cookies! That is, ginger cookies with operations and fractions and square roots and other math-y things frosted onto them. I also got a very formal goodbye handshake from one of my students. I love when pre-teens get all dignified and such.

For some reason, I always forget that before Finals Week and before Dead Week, there is HELL WEEK. And Lo! for it is truly named. There are papers and projects and presentations EVERYWHERE, only some of which will be useful. For example, the Good = I will have an entire month of social studies lesson plans for a World War II Unit. The Bad = I AM NOT A SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER.

Post a sentence/paragraph from every wip you can find. no explanations allowed, just the excerpt.

( Ficbits )

There are books that I wouldn't buy for a high school library (the majority of schools probably don't have erotica anthologies) but banning books is ridiculous. And, if anything, defeats whatever point you were trying to make in the first place, because you are then THROWING THE TITLE IN THEIR FACES AND DARING THEM TO READ IT.

And I'm not only referring to students. My high school lit teacher had us read Toni Morrison's Beloved BECAUSE the State Sec. of Education argued that it should be banned.

If you don't want students reading a book, be it "worthless" or "morally harmful", don't offer it to them. Other than that, it's out of your hands and should stay that way.

So this one time for narniaexchange I got a little overambitious, and then cut the resulting fic down drastically to be finished in time for the due date. While I'm still writing bits and pieces of the rest of it, I promised I would put the (rouch and sketchy) outine up for the whole thing and here it is. The story in question is The Winter King and features Susan and Peter stumbling into Narnia before Lucy did, and where a male Jadis rules absolutely.

( and so, belatedly, here it is )

In Fire, In Ice by moirariordan

This is not a cute fic about a children’s fandom. It is tightly written and emotionally fraught and darkness leads to decisions that are the best you can do at the time. Through a small and harmless accident, magic is revealed to the world, and the world reacts with fear. The underground system and gradual stepping up of terror is well-thought out, as are the restrictions on magic and technology alike, and the sacrifices made are believable. When the Russos can no longer hide, the spells needed to send them to safety can’t take everyone and remain undetected, so Alex and Justin stay behind, managing a whole year and a half before they too are forced on the run, switching identities and backstories with every town.

This does include incest, but in a context that gives it sense. When you change identities so much, when nothing is truly safe, in the end all you know is that this is the one person you care about, the one person you trust. It’s not handled as a romance, but as a consequence of their life. Still, if that bothers you, I would say to read the first chapter, which works as a beautiful, if melancholy, standalone.

In Butte, Montana, a young wizard cracks under the pressure. He takes his wand into a crowded mall and spells all the mannequins to attack passersby. His father is able to reverse the spell before anyone is hurt, but this is the proof that the world’s been waiting for.

The wizard, his father and the rest of their family are taken into custody, and the hysteria begins.

So I'm sitting on my couch watching Mansfield Park (the one from 1999) and I have to say that this is one time I'm really rooting for the cad. We never really see him as reckless in this one (you know, until that ( thing )) This in contrast to the 2007 version, which has him flirting all over the place. And, whatever other faults it has, I like Edmund better in that one (partly beause he wonders around looking all stunned and hit in the head when he figures everything out at the end) and Mary Crawford is so so so much better. She is actually charming, and her protests about how to handle the ....situation at the end comes across as though she is desperately trying to stay with Edmund, and not as though she is coldly calculating people in terms of their assets.

The Fanny Prices in question are so different as to be not worth comparing, but then they are equally different from the book. I actually like the book, until the very end, when I dislike Edmund (I like both movie Edmunds, but the 1999 Edmund seems much more BFF with Fanny, which combined with how much fun Crawford seems makes me really really want a whole second novel exploring that relationship)

I think I am going to buy this movie for Christmas.

You know what really sucks? Getting home from practicum with four hours to kill before leaving for class. Maybe you'll transcribe those fic bits you've been meaning to get to, maybe you'll try to get ahead on classes, maybe you'll OH SHIT IT'S INTERVIEW DAY!!!!!

Okay, a few copies of my resume, a lesson plan I taught last week as an example, COMPLETE AND UTTER PANIC!

Really, do I have to get a job? Because it'd be nicer if I didn't.

So bedlamsbard and I were talking about Glee yesterday, and how to solve various people's nonsense and how Quinn and Rachel and Finn should probably just form a threesome and everyone will be happier. In pursuit of this goal, bedlamsbard wrote some porny bits and I wrote this:

( Rachel/Quinn/Finn )

The whole thread can be found here

Also, I am totally waiting for the show to go Puck/Terri. Only Puck doesn't know she's Mr. Schuester's wife.

So, this is just going to run on repeat on my computer for like, EVER.

Dark Room by cherryice

They build Camelot up, they hold it together with their bare hands, and can't help but watch as it tears itself apart. Absolutely breathtaking.

Title: The Winter King
Author: westingturtle
Summary: “Well then Susan, Susan Pevensie,” the man extended one hand out to her, his lips curled into a promise. “Come into my carriage.”
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and settings and characters therein belong to the estate of CS Lewis and Walden Media.
Author's Note: This was my submission for narniaexchange, written for lassiterfics who had asked for (among other things) Susan or Peter discovering Narnia first.
Author's Note 2: There is a summary of the novel-length version of this that I keep threatening to put up, and I will as soon as I have time to translate the outline to functional English. Promise.



( His suit was like nothing Susan had seen since the war had started )

Liz and I went to see Adam at a local theater tonight, because tomorrow is it's last night, and OH MY GOD. I love this movie. I laughed, I almost cried, and when we got out, I kept repeating meaningless sentences and gesturing wildly. The trailer is



( My flaily and incomprehensible reaction... )
In summation. I love you Adam, I love you Rose Byrne, and HUGH DANCY I LOVE YOU AND WANT TO MARRY YOU RIGHT NOW.

Oh God! What grade do I want to teach? I'm filling out my student teaching application, and this is something I must apparently decide, instead of having the hand of fate and bureaucracy decide for me.

I'm leaning towards 7th (3rd through 9th endorsement under middle grades), but maybe 8th. Because there is a big attitude change in that year, and I still don't know which side of it I want to be on.

I HATE WHEN THIS HAPPENS!

So, I broke my first dish. Not first dish ever (obviously. My parents' dishes learned to quake in fear when I am near), but the first one that was mine.

This is apparently good luck according to Russian superstition, but bad luck everywhere else in the world. So today my apartment has been magically transerred to Russia (Hi Chekov! Hi!). On the bright side? BROWNIES!

Strangely gooey brownies (they are fully cooked) but we think that results from the baking powder+oil substitute for one of the eggs. But still CHOCOLATE BAKED GOODS FTW!

ETA: Damnnit! We missed some glass sweeping up, and now i've slit open the top of my foot.

The posting of stories on narniaexchangereminded me that I had all of these way back in my recs folder. Some of these are rather old, but that's just more of a chance that they slipped through the cracks earlier.

Might Shape Up Well by burntcopper
Author Summary: Soldiering is soldiering, even when you’re using a gun rather than a sword.
Peter, after Narnia.
This links into a whole series on soldiering in England, and how the Pevensies don't quite fit, and all of them really do need to be read. Right NOW.

Fairy Stories by animus_wyrmis
Author Summary: At St Finbar’s, Susan tells the girls fairy stories and Lucy remembers how they really went.

“But did they live happily ever after?” Marjorie asked, after a moment.

Snow Day by bedlamsbard
In contrast to her usual action-packed, pieces, filled with disillusioned and possibly sociopathic Pevensies (Peter, I’m looking at you), this is an early look into the Golden Age, where four children are trying to hold a country together with their bare hands. But they are still children.

"Edmund!" he splutters, and Susan can't help it; she claps her gloved hands to her mouth and giggles.

Lion Hunting by tirwen_star03
Author Summary: Susan’s life is shattered, but it continues – for sixty long years.

A boy would be Roger, she knew. She also knew that a girl would not be Susan. Nor would a girl be Lucy, as she made clear after Roger's hesitant suggestion. She was partial to the name Elizabeth--a safe, solid name that had been borne by an elusive great-grandmother of hers. Familial, but not close enough to reopen wounds.

When All Will Be Forgiven by peskywhistpaw
Narnia fandom, in a rush to the defense of Susan Pevensie, has many beautiful stories of how Susan has pushed the memories of Narnia behind her because they are painful, because she is trying to adjust to her new(old) home in explanation for CS Lewis’s description of her in The Last Battle In contrast to all of that, peskywhistpaw presents a story in which she truly has forgotten there was ever anything more.

The enormous tracks of some animal or another littered the ground about where she had lain.
“They think it was a bear,” the nurse shivers.
And Susan does not know why she suddenly wants to suggest that maybe, just maybe, could it not instead have been a lion?
This, of course, is absurd.

So, this thought popped into my head about a Doctor Who/Narnia crossover in which Narnia is this other planet that has some sort of occasional portal connection to Earth (Rift-ish?) and that Aslan is from yet a third and more highly developed planet and has set himself up on Narnia as supreme Lord a la the Goa'uld in Stargate*. After The Last Battle there is some kind of run in with the Doctor, Susan goes a-traveling with him, and after winding up there, Susan finds out about the whole false-godhood thing. And then goes out for crazy Pevensie-style revenge.

Oh fandom, why do you make me think such crazy things?

*I DON'T EVEN WATCH STARGATE.

It's the first week of school here and that means everything an everyone is a little crazy. The best example of start-of-school stress comes from my new neighbor:

"So we all had to draw numbers for the order that our presentations go in, and I reached into the basket and pulled out infinity.

WHEN DO YOU GO IF YOU'RE INFINITY? And then I realized it was an eight."


Sometimes, I really love college.

The

narniaexchange

 fic is not going well right now.  It's been kind of a rollercoaster ride. 

It was good when I had ideas, and then bad when things started not working, then good when I realized that in order to make them work I had to genderswap someone and REWRITE THE WHOLE THING  (The genderswap makes sense, I swear.  At least I really hope so).  Then it just stalled out because of time.  I"ve gotten an extension because I suddenly remembered that I"m moving this week and should probably get on that.  To figure out where I was, I went ahead and plotted the whole fic out so I could fill scenes in in my spare time.

It was supposed to be a glimpse, not an entire crazy Alternate Universe.  It looks about four times longer than I thought it would be (I am desperately trying to find parts it mirrors canon so I can allude instead of write) and it has ACTS.  I do not want it to have clear defined parts, because I JUST DO NOT HAVE THAT KIND OF TIME.

If anyone has time, please send the pills that stop the crazy.