I put Stargate Atlantis on this list because it really seemed like it should be on this list, and then I spent a lot of time squinting at it and skipping past it, because is it really enemyslash? Like it was a huge part of my fandom experience for awhile, but I read mostly John/Rodney (you kind of had to) and while they were sort of antagonistic for most of season one or so, they pretty much got over it after awhile (actually come to think of it that may explain why I drifted away only a few seasons in.) And I guess in the later seasons there were a fair number of people who shipped John and a Wraith? But I was mostly not super into it by then and anyway, part of the reason I quit is I didn't like what they were doing with the Wraith.

But then I went into my old bookmarks, and, oh right.

So you get a recs set of Rodney/Radek fic.

The capsule summary of the Rodney/Radek dynamic is: Rodney is the smartest man in the world, and he knows that very well, and he is going to make sure you don't forget that. (He might even be the smartest man in the world if they weren't stuck in a tiny outpost on an otherwise empty world! He thinks so anyway.) Radek is the second smartest man in the world. However, he feels no need to compete with Rodney, because he knows two things that Rodney doesn't know: first, that all the smarts in the world don't matter if you can't do people. And second, that nobody ever thought Radek was good at people until they had Rodney standing next to him for him to look good in comparison to.

• Two Weeks Notice (10431 words) by zelempa
  Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Rodney McKay/Radek Zelenka
  Additional Tags: Romantic Comedy
  
  Radek quits. Rodney figures some things out. Eventually.



• - incipit - begin here - (2758 words) by otter
  Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
  Rating: Mature
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Rodney McKay/Radek Zelenka
  
  Rodney and Radek are both too tired to care anymore.



• Absurdity Theory (10387 words) by julad
  Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Rodney McKay/Radek Zelenka
  Additional Tags: Community: sga_flashfic
  
  Rodney and Radek get cursed to quack like ducks, reinvent magic from base principles.

So. Uh. I've been digging around in my old-wips files some more, and meanwhile I was trying to write Grantaire, and I remembered that this existed and was very close to finished? It is mostly very very old, and very, very, very silly - and I would have bet that I'd never post SGA fic again - but I accidentally finished it, so, um, why not.

Oolon Colluphid Was Right (1060 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Characters: Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, John Sheppard, Ronon Dex
Additional Tags: Imprisonment, Communication, Languages and Linguistics, Cultural References, Rampant Geekery, Codes & Ciphers, Self-Indulgent, The Author Regrets Nothing
Summary:

The Stargates' universal translation effect can sometimes make secret communication in enemy territory difficult. Luckily, Rodney has a plan.

I am at stellar_dust's for the holiday week, and she has loaned me one of her archeology books, which has led, through an interesting series of links, to me reading a research paper from the Seventh Korean-Japanese Symposium on Medieval History of Europe. I love living in the future!

Of course if I was actually living in the future I'd be reading the actual paper I wanted to look up, instead of a paper translated from Japanese to Korean to English that happens to cite it, but, well, we can't expect our intellectuals to keep up with the times. /not bitter at all

Anyway, on to actually relevant stuff: stellar_dust's flatmate erinptah, having watched through her SG1 DVDs and then attempted to watch SGA only to realize it was the one where the fic was better than the series, wanted a "good parts" list of Stargate Atlantis seasons 1-3, so I said I'd post one here. (Limited to s1-s3 because stellar_dust stopped buying the DVDs after that.) Kibitzing in comments welcome. She says she likes Rodney McKay, time travel, and mystery/exploration type stories.

( List of episodes )

Am not actually at sister's apartment ATM - am actually exhausted from driving back home early today and then chasing four small visiting cousins through downtown Baltimore all afternoon - but I give you your daily cat pics anyway, as I have a plenty of stock:
( All-Darcy special edition. )

Anyway I actually left camera at the apartment, so had to use actual *film*. *shutters*, and there will be no pictures of small-cousin-adventures or epic Lincoln Logs constructions of epic-ness, but in the spirit of "tourist stuff", ( WHY DID NONE OF THE SGA PEOPLE I KNOW TELL ME ABOUT THIS BEFORE IT WAS GONE FROM MY CITY??? )

Yes, you say, nature film about penguins, yes, with tagline "As the water goes ice cold, his appetite turns red hot", yes, but there are many penguin films and not all of them can be about John/Rodney slash.

( Yes, but you have not read the *credits* yet. Look more closely: )
SEE?? AND I MISSED IT.

I am reading through the free e-book PDF of Writing Boldly, an account of the early days of Star Trek 'zine fandom. Here, have some interesting facts from it!

• Things I thought originated in LJ fandom but actually pre-date ST:
  • The term "fannish", which was used in the first ST 'zine so must have dated back to SF fandom.
  • Tickyboxes. I quote:
    A tradition that Spockanalia carried over from sf fanzines, and which carried over to subsequent Star Trek fanzines, was the check-off list on the last page. The list's introduction stated, "You are receiving Spockanalia because...." A number of possibilities followed. On my issue, the editor checked: "You are in Spock Shock," "We admire you," and "You are totally illogical."
  • Actor RPF. Okay, I knew this had been around from early days, because "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisted" was in one of the New Voyages anthologies, but I didn't realize that "Visit to a Weird Planet" was actually in the first ST 'zine ever (Spockanalia issue 3, while the show was still on the air. Lois McMaster's first published fic was also in that 'zine, btw.)
  • Stupid summary/author's notes from Mary Sue writers aren't an ff.net phenomenon; they actually *predate* the term "Mary Sue": from NCC-1701, 1973:"When I began writing my Star Trek series, I added a character to the crew of the Enterprise. This character is Janine Daniels, an eighteen-year-old with long brown hair—and green eyes. This is how she comes to the Enterprise." (Writing Boldly also contains the full text of the story that originated the term Mary-Sue, from Dec. '73)
• Ni Var was a Vulcan poetic form that showed up in the first Spockanalia issue, and was apparently used frequently in early Trek fandom, in which one is of two minds about something. The first Ni Var poem is reprinted, and man, it's excellent, as fanpoetry goes, and as poetic forms go, perfect for writing fanpoetry. Given I'm a sucker for Vulcan poetry anyway (ask me about Surak's Last Stave sometime) I wanna write me some Ni Var.
• Grup 1, the first all-adult ST 'zine, had a naked Spock centerfold.
• "Pon Farr means never having to say you're sorry", the subtitle of one of the earliest fanfic meta essays (summary: Why We Write Spock Sex) needs to become a fannish catchphrase again. /me is totally still working on a Ponn Farr story.
• The name Michelle Malkin makes me feel icky even when I'm 99% sure the early 'zine editor was not *that* Michelle Malkin. (Although it would be awesome if it was.)
• Why don't we have SMOFs anymore?
• Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Kraith AU, based around the concept that Kirk and Spock are soulbonded but not having sex, started around 1970, has had several hundred people write in it, and is still being written in, which means that it's been ongoing for almost 40 years. Eat that, M7 fans!
• Damn, I had no idea how many current big-name pros got their starts in Trek 'zines.

...and I'm up to 1975, "A Fragment Out of Time", and slash, and I promised myself when I got to slash I'd stop reading and go do something useful. :P Like OTW work. But man, I'm regretting that I didn't pick up that free copy of Bjo Trimble's memoir at BookThing when I had a chance. I wonder if it's still there...

(Mind you, my reason for not picking it up is that I still haven't even read my copy of "Star Trek Lives", which I should do, only that'd mean digging into the ST book boxes, and that'd mean nothing else getting done for a week, minimum, while I re-read all my old favorites with modern-fandom context.)

ETA: Crossover fanfic in which Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, astrophysicist, comes to Atlantis and then sets up Dr. McKay with his BFF Jon Stewart: y/y/mfy?

So according to the election judge at our polling place, our vote for a presidential candidate and our votes for delegates are two separate votes that have no effect on each other - the winner of the popularity contest gets a certain number of delegates at the convention *along with* whatever delegates are elected by popular vote. This is actually a pretty interesting and rigorous system, according to the theory of votes; you can vote for as many candidates as you want, and vote for them *different amounts* depending on how much you like them; you can use your popularity contest vote for the person you like, and then vote strategically with the delegates.

... if the election judge was right. That is not exactly the impression I got from the official state party rules (given that the official rules confused the heck out of me) and all the laymans' explanations I've read or heard about two-part primaries claimed that one or the other of the two parts of the vote were non-binding.

Anyway, I made the judge laugh by explaining what I was hoping I could do (and by being so gleefully ultra-liberal at her!) and I ended up voting for Gravel in the popular vote, and voting my delegates 1/3 Clinton and 2/3 uncommitted, which is actually a pretty fair reflection on my feelings right now: I've been leaning toward Clinton because a) the people who are rabidly against her, 90% of the time, make me angry with their stupid; and b) I understand her, and feel like I can predict what she'll do, in a way I just don't think I can with Obama. But, hey, still mostly Gravel and 2/3 uncommitted. :P

( So here's a democracy-themed multifandom fic rec set, in honor of the occasion. )

I don't think you JF people have ever experienced this, but when I go too long without writing any fiction at all, I'll find myself lying in bed one night, completely unable to go to sleep until the story that's tearing itself through my head has been written down. And it's always sheer crack.

It happened last night.

So now I find myself in possesion of SGA sort-of-slash, in the person of 2,000 words of John/Rodney as *Gethenians*.

I blame limyaael for this, for inspiring me to finally pull down and read The Birthday of the World. We're probably lucky that I decided to write this one instead of the one where they're all on Seggri.

(I do find it .. not so much surprising, really, that the first time I can recall ever writing a fic that was actually, honest-to-god, one of the huge slash OTPs, I manage to make it AU, crack, crossover, genderfuck, incest, ponn farr, huddling for warmth, (kind of)The Alterrans Made Them Do It, and if I write the next part, also telepathic bonding and (m)preg. And kite-flying. And all of that except the kite-flying is, of course, canonical for Left Hand of Darkness.

... on reflection, maybe the reason I fell for LHoD so hard *wasn't* entirely the subversive exploration of gender roles. But hey, if Le Guin can write femmslash orgy fic for it, I can write John/Rodney.)

I spent most of this afternoon measuring out chalklines to screw sheetrock to 16" studs. As a result, the Decembrists' 16 by 32 is *still* stuck in my head.

Somehow, this is all Stephen Colbert's fault.

In that mode, let's trying playing the new game that siegeofangels came up with the other day: load five songs at random, and figure out how they apply to John Sheppard and Atlantis (since all songs, after all, can be vidded to John/Atlantis : that's a basic law of fandom.)

Here's what I've got:
Da Vinci's Notebook - Window Washing Cowboy : okay, so this is a story about the tragic love life of a man who is very, very fond of tall building with lots of glass, and has a vaguely comic death-wish. That's pretty much John/Atlantis all the way. (Plus, the make 'em shiny clean chorus would have so much "oh my god John, you di'n't" potential.)

Dido - White Flag : This has always been a Jack Sparrow/Black Pearl Song to me, with Jack singing Dido's part because the Pearl left him for Barbossa but he just won't *let it go* already. But, you know: insane man/inanimate seafaring object: it would be so easy to re-map as Atlantis singing it to John - and it would be even *better* that way, because you would re-interpret it from a woman who won't let a relationship go, to a woman whose devotion is teaching her to fight to the end for *herself* because he makes her learn to value herself, and it would be kickass and end with John making the city fly. Yes.

Garth Brooks - Two Pina Coladas : This one starts with Jack tempting John out of Antarctica to Atlantis ("he said that heartaches are healed by the sea") and really is a love story between John and Atlantis, John falling in love with the city and knowing she loves him back (and whenever he asks for something, she gives it to him) with flashbacks to his horrible backstory on Earth.

(any of fifty bajillion covers) - Hallelujah : This one's kind of a gimme, becaue it's another law of fandom that Hallelujah can be vidded to any character or pairing, but - "the secret chord?" "the hallelujah"? This is set after one of the many times when Pegasus and the Ancients betray John, and he's lost all his faith because he's been hurt and people have been *killed* - he's killed people for *her* - and Atlantis doesn't even understand why he *cares*, but he walks though her corridors and he feels her hallelujah singing through his veins with his blood and he knows he can never leave her no matter how much he comes to hate her.

Eagles - Hotel California : Hotel California is actually an outsider's view of the freaky relationship John (and, okay, the rest of the expedition, too) has with Atlantis: specifically, that of the Wraith they captured and experimented on. Atlantis is Hotel California (she got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends.) Or you could do it as just straight John/Atlantis, actually, with a sort of sinister twist where John is being seduced by Atlantis into accepting the ancient code of "ethics".

So in conclusion: Yes, it is possible to vid John/Atlantis to any arbitrary song. Now you try!

ETA: Some days, I wonder about how I ended up so fannish. Other days, I'm packing away the dollhouse furniture I played with in elementary school and find Starbuck and Apollo cuddled up together among the quilts. :D (I have no memory of ever owning Starbuck and Apollo action figures, and yet, there they were...)

I present to you: the WIPs I currently have in my check-every-day bookmark folder!

State of Grace by Sailor_Ptah (Fake News Fic, character!Stephen/Charlene/Tracey/Jon.) The long-awaited companion story to Expecting, which is of course Daily Show fandom's one and only completely canon-compliant Jon/Stephen mpreg fic. :D Although State of Grace is expected to be somewhat angstier, as it brings in Stephen's (completely canon!) past as a rentboy. :D!!

This is actually basically the least crack-like story on the list, btw, since it's meticulously canonical. Watch the trailers if you don't believe me. And just *try* to not squee while you're doing it. (My glee, it goes on and on. PS: Does anyone have the Billy Joel song State of Grace? I can't find it and it gets stuck in my head every time.)

The Luck of Dennis St. Michel, Vicount Stokington by Captain Thunder, a denizen of Comics Curmudgeon (Newspaper comics, Dennis/Margaret, Dennis/Joey; AU): The sordid tale of the Viscount's return to Menacing Hall upon his expulsion from Oxford; and his discovery that Lady Margaret, still unwed and shrewish at 22, has come into a duchy and fifty thousand pounds a year. :D (There will be many :D faces before I am done with this, I'm sure. And possibly some \o/ . It takes a special brand of joy to keep something in my wips folder. Like, say, Dennis the Menace Regency Romance AUs.)

Readjustment by Seanchai and Elspethdixon (Marvel comics, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark): the sequel to their Reconstruction, Resurrection, and Redemption, the post-Civil War fixit AU in which Captain America comes back from the dead, he and Iron Man realize it was all a misunderstanding, they're in love with each other, and all is right with the world. Well, mostly: the rest of it they're fixing in this sequel. :D And, as a bonus, there's superhero fights and the aftermath of Civil War is actually being *dealt with*. Elspethdixon was the first fic author I really fangirled over back in my Remus/Sirius days, and, well, she still writes the manly angst better than anyone else. She the only person I'll read specifically for the H/C instead of despite it, because it's *just right* and totally true to the characters. And Tony just does manpain so well. Possibly even better than Sirius and Remus. (PS: Her Avengers fic also features background Danny/Luke/Jessica and Jarvis/Aunt May \o/ )

Burntcopper's NaNo project (Jack Harkness/Indiana Jones/(Methos)): She posted about this in little_details, and mentioned that it involved Jack Harkness, Indiana Jones, and Methos teaming up during WWII--

Oh, there are still people reading this review and not over there reading the story already? Why?

Actually, being a NaNo project, it's pretty rough and starts slow, although there's lots of WWII British spying in the beginning, so still worth reading. Indy shows up halfway through and almost immediately finds himself in bed with Captain Jack, though, so that's all right. Methos hasn't appeared yet, but he'd better before November ends. Oh, and there's a really cool plot with a nifty mcguffin. Did I mention the plot? No? Well, how about the Indiana/Captain Jack? ETA: AND NOW THERE IS JENNY!!!

Out Of Bounds, by icarusancalion (SGA, John/Rodney, AU): Okay, this one is basically figure skating porn with John and Rodney in it. I mean, it's excellent, the character work is great, but I have a feeling that the only people who'll get into it are the people who fall in love with men's figure skating at least every few years. (Note to self: must find my ice-skating lessons gift certificate before January.) It kept showing up on my fflist and I kept reading it, so I finally gave in. Mind you, it's long and lush and rich and porny and full of atmosphere and detail like everything Icarus writes; it's also a figure skating AU SGA slash WIP.

PS: Read everything else these authors have written. You don't get on my wips list unless I've loved a bunch of your long-form stories. Or I've never heard of you before and you're gloriously insane. one or the other.

So people have been rec'cing stuff left and right lately - srs bzness burnout, I guess, combined with a bunch of fests and challenges coming due. And there's this one SGA story everybody (including me) loves, which is an absolute confection of a John/Rodney forced marriage romance. Only of course the premise under which they get married is totally bogus, and there's a bunch of whining about that in the comments already.

Me? I could care less about that, because it gets me, y'know, John/Rodney forced marriage fic. No. What is bothering the living heck out of me is that there's a scene where "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers" are referenced, and the author thinks it's *Trix*. And it's not like I could just drop a line suggesting she change the reference (like she ought to change the typo in the first line) because the scene would be totally different if they were talking about leprechauns and lucky charms instead of trix and rabbits. But it would *also* be totally different if they were referring to 'rainbow fruit' instead, because then the gay would outweigh the tacky. And since the point is how dorky they are, I can't believe it's in character that they'd mix it up, and the whole scene *totally doesn't work at all*.

...there. Now maybe I can resist the temptation to go say that in her comments. </OCD>

I've also read a couple SPN AUs, because I gobble "Jess is Alive" threesome AUs like candy, and that combined with that vid with all the dead wimmens in it makes me really want a Jess-is-alive AU where Jess is in charge of her own life, and kicks ass because she fuckin' wants to. It's not like all the AUs I've read weren't awesome and asskicking, but even in nearly all of those, the version of Jess's story we get is about how she motivates the boys, not about her becoming her own person in her own right. Y'know, actual agency. And then maybe she could show Sam and Dean how to be in love without being codependent, and wouldn't *that* be a miracle?

( I don't have IM so I dump brainstorming here! )

Please tell me somebody's already written that fic, and I don't have to read all 83 del.icio.us pages tagged "spn AU jess" looking for it in vain. ^_^

Notes on this week's SGA:

Okay, have the scientists *always* had Starfleet-regulation pointy sideburns, and I just never noticed, or is this new?

Also: now they're playing with a State Twenty-Six detector, I keep expecting to here Jingle Bells in the background.

PS: I wrote this fanfic. Twice. ETA : No, wait, three times. And siegeofangels wrote this one!

rageprufrock just posted an SGA AU she is totally not writing in which there are genies and flying carpet rides.

It occurs to me that I once wanted to vid SGA's Pilot to A Whole New World. It occurs to me that I once said I would try to vid again when I had a brand-new laptop. Which I now do. I also, thanks to sister, have SGA S1. And I have the Aladdin soundtrack.

Further, it occurs to me that the reason I was originally inspired to do that vid is that I was, at the time, working on an SGA S1 AU that started ( Like this: ) and ends ( like this: ) And that I didn't finish it because I didn't have access, at the time, to a) SGA S1, b) Aladdin, or c) I Dream of Jeannie re-runs, (which is still a problem, but how many Air Force Major jokes does one fic need anyway?)

It further occurs to me that I've been thinking I need an excuse to write every day, and 14valentines is coming up fast. And that the Genie story is the only fic I've worked on (outside of HP) that really tries to deal with abuse and recovery in any meaningful way.

Just. You know. Thinking.

I've reached that point in my annual NaNo odyssey where I'm so far behind that I grin, throw my hands in the air, and write random crackfic instead. (I am still working on it, mind you, which is an improvement over this time previous years, it's just going very slowly and all I seem to manage are 500-word cookies that wouldn't make any sense to anyone but me. Also I'm still sick - does that count as an excuse?)

Anyway, this particular crackfic has been brewing ... well, possibly since the first time I ever heard "Snoopy's Christmas Carol" and fell in love with those (doomed)daring young men in their flying machines, but what what brought it on particularly was a combination of my amazement that nobody else appeared to have done this yet, and siegeofangels posting her giant and marvelous SGA songrecficsetthing on Armistice Day of all days, so she can take credit if she wants.

All historical and otherwise inaccuracy is to be officially blamed on the documented unreliability of Canadian aces' reports. :P (Also, this is not really so much historical-fic as it is Aerial Combat Adventure Stories for Boys fic.)

Fandom: SGA
Title: The Game of Naughts and Crosses
Gen, AU, violence, McKay&Sheppard, ~1500 words
Summary Major Meredith McKay (VC), the famous WWI flying ace, writes a letter home to his sister, on the occasion of having their first American pilot attached to the squadron. (He's an idiot.)

( September 1917, somewhere in France )

Dear SGA fandom: Sometimes a lemon is just a lemon. And sometimes it's a codeword for copious amounts of sex. Either way, freaking calm down already. You lot look insane. And not in the fun way.

In other news, I am at my sister's apartment. Have been since Wednesday. Mostly, it's been pirates.
[Poll #781727]
Right, break over. Back to homework.

So, this afternoon I was reading an SGA slashfanfic (a remarkably good one, if unconventional, as all of hth_the_first's can be relied on to be) which had a scene with a tape recording of a very young Dr. McKay playing "Someone to Watch Over Me" on the piano. This led to, first, that song getting stuck in my head, and second, me idly wondering if we had a piano score for it somewhere. Twenty minutes later, with the contents of the piano bench and the old wooden chest under it spread all over the living room floor, I got my answer: Yes, we do!

Of course, at that point, I figured might as well go through all the rest of it and see what's there, especially since there's a flea market this Saturday that we're donating to. So now there's a stack about a foot and a half high of music that I don't see any reason whatsover to keep. My sister will have to look it over when she comes home, but I have a feeling she'll agree. *Why* do we have the score for a violincello/viola duet? Not only do we not play those instruments, I don't even *know* anyone who plays cello. Oh, and if anybody reading this has a better use than me for a crumbling, 60-year-old book of mandolin chords, it is yours for the asking: I'll even pay postage. (If not, I'll keep it, just in case I ever get a mandolin. The mandolins it originally went with, presumably, were among the many wonderful artifacts lost forever in the heaping pile of fraud and rancor that was the settling of my great-uncle's estate.)

The coolest thing I found, though, is a really old, yellowed staff notebook that I used to play with when I was about ten. It's nearly half-full of badly-drawn music, much of it not labelled in any way. Some of it, I know, I wrote myself; some of it is drawn exactly the same way, but is actually almost *tuneful*, so that I suspect I must have been working from somebody else's tune. (A few of the ones I wrote have words. Or partial words. There's a half-finished song in the very back titled "Anger", probably by me, which is remarkably evocative for a ten-year-old. I wonder how old I was when I finally lost the last of my musical talent.)

I also found a book of easy-to-play popular music hits from 1979 which has now become my all-time Sheppard/Atlantis playlist. Every single song is so them! Well, okay, "I Just Fall In Love Again" is really more Sheppard/Puddlejumpers and "This Is Love" is more Sheppard/Weir, but everything else! Starting with "Theme From Ice Castles", anchored by "You Light Up My Life", "Star Wars Main Title", and "Y.M.C.A.", and ending with "Three Times A Lady." Seriously. I need to find MP3s of all these songs just so I can make a John/Atlantis mix tape.

(I'm not sure what this says about my taste in music (except that I don't have any) or my mental version of Atlantis (except that I should not be allowed near a keyboard while thinking about the SGA story based on the lines "John at the bar is a friend of mine, he gets me my drinks for free; and he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke but there's someplace that he'd rather be. He says, "Rodney, I think this is killing me...")

Sometimes I sore regret that I grew up with a language which makes no distinction between formal and informal pronouns.

This comes up because I seem to be writing Boston Legal fic as a Sir Thomas Malory pastiche, and while Late Middle English *grammar* I can manage pretty instinctively, I keep having to stop and think about whether to use 'you' or 'thou'. Okay, so it's not as hard as it *could* be - clearly King Dennys uses 'thou' to *everyone*, because *everyone* is inferior to Dennys of Cranepool. Sir Alain du Côte, by contrast, always uses 'you', because Sir Alain is familiar with nobody - except with Dennys, and occasionally with whatever damosel he's sleeping with. I have a feeling that Sir Jeraint, the Knight of the Hands, uses 'you' with absolutely everyone, except when he's very nervous and forgets, because it seems like that's one of the social things Asperger's would make difficult. It's when I start with the characters who are more or less normal that I run into trouble.

I suppose that this isn't that big of a difficulty - after all, many modern languages still make the distinction, English being one of the first to drop it, so translators must handle the issue. But when I speak Spanish I usually just go with 'usted' for everyone, because none of my teachers bothered to explain how to choose (and since they all spoke different dialects anyway, they'd probably have contradicted each other), and anyway it's one less set of conjugations to remember. I have a feeling I sound comically old-fashioned, but then my grammar sucks so bad they'd be laughing at me anyway, and better too formal than too informal - anyway usted is the direct translation of English 'you'. And in English I only fall naturally into 'thou' when cursing people.

This is actually the *second* Arthurian pastiche I've attempted in the past few months. The first was an SGA retelling of the romance of "John, the Knight of the Lion", (because who other than John Sheppard would go on adventure, get manipulated into marrying a lady, and then go back to his city and get distracted and completely *forget* that he'd married her?) John uses 'you' graciously toward his men and ungraciously toward his superiors but 'thou' promiscuously towards people he considers his equals. Rodney, by contrast, thous everybody indiscriminately until they earn his respect, at which point he switches to 'you' and sticks with it, even while he's calling them idiots. Elizabeth is scrupulously correct, using 'thou' to inferiors and 'you' to superiors and equals, although she tends to fall back to 'thou' in private, even with Caldwell. Ronon uses 'thou' on everyone except those above him in his direct chain of command, because that's how they did it on Sateda. Teyla and the Athosians only use the formal (except in prayer), although she's been picking up the informal a little with people who use it to her, mostly John. Ford uses 'thou' with his inferiors and equals and 'you' with his superiors and has always felt slightly odd about the Major calling him 'you'.

And, hey, since I went there *anyway* - Mulder thous everybody as a direct affront to his aristocratic background, except when he's being manipulative. He was being manipulative when he met Scully, and then never got around to switching back. Scully is very correct in the same middle-class way as Elizabeth, but the longer she spends around Mulder the looser she gets. House uses thou exclusively except with his parents. And with Wilson's wives and Chase's father, and other attempts to be deliberately obnoxious with it. It took him almost six months to get Chase to stop using 'you' on him, and he still hasn't broken him of being polite to Cuddy and the patients. Cameron switched from 'thou' back to 'you' with him after their date, and Foremen always uses you, except when House suceeds in provoking him. Wilson also uses 'thou' with everyone, but somehow with him they assume it's affectionate rather than contemptuous.

Harry Potter uses 'thou' with everyone he calls by their first name and 'you' with evereybody else, except for Dumbledore and Snape whenever he thinks he can get away with it, and Mr. & Mrs. Weasley because they insist, and Slytherins when he wants to make trouble. Bones uses 'you' with everyone, even small children, except the people she considers hers, which is basically just the stooges and Booth. Hodgins considers 'you' to be a tool of the patriarchy; Zack calls everybody 'you' because whenever he tries to 'thou' somebody he gets shot down, except Hodgins and Bones and (when she's feeling generous) Angela. Booth takes 'thou' from Bones and his army buddies but nobody else.

SG1 always sticks with 'you' except in moments of extreme emotion, except for Daniel, who will at the slightest provocation give you a ten-minute dissertation on why English preserved the informal form, and who likes to randomly switch to 'thou' just to see Jack twitch, and has gotten everybody but Jack to use thou with him off-duty. Jack has never yet called a Goa'uld anything other than 'thou', except that sometimes with General Carter he forgets; and he's been on thou terms with Thor since about ten minutes after they met. The Asgard and the Ancients thou *everybody*, but the Nox don't, even when they're calling us children; the Tollan use 'you' but they make it clear it's only to be polite.

Darnit, now I want to write stories where they really do use middle English pronouns. Oh, wait - there's one open on my desktop right now! What a coincidence! I'll get right to that, then.

Look what showed up on my flist, stellar_dust! And as a bonus, it's a a total ripoff of practically a crossover with The Librarian!!

And, uh, while I'm at it, two questions for the flist:

1) Can anyone give me any occasions in SGA when a native of the Pegasus galaxy speaks in a language other than English?

2) And, I need allusions to famous escapes. From TV, movies, books, history, myth, whatever, so long as any reasonably literate, reasonably fannish person might be expected to get the reference. (Especially if the escape strategy consists entirely of 'lure the guards inside the cell, conk them over the head,' or something equally simple-yet-effective. Or something comically byzantine, that would work too.) The captives must not have any outside help, or have made any prior arrangements. I *know* I ought to be able to come up with a bunch of these, but most of the ones that come to mind involve help from confederates who are still free.

Today was a brilliantly beautiful day; I love Maryland's climate, and I especially love Maryland's climate around the turning of the seasons, where I can go outside without wearing forty-leven layers of clothing, because it's nice enough to enjoy but the mosquitos haven't realized that yet. It's supposed to get up to 80°F by mid-week and then snow on Friday. Oh Maryland, my maryland.

So I spent half the morning crawling around on the roof, cleaning out the gutters. I want an excuse to go up on the roof more often. Actually, I want to put a trapdoor in the ceiling of the attic, but when I suggested it, Mom wanted to know what the *point* would be. It's a *trapdoor* in the *attic*. How can you even ask that question?

Then I spent half the afternoon digging in the dirt. Mom took an offhand comment I made about the daffodils, which have made a bid for freedom from the bounds of the flowerbeds, and ended up expanding the flowerbed by the mailbox to about four times its previous area. Then she wanted *me* to suggest what to put in it.

Ever since I read the Secret Garden at about the age of six, I've wanted a bit o' earth of my own, and she offers it to me *now*? I used to spend hours poring over seed catalogs and daydreaming. I haven't the first clue what to suggest. All I could think of was 'tomatoes', because I've been craving fresh homegrown tomatoes ever since last summer. Anybody have any nice suggestions for a sunny spot by the road that won't get much care, and already has some rosebushes, daffodils, gladiolus, some tulips that never bloom, and possibly other random perennials?

Then I spent half the evening cataloging books. The LibraryThing list is now at well over a thousand, and the halfway point is beginning to be visible. (Mind you, that's the halfway point of books that I consider in some way mine; if I was doing books-in-house, or even books-in-house that I *wish* were mine, it would be much longer.) I've taken a break from the SF and I'm working on my nonfiction collection now, and I keep running across all these books I want to read! But I don't have time! I need to spend a summer in a cottage by the water, and do nothing all season but cook and wander and read and think. (One of those books that I want to finally sit down and read is Walden, by the way.)

Oh! And speaking of tomatoes, I listened to SGA's Grace Under Pressure while I was cataloging: somebody had put several episodes up on the ep-sharing community as sound-only mp3 files, and I love that idea. In fact, back before we had cable, I had figured out a way to get the TV/VCR setup to give me only sound and no picture, and I used to do that all the time. Even before that, Mom had an elderly radio in her sewing room which would pick up VHF and UHF audio; that's how I was exposed to several ST:TOS episodes for the first time. I wish I knew an easy way to turn the picture off with our current cable setup, because I am in love with radio dramas.

And it's amazing how well Grace Under Pressure worked as a radio drama. Granted, it probably helped that I'd seen the episode before, and it was probably one of their lowest budget episodes for the season, with no new sets and no new characters and no new special effects, and that probably helped too. And I probably didn't get as much out of the episode as I did when I watched it with picture, but I followed it perfectly well, and I think I *enjoyed* it more; because I could close my eyes and let go, and let it be.

A couple weeks ago at Sunday School one of the other teachers was asking if we thought that his student would be able to listen to a radio drama, and when I said "of course, why wouldn't he," he said, "Well, you're different, you *read*."

Any kids I raise are going to know radio dramas.

ETA: Is it too much sga_flashfic? I'm having trouble as seeing this card as made by anyone but Major Sheppard.

SG-1 was awesome, and Teal'c needs to treat Vala to a Star Wars marathon.

Speaking of Star Wars, sister and I both *simultaneousy* said 'Offworld!Elizabeth looks like a Star Wars character!' followed several seconds later by 'She looks like Leia pretending to be a smuggler/she looks like Boushh!'

So it follows logically then that Elizabeth is Vala's granddaughter, and John is her secret twin brother. yep. And she's going to marry Rodney and they'll have lots of little Ancient children.

(Oooh, the One Ring just sank into Mount Doom!)

Oh, and that ship? We bet you 10 credits that the hyperdrive breaks at a climactic moment. (ETA: Rodney was totally going to name it the Falcon, omg! squee!)

Also, in light of this week's SGA, the Proklarush Taonas thing begins to make (a tiny, tiny little bit of) sense.

RE: the current SG-1 episode: why, by Ba'al's balls, aren't they using freaking *Morse code*?

bah bah bah.

On the other hand, m-theory is hot, even if Sam has it completely wrong. I'm sure Rodney would agree with me.

ETA: The SGA episode actually includes less logic than SG1. Bah. If he can design a virus that'll do that, he can design one that'll kill 'em outright and avoid all the sticky moral issues (since we obviously haven't got any qualms about biowarfare and genocide to worry about.)

And why, by the ring-devouring fires of Mount Doom, did they let a Wraith onto Atlantis in the first place? SGA seems to be alternating brilliant episodes with episodes that require every single person to be bloody stupid, and I no longer feel guilty about the fic I'm writing. So there.

ETA 2 ... and now I'm trying to figure out if it's reasonable that the Ancient alphabet is related to the SG Alphabet. (Answer: Heck yes. Clearly descended from the same ancestral forms.)

ETA 3: Ooooh! It's a Six/Baltar 'shipper episode! Now I wish I'd actually been paying enough attention to the show to follow the episode! Oh well. (Because all I care about in nu-BSG is Six/Baltar, and Kara when she gets to play fighter pilot.)