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.

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.

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 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...)

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. ^_^

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)