Hello, all. I have recently become aware of the fact that my lj practices are remarkably atypical and demand explanation.

I am really ifeelbetter in hiding from Real Life. Hence the name of this lj (It's a quote from Twelfth Night, for the peops in the hiz-ouse who rock the pretentiousness like I do, hollah). I have been writing fanfic since....I don't even know. The dawn of time. Whatevs.

I used to, as a pre-teen, write fic with my sister under the names "Molly Grue and Nobody Else." I also liked to use the name "Yorkshire Pudding." (Yes, that's the kind of kid I was, sorry parental units.) I took something like an eight-year break from writing--thinking I had "matured" past it or whatnot. Then grad school happened and I was reading fic again--first sign of a relapse--and then Inception happened and I was writing again too. So. Here we are now.

All of my academic real life is over at the "real" journal, the ifeelbetter one. The secrecy comes from the fact that that journal has been discovered by Real Life people on a couple of occasions (family--not even intimate family: extended bonkers family) and one of the things I really don't want my crazy bad-poet uncle bringing up at Thanksgiving dinner is my habit of writing silly gay stories. He makes crazy eyes at me already.

So. I am a cocktail of grad school, Victorian lit, emotive teaching, and obsessive fannish tendencies. I live in a world where Dylan Thomas and Edna St. Vincent Millay seem as real to me as a lot of the people I can reach out and touch so please excuse the pretentiousness. I don't ever mean it meanly. I honestly do frame my life practices around poetry and silly lit crit that loads of peoples could very rightly accuse of being navel-gazing. A lot of the fic I write shows this. That and the fact that I love drunkenness as a concept--being a rather shy and neurotic type myself, the loss of control inherent to drunkenness fascinates me. Other recurring themes are sleep (I'm an insomniac most of the year), technology (because the advances in communicative technology of the past decade seems beautiful to me), and, of course, the leap of faith that is falling in love.


This is where I live and I love the snow.

Title: Though Inclination be Sharp as Will
Author: ifeelbetter
Fandom/Pairing: BBC Sherlock, pre-slashish?
Word Count: 1,096
Summary: a coda to The Reichenbach Fall.
Notes: I couldn't not add my two cents to this moment of fandom tragedy.

( John visited the flat again. )

I'm just Stmubling, as you do when your flight has been cancelled and you're stuck without the means to prepare for the class you're about to start "teaching" in two days (except you won't be there because of the aforementioned cancelled flight), and I cam upon a list of "Best Dressed of 2011."

And I'm just casually clicking through because, to be serious, this year did not thrill my fashion soul.

And then I came upon this:



If that is not a girl made of fire, gold, and awesome, I don't know who is. I already loved her like whoa and now I have all these nether-region feelings too.

This is more for my own sake than anyone else's....but this is a list of fandom things I intend to improve on in the new year. This is partially motivated by the fact that most of the issues-ridden fandom depictions of Tony and all his Feels have been too close to my own massive set of issues for comfort and partially because I am enjoying the freedom from the mistake that was opening up my lj, all those years ago, to Real Life people who may or may not have ever gone away to leave me in my anonymity. So.

(1) Write this fic that I started last month because bookshop asked me what my headcanon of backstories for the Inception characters was and my answer was far too long to go into her meme.
(2) Deal with all this shyness that prevents me from actively partcipating in fandoms I love.
(3) Write fic for other fandoms.
(4) Finish the unfinished fics I remember....and everyone else has forgotten. Sorry.
(5) I am serious about that shyness thing, B.

I totally make myself believe that I'm about to be kicked out of the program every couple of months and then my adviser is surprisingly wonderful (despite having actually kicked a good friend of mine out of the program just last year) and talks me down. It actually goes down with a lot more professionalism than all that sounded like....but it's still a crazy loop that I am stuck in.

ANYWAY. Long story short--I got plastered last night after figuring out that (a) I'M STILL HERE and (b) I HAVE MORE TIME TO DO ACTUAL THINGS AND SO THEY WON'T BE BAD. OR AS BAD. (THEY MIGHT STILL BE BAD.) And I watched alllll of Psych that I missed in the past couple of months. And now I'm watching Inception. Yeah, that's right. I'm watching it right now.

You wish you were watching Inception right now.

( THOUGHTS. I AM HAVING THOUGHTS ABOUT INCEPTION. )

And then I stopped keeping track of my thoughts and just shouted at the TV. God, I LOVE this film.

I have to admit that I've been in a bit of a non-fannish bubble recently--"recently" meaning "up until a couple weeks ago when I discovered that I love Stargate Atlantis" of course--so I might have missed something....but is Delicious back? My bookmarks are all there suddenly, all easy-to-manage and as they once were. Dare I hope?

I WISH IT NEVER ENDED.

Can I also just say that "Vegas"? Was. So. Awesome. I wish there was an episode for every single genre show I could think of. It was just SO PERFECT an episode. There are very few episodes of any show that I feel could go on the Perfect list and this one SO GOES ON THE PERFECT LIST.

ALSO. I have adored Rodney since the very first episode, right, and he adores John and Atlantis adores John so I kind of begrudgingly liked him too. But I have seriously changed my position. After watching all five seasons, I have come to the conclusion that JOHN IS LOVELY LIKE SERIOUSLY LOVELY LIKE I MIGHT DIE FROM HIS LOVELINESS. Also. Rodney makes me go all gooey in my heart.

Also. Ronon totally won me over eventually. And Keller. I feel like this is one of those shows that seriously suffered from behind-the-scenes meddling. I mean, we can all see that Beckett was removed to make way for a hot girl character, yes, and it's to Jewel Staite's credit that she made the best of that incredibly awkward situation and pulled a cool character out of her hat....and then the musical chairs of commander was a hilarious bit of mismanagement. Still. There was no single character who wasn't interesting or one single character arc that didn't feel real and important. That's incredible.

SO. Does anyone have any opinions re: other Stargate shows? Are they worth watching? I'm watching episode 1 of SG-1 right now and...there's a room full of scantily clad women on an alien world and it's all getting a bit...rape-y for my tastes. Is it always like this?

A shout out to my fellow teachers out there--do you guys get the same heady mix of euphoria and despair when you have, like, only two assignments left and everything else is filled in on your excel spreadsheet for the semester? Like....I know this means I have a whole other batch or two to grade....and that sucks...but I'm so close.

ALSO. Watching SGA while I grade, yeah, and there was just a scene where Shepperd almost flew a kamikaze mission into the control tower and Rodney was obviously, like, "i love you bestest of all the people in all the universes" but John was all like, "I am unconcerned with your massive feelings and, as always, super excited about maybe dying" and Rodney made a face that was heartbreaking. Michael is sort of old hat by this point--though I totally dig his desperation for Teyla's approval and the fact that she Kicks So Much Ass--but that moment made this whole episode.

And then it turned out John didn't have to run the kamikaze mission and somehow in like two seconds flat Rodney was in charge of flying the puddlejumper in a probably-not-suicidal way. And you can just see on Rodney's face that he's uncomfortable because this is a thing John was totally sort of thrilled about dying in a second ago and Rodney doesn't like things that John's so comfortable about dying in and...GOD. RODNEY MAKES ME HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS.

[EDIT: Then I watched the Bill Nye and co. episode and GOD DAVID HEWLETT YOUR FACE I CAN'T GRAMMAR PROPERLY WHEN YOU MAKE THAT FACE. But also: I am confused by why show has super-imposed Jennifer on Shepperd. Cuz that's Shepperd!face he's making, no doubt.]

[EDIT II, RETURN OF EDIT: Is there fic out there with Shepperd accompanying Rodney to the physics thing instead of Keller?]

I'm currently procrastinating the end-of-semester....working on holiday drabbles, inventing a highly-detailed new syllabus (instead of re-using the one from the last time I taught this course which is what I should have done), etc.

Also this meme:

leave a ship in a comment and i will tell you

who is the big spoon/little spoon
what is their favorite non-sexual activity
who uses all the hot water in the morning
what they order from take out
what is the most trivial thing they fight over
who does most of the cleaning
what has a season pass in their DVR
who controls the netflix queue
who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working
who steals the blankets
who leaves their stuff around
who remembers to buy the milk
who remembers anniversaries

(stolen from Tumblr)

I am awarding myself an ironic award tonight for completing TWO. WHOLE. SENTENCES. in my dissertation. (Four if you count the two I added and then deleted. [Also. There were like ten hours between each of those steps.] Six if you count the false starts too.)

In OTHER news: I am re-doing my Detective Fiction syllabus for next term. ( WAFFLE ABOUT TEACHING UNDER THE CUT. I HAVE SO MANY FEEEEEELINGS ABOUT TEACHING. AND THOUGHTS. FEEEEELINGS AND THOUGHTS. )

OK. That's enough waffle about teaching.

Other news: fabulous roommates and I are sticking together for another year (yay!), we're also getting Family Holiday Portraits at JC Penney this week because two out of four of us (me!) have never done so before (yay!), and the semester is almost over (YAAAAAAY!).

On the other hand, I am almost finished with Stargate: Atlantis (BOOOOOO!) and am already feeling Rodney withdrawal. I just....I love him. Lots. With all of my many Feelings and Thoughts. I always talk to my TV when I watch, yeah, but I stopped using his name at all like a hundred episodes ago (<--hyperbole to my left) and have started, at first unconsciously, referring to him primarily as "Babe." As if I was Danny and he was my Steve. I am H50-ing my love for him. It's crazy pants up in my head, is what I'm saying.

Look at this now: