And then some

The inestimable X, whose art is the only thing I have ever written a story to outside of my own inspiration, has a gorgeous new piece up of Mal & Simon at her art site. I'm almost reluctant to encourage people to go, because I know she's had so many people take her art without permission, so just promise me you will go, ogle appropriately, send her fawning feedback, and behave yourself. Because man, oh man, is it a lovely picture, as pretty much all of her stuff is. For some weird reason, I don't seem to be able to write Firefly fic, slash or het, but I confess that if I was going to write anything slashy, it'd probably be Mal/Simon. I honestly don't know why, especially when there's my beloved Adam Baldwin to be had, but... the dynamic between Mal and Simon fascinates me, plus they're always, always having eye sex on the show when Inara's not in the frame with Mal or Kaylee's not there for Simon. And anyway, X's art could make a believer out of anyone.

I am finished with the next chapter of Measure of a Man. I was starting to think I couldn't do it. The sad part is, of course, that it's total pants, and absolutely nothing happens in it, just a bunch of yammering, and it's shorter than the other chapters, so all this sturm und drang for months over writing the stupid thing and it turns out to be this near-drabble pile of marshmallow fluff. Sigh. But hey! Now I can at least tackle it with a red pen and hopefully flesh it out a bit, get it in shape for a beta read (hear that, Ali?)

I decided to splurge and have a massage today because I'm in such extreme pain, and I figured that even though I have no income as such right now, I should in the near future. The therapist was really interesting, very new age woo-woo as one might expect, but she was so into hearing about some of the essays I've had/am having published lately, and we made plans to connect later. It's so odd to meet someone that way (she did an excellent job on my shoulders, too -- the pain is reduced to mere flaming agony as opposed to suicide-contemplation level), but kind of cool, too. Since I'm such a painfully shy person when meeting new people, I often force myself to go to social things so that I can meet new people. It's hard and makes me a nervous wreck, but it has benefits and I otherwise would never meet people if I didn't do stuff like that, plus the bennies can be great, as with my wonderful writing group.

Does anyone know of any sites where a person might be able to get/trade tapes or discs of TV shows eps? I'm in dire need of a couple of eps of Miami Vice to make a vid with, and unfortunately my original off-airs were disposed of by an acquaintance. I can't make the vid witout these eps, and I'm figuring I'll have to make contact with strangers if I want these. I know people with MV eps, but unfortunately they never respond, and I'm getting to that desperate "must vid, must vid now!" stage with this thing.

Oh, and I meant to comment on this earlier. Once in a great while, when I'm feeling down, fan awards can seem like a fun little thing if you need an egoboo. But most of the time I think they're absurd, and I'm always reminded of just how absurd when I get the exceedingly rare nomination for a story and hear what category it's in. Once again, an older Mag 7 story I wrote a couple years ago is being nominated for some silly Mag 7 fan awards, and it's in a category that just makes me want to pound my head against sharp objects. Adult Tear Jerker. I mean, I don't know, I suppose it could be worse, like Pseudo-Porn Consumption Fic or something, but I wonder sometimes if I'm the only person in fandom who just gnashes their teeth at these dumbass categories. Calling this story a tear jerker just... for some reason it really annoys me, it makes it sound like some cheesy Hollywood craptastic romance like Sweet November or I Am Sam or something, and I couldn't possibly have written a story with less intention of jerking any tears if I'd wanted to. Everything about this story -- probably the single thing in fan writing I'm proudest of -- was supposed to be about more than that, and for some reason, it just irrationally annoys me to have such a reductive, smarmy term applied to it. Yes, I know I'm being OTT about it, but... it's also not terribly adult, since there's no sex, just billowing curtains and fade to black (but you know, slash is automatically porn! It's all X-rated even if they don't kiss!), so I guess the two combined sort of get my goat.

Alias was fun tonight -- no spoilers, but I almost felt like they'd gotten an advanced copy of my ten point plan to make it better! They had a couple of my major points, including blowing shit up and fu. I can't say it wasn't still silly and stupid, but it sure was better than it's been all season.