sheldrake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Teyla Emmagan, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex
Rating: Gen
Length: 1934
Creator Links: Punk on AO3, DesireeArmfeldt on AO3, DesireeArmfeldt on Audiofic Archive
Themes: Working together, Teams, Friendship

Summary: The sun is high overhead, the sky a brilliant, cloudless blue.

Reccer's Notes: This is told from Teyla's POV, on a somewhat frustrating off-world mission where John and Rodney are being particularly dense and snarky. Luckily, Ronon's there to unexpectedly save the day! I especially love the strong sense of place and of the natural world in the story.

Fanwork Links: A Hundred Hundred Bolts of Satin on AO3, and the podfic read by DesireeArmfeldt

Reverse reasoning, for want of a better name, is something I've always found charming. What do I mean by 'reverse reasoning'? I'll give you an example from British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture. In that book, I recount the life of Momoko Ishii, the great translator, editor, publisher, critic, librarian, novelist and general powerhouse of Japanese children's publishing in the twentieth century. As a young graduate in English literature she was working for the writer and publisher Kan Kikuchi when the prime minister, Tsuyoshi Inukai, was assassinated - an event that marked the country's descent into military government. Kikuchi was acquainted with Inukai's son, and recommended Ishii as someone who could organise the deceased prime minister's personal library. In this way she became friendly with the Inukai family, and happened to be in the house one Christmas Eve, where she was presented by Inukai Jr.'s two children with a copy of The House at Pooh Corner, which they had been given by a friend recently returned from England but were of course unable to read. Ishii sat with them, translating as she went, and was overwhelmed by the experience to the extent that she devoted the rest of her life to children's literature. (This is the short version, of course.)

Anyway, later in the book, I write:

It is a sobering reflection that, if Tsuyoshi Inukai had not been assassinated, Momoko Ishii would not have become close to Ken Inukai’s family, would not have found the copy of The House at Pooh Corner under the Christmas tree and would quite possibly never have pursued a career in children’s books. To suggest that the world of Japanese children’s literature therefore owes Inukai’s assassins a debt would be perverse, but it is a striking example of the arbitrary consequences of human actions, especially when large enterprises depend disproportionately on the actions of a few individuals.

The 'perverse' conclusion I mention is what I would call 'reverse reasoning' (but surely there's a better name?). Another example: I used to tease my former lodger, Rei, by saying that she was only able to come to Bristol because Tokugawa Ieyasu won the battle of Sekigahara. The reasoning was that: Tokugawa was thus able to establish his capital at Edo, which created a demand for soy sauce, which the Kikkoman company (upriver at Noda) was able to supply, becoming rich in the process, and in due course the Kikkoman-dominated Noda chamber of commerce was able to fund the scholarship which paid for Rei's travel.

This way of reasoning, or rather the evident ropiness of it, is what makes some early detective stories creak a bit. (Yes, I'm thinking of the opening conversation in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and if you didn't guess that you are no Dupin.)

Anyway, I was delighted to find recently that there's a Japanese expression that plays with the same phenomenon: "When the wind blows, the barrel makers prosper." Here, the sequence goes as follows:

The wind blows dust into the air.
The dust increases cases of blindness.
The increased numbers of blind people mean that there are more shamisen players (an instrument traditionally played by the blind).
The increased demand for shamisens (traditionally covered in cat skin) reduces the number of cats.
The lack of cats means that the number of rats increases.
The extra rats, lacking food, are reduced to chewing barrels.
This makes extra work for barrel makers, boosting their profits.

The real problem with this way of thinking is that it fails to recognise the assymetry between cause and effect. Look back down the garden of forking paths and you see the one route you took. From the other end, you are dazzled by infinite possibilities. This is why it's easier to analyse a completed chess game than it is to write a chess program. The branching factor is too high - and in life it's higher still.

Still, the thought of being able to analyse things forwards in the way we habitually analyse them backwards is certainly appealing. Presumably there is a 'proper' name for it, better than 'reverse reasoning' - but what might it be?

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Genfic. John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Evan Lorne, Ronon Dex, Carson Beckett, Teyla Emmagan, Original characters
Rating: Teen
Length: 79,623
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply. Grim at times, as it depicts an aspect of WWII.
Creator Links: kristen999 on AO3, everybetty on LJ
Themes: Working together, Action/adventure, Teamwork, Friendship, Genfic, AU: historical, Novel-length

Summary: WWII-based AU. The Team as we know it has been transplanted to the South Pacific.

Reccer's Notes:
This tour de force is a novel-length story by kristen999, assisted by everybetty, an historical AU set in Papua-New Guinea, in WWII. It's pretty male-centric because of that, but does include Teyla as a local liaison with intel about the enemy. It's got lots of plot, great action and adventure, and an excellent sense of place - you can almost feel the tropical heat making you sweat and hear the mosquitoes whine. The story is illustrated throughout with lots of period photos from the time. It's told from all of the team's POVs, particularly John's (he's a pilot, of course, with Rodney and Ronon on his flight crew). Naturally, John gets thoroughly whumped, in the best genfic tradition. There's tons of atmosphere, friendship and teamwork, and it's a really great read.

Fanwork Links: Long Ago (and Far Away)

Anybody want to beta 400 words of light-as-air Sinners genfic?

Would you like to see some rather dusty holiday snaps? These (and more like them) would have been posted in May, but for reasons discussed in my previous entry I had neither the heart nor the mental energy to do so. Still, there are some good memories here, and I can take you through the highlights of our stay in picture-book form.

Last year, it being C&W's first trip to Japan, we did the classic Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Tokyo route - with just one side quest to Matsuyama in Shikoku. This time we decided to travel north, on the Tohoku shinkansen (the one used in the book, though not the film, of Bullet Train) - as far as its terminus at Hakodate in southern Hokkaido. Along the way, we stopped at Aizuwakamatsu, Sendai (with side trips to Matsushima and Yamadera) and Hachinohe. Afterwards I returned to Tokyo to see various friends and to visit an exhibition that was being held at Kanagawa University in Yokohama, based on my book, while C&W spent a few nights a deux in charming Nikko. Our final few days included a trip to Yokohama's famous Cup Noodle Museum with Rei, Tani and Yuko, and an early-monring session watching sumo practice at a heya in Tokyo.


This temple building (dedicated to Kannon-sama) in Aizuwakamatsu has an internal double-helix structure - you ascend on one staircase and descend by the other.


The view of Matsushima Bay that made Basho go wobbly at the knees, and who can blame him?


Channelling Caspar David Friedrich at Yamadera - an incredibly beautiful place, and far from crowded, at least on the day we were there.


Torii and pagoda at Nikko


"At a Nikko konbini all covered in vines, there were two rows of shoppers in two straight lines..."


An unexpected highlight was this musical version of Tom's Midnight Garden, which I very much enjoyed. Thanks to my friend Miho, I was able to enjoy a drink with the cast and crew afterwards.


Our cup noodle creations.


A post-keiko photo op at the sumo stable.

Gosh, it seems quite a long time ago now, but the wanderlust is already stirring and I'm beginning to ponder my next trip - perhaps to Nagasaki? I've not been to Kyushu since 2019.

Today was my first day back at work after my vacation and I did not sleep at all well last night, despite, you know, working from home and didn't have to get up early or anything. I was tossing and turning until sometime after 4 am, at which point I finally fell asleep.

Work was fine - busy, and kind of a lot, but not difficult despite the lack of sleep - but then I sat down on the couch after dinner to watch the Mets and fell asleep for about 40 minutes. *hands*

I'm really glad I took yesterday off too. I 100% recommend adding an extra day onto your vacation if you can - especially if it's a Monday, and doubly so if you actually went away. It makes it easier to get back into the grind, at least for me. I had 333 emails to sort through this morning, and there is way too much going on, as usual, but I timed it so that all of my regular meetings happened while I was out, so this week should be fairly quiet.

On the home front, I've had my new dishwasher for a week now and it is working really well, though I am still learning how to load it. The tines are much closer together and shorter than in my old one, which makes it difficult to get stuff in between them. But it's so quiet! And it doesn't leak! *knock wood* It does take 2.5 hours to run the full normal cycle, but I can live with that.

On the TV front, I finished Murderbot and enjoyed it - Mensah is still my favorite and I wish Bharadwaj had had more to do because I liked her as well.

I also finished the last 2 available episodes of My Life Is Murder because I read they are doing a new season, though who knows when it will be available here. I enjoyed the s4 2-part finale, and I do kind of low-key ship Alexa and Madison, though I also like that they have not had any real romantic interests for Alexa, and those 2 episodes really focused on her lingering grief for her husband.

In other news, Baby Miss L went to Sesame Place this past weekend and the videos of her vibrating with joy over meeting Elmo and Grover and Cookie Monster are amazing!

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Fandoms: Stargate: SG-1, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Characters/Pairings: Jack O'Neill, Teal'c, Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson, Sarah Connor, Cameron, John Connor
Rating: Gen
Length: 1886
Creator Links: cofax on AO3
Themes: Working together, Action/adventure, Crossover, Time travel, Teams, Robots and Androids

Summary: SG-1 meets a very intense woman with two heavily-armed teenagers in a warehouse in Modesto.

Reccer's Notes: A short fic about Sarah Connor's team helping Jack's team while on a mission in the past, dealing with a Terminator. Gripping action - and an intriguing and worrying AU in terms of the future of this crossover Earth. As Jack says: "That's just ... great." (Need to log in to AO3 to read it)

Fanwork Links: Temporary Alliances

I mentioned I've been reading a bunch of DCU/PJO crossovers, and mostly I like it when nobody is related to the Waynes and no Waynes are secretly demigods and it's just Percy et al in Gotham and rolling with their weirdness (or vice versa, I guess, but I haven't seen any like that yet), though I have enjoyed those other types. For me, the big key to making the crossover work, aside from the fact that I want it to so I'm primed for it (i.e., buy the premise, buy the joke), is how Wonder Woman is handled (and to a much lesser extent, Wonder Girl), even more so than Aquaman and Atlantis.

Like, for me as a reader, you can't pretend that the Batfamily is totally ignorant of the Greek pantheon or demigods if you've got Diana around. And I realize that some folks are basing their Batfamily stuff on other people's fic (I'm not making that call - some of them state it outright in their notes), which may not contain any info on Wonder Woman or the Amazons etc. but Wonder Woman is not an obscure superhero! Even if you ignore the retcon that she's a daughter of Zeus (and you should! Even the comics have walked that back, though I can see why it might be interesting to work into this kind of crossover), she was made of clay and had life breathed into her by Greek goddesses.

I mean, it complicates things to some degree, because where was she during all of Percy's adventures, but 1. she was in space/another universe etc., or 2. she'd been stripped of her powers for trying to help, or 3. she was back on Themyscira, and unaware, or, or, or... And those are just off the top of my head. Mostly I've seen Percy and friends angry that she didn't participate and that's a fine way to go, but like, I feel like something has to be said, even if just in passing, unless it's set very very early in Batman's career and he hasn't met her/she isn't public yet. And the ones I've found so far are not set in that timeframe, because the fun of the crossover is having all the kids interacting with each other and with Bruce.

Anyway, I'm always interested in how other people make crossovers work, because for me, skipping over most of the nitty-gritty of trying to make incompatible worlds/magical systems etc. work together is the way to go - choose one or two details to set the vibe and handwave the inconsistencies.

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Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings/Characters: Twelve/Missy/Jack
Rating: M
Length: 11,681 words
Creator Links: Trobadora
Theme: Working Together, time travel

Summary: This is what it takes to hold together what has been sheared apart.
Or: The Doctor, Jack Harkness and Missy encounter a weapon from the Time War.

Reccer's Notes: Jack visits the Doctor to berate him for releasing the Master from the vault. While he's there, something terrible is happening to time itself.  The Doctor and Missy have to work together with Jack's help to stabilize their timeline.  The author does such a great job showing you these little snippets of possible timelines, and giving you just enough that you want to know more.  There is a sex scene between the three of them, but it makes sense in the context of story, and is about so much more than just sex.  If you like Twelve and Missy and have always wanted to see what it would have been like to throw Jack into the mix, then please read this one.

Fanwork Links: Ao3

I made this fancy lemonade with what I learned from minoanmiss's tags is called oleo saccharum, which is sugar syrup made with the oils in the citrus peels. I had 8 lemons, and some leftover frozen strawberries and blueberries, so I let the berries defrost in the fridge overnight and then this morning I did all the juicing and the dicing and then let it sit for several hours (5, I think?) before straining the syrup and adding the juice etc. It's very good, though I need to try it with lemons only, I think, and maybe less sugar. Because I do like my lemonade on the tarter side.

Anyway! I dug out my potato masher and my citrus reamer with carafe for this, so it was nice to be able to use them. I do kind of wish I had a food mill but I've never been able to justify the expense to myself - I used a large fine mesh strainer and it worked fine.

In other news, I watched the most recent season of GBBO and I LOVED EVERYONE IN THE TENT, but especially Dylan! Nelly! Gill! and Georgie! ( spoilers, I guess ) And Allison is so great. I hope she sticks with the show for a long time.

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August will be a Flashback round where we revisit a classic theme from the early years of the comm.

Fandom: Star Trek AOS/Reboot
Pairings/Characters: Kirk/Spock
Rating: G
Length: 2,242 words
Creator Links: sad_bi_cowboy
Theme: Working together, outsider POV

Summary:

"Inspection order number 324867: USS Enterprise

Serial number: NCC-1701-A
Ship Class: Constitution
Ship Claim: Starfleet
Ship Membership: United Federation of Planets

Captain James T. Kirk in command.
Commander S'chn T'gai Spock: First/Chief Science Officer
Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy: CMO
Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott: Chief Engineer
Lieutenant Nyota Uhura: Chief Communications Officer
Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu: Pilot
Ensign Pavel Chekov: Navigator

Inspector Assigned: Lieutenant Jessie Bellamy

End of Transmission"

Reccer's Notes: Lt. Jessie Bellamy performs her first inspection of a Starfleet ship, and she gets the Enterprise in all its chaotic, rulebreaking glory. She's just trying to do her job, but the ship and crew are so far outside the rules that she's having trouble even fitting them into the standards for inspection.

When you read a lot of Star Trek fic, you start to normalize all the wild and irresponsible shit that goes on. This fic provides the perspective of someone who is supposed to evaluate how well the crew are following the rules, and it's fantastic. Lt. Bellamy has to stay on the ship for the duration of the inspection, work with the crew, and survive some of the scrapes the Enterprise gets into. It's hilarious and wonderful.

Fanwork Links: Inspection of the USS Enterprise

They gave me a 3 pm - 7 pm delivery window for the dishwasher today, which meant waiting around and stewing in my anxiety until they showed up around 3:30. The whole process - removing the old dishwasher and setting up the new one - took about an hour. Now it's running through whatever the initial cycle the installation guys set it to, and then I should be able to use it. It did cost me an extra $125 to get the electrical connection set up, since the old one was hardwired and the new one required a plug, plus I gave both guys a $20 on the way out, so overall it cost almost $1800 for everything, which is more than my stove and fridge cost put together, iirc. It's the most expensive birthday present I've gotten myself since 2016, when I replaced my laptop, but totally necessary. And it is very snazzy looking! (it's the Bosch 300 series 18" dishwasher in stainless steel.)

Anyway, that has been my birthday! I put all thoughts of cooking on hold until tomorrow, when I might make pulled pork (or I might not) and some kind of fancy dessert (I am thinking about this coffee icebox cake but without a stabilizer in the whipped cream I don't know how it could hold its shape if you turn it out of the loaf pan; on the other hand, I'm not taking it anywhere so I can just scoop it out without removing it, so I guess that's not really an issue), but we'll see how I feel tomorrow - it will be cool to not have to wash up by hand afterwards!

Sunday at Dom's was lovely - Baby Miss L was a mermaid in the pool (she kept exclaiming, "Mermaid!" and kicking ferociously - she hasn't had swimming lessons yet but she seems like a natural at this point) - and once she warmed up after her nap she was her usual delightful self. She enjoyed the books I brought her, especially "Be Brave Like Batman" (to go with the Batman and Robin t-shirts), and she wore her Superman dress, so we are covering all superhero bases.

I made the KAF fudge brownies again to take with me, since I was assured that they'd loved them last time, and this time I got to taste them and they were good! Slightly overbaked, but still chocolatey.

Then yesterday on my ride home, the driver took Jericho Turnpike all the way to the Cross Island, which made the trip longer, but did avoid traffic and construction, so I guess the extra 10-15 minutes was worth it.

And I still have 6 more days off before I have to go back to work!

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Fandom: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1
Characters/Pairings: Teyla Emmagan, Cam Mitchell, John Sheppard, Jack O'Neill, Ronon Dex, Daniel Jackson, Sam Carter, Miko Kusanagi, Rodney McKay, Teal'c
Rating: Gen
Length: 1505
Creator Links: LtLJ on AO3
Themes: Working together, Teams, Humor, Action/adventure

Summary: Five things that happen on missions where SG-1 and SGA-1 go through the gate together.

Reccer's Notes: A great example of the 5-things format - five dramatic, telling, and sometimes amusing times when members of the premium gate teams of Earth and Atlantis worked together. The last one's an absolute classic!

Fanwork Links: Five Joint Missions, Post-Retrograde on AO3
and I podficced it, here.

As I may have mentioned, Baby Miss L loves potatoes, so when I saw a t-shirt on Etsy that said, "Potatoes gonna potate!" around a picture of a potato, I thought, I have to get it for her! Unfortunately, it was only available in neon green, which I did not like the look of. Luckily, many other vendors were also selling t-shirts with pictures of friendly potatoes on them, so I got her this one that says, "Tater tot!"

This morning, I received a series of glamour shots and a video of Baby Miss L thoroughly excited about wearing the t-shirt. It was so great!

I also learned that The Muppets covering Jungle Boogie is one of her current favorite videos. AMAZING!

On all counts, her vibes are immaculate.

Tomorrow, I'm going to a birthday bbq at my brother's, and I'm bringing her the Batman and Robin t-shirts, plus some toddler books about Batman and the Justice League. Hopefully she enjoys them almost as much! (I also recently sent her a Captain America t-shirt, which I believe she wore for the 4th, and I also got pics of her in the Superman dress, with her arms up like she was flying. 😍😍😍)

In other news, I found this review of the new Superman movie really moving. Will I venture out to a theater to see it? Probably not, but I will be very excited to watch it when it makes its way onto HBO in a few months.

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