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This is late, but I hope everyone had a happy little holiday. I had one of those Christmases that felt like a very long day in a good way. Did presents with Shep's mom, did presents with my family, had some scrumptious dinner and then of course went to see Django Unchained (badaaass). Sadly because of some crap that came up that he has to take care of for his restaurant my brother and his lady had to leave us a day early, so I'll probably just be reading and enjoying my new blu-rays for the rest of the day because I'm not really out of lazy mode.

Of course I saw The Hobbit. I was pleased! It's long and very true to the feel of heroic romance that the book has (a big adventure with a lot of little adventures on the way) which will put off some people who really aren't into seeing a movie that feels a lot like a book but didn't bother me. Naturally there are some strong opinions about taffy-pulling this thing into three movies, but I'm frankly not interested in getting into that.

Fun fact: I remember that at least one of the times I read The Hobbit as a kid, either by ignoring or somehow overlooking description, I imagined Dori and Nori as women. And now I can't help imagining what that would have been like as kind of awesome, especially since it doesn't seem we'll ever even meet a dwarf woman in any of the movies.

When Halloween was approaching I found myself trying to think if I had ever read a fic that managed to really creep me out. It was hard to think of a few. Scaring people is pretty hard to do.

But to start with, (gasp) some original fiction!
I...don't often (or like, ever?) read horror but on a whim that started off having something to do with listening to the soundtrack for the movie Nightbreed I became curious about the short stories of Clive Barker. This guy...is nuts. He basically has a tendency to take human flaws and turn them up to caricature in a way that's often disturbing. Not all of his stories will really creep you the hell out unless you have a pretty low tolerance for gore - some of them are almost more philosophical - but one of his more highly acclaimed stories is In The Hills, the Cities which definitely left me a bit unsettled. I've still not put all my thoughts together about it, but I think it's ingenious in that it manages to be somewhat horrifying without there being any real malice or monsters involved. (Be warned, at the link the story has one or two places with wonky indents that aren't supposed to be there, but meh, it's free.)


A short Harry Potter fic that sets you on edge is Thestrals, in which James won't shut up with a very creepy nursery rhyme he keeps singing to baby Harry, and Lily has a bad feeling. (The author wrote out the entire rhyme, which is also brilliant.)


I don't know if there's a single Supernatural fan who hasn't heard of Red (I've never seen so many comments on a gen fic in my life), but it's amazing and could probably easily be read by someone who doesn't watch Supernatural. It goes in places that feel perfectly suited for SPN but in a way that the show itself would probably never do and couldn't really depict in a way that's as cool as leaving things up to the imagination. There are dangers that are realistic and relatable, and then there is the monster, which has something of a history with Dean that Sam knows nothing about.


The creepy factor of this one is more vague, but I've always loved this House of Leaves-inspired Star Trek fic "and this great blue world of ours (seems a house of leaves moments before the wind)". The novel it's based on is sometimes considered more of a love story than a thriller, and appropriately this is too. It's Kirk/Spock, and an example that I want to shove in the face of anyone who assumes that all fic narrated in first-person is crap; Jim sounds like Jim but Jim also sounds intelligent, which is kind of a tough balance to strike with reboot fic.

My New Year's Eve was surprisingly awesome. When I met up with my friends after seeing Sherlock Holmes the second time I was already tired, so I declared that I needed a nap while they ran to the store for Smirnoff, which probably saved me from being generally lame throughout the night. It was a little weird that it was the first new year's I've spent without my boyfriend in years, but Shep apparently was so exhausted he went to bed before midnight, so it's not like he would've been much fun anyway (lol).
Anyway, we basically crashed this party where the only person we knew there was the DJ (with the exception of Nerd's ex-intern which was kinda awkward), which, didn't make for much outside socializing obviously...But he was a GOOD DJ and we actually danced, a lot, until I thought I was going to pass out. That was fun, cause I rarely end up dancing anymore anywhere. I was too exhausted to tell if I got that drunk, really. I had about three shots of vodka throughout the evening and my heart medication puts my tolerance pretty low, so I'm guessing I definitely was at some point. Me acting like a jackass makes people go "OMG YOU'RE DRUNK" before they remember what I was kinda consistently like in high school, and...yyeah...

I have to say I'm really frustrated with how slowly this one Trek fic is coming along, which I had kind of an unofficial goal to at least start posting before the new year. UGH. I've run into a major "GRRR I'M NOT A SCI-FI/ACTION WRITER" snag with the ending and am just hoping the actual plotsuck won't matter because it's a relationship-centered fic, but damn. No matter how many times I've brushed off little errors in Trek fics I've seen and said to others that being too obsessed with the painstaking details don't matter, I absolutely hate writing what I feel is inviable in this fandom and just can't get past it. And then I remind myself that certain conflicts have the potential to be handled extremely differently in the reboot universe than they were in the TOS 'verse simply because it's very different creators with a different standpoint of entertainment, and how many nitpicky problems of this nature are in Star Trek itself, and I don't worry so much. But I still feel all "mreh" when I'm writing it.