stuff about stuff

[domarzione]

* School continues to kick my butt because of the time-suck, not because of the difficulty. And I voluntarily agreed to vaporize the intersession break between summer and fall by becoming a peer mentor, so instead of No Sleep Til Brooklyn it's No Break Til Christmas. I am looking forward to the peer mentorship, though, because I'm a huge fan of passing on the benefits of experience. And I wish I'd had someone when I'd started this program to be that for me instead of the one I got, who was half my age and unable to process the concept of a returning student on top of being primarily concerned with her own grade. (The program has a significant number of people who have decades between their undergraduate degree and this and the utter lack of support I felt was cited in my application.) But the summer semester is halfway done, so... yay.


* I've had to slow my roll with the fic writing in general because of the previous, but I'm also at a point where I need to pause and re-read the last chunk of QH because I need to find dropped threads and other things I've left in unsatisfactory condition. The problem with a story that's 200K words and nowhere near finished is that you can't start at the beginning, you have to find a point and go from there. Doing the big edit on the 2007-2012 chunk of QH, which was eighteen chapters, was enough to propel me through another ten but it's time for a small strategic pause to figure out where the hell I'm going and what happens before I get there. (I have the end state, for the record.) I have a few bits in the QH Scrap file (hi, Sam!) that I ponder posting somewhere  but don't because I fear it might give too much of the game away. Also, I'm totally open to requests/suggestions/questions because I do miss stuff even with an outline and what's in my head isn't what's on the page. If you're reading and there's something/someone you want expanded upon, speak up! 


* Tumblr's redesign means that Tumblr Saviour is working again but almost nothing else is including XKit. Gosh, I want 'post block' back again. Also 'tag viewer.'


* I have misophonia, which is when noise becomes intrusive to the point of making you lose your shit, basically. I'm an urban child and city noises don't bother me at all and I've lived most of my life under airport landing patterns, so I don't even notice the planes/trains/sirens/traffic. But human noises are a problem for me and I live in a building with thin walls and facing other buildings with backyards. The apartment above mine is a rental and the current tenant is a couple with a 3-year-old, which is as hellish as you imagine. I've written them politely (and vetted by a parent of young children) to please be mindful of the noise because I work from home and am a student and they were initially very receptive and wrote me back saying they'd bought mats for the purpose -- I saw the box when it was delivered. But today I went upstairs to ask them to take away the electronic piano because the kid bashing on the keys is making me anxious in a way that the running around has ceased to be. I was expecting a little Casio keyboard, but when they opened the door I saw a gigantic keyboard on a fancy stand at toddler height taking up significant real estate. Who does this for a toddler? In an apartment? I got a few hours of peace, which allowed me to get some work done, but a keyboard smash late in the day says that they haven't even unplugged the thing and my anxiety is not handling it well. 


* I am not a 'trash tv' kind of person, but I will shamefully confess to watching the first couple of episodes of Roswell, New Mexico. I never saw the original, but I'm aware of it and aware of the ways that this reboot is a significant upgrade in terms of reflecting the actual demographics of New Mexico as well as more general cultural progress. But it's totally trashy and I am trying not to wince too hard at the military ignorance or the way they are trying to wedge 1990s references in everywhere. I blame tumblr, but it's really only me. 

Comments

[bactaqueen]

I love trash tv and I fully support enjoying every terrible moment of it.

[ravurian]

You probably have mentioned this in the course of QH, and I am a couple of chapters behind, so please forgive me if this is just, you know, a shocking non sequitur, but I am slightly curious about whether the gene therapy is a thing that becomes a priority, or is now offered routinely, and to what scale/intent, and, more generally, whether this is relevant to the story at large. And also, I'm curious about, um, mission pregnancies and the availability of birth control and so on. Why am I curious about these things that are not necessarily germane? Why am I ever interested in anything? Who knows where thoughts come from?

ETA: WHOOPS, I MEANT THIS TO BE A REPLY TO THE POST, NOT THE COMMENT! Sorry, both.

[domarzione]

I honestly haven't considered the gene therapy for new arrivals and I probably should retcon some thought into it for obvious reasons that might not be obvious if you're a few chapters behind.

There are pregnancies and have been since before Earth fell to the Ori (and after they stopped evacuating pregnant women to Earth). Rodney mentioned a christening in Art Is Long. Atlantis has daycare and schools and a pediatrics routine for babies born there and the hundreds of kids Cam rescued and the kids of refugees. Birth control is limited because of capacity, but it's also limited because of interest -- most of Pegasus is trying reproduce as much as possible, not everyone from the Milky Way wants to prevent pregnancies, and the Stargate Program preferred to offer women long-term birth control methods like IUDs over trying to keep them supplied with the Pill. Caldwell and Ellis both stole as many condoms from stores they raided for supplies, but they don't last forever and Atlantis has not yet figured out how to make a preferred replacement. But the fact is that now that making a baby won't get you booted from Atlantis, a lot of Earth people aren't terribly against the idea -- survival of the species (and their own desire for parenthood) and the idea that Atlantis is now a home and not just a workplace...

[ravurian]

I suppose, too, that there may be temptation to mix those two themes by supplying the gene therapy in vitro, though the ethics of that would be interesting. I wonder if the gene therapy breeds true? I'd think not, unless it was administered in vitro. Hmm. Actually, I wonder what the implications of doing it that way would be. Probably not germane right now, but it could have implications a couple of generations down, when suddenly the ancient genome blooms. Ugh, now I'm thinking about it, and natural versus artifical gene now with 'natural artificial' option.