diary of a dialup dinosaur

 The local news today is about how NYC is running out of morgue space and which government agency will provide temporary storage of the dead. A hospital I walk by almost every weekend had thirteen people die there in one day alone. Brighter thoughts: 

* The NYTimes food section, normally paywalled beyond even the regular subscription, is seemingly free these days. Go there for sustenance.


* NYC is emptying out its animal shelters... into homes. Adoption rates for dogs and cats are skyrocketing. My two dudes celebrated their first anniversary with me last week and I cannot express how helpful they've been in terms of anxiety management. Even if one of them has just overturned the kitchen trash so he can rummage for plastic to chew on. 


* If you are not following Crouton and company on twitter, you are doing yourself a disservice. Crouton is a young steer who lives at the Squirrelwood Equine Sanctuary, where the horses provide therapy for veterans and the rest of the menagerie provide joy on social media. Go meet Rhubarb, Pumpernickel, Crouton, Benny, and the gang. 'Nickel lost his two best friends today (snip, snip), so he could use the love. ;) 


* Added to the watched list: Frozen 2, Lucky Logan, that season of GBBO where they defiled bagels, and slowly catching up on The Good Place. 

* COVID-19 everywhere, most of NYC shut down, and I'm still taking the subway to work because my employer hates paying us not to work exactly that much. Also, it's cheaper for them if we get sick -- they only have to pay us for as long as we have sick days. And being as I am recovering from flu, I have practically none. Is anyone in my department an essential employee? No. Are we so much as being given hand sanitizer? Also no. Have I looked up a copy of my union's Short Term Disability form in case I get sick? Yes. 

Every university is looking like the Good Guys for sending the students home and switching to remote learning to avoid crowds. And behind all of that are the people like me, non-teaching staff at universities that don't give a crap about our well-being because we are a financial drain (i.e., they have to pay us) as opposed to the students (who pay them). In the meanwhile, the official recommendation for my class of serfdom? Wash your hands. 


* Speaking of the virus, however... Support your local small businesses during this time. The big places are gonna be fine -- and in fact are totally necessary -- and so will the folks who work there. But your local Chinese restaurant? Your favorite taco joint? The independent bookstore? Go into those places and ask if they have gift certificates. They get the money from those now, you can redeem at a point in time that's best for you. 

(I just found out a Chinese joint by me does Kung Pao Brussels Sprouts. I am there for those.)


* There's no baseball and no hockey and I'm going to have to watch the three streaming services I have subscriptions to, aren't I.... On the bright side, Chris Kreider will be ready to play if the NHL resumes instead of missing the rest of the season. And Michael Conforto won't come back from his oblique injury too soon and hit .195 and wreck both his and the Mets' season. 


* If you get to self-isolate, or at least work from home, try to be a quarter as cool as the Sicilians. 

 Almost a month into the new semester and I am deeply regretting a few life choices. Notably my choice to take a bunch of 1-credit classes, which are not 1/3 the work, but all of the work in 1/3 time and I am swamped. Also, I might have picked a class that I am too advanced for and I am overthinking everything and paying for it. 

I did manage to burp out the next chapter of Qui Habitat, which I had spent most of my break working on. It's a far more... human and personal?... chapter for John Sheppard and is a consequence of the material I added in when I did my retcon/edit last year. It's definitely a new angle from what I was writing ten years ago, that's for sure, and I'm still feeling my way out on that new branch of unknown strength. The next chapter will be a little slower because of the first paragraph. 

Spring Training has sprung and my baseball team has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Life as a Mets fan. 

My hockey team is about to bid farewell to my favorite player because they can't re-sign him. One over-thinking, multi-lingual (he wants to learn Swedish for Mika!), crossword-in-ink-doing, power forward goalie-damager for sale. One day he's a curly-haired college kid parachuted in for the playoffs, the next he's about to be a UFA on the top of everyone's wishlist. Chris Kreider, fare thee well. 

I read a tremendously well-written novel that I'm still pissed off about because it went nowhere, had all of the built-up-to action happen offscreen, spent significant time developing several characters who literally were just dropped and then dealt with in passing in the epilogue, and yet I read it eagerly until the end because it was fascinating right until I wanted to set it on fire. I'm just so annoyed. 

This was a really interesting read in the NYTimes (worth the click) about all those bizarre brand names you see on Amazon and how this is changing e-commerce. 

I've managed to lose 5+ pounds since early January doing the 'mild' version of intermittent fasting -- giving up breakfast, essentially. (On the weekends, since I don't eat lunch because I get up late, it's now one meal and my fast-break is 17:00, although this past Sunday it was 20:30.) I totally admit to thinking that the 'it's impossible to lose weight over 40' thing was baloney, but then 40 hit, I got put on SSRIs, and suddenly there was 13 pounds where there didn't used to be. And then you normalize it and up-size in clothes because it's not going anywhere and... I'm insanely grateful for the weight loss. I'm not fat, although I'd argue that I'm more small than skinny, but I'm bigger than I want to be and it was starting to play havoc with my self-esteem. 

There was an interview in the Telegraph today with Richard Armitage where he elliptically confirms that he's gay and then goes on to explain that he had to keep it private while his parents were alive because it would have been a problem for them. 


... and that's just very sad. Actors hide their personal lives for many reasons, business or otherwise, but this is a much more dispiriting reason than "I wanted good roles." It's not a unique reason, but in this business, it's certainly rare. 

I officially posted Chapter 19 of Qui Habitat. There are new segments in some of the chapters because I edited the whole thing, but if you don't feel like a full reread, I think you can get away with In Medias Res and then Chapter 18. I don't know what the new rate of production will be -- my semester starts at the end of January, but I think I can promise "better than 7.5 years between chapters."

Also on the WIP front, I am thinking I am going to post the extant-but-unpublished 50000 words of Sleepers of Ephesus, just so I can stop promising that it's not dead. That would be the last update until it's finished. 


Three things make a post, but I've got nothing but "Happy New Year, Everyone!" and so that will have to do. 

 It took me the entire semester plus a few weeks on either side, but I have finally finished editing the existing eighteen chapters of Qui Habitat and can now ponder forward movement. Thankfully, not too much added to the total word count (current: 114K words) because I also deleted here and there. I think it's a better story for the work, not just because I did all of the universe fleshing-out after it was written and it seemed thin because of it. There's more weight to it now, for sure, hopefully not dragging it down. My goal was not only to fix the discrepancies, but also going to make it a more thoughtful story about survival and less of a straight-up action adventure tale about an alien invasion that succeeded. Atlantis is a home now, not just a deployment that turned into an exile, and it's a home with a far more diverse population than the outpost it had once been. Not just ethnically, but that matters, too. One segment I did add visits a space where the survivors of fallen worlds seek to preserve and share their cultures. 

I also snuck back in to this summer's In Media Res and killed off an OC and retconned in the capture of Cadman, who'd been unnecessarily absent from the entire saga but is too major a canon character to try to make her present without having to overhaul a lot, so MIA/Captured she is. I need to wedge her into Rodney's story, too. 

I also also added the QH OCs to the big list; mostly women because I made a concerted effort to include them once I didn't have to give a crap about canon. A couple of them existed in the first iteration (Gantry, Garcas, Valentine, Waterman) and a few were introduced in the recent edit (Sato, Vega) and all of them now have first names and and an MOS (Valentine got a medical specialty). For the guys, Charlie Ngo, introduced in In Media Res when I decided to expand Little Tripoli and retconned into the main story, is also now listed, as is Rowell, who also got a first name.

I should futz with other side-stories, especially Lorne's (I did go back there and find-and-replace his name so he no longer narrates himself by his last name), to make them coherent with the rest of the changes, but I want to get some forward action going on first.

*makes actual tumblr post*

*within 24 hours someone replies with unnecessary comment about ideology, presumably to inform me that something I like is problematic and they are purer than me for knowing it*

It's taking far more energy than it should to not reply back with a snarky comment about the necessity of interrogating the belief system of every creative before appreciating their work. If that's how you have to function to get through life, then you be you. But I get to be me and you don't get to shame me into going along with you. 

.... and this is why I was happy six weeks away from Tumblr. Maybe it's time to revisit that. 










 

*  This is what happens when you cross Remington Steele and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: you wind up in 1880s London on PBS.

* I was pleasantly surprised by the Black Widow trailer. David Harbour was the best, Pugh makes a decent Yelena (and perfect for my Freezer Burn needs), and I'm still kinda amused that everyone but ScarJo attempts a Russian accent. What is the pretext for four Russians speaking English to each other? Definitely amused that the IMDB page has RDJ in there as rumored because why wouldn't he be in an MCU movie at this point? No word or S Stan. Also, is it just me or did we get no timestamp on this clip beyond "after Avengers 1, before Endgame"? 

* Thank you to my mysterious benefactor. This should not be the third item. 

* The new Bond movie character posters are up and I think we should take a moment to marvel at how utterly freaking badass Lashana Lynch looks. Also that Rami Malek looks like a desiccated lizard, but mostly about Lynch. All of the fanboys are worried that she's gonna take over as the new 007 on a permanent basis, but I'm frankly more concerned that she gets fridged so that Jimmy Boy gets back in the saddle. She's not going to have the role permanently, that much is obvious -- else they would have done with her what they did with Jodie Whittaker when she became the Doctor. (Also, let's be honest, they're not going to have black women as both Bond and Moneypenny.) So does Lynch survive the film with another code number? Or does she die honorably so that Chav Bond can ride again? 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating. Mine will feature zero turkey and one matzo ball soup, so I am content. 


Cat versus humidifier continues. It's like a TV show you don't like that keeps getting renewed every fall and there are constant new episodes until spring. 


I am editing Chapter 11 of Qui Habitat (out of 18) and I kind of want to split it up into books, but that would generate new fic notices and I am just not going to do that to people who've been waiting eight years for me to finish it. I have realized way too far in that I need to figure out what happened to Cadman and I might have to retcon the bit I wrote in the summer to get her in there. I have to figure out what happened to a lot of people, granted. 



 

This is what I'm reading and I'm enjoying it tremendously. It's the story of Oleg Gordievsky, a disillusioned KGB agent who became a spy for MI6 and it's ridiculous and more ridiculous for being true. Highly recommended, especially for Cold War kids.


The anniversary of the death of someone who loved you and abused you is complicated, especially when almost nobody IRL knows that you're an abuse survivor and assumes your only memories are good ones. Overwhelmingly they are. But as much as I love them and miss them and still feel the pain of their passing, I'm ever more aware that I am where I never could have been without their death and it's complicated to feel both loss and gratitude for that loss because it came with freedom. 

 So Baby Yoda broke the internet? I saw him trending on twitter, even. 

Does anyone remember the live-action adaptation of Bendis's Powers? It had real actors in it and everything, but it was put together by... Playstation? [checks, Playstation] and nobody watched it and nobody can watch it now. Back in the Old Days, a show was created for television and nobody watched it and it eventually got to Netflix (DVDs or streaming) and people fell in love after the fact. But what's going to happen in the streaming universe? Is Netflix going to buy the streaming rights to a show that was originally streaming? Can they? If we're headed for a balkanization of streaming networks where you need to subscribe to a half-dozen different channels to catch the shows you want to watch, what gets lost when people choose to just not watch things since they can't wait for Netflix/Amazon and buying everything isn't an option. I've already been making those kinds of choices -- Richard Armitage is on a show called Berlin Station that would be right up my alley if I wanted to pay for Epix. But I don't want to do that because I already have Netflix/Amazon and there's nothing else on Epix I want to see. What does Epix or Quibi offer me and my limited entertainment budget when put on a menu with Hulu and Netflix and HBO and Disney and CBS and whatever else that has actually significant back catalogs and I can only afford one or two? 

(I ask this like I am not already literally years behind on stuff I want to watch.)


I have been a month off Tumblr, at least with respect to posting, although I cannot say my visiting has been anything serious. I've browsed my dash a few times, bothered musesfool a couple of times, and that's it. I'm sure I'm missing fannish news I'd like to know, or at least some quality Baby Yoda content, but the idea of full participation exhausts me still and the reward for it does not yet seem worth the energy. Am I cured? Or just tired?


Hockey team continues to be a bunch of undergrads, a couple of Continuing Ed students, and their really exhausted adjunct professor (hi, Henke!) and they're not good, but most of the time they are entertaining. I wish Chris Kreider were having a better final season on the ice because he is apparently killing it in the room as a mentor and role model. 

Baseball team continues to be the reason Deadspin has had a #LOLMETS tag for years. The just-hired manager's the possible architect of the Houston Astros' sign-stealing. The star outfielder with mysterious injuries has been spotted taking BP but the video was disappeared off the interwebs. The competence-not-yet-entered-into-evidence GM doesn't think the team really needs improving. And yet they somehow have both the Rookie of the Year and a back-to-back Cy Young winner. 

I am currently watching Calgary-Colorado because I want to see if Matthew "I am my father's son" Tkachuk will fight another goalie. 


Three weeks left in the semester. My field of fucks is barren at this point, I fear. 

* The problem with working in pectore:

Me: I ficced!

Also Me: You did not fic. You added a thousand words to a chapter written eight years ago while you were editing it. You can't post it as new fic and nobody's going to see it.

Me: I... ficced?

Also Me: you did, but since you're not releasing the story until it's done, nobody knows and nobody cares.


* Beasties update: they are fine, I'm still recovering.


* I've been reading about the Streaming Wars and I'm more than ever convinced that we're headed for disaster. Apple TV's launch has been a pretty strong faceplant -- nobody thinks their shows are any good or their opening discounts worthwhile or their catalog any kind of necessary. Disney+ is counting on every household with kids subscribing (true) while also patting themselves on the back for outwitting the nerds who thought they could sign up for one month and binge all the MCU/Star Wars stuff and then dropping it by releasing episodes weekly (false). CBS All Access is Star Trek plus a couple of things nobody is paying to watch. NBC's Peacock doesn't even exist yet. Amazon and Netflix are still spending an unsustainable amount of hundreds of millions of dollars to buy cinema legitimacy. What they all think is going to happen: people will cut the cord on the cable bill and then recreate the same bill with streaming services. What will actually happen... not that.

Actual drabbles! Words were counted!

From here


Alex is a student of history. Don’t tear down the fence until you know why it was put up in the first place, Chesterton said. Alex’s ambitions outstrip mere fences, but history is what bootstraps him up within HYDRA because not everyone is capable of learning from mistakes.

History is what gets him a present from Karpov, who doesn’t think his own proteges worthy of the most exquisite weapon in HYDRA’s arsenal. The Soviets thought it theirs for decades, which was by design, but Karpov is getting old and impatient and the gift is a coronation in all but name.

+++

It’s not until the weapon is delivered that Alex can properly appreciate the magnitude of it, the profound show of faith it displays. Karpov knows Alex will recognize the Winter Soldier for who he is as much as what. The first American Supreme HYDRA will go forth into the battle against chaos armed with the same weapon as the first American super-soldier. Alex knows that Captain America’s truest danger to HYDRA came from the fact that Bucky Barnes walked behind him. Rogers learned from and leaned on Barnes, who’d been lethal before HYDRA could improve on what war had created.

+++

The tools they use to control the Soldier don’t erase his memories, just sever the connection between knowledge and context. The Soldier has Barnes’s precision and instincts and control, finely tuned from decades of use, but no understanding of how they were acquired. The conditioning means he can lead men in the field but won’t question Alex – most of the time. The divorce of context and skill sometimes means that the Soldier has an army sergeant’s marksmanship without an army sergeant’s obedience. Alex is first angry and then delighted the first time the Soldier asks Why? before a mission.

+++

Rogers is and is not what history has made of him and the difference puts everything Alex has worked toward in danger. The chance to have Rogers as an ally is too great to dismiss out of hand, which was why Alex never let Rumlow terminate him on a routine mission. Alex is acutely aware of what moral authority can achieve – his own has been the greatest asset in his toolbox aside from the Soldier. Adding Steve Rogers’s would’ve allowed HYDRA to move almost unimpeded toward a bloodless victory. Rogers’s refusal is an intolerable risk, hence the Soldier’s deployment.

+++

The Soldier listens to reason, always has. He might lack a sergeant’s obedience to an officer, but he also lacks a sergeant’s cynicism and will believe a story well told. Alex has never lacked the capacity to spin tales and the Soldier has always nodded agreement at the end of them. They’ve not bothered to take steps to keep the Soldier away from anything that might trigger Barnes’s memories and it’s never bitten them in the ass before Rogers, but Alex isn’t fool enough to think this is anything but what it is. The chair is brute force, but effective.

I have apparently not posted here since the middle of June, which makes sense as that's when the summer semester started and I became completely less interesting unless you have a strong taste for information organization. The semester ends in a fortnight, after which I will have a fortnight of indolence and then right back into the fall semester. My entertainment value to anyone else is like a blood moon -- it shows up every once in a while for a blip and then disappears. 

There has been fanfic writing, but not posting because I'm kinda done with the WIPs, I think. And also because I am currently 11k words into a worldbuilding exercise for an unfinished AU in a fandom I haven't given a crap about in most of a decade. But Qui Habitat still stands up as a universe and I'm futzing with it and I think this is the first time I've ever really just written something for myself the way we all tell fanficcers that they should write for themselves and not for attention from an audience. It's not that I don't have MCU stuff I could (should) be writing, but this is what has my attention right now and it feels indulgent to just go with it. Am I.... maturing? Or am I just finally running out of fannish fucks to give? 

Today is my birthday and I have planned to spend it doing absolutely nothing because I am old enough that "not being on a schedule" is enough of a gift. (My other present to myself was to add to my Fiestaware collection because Macy's was having a sale.) One of my cats foiled my plan to sleep in by deciding today was a great day to test out his new yowling feature, which got me to jump up and check on him because he's never made those noises before and I thought he was hurt. He was not. He was quite pleased with himself. Still waiting for kitty adolescence to end with that one. 

I don't even know what happened. I got asked a question about Qui Habitat (Hi, Lizbet0!) that I'd punted on in probably 2012 and now answered... to the tune of 2500 words and what is essentially the first part of Chapter 19 of the story.

*giant handflail*

( when you're writing a new part of a dead story in a dead fandom )

Haven’t had to do a monthly review in ages, so thank you Endgame.

fic

Requiescat: Steve says goodbye to Natasha.

The 2012 Multiverse thing: or, the elevator scene is the real fork in the timestream.

Heritor: Sam at the end of things, which is really the beginning.



meta stuff

The two-body problem: or, there are two Steves in 1945, btw.

The role models: in extremis, the Avengers channel those who are lost.

The ladies of Endgame: strength, abandonment, and RDJ fanfic.