Locus Classicus

My posts have been ever rarer of late, but it doesn't mean I don't love you flist. I do!!! I owe several of you mail/cards/parcels, and you will have them soon! Holidays next week, yaye!

The good news is, I've been so busy because I have essentially had a fairly big promotion at work. I have gone from managing myself to managing myself and three other people. Obviously it's more money, which is always good, and even better the way things are at the moment. It's also a lot more work, and I'm slightly ambivalent about that. The cool parts of the work, ie writing and delivering new courses and mentoring gifted and talented students rock mightily. Managing people who are a decade or two older than I am is less fun. And the paperwork sucks. I like to spend my afternoons drawing the Battle of the Granikos on the activeboard, complete with troop dispositions and stick figure Alexander in red plumed helmet being saved by Kleitos the Black with symbolic afro, not writing endless reports.

The *other* good news however is that I have gone insane and signed up for not one but two Big Bang projects.

1) Last surviving Smallville fans on my flist (oh, my original darlings, this was how we all met, remember???) this one's for you:

I'm finishing and submitting Parallel. The huge fic I always jokingly called my masterwork, and never ever ever admitted I'd abandoned, but clearly had since it's been languishing for four years? Aha, that one. Current wordcount: 32,000. Of which, almost half is new in the last fortnight. We have atheneglaukopis to thank for this, who has been terrorising me via chat. She kept pinging me for the entire duration of the Mutiny at the Hyphasis yesterday, and is a very harsh taskmistress. If I'd had her first time round I'd have finished in no time.

2) Supernatural:

Yep, this too apparently. Progress decidely thinner on the ground, which may prove problematic since it's due much earlier. It is entirely of a piece with my earth logic that I am working on the challenge due August 1 before that due May 1. I iz cleva!

Now back to the manuscript!

Valentine's Day

I've been offline for two days, and consequently missed all the fun - instead I send love to everyone on lj I've ever interacted with. You astound me constantly with your wit, your charm, your generosity, your gentle support... And lj, I love you too. I like you much more than RL, where I had to hide downstairs and watch Lois & Clark while avoiding my best friend and the recently designated love of her life *dancing* upstairs.

And thank you so so so much to my two anonymous beloveds who left me secret messages chez Madelyn.

Me and My Fic, ie WIPs R Us

I've been busy enough to die the last fortnight, given that school's back in, but found time this afternoon to write most of chapter 3 of the 'Lex and Clark go to Metropolis' verse. I was meant to be coaching the rowing team, but even I tire of sweaty boys in lycra eventually. enderwiggin24, can you please send me a rude email on Sunday and ask me where it is if it isn't up? That's a firm deadline.

I'm also *very* excited about my assignment for remixredux and have decided which story I am going to do. I'm a little afraid of what will happen to *my* story, but also looking forward to finding out.

I'm deeply ashamed that I have three outstanding ficlets for 'Fic on Demand'. Sorry guys! I had to start planning lectures. They'll go up one per day for the rest of this week.

atheneglaukopis and other classici, I'm still working on that (overdue) Alexander!porn. I must say it makes life interesting when lines come to me in the middle of a class. Blah blah blah, Chaironeia, blah, wolfskins, body fluids, woops, back to that oblique advance. If you want to hassle me on this one, wait till next week, then feel free. You know me and pressure. I'm a hothouse flower.

Other Fannish

I finally saw Brokeback Mountain. I think it broke *me*. I went feeling all staunch and "read the book, forewarned is forearmed", and when the *ahem* happened and I was still dry-eyed, I thought I was going to make it. But then I burst into tears in the last scene in the caravan and couldn't stop. I really thought all involved did a wonderful job. I then, naturally, got in an argument this morning with a colleague (the same one who called Alexander 'deeply disturbing') who declared that noone in the film was gay, and it was all situational. Though he wasn't intelligent enough to come up with 'situational', he just blustered about being stuck up a mountain. Ass.

Still loving and adoring Stargate: Atlantis. I have never been gladder to be seduced to the dark side. I'm not up to writing real fic yet, but amused myself by creating mock school reports for John and Rodney for the Documentation challenge at sga_flashfic.

I had to fetch down my own school reports to do it, and I have to say, I was horrified by how cruel some teachers used to be. And I was top of my class! If they were that nasty about me, I hate to think what some poor kids copped. My favourite comment, though, was from the priest who took me for Divinity, who gave me a 1+ for academic and an A for effort and wrote: "Victoria makes no effort in this subject. She has a bad attitude, and could do much better." Well honestly, not to be a raving egomaniac, but how??? I guess technically there's room for improvement since it's not an A+, but sheesh. Not much of the Christian spirit there. Evidently accidentally professing atheism within his earshot was unforgiveable. Pretty much everyone else just said I talked too much. Some things never change.

And that's a wrap. I have *triathlon* tomorrow. I *hate* athletics season.

My mother always used to say that a poor workman blames his tools. Which now I think of it is a platitude worthy of Bo Kent. But what I've been through to get this up...

I'm staying with friends, and of course I *packed* everything remotely useful like USB cables, so when I want to print something I have to email it from my pc to theirs. Disconnecting one to connect the other... But it's too cold to work out here so I wrote this inside on my work laptop. Which only has wireless and I'm out of range so I thought okay, I'll save it to a disk. That's when I discovered that brand new laptops don't *have* floppy drives. So I walked up to the supermarket to buy a cd so I could copy it onto that and transfer it... Done, done and done.

So without further ado...

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter ten )

What a week! That's really all I can say.

The highlights so far...

When I merrily downloaded a couple, alright, several, episodes of Smallville without thinking to ask, in fact, what plan mine host the bill payer was on - kids ask your parents first - and the bill came and it was a thousand dollars. And I was all, oh, it's a typo, and they said, no, it's 20c a meg and you downloaded 5000 megs, and... And I had to pretend to be all nonchalant, and oh, yeah, hey, that's sweet, no worries... Because really, even more than the money it was just so incredibly embarrassing, and I felt like the stupidest person in the world, because of course adults who have *lives* and aren't addicted to stupid tv shows never download anything and therefore go for the cheapest connection with the highest excess...

Now in fact, somehow magically, I got away with it after all, because the ISP had forgotten to fix something they were meant to fix, but it doesn't change the fact that I am, in fact, the stupidest person in the world.

This news was confirmed when I was all set to respond to prodding - thank you to all who provided, though I'm afraid again my stupidity trumps your industry - and post new Parallel, and instead of the new chapters, I have a file full of deleted scenes - the bits I cut out. I have *no* idea what happened there. Can I possibly have switched the names on the files??? I never knew I was *that* stupid. This has been a real week of revelations. I'm not sure I'm safe to walk the streets.

Again, this is not quite as bad as it might be, since I have most of the printouts I was proof reading nefariously in class, but as is always the case, I'm now convinced that the last edit must have been the most brilliant thing since sliced bread. Back to the drawing board...

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter nine )

I've just finished pickling twenty kilos of onions (that's forty pounds!) and can barely see to type. My sisters, who each asked for a jar, and swore they'd do the peeling, have once again proved, beyond shadow of a doubt, to be lying toads.

I, however, am *not* a lying toad. The next chapter of Parallel will be up before Christmas. No negotiation. I've had a *lot* of requests for other stuff in the last week, though, so I need guidance.

[Poll #406523]

Winner takes all. Or at least gets a guaranteed date for their story.

I'm shifting this out of the election coverage and into calmer waters, because I'm writing madly, fending off the blues, and there'll be more tonight or tomorrow. Much more. And I don't want to confuse people. Or myself.

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter seven )

It's strange. Parallel was the very first piece of Smallville fanfic I ever wrote. Or more accurately, *started* to write. Friends, it's been a *long* time. And in part it's just my pedantic perfectionism, and the never ending battle to find the *precise* way to phrase an idea I see vividly in my mind... But partly I think it's the fact that the damn thing has a plot. Not just a "How can Clark convince Lex it's for real?" plot, or even a "How can Jonathan finally see the good in Lex?" plot, but a strange, mysterious journey where I don't know all the answers, and am sometimes as confused as my characters. I wrote all the high points in said plot first, as they came to me in flashes of light, which left me with all the segues and bridges to fill in later. And they aren't as much fun. And have proved infinitely harder.

Every story I've written *since*, I've written in one go, a single afternoon or frenzied late night session. And I've written from beginning to end, not jumping maniacally back and forth. Whatever happens, Parallel will always be a unique experience as far as the actual writing goes. I spent all my afternoon classes today, for example, pen in hand, editing on a hardcopy with half my mind, while answering questions about how casualties were so light in a hoplite battle with the other.

I got a lot done, despite the circumstances, and hope to post *quite a bit* over the next few days. And fear not, I am vowed and determined to finish fairly soon. WIPs should not take forever! In the meantime, though, thank you for putting up with my malingering!

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter four )

The first thing I want to do is thank everyone who sent me condolences or messages of support. They really were appreciated. And helpful too. In an extraordinarily difficult week they helped make the world seem a little smaller, and a little less cold.

Singled out for honourable mention: Annemarie (you know who you are) who phoned me here in Wellington, otherwise known as The Far Side of the World. Or Middle Earth, if you prefer. Even if you did think my accent was weird... Accent? I have no accent. *You* all have accents! :-p

Anyway, each day's been a little easier, and I feel really good today. Ready to plunge back into the daily swim, which includes a return to fandom. I scrawled three pages longhand when I was meant to be supervising a test this afternoon. I'm not sure if the boys were cheating, but I was smiling. All fic which has been on hold is back on the to do list. That's clex, A/P, and A/H, for those of you who might be interested. Expect some soon. I can't *swear* which will see the light of day first, given my chaotic lurching between the three, but at the moment chapters three and four of Parallel are winning. If only I hadn't, in typically perverse fashion, finished four first...