Winter has found us, oh woe

[sholio]

I appreciate the irony of my icon. Thermometer says -20 (about -28C); however, the Internet weather claims that it's -30 in town, so either it's warmer on our side of the hills, or the thermometer is reading high because it's next to the window. It's definitely cold, though -- bitter, hands-freezing-to-metal cold. Isn't Dec. 21 supposed to be the official "first day of winter"? Is it entirely fair that it's supposed to be -40 tonight when it isn't even officially winter yet?

Some recently read stories that I can't rec at stargategenrec because they're either not SGA, or not gen:

Next Year in Jerusalem - SPN, PG, gen
A short, really wonderfully written Bobby POV, overlapping with the events of the flashback in the SPN Christmas episode. It reminded me how much I love Bobby, and why.

12 Days of Christmas - SGA, PG-13, John/Rodney
Rec'd not so much for the Christmas-ness of it (which doesn't matter that much to me) but the hilarity of it. My sister and I used to joke about this exact problem with the "12 Days of Christmas" song when we were kids, and I loved this Atlantis twist on it. If you're not a slash reader, there's actually just a little bit of slash at the end; you might want to give it a try anyway.

Crap, my dish towel just fell in the bread dough! Ahem. Sorry. You can tell what I'm doing while I'm writing this. Continuing...

Male Enhancement - SGA, NC-17, John/Rodney
I'm actually very, very torn on this story. I'm torn because the first 3/4 or so is, hands down, one of the best AUs I've ever read in this fandom; I would seriously read this one as a novel. I was amazed at how deeply it drew in my emotions. And then there's something about the ending that I had so much trouble with that it affected my enjoyment of the rest of the story as well. I wish I could give this one a wholehearted rec, but I just can't -- however, it impressed me so deeply that I want to rec it anyway despite the problems I had at the end.

Because I know people are going to ask, here's the problem I had with it.

SPOILER SPACE
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I was gliding along on a lovely cloud of suspension-of-disbelief right up until the story was shoehorned into actual, canon continuity. That's when my disbelief unsuspended with a resounding crash, because I don't for a minute believe that canon!John or [other canon character that is a major spoiler] were robots up until a month or so before the Stargate program began. I can't make myself believe it, and this had a domino effect on most of the other things I'd been willing, up to that point, to believe about the story: that it could be a world exactly like our own, but with sentient robots that look and act exactly like people (which we now know is supposed to be happening in about 2002); that this is pre-Atlantis, Redemption-era Rodney (which I just didn't really get from him); that any of the characters knew each other that well prior to Atlantis ... no, it just didn't work for me, and where I'd greatly enjoyed the story as an AU taking place in some undefined AU-space that kinda has a Stargate program off-camera, I just don't buy it as "our" SGA except, by the way, John is a robot.

But I hate to sound like I'm ranting, because I really loved most of the story. I just wish I'd been able to love all of it.
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Aha, I just figured out how the dish towel which was on top of the bowl of bread dough ended up in the bread dough. *glares at cat*

And a couple from my slightly older bookmarks, but I don't think I've ever rec'd them here:

Dysmas - Due South, gen
I don't usually read DS fic, but this was absolutely brilliant.

The Doctrines of Natural Law - Coldfire, gen (yes, gen!)
As book fandoms go, finding Coldfire fic isn't all that hard, but I didn't think there actually was any such thing as Coldfire gen. It might not stay gen if the author wrote the full version (as mentioned in the author's notes), but I was delighted to find this nonetheless.

Eight Crazy Pilots Serenity Didn't Keep - Firefly (crosses over with a bunch of fandoms), PG
A bunch of very entertaining what-ifs. Although one of them broke my heart ... again. Guess which one. *g*

Comments

[argosy.livejournal.com]

I read *all* of Male Enhancement in one go, so I may have been a little loopy by the end, but was it really *our* Atlantis expedition? So many AUs end up in Atlantis no matter where they start, and I just always think of them as AU Atlantises even if they seem just like the canon ones. That's how my mind works anyway.

But what I really wanted to say is the 12 Days of Christmas is a fantastic story, and I was going to say you had that problem when you were a kid? But now, umm, rereading your post, I see that you said you just joked about it. So umm, yeah, just ignore me...

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

LOL, yeah, my sister and I had this ongoing ... well, "role-playing" isn't quite the right word for what we used to do, but they were collaborative stories that we'd make up, out loud, on the spot. There were tons of them, but I definitely remember the one about the poor girl at Christmastime who ended up with 12 partridges, 24 turtledoves and it just kept getting worse from there.

I'm not exactly sure why my reaction to the end of Male Enhancement was so negative. I think it's essentially that finding out the timeline was supposed to be THAT much like the one in our universe made my brain do a very unpleasant paradigm shift and start trying to make everything make sense. I feel terrible about giving it such a half-assed rec, but I had so much love for most of it that I also hated not to say anything at all.

[winter-elf.livejournal.com]

I'd send you some sun if I could. A little chilly here, but nothing like what you've got. I think we've been in the 50's :)

Ohhh recs! :) I liked that version of Male Enhancement the most, though yea, the end was a bit funky. Though it fit in a way - I'd much rather them both be 'alive' then in love and one a robot, so I guess I accepted it more. And yea, I definately kept it in my mind as totally AU verse. So, I guess since I was already in AU mode.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I would've been okay with either way it could have gone -- that is, John being alive or staying a robot -- but I thought the story did a good job of setting up the inevitability of that particular aspect of the ending. It was other things I had trouble with. A lovely story overall, though...

The cold is here...

[fitzwiggity.livejournal.com]

I agree about it being cold. We've already had our first snow come and gone, and there's still patches here and there with a bunch of snow un-melted. It's amazing! I hope it snows again for Christmas.
The stories looked decent from what was described, but I really don't have much time for reading right now. (As much as I want to read all the books of Twilight.) I'll read those later.
I know how bad cats can be at knocking things down. They really mess things up some times, but their nice to have around when you're on your lonesome.
Anyways...have a nice holiday. I may not reply later until the days of Christmas and the new year are over.

Re: The cold is here...

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I don't really decorate because the cat gets into things so badly. Which is kind of sad ... but on the other hand, the frustration isn't worth it!

[parisntripfan.livejournal.com]

While most people think of winter starting with the winter solstice,
as far meteorology is concerned winter starts on December 1st. Or at least that is how the weather guy on the station I watch always says.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

We usually get our first frost in early September, and it's snowing by early October. The winter solstice equals start of winter thing is just adding insult to injury. *g*

[iamrighthere.livejournal.com]

How do you heat your home? I go for the practical questions.

Okay, Missy, how do you find time to read so much? Since I've started working outside my home again, all I do is work, post edit "Happy," post "Happy" and worry that the story sucks. Thanks for the recs, though. I'm looking forward to reading some of them--the SGA ones, anyway. Leahwoof's in particular. I'm saving the under-the-cut part of your post about it until I've read the entire story so I won't spoil myself. Their "Body Holographic" still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

How do you heat your home?

Coal. We have an outdoor boiler -- basically a big firebox -- and a giant pile of coal in front of it. Of course, this means going out in the cold and shoveling coal twice a day, but hey, it's exercise. And with current oil prices, the coal is quite a bit cheaper than heating oil, as most people use.

Okay, Missy, how do you find time to read so much?

LOL! By procrastinating, mostly! I haven't been writing a whole lot of fanfic lately; I've been mostly working on my original fiction, or trying to. This often ends up with me either surfing the net to avoid writing, or bribing myself with fanfic to write a page or two.