Rat Creature's Journal

( mostly just a reaction, but also a question so some spoilers up to 5x13 )

I am curious: When you are cooking, and tasting things, how careful are you not to get any of your saliva into the food? I.e. do you always meticulously use two spoons, or are there circumstances when you don't bother and put the same spoon you had in your mouth in contact with the food again?

It is really confusing to get update notifications from September 2008 delivered now. Also this is kind of bait and switch, as I mostly track for story updates, so I click on the "such and such updated their journal" all excited that there is a new part, then get a puzzling "wait, I think I've seen that already?" moment, and only then notice the date. But seriously, 2008??

I had started reading a long K/S story this morning, but then I had to do something else, and bookmarked it to continue later, and now the archive is not there anymore! I only get a MySQL database error?

ETA: It seems to be back now, but it's still disturbing to have it vanish on me. *pets infrastructure*

And it was great fun, though it would have been even better if the two young women to my left had not felt the need to talk (or loudly whisper) throughout the whole movie. I could have also done without the person to my right who at one time used some kind of electronic device with a brightly lit screen, which at least didn't beep or anything, but suddenly appearing light sources in my peripheral vision are still startling during a movie. On the bright side, since the early afternoon screening was quite empty I got one of those two person seats all to myself, so at least I wasn't feeling squeezed in.

ETA: BTW, if you have written or read any fic worth recommending, I'd love to hear about it. I mostly employed selective blindness while following my f-list to avoid spoilers, so I haven't bookmarked anything for later reading.

( spoilers up to 4x10 )

There have accumulated far fewer crossover recs than AU recs since my last recs updates several months ago, so that seemed less daunting.

My Brother's Keeper, by Ducks-in-a-row. Gen. (ca. 9,400 words)
House/Supernatural
Sam is in a coma for supernatural reasons, and Dean clashes with House and his team, all in a way that is a lot of fun to read. I think these mesh quite well because it's not like House's procedures and patient interactions are anything like happens in hospitals, so throwing in zombies does not stretch the House universe of wacky medicine too far.

The Noodle Fic, or Mama Bears Don't Stand Aside, by Tassos. Het, John/Aeryn. (ca. 13,290 words)
Farscape/Firefly
I've followed this as a WIP, and now it is finished and quite awesome. Don't mind the odd title, this is a solid crossover, in which John and Aeryn scrape by post-PKW, and end up working with Mal and his crew because they need a doctor for D'argo.

Bad Pennies, by Troyswann. Gen. (ca. 4,000 words)
MacGyver/Stargate: SG-1
This crossover seems like it could be right out of a MacGyver episode, only better because the SG-1 team is involved.

I forgot about my coffee mug still having a rest in it, and apparently Linus likes coffee. I had to pick him up from balancing on the rim of my mug, lapping it up. Well, at least I got to him before he drank more than a mouthful, because I'm sure caffeine is not good for rats, also these guys really don't need to be any more hyper. As it is they've torn down a whole chunk of my wallpaper recently and are still trying to intermittently investigate the underside of my (glued down) carpet.

trekreversebang
This is a Star Trek (TOS and Reboot) challenge where the art is created first, and then authors write a story inspired by it.

I didn't make a post to promote this directly after I signed up, because I had seen a couple on my f-list, and I did not want everyone to get annoyed at seeing too many promo posts. But just now I looked at the post where anybody can drop by to leave prompts to give artists ideas and provide inspiration, and there has been only one(!) comment so far (and okay the prompts are optional, but still). Clearly this hasn't gotten enough exposure yet. So you should drop by there even if you don't want to sign up as artist or writer, and just throw a couple of ideas out for things you always wanted to see done in Star Trek fanart.

It is really cool how color perception works.

( very short comment, spoilers for House 6x10 )

In case you wonder, I'm not baffled because of the tasty food, but because I encountered this pairing smoosh for McCoy/Scotty for the first time in the wild just now. I'm waiting for the inevitable "Scones & Spork" label on fiction with several pairings. It just makes you to want to eat it up, I guess, which the the boring "K/S, Mc/Sc" of the olden days just can't accomplish.

I'm just never getting used to these, am I?

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex
Media used: pencil drawing, inked with fine liner pens, acrylic paint
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This was my yuletart gift for Mashimero, originally posted during yuletart here. Mashimero asked for fluffy, happy team bonding scenes, and for gen or McShep, so this is a team scene, with very mild McShep cuddling. John, Rodney, Teyla and Ronon are making S'mores.
Preview:
( Image and several high resolution details are behind the cut. )

I finally managed to take a photo of one of my rats while he's yawning, which is the cutest thing ever. Though on photos slightly less so than in RL, because it's the whole motion that is cute.

So last night I saw Leo and Noah yawning (yawns catch among them too), but of course by the time I had my camera they were just plain snuggled up again. Which is also cute, so I photographed that, but then I thought, why not try yawning at them while I have my camera in hand? And this worked. I'm not entirely sure it was due to my yawn, or how well rats can see such things, but I yawned at them, and Leo yawned back, and I got it on photo.
( two pictures, one just Leo and Noah snuggling, one of the yawn )

There wasn't a lot this year, not even if I count all drawbles and icons and such, i.e. I can't even do the meme thing with the squares of one preview picture for every month.

January
a Numb3rs Don and Charlie ratcreature icon

February
Nothing. :(

March
Diricawl (Harry Potter fanart)

April
a fail! ratcreature icon

May
Five drawbles: 1-3, 4, 5
Robin (DC fanart)
Nightwing (DC fanart)

June
an Uhura ratcreature icon
a weird comment doodle for Kass' story Zygote (SGA/Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (but were afraid to ask) fusion fanart)
Star Trek Reboot art meme (Star Trek: Reboot fanart)

July
Nothing. :(

August
Nothing. :(

September
Nothing. :(

October
Nothing. :(

November
Nothing. :(
(I did work on my Yuletart assignment that month, though I only finished in December with an extension)

December
Twelve drawbles: 1-6, 7-10, 11-12
Santa!Cthulhu
and the not yet revealed yuletart art.

This is even less than 2008, and it's not like I was prolific then. I suck. :(

I don't really care much one way or the other about Epiphany caroling for charity. I mean this being a Protestant region it is not done as much, so usually I don't see any, but for some reason the Catholic church kicked of their charity campaign from my city this year. So they got a fair bit of attention. And they certainly manage to collect a lot of money for children's charity projects. But I really wish they would cut out the blackface in the Three Magi costuming.

Fandom: Lovecraft, in a way
Characters/Pairings: Cthulhu
Media used: charcoal, chalk and black pencil on gray paper
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This is a bit late, but I guess technically Christmas season sort of lasts until the 6th, yes? This sketch was inspired by the "Santa Cthuluclaus" LJ v-gift I've seen on other people's profiles, an idea which I found cute, only the clipart looks nothing like Cthulhu, not even the jokey cute renderings, but instead looks like a sad octopus with a santa hat, which for some strange reason is carrying flowers and a pencil. Which is just odd, even if you make a sad octopus stand in for Cthulhu. I've done cute Cthulhus before, but I doodled one with a santa hat this time. You probably shouldn't count on this one delivering any of the presents though...
Preview:
( the finished image is behind the cut )

I am not actually in the "adverbs and adjectives always suck" camp of stylistic advice or anything, but wow, I just tried to read a story in which the overabundance of them threw me right out. I don't think I've ever had that happen before. Not recently anyway.

I counted over twenty adjectives and adverbs in the first paragraph of six sentences with 130 words in total. And that was not including nouns being modified by other nouns in some sort of tacked on thesaurus, like if I wrote "the purple prose, this murky miasma of adjectives,..." I counted only the two adjectives, not the whole mess -- what do you call that kind of construction anyway? (The story didn't do it with alliterations though, I just did that in my example for humor, it was just two nouns, both modified with adjectives, saying the same thing, one after another.) That was even more jarring than the adjectives. The writer should just have settled on one of the two choices.

I haven't drawn any Christmas cards this year, but it's been a month since I last posted photos of my rats looking adorable, so I thought I'd use them for cute and happy content. And that's what online journals are there for after all, inflicting photos of your pets on the world at large. :)

( rat pictures )

I'm so glad that the days will now be getting longer again (in this hemisphere at least). Seven and a half hours of paltry, weak sunlight at best (usually much less with it being overcast) is just not enough.