Once upon a time, a ball-in-space went through a long time not talking to other balls-in-space. After they started talking to them again, there was a big fight with the people from another ball. They beat them. After this fight, they picked a fight with another one with their closest ball and beat them, too. But it did not go all well, and the top man in the fight had to go away for a long time.

The top man then met a woman on a new-to-everyone ball-in-space. They are stuck in the middle of another big fight, but eventually are able to get married. There is a book about this.

They have a son, who has problems in his body because of yet another fight when some people tried to kill him and his parents. There is a book about this.

Then the son grows up and becomes a person-who-fights-for-a-living and has many exciting things happen. He even finds out he has a man-who-is-exactly-the-same-as-him that he did not know about. There are a lot of books about this.

Eventually he stops being a person-who-fights-for-a-living and becomes a person-who-tries-to-find-the-truth-for-a-living because he got too sick to fight-for-a-living and then lied to his top man about being sick. This is a big problem and so he can't go fight people in space today or ever. There is a book about this.

He meets a woman on the ball-in-space from that second fight, but she's from the ball-in-space he is from. She is married, but it's okay, because she leaves her person-she-is-married-to and then he dies anyway. She has a kid, also. There is a book about this.

And then the the man and the woman date, but there are a lot of problems. It's okay, though, because they get over them. There is a book about this.

And then they have more exciting things happen to them, and those are more books, too.

There is even a book about the man who is the father's mother's sister's son's son of the man who is no longer a person who fights for a living. In it, he gets married, too.

A lot of people get married and a lot of things are made-broken-with-fire-and-loud-sounds in exciting ways. This is the story of this long story that is in many books.

Oh, and there is also a book about people-with-four-arms and a ball-in-space that does not have any women on it. Those are also in this long story that is in many books, too.

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Methos is in his bedroom.

Methos is in his bedroom.

Methos is in his bedroom.

In an effort to get out from under the thumb of his step-father, Charles chooses to become a courtesan for several minor nobles in King Erik's court. It is not long before he attracts the eye of the young king, and the Cardinal who holds the young king's ear. Charles spends months working to secure his place as King Erik's favorite and to regain his father's title of Merchant Prince. Charles hopes to disprove the old adage that once you enter the king's bed, you have nowhere to go but down.

A historical AU with alpha/omega dynamics (no heat). Not nearly as dark as the warnings might make it sound.

The mark of the omega was a gift, one which Arthur had ignored for the sake of the succession. Now his omega had come to claim his birthright.

The Prince of Wales at his school. Merlin was sure it was all just a very bad joke. A modern royalty AU.

1. Trust Falls. For maryling. (Knitting, Not A Fandom #1)


2. The Worst Things In Life Are Hideously Expensive (Or Maybe That's The Best Things?) For adaptationdecay. (Ghost Soup Infidel Blue, Not A Fandom #2)


3. Confessions Of A Blue Marble. For cake. (Solar System Anthropomorphic; Not A Fandom #3)


4. I Kissed A Girl Won't Change The World. For thefifthcircuit. (Lizzie Bennet Diaries, actually a fandom! It's also a modern AU of Pride and Prejudice, so maybe this counts as two fandoms?)


5. Among The Women (We Come And Go). For ladymercury_10. (Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, also a fandom!)


6. The Raven King Does Yuletide. For kaesa. (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell/Ghost Soup Infidel Blue, wherein a character from a fandom that does exist writes in a fandom that doesn't exist.)

It began, as did so many bewilderments small and large, with a declaration by Captain Carrot.

THIS IS BRILLIANT AND AMAZING!!! It's like you read my mind, author. ♥ All the little bits here, I love them so much! Especially this:

"Well, once word went out in The Ankh-Morpork Times it all rather cascaded*. We thought it was important to involve some of the more traditional dwarfs as well as the progressives, to show that there's a whole spectrum of being female - that it's not just about dressing and acting in certain way, but about claiming the word for yourself, even if it's only in your head."

YES YES SO MUCH! One thing I've been disappointed about in the canon was "being female = skirts and makeup and such", as if you can't do one without the other and one requires the other.

Okay, and not to be quoting the entire fic back at you, but also this SO MUCH


"As I say, sir, I thought it was important for those of us who still follow traditional dwarf practises to join the guild as well, to demonstrate that claiming a statement of gender doesn't necessarily have to mean abandoning the old ways."

"And you're stating that you're... female." Well. Dwarfs did things differently, didn't they? And Carrot... Carrot did things very differently. Vimes rallied. Halfway. "Will there need to be, erm... pronouns?" He wasn't sure how well the city as a whole would cope with pronouns, though if anyone could get the people of Ankh-Morpork blushing and stammering apologetically every time they messed up, it was Captain Carrot.

"Oh, no, sir." Carrot looked slightly alarmed. "That's a bit... drastic, don't you think? I mean, I know some of the women feel it's an important part of femaleness, but, er-"

"You'd rather... assert your right to be acknowledged as female by not doing anything traditionally associated with being female," Vimes said.

The captain radiated relief. "Yes, that's it exactly, sir."

I am all asquee. Thank you so much!!!

"Carrot's a dwarf. And, as a dwarf, she doesn't see why being a woman is any kind of problem."

Sometime in the thirteenth century, Thomas of Dundale and William of Lanchester quarreled with the Raven King over the resurrection of Henry Barbaratus, the son of a traitor.

"Does it bother you to work with alphas? ...I mean because you're an omega."

"Does it bother you to work with men?" Jim asks guilelessly. He widens his eyes innocently. He's dropped his usual accent in favor of Sebastian's, making everything he says sound uncomfortably over-familiar. "I mean, because you're a homosexual."

But outside the week or so surrounding Jim's heat, only one in every twelve or thirteen, he looks and smells and tastes just like any other man and a part of Sebastian forgets that he's an omega. He's just another bloke, one that Sebastian works for and fucks and sometimes wakes up with.

He can't forget it now.

He looks at Jim and his eyes are drawn to Jim's belly, to its slight curve and the protective caress of his fingers over it. There are moments now where Jim looks peaceful, content. Those are the moments where Sebastian looks at him and sees, omega.

• 12-12-12! What an awesome day to get married and/or do something where you'll want to remember the date in the future. I didn't do anything interesting, but it's the spirit of the thing.



• I really should just stop posting that I've done stuff IRL. Because I ended up closing the savings account and getting a different phone (MyTouch slide). Because, you know. Stuff.



• Okay, well, no. I closed the savings account because it was not worth it; I couldn't do deposits through an ATM and had to transfer money in electronically, which defeated the purpose, and also I coudln't export the transactions to Excel in any meaningful form, so had to construct the history table in my records by hand. One of them by themself might have been managable, but two of them together, just not worth it. I mean, all a savings account is these days is a checking account you can only make a limited number of withdrawls from. If I can't just drop money in there when I have some spare cash, and if it's a headache to keep track, then what's the point? So I closed the account and I haven't opened a new one yet; I'm still deciding if I will. It seems places that do cheap banking do not seem to offer deposits through ATMs? Sigh, whatever. I'm continuing to dump money into investments (do not ask me for my opinions about this, giving money to wall street is basically the same as throwing it away, and oh, I really hate gambling, I hate it a lot, and I really hate how tempting the idea of but how hard could it be? is, because you cannot beat the house, the house always wins, and I know this, and yet I am still goddamn tempted, wtf self), and until then am just using my checking account as essentially long term storage for money I don't want to risk losing. This is probably not tenable over the long run, but we'll see.



• And as for the phone, I really did like the Blackberry, especially in the way you could modify all the settings and change everything, double plus good! Except I couldn't get out to use the internet, it was such a headache. So I got the MyTouch slide, which has an even better keyboard and can use the internet, but the downside is that it's much less modifiable, which bothers me. There are some apps built in that open when you turn on the phone and you can't easily turn them off, and whenever I use a thing to force them to close, they open right back up again. I have got to find a way to uninstall these goddamn things. But until then, I have a phone I can do internet on! Which is good because apparently this is the week for blackouts. Yes, plural. Fuck the universe. There is not sarcasm enough in the world to explain how thrilled I am about this.



• In other news, I lasted 10 episodes into Once Upon A Time! Go me! It wasn't exactly a fail out (although there were things in the show I was annoyed by), it was just that, after 10 goddamn episodes, can you please stop introducing characters and get to the meat of the story? *turns off episode* Anyway, my one big (and possibly only) take-away from the show is: Ginnifer Goodwin is hot.



• Also blah blah blah true love blah blah blah biological families rule blah blah blah true love blah blah blah magic blah blah blah repetition blah blah blah true love. And Ginnifer Goodwin is v. v. v. hot. I feel like that last part is the only memorable part of it, which, um, yeah. I did want to like the show, it just didn't grip me all that much. Alas.



• In yay news: I'm really liking Kill The DJ off of Green Day's (first) new CD, so much it's been on endless repeat the last couple days. The rest of the CD is great too, definitely love Let Yourself Go. I guess the thing about this and 21st Century Breakdown is the question of "how the hell do you follow American Idiot", to which the answer is basically "um, you don't". This stuff is very much Green Day, which I love, because I love Green Day. But I guess the other way they could have gone was to keep trying to chase American Idiot and I'm sort of glad they didn't. American Idiot was this amazing hit that was the confluence of right time, right plce, right message. Trying to chase that probably would've been a bad idea. And yet, I do kind of wish stuff from their CDs since then have been as memorable, if not iconic, as American Idiot. Not to call this stuff forgetable, but... ugh, I don't have words today. I guess what I mean it: I like this stuff, but it's really not American Idiot. But that's okay, because I should stop expecting it be. Well, not expecting. Hoping, perhaps.



• My brief, oh so brief, hope was that I could get the Methos thing done and posted by/on my birthday, but then I looked at a calendar and went "...yeah, no." Sigh. We'll see.



• Ugh, my mood. I think I'm going to need to cut back on blog following again. The big hazard of political junkie-ism is this overwhelming feeling of futility, that you are screaming into an abyss and no one even admits the abyss exists, let alone that they can hear you. And reading blogs reminds me that I'm not the only one screaming, which makes it worse, because so many people screaming, and no one gives a fuck. ...tl;dr, I'm still depressed? I don't even know. What kind of effects does this shit have on people who aren't depressed? Anyway, yes, I should probably cut back. But on the third or fifth or ninth hand, it's not like not-reading a bunch of blogs will make me any less upset that we don't have a single-payer health care system that everyone can use, and that apparently our elected repsentatives want to utterly destroy the healthcare systems we do have. Because freedom and stuff.



• FUCK THIS SHIT, IT'S NOT SPENDING MONEY, IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING INVESTMENT. YOU ALL WORSHIP BUSINESS, YEAH? WELL, LEARN WHAT AN INVESTMENT IS. THE MOST IMPORTANT RESOURCE A COUNTRY HAS IS ITS PEOPLE. YOU NEED TO FUCKING INVEST, YOU WORTHLESS PIECES OF CRAP, AND BELIEVE ME, I HAVE IBS, I KNOW FROM CRAP.



• ALSO EVERYTHING COSTS MONEY. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS A SURPRISE. THINGS COST MONEY AND NOT EVERYTHING WILL MAKE A PROFIT. IN FACT, NOT EVERYTHING *SHOULD* MAKE A PROFIT. SHIT IS EXPENSIVE AND COMPLICATED AND HARD: DO IT ANYWAY.



• In conclusion: I think I need a nap. And a country with better infrastructure. And a working legislature. But not a pony. I'll have a cupcake instead.

• Heaven Forbid by The Fray is, oddly, a Methos song.


• One day, I really should break up with the Rule of Three. Today is not that day. Tomorrow is not looking good either.


• It's a good thing this fic never had a point other than "wow, Methos sure is Methos, isn't he?", because otherwise, I would say it lost the plot a long time ago. As it is, though, it has thoroughly lost the point. Good thing the point is just "no, really, Methos is Methos" because otherwise, goddammit.


• This thing has been moved around and cut up and fucked with so much that it doesn't have section breaks, it has SCARS.


• My favorite line that I absolutely refuse to cut: And you have just done it again. You are Methos: you stab your enemies in the back once, but your brothers twice.


• My favorite line that might end up cut: Careful, you think. That's how you die.


• In short: Methos. Goddamn, fucking, dear lord what is that thing, also will you ever make sense, also also why are you contradicting yourself within the span of two sentences... Methos.


• TWO AND A HALF YEARS AND STILL NOT PRESENTABLE.

The one where they do porn.

• So, unless things change, by which I mean I get an amazing bunny or something, I'm not planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year.


• The thing is, on the one hand: 'you won last year, what do you mean you're not going to try again it this year? Haven't you ever heard of momentum?' But the other hand is: 'hey, remember how you won NaNo last year? Whatever happened to that fic?' Exactly.


• Also, I will be a total emotional wreck for, um, let's just estimate the first 7 days of November. Potentially longer, of course. So there's that as well. Do not make plans when you know you will be a mess of nerves, especially when this election could get dragged out. (I remember 2000. I am still bitter about 2000. This is not news.)


• So the essential plan right now is: in November, I will be conducting Not National Revise Last Year's NaNo Month. Plus writing Yuletide and also plus some bonus political emotionality.


• To recap: when we left last year's NaNo, it was a 50K mishmash where Laisa and Delia meet, start dating, Simon gets de-chipped which causes ImpSec nervousness and Komarran repercussions, Duv gets arrested and cleared and then quits ImpSec, Donna gets legally declared a man (oh my god, I do not know what I am going to do about pronouns for Donna, I can make the case so many different ways, it's not helping), and we end off slightly hopeful and onwards towards jetting off to Komarr and stuff.


• Things it needs: a lot.


• It has a basic structure, but right now I have some scenes from both POVs, or one POV overlaps the end of the other, and things are basically all over the place in terms of scenes that are where and otherwise.


• Things that need to be decided: what story am I telling. And then cut it down. It's possible this could go from 50K to 30K easily by taking out everything that doesn't fit this story.


• The question of what story, and whose story, is somewhat complicated. On the one hand, it's Delia's and on the other hand it's Laisa, and on another hand, it's Duv's, and a case could really be made to add Olivia as a POV character, in which case it also becomes her story.


• Which is a long way of saying: I need to decide if this is a story about Komarr or about Barrayar.


• Because it's kind of two stories. It's about Delia (and her sisters) and being Koudelkas and growing up prole among all the Vor and sort of being honorary Vor. It's about changes to Barrayar. It's about Delia being the first one to go to college, about using the way she looks to her advantage, about strategies that take advantage of the male-female imbalance. It's a story about change and about power. And there's also Olivia/Donna slinking its way through it, which is also about change and about power and subversion and everything like that.


• And it's also about Komarr and how Komarr fits in with Barrayar (spoiler: not very well), and about why some Komarrans like Barrayar and prefer it, and all the ways they don't. It's about how Duv is wrong about Komarr, and why, and I kind of think the strongest parts of the fic are the Laisa and Duv bits, because they're arguing back and forth about some really important things and about selling out and why Duv did what he did and about Duv's biases and about "back home" and, I mean, Laisa argues Duv into realizing he needs to go back home. Yes, you can go home again, but no one ever promised you it would be easy.


• It's not really, though, Delia and Laisa's story, despite that that's how it's constructed. If you think about the usual plot chart, that's not really being followed for Laisa/Delia romance. If anyone, that's being followed for Laisa and Duv friendship. Which is not desirable if this is Laisa/Delia.


• But possibly this comes down to a question of plot and drivers-of-such. I've stolen the plot from Memory and so Haroche's treason is a major driving force of the plot and yet Haroche shows up long enough to arrest Duv and that's it. Haroche is barely a character; he's a force of nature, and the tidal waves are the plot. The Laisa and Duv stuff starts out fine, but then gets driven by stresses caused by Haroche, and then comes to a head when Haroche arrests Duv. Yeah, I think this is really making the case that this fic needs to be Laisa&Duv. But but but... I don't know.


• Laisa and Delia have frictions, but they don't have conflict. The conflict is Laisa and Duv, but that is potentially just a factor of the fact that Duv kept giving me word count.


• On the Nth hand, however, shouldn't the fact that Duv is the one who keeps giving me word count tell me something? If this fic wants to be Duv focused, fighting it is not going to make it be something it's not. It's just going to splatter and collapse.


• So perhaps the question is: is this fic Laisa/Delia, or is it just that I want it to be that way?


• Considering that this is, supposedly, femslash, I am loathe to break that up, though. But on the other hand, the romance is the weakest part, and it's barely there. (Writing falling in love = hard). This could be changed to Laisa/Delia friendship fic without any serious problems.


• If I do switch to friendship, would need to figure out what to do about Gregor/Laisa.


• I do like the Gregor in this, though. This is Gregor without the Dues Ex Laisa: he's 35 and unmarried and aware of all the problems, and he is totally willing to let the Vorrutyers try to hang themselves by playing games with inheritance because Let's See What Happens. He's sort of a spymaster of the spymasters in this, which I like.


• There's also some minor threads running through it, which should just be yanked out and done something with somewhere else, like Kou and Racozy and Simon and "who are when we're not Aral Vorkosigan's men", and then Kou deciding to do Vor Patronage to Duv (also Allegre's trying to do that, too, but I wrote that fic already). There's also a Duv rant that does not belong there, but could possibly find refuge with wherever I jotted down Allegre's Thoughts On Fast-Penta and turn into something creepy and dark, which could be fun.


• I am kind of liking the idea, which isn't actually in the fic as it stands, I think, of marrying Gregor to an actual prole (Laisa doesn't count, she's a Komarran oligarch). But then it would become Not This Story, and I'm already trying to write too many stories at once.


• I suppose a case could be made for doing something different. I have totally already written Barrayar stories, a ton of them. I have fewer Komarr stories, and they're all Duv, I believe. I could make this exclusively Laisa POV, tighten the focus on her completely. That way, I also wouldn't be giving up the Bechdel-pass-first-scene.


• But I don't know if I have enough of Laisa. I would need a second main character, and that's currently Delia, and I'm playing off the differences and similarities, which works, but there's no tension in it without bringing in the Memory plotline and this also brings in Duv. And in no way shape or form do I want to get rid of Duv, but he is kind of taking over this fic, so either I need to cut him down or make him a third main character, and now I am back right where I started, so that's not much of a help.


• Alternatively, it could be heavily Komarr, and focus on Laisa and Duv. Their friendship is complicated, what with Duv being the evil collaborator and ImpSec and all. And there's a lot of fun to be had there, with some good conflict and friction, even without ImpSec's Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal.


• Or I could keep it all just the way it is and see if I can flesh things out. The romance really is the weakest part, sadly.


• Potentially, I could just split it up, maybe. Tell two concurrent stories in the same time-frame and universe, one of them being the Koudelkas and the other being the Komarrans. So this way I could actually keep the problem POV scenes, because it would be in both fics but as different POVs. This could also scratch the itch I've been having to write a fic where I show the same events from different POVs, where it's not the same story over and over again, because the story is in the POV. Same events, different POVs = different story. So I could try that.


• Um. So my lesbian epic might become two gen fics. I don't even know.


• No matter, the first step probably is, figure out how to best turn all these scenes into a story. The best parts are the beginning and the ending. Theoretically, I could cut all the stuff up until the party of doooooom (in this case, celebrating the end of the Pretendership) and just start at Duv's arrest. I don't know if what I'd lose is worth it for what I'd have to do to keep it. I could throw in right in the middle of the preparations, set the stage of the AU, and then roll with it.


• If I do that, there is no actual reason to go AU wth Gregor/Laisa, true. But I'd rather not rewrite canon in this case, especially because I am totally keeping Duv leaving ImpSec.


• Um, in which case, I do need the lead-up to him deciding to do it.


• Oh, ffs. Whose story is this anyway.


• (If the answer does end up being: 'Duv And His Problematic Bullshit', well, it's not like I'm not predictable. Perhaps this will end up as five fics...)


• ...Which is not actually a terrible idea? Maybe? Delia's story and Laisa's story and Duv's story and Olivia's story and maybe even Gregor or Kou's story. Because why try to write one fic when you could be indecisive and write all of them?