jen_nsync_landl

My drabbling plans this evening have been pushed aside by the discovery of an under-the-sink leak in my master bathroom. Water's apparently been leaking for some time, as the bottom and back of the vanity are *quite* wet. I've been pitching a lot of ruined things stored under there and trying to suss out exactly what the heck was going on with the pipes. *sigh* Tomorrow morning will begin the great quest to trying to fit getting it repaired into my ridiculous work schedule.

Well, even in severe annoyance, apparently one little drabble has emerged:

Title: Waiting
Setting: S5. A little experiment in POV.
Disclaimer: You know the drill.

I am sleek, powerful, force in motion: I am strength.

I am torn flesh, screams of agony, rivers of blood: I am pain.

I am a product of the evolution of the millennia: I am the face of progress.

I am a fighter of countless battles, a taker of lives, a breaker of glass and stone and brick and bone: I am the face of destruction.

I am anonymous death in cold steel, Armageddon in a hair trigger, and the next time she needs to launch a rocket, I’ll be ready.

Until then, I am waiting: I am death deferred.

Well, my week of freedom draws to a close. I had my parents in town for the holiday (thus the lack of LJ checking of late) and have now seen them off home, which means it's time to get back to the business of ordinary life. I have drabble requests aplenty (yay!), and I do plan to get to work on those this evening.

Until then, I have a little goofy 250-word piece that I hope may buy me some time and perhaps be of special interest to angearia, rebcake, and gabrielleabelle, given certain conversations of late. *g*

Title: Move-in Day
Word Count: 250
Setting: pre-BtVS S4. Buffy's all ready to move into the dorm when Joyce notices a strange object in the back of the Jeep...
Disclaimer: Still not my characters or my profits.

( Read more... )

In the comments of the beer/aspirin drabble series, I jokingly said that I couldn't make up my mind about what to call it, since I'd had so many lovely suggestions, concluding I would simply refer to it as "The Ficlet of Five Titles." Then, in a classic *face*palm* moment, I realized that it was a five-part drabble. You know, meaning that I could actually use multiple suggestions since there are multiple parts. So...

The whole set is "Oh, Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven," but the S4 bit is now deird1's "Headaches and Hangovers," the S5 bit is readerjane's "What Can't Be Cured," the S6 bit is jamalov29's "Beer and Aspirins Are Mixy Things," the S7 bit is readerjane's "Rendezvous in Aisle 3," and the post-NFA bit is rahirah's "Better Living Through Chemistry." :) You can see the whole thing in all of its glory here at AO3.

TA-DA! Thank you, ladies, for your creative input. You may all request drabbles if you so desire. You know the drill: pairing and/or situation, and I'll put something together for you. And do me a favor and let me know if you prefer comedy, romance, angst, etc., as I don't want to disappoint someone wanting angst with a raucous farce involving Xander and a mariachi band from his post-graduation summer. ;)

Oh, which reminds me: yeah, I'm over at AO3. I got in early enough that I snagged the unadorned username Jen. I am the Alpha!Jen, the ideal form of Jen-ness. ;) Actually, the blank rectangle staring me in the face as I set up my profile prompted a minor identity crisis. I know my LJ username suggests a certain...whimsy? Is that too kind? A certain immaturity? I created the name when I signed up on Yahoo!Mail in the late 90s, when my fangirl loves were *NSYNC (call me Captain Obvious!) and Liz and Lucky on GH (thus, the landl), and so I'm rather attached to it. I was in my doctoral program at the time, drowning a bit, and my pop culture passions were keeping me afloat. Now it's a dozen years worth of me online, and so it stays here at LJ and at Yahoo!Mail. But because I thought I might be taken more seriously if I dumped the teen references, I decided on "Jen" for AO3. I'm still musing on what this online username shifting means. How do people come up with usernames? Should they change with the times? *muses*

Still, it's certainly nice to have a place for my fic besides my much-neglected website (which has not been updated since 2006 because I can't ever remember how to use Frontpage - is that what we use, kellicb? See?), and I'm slowly getting stuff posted. And there's lots of great stuff to read there, if you haven't wandered over yet.

louise39 asked for a drabble involving Buffy, aspirin, 7-Eleven, Spike, and beer. I thought about it for 30 seconds or so, and the following idea was born. Not sure at all that this is what you were thinking of, dear, but I just couldn't help myself! Maybe the first is the purest response to the prompt; the next four were my own brilliant idea. *g*

One problem, though - I couldn't think of a title to save my life. I remembered this morning that 7-Eleven's classic slogan is "Oh Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven," but I can't tell if that's the worst title ever, or whether it actually works here. Feedback is most welcome, and whoever comes up with the best title gets...a drabble (or, heck, a drabble series, perhaps!). Help!

( Name this drabble series! )

This week's open_on_sunday prompt is origin. That, naturally, led me to The Trio and Star Trek:

Space, the Final Frontier

A moment to spare between classes and meetings to say that the next time I check in, I will be free! The Thanksgiving holiday break starts for me at 2:00 today, and I have been staggering toward it, topped off by a marathon grading session yesterday that spilled over into this morning (sleep?! who needs sleep?), and freedom's so close now I can almost taste it. Since I'm thankful for all of you, my friends new and old, and since I can't write worth a crap in any format beyond drabbles these days, I offer you this: request a BtVS or AtS (or, hell, even Supernatural, maybe?) drabble, and I shall write it for you! Give me a scenario or pairing, and I will make it so. :) Just comment to get the goods.

Challenge extended!

ETA: It is now 2:00 (w00t!), but feel free to keep the requests coming! I've already got my thinking cap on...

Allow me to shirk my professorial responsibilities just a little bit longer and offer this bit o' drabble foolishness:

Word Play, Part 2

Surely the grading of yet another batch of Crusades papers can be put on hold for a few more drabbles! :)

Last-Minute Research and Word Play

This is what a glass of wine will get you - an insane open_on_sunday entry:

The Man of His Dreams

I'm far too amused by my bizarre take on the open_on_sunday prompt, "wall." Behold my ability to cram my dissertation research into one of these bad boys. ;)

Late Night Diner Talk and Not So Accidental

So apparently the muse is not done with the post-S5 summer just yet. The open_on_sunday drabble:

The Carnival

A few thoughts on the day:

As noted earlier, the fic is done! w00t! It ended up at 2700 words - I have not written 2700 words (for non-academic purposes, that is) in, hmmm, let's see, 4 years, since my last seasonal_spuffy submission, "Something Borrowed," as a matter of fact. Writing basically took over my life for the past four days, and something funny happened during the process. Or, rather, something didn't happen: I didn't work 24 hours a day, and everything that needed to get done actually still got done. Okay, yes, I do have a bit of grading that I pushed off, but it's not the end of the world. Funny, that. It feels like there's a lesson in there somewhere...

Special fic shout-outs: gabrielleabelle doesn't know this, but I actually *have* been reading her posts of late intently and was particularly inspired by her talk a while back about Spike's BtVS journey and her more recent S6 squee. I was nodding vigorously, even though I didn't have time to make with the written "amen"s. It was thinking through some of her comments that "In the Living Season" really began to take shape. I knew vaguely what I wanted to do, but she helped crystallize some important ideas. And alwaysjbj and I had a monster chat session several weeks ago that also set me thinking about the post-S5 summer, so thanks to you as well, dear. And last, but so seriously not least, the fic was in key ways a joint project with readerjane. She lived it with me these last several days, and her comments were rigorous, thoughtful, and full of encouragement, just as I needed. Most sincerest of thanks on our little venture! :) You, lady, are AWESOME!

And if that weren't enough for the day, JJ returned as Lucky on GH. There is really no way to express what *that* means, so the squeeage will have to wait until I find my words. :) I have literally had the L&L love story on permanent loop for the last 12 years, so seeing him was like a dream. I should have known better than to finish my make-up just before the show started because of course I got teary. Yes, I'm just that dorky/hormonal.

I hit 136 on the scale today. That makes 17 pounds down. Even more amazing, I actually did 33 full push-ups during the daily workout. Okay, granted, they were not the best push-ups ever, by any stretch of the imagination, but they were still thirty-freaking-three push-ups. *is strong like Amazon. sort of*

Well, crap - I'm having total icon identity crisis! What to do??? Spuffy default icon to celebrate the completion of the fic, or L&L to celebrate JJ's first day? Okay, it has been 10 years. I think I've gotta go for L&L. If Guza and TIIC screw this up, they will rue the day. And what do I need to do to get them to take Greg Vaughan out of the credits? And removing characters who've been killed off or left the show, like, three years ago would also be a nice gesture. *is puzzled and also still kinda misses Alcazar*

Well, this is it. My seasonal_spuffy posting day is here at last. And, wow, I'm feeling anxious!

Go read, eh?

Pretty please?

In the Living Season

This wanted to be about 500 words, all full of deep S2 Xander reflections, but I beat it into submission and now it is properly drabble-y. Makes me feel all powerful...and kinda headache-y:

Do You Have To?

I've just returned from a conference in Oklahoma - I was too busy trying to *get* out of town to let you all know I was going out of town. *g* Now I'm sitting on a mountain of exams given in my absence on Friday, a ton of preps to do for the forthcoming week, and a whole, big mess of exhaustion and panic. Twenty-two hours in a university van within four days time is just too bloody much!

Anyhoo, I wanted to say hello and to hope that everyone is well. I'll be catching up with you...sometime soonish. ;)

Oh, please, *please*, let the news be true: rumor says that Jonathan Jackson is coming back to GH to be Lucky again. My OTP, after 10 years of general nonsense, bad casting (sorry, Greg, but you are NOT Lucky Spencer, and do not even get me started on Jacob Young!), and idiotic plotlines, shows distinct signs of life. If I get to see JJ emoting on a daily basis again, I will probably keel over dead with joy! Nobody emotes likes JJ...except maybe James Marsters. ;) Ah, the power of a beautiful, emoting man.

w00t, like, to the power of 10!

Sick.

Headache.

Exhausted.

Over-scheduled.

Uninspired.

Ugh.

I decree these things (heard and observed on my recent trip to the restroom in my academic building) to be evil:

1) Spinning the toilet paper roll (and to clarify, I'm talking about spin-na-na-na-spin-na-na-na-spin, etc.) to gather up great wads of forest to wipe a bum.

2) Using a three-foot sheet of paper towel to dry wet hands.

Seriously, are these people living under a rock? I'm not one of the "one square" advocates, but is the use of ANY kind of restraint too much to ask?

/rant