broadcast me a joyful noise

Periapsis by rawles. Lee and Kara and the nature of sociopathy, before and after the end of the world. IT'S EXCELLENT, disturbing and plausible in the best Rawlesian style (see also: Reign Within); what's frightening is how little this AU alters things, in the end.

~

Pursuant to that, I think I have a fic in me somewhere about childhood and adolescence as a game of Mao. About taking an active role in your own operant conditioning, and about becoming fluent in the laws which determine your possibility of success.

(It took me a while to work out how to reconcile a strong desire to be universally liked with the inability to truly register negative emotion, when defining a coherent personality, but I figured it out eventually: someone disliking you is the equivalent of having to pick up a card. You've done something wrong. Work out what it is. You can't please everyone all the time is something of an alien concept; working within structures, basing your social interactions on the idea that there are certain agreed-upon rules, logic dictates that if your actions are appropriate then you will be rewarded. 'Not caring what people think' is a character trait; as such, it must be constructed and developed just like any other, and it takes some time to overcome the years-long association that is: someone's negative opinion = a mistake on your behalf.

And no matter how complex and thorough your understanding of human systems becomes, how automatic and effortless your behaviour, you never quite drop the idea that perfection is achievable. Tailor your game and tailor it again. You'll get there.)

Anyway, I was throwing around the idea of turning all of this into an Azula fic, but then I realised it wouldn't work because Azula never had to learn to act the same as everyone else: she was expected to be different. Her sociopathy was tolerated in some areas and encouraged in others. Her learning of the rules was strictly for the purpose of being the dealer, so to speak; she never had to compete with anyone or learn them in order to survive. She never had to build up her own portrayal of normalcy.

And I've already said what I want to about Dexter.

~

I enjoy Mao enormously, even when I start out blind; it's like life, only easier. And for much lower stakes.

I just realised that as of yesterday it's been exactly two years since I wrote Benevolent Sibling. Wow. That's...a long time :D

I feel like there's a long mushy post to be made here about the BSG fandom and how much fun I had in it and all the awesome people I met through it and how Claira and I are maaaaybe considering a Grand Reunion Tour in the form of another cowritten fic, but I have to go and do some biochemistry reading and some research on breast cancer risk factors before I can sleep, so just pretend I rambled for a long time and said a lot of lovely things about everyone.

*HUGS YOU ALL*

*trudges back to the books*

So my resolution not to read any spoilery BSG reaction posts lasted about 0.0047 seconds.

I WILL HAVE YOU, BSG. COME JULY.

Today I bought a fucking awesome corset to go under my Esmeralda costume and applied for a job at a TEA STORE and tonight I'm going to study my ass off, so I'm feeling quite good about the world. How about you lot?

I promised back when I first wrote this fic that I would write a commentary for it because the sheer amount of references and meta that went into it were worth explaining, but it's taken me over six months to find the time :D And man, did it take time. There was a LOT to talk about.

Feel free to pick out anything you like and discuss it with me further, especially in the light of post-Maelstrom S3 events.

( Here we go! )

I'd forgotten how much I love The Office. Bizarrely, though, it makes me wish I had a job. (You know. Not their jobs, but...employment. Coworkers. Etc.) Of all the S4s that are starting soon (funny how many good shows started four years ago!), I am probably most excited about this one.

Okay, and BSG :D Speaking of, I have been sporadically downloading stuff during the post-VVC festival of shiny things, and I do have a particular rec:

Signal to Noise by keewick. Loosely Lee-centric, but it contains footage from all three seasons, and I love it because it cleverly illustrates the moral ambiguity at the heart of the show; the decisions, and corruptions, the uncertainties of allegiance, the politics and mythology, and the shifting lines of trust and responsibility between the characters. It's a tricky song, too, but the editing suits it beautifully.

I'm not normally one for interviews or commentaries or podcasts or shooting diaries or anything of that nature (for someone who enjoys kicking meta around and cheerfully tearing canons into shreds of symbolism, I am perversely unwilling to have someone else break the fourth wall for me).

That said, Bear McCreary's blog about putting together the BSG soundtrack is always interesting, and this entry about the use of that song in the S3 finale is really fascinating, especially the stuff about how they basically rebuilt the song from scratch using Indian-themed instruments, and the fact that yeah, he originally thought that RDM was going crazy :)

Anyway. Worth a read.

I'm also going to take this moment to declare a semi-permeable state of hiatus, due to a heavy load of academic, work-related and personal stuff at the moment. You know the drill: I'm still reachable by email, but I won't be updating LJ and most likely won't do more than briefly scan my flist.

I am now scrolling through my flist and bookmarking everyone's reactions to the BSG finale by clicking the lj-cuts, covering the screen with my ARM, and squinting over the top of it as I find 'bookmark this page' in the Firefox menu.

This is kind of ridiculous.