To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Yes, yes indeed the second episode of the tenth season of X-Files is much better than the first one, if only because ( spoilers )

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An AO3 Stats meme stolen from lizbee:

1. Your 3 fanfics with the most comments:
All of these are Yuletide fics, which is unsurprising. I hit the jackpot occasionally with a source that lots of people know, but there isn't much fic for.

"Moves in the Field" (40) - The Cutting Edge, Doug brings Kate to visit Minnesota after the movie, told from Walter's POV.

"My Late Enchantments Still in Brilliant Colors Shine" (31) - Susan Ivanova vs. a technomage.

"The Case of the Missing Martini Olive" (28) - The Thin Man, Nick and Nora banter and fluff.

2. Your 3 fanfics with the most kudos:
Agent Carter fans are very kudos-happy.

"Pigtails and Inkwells" (213) - Thompson pulls Carter's pigtails.

"Necessary" (197) - Thompson helps Carter out of a jam; she goes right on mouthing off at him.

"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" (123) - "'We'? I fail to recall the point at which I was brought into this baby-making enterprise of yours."

3. Your oldest fanfic:
The oldest one I will admit to is a Farscape fractured fairy tale, "Cinder Rocket-Jockey." Featuring Crichton as Cinderella, Rygel as the fairy godmother, and Aeryn as Prince Not-Very-Charming. From all the way back in 1999!

(Speaking of fanfic I will not admit to, oh my god, I wrote my first fanfic twenty years ago this year. TWENTY YEARS.)

4. Your latest fanfic:
"What Happens in San Jose" - Cupid fic for Yuletide. Trevor tags along to Claire's high school reunion as her totally-just-friends date. Things do not go as planned.

5. Your proudest fanfic:
Right now I'm going to go with my China Beach epic, "The Future an Affirmation," or how McMurphy and Richard made a quarter century of marriage work after Vietnam. Told backwards, as a bonus.

6. Your longest fanfic:
Also "The Future an Affirmation," but since I already used that, number two on the list is "Two Musketeers and a Dead Guy," or Fraser and Thatcher take dog sleds through the Yukon to bury Frobisher in a plot from beyond the grave to get them together.

7. Your 3 fanfics with the most bookmarks:
"Moves in the Field" (28), "Necessary" (16), and "Pigtails and Inkwells" (15).

8. Your top 3 crossover fics:
I'm not sure how we're defining top, but these are my favorites. Hilariously, most of my crossovers involve due South.

"To Give Life a Shape" - Benton Fraser, meet your older lookalike Geoffrey Tennant. Geoffrey's going to make you and Thatcher do Shakespeare together until you admit you like each other.

"Monkey Say, FBI Agent Do" - Someone's using inanimate objects with animal faces to talk to Olivia Dunham, and she's going to make Jaye Tyler tell her what's going on.

"Lovers and Madmen (and also Canadians)" - Trevor Hale matchmakes Fraser and Thatcher, with predictably absurd results.

9. Your favourite characters to write in fanfic:
According to AO3, I spend most of my time writing about Susan Ivanova, Benton Fraser, Meg Thatcher, and Michael Garibaldi. No one is surprised. I quite like all of them.

Yesterday during my lesson, I actually managed to center a spin of more than two revolutions. (It was somewhere between three and five; it's hard to count revs while you're in one.) THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. Did I mention I finally found the spin rocker on my blades? (On any blades, for that matter; I never found it on my old ones.) I can feel the drag pick scraping when I spin, which is not ideal but is a hell of a lot better than I've ever managed before, because it means I'm just a millimeter forward of the right spot rather than half an inch behind it.

I just need that to show up for the test on Friday. I didn't get a chance to try and center one out of P's sight because my lesson was at the end of the session, but I'm certainly going to try tomorrow. (Skating reminds me of my struggles with math in K-12. Everything worked perfectly in class when the teacher was there, but the minute I tried to do stuff we'd just done that school day at home, everything went to hell. I grew up practically believing math teachers were magic and I could only really do math in their presence. My skating always improves when I'm in a lesson, even when P is not actually giving me corrections at that moment.)

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I watched Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. I went into it completely blind, purely on the recommendation of a co-worker. Things I was not expecting:

1. The talking raccoon.
2. Lee Pace.
3. Sweet, innocent, adorable Lee Pace as the villain.
4. Lee Pace with his eyebrows covered up (sacrilege!).
5....except I guess on some level you could argue that the makeup department made his eyebrows take over his entire face? But they were still hidden by makeup! Why do you have a Lee Pace and immobilize his eyebrows??

I wasn't impressed with the movie. It felt like it had the structure of a children's movie, with half-hearted attempts at the trappings of an adult movie thrown in at random intervals. Pixar manages to do the "kids movie with some fun bits for the adults," but this was not like that at all. It was awkward and weird.

The tree was cool, though. I liked the tree.

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How much stock should we put in the ever-more-substantiated rumors of an X-Files remake/continuation with Duchovny and Anderson? Part of me is squeeing uncontrollably, while another part is remembering that the second movie was actually not that good, so I have mixed feelings.

Fandom stockings have been revealed! Yay! I received some lovely graphics and recs for poetry and books which look interesting indeed.

I volunteered as a pinch-hitter (pinch-stuffer?) and thus ended up doing more than I thought I would for this fest; specifically, I wrote twelve fics and made one vid. Here's everything I wrote/vidded, with links to the AO3 because it's simpler than chasing down comment threads, especially for those that are broken into multiple comments. (Unless otherwise stated, these are 1,000ish words or fewer. All are, at most, PG.)

Babylon 5
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall for perverseparagon – Londo's life is full of mazes now.

If Equal Affection Cannot Be for rivendellrose – Five poems Marcus Cole knows by heart. One-sided Ivanova/Marcus.

Soldiers for bessemerprocess – In which Susan Ivanova and Olivia Dunham meet in a bar. Angsty and apocalyptic. Crossover with Fringe.

Castle
...In an Elevator for debirlfan – Castle and Beckett, stuck in an elevator. UST.

Murder Most Kindergarten for soobunny – Five-year-old Alexis writes a story. It gives her father cause to worry.

Corner Gas
Baby, Baby for livii – Someone leaves a baby on the steps of the Dog River Police Station. Chaos ensues. Everyone appears, but it's Karen- and Davis-centric. (3,000 words; also at LJ.)

Doctor Who
Second Star to the Right for jenavira – Eight, Charley, and a low-gravity planet.

Follow the Fleet
Side by Side for idharao – Sherry and Bake are having a trying Christmas, but they make the most of it.

Fringe
Soldiers for bessemerprocess – In which Susan Ivanova and Olivia Dunham meet in a bar. Angsty and apocalyptic. Crossover with Babylon 5.

Northern Exposure
I Feel the Sky Tumbling Down for oxoniensis – An alternate explanation for Maggie's vertigo in "I Feel the Earth Move." Joel/Maggie, Ruth-Anne.

The Reality of Experience for juniperphoenix – Roslyn and Cicely share a life lived through books.

Slings & Arrows
All in a Day's Work for wiliqueen – An all-too-typical day for Anna Conroy.

Sea-Changed (vid) for loneraven – A vid about Geoffrey, the theater, and even Oliver. Set to "Full Fathom Five," by Hem, feat. Audra McDonald and Anne Hathaway. 1:30 long, 19 MB Quicktime file.

X-Files
The Heart of Saturday Night for ruuger – "John Doggett requires a cautious, quiet approach, like sneaking up on a bird or squirrel to take its picture." Doggett/Reyes UST.

One of the very greatest things about X-Files fanfic is how much of it there is. I never have to read bad fic just because that's all there is! Now I remember why I loved being in this fandom so much.

However, even in otherwise well-written fics, there are the occasional, shall we say, unusual turns of phrase. Like the following: "[Scully] turned to him, her eyes the color of cyanide."

*sporfle*

...At least it's not "cerulean" yet again?

CAN'T SLEEP. MOTHMEN WILL EAT ME.

(I've seen "Detour," like, four times now, and yet I always remember it as "Tower of office furniture! Raining sleeping bags! Hee!" rather than FREAKY RED-EYED MOTHMEN UNDER THE BED. Those last two minutes are fakeout-topped-with-creepy par excellence.)

Like I said last weekend, I so didn't need to discover that Netflix is currently streaming every single episode of The X-Files. I haven't exactly been watching them nonstop, but I've probably watched a few more than is really good for my productivity.

Mostly I've been watching the humorous ones, like "Humbug," "Rain King," "Jose Chung," etc. (For some reason I really disliked "Jose Chung" when it first aired. Perhaps at 12, I was not sophisticated enough to appreciate POV-reliant stories?) I always forget how quirky--and hilarious--Moose & Squirrel are. Especially Scully! Scully is funny as hell. I think I especially love her "You rebel!" when Mulder rips the page out of the FBI bound periodical in "The Unnatural."

Plus, watching episodes from various seasons all at once makes it really bleeding obvious how close M&S grew throughout the series. I thought Scully in "War of the Coprophages"* was adorable, with her little "No trouble, Mulder *adorable smile*," over the phone when he called her with the nine millionth update on the case. You could practically hear the "Especially not for you. Call me any time! Hint, hint!" she was obviously thinking right there. Awww, so flirty and cute. And then by the sixth season they totally have this settled, old-married-couple vibe going on (and not just in "Arcadia"). Despite the fact that CC couldn't plot his way out of a paper bag (I will NEVER get over the "beams of starlight" thing), he had a deft hand with character development. So did GA and DD.

I went on a screencap search recently (and found the cap for my icon--hee!). I found other things, too, some of them more horrifying than fluke monsters or detachable conjoined twins. I know there were unforgivable hair and fashion disasters for both of them, especially Scully, because early 90s businesswear was a cruel mistress,** but I didn't think it was possible to make Mulder look quite this bad. The hair would be awful enough on its own. Add in that ugly tie and the pastel stripes on the shirt, and just...wow.


* "Her name is Bambi?"

** Although I totally dig the flannel many of the guest stars seemed to wear when they still filmed up in Vancouver. My personal fashion concept as a teenager could pretty much be summed up in "flannel shirts and high-waisted baggy jeans," so it has sentimental value.

Oh, MY. I don't know why JMS decided to do a parody of The X-Files on his show. It doesn't really seem like something they would have time for, trying to save ten billion people from a plague and all. And yet...I'm kind of glad he did, because that was pretty hilarious. RIDICULOUS, but hilarious.

(The premise of this episode was that there is an alien Mulder and Scully hunting down aliens and conspiracies, and humans are the aliens with an agenda. No, really. Alien Mulder and Scully. Who, given the way she kept clinging to his arm, are obviously going the same route ours did. They have an office, and they use cell phones. Their office window has a "Y" in masking tape on it. There is even a cigarette-smoking man. Plus the non-visual stuff: Durkani ["Duchovny"?] rambling on about how the truth is out there and he trusts no one, Lyssa being a non-believing scientist whom he eventually convinces, etc. etc. Oh, and they went for the green time/location title, but they got the font wrong, so it looked a little weird. Good effort, though!)

And damned if I didn't like the explanation/ending to this episode more than I did the actual series.

I think whatever's in Gideon's apocalypse box is at least part Vorlon. I guess that would've been addressed if the series had continued. Too bad.

- Even after eleven years and resolution of the storyline, "Memento Mori" is no less heartbreaking. :(

- "Bad Blood" is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I don't think I've ever seen it before, actually, which is a travesty that has now been remedied. ("Large intestine, 829 grams...yadda-yadda...") And Brent Butt was the coroner! Hee!

- "Milagro" is a lot creepier than I remember it being. Like, a whole whole lot. (Of course, pretty much the only thing I remember clearly from it the first time around is "Agent Scully is already in love." What can I say, I had a one-track fannish mind as a fifteen-year-old.)

- And "Beyond the Sea" was pretty damn creepy, too. Of course, Brad Dourif kind of embodies creepy, so perhaps that was to be expected. Still. *shiver* Although possibly the creepier bit was Mulder continually calling Scully "Dana." Although I did enjoy her little "WTF?" reaction each time he did it. (And awww, it's Hammond!)

- "The Host": Fluky! I knew I remembered that episode from something. Heh. Although I think the real monster in that episode was whoever gave Scully a haircut that included bangs. Wow, mistake.

Hmm. The only things I'm getting from those eight episodes as a unit are: psychics and psychic crimes, creepy men who like Scully, and Scully-is-an-emotional-punching-bag. I have a sudden fear that everything in the movie will turn out really, really badly for her. Please let me be wrong about that. (I am in fact going to brave the crowds and go to an early afternoon showing tomorrow, in hopes that most other viewers will be at work and not the theatre. Wheee!)

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In other news, has anyone else heard iTunes's single of the week for this week? Anyone else think this girl is the spiritual lovechild of Björk and Tim Burton? I like it, but wow, if you told me it was a Björk song, I would totally believe you.

Now that the new X-Files movie is only a month from coming out, I'm starting to get veeeery excited about it. I spent about an hour tonight checking out the responses to a recent MSR vid challenge. From what I've seen so far:

Here's a cute, funny little vid.

And this is rather cool; it's clips in air-date order over the entire nine years, using an acousticy-sounding version of "Walking After You." (Remember in middle and high school, when we all made up little personal Mulder/Scully fanmixes which included that song, half of Sarah McLachlan's oevure, and bits and pieces from The Cure*? ...just me, then?) I realized in watching it that, wow, Scully's hair was almost as terrible as her wardrobe in the early seasons, and as she used progressively less hairspray, she looked progressively better. Also, bangs are a Really Bad Idea on her.

I hear also that in preparation for the movie, they're releasing an eight-episode DVD set with episodes Chris Carter considers essential for understanding the film. They are ( cut for those who don't want even the titles )

* Bonus points if, even now, hearing something by Savage Garden immediately makes you think of Paris/Torres on the strength of "To the Moon and Back." Ohhhh, I am so dating myself right now.

"Humbug" was on Skiffy this afternoon, and I happened to catch the second half of it. I always forget how funny XF was--before it started sucking, anyway--in addition to how creepy. And the camera work was really quite good, at least in this episode; I loved the sequences in the funhouse and Scully's interview with the deformed curator. Also, Michael J. Anderson was in it! I love him! (And heh, he played a manager here too.)

One day, I need to sit down and rewatch the whole series.

(Oh, and read fic. Hmmm. Anyone got recs, or a favorite recs list/site?)