Cimorene

Don't you love when some random tidbit makes you go "That doesn't sound right, but I have to go to Wikipedia to disprove it!" so you end up in a wiki spiral about cattle in Viking culture or the separation of West Virginia or the 18th century postal service?

Thanks to one of those moments claiming that Methos was "about as old as civilization", I can now declare with confidence that several Nile valley civilizations considered the precursors of dynastic Egypt existed in the 4th and 5th millennia bce, and while evidence from Mesopotamia is fragmentary, it's known that there were many city states there prior to the first known rulers around 2600 bce. Danubian or Linear Pottery culture dates to around 5500 bce and the oldest known civilization from China, the Jiahu culture, about 7000 bce. There's a Stone Age city in Turkey dating from around 7500 bce, and the Australian Aboriginal culture goes back to at least 50,000 bce.

Methos is about as old as Gilgamesh, though, slightly older, and around the age of cuneiform, which is still the earliest known form of writing.

Behind the cut are links to Deep As You Go by Destina, The Matryoshka Principle by Amand_r, The Declaration by Aristide, Circle Dance by Chris Quinton, and Straight and Low by Esjay. ( Read more... )

I'm using AO3's Export Bookmark function here and they take up a lot of space, so. Cut tag. Behind which are links to Strata by Kat Allison, Zig and Zag by merriman, Exposure by starcrossedgirl, Nothing but the Truth by carenejeans, Still Love by cupidsbow (as Thyme), and Social Graces by MacGeorge. ( Read more... )

I've reread a bunch of SGA fic in the last two days, and every time I'm reminded about Don't Ask Don't Tell and marriage inequality, I get a little jarring moment of 'WEIRD!' Even though I lived through that reality, and that fandom, and the concerns were contemporary at the time!

I was rereading Highlander a bit a couple of weeks ago, and it's set during the period where the AIDS crisis was a thing! (Not that it's relevant to the magically healing characters really, but I guess the movement to make a big deal about condoms & lube was gaining quite a bit of steam around the late 90s to make up for all the years where no lube or condoms in fic was the norm.) Now I'm thinking... does the crisis make an appearance in Sentinel fic, where at least the characters are both human, or is it late enough (and AIDS enough of a downer) that it only appears indirectly, in the form of condom hygiene? I haven't reread a bunch of Sentinel fic in years.

Damn, the new NCIS was good. And not only good, either - I mean, it was partly good acting, and it was partly better writing than usual, because it was really sparkling, and Michael whassname is really good at - you know, impressions, and being a bit of a goof, and comic timing - so I'm sure they wrote the ep for him, just to let him shine, as it were. But anyway, my point is that it wasn't just better written than usual, it was more gay than usual. Like, okay. In graph form,



NCIS is usually about as gay as Highlander, which is to say, amusingly gay, but not necessarily anything that your typical non-gay, non-slash-goggles-wearer would even pick up on; the realm of repeated humourous subtext, but without the intense focus on interpersonal relations, in a bromance way, that you find in Star Trek and the other higher-up shows on the graph (there are plenty of other shows, too, obviously, I just picked big fandoms that spring immediately to mind as benchmarks). It spikes occasionally, especially in s6, with ( spoilers ), but those spikes have heretofore, due to characterisation and camerawork (ie no lovingly lingering shots of the eyefucking, more like you have to notice it happening is a comic aside when the plot is focussed elsewhere), been still mostly at sub-Star Trek levels. Last night's episode was firmly up above Star Trek gayness levels, although still under Due South (it's hard to get as gay as riding off into the sunset together) - more like The Sentinel (other shows at TS's level of gayness: Merlin, Starsky & Hutch from what I have observed).

I keep refreshing my delicious subscriptions looking for episode tags because I'm too lazy to try to write one myself, but you could totally put a really awesome Gibbs/Dinozzo FT fic either directly after the events of the ep, or shortly after like a few days or weeks. Even though my personal canon places that earlier this season.

ETA: If you haven't seen it, go participate in thefourthvine's Scientific Poll on the subject!http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/98874.html#cutid1 & http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/99145.html#cutid1

my parents just emailed me another photo from france! here's wax_jism walking towards the shakespeare & company bookstore. i got more excited to see this than i did by many actual tourist attractions in paris. i hadn't actually realised that it was, er, a real place. ♥

it's sad but true that the "healing cock of the scottish highlands" icon cannot come into being without a good picture of methos in a tshirt, which i definitely don't have.  i'm not even sure there's one to be had.  he's always wearing sweats and sweaters and coats.  (damn the man.)

mace_m, is there a chance of the "gayer than your average gay bar" caps of duncan from "messenger"?

because this is a totally different story but it does the exact same thing with music. i just know that SOMEWHERE out there is a calm, reasoned paragraph about how duncan or methos has enjoyed the evolution of the backstreet boys, or evanescence.

Searching through the ample collection, he stopped on a Nick Cave album. It had been years since he'd last heard Cave; possibly since the time he'd seen Wender's Wings of Desire. Now that wasn't a bad film at all. The image of the singer made him smile. Did the man have a Messiah complex or something? The title intrigued him. Let Love In.here

okay, well, late queen isn't all THAT different from evanescence; it's just consciously, not unconsciously cheesy. with better lyrics. oh queen. ♥ there is ... uh... not THAT much evanescence on my highlander playlist. okay, maybe there is. shut up.

but i really liked that story, a lot. watch me! i'm reccing it. see?

adagio amidst the ashes, by illuferret; d/m, nc-17, post-series. a leisurely, lovely, very peaceful novella from duncan's point of view--my personal favourite mood and flavour in a story, sun-drenched and contemplative, slow and confident and inevitable. solidly, deftly written with some few small weak spots. never overly mushy: incredibly tasteful.

"She said that Duncan was the most handsome man she's ever met, and then she said he had the handshake of a limpet. Why do all these women compare Duncan to fish?"

"Mollusk, darling," he said, but at Gina's dark look he dropped the correction. ( string of pearls by tray--not going on the recs page, although it doesn't suck, because it doesn't go much of anywhere. cute though, esp. that bit.)

here's a story by the same author about witchcraft, which is interesting intrinsically, and amusingly handled. pg i think. deiseil.

and here's a rec that's actually going to make the page.

grace period by tray. d/m, pg pre-slash. other pov--anne lindsay's daughter mary, a teenager. the pov character is good--almost brilliant in spots, the story absorbing and--nice. not at all without tension, but without a big dramatic adventure plot.

eta: hahaha. "Methos doesn't seem to think it's all that important."

"Methos would act unconcerned if purple monkeys flew down from the sky."

"Yeah, okay." (sublimation, pg, a weird-ass gathering story.)