"Do not meddle in the affairs of slashers,
for you are cute and go well with other men."

Me? I'm boring, I promise. Keep reading, and I'll prove it.

But anyway...

I have been a Trekkie pretty much forever. (I started to say that I was a Trekkie before it was cool -- but, yeah. Guess it's never been cool.) I've fallen irrevocably in love with Sulu and Chekov -- both individually and as a pair -- and have found that I've gotten rather absorbed in (please read, "obsessed by") my "Both Ways/Sestina" 'verse. But hey -- we all have our little quirks, and that's one of mine. (There are more where that came from.)

I've also been into slash and fanfic since before I knew there even were such things -- God help me, I used to write "Hogan's Heroes" and "Man from U.N.C.L.E" fanfic in elementary school.

I also love Harry Potter -- and have, in fact, been introduced to the joys of Harry/Draco slash. (Ginny WHO?)

So far, I've only gotten up the nerve to write for "Star Trek," but I'm kind of all over the place with what I read. (Harry Potter, Torchwood/Doctor Who, House, Sherlock Holmes in any book/movie/TV incarnation, even old West Wing stuff. Like I said -- all over the place.)

About that: This summer, Sherlock Holmes has consumed my BRAIN. Not BBC "Sherlock," but the original 19th-century Arthur Conan Doyle 'verse. It's just gorgeous, and honestly slashy as anything -- as poor Watson (in the real stories) is so obviously in love with Holmes that it'd be sweet if it weren't so sad (for Watson and his wife). Thank goodness for fanfic so that we can fix the "unrequited" part of his problem for him...

Sometimes I end up in fandoms with which I'm not all that familiar in "real life," just because I stumble across an author whose work is just so darned intriguing. (You're over here reading my profile because I've put you on "alert" and you have no idea why, when I've never reviewed you? So now you know; even if I'm not knowledgeable enough write an intelligent review of your work, you're still awesome, OK...?)

Like I said, I enjoy reading a lot of the stories out here -- I'm usually reading when I ought to be writing -- and I try to review whenever I can. If I think a piece is awesome, you bet you'll hear from me.

If I think it's laughably bad, or if I've looked at my computer screen and said, "You have got to be kidding me -- that is SO STUPID," then you won't hear from me -- because I probably wouldn't be able to convince you to change anything, and there's no use hurting your feelings.

I'm sure there's a ton of really good het out there, but when it comes to my taste in stories I like to read -- I have to say that I'm pretty much all about the slash. This is amusing if only because I am very, very straight in my own "real life." So, go figure.

That said, I can't even begin to read ANYTHING with mpreg.

Repeat after me, children: Unless you are writing a fic about SEAHORSES, the male cannot become pregnant. They do not have eggs to be fertilized. They do not have uteri or any other nice little sterile enclosures in their bodies in which to gestate another life, nor do they have a means to nourish another growing life form. They just DON'T. Moreover, on the rare occasion when I do hold my nose (figuratively) and try to read such a story, they inevitably trot out the most gruesomely trite cliches about pregnant women and use those on the pregnant male. There truly aren't words to appropriately express the scorn and loathing I have for that entire sub-genre of slash. I don't care if you're my favorite author on the planet -- you write mpreg, I will not read it.

In that vein -- if you're going to write slash with two guys, please don't make one of them act like a badly-cliched woman (weepy, clingy, dependent, needy -- you know) unless the character you've chosen is like that in canon as well. If one of the characters is written as essentially a woman with a penis, it's not only bad slash, it's bad het, too.

I am equally creeped out by any piece wherein an OC is the love interest (bleeaah). I also mostly won't read pieces that start with summaries wherein the authors tell us that they suck at "summeries." They also suck at spelling.

I don't mind angst in stories, but insist upon happy endings. Because I just do. I can find plenty of tragedy in the actual world, thanks. (BTW, if you want to interpret that as me saying that I insist upon happy endings in my own work as well, feel free to do exactly that.)

I shudder when I read someone using "orbs" as a synonym for "eyes." And yes, I know. You feel as though you're getting repetitive, and it's hard to write any decent relationship stuff without talking about eyes a lot. But seriously, kids. NOBODY uses that word. I mean, really -- "Let me get my sunglasses -- the light is making my orbs hurt."

Well, okay -- Lord Byron uses that word. But he died in 1824. So... yeah.

Are you still reading this? Really?

Personally, well -- I love to sing, and pretty much do so at all times, whether I'm meaning to or not. Music is mostly what I do with my spare time -- when I'm not writing my random nonsense. And it turns out that spare time is something I don't have nearly as much of as I'd like.

I also am an enormous history dork. You name it -- if it happened a long time ago, I'm probably interested.

Shakespeare is my homeboy.

I've never met a foreign language I didn't like -- I've just started learning Italian, and can tell you all kinds of useful things. Like, "The boy/girl/man/woman is walking/running/swimming/eating/drinking/sleeping/reading/writing." Or any one of those people might be driving a car (or in the case of the children, not driving a car.) Let's just say I'm not planning on taking Tuscany by storm anytime soon...

I'll read almost anything I can get my hands on (though Jane Austen is my favorite author EVER -- and I'm still refusing to read "Twilight," just on general principle), and I am just a horrific Spelling/Grammar Nazi.

My biggest pet peeves:

= Right here. Here's the killer. You LOSE something, not LOOSE it. (Of course, if you lose it because it fell off due to being loose, that could be another story.) But seriously -- that one bugs me so much that sometimes I have to stop reading the entire piece when I run into it. It is my version of nails on the chalkboard. (And yes. You can "loose" Rapunzel's golden tresses -- or a volley of arrows -- or a pack of hounds. But how often do you encounter that verb in day-to-day writing? Not often. Most of the time if you see "loose" used as a verb, it's because someone meant "lose," and misspelled it. So, seriously -- I forget who jumped my case about this particular omission on my part, but get over it.)

Told you I was a Grammar Nazi.

Your/You're really shouldn't be that tough for people.

It is spelled DEFINITELY.

If you spell it "defiantly," it will indeed make it through spell check -- but then it means that someone/something is defying someone/something else, and is a completely different word.

Punctuation is important. Really. Can't end a sentence without at least a little bit of it.

QUOTATION MARKS DO NOT END A SENTENCE. DO YOU HEAR ME?

I had to stop reading what seemed to be a reasonably decent story the other day because of dialog like this:

"Spock, I'm sorry"

"It is quite alright captain"

Quick -- can anybody tell me what these quotes needed?

Yes! Periods!

Because otherwise the sentence doesn't end

And that looks weird

And if I add quotation marks at the end it really doesn't look much better"

Just... GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH. Makes my orbs hurt just to LOOK at quotes like those.

And, in case you haven't already dismissed me as a nit-picking crackpot, here's more...

One does not "reign" something in. One, in fact, "reins" something in.

Difference? Kings and queens reign over their countries.

When your horse is out of control, you use the reins to get it back to where you want it. When that happens, you say that you have "reined in" the horse. You're only going to reign if you're actually the monarch of a sovereign nation, like, say, Sweden or something...

Taut/Taught/Taunt:
If you mean that something is tight, it is taut.
If someone is receiving instruction from someone else, they're being taught.
To insultingly mock something/someone is to taunt.

I was reading a fic recently about a guy's "taught" stomach muscles, leading me to wonder
a)who had been able to teach them, and
b)exactly what the muscles had learned as a result.
It made me want to taunt the author who wrote the story...

And I am getting SO FREAKING SICK of people saying "discrete" when they actually mean "discreet."

Yes, of course they're both words. However:

Discreet: Marked by, exercising, or showing prudence and wise self-restraint in speech and behavior; circumspect.

Chances are excellent that this is the word you want, and not...

Discrete: constituting a separate entity : individually distinct.

So, yeah... that's probably as much as you want to know for now.

I told you I was boring.

o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*

Here's something new -- for me, at least. I've been introduced to the wonderful world of fan video. (Well, yeah -- I've been watching them forever, but now I've figured out how to make them, sort of.)

If you're so inclined, here's a link to my Kirk/Spock vid, "Waiting For My Real Life to Begin."

What can I say -- it's a first try. If you watch it, let me know what you think! XOXO