Shut Up, and Let Me See Your Jazz Hands

Still working at Atwoods, with the bonus of a raise, possibility of promotion (even though it's partially because someone I liked got fired), and the return of the best discount ever. We had it for the holidays and it made them so much money that they brought it back until somebody abuses it; they take what they paid, add 10% profit, and we get everything else off. I'm getting shirts for $2.50, it's awesome.

And hey, remember when I was all, I want some Simon/Ronon and then got it? Twice? Just found more. The internet rocks.

Back in RL, I'm getting to redecorate my room for basically the first time ever. On the negative side, that's because a water pipe in the wall between my and Richard's rooms burst and ruined the carpets and some of the furniture and stuff. Totally could have been worse: my computer was set up in Richard's room and his was worst hit; basically all of his furniture is a loss. But I was in there and we got it stopped quick with no damage to my baby.

It seems like nearly all I'm reading lately is M7 and original fic. And those are two things that have, for me, a startlingly high rate of failure, of fics that I just can't sit back and enjoy. I found some good stuff, but it's been two-and-a-half, three weeks now and it's getting ridiculous. A couple of notes:

"Ohhh, new fandom and it burns. I keep finding Mag7 fic that's just good enough to make me hope there's something awesome on the horizon. I've found three that are pretty good, but that's after five days of searching and that third one? Mostly made the cut because it got bonus points for hooker!Ezra. Hooker fic always gets bonus points if it's even readable and negative points if it's not. There was another hooker!Ezra fic that got so many negative points I just skimmed the middle third. It was bad hooker fic with drug addiction, weird relationship dynamics (and not my ship), and there was gangrape of a girl. That's, like, -70. Not cool."

"OMG, stop it, GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS REAL NAMES. Taniel? Dravin? And then, god, there was the story that featured Shasta and his neighbors, Dawn and his sister Karen. I mean, if you're going to give a boy a hippie girl's name, don't then name his sister something completely normal. I would fully accept soap opera names like Blake and Kendall! But dude, random guy named freaking Dravin? Bitch, please."

I bought a bunch of ebooks from Torquere Press and remain rather bemused at the quality. Out of...23 books this last time, there are 2 I'm still waiting to read because I have hopes and don't want to be disappointed/don't want to fall in love before I have money to buy the sequel(s), 4 anthologies where I enjoyed the story/stories I bought them for but haven't read completely, 6 novellas that are good-to-awesome, 5 that are bad-to-mediocre, 4 novels that are almost good, and 2 that are medicore.

Still haven't found anyone as good as Parhelion, although Julia Talbot is growing on me. She's pretty solid, but this last book, The Peacock and the Firebird, really floundered for me when it came to the vision/ghost crap. Some of it contradicted itself a little, one hero's reluctance to accept, y'know, crazy and sometimes overwhelming visions of a past life that included his violent death is treated as silliness/cowardice at times, and oh yeah, the thing with the bodies? If there was one murderer, why were there two swords and oh, yeah, why did he/they leave them in the corpses? That's not how you treat a good weapon!

Guide to Survival, by Kurtzwilde, I think, felt like a freshman effort, but had some good bones. Manners and Means similarly had something that could have been good, but the plot takes place in such a small window of time that the change in relationship dynamics felt very...forced? I dunno, off. Our hero went, in five days, from in love with two guys and caring about a third, to in love with the third and caring about/distancing himself from the other two.

Broomsticks and Stones was pretty awesome and made me long for more Kara Larson. Dead of Winter, Hanged Man, and The High Priestess were all by Parhelion and therefore awesome; that is a man with a fantastic grasp of period dialogue. And wow, now I want to go reread some of this.