thamiris is gloriously abuzz today. I am limp and overwhelmed, mouth agape, unable to rise from her divan, pinned in place by a swarm of golden buzzing words.

I used to more often make lists of words I intended to include in stories. Here's a list I once had for a Sentinel story, more or less intended for Blair:

Dionysian, impudent, saucy, compact, concise, succinct, pithy, snug, accomplice, consort, dispatch, saturated, replete, nerve, mettle, pluck, game, gamecock, pugnacious, cross, complex, illegible, difficult, irregular, gallant, honey-mouthed, humanist, lax, unbridled, loosening, anarchical, leap, hop, bound, kangaroo, grasshopper, flea, billy goat, fierce, savage, groove, curry, amiable, cranky, jumping bean, spring, frog, leaper, romp, cavort, frisky, lively, bouncy, cut capers, frolic, skittish, curvet, overtaxed, coil and recoil, reservoir

Meanwhile, I managed to spend most of yesterday browsing and reading stories. It was one of those things where you're like, "I'll just read a few before I start writing," and then your snack-sized impulse insidiously takes you over and before you know it hours have passed and you haven't written a thing, because it was all just your subconscious's way to distract you from staying on task.

But I read good stuff, including The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which fills a certain hunger that had been whetted by shorter Snape/Harry stories, but which is still unfinished. I mean, it's obviously built on a five-year plan, and we're only part of the way into year two. But it's so gooooood! (She wailed.) I suddenly get how some people must feel about the noir, because I want to say impatiently, "Please drop everything you're doing at *once* and finish this ambitious epic you've started, damn it!"

Among other things I read yesterday, a list which owes heavily to Sandy's rec page:

• What One Hundred People, Real And Fake, Think About Josiah Bartlett (WW, gen)
  
• Rings and Sores (SV, slash)
  
• Forgotten (PM, slash)

I am Anna's raging bulletproof kink: the amnesiac slave story. "Forgotten" is built perfectly to spec, a cliche parade, but absolutely beautiful, every element of the standard template humanized and rendered specific to the characters. I loved, loved, loved it. The story has a headstart on its goal, because the characters already have a very close relationship. I point that out because I wouldn't mind reading an S/X story like this, but those two lack the same degree of personal intimacy as Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, and so the emotional tone of such a story would be very different--would end up far edgier, I think. You could presuppose that Xander and Spike had a relationship, yeah, but that'd be harder to sell.

Of course, variations on a theme is what it's all about, and I like edgy.

(By the way, if you type "Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon" into Google, the first result you get is, "Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon on Ice." No comment needed, I think.)

For my breakfast reading (er, late start), I am just now feeling my way into One Bare Hour, a Stargate story. Slash, I think.

<Shatner> Must. Not. Get. Sucked. Into. Fictional. Vortext. Again. </Shatner>

(Do you like vortext? Typo, but I'm keeping it.)