Well, I hope those of you who did the Christmas thing had a good one. I don't really like Christmas, but mine was nice as usual all the same.

Anyway, on the topic of giving, the LJ promotion this year is $10 off a paid account. Since most of you already have one, and I don't really feel it's a great gift to give someone something they still have to purchase, I'll just offer up: If you want a gift certificate for $10 off a paid account, just comment and let me know. I've got 10 to give away, anyone welcome.

And, since what's Christmas without presents, here's the nice begining to an unfinished post-Apocalyptic fic to warm your hearts.

Watchmen, PG, probably no pairings, Movie!verse AU

( Snow is falling through the shattered pyramid walls )

Montreal was nice; did some sight seeing and some shopping, or rather some walking through shops without really buying anything which is my equivalent thereof. My French comprehension's still strong, but I just can't speak at all; everything I grasp for comes out in Japanese or not at all - it's really frustrating. x.x

Had the following conversation with mum at the hotel lounge, to which I brought my notebook and she a book (in case we had nothing to talk about??? I'm still confused)

Mum: So what are you writing about now *indicating notebook*?
Me: Well, this notebook's pretty old so nothing in it's current. Mostly now I'm writing for Watchmen.
Mum: Oh yeah?
Me: Yeah.
Drinks are delivered. Mum has a Kir Royal, I have a virgin Pina Colada (man I hate the use of the term virgin for non-alcoholic drinks)
Enough time passes that I think we've moved on from that.
Me: It's hard writing about alcohol when I don't drink. You know, deciding what sort of thing people would drink.
Mum: Well, these are really girly drinks. Rorschach wouldn't drink them. He probably drinks whiskey.
Me (momentarily boggled):... I am pretty sure he doesn't actually drink. But yeah. ... I meant more in general.
Mum: oh.

I love it when mum tries to help me out with these things. This is almost as good as that time I asked them how much brandy you'd have to pour into a carpet before you could set it on fire. And then Dad was all DO NOT TRY THIS. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure my parents have realised the fact that I'm not 12 anymore.

In other news, I stopped in HMV the other day and they were selling Hogan's Heroes DVDs. I held off buying any, but man now I'm sucking myself in. SERIOUSLY, SELF. SERIOUSLY.

SO. By some miracle I got the last ticket on the campus bus to Ottawa, so I will be leaving shortly to spend the night there, and then off to Montreal the next morning. While in Ottawa I'll be having dinner with one of my teachers from Japan who's currently on an English-study program here in Canada, which is super neat although also potentially awkward. ^^ It will be more unfortunate in that I'll be thinking even more strongly in Japanese, which will seriously interfere with any necessary French speaking this weekend. I was trying to think of responses to possible questions the other day and 50% or more Japanese is not really a promising statistic.

I'm hoping the weather might stop this rain thing it has going currently for the weekend, but I kind of doubt it.

I've got 7 pages of Antarctic madness; we'll see if that actually goes anywhere. Another of those ideas without a plot or a purpose, so you can guess how likely it is. Also I'm starting to feel like I really should be doing more work, so yeah.

One of the really neat things about my program is it's extremely interdisciplinary. We've got people who did their undergrads in Humanities, Econ, Psych, Heath Sciences, Science, Engineering etc. This means that all the classes we take are basically a 100 level course for somebody. For me Governing Institutions is crazy easy, for the econ kids Econ is laughable. So it's nice that everyone should have a couple of courses that are really simple to weigh out the ones that make them curl up in a ball and try to rock themselves to sleep. Also it means you can have the following scenario. A did her undergrad in Health Sciences.

A and I go to the library to look at books for their papers. I, getting started, choose 4 books, 2 per paper.

A: Wow, that's ... that's a lot of books.
Me:... well, it's just two per paper. But these are just to get the basic ideas. I'll have to come back for more, obviously.
A: I didn't take out that many books in the entirety of my undergrad.
Me: ... I have no words.

THIS IS SHOCKING TO ME. SHOCKING. By the end of semester I always had at least three huge piles of books for my papers; it would take me multiple trips with my backpack to return them all. And, as this happened right before class and I took the books with me, someone stopped be outside class and gave me this surprised look and said "how many sources are you planning on using?!?" WHAT? WHAT? IT WAS 4 BOOKS, PEOPLE!

Goodness. Anyway. I need to go and pack. Happy Thanksgiving!

Going to Montreal for Thanksgiving, via Ottawa. Left off booking tickets to Ottawa too late, now not sure how the hell I'm going to get there. x.x

Wrote some conclusion-less, pointless crack to try to make myself feel better. Watchmen, no pairings, violence warning.

( Fight scenes. Who cares for them? Really? )

I don't usually do this sort of thing (in fact, never), but I've been reading some pretty awesome Watchmen fic recently and I just spontaneously really want to rec it to you guys. So there you go. And also kind of want all my links in one place

( Don't do it. )

Now I'm tired and have to go to class and make a presentation, so that's all.

Tracked down Watchmen Director's Cut DVD and watched it.

( Some thoughts )

In other news, I have (obviously) returned from Ottawa. The trip was... good, I guess. Seeing question period at Parliament was cool - I've been to q.p in the provincial leg so it wasn't surprising to me, but seeing everyone else's reactions was hilarious. And, potentially shallow as it is, it is pretty neat to see the PM and the leader of the opposition and, well, the leaders of the country in person. Since there was the vote of confidence that day everyone was there, and Harper, Ignatieff and Duceppe all spoke which was even more cool. XD Also, as I've mentioned before, the buildings are beautiful and this time I had a camera so I was able to take some pictures.

Apart from that the speakers, although prominent people and good speakers, were not of much interest to me personally. I mean, I guess it's good to hear more stories of how civil servants have made their way in the public service, but when your parents and all their friends are civil servants, this is kind of a story you already know. So occasionally I got bored and wrote Watchmen fic on the hotel stationary.

Other than that, it was a good opportunity to make some friends, which I feel I have at least begun to do, so that's good. My hotel roommate, who also happens to have the same class schedule as me, got to talking a lot which was good, except now she may be trying to hook me up with her house roommate, which may potentially be bad. >.>

And then I returned to find some sort of irritating throbbing humming noise coming potentially from the ceiling? I can't track it down, but it's really starting to get annoying. I had thought it might have been someone who forgot to turn off their alarm clock, but I've gone upstairs and nothing. IRRITATING MYSTERY.

Oh, also, for fun, my mother's description of Watchmen, having seen it when it came out.
( Who was the voice actor for the main character again? )

Rolled in some nice warm laundry today for the first time in more than a year. No driers in Japan was definitely a tragedy to my favourite chore reward.

Title: Red Sky 3/?
Pairing: Maybe Daniel/Rorschach someday?
Rating: Definitely high end of PG-13 for disturbing. Probably moving towards R.
Notes: AU fix-it. Still following traditional straight-off-press release since I doubt anyone here's particularly interested in it. ^^

Summary: The world didn't end. So it's up to the capes to clean up the mess. Isn't it?

( Spellcheck thinks rictus isn't a word. How am I supposed to work with this? )

More crazy straight off the press. I'd like to be able to promise more, but I've only got another chapter's worth of plot. Of course, something could come up...

Title: Red Sky 2/?
Fandom: Watchmen
Paiting: Possibly Nite Owl/Rorschach later, but don't hold your breath.
Rating: PG-13 for disturbingness. Totally forgot this one before.
Notes: AU comic!verse, fix-it fic (I suppose). Still not beta'd or proofed; comments still welcome!

Summary: The world didn't end. So it's up to the capes to clean up the mess. Isn't it?

( In which I pretend I know something about the geography of New York. Again. )

Look journal, fic for a new fandom no one cares about! How excited you must be! I would have written more, but I was too tired. Maybe more later.

Title: Red Sky 1/?
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: None currently, possibly Nite Owl/Rorschach if I continue to write it which I doubt.
Notes: Comic-verse. Written in one go, no beta. Uses the same fix-it mentality and excuse as the rest of the fandom. There's really not a lot of room for originality there... Thoughts/comments welcome, as always. XD

Summary: The world doesn't end. So it's up to the capes to clean up the mess. Isn't it?

( How did Archie manage to fly all the way to the South Pole (and presumably back again) anyway? )

While I was in Japan, I definitely suffered from creative dry spells brought about by my total lack of exposure to any new ideas or media or in fact my language, so was looking forward to getting back and seeing/reading new stuff and having thoughts again.

What I'd forgotten was how awesome school is for giving you ideas. Just today I had several: hey, that would be interesting to work in! Or: wow, now I can have Otacon Character A talk about stats! moments. So I'm pretty pleased with that, although I'm still not sure how much free time I'll have for writing and, since everyone keeps telling me how rigorous this program is, how guilty I'll feel about using my time for writing. (Actually this is a lie: I already feel guilty, and it's stopped me from doing any for the past week when I haven't even had any work to do, so that's probably not a good sign, but we'll see).

I also had lunch with my Dad's old professor/Ph.D advisor which I had kind of been dreading because obviously he's a smart guy and I didn't want to look like an idiot. But it went well enough - neither poorly nor brilliantly - and he did his best to think of people related to Japan to introduce me to and gave me his numbers at the end so clearly he at least wasn't sick to death of me. So that's nice.

No class tomorrow - maybe I'll indulge in some writing. Optimistically I'd like to finish my thing for the MGS Clichefic thing, but the fic is not even halfway done, and I don't think it's great and it has nearly the same plot to that Liquid Fic.

SPEAKING OF WHICH： In the middle of class today I realised with shock that the Sherlock Holmes/MGS crossover fic has basically the same plot as the Creepy Quebec fic (except for the time-travel/ghost factors). GOOD JOB ME. GOLD STAR.

ALSO I think I'm going to have to distinguish my "school" tag between school where I was a student, and school where I was a teacher. x.x

Since this has already become a catch-up entry about nothing in specific: I finally saw Watchmen. I hadn't read the comic, and knew nothing more than that it was a superhero movie about anti-heroes, and had seen the trailer with Rorschach's voice-over to the effect of: "and they will look up and cry 'save us' and I'll whisper: no." From this I had drawn the (admittedly simplistic) conclusion that it was about superheros who had turned obviously bad/ had no interest in humanity and refused to work for them anymore which of course is true of various people but not the entire plot.

( I can heat those up for you... )

Having rearranged my room, I'm hoping not having the head of my bed against the noisy wall will be good. Also it means the space between my desk and bed is smaller, so I don't have to turn up the volume on my computer so loud when watching things, which eases my guilty conscience.