there will be a fish

- WOOOOOOO YULETIDE SIGNUPS ARE IN! All except one of my requested fandoms have offers, and all of my offers have requests (except the same one as the requested; I was the only person to request and offer for Paper Moon, sigh). ETA: I plan to put up a Dear Yuletide Author letter soon! Just, not today. I really need to sleep.

- Today was my mom's birthday! That was fun. She mostly wanted to do brunch, then hang out and watch musicals, so that is what we did. ♥ Our birthday present/project for her didn't really get done in time, and the surprise was spoiled, but that's okay. (There's an old set of French doors that we took down for some remodeling, and she wants them hung in a different place so she can close the door and listen to music in the living room while things are going on elsewhere. They were painted in oil paint and then latex over that, so the latex is peeling off and we had to scrape off the old paint layers, prime with a bonding primer, and then paint with the real color, so it's this whole endeavor that involves taping the edges of about a million tiny panes of glass and painting in woodwork crevices and cursing. It's taking forever, is my point.)

- Last night, the twin and I went to a party out in the countryside hosted by the lovely katieupsidedown. I got rather drunk and slept on the floor and spent most of today hungover, good times. :)

- Is anyone else reading that XMFC work-in-progress Nine Eleven Ten? Because Katie is not, and I desperately want to talk with someone about how amazing it is and speculate about WTF is going on with certain things and also what the hell is going to happen next. I've been raving about it enough that I've convinced Katie to read it, but that's going to take a while, so. Yes.

For those who are not reading, IT IS SO AWESOME, I RECOMMEND IT. Even though it's a (regularly updated!) WIP. It's a Beauty and the Beast retelling -- only definitely a dark, dark version of the story. This is much less Disney, and much more the "Cinderella's stepsisters cut off their toes to try to fit the slipper" or "someone dies by being dragged along the street in a barrel of nails" or "heroine's cursed shoes that keep her constantly dancing until she amputates her own feet" or "the little mermaid dies and turns into sea foam at the end" kind of fairytale. Which is the kind I LOVE. For extra special bonus points, it's set in an apocalyptic dystopian AU (basically: nuclear WWIII happened), WHICH I ALSO LOVE. The Beast (Erik) is legitimately scary and damaged, and Beauty (Charles, LOL) is not at all a happy or obedient captive and pretty BAMF in his own right, and the world-building is fantastic, and the author has cultivated this brilliant fairy-tale sort of tone which really shouldn't work for a science-inundated universe like X-Men but does (because their powers are sort of like magic anyway). Her Charles is brilliant, so clever and kind, but she never forgets his pride or arrogance or fallibility, nor his slightly-dubious adherence to boundaries. And her Erik is complex and dark, as capable of cruelty as he is of incongruous kindness. BASICALLY IT IS EXCELLENT. I'm a total sucker for "the main characters are horrible to each other before they come to understand each other and then fall in love despite themselves" kind of romance (along the lines of The Queen of Attolia, Captive Prince, etc...), and this has it in brilliantly-written spades. Definitely watch the warnings, though -- here there be graphic violence and dub-con. As an aside, though, ( oblique spoiler ) The author apparently has previously written a bunch of Sarah/Jareth Labyrinth fic, some of which I've read and deem excellent -- which is not a surprise at all; she's got the complex power-struggle/fairytale themes/strangely-compelling-but-not-at-all-a-nice-person villain-slash-sort-of-love-interest down to an art in this.

I am sort of obsessing about this fic. I can't even regret it all that much; it's so fucking good.