the fandom librarian

hey hey hey! didn't die of alcohol poisoning or sleep deprivation, yay! dissertation handed in, yay! still one exam between me and total freedom, not yay, but I roll with it.

in anticipation of my glorious release from academic labor, an extremely lo-fi poll!* in my soon-to-arrive free time, should Veronica:

A. FINISH THE SOULBONDING SEQUEL YOU LAZY WHORE

B. write Victor/Bojan/Andres hurt/comfort from when Bojan tore some ligaments and looked like he was out for the season

C. write Xavi/Victor hurt/comfort about Abidal

D. write Victor/Andres ridiculous teenage angst

E. FINISH THE ALCANTARACEST YOU'RE TROLLING FBKINK WITH YOU LAZY WHORE

F. write a beyond ridiculous Rafa/Nole office AU in which Andy Murray accidentally yentas them back together after a bad breakup (kind of want to wait until after Wimbledon for this one anyway)

G. THIS OTHER THING YOU SAID YOU'D DO AND FORGOT ALL ABOUT VERONICA YOU HORRIBLE PERSON

H. (included with grave reservations) attempt to write the prequel to Only a Signal Shown

I. OH HEY THING I FORGOT. write a totally unworthy alternate to the awesome "Leo is an alien" fill on fbkink in which Pique and possibly Cesc do some good old-fashioned sexual experimentation~ to figure out how exactly Leo's body is different from theirs. I am a creeper, nobody is surprised!


*which, in full disclosure, I will probably ignore, but you never know

ok, back to procrastinating on learning paleography! this shit is really hard!

PS: yet more signal boosting for soulbonding spinoffs! I am so proud to have spawned this movement. :') soulbonding comes to Arsenal! enjoy!

yes, yes, I swear, when I get time I will update the recs and do some more mini-spams for the I ♥ Barcelona post. other projects though.

stickmarionette and I had a brief discussion about this on Twitter earlier today (prompted by another fabulous update to guede_mazaka's vampire AU, btw, and if you're not reading it you don't know what you're missing), but is anyone out there still pining over a pairing so old-school that fandom newbies have never even heard of it? because oh god, Hierro/Guardiola. WHERE IS IT GIVE IT TO ME. CAN FERNANDO COME COACH MADRID NOW WE ARE IN SORE NEED OF HIS BEAUTY AND CLASSINESS IN LA LIGA. now, obviously we have a slight bias here (Figo/Guardiola? Raul/Guardiola? Cruyff/Guardiola? have you noticed a theme yet?) but we can't be the only ones with such a nagging, largely-unfulfilled passion, right? would anyone be interested in some sort of "old-school pairings" ficathon? (after I'm done with exams, natch.) just polling right now, but who knows, maybe something will come out of it. even if it's just me and Lee yelling "FINISH THAT FIGO/GUARDIOLA FIC RIGHT THE FUCK NOW" at each other on twitter for the next six months, haha.

also, and this is a project I have been contemplating for a long while now, I want to index footballers' tweets on delicious so that they don't get lost once they're beyond the timeline's recall. I can't believe nobody's ever done this in RPF before - twitter is such an amazing resource of how people really interact with each other (not the ones runs by interns, obviously, and in this case I'm thinking more of the kids, who haven't yet learned the art of discretion, but Puyi, Cesc and Pique are a great example of twitter revealing a lot about personal relationships) and I certainly use it as such! it would be a massive undertaking, but I don't know, I think I could manage to go through the primary Barça accounts, and maybe the Athletic Bilbao ones, given a week or so with nothing better to do. think about it. all the tweets by footballers that mention other players. links saved, tweets translated and everything tagged by relevant player. it would be beautiful. or maybe that's my OCD / librarian-fu talking. anyway, just putting it out there. it could be a joint project! if a bunch of people got together and agreed to each index for a few of their favorite players that they already follow on twitter, it wouldn't even be all that hard.

ok back to writing my dissertation now. IT IS ALL ABOUT THE OTHER-ING OF THE BELOVED. THIS IS THE KEY I HAVE BEEN MISSING. SUCK IT, PROPERTIUS, I'M ONTO YOU.

well, sort of. I'm trying to get something finished quickly so I don't have another WIP hanging over me and I am sort of, you know, meant to be writing a dissertation, but Barcelona was HOLYSHIT AWESOME and I will do a wrap-up post eventually, I think. with pictures! only I have a zillion and going through them will take a while. (preview: I went to see the babies play, they won 4-0, I have a lot of pictures of Jonathan Dos Santos taking corner kicks i.e. of his ass.)

in the meantime, have an Alcantaras ficlet that I wrote for ibuyu over at touchline! and mardia filled my Victor/Andres cuddling prompt! if you aren't playing with us yet, why not? :D

OMG BARÇA I LOVE YOU.

5-0. but mostly because Cristiano Ronaldo shoves Pep and the entire team storms up to defend their coach. led by Miniesta himself, who has to look up seven inches to see the top of Cristiano's hair, not that he lets that stop him. (with Victor only a little behind because he had to run all the way from his goal to the sideline. Pique had to drag him away.) children, he doesn't need you to protect him, but it's beyond sweet that you want to.



I swear to god I am writing this paper, but the inspiration would not leave me, so here, have (probably) the only Sernando fic I will ever write:

( text messaging is such a subtle medium )

just to make it clear, because I saw someone on Tumblr speculating that Fernando was probably cheering for Sergio: FERNANDO TORRES HATES REAL MADRID. I can guarantee you that the Clasico is the one match that every Atleti fan wants Barcelona to win. any excuse to post this clip:



note what he says at 0:24. XDD FERNANDO ILU. going to go write this essay now, and wish I were watching a replay of the Clasico with Fernando and Pepe instead. AHHH IT WOULD BE SO EPIC.

goddamn it, I am actually in tears over the end of this stupid epic Renaissance-era AU. I hate it when reality creeps too far into my fantasy world. (also, two papers to write in less than two days and I am covered with mosquito bites. and yet the part where people die in a fanfic is the reason I'm crying. oh, self.)

later today I will be packing up my things and heading back to the dorms, so I can camp out in the library and write my thesis. woe.

though on the bright side, tennis has returned just in time to keep me company in my time of trial and tribulation. hopefully Rafa will continue winning and keep me happy. at the moment, the ladies are picking up the slack until he plays a real match: yay Flavs! yay Kim! FUCK YEAH KIMIKO, winning matches at age 39 over girls half her age. we should all aspire to be as badass as she is.

on a slightly more pan-fandom note, does anyone really understand the comment etiquette over on AO3? I'm normally religious about replying to comments on my LJ, but it makes me very uncomfortable to reply on AO3, where comment counts (which include replies) are part of the information provided in the fic summary. idk, maybe I'm being weird about this, but I really don't like replies being so visible on an archive; it's not like it's my journal where I can have a discussion 50 comments long if I want to. but then I'm not sure if I'm being deathly rude by not replying to my Yuletide comments.

grah. backing up my fic on AO3 was not supposed to complicate anything.

Rafa won, so I'm happy. David managed to gut it out in five sets and over four and a quarter hours, so I'm delighted. I'm not sure how good it is that tennis results can actually alter my mood, but I guess I was happy before they won too so it's not that big a difference. anyway, RAFA WON THE UNIVERSE IS RESTORED TO NORMALCY. tomorrow Feli and Fer will be gay at each other play doubles and all will be well.

not thinking about thesis!

I don't even know what I'm doing with my thesis right now. I kind of think I need a plan of attack, but since my plan of what I want to write changes based on what I read each week, I... don't know what I'm going to be reading from week to week. and thus I am a mess. hopefully I will manage to magic myself out of this sometime soon, but until then... who knows! (I have totally wasted my entire day off. I have no one to blame but myself.)

in other news, Rafa dug himself into a hole and then just barely managed to dig himself out - I watched the scores until he lost the first set and went down a break, went to take a shower so he could lose without me, came back and he'd gotten the break back, went to eat breakfast, came back and he was down several match points, watched him break back and went to do some thesis reading, came back and he'd won the tiebreak but was down a break again, at which point I flung my hands in the air and cussed him out a little. and then magically he managed to break Nico when he served for the set (for the second time), hold serve, break and serve it out. FIVE MATCH POINTS. FOR FUCK'S SAKE, RAFA. I KNOW YOU'RE COMPETING WITH NOLE BUT THAT IS NOT A COMPETITION YOU WANT TO BE WINNING. (feel free to proceed to win the tournament like Nole did, though. that's an acceptable action to emulate.)

and then Federer managed to lose to Julien Bennetteau in a match I was sort of vaguely keeping an eye on, thinking, oh, he managed to hold serve, that's cute! oh, he managed to get it to a tiebreak, that's cute! oh, he won the tiebreak, that's cute! aww, he's up a break in the third on Fed, that's adorable! ...and then I went to dinner and apparently Fed never broke back. and then I laughed.

oh, and Marat Safin retired. the ladies mourn, but their panties are at last freed from the oppressive threat of spontaneous combustion. exciting happenings in Paris!

ugh, so much Herodotus. it isn't even that it's hard at this point. there are just too many words.

Rafa lost his quarterfinal, sadface. I was upset for a split second and then remembered that I am in this fandom for the slash, not the actual tennis. my faith in Rafa's invincibility has been a little shaken, though, I admit. ~shrug~ whatever, he's still pretty. I kind of want the Davis Cup boypiles back. nothing can be upsetting when full-grown professional tennis players are bouncing up and down singing about how much they love Rafa.

in a strange convergence of fandoms, I have been thinking about threesome dynamics. (for those of you going: uh, what is she talking about, the threesomes I have been pondering are Tharkay/Laurence/Granby from Temeraire and Rafa/Feli/Nando from tennis slash.) perhaps this is because I have never quite been able to wrap my brain around polyamory, but I see them both (and they are both very different dynamics) as starting from two people in love with the same third person. however, I would fully buy Tharkay and Granby, both of whom are sort of hopelessly in love with Laurence the epically oblivious in canon, as getting with each other independent of Laurence, and I sort of rank that scenario as more probable than either of them getting with Laurence independently, just because Laurence is so deeply bound up with Temeraire that he would probably fail to notice sizzling sexual tension if it set his coat on fire. once Tharkay and Granby are involved with each other, they gain confidence and stability (which I think neither has had in, let's see, ever) and would be more comfortable approaching Laurence from the secure position of an established couple. rejection is scary! but less scary if you already know someone loves you. (thinky thoughts on Temeraire prompted by novembersmith's deliciously hot OT3 fic, which is through no fault of its own not really compatible with my personal canon. I love it to pieces! but it's not how I see it going down.)

by contrast, I think the Spanish OT3 absolutely cannot exist without Feli Lopez. I'd buy him with either Rafa or Nando and pulling the other one in, but Rafa/Nando? absolutely not. no spark. (and I say that having seen many Davis Cup pics where Rafa and Nando are snuggling shirtless or rolling around on the ground on top of each other. really. no relationship spark.)

as I try to analyze these findings, I'm wondering if it's based on how I see the... I don't know how to describe it, the balance of effort in the relationships? Laurence is a lot of work, and dearly as I love him, he doesn't give it back. he's too invested in doing his duty. he loves Temeraire, and so much of his energy is spent on looking after Temeraire that he really doesn't do a lot of caretaking for other people. (being a responsible commander is not caretaking as I'm defining it here. I mean looking after someone because of an emotional investment in their wellbeing.) Tharkay and Granby are following him to freaking Australia. that is some serious emotional investment. and they both, throughout the books, really do spend an increasing amount of time trying to take care of Laurence. (Laurence appreciates this irregularly.) unless Laurence changes somehow during the trip to Australia, I think he would destroy a lover who was in love with him. he wouldn't understand that he was doing it and he would be very sorry afterwards, but it wouldn't change the result. which is why Jane is awesome for him: she's not down with that nonsense! but seriously, Laurence is an absolute sink for energy, affection, and worry. two people making a concerted effort and also making sure to take care of each other could manage him, but... yeah. (Laurence, I still love you, bb!)

I see Feliciano as being the caretaker for both Rafa and Nando. a fun caretaker, someone who will tease and act like a friend, not a parent, but still, he's the one making the effort. he's part of Rafa's entourage, not the other way around, and I think Verdasco needs a lot of affection and reassurance. that's maybe unfair to Rafa; I don't know. based on pictorial evidence of him hugging everyone on the planet he's very comfortable giving physical affection, and absent any work on an author's part to convince me otherwise, I see him as the caretaker in the Roger/Rafa relationship. but I don't see him as willing to be the giver with Nando, which I guess is the relevant point, and I just don't see Lopez as needing the kind of effort and energy that would require him to be.

...I think my conception of the threesome dynamic is alarmingly co-dependent. will contemplate this further.

rambling meta brought to you by procrastination! whatever, I'm not sleeping anyway.

behold, the love child of my two passions: slash and academia. I think I may have succeeded in writing the most pretentious, referential ficlet in the history of the internet - but no. this is the web. there must be something worse out there. written for the love-a-thon over at lucyjanesparlor.

( prelude to catullus ix (classical literature; catullus/veranius) )

several Catullus poems are referenced throughout:

IX. ad Veranium (translation), LXXXV. (translation) and, rather in passing, XII. ad Matrucinum Asinium (translation). I was totally going to do my own translations, but then I was lazy. Maybe later.

Latin FTW!

ETA: now with new shiny and slightly more coherent sequel! who knows, maybe there will be more!