bunn7cula

 It's been entirely too long since I've been here but lots has been going on!

I started a new job. It's been...interesting. I was hired on a temporary basis to fill in for a medical assistant out on surgical leave. Apparently the decision to hire someone to cover for her was a very last-minute one, and I have found myself thrown into the deep end of the pool. I had one eight-hour day shadowing another MA at one clinic (this doctor has two), which I mostly spent learning the very basics of the charting software and sort of getting a feel for how the doctor wants things done...without the doctor actually being there that day. The next day, I drove the 45 miles (yes, I know) to the other clinic and, after getting lost, found where I was supposed to be, met the doctor, and immediately started clinic without anyone else there to train me. Am I somehow getting it done anyway? Yes. Am I stressed out? YES. Each day has been better than the last, but it's quite an uphill climb getting to where I need to be. I didn't even know the proper work hours until Friday! 

And then in the middle of the workweek, we had a category 2 hurricane directly strike the city. We escaped without any damage, and cleanup the next day was mostly downed branches and leaves. We lost power at about the halfway point through the storm, and got it back the following day. This turns out to have been incredibly lucky. Many poles and lines are down, and many people are still without power. Driving is still a little hazardous, as many of the traffic lights are out. Oh, and the sewer line backed up in our yard because the two nearby pump stations had no power, so we had quite a cesspool going on for two days, much to the consternation of the neighbors. Someone from the city came out today, poured disinfectant around, and power washed the poo stains away, so that's a bit better. 

I planned on creative pursuits this weekend but they didn't happen. And probably won't get to happen now for a few weeks, unfortunately. Bummer. 

 On the creative front, I have a few things kicking around:

1. THE GPSC ZINE! I'm trying to get more organized about this, because, well...someone will have to. There are three of us mods working to put this together, and collectively there are many interesting ideas being discussed and considered, but it all needs to be corralled. Not sure if there will be an overarching theme to the thing yet but I'm particularly interested in the idea of being an homage to the rich history of our zine forbearers while simultaneously taking a more modern approach to things like subject and format. And since GPSC is especially good at them, There Will Be Memes. Oh, yes. But not penises--a non-unanimous consensus decision which I'm both sad and relieved about because while I do enjoy an expertly-rendered, macro-photorealistic Throbbing Tower, they are also a bit of a source of second-hand embarrassment because evidently there is still some shred of Victorian repression left in me, probably from 8 years of Catholic school. I dunno. I really work to overcome this by being limitlessly awful on the server, though. 

2. So yeah, I have wips laying around crying to be finished off because I'm a selfish lover like that, but I have a new idea I've gotten excited enough about to start outlining. Which never happens--I've always been a pantser. This has served me okay in the past, but I have to admit that I am a little terrified of writing B7 because of the strong history of both high quality and critique in the fanficdom. I don't know if fics are getting the same level of scrutiny now that they have in the past, because I think fandom has maybe changed...but I'm not really qualified to come to that conclusion because I'm only a year into this, and trying to familiarize yourself with a 40 year old fandom takes some time. Anyway, I've been outlining a thing because I don't want it to suck. It's PWB Blake/Travis, which has of course been done before, but what hasn't. (If anyone has any fic suggestions in this vein, please send them my way! I've read a few but definitely not all of them.) There are many like it, but this one is mine and all that. 

3. I was totally going to have a third thing, but in the time it's taken to write this I've gotten three actual real phone calls that were not spam, and now I forget what it was going to be about. Maybe all the crappy half-finished vids I'm in the middle of, too. Or the intentions to filk. Or none of that. awkward silence, so picks up phone Oh, look--they are gender bending the cast through filters in the server right now...and Gan makes a pretty lady!

Man, look. 

Hyperfixations are a bitch. But hyperfixations on super sad shit is a whole PACK of them. 

I've seen Morgan's Boy before. Twice. Great the first time, excellent the second. Gave me the sads but I could deal because something something Blake's 7, and lots of other people to commiserate with whenever I'd subject myself to "Blake" yet one more bloody time.

I got one of my pals on my B7 discord server (inquire within) to do a Morgan's Boy watchalong with me over the past week or two and we finished Saturday.

What is today? Thursday? Centaxday? Stardate 76160.4? Whatever, I am still on this shit and DEVASTATED.

The third time, my gods, the third time was it. And having a fellow Gareth Thomas fan with eagle eyes and insightful conversation with me this time made it even more...just, more. The more I think about the details, the more I realize just what a diamond this series is. As in hard and gleaming. A show about a Welsh hill farmer--think you're getting some nice cozy twee outing in the country with some dramatic ups and downs? Hahaha, no. You are only getting fattened by superior storytelling, compelling characters, and singular acting performances before getting your throat slashed and your body hung still alive on a meat hook to be slaughtered like The Old Gentleman did all the pigs in Powys. 

Like Morgan, I am too soft, boy. 

The worst part of it all, though, is I seem to be finally truly mourning Gareth Thomas. 

I'm a noob B7 fan. Got into it last year and, after some trepidation and avoidance since I'd already absorbed every spoiler, finished the finale mere hours before Paul Darrow died. (yes, that was just as much the proverbial peanut on the poo-pile it sounds like it would be.) I loved Avon very much, and had the show been his from the beginning he would have undoubtedly been my favorite, but my heart belonged to Blake from the first.

Avon is an obviously complex character, while Blake is much more subtly so. It excites me to no end seeing how other people that agree with me about this have approached his character in fanfic. I don't even have to say that B7 has some of the finest fan writing I've ever encountered, because after 40 years of quality, it speaks for itself.

Anyway, I knew not too far into my early viewings that Gareth had passed away a few years before, and was quite disappointed about it but that, as they say, was then, and this is now. 

I've tried watching everything I can find on the internet that Gareth has done, and I've been treated to some fine entertainment (MB, Children of the Stones, Stocker's Copper, Sutherland's Law, naming only a very select few) and put through blessedly few dire messes (Star Maidens, that Hammer House of Horror episode - which are both still worth one viewing respectively for, a) Gareth in some very revealing Levi's, and b) imo peak handsome period aside from, say, 1972. (I may be mourning, but I'm still a shallow, thirsty bitch, okay? And lbr--contrary to Gareth's [deadly charming] self-deprecating remarks about his appearance, the man was exceptionally handsome. Combined with his enormous presence and exceptional talent, he is truly the Extra Large Full Meal Deal in anything he appeared in.)

But this third viewing of Morgan's Boy has somehow really made it sink in that Gareth is gone. It feels strange and quite crazy to feel so forlorn about the death of someone I never knew, and which occurred five and a half years ago, but I know there are others out there that have felt a similar sadness because I have read so many of their accounts. Here is yet another one. 

Thanks for everything, Gareth. I'll add to the chorus that it really is a shame, you were a bloody fine actor.

X

There is little more frustrating a circumstance than the fleeting possession of a mind virtually vibrating against one's own pia mater with creative inspiration and having no quiet time with which to reap any fulfillment from the experience. 

I realized today that the 10k fic I've been working on for months has stalled because I think it needs a POV change and I want to fix it NOW but cannot even begin until at least tuesday. 

cries