choose your own adventure in Teland

[sab]

I started this post in thete1's journal, but the hyperlinkEDness of the internet got the better of me, and so, here we are.

I said to Te, I said:

So because I couldn't find the little clicky LJ bust to get back to your info page -- and in totally unrelated news, is that just me? I use the info pages as my console for EVERYTHING, I check out what icons people have these days, I mean, you think I woulda latched on to lcsbanana above if she hadn't had (don't miss!) Shifty as her default, to say nothing of the gaptoothed mofo? but OH how I get distracted, and what I'm trying to say is--

I couldn't find the clicky bust in your Batman layout. Which I wanted to use so's to get to your console and then find your e-mail address, which I think I used to have in the fannish compartment of my brain (along with, like, everybody's old URLs and the titles of stories I haven't read in years) but, alas, I'm getting up there in years and the fannish compartment of my brain is -- I'm taking up way too much space. Sit tight. I'm going to continue this in my LJ so as not to commandeer your lovely Batman area.

And here we are.

So, some points. The first point is, I am obsessed with the LJ userinfo console page. I use mine as my Home page, and it's my perpetual jumping-off point for exploring the far reaches of the Internet. If I had my druthers I'd store bookmarks there, snackfood, money.

When someone new shows up on my LJ radar, the first thing I do is hightail it back to her info console and poke around her icons a little. You can tell a lot about a gal in who she thinks is pretty, in what she says about them, in how she says it. An obvious popslash fan might have just that ONE Bayliss/Pembleton icon and all of a sudden you know it's not just about Lance and his Pants anymore. Or, you know, you think you've got a Buffista all figured out and kapow! It's Soames of The Forsyte Saga or an animated Cowboy Bebop clip. Anyway.

So there are these LJ styles, themes, whatever, and some of them don't integrate the little clicky infopage headbust guy into the layout of the interior journal part. So you get in, and it's all Batman glory or, like mace_m, the gorgeous corner extended, but no clicky guy! And then y'all customize your link names and I just get so lost.

Perhaps this is a PSA to ask all of you with really glorious and beautifully customized LJ's to please add a link back to your user page on?

Or perhaps it's a PSA about the fact that I'm not quick enough to find it on my own. *g* (mace_m, found yours!)

But perhaps this is, instead, feedback for Te's really fantastic piece of Crazy Space Incest, the Simon/River tale "Logos" that y'all should read.

Because first of all, it is hard as hell to get River's voice down. Because she makes sense to HERSELF, even when she's not making sense to the rest of the Serenity brigade, so when you're spending time in River's head you can't rely on easy gimmicks to illustrate that she may be just a wee bit off, but she still knows more than the rest of us put together. Te nails it. Observe:

There is nothing sterile here.

She licks her palm and slides it down a wall, just to be sure.

She thinks the ship understands.

And yeah Mal'd think she was a crackhead if she saw it, but here, it makes perfect sense to River, and to us.

Plus! Another sticking point with River's that we're sure she's not wholly living in the present, that her memories too easily slide across her time on Serenity, her time in the hospital, her time before. And again, it makes sense to her, it's not jarring, not abrupt the way it might be to Simon, watching her. Te's such a pro, look:

She remembers her nana pointing to the water and then to
River's chest and smiling broadly.

"I am vast, I contain multitudes," is what she manages to spit out,
and Simon looks up from sorting bandages to smile at her with
that gentle distance she's come to loathe.

"Been talking to Book, have you?"

Anyway, I love it. And then there's the essential physical exploration, all full of love and faith and confusion and everything that makes Simon/River the only real OTP of Firefly, and it's just exactly awkward enough, awkward to Simon here but not awkward to River, and because of that, it flows.

This is just a knock-down drag-out awesome story in a fandom I'm only beginning to get to know (and I still owe shrift her birthday fic, so, you know, there'll be Firefly from Sab soon. Probably.), and everyone should ignore my natterings in favor of popping over to Teland to read the thing.

Dear Te;

Loved, absolutely loved "Logos." Twisty and sexy and innocent and creepy and dark and small and perfect. Thanks for sharing.

Love,
Sab

[ETA: I'm an idiot. I found the link back to Te's info page! Yeah. As runpunkrun confirmed, I'm a dry roasted nut.]