brains are supposed to be helpful, right?

My brain is a weird, weird place. I'm awake, again, and I figure if I stay awake until 1300 then I'll be awake tomorrow when I need to be. Except I have to keep checking that it isn't already tomorrow cause this week definitely should have had an extra day in it and last week should have had a week in it rather than all that sleep and, well, arrgh. Quietly. And there's all that big thinking I could be doing, two essays, and I could polish the poetry some more in the hopes of making it actually good in the next 25 hours, and that might even be a good idea if I didn't have a headache and insomnia and if I did have a brain left.

My brain hasn't been very helpful lately. About 90% of it is full of Star Trek and for some reason Stargate characters, mostly men, mostly wearing workout clothes and meditating. I don't know either, that's just the brain pictures of the day. Weird religious meditation sexy. With lots of thinking about big philosophy concepts and some thinking about guys that look good with their shirts off, which is not the usual ratio of those two thoughts. Mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of other people breathing, concentrated awareness, loving-kindness, joy in the joy of others... there's some good concepts there.

I spent at least an hour thinking about if I'd been body swapped with Daniel Jackson, and going clothes shopping with Teal'c, and how much more from the goth shop would actually fit me in that body, and what Teal'c would look like in some of the more industrial goth stuff with the metal plates or the hi vis strips or the weirdly bug eye reflective patches. Or in the other side of the racks, the long velvets with hoods. Not that far from what he used to wear. Then shopping with him in charity shops and vintage clothes, so he can get the benefit of decades of fashion at once. And being camp as hell, and watching Teal'c flirt, in his incredibly understated way, and be camp as can be, given expressions mostly articulated with one eyebrow, and enjoy the hell out of the brain crunched reactions while taking advantage of everyone assuming it's some kind of cultural crossed wires.

If I had any intention of writing that up it would still be crack fic, but no, my brain just... apparently didn't have anything better to do.

I was reading fic, and still have half read fic open right now, but after a while I have to ask myself why I'm still reading bad BDSM fic about characters I don't even fancy, and while I know that's because it's a bugger finding good BDSM fic on account of the definitions being so very particular - seriously, a single word can make me all eeeeew about really really long fic, it's like shopping for soya ice cream when everything is labelled ice cream... er, that stopped being a sentence at some point... ANY way, just because I haven't currently got the good stuff to read, why am I reading the bad stuff? Still? Many many chapters later?

... aside from 'because magic healing cock is never not funny'...

ack. I've got to fill up at least the next four hours with being awake, there's got to be something in here that isn't proof my brain popped a cog long since... somewhere... at all...

And another think about fic

A thing I don't get: I am reading about older characters. As in, not teenage. Probably middle aged. They've accumulated a bit of milage, got their scars, and while they've still got strength enough to be going on with, they're better padded than they used to be. Bodies that are comfortably worn in, like good leathers. Possibly they have less hair than they used to, probably it's going a little grey, or a lot silver. These are all features of these guys, distinguishing characteristics, and from where I'm standing good things.

So I read fic, and what happens? Some writers have them loose weight, change their exercise regimen (even characters who canonically get very plenty exercise as it is), grow their hair (!) and change their clothes (!!) and generally write about them like they got twenty years younger and decided 'pretty' was more important than 'apocalypse' in the grand scheme of things.

It's like they looked at these guys and decided 'They're so dreamy, I'll just change everything about them!'

I mean, I get writing about the younger versions, seeing how people got to be the way they are, maybe liking a certain season better than others, or appreciating the way regular exercise reshapes a person. But what I do not get is, if they're going to make them have different bodies, why start with those other bodies in the first place? Just... find different guys. Who are in fact younger already. It's not like Hollywood has any shortage.

And while it might logically seem likely they choose those guys for the personality, personal histories, relationships and all that unique stuff... no. Not so much, that I can see. I mean, there might be some really well characterised stuff that just thinks guys look better when they're starving themselves and spending all day at the gym, but the ones I've seen, if they're going to reshape their outsides, they go for the 'bringing them out of themselves', 'more confident', 'freer', totally redone different personality. Just tweak every aspect of their personality. And forget all that save the world stuff, that's what canon is for, the guys clearly would rather be in bed.

Maybe it's for the pairings. If they keep the pairings. Just... if they want them to look different, act different, and live in different stories, why do they care about the pair at all?

... okay, I'm done now.

I'd just like to read stories about (a) old friends-turned-enemies who try and make it work again and (b) teachers with adult-enough students, probably with swords involved or (c) protector/protected pairs that are based on age/ability not gender, and all of those require people with a bit of history on them. I like the little lines and the silver. It's all good. All this instant teenage reversion stuff... it's like the auton replica versions, hello plastic.
... except Rory-auton didn't look plastic, or act plastic, so plastic is not necessarily a bad thing, but you know what I mean.

I'd say it's like the Hollywood recasting of everyone but quite a lot of TV was in LA to start with. Still, LA people are less likely to look as various as British TV people, to my eye, and it gets peculiar sometimes.

Okay, I should take a painkiller and do something completely different now.
/rant