The Turtle Jourtle

Big Bang Fic Away!

2025-10-09T19:12:46Z

Hello, everyone. My journal has been very quiet, hasn't it?

Over the past few months, I've been putting a lot of my fannish energy into writing The Wind and the Rain, the 13,000-word story that is my contribution to this year's Professionals Big Bang. I've been reading a little bit of fic, too, but not in the organized way that lends itself to write-ups.

Last night, I finally posted The Wind and the Rain. I'm elated. I'd been working on it since March, and it's the longest fic I've ever written by a factor of ten. Indeed, I think it's the longest piece of any kind I've ever written, including everything I wrote in college.

As I bask in the glow of my finished fic, I'm also looking forward to having more time for reading again. For the rest of the month, that time will be dedicated mostly to reading the other Pros Big Bang fics, but after that, expect a return to your regularly scheduled program. At least until I have a new idea for a story. :)

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Slow and Steady Enters the Race

2025-03-18T23:26:04Z

Despite having only one round left, I haven't been making very rapid progress on Lifetime Fic Bingo over the past couple of weeks. My mental health has been bad, and my concentration has suffered. What I have been doing, to my surprise, is coming up with an idea for a long Professionals fic and making it concrete to the tune of six pages of notes and a 2,500 word outline. All this inspiration came too late for me to sign up on time for this year's Big Bang, but the kind BB mods have just welcomed me as a late entrant. So here we go. A rough draft by July 1st shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? Right?

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Lifetime Fic Bingo: 2017

2025-01-16T03:11:04Z

It's (already) 2017. Luis Fonsi is on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is Star Wars: The Last Jedi. New terms coined include: Latine and Zoomer.

For 2017, I read five fics: one Sentinel, one Starsky and Hutch, one Man from U.N.C.L.E., and two Sherlock Holmes. Apologies to the Professionals fans among my readers. Uniquely, I think, there are no Pros fics in this batch.
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Lifetime Fic Bingo: 2016

2025-01-11T04:23:56Z

It's 2016. The Chainsmokers are on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is Rogue One. New terms coined include: cancel culture, girlboss, MAGA, and touch grass.

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Lifetime Fic Bingo: 2001

2024-02-29T06:14:14Z

It's me again. My output of write-ups has fallen off a lot lately, but for happy reasons. Over the past two months I've been putting most of my energy into reviewing math. I have a bachelor's degree in math, but have been unable to engage with the subject for about fifteen years due to mental and physical illness. Lately, circumstances have finally aligned so that I'm able to work on recovering some of my missing knowledge. It is a very important development for me.

Now, on with the show...

It's 2001, and I'm starting high school as the Twin Towers are destroyed. Linkin Park is on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. New terms coined include: ack, anti-vaxxer, bromance, captcha, chiweenie, dubstep, forever chemical, Internet of Things, lean in, and twerking.

For 2001, I read five fics: two Man from U.N.C.L.E., two Professionals, and one Sherlock Holmes x Quantum Leap crossover.

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This Week

2023-10-29T06:31:51Z

This week has been really stressful and confusing.

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How Fanfic Sounds

2023-10-12T03:23:19Z

As I discussed in a post a year ago today, I usually use text-to-speech software to read fanfic.

Recently, I acquired a new piece of text-to-speech software called Speechify that I'm very pleased with. (I made a post about it a while ago, but deleted it because I wasn't happy with the included videos.) Speechify comes with a wider variety of high quality voices than I had previously, and one of the things I've been doing since switching to it is using US voices for fanfic based on US media (such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and UK voices for fanfic based on UK media (such as The Professionals).

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Yet More Recs

2023-08-09T09:45:25Z

This morning I made an appointment for my dog to be put down, and this evening I had an encounter with a neighbor who made it clear that he thinks I am doing the wrong thing. Both of those have made tonight difficult, so I've decided to do another rec post. I always find them cheering.

I'll be drawing inspiration for this list from a collection of themed fic recs that I found via a Google search. I'm also going to try not to repeat any of the recs from my posts Genre Fic Recs for Bistocon, These Are a Few, or 66 Recs (to Get Your Kecks).

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Coming Out Fic Rec
Salem by Evan Nicholas (evan_nicholas)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
An unusual gen coming out story.

Crack Fic Rec
Munch, Munch, Munch by spikesgirl58
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
Illya is always hungry.

Halloween Fic Rec
Death is Easy by spikesgirl58
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
Another bedside vigil with an unusual outsider POV.

Holiday Fic Rec
Noel by otherhawk
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
New partners at Christmas.

Humor/Funny Fic Rec
Spellcheck by shayheyred
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
Illya arrives in America.

Hurt/Comfort Fic Rec
The Peace of Wild Things by Paper_Crane_Song
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
Perfectly pitched h/c.

Mental Disorders/Illness Fic Rec
Too Much On My Mind by captain_starcat
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - slash
An unusual take on Napoleon's character.

Pining Fic Rec
Love's a Funny Thing by Azdak
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - labeled "other"
A story about various expressions of love.

Prostitute Fic Rec
Services Rendered by Nyssa
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - slash
An encounter between Napoleon and a male prostitute, who is the point-of-view character.

Protective Character Fic Rec
The Simple Affair by Mrs_Spooky
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
A fine mission fic.

Religion Fic Rec
After Querido by Linda White
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - slash
A short look at Illya and Napoleon's relationship and the only fic I've encountered in which Illya is a Russian Orthodox believer.

Sad Fic Rec
At a Distance by Nyssa
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - slash
Very sad. Ack.

Sexual Tension Fic Rec
Hands by Cord Smithee
The Man from U.N.C.L.E - slash
From first meeting to first time. And Illya's hands.

Short Angsty Fic Rec
Burn All Your Bridges Down by IamShadow21
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - slash
Illya after UNCLE.

Tropical Setting Fic Rec
Between Life and Death by F. MacDonnell
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - gen
A conversation turns to Illya's ring while he is held captive on a mission.

The Professionals

Age Difference Fic Rec
Lest These Dark Days by Jane Carnall and Ann Johnson
The Professionals - slash
A very convincing Bodie/Cowley fic.

Captured Fic Rec
Today's Lesson by JoJo
The Professionals - slash
Bodie is captured.

Fake Relationship Fic Rec
Concatenation by sineala
The Professionals - slash
B and D get married.

Horror/Demon/Vampire Fic Rec
The Devil and George Cowley by Ann Carr
The Professionals - gen
More things in heaven and Earth.

Older Characters Fic Rec
Ray's Cottage Garden Diary by Pale Rider (boothros)
The Professionals - slash
An older Ray contemplates the flowers he grows.

Post-Apocalypse Fic Rec
Into the Light of a Dark Black Night by lomelinde
The Professionals - slash
Bodie, Doyle, and Cowley after the end of the world.

Wedding Fic Rec
The Last to Know by PR Zed (przed)
The Professionals - slash
Ray leaves CI5 and what happens after.

Wings Fic Rec
Icarus Also Flew (everyone forgets that) by Anonymous
The Professionals - slash
Bodie has an unusual ability.

Other

Animal/Pet Fic Rec
Low by Dr Spleenmeister
The A-Team - gen
Inside Murdock's mind. Angst ho!

Asexual Fic Rec
To a Doctor's Wife by tweedisgood
Sherlock Holmes - liminal
A really beautiful fic, though sad.

BDSM Fic Rec
How Certain the Journey by brightlyburning
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie - slash
Napoleon/Illya BDSM AU with soulmate marks. Totally tropey, yes, but still quite compelling (even if I find the sex a little squicky).

Dystopian AU Fic Rec
Jim's Secret by RandomFlyer
The Sentinel - gen
Are-known AU featuring a society tilting toward dystopia.

Gender Swap Fic Rec
Portman Square by afterism
Raffles - femslash
Lady burglars.

Military Fic Rec
Psmith and Jackson, RFC by kindkit
Psmith - slash
Psmith and Mike during the First World War.

Movie Inspired Fic Rec
the compromise by Val Mora (valmora)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie - slash
How do Napoleon and Illya's superiors view their relationship?

Prison Fic Rec
Five times the A Team escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground by Emma_Oz
The A-Team - gen
Why did the Team break out of prison?

Self-Harm Fic Rec
The Healing Properties of Felt-Tip Pens by Echo
The Avengers - gen
Not really self-harm, but adjacent.

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A Frabjous Day

2023-06-13T06:04:35Z

(Note: This was formerly an access list only post but is now public.)

For the year 1987 in my Lifetime Fic Bingo game, I have wanted to read the Man from U.N.C.L.E. novella Traitor Within the Gates by D.H. Bryn, which is one of the four hard-copy zines in my small collection. Yet, as I've discussed before, reading physical media is hard for me. This is especially true when the text is closely spaced, as that of this zine is (although it is both larger and crisper than in some zines I've seen).

Tonight I was talking about the problem with some online friends and reminiscing about a (then very expensive) program I was allowed to use in college that did optical character recognition on scanned pages and used text-to-speech to read the resulting data. I said that I'd always fantasized about having a small portable scanner in the shape of a pen that I could run across a line of text to perform this task in real time. (An Internet search later in the evening showed that such a gadget now exists.) One friend commented that cell phones might be able to perform more or less that function these days, which inspired some googling on my part. And lo, as of iOS 15 (2021), iPhones have been able to do instant OCR on any photograph taken with their cameras and then speak the text discovered. Wow! Rejoicing in Turtle Town!

I've tried this out by photographing the pages of my copy of Traitor Within the Gates, and although there is a little fiddling involved in starting each new page, it is working great. It has made the zine much more accessible for me, and it's a technology I hope to use frequently in the future. Maybe I'll even buy some more zines to use it on.

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Something for Everyone

2023-06-02T08:18:50Z

It makes me happy that even fics I hate are often loved by someone. Tonight I've been doing more gathering of stories for my Lifetime Fic Bingo game. This involves visiting the Fanlore articles of fics published in my target years, and those articles often include quotes from past discussions of the fics in various venues. Tonight I was fascinated to discover from these that moonlightmead not only loved castalia's Sunshine, my least favorite Pros story (at least among those I've finished), but described it as the fic that hooked her on the fandom. Whoa!

I have been on the other end of this, as well. At the last Bistocon, someone mentioned Endgame by Tarot as a story she was sorry she'd read. I, on the other hand, like that story very much. I even named it as a favorite in the recs I prepared for the previous Bistocon. This diversity seems to me like a joyful thing. If people love different fics, then more fics get loved.

(Though I admit that I sometimes have difficulty keeping that in mind. I can feel attacks on fics that I like, especially if they come from particular people, as attacks on me, implying that I am stupid or bad.* I'm working on getting over that, however, and the fact that other people love some things that I hate is helpful, since I know that I don't think those people are stupid or bad.)

(*ETA: This is one reason I tend to throw softballs in my fic write-ups.)

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Another Closet

2022-10-11T23:23:08Z

(Note: This was formerly a access list only post but is now public.)

Today is National Coming Out Day. This is the first year I've actually remembered on the day, so it's the first time I've had to decide what to do about it. I could make a public post about sexuality in my journal. I have been somewhat circumspect about that issue. (For instance, my belated NCOD post last year was friends-only.) In my most recent multifandom bingo post, though, I used the phrase "as a queer person", so I suppose I've more or less exited that closet without having to wait for the designated day.

Applying the idea of coming out more broadly, there are other things I've been vague about that I could make explicit. Yet, while I think there is value to "someone you know is X" efforts, that stuff doesn't feel relevant enough to my participation in fandom to make the complicated and painful explanations worthwhile for me or for others.

Yet there is one thing that is relevant, that as far as I recall I have never hinted at in any fan space, and that I think might be liberating to make known. That is that I am dyslexic. I find reading slow, laborious, and error-prone, and I do much of my reading of fan fiction using text-to-speech software. That doesn't, in my opinion, mean that I am "not really reading" it. The use of adaptive technology doesn't make an activity less meaningful, it just makes it possible for people who would otherwise be excluded.

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