Inside the Little Plastic Castle

I've adored the writing of wordstrings in BBC Sherlock. I was delighted to learn a decade ago that the same person, writing as Katie Forsythe, created many excellent fanfics in the Arthur Conan Doyle canon. Those used to be hosted at liquidfic.org, but that domain parted ways with the author.

Today I got a AO3 notification that wordstrings didn't have backups of the Katie Forsythe work, so asked if someone had saved the stories locally, and if they'd be willing to share them with other interested parties.

Of course scores of fans stepped up, and it's clear those works will be back on the internet soon.

I did some random searching, and was very surprised to learn another of wordstring's works, the Paradox Series, still at the AO3, is also available for free via the no-DRM-ebook-only publisher Smashwords, which offers pdb and lrf formats, in addition to the pdf, mobi, and epub formats hosted here.

So I guess some folks use Smashwords to host fanfic?

(And there's one further complication: the liquidfic.org stories are on the Wayback Machine, BUT the Internet Archive is offline because they're dealing with a DDoS attack. According to the Archive's founder, it will be "days not weeks" before they'll be back up.)

Let it be known that Tumblr did support awesome creativity! Particularly the 221B Baker Towers headcanon universe, where all the reboot characters are marginalized folks living in a poor housing estate. A delicious improvement on the class-bound glaring-white BBC version.

I've seen most of the creative art and writing on 221b-baker-towers Tumblr

…but just in case…

The original art manip and headcanon post, safe on AO3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/428754

Tagged Tumblr posts https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/221b+baker+towers

And on the Archive https://archiveofourown.org/tags/221B%20Baker%20Towers/works

Sunday I rolled to the Gulf Coast YMCA branch. The water was deliciously warm at 85°. I neglected to bring my flippers, so only swam 8 lengths in my allotted time, but that's why I exercise to time, not distance.

The pool may be filled with filtered sea water: it's certainly soft enough.

I streamed the first half hour of the final Sherlock to my massive disappointment. As always, plaidadder nails it

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I think that I may fairly make two postulata:

• 1) Whatever about series 5, this episode was designed to be the last episode of Sherlock that Moffat and Gatiss would make.
• 2) It should be.

http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/155952044114/the-perfect-metaphor-the-final-problem-and-the

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end quote

We walked over Mississippi Sound on the 2 mile bridge connecting Biloxi and Ocean Springs. The view, the sun, the breeze, were exhilarating. My traditional direct attention to the water photo memorializes one stop:

Home to nap, and finish The Final Problem. Wow, that was terrible. (As with most Sherlock canon, there were a handful of wonderful moments, but...thank god for fanfic. I heartily recommend all of plaidadder's.)

We then drove back to Biloxi to assess what was where. The beachside road is furnished with a wide array of architecture: brick Waffle Houses; massive casinos; 1940s apartment buildings; humble 900 sq ft shotgun houses, Frank Gehry's typically bizarre Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, and the Biloxi Visitor's Center, a majestic three-story former mansion.

In my brief time here, I've seen scores of historical markers, displays, websites, pamphlets. Based solely on the ones I've seen, the only people on the Gulf Coast have been the immigrant waves of French, English, Spanish, and "Americans." Africans aren't mentioned anywhere. This is what it looks like to be written out of the narrative.

The third Monday in January has officially been "Robert E Lee's Birthday" in Mississippi, until this year. Twitter shaming played a part in the Biloxi City Council voting unanimously to bring the holiday in line with the Federal designation of Martin Luther King's Birthday.

We finished our day with a promising but ultimately dull meal at Mosaic. MyGuy liked his pulled-pork quesadilla. My ceviche & rice-stuffed portobello was tasty, but not enough to write home about, although I seem to have done so.

Time to swim!

begin quote ... I can help you (and maybe others who are in your same shoes) keep your job until you decide you don’t want it anymore, and if you can’t keep this one maybe this will help you keep the next one.

A lot of this stuff is literally THE hardest stuff to do when you’re feeling down. Because the principle behind this is antithetical to who we probably are as people, seeking genuine connections and genuine expressions of ourselves. The operating principle is: Appearances count at work. Sometimes more than the actual work does.

Is that fair? No.

Should a really intelligent good worker run into trouble because they are having at temporary bout of sads or meds re-adjustment or other big life stuff? No. quote ends