I'm seriously thinking about signing up for yuletide this year. Still not sure if I'm quite clear on the rules or who can write for it and who can't. But in the past, it's been a delightful source of fics in rare fandoms that I enjoy, and I'd really like to participate. I'm awfully tempted to request one of my own original works, too, just to see if anybody might actually WRITE it. (I have, to date, received two fanfics of my original series, which just turns me into a quivering puddle of happy authorial jello.)

In other news, Common Ground reactions!

Another episode that rated quite high on the squee-o-meter. I think this season is just completely spoiling me! This one didn't quite turn me into the puddle of goo that "Progeny" and "Sateda" did, but it still had enough wonderful moments to make me a happy, happy fangirl.

I did see the ending coming a mile away, along with the blatant "Enemy Mine" elements of the plot. Still fun to see, though. Words cannot describe how much love I have for Sheppard's insistence that his friends will come for him. (And, continuing last season's trend, he only ever expresses that sentiment when no one is around to hear it.) And his snarkiness in the face of death, and never-say-die attitude .... And OMG, Rodney! Rodney, Rodney! SQUEE! "What have you done to him?" -- and his "seriously pissed off" body language in the conference room with Leydon just afterwards -- and trying to give a Sheppard-esque pep talk (and doing a very good job!), then still being his usual utterly incompetent self with weapons ... and FLYING THE PUDDLEJUMPER (competently!) -- between "Sateda" and now this episode, I think it's pretty much established that Rodney's become a darn good pilot -- and "He looks even younger than he was before!" to Sheppard ... and the little squeak at the end ... Oh yes, my Rodney fangirliness is back in full swing, all right!

And I believe we finally had an episode in which nobody double-crossed anybody! How unusual for them, LOL. (Unless you count Leydon double-crossing Kolya, but that happened last season.) And, you know, I *really* like Leydon. Liked him in Coup D'Etat, like him even more now. He really is a much better leader of the Genii than either Cowen or Kolya would be.

My one big question at the end, though, is: What about the Wraith enzyme? Don't they inject it when they feed? Did the Wraith "gift of life" fix that aspect of it, or does he have to deal with enzyme withdrawal now?

Oh, and a random side note -- I liked that it was night on the planet where they gated with the Wraith, but day where they came from. Almost invariably this show seems to sync up the day-night cycles of the different planets where they go, and really, what is up with that? Shouldn't they be about equally likely to encounter night as day on the planets where they go? Or did the Ancients actually take that into account when they placed the gates and make sure they were all in approximately the same "time zone" on their respective worlds?

Yet another side note, and while I hate to derail the overal positive of the rest of this post, I just have to ask ... WHAT is up with the Carson hate in the fandom? The first time I ran across a Carson-bashing comment in somebody's LJ, I just thought, oh, whatever, everybody has their least favorite character and it's not like, say, Weir or Teyla don't get bashed a lot too. But it's gone from being kind of a minority opinion to something I see everywhere. It seemed like every other episode reaction for "Common Ground" degenerates into Carson-bashing at some point -- and it's not like "I disagree with his actions in this episode" or "I wish they'd take his character in a different direction" ... it's character hate of the "kill him off already" variety, which I just don't get. Especially not for Beckett. WHY?