marbleglove

Okay, it’s Christmas season around these here parts, and I thought I would share my little rant about Santa Claus. Because, believe it or not, there are kids who do not believe in Santa Claus. For that matter, there are also adults who do not believe in him. I’d expect a few teenagers to refute him just because they’re teenagers and being contrarian, but the rest… (I sadly shake my head.)

Let me lay this out in logical fashion:

Santa Claus gives presents.

He gives additional presents. All the various relatives have to give their own presents, they can’t lay claim to Santa Claus presents. (1)

So there may be all sorts of evidence against his existence (say, you saw Mom wrapping the presents for stockings or saw Dad dressed up in a red suit with a white beard, or you took a moment to consider the physics of flying through the air with reindeer) but clearly all of this so called evidence is trumped by the simple fact that he brings presents. It is completely counter-productive to deny the existence of someone who is giving you presents.

After all, someone who doesn’t exist, can’t give you presents, and there isn’t any greater issue at hand. It’s just a matter of, present or no present? A bit like Cake or Death.




Santa Claus clearly lives because his existence makes the world a better




(1) I’d also like to mention that Santa presents being additional is a wonderfully useful thing from the opposite side as well. Say you found the perfect present for someone but its not something you want to be known for giving, you wrap it up, sign it from Santa, and stick it under the tree. I did this a couple of years ago just for the fun of it, and the chaos it created was hilarious.

A circle of coolness regarding the face-eating spindly-dromes of PG8-K59

A prompt by bratfarrar

A creation by pentapus (which is very, very cute, as all of her work is.)

A prompt by marbleglove (me, in the comments section)

A creation by bratfarrar

I have a quick rant to make about showing honor and respect to either real people or to characters. This was inspired by a Veterans' Day radio bit which pissed me off. It was talking about how "Soldiers, not poets," did whatever. Allowed freedom, and free speech and whatnot. While it's annoying that it blatantly ignored the contributions of poets, that was more or less understandable given that it's Veterans' Day.

What was more distasteful was the fact that the radio apparently thought that the only way to honor veterans was to dishonor everyone else. This is distressingly common in writing, too: some authors think that the only way to show how smart one character is, is to show all the other characters are idiots. This way of looking at the world is also a main reason for domestic abuse: the only way for the one person to feel strong is for the other person to be weak.

The theory is wrong. Honor and respect and power are not a zero sum game. One person having these does not mean another person lacks. The opposite is true, they build upon each other. One of my favorite books is The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. It's about an assassin trying to get past security and a cop trying to track the assassin. What makes it so good, though, is that both characters are so spectacularly smart, tricky, and clever. If one of them were simply incompetent, then both would lose that quality. A person can be defined by their friends and their enemies. Only a very small person needs very small friends and enemies. A powerful person wants powerful friends and can deal with powerful enemies.

A quote of dubious origin (either Marianne Williamson or Nelson Mandela):

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. Thee's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

 
Despite evidence to the contrary, I actually don't watch that much TV. Tuesday evenings are the one time when I watch NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles back-to-back. NCIS, as I have mentioned before, has grabbed a hold of me and won't let go. The Los Angeles spin-off is less well-done but it's growing on me. 

Anyway, I don't have a particular plot-bunny at this point, but I do have a scene that's probably in an epilogue to some unwritten greater story. If anyone else knows the plot, feel free to let me know. It's a Highlander crossover. 

Epilogue

Hetty was the last of the team to say her goodbyes to Professor Pierson, the resource she had brought in to help on the case. The rest of the team stared in covert awe as the man actually lifted Hetty up off her feet in order to give her a quite thorough kiss.

Actually, the stares weren’t all that covert, but the two principals in the drama were ignoring them for now.

“That certainly takes me back. Will I be seeing you again?” Hetty spoke in her regular dry fashion.

“No. I’m afraid Adam Pierson is overdue for a fatal accident.” This comment got a few side-long looks from most of the observers, but G was clearly less than surprised and Hetty merely tsk’d.

“Pity. Am I in the will?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.” Then with another kiss, he put her down and was out the door.

Hetty watched him go with a fond look. “Such a lovely man.”

Finally she turned to Kensi and said, “Some advice. Never get into a relationship with a man who has a price on his head larger than your mortgage. It never ends well. What? Oh, I never did anything, but some days I couldn’t help but consider. Sadly, that was enough. He could always tell what I was thinking. Well, back to work.”

She ignored the shocked agents she left behind.

G finally broke the silence. “I… don’t even know what to say to that.”

Sam knew exactly what to say. “I’m wondering how much the price is, who’s offering, and why. And what we were doing working with someone with a price like that.”

“And yet we’re never going to know,” Nate pointed out, “because looking would require researching one of Hetty’s exes.”

That was a very good point. And they had other, less dangerous, work to do, like tracking down killers. They got back to it. 

Today being Sunday and me feeling more virtuous than usual, I actually contemplated religious issues today. It occurred to me that if God is this incomprehensible creature with vast powers, I have a god-like role to the characters in my stories. So I considered this comparison for a bit. 

I love my characters. A few in particular are my favorites, of course, but for the most part, if I don't enjoy a character at least a little then I don't write them at all, and that's that. I love the good guys and I love the bad guys, and I love the conflicts they get themselves into. 

And I am not kind to my characters. When I love them, I love showing them off. I push them to their limits, finding outrageous scenarios that would show off a particular reaction from them. My characters do not get to skip happily along singing happy little songs because, good grief, it would be boring and I don't like boring characters. In fact, the type of character who is beautiful, wonderful, capable, happy, and who skips along singing happy songs while being beloved by everyone has a name. This name is Mary Sue, and she is not well thought off by all the other god-like creators out there. Occasionally, other fic-writers go out of their way to beat down a Mary Sue for being too irritating. 

My characters even have free will to the extent that if I write them as wildly out of character, it's just poor writing and I try to avoid that. 

I do want my characters to be happy... at the end of the story. Or maybe not happy, precisely, but better off than they were. Or, well, more impressive than they were?  Or at least have survived to have a really cool story to tell. And if they die a horrible death, at least it's for a good cause and other people will be impressed. If they ever find out about it since it's really made to be visible from a god-like perspective rather than to the other characters. But well, the other characters just aren't my audience, now are they? 

Anyway, those are my thoughts as I sat in holy silence contemplating the wonders of the world and the love of god. People who say, "God loves us, he wants us to be happy" are probably not fiction writers, or at least haven't thought it through. 

Have I horribly offended anyone by this bit of philosophical rambling? I did refrain from saying any of this out loud until I could get back to my computer. 

Spike is surrounded by dementors. It's a lost cause. All the wizards and witches watch with horror as their new friend disappears from view beneath the multitude of dementors determined to have at him. And then there's a howl of pure rage and the dementors quickly find themselves decimated and no visible end to the carnage done to them, one in particular looking a bit queasy for a dementor. It was backing away as best it could from the raging vampire shouting at it. "You bastard! You stole my soul! I worked hard for that thing. You'd better give it back!"  

I've recently been watching Samurai Champloo. It is utterly fabulous. There are many, many amazing bits and I'm not sure which character is my favorite Jin (a quiet reserved traditional samurai appearance that mostly masks the fact that he's homicidally insane) or Mugen (who is homicidally insane and is very much in your face about it.)  However, I think the single scene that tops the others is where one yakuza type is saying that there are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who give the orders and the ones who do what they're told. It's possible that this would have been a convincing argument if it weren't for the fact that he was saying it to Mugen who goes out of his way to do neither. 

It's surprisingly similar and yet completely distinct from Watanabe (the director)'s previous creation: Cowboy Bebop, another absolutely fabulous anime. It's bounty hunters in space ships and genetically enhanced dogs and Spike is too awesome for words and Ed is... well, Ed is Ed and is absolutely adorable. 

One thing that has struck me, though, is that I don't feel any need to read or write fanfiction for these two shows. Not even crossovers, which are my real weakness, pitting these characters up against someone from another fandom. Nope. It would just be messy and completely unnecessary. These stories are perfect and complete in and of themselves. 

It's been five years since I became an active member in fandom. I get most introductions to shows through fandom, have watched several purely to better understand the fandoms, and get ideas all the time. It's odd and unnerving and peaceful to just not for these shows. 

I certainly like fanfiction and it would be horrible to have all shows be this perfect, but it's rather awesome that they exist. 

So I actually won a small writing contest and will get two free books for it.  Coolness. ilona_andrews  writes a couple of fantasy series and for Halloween had a competition to write what and why one of her characters dressed up as. Apparently she is an author who actively promotes fanfic. Additional coolness. Anyway, the story entries are here. I definitely recommend the series starting with Magic Bites. Her other series is fun and interesting but not at the level of awesomeness that is her first series. 

I have this idea, that many before me have had, that Willow of the uber powers gets possessed by a goa'uld. Ooh, the terror.

However, it doesn't quite go the way it's planned. 

You see, Willow's powers are religion-based, not physical attributes. So the goa'uld gets into her, and can do anything it wants with her body but her mind is still there, seeing and experiencing what is happening. And her mind is still perfectly capable of praying, raising power, and/or casting spells.

So while everyone else is freaking out (oh no, Willow's gone evil again, sort of, what will we do?), Willow has a mild freak out of her own (oh no, why is there some alien calling itself a god moving my body like a puppet?) and then she casts a spell so that she's possessing the goa'uld who's possessing her, and while yes, the controls are a bit weird at this remove, she's not going to let someone else drive her body. 

She explains this to everyone else who all go O_o. 

Meanwhile the goa'uld is getting a short but intense introduction to what real gods are like and the dangers inherent in pissing off someone who has a close personal relationship with a real god. Through this experience, he's converted to Wiccan and becomes Willows apostle. 

Everyone (including Willow) goes O_o. 

This is an old Sentinel/Highlander story that I thought up and plotted out and then stuck in a corner of my hard driver. It still holds a place in my heart even if uses way too many cliched plot devices for me ever consider actually spending the time to develop further. Anyway, I found it the other day and decided that rather than allow it to continue collecting dust, I'm going to put it out to pasture along with all of the younger and more rabid plot-bunnies. Enjoy.

 
A few scenes are:

( Blair Sandburg freaking out about arresting a member of his defense committee )

 
And

 

There was some relatively high profile crime that Shawn solved in a fairly high profile manner. (Okay, go ahead and pick an episode, pretty much any episode of Psych. There are maybe two exceptions?) Whatever. However, it has attracted attention, specifically, it has attracted the attention of the secret military no-longer-The-Initiative group.

They recruit psychics. However, they know better than to trust just anyone claiming to be a psychic even if he did just solve a crime. So they hire an outside contractor to come with them, to see if he’s really as psychic as all that.

Thus, Riley et al plus Willow show up at the police station, with the intention of interviewing the police’ psychic consultant. The Chief is taken aback. Lassiter is caught between being appalled that anyone is taking Shawn that seriously and delighted that finally Shawn will be revealed as a fraud.

When Shawn finally bounces in, he thinks it’s awesome. Gus is significantly more nervous. (“It’s one thing to lie to the police, it’s another thing to lie to secret military people who could kill you with their pinkies.” “So you agree that it’s okay to lie to the police?” “No! But lying to the police will get you thrown in county lock-up. Lying to the military, you’ll get sent to Guatanomo Bay and tortured!” “Hey, I’ve been lying to the police for years, and never sent to county lock-up.” “Shawn! Be serious.” “I am serious.”)

Willow does her thing with a bit of chanting and a few herbs thrown hither and yon. Shawn is practically taking notes. The no-longer-The-Initiative are looking stoic. Lassiter is looking ever more appalled.


“Yup. He’s psychic all right.” She sounded amused.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Lassiter was appalled. (He’s appalled a lot, come to think of it. Pretty much constantly.)

“It’s pretty giggle-worthy from my perspective, too. Psychic a catch-all term. A lot of different symptoms get all grouped together under the one phrase, but not all psychics are alike. His ability is really tightly bound-up with sight and memory. It’s not strong but it’s really well-trained. I doubt he ever gets the clichéd visions, but he’ll almost always be drawn to noticing the pertinent details. And, not to reveal too much of what I saw in his head, boy did his dad really screwed the pooch on this one if he wanted mature adulthood in his son. It took an extra bit of something to live up to expectations, but while psychics get more input from the world around themselves they also tend to be a lot more flaky.”

“Hah!”

“A warning—and as police you should already know this—just because a person saw something you didn’t, doesn’t mean they’re telling you the truth. That’s a warning for you, too, Shawn. If you ever do get in contact with a  spirit or power: they have motives of their own and are just as likely to lie as a living being and tend to have fewer tells to let you know.



In the end, I think, the military decides that he isn’t actually powerful enough as a psychic to help them. And they go away again. This could very easily be a one shot, but I have too many other projects going on to really develop it properly.

And yet another Highlander/Criminal Minds plot idea. Given the fact that it’s serial killers, I’m sticking the rest of this post under a cut. Nothing particularly graphic but possibly not what you want to see by surprise while browsing.

( Read more... )

Are there any Criminal Minds / Highlander fanfic out there? I did a brief google search and didn't find any. Peculiar, given that hte one show has a bunch of serial killers as both good guys and bad guys and the other show focuses on track such killers down. Plus, Matthew McCormick from Highlander is an FBI profiler. If anyone knows of any crossover fics for this, please let me know.

I watched the first season of Criminal Minds on dvd some time back. The series is about an FBI response team that profiles serial killers. It was a lot of fun, but wow, it’s also a good way to start seeing serial killers everywhere. Then last week, I saw the most recent season premier.

And immediately wanted to add Methos to the mix.

Given that the season premier was fairly recent, the rest of the idea is under the spoiler cut.

( Spoiler cut... )

Of course, the real point of the story is to get the behavioral analysts of Criminal Minds working with someone who has an even more thorough understanding of how serial killers work. They probably know it, too, but can’t quite find any proof. Or maybe they do find proof and aren’t sure what to do with the fact that they have identified one of the men who released the Turkish Cannibal, given that he’s also helping them save one of their own. Choices, choices.

Plus,

“I’m not any more. I glutted myself on blood and death and finally became sated.”

“Then you weren’t a real serial killer. It’s a compulsion for these people. They have to have it, and every kill makes the need grow stronger.”

“Oh, I was the real deal all right. It’s just that you’ve caught all of your case studies before they body count got high enough to meet their needs.”

The smile he gave was chilling in the way that it was soft and amused and not at all what a self-confessed killer should be like.


Or then,

“A question of morality: who is the better man: a serial killer who stopped killing innocents and got on with his life as a pacifist or a serial killer who continues but always and only targets other serial killers?”

“Huh. It’s an interesting question. Why do you ask?”

“Well, you asked about the Turkish Cannibal. I helped get him out of prison because our brother was threatening me, but then set them both up for another killer. Now this third killer was most put-out with me. He thinks I’m a monster, or at least was one. And I was, certainly, but he doesn’t seem to think he is at all. It doesn’t occur to him.”

“That’s rather common to all sunsubs who target other unsubs. The others do it for the extra thrill.”

 
I'm not exactly sure what the plot here is, but the characters are Willow and possibly Kennedy from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the whole crew plus Ian Edgerton from "Numb3rs". 

There's some FBI case that's proving particularly difficult for the Numb3rs crew. At one point, Charlie mentions that there's a brilliant math student at CalSci who really seems to get the practical application of numbers. It's both wonderful and annoying, then, that she seems determined to focus on the pure theory. However, maybe they can tempt her to help out anyway. So a group of agents plus Charlie (and Aminta and Larry) all go to Charlie's office to work on the problem and lure the newest math wiz in. 

The newest math wiz, is Willow. (This is post-series, but I'm ignoring the comic books which I haven't read, anyway.) 

Take a moment to consider her character: she was always brilliant with computers, she fairly quickly became rather impressive with magic, and there's clearly a way that the two subjects heavily overlap. As Charlie would say: "Math is everywhere." Math is God's language. Math describes the world. Given what Willow has proven herself capable of, magic-wise and computer-wise, math is pretty much a language that she is quite fluent in.

However, she's still a black-magic addict. It was wonderful that she could perform magic without going evil, but that's a demonstration of control on par with having managed to quit black magic in the first place. She is still an addict, and needs to stay away from temptation. It's too bad, then, that the Scoobies still need her skills come apocalypse season. So, in general, she helps out the Scoobies during May, and then spends the rest of the year detoxing, so that she doesn't go overboard and try to destroy the world again. 

She's very good at pure math, she's even better at applied math, and it's too bad that she does as much practical application as she can stand during that one hellish month in Spring. 

Anyway, Charlie et al are working in his office when she comes in, and is about to politely decline when she sees Ian Edgerton. Agent Edgerton has gone white and is trying to disappear into the background. Possibly he succeeds in staying out of Willow's notice until Don attracts everyone's attention with a concerned, "Ian? Are you all right?" 

Edgerton is the best sniper in the FBI and the fourth best sniper in the country. A top tracker, an instructor at Quantico, and high-ranking enough to pick his own assignments. While none of the other Numb3rs crew would have been told, Edgerton would have been briefed on the supernatural. He not only knows about the supernatural, in general, he also knows about the first line of defense (ie, the Scoobies) in specific. This is because the government has realized that Willow is a real and serious danger. Ian has been briefed, as a sniper, that there might be a time when she needs to be taken out immediately. He's studied her before, as a target in case the need arose. It's one of the reasons why he's been in California so often. He just wasn't expecting to meet her face to face. 

Given what she's done to people she doesn't like and the fact that she's displayed evidence of telepathy before, he feels justified in being a bit nervous about being in the same room with her. 

Willow just shrugs and explains that actually having someone like him around actually makes her feel safer. If worst comes to worst, someone will stop her before she hurts everyone, and that's a good thing. 

No one else knows the specifics but that reassurance directed at Edgerton, the resident sniper, mostly makes everyone else in the room highly suspicious. (If Kennedy is there, then she's a lot less laid back about the situation than Willow is.) Then things really devolve into arguing and guilt trips and in the end it's actually Willow and Edgerton who are most okay with the whole situation. 

Then of course, they all go off and find the actual bad guy (without using any magic because Willow really is going through detox, although possibly with some help from Kennedy's slayer skills.) 

So I've been listening to a lot of Heather Dale songs recently. The songs of hers that I like, I like a very great deal. (Hunter, Joan, The Prydwen Sails Again, United at War, Kingsword, etc, etc, etc)  The songs of hers that I don't like, are mostly just elevator music and are easily ignored.

Anyway, one of her songs is Black Fox, and it has a plot and characters and it's clearly a teaser to a full story. And I really want to read the story and I really don't want to write it.

To hear it and see a quite cute animation for it that illustrates the lyrics exactly, you can go here.
To hear it and see a different animation that is less strict to the lyrics and more edging towards character development and plot, you can go here.

The lyrics themselves are:

As we were out a-hunting, one morning in the spring.
Both hounds and horses, running well, made the hills and the valleys ring.
But to our great misfortune, no fox there could be found.
Our huntsmen cursed and swore but still no fox moved over the ground.

And up spoke our master huntsman, the master of the chase,
"If only the Devil himself come by, we'd run him such a race!"
And up there sprung like lightning a fox from out of his hole.
His fur was the colour of a starless night, and his eyes like burning coals.

And they chased him over the valley, and they chased him over the fields;
They chased him down to the river bank, but never would he yield.
And he's jumped into the water, and he's swum to the other side
And he's laughed so loud that the green woods shook, then he's turned to the huntsmen and he's cried:

"Ride on, my gallant huntsmen! When must I come again?
For you should never want for a fox to chase all over the glen.
And when your need is greatest, just call upon my name,
And I will come, and you shall have the best of sport and game!"

And the men looked up in wonder and the hounds run back to hide,
For the fox, it changed to the Devil himself where he stood on the other side.
And the men, the hounds, the horses went flying back to town,
And hard on their heels come a little black fox, laughing as he ran.

"Ride on, my gallant huntsmen! When must I come again?
For you should never want for a fox to chase all over the glen.
And when your need is greatest, just call upon my name,
And I will come, and you shall have the best of sport and game!
Ride on, my gallant huntsmen! When must I come again?
For you should never want for a fox to chase all over the glen."



If I had my druthers, I think I'd have maderr write it. She has a lot of quite awesome slash stories that this reminds me of. (If you want to read her work, you should do so soon since I believe she's transitioning a lot of her publicly-available stories into a paid account. Although actually, the paid account isn't particularly expensive, so it shouldn't really be a deterrent.)

So I just saw the pilot episode of Psych and it was quite a bit of fun. First reaction: Shawn Spencer is pretty much Ferris Bueller.

I have recently discovered the TV show Leverage. It is quite awesome: sort of a modern-day Robin Hood group. Steal from the rich (and corrupt) to give to the poor (and wronged). There's some heist or con job every episode. Oodles of fun.

Almost immediately upon hearing just the premise, I thought of Cory Raines and Amanda from Highlander, both of whom are warm-hearted thieves. Cory Raines would fit in best with the Leverage group being completely insane in an adrenaline-junky type of way, and going on bank-robbing sprees and donating all the of the stolen goods to orphanages.  However I really want Amanda to meet up with Parker from Leverage, becaues they're both talented pick-pockets and cat burglers, but Parker is severely unsocialized while Amanda seduces her way out of all sorts of situations. I think a meeting between them would be interesting because Parker would probably be uncertain and envious and think that Amanda was much better than her while Amanda would probably see a lot of herself from before she was found by her teacher Rebecca. A meeting would probably bring out one of Amanda's rare serious/mature/maternal moments.

While just the idea of the characters mixing up together is fun, I do have a basic plot.

There is a bad guy who has done something particularly heinous. My current thoughts are that a mobster stole an organ intended for live-saving surgery for a child and intends to sell it on the black-market. Not only a heinous crime but also one that demands a really quick turn-around time in order for any fix to be actually helpful, thus more mistakes to be made.

I'm thinking Amanda probably heard about it while stealing something else from the bad-guy. Thus not only does she feel the need to steal the organ back for it's original owner, but security is much higher than it had been so she needs help: she calls in Duncan, Cory, and Methos.

Methos respectfully bows out, saying he's not planning to make any enemies of that calabre.

Meanwhile the Leverage team is approached by the uncle of the child being prepped for surgery. Given that the motivation of the head of Leverage is all tied up in his own young son's death, this would be something he would take on even without having time to do as thorough a set-up a needed.

There is much high-jinks as both teams run into each other. Many close calls and misunderstandings and whatnot.

In the end, it all works out and they go to deliver the rescued organ to surgery in the nick of time.

It's only then that they realize that the family of the child was still freaking out in the hospital and no one had thought to look for any recovery options and the kid didn't have an uncle.

It's Duncan who's suspicious enough to ask for a picture from the Leverage team and identifies Methos, of course.

Okay, I just recently saw Transformers 2. It was fun. Bad like whoa, but fun none the less. I pretty much went into it figuring character development was a lost cause, and plot was probably something best left alone, but pretty people, pretty cars, and action sequences were a go. And yes they were. I was only really thrown out of suspended disbelief a few times when the physics of the situation was just a bit too far off.

While I enjoyed the complete schlockiness that was Transformers 2, the best part of the movie was seeing the previews. Some of them not only looked fun, but looked good, too. So here are a couple of movies that are coming up and look awesome!

Sherlock Holmes (25 December 2009)

Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes. Let us pause just to appreciate that bit of type casting... he's brilliant at what he does, he's a complete loose canon, a drug-addict, and a bit of an ass. It's perfect.





M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender (2 July 2010)

This just looks awesome! One caveat: Avatar isn't an anime that I follow. And thinking of the anime that I do like, I'm not sure that I would appreciate them being made live action. However, I don't watch the anime, and I do trust Shyamalan, and, as I said, this preview is awesome!

I recently stumbled across What's Special About This Number?, a perfectly awesome website that shows math trivia. This reminded me of one my gripes about Numb3rs fanfic. There are some very good stories in this fandom, but I have found very, very few that actually center around any math.

Are there just too few math majors writing fanfic? Surely not.

Is it too hard? It can't possibly be. After all, I have personally heard Quakerism explained by the solving of a quadratic equation, which is alas, not online, although I may need to bug the author to post it. (You know who you are, You-Know-Who.)

Admittedly, the canon authors aren't doing much better. However, frankly, that's more common than not, and most fanfic authors seem to take inspiration from the failing of the canon authors to Do It Right. So I would really like some authors to go do it right. And then let me know.

Anyway, for inspiration, here are links to the few stories I have found that are at least vaguely math-based:

The Arms of the Galaxy by audrarose 

Calculus Is Easy by frostfire_17 

Game Theory by halcyon_shift 

Alas, I do mean "vaguely"

If anyone reading this has more suggestions, please let me know.