We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

James Gilbert Caughran died from congestive heart failure on August 6th, 2024, aged 83. He is survived by his wife (my stepmother), his two sisters, his four children (including me), and his two grandchildren.

Jim was born in Tacoma, Washington and spent most of his childhood living in Lincoln, Nebraska. His family's temporary move to Pakistan when he was a teenager helped foster an interest in other cultures and gave him an international outlook early in life. He completed his last year of high school on a correspondence course and also became involved in science fiction zine fandom at this time.

He was a longtime science fiction fan, a member of Offtrails Magazine Publishers Association, Corflu, the Cult, and the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, and the first editor and webmaster of Fancyclopedia 3. He published the fanzines Erratic, A L'Abandon, and A Propos de Rien, among others.

He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California-Berkeley and received his PhD. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1967. After starting his working life as a university math professor, he immigrated to Canada in the early 1970s, and worked for more than three decades as a computer systems analyst.

Jim was active in the Toronto Monthly Meeting (TMM) of the Religious Society of Friends, and was one of the founders of a Quaker men's group at Friends General Conference in 1987, which is still meeting regularly. He served on many TMM committees over the years.

Jim was a kind, giving, philosophical man with a wide range of interests including handball, sailing, cross-country skiing, Scrabble, computer programming, and more. He kept many pets over the course of his life. In his later years he travelled widely, enjoyed classical music and opera, and was an avid reader of detective fiction and anything related to science, particularly cosmology. He instilled a love of learning, a keen wit, and an appreciation for social justice in all of his children. He is deeply missed.

If you knew Jim Caughran, in fandom or otherwise, please feel free to contact me at vicaughran at gmail.

I'm sure everyone has other things to think about right now,* but here is my Trick or Treat fic:

Title: Desert Dreams
Rating: T
Universe: The Old Guard
Characters: Quynh, Andromache
Warnings/Enticements: Canon-typical Temporary Character Death, Pre-Canon, First Meeting, First Kiss
Summary: Quynh gave up—once.
Word Count: 408

On AO3

And Growing Seasons was updated Friday as usual, although now that I am slightly less anxious I should start properly editing the last chapter.

I have not signed up for Yuletide this year, because I very clearly need a break from writing. Therefore I don't know if I'll make it to 400,000 words total on AO3 this year or not. If I end up treating anything then I probably will.

*I'm not watching the speech because I would have to watch it with my mother, and probably I would cry. Which would be fine in, you know, other circumstances, with someone who wasn't allergic to emotions. I am reading the 538 liveblog and explaining to Pepper that she doesn't get fed yet.

So.

My college is switching to online classes, except they haven't done this before in the middle of a semester and also half of my classes have really important lab components which can't be done from home. They're saying the semester will end when scheduled; I kind of doubt that. They're supposed to have figured out how this works by Monday, and until then I get to review and be anxious.

All of my work's clients are cancelling their inventory counts, obviously. I am not seriously financially affected by this.

My 79-year-old father decided to fly to Texas last weekend. He's back now where we have free healthcare and my stepmother is in an AirBnB so that's resolved, ish, but wow, Monday night was not fun.

Unfortunately being stuck at home with my mother all day is not ideal for my mental health, but ... there's nowhere else to go and if there was I'd have to go on public transit. And it's still too cold to spend much time writing in parks. But I'm generally doing okay. Lots of knitting.

The problem with saying "use the time to write!" is that this is a major disruption of routine, with bonus anxiety, which does not actually lend itself to increased creativity. I don't have that much focus for reading, either, including my DW list, which come to think of it is probably a warning sign (so, now I know). There has nevertheless been some writing. Kate Bornstein is a treasure.

I am sort of doing more on twitter, but I would not really recommend going on twitter if you don't want ALL CURRENT EVENTS ALL THE TIME.

Recommendations for podcasts accepted, no horror or true crime, without frequent interviews or changing guests every episode. Basically I want to listen to a small fixed group of people talking about things they are interested in that will not give me nightmares. Examples are Jay and Miles XPlain the XMen, Lingthusiasm, and usually Sawbones.

From thefridayfive:

1. Did you enjoy your senior year of high school?

Certainly more than the other ones.

2. Did you have a senior trip (high school) and were you able to go on it?

A what now?

3. Was graduating (from either high school or college/university) a big thing with your family or just another day?

Well, I and my parents actually went to my high school graduation, so there's that. I did not attend my university graduation ceremony, mostly because the default was that you could have two guests and apply for a limited number of extra invitations, and there were at least four people I really wanted there and a couple others who would expect to be invited, so it was easier to just avoid the issue.

4. What were you looking forward to the most after graduating from either high school or college/university?

After high school I was looking forward to university. After university I ... wasn't really.

5. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your graduating self?

For god's sake go see a fucking psychiatrist. And the campus employment centre.

We are back from the Giant Family Christmas Week of Doom (it wasn't bad, there was just ... a lot of it) and I have slept for nine hours and started the laundry and paid bills and done various other back-home things (and, halfway through this post, eaten lunch) and am therefore free to spam your reading page.

Not sure how much I wrote in 2018 in terms of numbers, but I wrote more than 300 words on 1/3 of the days. And probably over 60 000 words total.

Hit 150 000 hits and 1000 comment threads on AO3, and posted my longest single work to date.

Read 120 books (including novel- and novella-length fanfics, which this year made up about 2/3 of the total. Which I am okay with - this is because I have been reading on my laptop while knitting, which is great). And more than doubled the percentage of works by authors of colour from last year, mostly because of Silk, though the hard numbers are still kind of embarrassing.

Speaking of which:
I would like to read more works by authors of colour. I have been reading a lot of fanfic. Putting these together, I am soliciting recs for fanfic authors of colour (who, obviously, are comfortable with the internet knowing that), preferably but not necessarily Marvel.

To start, gsparkle writes great detective AUs and Natasha!fic.

In other news, the Three Sentence Ficathon is still going on, and I have written some things and may write more; I'm not quite sure what to do with them after, though. I'm fine with posting drabbles on AO3 but some of these are shorter than drabbles and also very casually tossed off. So your thoughts appreciated.

My sister was in town! My sister is the best person ever. And we played games and went to the aquarium and I got to spend the night with this handsome young gentleman:



And now they're going back to Windsor and there is tea.

And I got writing done on the subway, mostly the kind that's probably never going to be posted or go anywhere else, and that's nice and relaxing.

So everyone should go read The Café Elsinore by hoc_voluerunt. And then come here and talk to me about it.

It's made me think about modern adaptations and changing portrayals of mental health and the cliched argument over the transfer of power between generations in comedies vs tragedies and how parental relationships in Shakespeare compare to parental relationships in fairy tales. And I haven't had all these thoughts in my head at one time since university or mayybe when I was reading Aurora Leigh the year after, and oh, my brain is back.

(My brain is actually having serious difficulties at the moment, but the return of my critical reading skills can only be a good sign)

Returned library books.
Went to Mom's for dinner.
Made a Tumblr. Don't ask me why. Icons will be showing up once a day for the next two weeks, and thereafter very rarely as I make them.

Things done today:

Did some research on early 20thC Toronto
Told relatives (the important ones)
Talked to knumpify
Went grocery shopping
Read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Wrote over 600 words

I got a Lady's Not For Burning fic and oh, it's wonderful. Accessory After the Fact. Thomas Mendip's attitude toward life is enough like mine at the moment that it was lovely to get an exploration of it partially changing.

I also wrote 9 Yuletide fics, which seems like a lot, but 8 of them are only 100 words long. Way too much fun, like I said. And they appear to be well-received, which is lovely.

There isn't much, other than that. It's been a very nice Christmas so far, but there's still Christmas with my dad and my sister and my grandparents and knumpify to go (I grew up with divorced parents. I'm used to multiple Christmases). My mom's internet hasn't been working properly since the ice storm, so I spent yesterday running down my tablet battery and my brother's data plan reading Yuletide fic while Toronto worked on making "White Christmas" an understatement. And then my brother made me watch what is allegedly one of the worst X-File episodes ever (evil trees!). Very nice.

(Much nicer: I get this week off work and I'm only in three days next week. Ack, I used to like work.)

And now I really do need to leave for Dad's.