+ Back at work today, feeling fine. It's wet and icky outside, though.

+ zahrawithaz reviews Beauty and the Beast (Merls 2x05). Or rather, the characters of Merlin do. Better than the episode in some ways. *g* I love Merlin to extremes, I seriously do, but this reminds me how many people I know on my own f-list who could write a better show than we actually have.

It's kind of weird/funny that the shows and source material that need the most help are always the ones with the big fandoms. As much as I'd love to be able to roll around in Being Human fic all day for example, I have to admit that it's just a better show, it doesn't need holes filled in with fic and such, so people don't flock to it.

+ Glee fic continues to be better than the actual show. Giving Quinn and Kurt and Sue etc. much better treatment. I do wonder if there's any fic about Tina or Mercedes, though.

+ randomneses alerted me to this bullshit yesterday: Howard University's Hilltop mag has a staff editorial that details the ways students can prevent getting into dangerous situations at night. Money quote:

As well as making themselves look like easy targets by distractions or lack of awareness, female students are often guilty of another serious offense-strutting through the streets of Washington, D.C. in badly chosen attire (...) If walking through the streets in seductive club attire isn’t a blatant call for sexual harassment, then nothing is.

Do I even need to rant about the ways in which that passage is infuriating? Because yeah, you really want to send a message to college kids of all sexes that girls who dress however the hell they want to are asking for whatever happens to them. Fuck that.

+ That's all for today, must finish coursework for class later, and oh yeah also, am at work. :P

+ Yuletide nominations! It's my first year participating, I'm pretty excited. The fandoms I nominated are nothing revolutionary or even particularly obscure as far as obscure fandoms go, BUT:

Jacqueline Carey - The Kushiels Legacy series
Mad Men
RPF - Merlin
Sons of Anarchy
Southland
The Wire

What, ya'll know I had to sneak some Merlin in there. *g* You can nominate here if you're thinking of participating. Any fandom that is tiny, old/inactive, or had its first season/book/premiere date in the past year. Except for Leverage apparently. *sadface*

+ That Merlin character meme was much fun. And my thread - I've been overwhelmingly dubbed Guinevere (yay!), with a dash of Morgana and a smidgen of Merlin to taste. And flowers. Which makes me GLEEFACE. You guys are the best in all the land. ♥♥♥

+ Welcome to new friends! I'm on Twitter too if for some reason you'd want more of my random babble. ;-)

+ My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in the Philippines, in Samoa and Tonga, and everyone with family there.

What you can do to help the victims of Typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana (via lassiterfics):

1. Help for Typhooon Ondoy Victims in the Philippines - This is a good place to keep up with news, with active situation map and a list of ways you can donate. If you scroll down, there is a list of US-based donation drop-off points, though it's just California, New York, and New Jersey. You can also do credit card and PayPal.

2. Ondoy Places to Donate Relief Goods - This GoogleDocs has a more comprehensive list of how to donate under the 'Online/International' category.

3. SPREAD THE WORD.


+ Not like everyone doesn't already know about this, but it bears repeating. Everyone in the entertainment industry (everyone everywhere, really) who is petitioning to free Roman Polanski? Fuck you all.

The longer I look at the list, the more names I recognise, the more ragey I get. Of all the things, of all the people to fight for and to place your well-known names behind. Fuck that.

+ Also, Merlin fandom, don't even start. Just please, don't even. That's all I have to say about that.

I haven't done a meme in a while! It's either this, or I fangirl Gwen some more, so. ;)

Gacked from such_heights and penknife:

Ask me a fandom, and I will tell you:

+ OTP
+ Runner-up
+ Honorable mention(s)
+ Crack pairing(s)
+ Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't

Any fandom you know me to be in (I have about four active ones) or that I talk about is fair game, or even if it's a show I post about regularly but am not in the fandom for. Also, these days I SUCK at OTPing, but I should be able to narrow down a favorite for every fandom at least.

+ Today at work we had our normal bi-weekly Friday meeting, even though it's Thursday, because Boss is out tomorrow. Now it feels like Friday. Meh.

+ What part of "if you don't want to read/discuss/participate in meta, then DON'T" do some folks not get? Have peoples' scrollbars stopped functioning, or do they somehow think they should be able to dictate what other people want to talk about as well?

+ Supernatural starts tonight! I can't wait to see what happens. For those of you who love the show but will still be compartmentalizing the race and gender issues, like me, ABW has An Open Letter to Eric Kripke. And seriously, don't read if you're afraid your squee might get harshed or something, idk.

+ The Beatles: Rock Band is out, and OH MY GOD DO WANT. Why am I so broke, f-listies? Whyyyyy?

+ Actually, there's something I'm NOT cranky about today, and that is MERLIN. Guys, I have Merlin on the brain. Is this what TV fandoms are like? Because with HP fandom we only got new canon every couple of years, so the mass fandom flailing was few and far between. But if I'm going to get THIS BOUNCY every time a couple of promo pics or a trailer is released over the next thirteen weeks? I am afraid I might, like, pull something.

+ Though Merlin is on the brain, I happen to be writing epic Potter fic at the moment, which is kind of cool. (inell is the master of plotbunnies, by the way.)

+ I missed Glee and Leverage because I was politicracking last night. Oh well, I look forward to catching them tonight. :D

+ Also, Ronon is pretty in my icon. No reason to be cranky about that!

+ I am told that this is yet another s2 promo.



(click for bigger because I am trying to be better at adding image attributes to protect your layouts.)

Also, I'm going to need them to stop being so pretty and piling onto each other like that, it fills my head with prurient imagery and irregular dirty wrong un-ladylike thoughts about hot peoples. SOMEONE STUDY ME. HOGOD THEY APPEAR TO BE UNDER THE COVERS.

+ In other news, last night I signed up for smutty_claus and camelotsolstice. I'm really excited about both. And am thrilled that so many of you signed up for the Merlin one, that should be fun. Mutual flailing, etc. *g*

+ I've been in a bit of a fog the last couple days, busy at work and with school and fandom commitments. A week and a half until my vacation and it can't come soon enough.

+ Tonight is beta-ing and collecting lonely prompts from the party and making HBB banners. kendas I'll send your thingie back tonight.

+ Also, it is early. Need an extra hour or two of sleep, kthnx.

Do this meme. DO IT (please): Ask me my fannish Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post.

+ Seriously, WTF. Twitter gets a DDoS attack, then LJ at the same time? How much more am I to take? I hear facebook got hit as well.

+ I'm about two thirds of the way through Kushiel's Mercy, sixth book in the Kushiel saga thingy by Jacqueline Carey. It's one of my favorites of the six, as emo as Imriel is. I might review the lot of them when I'm finished. It's an entertaining series, for the most part.

+ Joe GL and Zooey Deschanel need to marry each other already. Alternatively, they could marry me. Yes, both of them.

+ Star Trek fandom is a bit ridiculous at the moment. I haven't looked at the kink meme in weeks, and I'm in no mood to go back to it. Why can't we have nice things, fandom?

+ In other news, Katie McGrath apparently has a tattoo that reads 'purity' across her lower back. Heh. I feel another Angel/Katie fic coming on.

So, road_ahead closed yesterday. :( For those of you, and I reckon there are quite a few, who weren't on my f-list when I was nattering about this every other day, RA is an Harry Potter RPG I helped start and run with Inell and Flora, that we were involved in for upwards of 20 months. It was time, I think. When you have a game that takes place post-war and is as focused on everyday life as RA was, the world's bound to reach a sort of equilibrium. Things were settled and activity from players (myself included) had slowed down quite a bit. Most games don't stay active for as long as we did, and it's been amazing -- bit of a rollercoaster at first, but eventually it settled down and became my happy place for a really long time. I met some awesome people and definitely grew as a writer. I'm going to miss the characters I wrote there, both the main ones and the NPCs, so much, and I'll miss reading everyone else's stories. And good lord, I'm going to miss writing Harry. I love that boy to a ridiculous degree.

That said, I think I'm done RPing for a good while. Which is a bigger deal for me than it sounds - I've been in fandom since 2006 and have been RPing in Potter fandom for almost the entire time. It's going to be weird not being in a game. But at the same time, it's become harder to split my time between all the things I want to do in fandom -- and in real life. I want to spend less time at my computer, but I also want to write more fic, make more art. I won't lie and say that new fandoms have nothing to do with it, but the truth is RP has been more of an effort for me since before I got into Merlin and SGA and Trek. RP is a huge time-suck; it eats your brain in the best possible way. But it's got to be fun. It's meant to be a diversion, something to escape to. And when it's a good experience, it's REALLY GOOD.

But when it's a bad experience (and if you have RPed for a long time, you've probably had these to some extent or other) there's nothing fannish I can think of that is less fun. I've made friends that I lost four months later. I've moderated player chats that have made my head hurt. I've been disillusioned by people, and maybe they've been disillusioned by me. I've shed tears and wasted a LOT of time on things that really aren't a big deal. I've learned that people are basically the same from one game to another, and that no game can escape wank completely -- and as such, I've learnt to be very, very zen about the whole thing.

Thing is, road_ahead was an AMAZING experience, on balance -- that's what I've loved about it; that's why I'll miss it, and that's why I'm so, so proud of the world we created together. I'll miss the folks who stuck with us from beginning to end (omg you guys, it's been a looong and bumpy ride). I'll miss those who've joined us along the way and those who've moved on since. And mostly, I hope I won't be missing ya'll too much anyway, because we've become more than co-writers and players -- we're friends, and I'll be in touch. ♥

You know where to find me on YM and gchat, or come poke me on Twitter if you can brave the zombie horde. *g*

Thanks, guys. <3

I have been collecting links to particularly awesome Trek-related things that I've been reading, and will do some sort of rec post very soon, but I wanted to point to one real quick, and that is this essay on Uhura by taraljc that I read on my lunch break.

So it's not a fic at all, but meta on the women in the film. A different perspective on the common wisdom that seems to be going around in which there is headdesking over what Abrams did with the women and their relationships to the men. I've participated in this, as have many people I've seen around LJ. I can't say more without spoiling, but if you watch for the girls as I tend to do, it's a good read. It is, of course, very spoilery for the whole film, and I found it really refreshing and it made me think differently about a few things. I also came out of it fangirling Uhura even more than I was, which I didn't think was possible. XP I also really want to see the film again.

Yay for meta! If anyone wants to talk about it here, feel free to comment. *g*

eta: Also! 10 things you should probably know about Star Trek.