nor so wide as a church door

God, I had forgotten how long Children of Dune was - and how pretty. I mean, the costumes are still a little hit-or-miss, and the special effects are mostly miss, but still.

Anyway, Irulan! Part 1 here.

( Cut for MORE IRULAN. )

w00t. In the process of putting this one together, I managed to cap all the ladies of Dune in one runthrough, which greatly ups the odds that I'll actually finish doing all six of them. ... Probably mostly because it is just fun to unload every spare thought that passes through my brain when I watch these miniseries. :D

So it's the first of February, and ... I have nothing. Big shocker. :D Part of the reason is the stupid auction catalog, which has been consuming an incredible amount of time and energy; but it finally went off to the printer today, so, aside from the inevitable addenda for last-minute items, I am DONE. \o/

I am using my Irulan icon because I maybe have a vague picspam/YAY AWESOME post in mind, and if I do work from home tomorrow due to the Great Snowening, I can probably get that coordinated for tomorrow. I think I need to rewatch a couple parts of the miniseries, though, because it has been SO LONG since I watched it. Really, there is quite a bit of material in there - Irulan, Chani, Lady Jessica, Ghanima. Even Wensicia is pretty awesome, if evil - and who could pass up a chance to cap Susan Sarandon? (NO ONE.) And pretty much all of them are underused. I used to tell myself such bedtime stories about Ghanima, omg.

ETA: And Alia, jesus. Now you know I was tired when I wrote this. :P

... Anyway. It won't really line up with halfamoon, in the end, but I'm going to try to get at least fourteen somethings about ladies up vaguely during the month of February. **hands** Next year, I have got to remember to start earlier so I can avoid getting waylaid like this. :P

Very brisk out today, where by "brisk" I mean "five degrees below zero while I was driving to work this morning". D: But there'll be snow tomorrow, and probably at a time that will still allow me to get to work, which is nice.

I made a stupid mistake on Friday with the newsletter, but I think I managed to get the correction out okay today, so it should be fine. Aside from that, the only stupid thing I'm doing is torturing myself with The Last Airbender - I need a project for ScriptFrenzy, and clearly the only thing my brain cares about right now is rewriting things, and then this just fell in my lap! But I have to watch it at least a couple more times, because the first time I was so busy hating it I wasn't paying super close attention. Not that paying attention does anything but make the script even more glaringly terrible. D:

( Okay, I'm sorry: I must gripe. I can't hold it in any longer. ) And now I am going to cut myself off, because if I keep thinking about this I am going to blow a gasket. D:<

On the upside, I think maybe I can get on track to post the last few chapters of ItO two weeks apart, instead of four weeks apart. \o/ I might have to take a little time off before I start Book Two, but if I can drop down to a two-week posting schedule, I will be VERY HAPPY. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD Also, I am dusting off my old, unused FF.net account and trying to figure out how to post to it - not because I especially want to, but J and Ka both apparently use it, and I figure I should at least give it a try. **dubious** I am probably only saying this because I'm so much more used to it, but: the AO3's interface is so much simpler. :P

The school observed the moment of silence the other day for the victims of the Arizona shooting; I am not in a brainspace where I can be coherent about super heavy things, and Jon Stewart said pretty much everything I have been thinking anyway, so. I will leave it at that and move on to somewhat more shallow things.

Actually, I will segue with a middling thing: I think I got the closest I have ever come to an actualfax panic attack in my life, and it was over having my arm trapped inside the body of my sweatshirt and not being able to get it back through the sleeve. /o\ I mean, I knew I was pretty claustrophobic, and I am really wiggy about restraints - if I am ever handcuffed, I will probably flip my lid completely - but, wow, brain. That was SPECIAL. D:

And now, the shallows. My mother was deeply intrigued by the preview commercials for The Cape, so we all sat down together to watch the pilot. ( Wow, is that ever two hours I am never going to get back. )

I can handle a cracky plot for the sake of characters I like, but they crammed so much stuff in there that there was barely any room for anybody to display some personality. I mean, here's hoping it was just an attack of pilotitis, and now that they're done explaining how everybody got where they are, they'll take the time to actually tell a story; but I'm not holding my breath. :/ Anyway, what all this boils down to is that I have not in any way started writing a fic where Donna is The Cape instead. Nope nope. That would be ridiculous. :D

Also, saw Tangled, which I basically adored. I mean, of course I have a couple of complaints, I'm me; but overall, I liked it WAY more than I expected to. ( Spoilery. ) It wasn't, like, Toy Story 3 or WALL-E or anything, but it was sweet and engaging and I LOVE RAPUNZEL, SHE IS AWESOME. Now I want post-movie fic of her learning how to run her kingdom. :D

The next chapter of ItO is on track for Sunday, and I am trying to think of things I could do for halfamoon, though, knowing me, I will need to start early because they'll all be 20k words long. Oh, and: I have a meeting with the school headmaster tomorrow at noon, at which he just might maybe offer to make me full-time. **crosses fingers**

And the TV is broken again. **weeps** I didn't appreciate it functioning enough, I guess; or else I was just blithely assuming the roofing guys would keep fiddling with the cable at the end of every day to keep it working. We tried to fiddle with the cable ourselves, but it didn't help. The actual TV repair people are supposed to come by today - not soon enough to get me prompt Burn Notice, of course, but I'm betting USA will re-air the eps I've missed. This thing where I have to limit the amount of video I watch online is just killing me. :P

Still, it gave me and my mother a reason to actually watch some of the DVDs we've been accumulating recently. ( The West Wing, The Black Swan. Cut for not interesting. )

I am - mostly successfully, at the moment - juggling my NaNo with racking up more Newsies cliché bingo fic bits. /o\ The NaNo has, as always, gotten kind of unfocused in the process; when I get stuck, I tend to take that as a sign that I need to add a new plot thread, so I am acquiring open plot arcs at a sort of ridiculous rate. Still have a few spare days in there, though, so if I just work through Thanksgiving, I should be able to finish the fifty thousand words just fine - if not, you know, the story. I am so bad at actually completing my NaNos. :P

As for Newsies, I guess I'll just have to give in and let it own my soul for a while. New fandom love is like the Borg: resistance is futile.

Oh, and: snow! Probably won't stick all day, it was really just a dusting, but it did manage to actually accumulate on the ground. :D

I don't know what arcane power it is that Star Wars has over me, but every now and then I just can't resist tuning in for Spike's weekend marathons. And I can't bear to turn it off before the "DEMOCRACY!" fight, either, because it is just so hilarious. /o\ Plus, I am always unbelievably tempted to buy the movie novelizations after I watch the prequels, just because I think they'd be the best kind of cheesetastic. (I read part of the AotC novelization, and, my hand to god, the first scene I idly flipped to had the phrase "chocolate orbs" in it. It was beautiful.) There's such a weird push-pull, for me; parts of the universe are genuinely interesting and compelling, but the prequel canon is so ... bad, in an amusing, at-least-all-these-people-are-hot kind of way.

And, bonus, they make me think of iharthdarth every time. ("i love you like i'm blind." "what?")

ETA: Of course, there is also no misogynistic bullshit quite like the misogynistic bullshit in the ads that air on Spike. Here's a big fuck you right back atcha, beer commercials.

I swore to myself that I wouldn't post until I'd done the second ladiesbigbang check-in, and I swore to myself that I wouldn't do that until I had broken 30k on the fic. Which I did! Sadly for me, it is ... still not quite half-done. D: Why, brain? Why is it always epics? I also can't wait to edit it, because ... well. It's not as bad as it could be, but it could still use some work.

Anyway. I absolutely LOATHE HEAT, so this hasn't been the best week ever, but I've still managed to get some weeding done by going at about 7:00 in the morning. And then spending the rest of the day lying on the couch trying not to move too much. Before it got too bad, I got another bowl of those magnificent blackberries - well, okay, black raspberries. Whatever. Point is, they're out again this year, and they are just as gigantic and gorgeous as last year. I also had to give up a little blood to pick them, same as last year, and again, I got that funny sense of appropriateness about it. If you want fabulous black raspberries, then you've got to be willing to get pricked.

The Fourth was pretty good. Too hot for my taste, of course, but we got to go over to a friend's family's house for dinner, and show them Stranger Than Fiction, which they had not seen before and absolutely loved. I was a little worried about it; I love that movie, but it can take pretty hefty suspension of disbelief for some people to get past the premise and just enjoy it. But it all worked out! \o/

I wish I had something intelligent to say about Vividcon, but I've never been and I have only just begun to scratch the surface of the wonderful world of vids. ( Some blithering about my personal opinion below. )

In lighter, more squeeful news, I am getting seriously overwhelmed by shows. I need a Time-Turner, I cannot watch HawthoRNe and Covert Affairs at the same time. :P (Please, Covert Affairs, be good. You don't have to be great, I am not a demanding viewer. Just be decent!) I keep forgetting to post about Burn Notice, but it should suffice to say: ♥♥♥♥♥! I am still happy, and looking forward to wherever they're going with this whole badass-hot-assassin-lady thing. I also managed to catch the end of last season/beginning of this season set of Warehouse 13 episodes last night, and all I can say is: I LOVE CLAUDIA. AND EVERYONE ELSE. Including ( maybe a bit of a spoiler. )

... I still can't believe I have a job. D:

Well, first things first: I CAN HAS JOB. (That is, verbatim, how I relayed the news to my sister.) A few days of waiting around, flopping back and forth between "... it could happen?" and "Oh, forget it, you're going to be weeding for the rest of your life," and then suddenly there was a phone call. Well, more accurately, there was a phone call to my house while I was not there, and then to the cell that I had left on the table when I went away from the house, which meant that in the end, I had to call the guy back to get the news.

Clearly the job was my reward for buckling down and dialing without pausing to throw up first. :D

So now I may very well spend at least the next few years getting paid to do things I'm pretty sure I already love to do. I start on July 12th. \o/! There's still a part of me that's staring down at my phone and thinking, "... what just happened."

In more fannish news, I can't help but be pleased as punch that the A:TLA movie is getting bad reviews. I mean, I'm pretty sure most of them are because there was some pretty severe Adaptation Decay, but it's still sort of cruelly satisfying. I love A:TLA a truly unreasonable amount, despite how much the dialogue sometimes hurts me, and having a movie that was so ... I don't even know what - disrespectful? in a racist way? - do well would be horribly ragemaking. Please keep being bad, reviews.

Also on an A:TLA note, I finally saw the finale! I will have to do some rewatching - I skipped a few filler episodes (like Ember Island Players, for example) because, quite frankly, I am a terrible and impatient person and I really really wanted to see the end. I don't have many deep thoughts, and it's been a while since the thing aired, but, idk, just in case: ( spoiler cut! ) Point is, I liked it, despite the continued anviltastic qualities of the dialogue, and I am still incredibly overinvested in it. Good thing I have my ladiesbigbang fic to keep me occupied. My sister and I mapped troop movements the other day, it was very exciting. :D

And, of course, I read tfv's post on Twilight fans. Okay, yes, I have problems with Twilight, some bigger than others, but I'm not exactly in a great position to tell people it's not okay to love problematic source. Despite their various issues, I am still enormously in love with Harry Dresden; with Buffy; with Firefly; with ST:TNG. Fandom means a pretty ridonkulous amount to me, and when it comes down to it, I can't begrudge anybody the opportunity to fall in love with a source. (Although I still think offering RPattz your bleeding neck is probably a bad idea.)

Man, I definitely should not have waited as long as I did to start fixing my pants when they began developing holes; good thing I had barely anything else to do, or I could never have blown through multiple patches on each of four pairs in just a few days. I actually like sewing pretty well - it's pinning the patches in place beforehand that I don't care for, because it usually takes me quite a while to get it just right. :P (Of course, my inclinations toward perfectionism probably don't help.)

Fortunately, it wasn't nearly as dull as it could have been, because there was a Burn Notice marathon before the new episode on Thursday. :D And then the new ep! ( Much ♥, as always. Spoilers! ) Point is: HEARTS IN MY EYES. I am so far from objective about this show, it's a little ridonk. /o\

M came over a couple times; it's probably a good thing that we haven't sunk into another three-hour sexism-and-racism chat. As important as that conversation obviously is, I think it's best to space these things out a little, give yourself a chance to think things over in between long talks.

Relatedly, my feelings about the A:TLA movie are stronger than I think I had previously realized. The screencaps I've seen, and the previews that are starting to show up more and more often on my TV, just ... make me kind of ill. I was never planning to see the movie when it came out in theaters, but I was expecting it to feel like a wrench to have to skip it, and right now? It really is not feeling that way at all. I don't feel angry so much as frustrated - and, okay, I need to stop talking about this, because there are warning signs that I'm about to make myself cry. Just, blergh.

I'm slowly revving up again on my ladiesbigbang; this one conversation is slowing me down, I have to make sure all the pieces make sense, but once I get through this scene, it should pick up a bit. (Also, I need to remind myself to let it go a little - if it's not perfect, I can always fix it later, self!) It's funny; I've spent so much time with Yue in various little fic-bits that I actually have trouble remembering how little time we spend with her in canon. Also, of course, I need to actually finish the show; helpful as the wiki is, it'll be good to get the last couple DVDs from Netflix. :D

And now I should really stop posting and pay attention to the World Cup. I'm not intense about soccer, but I like it well enough - and, hey, maybe watching the Cup will turn me into a fan.

I ... am so lazy I hate myself a little bit. :P I need to artificially embusy myself - make a schedule or something - because I'm caught in this weird place where I have just enough I ought to be doing that I want to avoid it, and yet so little to be doing that I feel like a COMPLETE FAILFACE for not just buckling down and getting it done. RRRGH.

But now that I've admitted it to myself, I can fix it. I can't believe I'm going to a DCOM for part of my life philosophy, but, self: skate better.

The ladiesbigbang fic has - well, the visible output in the actual fic file has stalled temporarily, because I am re-wrangling some plot things that I thought I had already wrangled. Part of the result is an increase in the AUitude of the fic, which I think is probably a good thing but also makes my notes file a touch more complicated. Still, if it will make the fic better, then I had better do it.

Also, ( BURN NOTICE. ♥♥♥♥♥! ) Conclusion: SO MUCH ♥.

I also caught a little In Plain Sight; I have seen, like, four episodes, but I LOVE that show. Mary is awesome, and I could listen to her banter with Marshall, like, ALL DAY. ALSO ♥. I need to start watching that more consistently. Oh, and speaking of awesome ladies, I have to remember to make a note of when HawthoRNe is airing - and, what is it, Rizzoli & Isles?

And I suppose this might be a good time for me to natter about Iron Man 2, which I only just saw this week. ( Squeeful thoughts with a hint of meta. ) Anyway, overall, lots of fun; I am cautiously hoping that all of the Avengers movies may actually be reasonably good. **crosses fingers** And I love Pepper and Natasha forever.

And now I probably ought to get moving. Today's a good day for my self-improvement project to kick off, because I actually have a fair amount to do: weeding this morning, picking my dad up from the bus, and stacking wood for a couple of family friends in the afternoon. \o?