nor so wide as a church door

Ugh, I am not even sick anymore, why am I tired? :P

( OUaT (spoilers). )

In other news, I accidentally DEVOURED the first two seasons of H2O. I meant to make icons for halfamoon, but I haven't even gotten through all my caps of the pilot (and already have dozens, but still!). /o\ Failed again! But my auction stories for seta_suzume and green_wing are coming along all right, so. At least there's that.

( Fannish to-do list, cut for boring. )

why aren't there more hours in a daaaaaaaay

Whoo, I've got some catching up to do.

( Last last weekend: colonial gardens, swimming, failures to communicate. )

Last weekend, by contrast, was much less exciting; with the weight of my guilt lifted, I could go kayaking with my mother with a totally clear conscience. Technically, we also went last last weekend, but we picked a rather boring lake, with nothing to recommend it but two unexpected loons going fishing. Last weekend was way better - little peninsulas with nooks and crannies, fish and frogs and a great blue heron, and some really lovely water lilies.

But! I have also been watching TV.

( The Closer, spoilery. )

( Rizzoli & Isles. Also spoilery, and not especially pleased. )

I have not seen HPDH.2, because I am still pretty sure I'm going to cry like a baby; but I may have to do it just for Neville and Luna. (No epic HP fic until ItOverse is finished, self!) Also, The Daily Show: I had no idea Daniel Radcliffe was so awesome. I cannot get used to his face with no Harry!glasses, though.

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

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

So, I finished yesterday's post about two seconds before I flipped over to my reading page and saw the news/discussions beginning about FictionAlley and Pepsi Refresh, and I have basically been reading stuff about it ever since (in between bouts of work on my NaNo, of course), including posts by: seperis, here and here, schemingreader, melannen, futuransky, obsession-inc (with handy table, plus more links), justira, and katekat. Plus, of course, the unfunnybusiness post, and the update about FA withdrawing.

I'm kind of surprised my head hasn't exploded. :P Everybody has said just about everything; what it comes down to for me is that it was badly managed, pretty much. I'm glad to see the sort of counterswell of insistence that fandom has value be paired with not excusing FA's bad handling - I've been working hard recently on not letting myself feel ashamed of my fannishness, as exemplified by my arguments with M and my mother about it, and I think I'm getting pretty good at it. As for FA, mostly it makes me feel vague nostalgia; I don't think I was ever actually part of the site, but back in the day, I did visit it quite a bit, and F_W often had links to epic explosions that I now think of with a certain fondness. When I get home, I think I'll chip in a little to their actual donation drive, now that they've withdrawn. Oh, Harry Potter fandom. Even if I manage to finish the epic HP AU, I will never quite quit you.

More boringly, the end of this week is going to be hell at work. My supervisor is going to be out for the rest of today and all of tomorrow, and unreachable entirely tomorrow, which means I am left with the epic task of sorting out the proofs for the school's ENTIRE FALL MAGAZINE and getting them sent out, in addition to getting a Thanksgiving card set up and off to the printer's and attending a management meeting in her stead. None of which I have ever done before. D: She did leave me with a little handout/summary thing of the work that's been going through our office lately, so it's possible I can get away with giving that out, nattering about it a little, and leaving it at that. Still, these are not going to be the best two days ever. :P

I just woke up from a very interesting dream, of which I actually remember ( some contiguous parts. ) It was kind of cool in a creepy way - it would have bugged me more if all this had not happened with me under the distinct impression that, should the dream continue, I would be fixing this situation. Also, for at least part of it, dream!me was a dude, which has actually happened several times.

I had a little trouble going to sleep last night because of an extremely long bout of asymmetrical tinnitus. It's the first time that I can remember my ears ever ringing for that long, and I'll admit it makes me a little nervous, after all that stuff in Intro Audiology about how asymmetry usually means a referral, because it could be a sign of something wrong neurologically. However, it's only happened the once, so. If it starts happening on a regular basis, then I might see about getting it checked out.

Which reminds me: yes, Hearing Rehab is still on notice. Hard. I actually wrote "fuck you" in my notebook two or three times while taking notes, because it was seriously ( driving me out of my tree. ) If I expect anyone in the world to remember to make that distinction clear and obvious, it's somebody in CMSI who ought to know this shit. And she just ... never did; not once, through the whole class. >.<

Anyway. I also wrote over a thousand more words of maybe!ladiesbigbang A:TLA fic during class, which I know is awful and wrong and awful and I did it anyway. /o\ I have essentially finished the first chunk, and it is clocking in at over six thousand words. There are supposed to be around twenty such chunks total, which means that if this keeps up, I am staring 120k words of fic in the face. D: And it's not even the first time; I keep cleverly chaining myself to these massive canon-rewrite "what if" AUs, it's like my catnip. The first fic of the HP AU series is nearly 90k words, and those are probably only going to get longer as they go on (this is assuming I ever even make it through them before I die, natch).

why, brain?!? whyyyyyyyy.

Still, I can't complain too much. At least I have a plan, which is a relief; it's not like I'm diving into 120k words not knowing where it's going. That would be scarier.

Man, what a weekend.

Friday afternoon was lovely. The day was so beautiful that I took a walk down to the waterfront, which was spiced up somewhat by a small dog - hir owner complimented me on my skirt, which was very kind, and I guess the dog must've liked it, too, because zie tried to take a bite out of it. Fortunately, there was no damage to the skirt, so it all ended well (although the dog was sadly thwarted, I suppose). Then I sat on the rocks for nearly two hours, listening to music and enjoying the breeze and the view. Amusingly, when I was on my way back up, I ran into a woman who had been inside the salon right next to where the Dog Incident occurred, and she stopped me to tell me it had made her laugh - in a very friendly way, not, like, a mean way.

Unfortunately, Friday evening was ( somewhat less shiny. ) :P

Saturday, likewise, was shaping up to be a lovely day, as AT came by and we ended up going on another walk to the waterfront and talking for a while, and then walking back up, getting lunch and ice cream, and eating both while we watched more Burn Notice. (I've gotten her halfway through the second season, so far. \o/) And then I came back to the room, only for Bailey to turn to me, teary-eyed, and tell me that her mother had called to let her know that her cat had died.

Clearly, me taking walks to the waterfront is just a bad idea.

It looks like today's going to turn out all right, though. Easter mass this morning, and it was definitely more cheerful than Palm Sunday, which was nice; as a bonus, I actually knew one of the songs we were singing, which has never happened to me before. We sang much more than I was expecting, including some parts that are usually spoken, and I was also taken somewhat by surprise by the part where the priest came around and flicked water on everybody. :D Oh, Catholicism. Just when I think I've got the whole routine almost figured out, you throw me a curveball.

I'm still waffling over whether or not to sign up for ladiesbigbang - I'm leaning toward not, because that way I won't have to feel disappointed in myself if I don't finish the fic, but if I do get it done on time, I can still turn it in. Plus I don't need to make anybody produce a complement - I have my sister for that, we've already started trading chunks of story for art. :D I kind of can't believe how quickly Avatar: TLA has taken me over. I mean, I'm still chugging away at the HP AU, albeit a little more slowly because there's some background work I have to wrangle; but the Dead Moms are now edging toward forty things, and I've already got over 2,000 words of the fic I'm considering doing for ladiesbigbang. The concerns I have about being able to complete it for the 'bang are in terms of story completeness - somehow I don't think writing 15,000 words is going to be much of a strain. /o\ And yet I can't say, in the end, that I really feel all that faily for wallowing so gratuitously in awesome ladies.

... A little guilty, maybe, for the (ridiculous) amount of effort I'm willing to invest in it versus the (miniscule) amount I find myself caring about, say, Biology; granted. :D

So, I had a thrilling day in Biology on Tuesday, part of which involved a locked door and me taking it upon myself to hold it open for people - and, in my rush to let someone in, slamming my upper thigh into the corner of a chair arm. I now have a similarly thrilling bruise, which, for some unknown reason, has manifested its darkest regions in the shape of a small three-fingered hand. I am not even kidding, it's like I've been groped by a handsy Elfquest elf.

I also had a thrilling day in Biology today, as it happens, although this was thrilling in a better way: I nearly missed the professor's announcement that he was letting class out early because I was listening to music on my not!Pod and planning fic in my notebook. :D

Less randomly, I have suddenly fallen absolutely ass-over-teakettle for Avatar (the cartoon series, not the movie - not either of the movies, for that matter, although technically the word "Avatar" isn't in the title of the more pertinent one). It's one of those things that makes me curse the Animation Age Ghetto (warning: TVTropes link), because the world is captivating, and the animation is often really gorgeous, and the writing ... sometimes hurts me inside. Like, I used to think L&O and SVU got pretty anviltastic, but Avatar ... yikes. ( The general impression I have is that most of the eps would benefit from being an hour long. ) But I can't seem to stop myself from going back and watching more. Oh, and: I LOVE TOPH. TOPH BEI FONG IS MY FAVORITE EVERYTHING. ♥♥♥♥♥

Given that my first introduction to the existence of Avatar was F_W, and the massive wankpocalypse that struck the hardcore Harmonian Zutara shippers after the finale, I ... kind of can't believe that I've started an Avatar section in my Cliché Bingo prompt list document. /o\ Curse me for being so easily hooked.

Since I just saw New Moon for the second time, and then finally gave in to curiosity and watched 300 on TNT, I guess I might as well record all the teal deer that came to me while I was watching.

( New Moon! Ah, lolariousness. )

It was fun to watch purely for the lulz, but if I start thinking about the meta, it makes me itch to rewrite the books - not as fic, just for myself, so I could read something silly and fluffy that wouldn't annoy me if I thought about it too hard. The Twilight franchise is a bunch of brain-twinkies, sure; but some twinkies are crappier than others.

The highlight of the movie was definitely seeing the Sherlock Holmes preview that showed beforehand. I seriously faint with joy every time I see ads for that movie, and I am going to see it the day it comes out, and then possibly a couple more times.

( And 300 - more abs, more racism, but also slightly more plot! )

Overall, the "it's a subjective account from a Spartan!" line of reasoning will only excuse so much. I mean, there's plenty of media about Thermopylae from the Spartan point of view; did you really need to make more? And one that so dedicatedly turned the Persians into one-note, literally monstrous villains? Really? And it was a particular shame that Queen Gorgo was the only woman with basically any role at all. I was under the impression that Spartan women actually had a modicum of rights and privileges, and a revamp of the stand at Thermopylae would have been a pretty good opportunity to do something cool with that - instead of tying the extraordinariness of Spartan women to their ability to bear manly sons, which, of course, is what they did. Sigh.

... So, weirdly, I have practically the same complaints about both movies; to me, they actually kind of fall into the same category. New Moon was emotional porn; 300 was bravery porn. They both had the same kind of single-minded focus plus implications regarding race and gender that ranged from vaguely to seriously uncomfortable, and for me, that equals ... something I might watch if it happened to be on, so that I could yell at the TV, and not much else.