nor so wide as a church door

So, wow, June. You are ... almost gone. D: Also it's going to be like a hundred degrees tomorrow, and that is barely even an exaggeration. BLEH.

There was graduation, finally, and my head did not explode; and then I took vacation and pretty much ignored EVERYTHING, and I went to Boston (and was lost for nearly three hours, but I wasn't driving) and Providence (lost for perhaps twenty minutes, and I was driving) and also a hot air balloon festival, and then I stayed up until six in the morning and almost didn't go to sleep again. (But then I gave in and did.)

And during aaaaaaall that time, things happened!

Like ( Snow White and the Huntsman! Spoilers, and, well, I sort of enjoyed it? ) I can't even tell anymore! Maybe I just shouldn't be allowed to talk about movies, I clearly have no useful critical faculties.

Books, on the other hand: I cannot turn my brain off. I am maybe a hundred pages into the second Bourne novel (I only just obtained the first), and holy crap that is some -ism bingo material right there. The writing is way too florid for my taste even if Robert Ludlum weren't apparently challenging himself to use the word "Oriental" every two pages and trying not to give any woman a name except Marie, and the way he describes Hong Kong and the residents thereof makes me want to just about weep from rage. I'm sure the movies have their issues, but I'm going to need to marathon them just to get the taste out of my mouth. Yikes.

Far less painfully, ( Korra! )

There was also Burn Notice in there somewhere, but this post is getting really long and there's another ep tomorrow, so I'll save that.

At long, long last, next chapter of LttE: 3.5k. I'm thinking this is going to be a long one.

Drive-by update to say: I should absolutely not be doing this, considering I just got all those big bangs and Yuletide off my plate, but! I've put up a fic offer at help_mindanao, in case anyone has anything left after end-of-year giving - or is interested in making an offer. I haven't even taken a good look at the rest of the comments yet, but more offers are always good! (And there are also offers in other media, it's not just fic.)

Ugh, my god, I am so fail.

To match, this week has been sort of fail: I got a flat tire Friday evening, and the lug nuts were so unbelievably uncooperative that they did not come off until Saturday, under the boots of a lovely road assistance guy, and the tire was not fully replaced until yesterday. Because that was not enough car trouble, idriya got stuck in a rut on the way back to her apartment on Monday (the evening of her birthday, even), and it took until nearly midnight for the tow guy to get there and get it all sorted. And then Tuesday I had a dentist appointment, and because I am a terrible person and never remember to floss properly, I have to go in and get some fillings on Friday morning, because I am cavitous. /o\ Augh.

But! The bidding on help_japan has concluded, and I have a very clear winner! \o/ PM, email, whatever makes you most comfortable, alexseanchai; just let me know what you'd like, and I will do my best to deliver.

I am laboriously flailing away at my Book Two outline; the second half isn't going super smoothly, but it's going, and a fair bit of my writing process seems to revolve around spur-of-the-moment off-outline stuff anyway. **hands** I'm hoping I can get the first chapter out this weekend, but we'll see. **crosses fingers**

I know it does awful things to the roads, but god help me, I love freezing rain. I drove home last night and in this morning through a forest of trees silvered over with ice, curved like dancers with the weight of it. And, of course, since it's been sunny the past couple days, everything is sparkling! It is like Edward Cullen out there. THESE ARE THE TWIGS OF A KILLER, BELLA.

I celebrated International Women's Day by watching that M and James Bond video like fifteen times. Bandwidth well spent. Also, spent some time on Al Jazeera: Ivorian women protest over shootings of female protestors. (Possibly triggering for violence, but the picture with the article is kind of awesome.) And their liveblogging about Libya has been excellent.

I need to buy some more books. If I'm going to keep failing at keeping up with my TV shows, I need something else to occupy my brain. Also, idriya's birthday is coming up. TIME TO SHOP.

Through celli's post: o look, pro author fail.

Not a week ago, I was just thinking I had to get around to reading some Elizabeth Moon. Now, suddenly, I'm not really feeling it. Funny how that works.

In less srs business, ( the Covert Affairs two-hour finale. Spoilers. ) I'll keep watching, but between it and Warehouse 13, I think Warehouse 13 is winning.

Also, I did a crazy thing and ordered a new computer. I rationalized it a lot, and the rationalizations are all true and logical, but mostly, it comes down to how utterly tired I am of having my current computer's shitty graphics card determine what games I can play. /o\ I'm so shallow. So that should come sometime next week, which gives me time to come up with a name. The computer plus the dentist thing means no more frivolities (well, aside from a birthday gift for my mother, but that's not quite in the same category of unnecessary expenditure as stuff for myself) until after a couple more paychecks, and then nothing but donations until Christmas rolls around. I am Gibraltar. [/Mr. Feeny]

Aaaaand gatorgrrrl digs herself a deeper hole (bonus: translation by nestra). **facepalm** I can't help but sympathize with the urge to explain yourself at length, and I get that having the spotlight of fandom attention turned on you negatively, full-force, for several days, can be really rough. But, look: the conversation isn't going to stop just because you said you were sorry, and getting all sad inside about how you ttly apologized and yet people still haven't magically started acting like nothing ever happened ... is not going to help. Odds are the conversation isn't even about you, your motivations, your intent, or whatever defensive justifications you can muster; it's about what you did. By which I mean a thing that is done; over; complete. Unless you have a TARDIS, you can't change said done thing, so just let people discuss whatever it was, and do your best to learn from the things they're saying.

NB: These "you"s are nonspecific - this applies to a lot of mid-wank/unfunny business apologies.

Also, if your apology contains a line like this: "If anyone has defriended me, I am sorry you felt the need to do so"? Please, please rethink it. To me, at least, it comes off as weird and passive-aggressive and blame-shifting - like, "I'm sorry you got so upset" instead of "I'm sorry I upset you". NOT A GOOD APOLOGY. D: Really, the passive voice in general is probably a bad idea: see the classic "mistakes were made".

(Countdown to me doing something stupid on the internets, forgetting everything I've written here, and coming off like a total failboat: starts now.)

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.

Last final this afternoon - Cognition and Language, which was actually kind of nice, because I'm doing pretty well in that class.

It's weird to be essentially done, even if it doesn't really count for almost two more weeks. I can't say that I really loved college, although I can think of ways in which it was probably really good for me - although I do think that the vast majority of any improvement I've made as a person since freshman year was ... mostly because of fandom, not school. I cried like a hungry, angry baby when I picked up my cap and gown for high school graduation, and not in the good way - in the way where I was pretty much wrecked over everything I was leaving behind. But now? ... Not so much. I mean, I feel sort of nostalgically fond of this place, and I bet I always will. But that's not really the same thing. :P

And I guess this isn't a bad time to round up some WinCon unfunny posts for myself. Given the topic of discussion, there is potentially triggery stuff on the other ends of ... probably most of these links: Unfunnybusiness post; seperis; seperis follow-up; musesfool; tzikeh; sparky77; seperis a third time; mistresscurvy; tabaqui. I don't think that's everything I've read about it, but I got to everything I've read about it through some combination of these posts, so. I'm severely not on board with victim-blaming, but everything I could say about that has been said, and, once again, far more articulately. So all I've got left is to say that I really, really wish people would remember more often to throttle their first defensive reaction to any accusation of wrongdoing, and stop to take a careful look at the actions that led to the accusation, instead.

... Now that I've said that, of course, I'm guaranteed to forget it myself at some future date and end up looking like a complete ass, but. There it is.

Anyway, now that I can cross exams and my own personal linkspam off my list, back to the important stuff: my ladiesbigbang fic.

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.

The blush of new fandom love continues, but, as always, that meta-issues portion of my brain is ticking away. The list of Cliché Bingo prompts that I saved is so, so useful for unloading fic bunnies that would otherwise clog up my mind, and, bonus, it makes me think about things.

For example: ( Avatar: TLA and its parade of Dead Moms. )

I love Katara and Suki, and I absolutely adore Toph; but it seems pretty obvious that once you look past the main set of characters, the women tend to get the short end of the stick. The way things look at the start of the series, it seems like Azula is likely to become ... uh, a Fire Lady regnant, I guess; and, IIRC, nobody in-universe indicates that this situation is unusual. I was pleased, and surprised, and expecting to find that this had happened before. But when I was noodling around on the A:TLA wiki, trying to put together a series-wide AU for the genderswap prompt, it was all Fire Lord this, Fire Lord that, and, oh, yeah, they were married to somebody whose article is a stub/doesn't exist. The swap gave me four generations of Fire Ladies and female generals, and ... a couple dudes they were married to who didn't do much.

Granted, the Kyoshi Warriors are awesome, and make me very happy; Kyoshi in general makes me very happy, too, and so does Yangchen. But I still kind of wish Azula had been named for her grandmother, the iron-fisted Fire Lady who commissioned the Great Gates of Azula, you know? Sigh.

And then, of course, the impending movie makes me kind of ill. That is just not what Katara looks like, and that is not Sokka, never mind totally unsmiling white!Aang; Dev Patel, on the other hand, would be a ridiculously great Sokka, so why he's playing Zuko is beyond me. I'm sure Nicola Peltz and Noah Ringer are decent actors, and I bet Jackson Rathbone is happy to be playing someone who gets to have actual facial expressions; but if there's any movie that fandom absolutely should not have to do an ideal chromatic recast for, it's TLA. (People like this absolutely boggle my mind. When you are unironically echoing character!Stephen Colbert, you need to take a good hard look at yourself. And that's one of the least obnoxious F!Secrets on the topic.)