Things that can't end well: dropping your cactus behind your desk.

On the bright side, it's not Eustace, who was more than a foot tall with needles more than an inch long and nearly caused a stitch-requiring injury one year during dorm move-out (not everyone was grief-stricken when Eustace succombed to mould).

It's been a slow week for me. Possibly because Bones ate my life. I think I'm mostly over it now. I have to say, my hands-down favourite ep was the AU one. Apart from the fact that everyone had awesome jobs/characters which tied in really well to their "canon" ones (or complimented them in bizarre ways), we had a main-character relationship which was completely solid and faithful despite everyone trying to convince them the other one was cheating/murdering. We could use more of that on TV.

And now for a writing-related meme which I doubt anyone will join in on! I have too many commitments (actually, just one, but whatever) to be able to do a request thing or the song meme, but I miss interaction with you guys, so off we go!

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Or, if you'd prefer, just pick a fic. Who wants to go trolling through for paragraphs? If I've forgotten my motivations, I will MAKE SOMETHING EXCITING UP. (Also, there will be no puns. Because I don't get puns. It's a problem.)

I started writing some Alabasta-arc meta that no one cares about. But then I mercy-killed it and wrote some Alabasta-arc fic that no one cares about instead! Yay!

Okay, yes, I know. But now it's out of my system and I can return to more important projects.

A series of written correspondance. G, no pairings, yadda yadda. It's very hard to format letters.
( I need to stop listening to depressing music while writing. )

Last night I had an awesome dream which somehow involved Pell and Chaka and the cast of Bones interacting. I don't remember much, except there was some excellent h/c. My subconscious knows what I want from it.

Also, man, Alabasta-arc why must you always do this to me? Just when I've got a good groove going in a fandom, am working my way towards semi-monogomy, you must come in and blast that right out of the water by wedging yourself in between. You know I love you, why must you exploit that? ;_; (Also, geez, Ota, you are not helping the situation. STOP LEADING ME ON BY DOING TITLES WITH IMPORTANT PREVIOUS CHARACTERS INCLUDING VIVI, AND THEN LEAVING OUT EVERYONE ELSE BUT SAY KARUE. NOT COOL. Okay, you get points for the hotspring one. BUT THAT WAS 300 CHAPTERS AGO.)

Bottom line: Never pick minor characters in a location arc-based story as your favourites. THEY NEVER COME BACK.

Oh, yeah, and I started watching Bones. I mean, it's complete ridiculous popcorn, but sometimes that's nice. And really, who's gonna say no to David Boreanaz?

Pimping hogans_heroes; they went AWOL from two armies at once! (Well, okay, mostly only stalag_13.) If only I had something to post. You have that Carter cross-dressing fic...

Seriously though, stalag_13 has imposed a no-slash policy on what I personally feel are unacceptable grounds. hogans_heroes has been created as a place for those who feel likewise to continue their Hogan's Heroes fanning. (I should probably mention, since that statement's a bit ambiguous, that I had no hand in its making)

In other news entirely, SPN, pull your socks up. What was up with the endings in the two most recent eps? ( They were weak, incredibly standardized, and unrealistic. )

OH MAN 69 ENTRIES ON PREVIOUS POST, QUICK SOMEONE SCREENCAP. It's a first for me, okay? XD - CRAP TOO LATE.

So, the comments in one of the recent posts at stalag_13 rather disturbed me.

( Yes, this is about slash, and attitudes towards it. )

I was sitting innocently in class today, learning how to analyze policy, when suddenly I was struck with a horrible thought.

( They could be the same person. Seriously. )

Meme from arisha!

RULES:
1. Reply to this post and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a neverending cycle of icon squee. Whoo!

( I'll quit the war! )

This weekend is turning out to be entirely group meetings. On the one hand I had hoped it would be a break, but on the other I always feel guilty when I don't do anything so I guess this is good. But 6 hours of group meetings a day is a bit much.

PS: The 3 Musketeers Disney movie; don't see it (although who knew that Kiefer Sutherland was Tommy Douglas' grandson. Well, probably a lot of people, really. But I didn't). But the 1973 one, OMG. I loled so hard. I just... pffffffffff. XD

Off to write crazy supernatural AU, back never later.

Reasons Athena shouldn't post at 2am: THIS POST.

Sooooo, I kind of started writing a HH supernatural AU thing in my head yesterday. AND THEN I COULDN'T STOP.

The sad thing is that this could turn into a full-fledged universe

( This could probably use more fleshing out. Or, you know, sanity. )

I expect I will regret this tomorrow.

I was bored the other day and so following my practice of re-reading books I've read before rather than branching out into new literature, re-read The Three Musketeers. Then for fun I got it out in French, because I am the kind of loser who likes to see who uses tu when (one of the things I regret about learning languages as second languages and in non-immersion settings is that while I understand the literal difference between different levels of formality, it doesn't feel like anything to me. I see it and think "oh, he's being more/less formal now" rather than interpreting it as reflecting emotion.) ANYWAY.

( Spoilarz re Milady (seriously, is this even a concern?) )

Oh, also, help_haiti's auction is finished. I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to raise $100,000 in total. Internet, you have awed me. Never change.

EDIT: Apparently there's a 2005 French version of 3 Musketeers (in which Milady is a ninja demon???). The reviews either think it's the most awesome thing ever or utter trash. OFF TO SEARCH.

help_haiti's auction ends tomorrow (or today for those of you in Asia) at noon EST; hopefully people feel like they're in a good position with their bids! If I didn't have class, I'd definitely be picking a high-demand section of the threads and watching it just to get a tap on that auction-fever. :D

Oh god guys, I can't stop listening. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to upload to youtube, and don't know how to do the embedded thing) Why can't I like today's popular music, or tv shows? But no, it has to be WWI/WWII covers by terrible 60s shows. The worst part is that all the other artists' versions on youtube are TEN TIMES WORSE than the HH version, so I now know immediately how far into the episode to track to get to the song. (Also I'm torn between loving the dialogue and wishing they'd shut up so I could hear the singing.) Thank god they didn't sing Lili Marlene...

oh jeez I wish there were a CD of the show's album. Or even that our turntable worked.

Also I spent my free time today compiling a list of inconsistencies in Carter's character with a thought to posting it on stalag_13 or something. But I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world who cares. So I'll just sit here and entertain myself with it.

Okay, okay, I'll shut up.

So, as we all know, Haiti is in urgent need of our support. We've all seen a lot of excellent ways to contribute to that cause, and at this point anything I could say or links I could provide would be something you've seen 50 times already (although I have to say I'm incredibly impressed by ontd_startrek's fundraiser). In an effort to do what I can to encourage further support, though, I'm signing up to write something for help_haiti's auction. I frankly doubt that anything I could write would be worth, you know, money, but it's going to a very worthy cause so I suppose that's a better way to look at it. Commission info. You guys can rest assured I'd take it much more seriously than drabble requests. ^^

I was rewatching some of Avatar (TLAB, man it is annoying to have to spell that out all the time now). I'm not sure whether I'm boycotting the movie or not; on the one hand I want to see it but on the other I am just so against the casting. But anyway, regardless of that, what I want more than anything else for that movie, pretty much, is for them to use the songs from The Cave of Two Lovers. Even if it's just the credits. I mean, come on

( So, some of these became full-fledged fics, while others pretty much went backwards. )

Was just hailed on the street from behind:

Guy: Hey, buddy! Uh...miss...

Admittedly I was wearing my parka and a backpack. But oh, how it reminded me of my unfortunate youth.

Drabbles maybe later today. Too tired, maybe tomorrow. ^^

Well, it's been one day and I'm bored already! Entertain me, guys!

Give me a character/pairing and some sort of prompt, and I'll whip up something for you. Prompt could be anything from "Snake and Otacon discover that what they thought was a Patriot scheme to infiltrate their apartment is actually just rats" to "blue." Any fandom I'm in is fine (check my profile page if you're looking for something I don't talk about much). I'd say first ten people, but that would be kidding myself into thinking there are ten people who read this. XD

(In other news, I accidentally left my 5am alarm from yesterday's flight on. My alarm having been my cellphone while at home, it promptly played the HH theme at 5am again this morning. The really bizarre part was that, as I was dreaming about HH, it fit in perfectly)

Survived the trip back to school; there's a few inches of snow on the ground. :)

In unrelated news, I was lying awake the other night thinking about English.

First, there are some letters of the alphabet we just don't need. For example, C. What's it good for, really? Everything C does can be done just as well by S or K with the exception of CH. So why don't we just have a CH letter and chuck C?

Second, why can't we say "amn't"? Seriously. Because it sounds weird? Is it any better to appropriate a completely different conjugation when we have to ask questions about ourselves (aren't I?)?

Third, now that women have become people rather than those things that do the cleaning in the background, we have moved past the times of refering to unknown people by "he/him" and now use "he or she/him or her", which is very clunky. Obviously we can't use "it", since that is in some ways a step backwards. So clearly we need a new set of gender neutral pronouns. I'm not particularly enthralled with se/hir, but it gets very tiresome writing our "he or she" all the time.

Fourth, everyone has at least one word they cannot spell, and mine is maneouver. I just had to open Word to do it. The only question is whether I'll get close enough that Word will automatically fix it. Which, convinient as it is, doesn't really do a lot for my spelling. And also is unfortunate when it corrects things which are not, in fact, mistakes.

I realise not a lot of action is going to be taken on 1, since let's face it, English spelling is never going to be fixed. But I think we could unite and rise up against 2 and 3 and strike a stunning victory for better language! Who's with me?

Tomorrow I fly back to school at a ridiculously early hour. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, but I'm not dreading it either. I'm hoping my courses will turn out to be better than they sound; from the titles I'm not interested in any of them.

This has been a good vacation in terms of having a break, although lousy in terms of productivity. I didn't do nearly as much writing as I'd hoped/planned to (finished nothing except a birthday fic, didn't even finish a new chapter of anything), and I only got half-way through my Japan scrapbook (scrapbooking: not as easy as you'd think). But it was the first real rest I had since coming back from Japan, and for the first time since maybe the spring I'm feeling up to my old energy levels. And, hey, I did manage to see Sherlock Holmes twice, so it wasn't a total write-off. XD

My to do list for the next few weeks involves:
- fixing resume/CV
- working on/finishing Epic!fic
- try to pull some more together for Hands
- work on Hornblower music video (currently thwarted by Movie Maker not accepting the version of the song I have)
- post the HH funny clips thing, since it's not getting any better for me sitting on it doing nothing

Sounds good. Hope everyone had a good holiday.

My program has just told me I won't have my course marks until JANUARY F-ING 16TH. WHAT. THE. HELL. This is especially ridiculous since I KNOW FOR A FACT that half my profs have submitted them.

If they weren't up by Christmas as UBC there would have been a riot.

When I was younger, I was really in that camp of “if they’re not gay, don’t slash them.” Imagine my horror when the LOTR films flooded the fandom with new fans leaving everyone awash in a sea of slash. I’ve since come to realise that fic is about writing what didn’t happen in canon. If you can do it and keep the characters in character, I’ll be fine with anything. Maybe they’re not gay in canon, but if you can find a reason for a relationship/one night stand/crazy VR orgy to happen, I’ll be at least indifferent to any pairing.

If you want to ship Holmes and Watson from the film, go straight ahead. It’s anachronistic and AU enough that I think you’d have a pretty damn easy time. If you want to ship the original characters and you can convince me about it, good for you. If you want to argue that they were in fact gay in canon, I’ll give you a listen.

But please, don’t come out and say “they were obviously gay” because you’ve read the original stories and they live together and care about each other and ZOMG Holmes rushes over to Watson and tears his pants open when he’s shot. Have you read other period works? Because there are two things to consider. 1: All writing of the time is like this, that is just the way male friendships a) were and b) were portrayed. 2: Although homosexuality wasn’t understood in the way it is today, sodomy was an incredibly serious offense and even if Holmes and Watson were engaging in a homosexual relationship, Conan Doyle would never ever have published anything which suggested it. Readers of the time would not ever have even considered the idea.

Ship and argue away, but let’s try to avoid the blanket anachronisms, shall we?

Also, man, mgs_slash is having a crossover challenge. A CHANCE TO USE MY HOLMES/MGS CROSSOVER! If only it had been a year earlier!

Tallied up 2009. ( The results )

In other news, this afternoon mum and I went out to see Sherlock Holmes. I hadn't been looking forward to it, because I'm a secret Holmes nut and the trailers just looked... ridiculous, but, uh, it was pretty awesome. I'd definitely recommend it. If you're a Holmes fan, it's probably a good idea to go in with the idea of it being AU; I found that helped me immensely. More later, maybe.