Arduinna

I'm fine; I don't work in the city, and I was working at home today anyway. therienne and mollyamory are also okay.

I'm just in shock. I grew up along the Marathon route, and we used to go stand on the sidewalk every year to cheer the runners on. Most years, if I'm home, I still turn it on to watch (at least in the background). I can't wrap my head around someone setting bombs to destroy that.

CBS Renews Elementary, Person of Interest, 2 Broke Girls and More

I'm also pretty happy about Elementary. But I'm kinda flailing in glee over POI. \o/ Yay show!

So as should be obvious from my (sadly few, so far) posts about Person of Interest, I'm in it for the Finch/Reese, which the show delivers in spades, and which makes me ridiculously happy. Watching John tell everyone he meets how much Harold means to him, while Harold is listening in, is just... ♥melts♥

But it does some other amazing stuff, too.

Like how it handles women. Other than Finch and Reese, almost every other powerful person in this universe is a woman. And more than that, they're women with their own agency, their own agendas, their own reasons for being in this universe entirely separate from Finch and Reese.

And that is just bizarre, given what tv and movies are usually like.

I mean, look at it: POI is nominally entirely about two men. Pretty much every episode focuses on one or both of them. Their backstories are hugely important; their relationship is the entire point of the show. They're flip sides of the same coin: two highly skilled specialists who broke in the face of 9/11 and responded by taking their skills to a new, terrifying level of ends justifying the means in a desperate attempt to keep it from happening again.

Both faced a terrible personal loss as a result of their choices -- neither caused the death of the person he loved, but their choices led directly to those deaths, and each knows it. Those losses broke them again, and turned them both away from the single-minded path they'd been on even as it drove them both into deeper isolation -- until Finch found Reese and started healing them both by focusing them on the needs of the one, rather than the many.

And they've each taken that desperate need to protect the country and turned it into a desperate need to protect each other, which, wow, makes me happy.

Usually in a show like that, women would be there to give them something to angst about or long for, and not much else. ( And that does exist, a bit )

And yet, there are also all kinds of strong women everywhere, on every side of the equation. In fact, the more competent someone is, the more likely she is to be a woman.

( Look at John and Harold's helpers )

More than that, ( cutting for major plot spoilers through currently aired eps )

And all of these characters, women and men both, have lives outside of Finch and Reese's little world. Which is normal for men -- look at something like Grimm, and the difference between Monroe and Adalinde, and which has a more fully realized self as a character. Or Monroe and Juliette. Or hell, Adalinde and Bud the beaver dude.

On POI, not only do the women get to have lives, they get to have lives even if they're not related to or romantically/sexually involved with the male leads. (Grimm, once again I am looking at you, much though I love you.)

( Like, say )

Which is great not just in a characterization way, but in a universe-deepening way: things are happening in this universe that have absolutely nothing to do with John and Harold. Leading me directly into ( Booked Solid (2x15) and Relevance (2x16) )

... I think I've lost the thread of this, having rambled too far. Oh well.

On a fandom-related rather than canon-related note: DeviantArt, which I find very hard to navigate other than completely randomly, turns out to have something called Groups, which I discovered when I saw links to some POI groups while randomly looking for fanart. So I joined! Then stared, baffled, at the total lack of any indication that I'd joined them, or what one does with them. Eventually I found a help page that said "you can add the Groups widget on your user page" and after some frustrated poking at Settings (completely useless for this purpose), I figured out that I needed to edit my profile page and add the Groups widget there. Then I could see the Groups I was in. Still don't know how they work, but hey. At least there are presumably collections of fanart there...

I put links to them on the Person of Interest page on Fanlore, which yes is a blatant plug to get people to go look at that page and maybe add more things to it while they're there. *g* Look, fanart! *tempts*

Icon particularly appropriate!

I took some random time off this week, partly just to use up some vacation time, partly to spend some time with my dad, and largely to "hermit out" and get some extended time inside my own head, which I haven't done in... years, it feels like. Since my sleep apnea got diagnosed a few years ago I've been a lot more functional (looking back, I'm horrified at how non-functional I was for years, even decades, without ever knowing it), and less desperate for total alone-time downtime. Plus I've just been busy, with most of my downtime spread out between crises, mourning, and visits from friends.

But after most of a week mostly alone, with very limited interactions with people, my head is in a better space than it's been in ages. I think I could use another week or two of this, but that's never going to happen, alas. Still. This is a good reminder that I really do need to just shut down every now and then, and play with my cats or watch mindless tv for a while, or even just sit quietly in the silence.

It helped a lot that I did what I almost never do on vacations, and actually front-loaded all my errand-y things into the first part of the week. Usually I plan to do that, and then my agoraphobia kicks in silently and I never quite make it out of the house, and the need to run those errands builds up over the week and stresses me out, even as my brain comes up with a million reasons for me not to do them. This week, though, I made advance plans for Monday and Tuesday for the crucial stuff, after which I didn't leave my house again, but that was okay because there was nothing else I had to leave it for, so there was nothing to stress about. \o/

What I did on my spring winter vacation:

Monday:
Spent the whole day day with my dad, getting myself put on his bank accounts and safe deposit box in case of emergencies, and "fixing" his computer by showing him how to forward an email.

Watched the pilot ep of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which I'd heard good things about and had bought on impulse at Costco.

Tuesday:
Brought the cats to the vet for vaccinations.

Brought the car to the mechanic for a new headlight and spiffy buffed lenses over both headlights.

Bought all the cleaning supplies and kitty litter in the world. Or at least in my local grocery store.

Watched a couple more eps of the Lady Detective, checked the Festivids site to see if there'd been any vids made for it. Alas, no.

Wednesday:
"Fixed" my dad's computer remotely, omg yay.

Cleaned the "pantry", really my oversized storage closet and kitty litter space. Cleaned it a LOT, down to washing the walls. Threw out seven giant bags of crap, one normal-sized bag of kitty litter, and one normal-sized bag of regular weekly trash. (This was baffling to me. I had done a massive cleanout on this room out a year or so ago, turning it from a junk dump to a functional room where I could get at everything easily. I had no idea there was still so much crap in it.)

( Proof! )

Moved my car to a safe spot on a side street in the face of a rumored storm, even though from the sound of it it was mostly going to fizzle, maybe a couple inches total.

Watched another ep of the Lady Detective.

Thursday:
Rested on my laurels after admiring my awesome clean pantry for a while. Played endless rounds of broken-toy games with Hobbes, with Darien jumping in any chance he could.

(Seriously. Broken toy. Hobbes loves feathers on a string, but they keep chomping the feathers off. Then Dari somehow yanked the remaining feathers out of the little plastic holder thingie, which swung empty at the end of the string and turned itself into the most exciting toy EVER OMG. They've been playing with that broken bit of plastic for days. I don't even.)

Watched tons of Storage Wars, Auction Kings, and Property Wars in a zoned-out haze of relaxation. (Time to give up on Storage Wars and Property Wars, though -- I've seen enough of both to be fed up with the way people jerk each other around and bid things up just to make it harder/more expensive for other people. Bleah. Auction Kings is more fun; it's about cool stuff, not obnoxious jackasses. And since they seem to have given up on the annoying Whatever Brothers from last season, it's back to being pure entertainment for me.)

Admired the pretty weather, with constant snowfall in temps warm enough to keep the roads clear.

Watched POI. \o/ Started writing reaction post.

Friday:
Got woken up by my boss, who had lost power in the storm that had decided to stop fizzling and morph into a heavy wet giant of doom. Covered for him for a couple of hours till his power came back, cranky but resigned - crappy way to end a vacation week, but he's given up vacation days for me when I've had emergencies, too.

Sucked it up and called an insurance company to request a quote for auto and renter's insurance, after years of being vaguely dissatisfied with my existing company. Dithered for a couple of hours, then actually went ahead and did it, go me!

Watched lots of Law & Order: SVU, weirdly; that used to be a go-to mindless show for me but I haven't watched it in a couple of years. Guess the burnout finally wore off. It's perfect for days when I want a storyline to follow but don't want to devote the energy to actual investment in anything that happens.

Watched Grimm, which is finally back, in its most bizarrely-scheduled year ever. (... out of two years.)

Rediscovered my deviantArt account and actually started using it a little. I still don't really get how dA works, but hey, pretty fanart.

"Rediscovered" Tumblr, which for some reason I'd stopped checking -- I think because I was behind and wanted to catch up before I... went back... I don't know, blocks are weird. And turns out Tumblr's still very time-suck-y.

Saturday:
Shoveled. A day behind the rest of the neighborhood, because my landlord's son told me he wasn't shoveling till Saturday morning (which for him meant 4am, apparently - his sleep schedule is even weirder than mine), so the front walk was buried until then. Surprisingly, this turned out to have been a good thing for me; I'd been resigned to having to shovel very heavy, wet snow after a warmup, but instead I got out to my car across the street and discovered that the people parked around me had done a kickass job, and left me barely any work to do. \o/

Finished and posted the POI reaction post, for a miracle. I start so many posts I never finish.

Watched another ep of the Lady Detective.

Spent lots more time on Tumblr and deviantArt.

Sunday:
Completely failed in my attempt to adjust promptly to Daylight Savings. Oh well. It's always a couple weeks of misery and oversleeping for me, soothed by the lingering daylight in the evening. It's going to be light tonight till almost 7pm!!

Planned for the rest of the day: roast a turkey breast, finish a more rambly POI post, finish the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series (short series), write a story, clean the rest of my house.

Hopefully I'll at least manage to roast the turkey breast. The rest is icing.

As always, there are a ton of things I'd planned to do and never did. I was going to organize my bookmarks (and sync Pinboard and AO3 bookmarks), update links on my recs pages, maybe make some new recs for the first time in years, maybe work more on my months-old VVC DVDs review so I could post it, write a story or two. I was totally definitely going to at least spend an hour every day working on things like the bookmarks and the recs pages. I was going to read tons of fanfic, and catch up on books I've been meaning to read for ages, and watch at least one vid every day.

Yeah, not so much. But that's okay. It's as important to be quiet sometimes as it is to be busy. And I forget too easily how much better I feel when I'm quiet.

*contented sigh*

A few weeks ago, I stumbled over a program called TeamViewer, which gives you remote access to another computer. CNET gives it five stars, or "spectacular".

It's free for non-commercial use, and lets you do all sorts of things. You can use it to control another computer; you can use it to invite people to look at your screen in an online meeting; you can use it to transfer files back and forth without having to first upload them somewhere. The only requirement is that both systems have it installed and are online. (Obviously, faster connections and more modern OSes are going to have better results.)

The default setup gives you a user ID number that stays the same, and generates a random password every time you launch the program. You give that password to whoever you want to have access to your system, then when you end the session, the password is deleted.

You can also set it up to have a permanent password, so anyone can access that computer at any time if they know the user ID and pw. (You can do this during installation, or at any point thereafter by choosing a specific pw for that computer.)

One of the things I wanted it for was to be able to help my dad with small computer problems. I used to be able to walk him through things, but that's harder now, and my default had started to be "okay, write down the entire message and I'll take a look the next time I'm out", which isn't really great for a lot of stuff.

So I installed TeamViewer on his system the last time I was out there, which is when I discovered the permanent-password option, which was a source of great joy for me. I hadn't been looking forward to coaching him through opening the program any time I had to help him.

He called me a few minutes ago to say he had this crazy message on his screen from "A-V-G" about a "trojan horse found", and said "That doesn't have anything to do with me, right? I can just blow that off?"

And I said, "You know what? Let me try that thing I showed you..."

Opened up my laptop, opened up TeamViewer, opened up the list of "my computers" and clicked on his computer where I'd added it and its permanent password, and boom, there was his screen on my laptop, with the AVG threat-detection screen. Instead of having to listen to him read every word on the screen trying to get him to the "remove to vault" option, I just clicked it, and now am running a scan on his system from my living room, while he's off mailing a check.

If he didn't have a permanent password, I'd have asked him to launch TeamViewer and read me his numbers, so I could plug them in to my connection screen.

The remote-controlled computer has full functionality the whole time: if you need someone to show you what steps they took, they can do so while you watch. There's a little bubble in the lower-right hand corner of the remote-controlled screen so they know someone's there, with tools (toggle control permission off/on, chat window, etc.).

The session can be ended from either side. Once the session ends, a notice pops up on both computers that this was a free session, asking you to "like" it on Facebook/G-plus, giving an option to buy a license, or clicking "okay". This is a little annoying on the one hand, but clicking okay takes care of it, and the message means no one can sneak onto your system without your being aware that someone has done so.

I highly recommend this if you do tech support for anyone, or want to do any sort of remote collaboration. Or even if you want to do things like control the media player on your desktop from your laptop in the other room...

There are even mobile versions for iOS, Android, and Windows 8/RT.

Download it from the TeamViewer site instead of CNET, though, to avoid CNET's annoying third-party add-on crap.

Chicago, here I come...

(But first, man, seriously time to start thinking about a vid. Eep.)

The South Korean Air Force (ROKAF) did a parody of Les Miserables called Les Militaribles that is freaking fantastic. And for those of us buried under a few feet of snow, remarkably well-timed...


Direct link in case the embed doesn't work for you

I wrote one story for Yuletide this year, in one of my oldest and most favorite fandoms, I Spy. My recipient, sarahenany, wanted Scotty-focused hurt/comfort, and listed off some of my favorite episodes as examples of the sort of thing she was looking for, so all in all I was pretty stoked about this assignment! I kept going back and forth on what to call it, and in the end tagged it both gen and m/m; really I think it's pre-slash, in that misty in-between area.

SERE (5468 words) by Arduinna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: I Spy (1965)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Kelly Robinson/Alexander Scott
Characters: Kelly Robinson, Alexander Scott
Summary:

Survival, Evasion, Recovery, Embrace

Many thanks to dorinda, therienne, and mollyamory for beta!

---

I also got a story. \o/ My author was slipshod, who matched me on Person of Interest, and gave me a lovely story full of unspoken concern, h/c, and protectiveness that slides into a careful first time.

Give (1704 words) by slipshod
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Person of Interest (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Characters: Harold Finch, John Reese
Summary:

"This is fun. This is what you and John do all day long?"

---

I'm still reading my way through the archive; there are dozens of fandoms I haven't even looked at, and more I've started in on but not worked my way through. So much good stuff to read!

In the meantime, I'm slowly building a recs set in my AO3 bookmarks; these are my Yuletide 2012 recs, which will keep getting updated as I keep reading.

In summary: Yuletide! \o/

First off, I spent the weekend adding a bunch of new people from the friending meme, and with a bunch of new people subscribing to me. Hiya! It's very cool to see the new voices on my reading list. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should; the word spread pretty far, and it's up to more than 1,200 comments over 11 pages. A big chunk of that is people responding to each other, but that still leaves hundreds of entries.

And if you're thinking damn, you should have jumped in -- jump in! It's still going, with new entries and new conversations. I started tracking it early on so I wouldn't forget to go check for new people, and then it hit a tipping point on Friday night and whoosh. It may have finally started slowing down a bit, but it hasn't stopped. I suspect the mention it got on f_fa is what did the trick, so yay to whoever did that!

I'm about a hundred comments behind at this point (by dint of ignoring basically all the side-chatter, which is a pity because I bet there was some good conversation, but -- 1,200 comments! oof.)

Meanwhile, I took a break from DW last night to watch ( the Amazing Race finale. )

Thank you so much! The thought of a story in any of these fandoms is already making me happy.

I'd really like something that falls on the warm / happy / fluffy / vanilla end of the spectrum, if possible. If that isn't something you can do, I understand! Just please no deathfic or loss of a loved one, including pets; and no terminal illnesses of any kind as an h/c or angst trope. Thank you. <3

I love all four of these fandoms unreservedly, so if you have a yen to explore the universe, or bring in additional characters I didn't list, it's all good.

If you want more information about my requests, read on - but please don't worry if your ideas go in a different direction. Optional details are optional! As long as it's for one of these fandoms, and uses the characters, you totally win at Yuletide. \o/


( my fic tastes )

Why I love these fandoms

(Alphabetical, not ranked by preference! I love them all. :)

( Burn Notice )


( Elfquest )


( Night Court )


( Person of Interest )

Truly, I adore all these fandoms, and will be happy with absolutely anything you write, as long as you enjoy writing it.

And thank you, again!!

There are a bunch of Disney references scattered throughout the season, and probably lots more I missed since I haven't watched that many recent Disney movies (where by "recent" I mean "in the last 25 years" ahem).

But I did catch some, and more on my vidding rewatch. This one needed a couple of videos to cover the stuff I saw, so some of the cuts have embeds as well as still shots.

( Wish upon a star )

( Fantasia )

( Mickey Mouse )

( Cinderella castle fireworks )

( the dwarves from Snow White - pic and video )

( Snow White and her bluebirds - pic and video )

Next up, the final post, with bits and pieces of things that didn't fit into any of the themed posts.

-----
OUaT s1 picspam series

Part 1: Season one takes place in a forest

Part 2: Regina and Rumple: colors and castles

Part 3: Clothes make the match

Part 4: Clothes make the point

Part 5: You are here!

Part 6: Bits and pieces

Okay, I blame Tom and Lorenzo for this entirely. I started reading them for Project Runway recaps ("Project Rungay"), then started poking at other stuff they write. One of their favorite shows is Mad Men - which I don't like, so was cheerfully skipping the recaps for, till I stumbled over their followup Mad Style recaps, which looks at each episode through the lens of the clothing people are wearing, the rooms they're standing in, body language, color, things like that.

I was fascinated. I wound up reading a lot of them, and I've been reading them ever since. Other than a few basic things I've never really noticed the underlying meaning in things like clothes on tv (honestly, mostly just that SG-1 has always, always dressed in identical uniforms but equally always worn in four different ways, to clearly mark them as individuals who make up a solid unit).

But just as vidding makes you notice things like color, TLo can make you notice things like clothes. And once I started watching OUaT closely for visual cues, they started leaping out at me here, too.

Focusing on Storybrooke here, there are a few people on OUaT who dress individually -- Ruby is always in bright red, Archie is always in dull greens and other muted fall colors -- brown, rust. But the main characters are almost always dressed to reflect the interactions they're having that episode. Some of it's blatant (... for certain values of blatant), some of it's subtle, but it's there in pretty much every episode.

I will spare you screencaps from all 22 episodes, I promise.

But I won't spare you screencaps from *some* of the 22 episodes...

( Meet Mary Margaret, Emma, and Regina, together in the same scene for the first time )

( Regina and Mary Margaret, Regina and Emma )

( Mary Margaret, Emma, and Henry )

But it's not all about the women (er, and children). Entirely. Sometimes a boy shows up to entertain them.

( Mary Margaret and David )

( Emma and Sheriff Graham )

( Regina the seductress )

There are tons of little connections and cues all over the place in this show, and the more you look, the more you see.

Next up, more clothes, but in a different vein: clothes that make a point, specifically about episode 8.

-----
OUaT s1 picspam series

Part 1: Season one takes place in a forest

Part 2: Regina and Rumple: colors and castles

Part 3: You are here!

Part 4: Clothes make the point

Part 5: Disney references

Part 6: Bits and pieces