I am trying to take care of errands and stuff before tomorrow's storm, so am posting a cat video real fast to get in my daily post. <3

(still taking questions/suggestions, if you want me to talk about anything in particular - mixing up my responses to those with other stuff as I go)

As part of my "dammit I will be more fannish" decision, I signed up for an hc_bingo card. The official bingo period ends, uh, tomorrow (Jan. 5), so I suspect I will not succeed on that front, but the amnesty period lasts through June 1, so I still have a shot at getting something done, at least.

( My hc_bingo card )

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted. Hi! It's been a hunker-down-and-get-through kinda year -- not all negative, but energy-intensive. I didn't even sign up for Yuletide, for the first time ever, and while I was sad to lose my streak, I don't regret taking this one off. I'm also prone to retreating into my own head in stressful times, and uh, hello present day.

But enough is enough, so I'm going to see if I can re-set my sociability a bit and get to posting more. Maybe even creating things, that would be nice. Maybe fight some fascism.

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and do a January posting meme thing. I'll try to post every day, and if there's anything you want me to write about, feel free to leave a comment, with or without a requested date.

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

I love all 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! I would much rather read the story you wanted to write than the story you felt you were obligated to write because of something I said. 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. :)

( Boston Legal )

( Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) )

( Night Court )

( Tango & Cash (1989) )

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!!

I've been half expecting this to fall through, but the good news keeps coming.

Sentinel DVDs set to be released on September 22

Pricing is all over the place right now; Amazon US shows it at $179 with no discount yet, Amazon.ca shows it at C$166.31 (discounted from C$227.08), and the company producing it (Vei) it is showing it at $99.99, discounted from $119.99.

They've even posted a trailer to Youtube:


(if this works, it should also crosspost to tumblr...)

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 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! I would much rather read the story you wanted to write than the story you felt you were obligated to write because of something I said. 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 )

( Grimm )

( Voyagers! )

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!!

I saw my first ad for Cosmos about a month ago, which consisted of a lot of visuals and no obvious indication of who the host would be.

First reaction: outrage! "Cosmos is Carl Sagan's! No one else can do it!"

Second reaction: "... hm, unless they got Neil deGrasse Tyson. He could do it."

*brief interlude of rewinding and watching the footage slowly over and over again, trying to pin down the tiny flash of host I'd caught out of the corner of my eye*

Third reaction: "WOO Neil deGrasse Tyson! This should be great!"

The first episode aired last night, and was everything I'd hoped. There were a lot of callbacks to the original that made me happy, including some straight-up repetition of approach and dialogue. But it wasn't a rip-off; it was clearly an homage to tie the two versions together. This is an updated revision, not a wholesale rewrite, and I totally dig that. Also it's hugely clear that Tyson admired and respected the hell out of Sagan, as a scientist, a person, and the man who'd helped popularize a lot of science almost 35 years ago. The final few minutes of the episode had me choking up.

(Also holy cow, they got Obama to do the intro.)

I can't wait for the rest of this series.

And then there's this, which has me grinning all over my face:

Does anyone know how to rip an Amazon video to be able to vid with it? It's even legal now (woo, DMCA exemption!), but the googling I'm doing is bringing up very few programs with even fewer reviews, so I'm not sure what's reasonable and what's potentially malware. I'd be happiest with something free, obviously, but am willing to pay for something that works. Amazon has some stuff that iTunes doesn't, and it's starting to get frustrating.

The two options that seem to be most likely are GetFLV and Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate. Anyone have experience with either one, or know of something better? (CNet loves GetFLV, gave it a five-star Editor's Pick rating, but the user reviews are full of people claiming spyware/malware...)

Legal or not, it is so hard to leave this post open!

I wrote Haven for Yuletide! I was a little hesitant to offer it, partly because I'd also requested it, and partly because I'm always nervous writing for the first time in a non-tiny fandom for some reason. But I love the show, and this season in particular I was over the moon about Duke and Nathan, so it was too tempting to resist.

Bank Shot (5522 words) by Arduinna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Haven
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos
Characters: Duke Crocker, Nathan Wuornos
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Reunions, Reunion Sex
Summary:

Nathan's got the weekend off, and Duke Crocker's back in town.

That's not the best summary ever, but I was stymied. My title and summary always wind up being last, and this time I had a punch-drunk version in my head I couldn't get rid of, and that I couldn't use ( because they were: )

... yeah. No. *g* But it meant I was scrambling and wound up with the most basic thing imaginable. Oh well. I'm pretty pleased with the title, at least.

I was extra-happy to be asked about Haven and the Duke/Nathan fanservice coming out of it this season in the December meme, because it let me wallow around in fourth season and do some more thinking about these two and how they fit together, even if I then had to be very careful not to go into anything that might give away what I was writing. Thanks, justhuman - that couldn't have been better timing! <3

( rambling a bit about story process )

Meanwhile, in the rest of Yuletide, I didn't get nearly enough read this year before reveals, and my recs count is woefully down from previous years. I blame the Wednesday holidays; I didn't have any time off from work, and just never had time to settle in to a few days of nonstop reading like I prefer. Next year, I am determined to do more!

In the meantime, though, here's the handful of recs for this year so far, and I should be adding to this for a while.

A week late, but here we go with the catch-up edition of the meme.

quarter_to_five asked for: Fringe vs. Person of Interest

Huh. I'm not sure what angle to tackle this from! But I'll ramble on and see what happens.

I was intrigued by Fringe from the original ads, and watched the first few eps live, but I think I drifted away for a bit. Partly things weren't quite grabbing me hard enough, and partly I stopped trusting JJ Abrams shows after Alias; he loves mysteries but hates answers, and that's frustrating to me. But by mid-season I was back and caught up, and never left again; by the end of first season, I was actively pimping people into the show. Some of the things that really upset a lot of the fanbase in the last season or two didn't bother me; I was along for the ride without any real qualms. It was one of those shows where I watched pretty religiously but didn't really go looking for fanac, beyond enjoying vids at Vividcon, and I didn't pay that much attention to what other people were saying about it.

In a lot of ways, I reacted to it the way I did Farscape several years earlier; I was in it for the mindfuck and the sheer sense of "this is SF, and we can do whatever the hell we want to". Hedgehog man? Sure! Time-traveling bald aliens in hats? Sure! FBI agent all mpregged up with worms? Sure! A cow hanging out in a lab where homemade LSD was being created next to genetic experimentation next to a window into an alternate universe? SURE! \o/

I was absolutely terrible at keeping track of things except in the moment; I was hugely impressed at people who were writing in the different universes, or crossing the different universes, because my brain was basically just stuck on "wheeee!"

Person of Interest was different; the few ads I saw before it aired didn't particularly interest me, and I never even turned it on. Then partway through first season, dorinda came to town for a visit with a fistful of eps (having recently been pimped in by sakana17, and by the time she left a few days later, mollyamory, therienne, and I were all completely hooked. For the first time in years, I wanted everything with this one: more canon, all the fic, vids, art, gimme gimme GIMME. (Not that I've managed to catch up with everything, or keep up as things have gone along, mind you.)

About the only thing it has in common with Fringe is that it has SF elements; it approaches them very differently, with no real sense of gleeful abandon. More of a wary paranoid protectionism. *g*

It's -- huh. Huh.

Fringe had that gleeful abandon in the possibilities it was willing to explore and was full of people being heroes, but really was dystopic; universes crashing together, thousands people dying horribly, really just vast amounts of misery, and nothing anyone did made a difference, except to make things demonstrably worse, at least for someone, somewhere, right down the line. (Which is why I still think they got the finale wrong, but hey.) It was all sort of summed up by Walter at the heart of it all, singing and dancing in delight but so incredibly, incredibly broken at his core.

POI is way more dystopian on the face of it, with the sociopathic spies and the brutal government agencies and the secrecy and the spying and seriously, but the heart of it, to me, is people learning to trust and love each other, creating families out of (often self-imposed) isolation, learning to look past the grimdark world and find a little comfort and humanity. Trying to make things better almost always works, if only in small ways (and small ways are almost the only way it works -- Finch already knows that trying to save the world will only make it worse).

I think, with Fringe, I watched to see what would happen next; I was in it for the characters, sure, but also hugely for the universe itself, and all the weirdnesses therein. And the multiple versions of the characters, of course -- ye gods, but Anna Torv and John Noble are good at that. But I never got personally invested in the other versions, particularly. As the show got increasingly convoluted and started eating its own tail a bit, I was a distant enough observer that I could ride it out, just sorta fascinated to see where it went.

With POI, I watch for the characters and their relationships, and "what happens next" is basically just the framework within which those relationships develop for me. I don't sit back and go "wheee!", I lean forward and go "omg he *tapped the eggs benedict on the menu*!" and "oh he's so upset that the phone went dead!" and "holy crap, that was a complicated emotional eyeroll! From JOHN! eeee"" and "omg WASHING BEAR TOGETHER" and the like. And I am super-invested in these characters, which is making the current part of the current season kinda dicey for me, where if this season's POI events had happened in Fringe, I would have sailed right past them, I think. (I'm sort of... rowing past them, in POI. It's a lot more effort and my shoulders hurt and there are blisters involved and ow. But I'm moving.)

Okay, that was really interesting to sort out in my head. Very cool question!

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Full list here, with a few spots still open!