the sun and the moon and the stars

I'm jonesing for Avengers movieverse fic at the moment - including Iron Man/Thor/Captain America movieverses too, of course. I'm less interested in Steve/Tony or Steve/Bucky than other pairings or gen shenanigans, but I'll basically read anything at the moment, especially if it's fun and lighthearted and features banter, snark, or generally adorable ridiculousness. (Bonus points for Darcy, Coulson, Clint, or any of the less common PoV characters.)

Rec me tasty tasty fic? Please? :)

Man, it is a good thing I didn't do Yuletide. I don't even know where the last six weeks went, but there's less than zero chance I'd have got Yuletide done on time if I'd tried.

I'm back at Uni (doing postgrad Arts (Writing), probably aiming at a Masters) and it's a lot more of a struggle trying to fit the study time into my life than I'd expected. Ten hours a week per subject doesn't sound like much, but it is. Especially when you're a chronic procrastinator like me. I'm currently staring at some slightly overdue work, and it's staring back at me, and it's just not getting done. Thankfully my tutor is very relaxed about due dates, but the longer I leave things, the more work piles up and the pile gets more and more intimidating and insurmountable.

And then there's SWTOR, which is amazingly fun and terribly, terribly addictive; I'm currently trying to avoid it else there's no way I'll get my Uni work done, but it's tricky!

So, yeah. I'm about six weeks behind with my flist, and I'm going to try to catch up but it won't be easy. Did I miss anything important? :)

avengers trailer avengers trailer avengers trailer AVENGERS TRAILER

* My tag bundles are gone. All of them.
* I hate the new layout. Less data and more whitespace is good for reading; it's not useful for a complex environment where more data is better.
* My tag list has maybe 40 or 50 tags on it, out of my HUNDREDS of tags. Nowhere can I find a list of "all tags you have used".

And you can't even rename or delete tags. Way to improve functionality there guys, nice work.

Fucking hell, AVOS - it wasn't broke, so why did you 'fix' it?

So, back to working on my current vidding project, and it's not going well. That is, it's stalled around the point where it always stalls: I've got 20-30 seconds of finished-ish clip sequence, and I'm looking at the rest of the song going "...now what?" Other vidders make it look so eeeeeasy, saying what they want to say with their vids and having intelligent narratives and actually making *art* beyond a frenetic three minute string of quasi-related clips.

I think I need an expert to hold my hand and tell me what to do, but I'm beginning to suspect that - much though I love vidding, and though I'm overflowing with ideas for vids - I'm not actually cut out for it.

(It doesn't help that I'm learning a new program, either, although technical proficiency will come with practice and it's not where I'm having the obstacle anyway.)

...and Natalie Portman, aka Dr Jane Foster, isn't listed as part of the cast for The Avengers.

I really hope Dr Foster at least gets a reference in the movie, as the means by which the Bifrost is reopened or some such. ( As it is, The Avengers is looking like a total sausage-fest... (cut for casting spoilers) )

I have this burning desire to vid the Harry Potter movies to "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance. Someone tell me that's been done so I don't have to do it? Please?

Happy VVC to all of you attending! I have much envy. Hope it is fun and filled with viddy awesomeness. :)

I know a lot of you are keen cooks and/or knowledgeable about food, so I'd like to ask for some advice and input. I'll put it behind a cut for the sake of those with eating/food issues.

( Onwards for my request for advice! )

Thankyou for any input you can offer!

(Cross-posted to a community and my own journal.)

This WebSnark post perfectly sums up the problems with Barbara Gordon's reversion from Oracle into Batgirl, for me.

... Barbara Gordon was put in that wheelchair in 1988. She had debuted in comic books in 1967, so she had a twenty one year run as Batgirl. She debuted as Oracle in 1989, so at this point she’s had a twenty-two year run as Oracle. That’s an important point — she’s been Oracle (and disabled) longer than she was Batgirl.

So the brand argument, to me, is somewhat specious. That brings us to their earlier statement — the one on diversity and how they’re chock full of it.

Well, they’re not. They’re just not. The ‘new’ DC Universe has put more white men in the forefront, not less.

And Barbara Gordon has gone from an extremely powerful role — and role model — to a weak one.

Oh, I have confidence in Gail Simone to write a strong Batgirl. I really do. But Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again. Some other character is Batwoman, defined as being entirely independent from Batman. Barbara Gordon is back to the role of being passive and scared (look at that cover I’ve reprinted above) as Batgirl, where she was strong, confident, independent and distinctive as Oracle.

Right on.

The Raven, the Rooks, and the Lantern by sharpestrose, aka mary. It's a lovely XMFC/Narnia crossover and thoroughly worth it.

I am sick like a sick sick thing. It's either a horrible cold or a mild flu and either way I'm absolutely wrecked. *deathrattle*

So, how about some TV to ease the pain...

( Thoughts on Burn Notice 5.03 )

Interesting stuff. I like the direction that the show is going in, I think, but it's still taking some adjustment. Still, from the teaser it looks like stuff changes next week, so... we shall see.

This pretty much sums up my attitude to Google+. I'm really rather keen to try it - if anyone can hook me up I'd be forever grateful.

Incidentally, this cnet article covers a way to get your friends in on Google+ even if you don't have invites to share.

Edit: I am all hookéd up, with thanks to generous friends. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to link to my profile; if you're there and wish to connect, PM me for my gmail addy if you don't know it already.

You know, I was really pretty excited about the upcoming DC reboot - I really like comics in general, but I don't follow anything enough to keep up with the storylines, and DC is just so intimidating to try and get into. (As is Marvel.) So I've mostly stuck to the other labels and other kinds of stories, but I like superheroes, and I was relishing the chance to get in at the ground floor with one of the big superhero universes, without having to try to learn years of legacy backstory.

And then we find out that actually, they're keeping around a bunch of the legacy backstory (ie Batman and Green Lantern stuff), and they actually don't care about fans like me - like us - anyway.

From Bleeding Cool:

The target audience are men age 18 to 34 though they do realize that they have readers in other demographics.

This from one of the monoliths in an industry that has been shrinking for years. I can only assume that, in the words of Yahtzee, they're allergic to money and success.

(Also, given the dearth of superheroes of colour in the reboot, I think it's safe to say that there's an unspoken "we mean white men" in their audience identification.)

Guess what, DC? I'm pretty sure that you've already got all the (white-)men-aged-18-to-34 you're going to get. This was a good chance to make fans like me feel welcome in non-token ways, and not only did you blow it, you didn't care in the first place.

Since you don't want me as a fan, I won't burden you with my icky girl money - I'll continue throwing it at Dark Horse, and maybe have yet another try at Marvel. At least neither of them have officially said they don't care about my interest.

I am VIDDING, you guys. This is tremendously exciting. I have missed it so. *hugs Final Cut*

Of course, it's 7am and I have guests due today and work to do this afternoon and I totally have to sleep - somebody make me go to bed.


**

In other news, James McAvoy apparently ships Charles/Erik, which fills me with nearly as much :D :D :D as his suggestions for RPF pairing names.

Mostly DS9 icons. But basically, just lots and lots of icons.

Can anyone rec any good sources for screencaps and more obscure stock images and anything else pleasantly iconable?

leupagus started a round of Recast Your Favourite Show, and it got me thinking. Now I want to recast ALL THE SHOWS.

( Burn Notice recast! )

That was fun! Now ( let's recast NCIS Los Angeles! )

Upon a second viewing of Thor, I've come to a few conclusions:

( spoilery as hell )

Okay, nuts to this, I'm just gonna catch up. :)

8. (Alternate) What is your philosophy on journal layouts?

I'm a big fan of black text, white background, decent font size, decent column width, decent typeface, no ridiculous replacement cursors. I don't have any significant related accessibility issues apart from poor eyesight, but I have little patience for form that impedes function so I'll almost always view offending journals as style=mine.

I also don't much like layouts that don't show tags, both by post and by sidebar list/cloud, since I find tags invaluable for browsing and content discovery.

9. (Alternate) Tell me about your default icon.
For a long time my general internet pseudonym was Jestyr/LadyJestyr and Harley Quinn up there was my default icon pretty much everywhere. Jester -> Fool, and Harley Quinn was the best female Fool I could think of. Also, she's adorable.

A while ago I switched to a photo of me as my default icon in many places, but I still identify with this Harley Quinn icon as strongly as I do with my actual face. And I still use Harley as my default icon on places where I want to be me, but don't want to use an actual photo - dreamwidth, twitter and so on.

10. Pick 10 random icons from your userpics and tell me about them.

Okay, this can go behind a cut :)

( here be icons! )

11. What features do you think Dreamwidth should have that it doesn't currently?

* A kudos-style feature!
* User notes!
* A memories system analogous to Delicious (OMG WANT, never gonna happen though)
* The ability to remember viewing preferences (eg style=mine, style=light) by journal (i.e. "ok, I view these in their native styles, these in my style, and these in light style").

That's just off the top of my head. I know there's more. :)

12. What do you consider the five most "telling" interests from the list on your profile? Why?

In alphabetical order:

( Read more... )

13. Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they? How'd they get there?

Amazingly, no I don't.

14. Did you have a gateway fandom? Still in it? Why or why not? Is there a community for it on DW?

The first fic I ever read was by cupiscent, in XMMV, and that prompted me to read voraciously in XMMV - so in that sense, it was a gateway. I think Constantine was probably more of a gateway, though, in that I was an active participant in the fandom - I wrote reams of meta, I wallowed in the glorious fics, and I even started (though never finished) fic of my own. Had it been released five or so years later, I probably would have vidded in it (and still think I might, even now).

(alternate) What is your favourite subject to discuss on Dreamwidth?

Fandom stuff, mostly: my fannish reactions to the sources I love, vidding angst, the fandom meta du jour. I kind of wish I had the focus to be monofannish, but there's too much to love. :)

15. What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?

Right now, oddly, it's nail polish. Which may seem kind of shallow, but there's nothing wrong with loving the shiny. It's not something I'd ever done much with before, apart from low-level maintenance stuff, but I bought some OPI nail polish for my mother and I a year ago, and some more at Christmas time, and it triggered something: the urge to collect ALL THE COLOURS.

It's having two good effects, I find, which are probably reinforcing the obsession: firstly, it's an incentive to take good care of my nails, which are typically weak and prone to delaminating. I've never had such nice nails so consistently before, and it's making me want to keep them nice instead of picking at them.

(Which reinforces something I'd realised about myself recently: I need an apparent motivation for reward to do things, not just an intellectual one. For instance, my house has always been rental-house ugly, and I'm very untidy and disorganised by nature. Over the last year or so as it's been slowly renovated and improved, I'm finding that I keep it much nicer without even thinking about it. As I said to a friend, back in the old days I could knock myself out tidying and cleaning and the place would still basically look like shit - whereas now the only thing stopping it looking awesome is the mess, so that's all the incentive I need to deal with the mess unbegrudgingly.)

Er, tangent much? Anyway, yes, second awesome thing about the nailpolish obsession: it's a way of really feeling good about the way I look. I have a number of body-image issues related to my recentish health woes, and they can be very disheartening; keeping my nails nice and (better yet) pretty makes me feel just plain good about myself every time I catch sight of my hands - and that's priceless.

Er, oops. So, I've had a busy week, and something had to give. I'm sorry, Internet - I missed you!

On the up side, these memes are usually more fun when there's more than one question anyway.

7. What is your favorite community on Dreamwidth?
I am not actually all that active in comms here, although I think the first thing I did when I signed up at DW was join omnomnom.

Right now, I am loving product_junkies very much, because I'm currently wallowing in nail polish addiction (hooray for improving one's self image and having awesome shiny fingers all at the same time!).

8. What community do you wish was more active?

product_junkies! Or, alternatively, white_lotus, because I'm kind of jonesing for more good AtLA fanworks at the moment and I think I've exhausted all my usual sources.

9. Are there two people on your reading list that you think should meet?
Um, to be honest, sometimes I get the feeling that everyone already knows everyone anyway. :)

Oops, missed a day.

5. How about when you're not online/on the computer?

Not... on the computer?

Oh, that would be when I'm asleep. Right.

Er. Most of my non-computer time is either: sleep, chores, travel time, or roleplaying games. RPGs are my only significant non-computer-based activity, and one I love very much. There are some things from my old lifestyle that I do miss, though. One is cooking, and I'm working on doing that more (well, obviously I cook all the time, but cooking as an activity is a bit different from cooking solely to generate nutritious variably-tasty comestibles). The other is moviegoing, and that's unlikely to change in the short term for various reasons.

6. What do you wish people who read your journal knew about you?

That I'm an interesting person.

My thoughts on yaoi!

Um. That is, this is primarily a fandom journal, and so many of my friends on DW are fandom-related friends. And one thing that has always frustrated me about fandom is that most conversations about our objects-of-fannishness are held via creative mediums: more often than not, someone with an opinion about the characters, plot or themes of a given book/show/movie will express that opinion via fanworks, particularly fic. And other people mull that over, and respond in kind.

As a non-writer, that frustrates me to no end. I adore fanfic, I read it voraciously, but I'm an extremely slow, uninspired and uncertain writer, and creative fiction isn't my language. Whereas I interact with my fandoms by talking - meta, squee, criticism, whatever - and the ratio of meta-to-fic, in fandom as a whole, is pretty freakin' tiny. When I post meta, people rarely engage with it, and I rarely see other people posting much of it either. (Not that I post much of it myself these days, as it's a bit like talking into the wind.)

None of which is meant to say that anyone else is doin' fandom rong - not at all. As an avid reader, I love the fact that there's so much interesting, thinky fic out there (and even if I wasn't, I would never presume to tell people they should converse the way I want them to). I just sometimes get a bit frustrated and sad that nobody seems to speak my language, or to want to engage in the kind of conversations I can have.

But! On the up side, at least that means there is a metric ton of awesome thinky fun interesting fic out there - at least I can hear and enjoy the language, even if I can't speak it. :)

You guys are awesome, and it makes me very happy to have you all as part of my life.

*internet hugs*

3. Do you crosspost? Why or why not?

Yes, and no. By default, my entries are all crossposted to eleanorjane, which is specifically intended to be a mirror to this journal. I have never felt that I belonged in fandom enough to turn away friends, and there are interesting people on LJ who I would miss if I withdrew to being DW-exclusive. I do sometimes turn crossposting off if I'm posting something DW-specific, though.

I also crosspost some of my entries to my primary LJ, ladyjestyr, if it's something that I think might garner interesting discussion over there, or be of interest to my flist (which is almost entirely non-fandom). Crossposting to that journal isn't on by default, though; I only turn it on for specific entries.

I know there's been a lot of meme content here lately, but I don't have the juice for anything creative and there are some interesting questions here, and it's all about online life, which seems perfect for 3W4DW.

(For those readers that haven't seen it elsewhere: 3W4DW is Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, a three-week fest celebrating the anniversary of DW's open beta, aimed at stimulating content and community here on Dreamwidth; during the fest, a lot of posters do something special, and we generally avoid crossposting our 3W4DW content to anywhere else.)

1. Why did you sign up for Dreamwidth?
I've always been an earlyish adopter of social media, even back before that meant something specific. When I heard about a new journalling service, I was interested, and then somehow I failed to hear anything more about it until a month or so before open beta. A kind friend gave me an invite, and it coincided with increasing frustration about the changes happening at LJ. I was so impressed with the featureset at DW, the plans for future development, and their transparency and responsiveness to user concerns and requests.

The only reason I still do anything at LJ is that there are people there I'm not ready to say goodbye to.

( rest of the days under the cut )

Because there's not enough uncomplicated yay! in my life, here's some things that are making me happy right now:

* Archer, which is hilarious and oddly addictive, and could teach lessons on how to make edgy comedy that's not wall-to-wall offensive.

* Castle, my viewing of which fell by the wayside a year or more ago, and after my TV-watching buddy acknowledged last week that we weren't going to have time to watch it, I mainlined over a season of it, and I love so much about it. I don't remember any of the plots, but they're not the joy of a show like this.

* Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe, the prequel telemovie which aired a few days ago. OMG SAM. "El Barbia!" "You really want to kiss me right now, don't you!" Beatriz! I love Sam Axe a ridiculous amount, I can tell you, and the whole thing was great. (And Sam's execution of the Michael Westen Voice Over - awesome.)

* The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells, recced by mollyamory. It's smart, clever fantasy with excellent characterisation and worldbuilding, and an intriguing plot. Amazon refused to sell me a Kindle version of it (SCREW YOU, ARTIFICIAL DIGITAL SCARCITY) so a friend hooked me up with an ebook version while I order a hardcopy. (I am not a patient person.)

* DS9, ds9_rewatch and the friending meme. I am really hooked on Trek at the moment, and very glad to have people to talk about it with... to... at... whatever. :)