Whatever, I Mean, Okay, Whatever

[fic][Doctor Who] Let Them Eat Cake

2009-07-26T06:30:09Z

Baby's first Who fic! I was getting annoyed with my brain's refusal to write anything of subtance lately so I decided to sit down and bash this out. It's, um. It's debatable if this could be termed subtance, but: Dalek Caan! ♥

Written for the Happyfest III prompt: Doctor Who ; Dalek Caan ; Cake. So obviously I had to write it and, you know, this be crack.

1000 words
Rated G
Vague spoilers for The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.
With oodles of thanks to hobbit_feets, euclase, and shutterbug_12 [who braved the scary sci-fi for me!] for the fantastic beta. I go all-out for crack fic, man.

( Let Them Eat Cake )

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Concerning Dreadwidth

2009-06-14T06:36:03Z

Dreamwidth's been live for a little over a month, so I figured I owed a post explaining how I'm going to use that in re: primary journal vs. secondary journal, and livejournal.

I made a sticky post about it, which should sum up my thoughts. Livejournal is going to be my primary journal: where I hang; where I keep up with you guys; where I post most of my entries. I haven't crossposted to dreamwidth all that much and I think that mode is going to continue. Some things will be crossposted; some won't. If I'm reading you on livejournal, I'm not going to add you to my dreamwidth reading list. In the future, I might begin to use dreamwidth more, but while it's in beta, I'm going to stick to what I know.

So there's that.

I did however code my layout onto dreamwidth, which therefore makes me awesome. I used this tutorial to do it. It was remarkably helpful.

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[fic snippet][Stargate Atlantis] Folsom Prison Blues?

2009-06-14T06:20:31Z

Signed up for Team Peace on mcshep_match. Sign ups still currently open here. (And peeking at the sign up lists, several of you seem to be my new competitors. Hi, other team! *waggles fingers*) I'm just jumping head-first into this whole fandom partcipation thing lately. Whew.

I've also started to do the thing where I want to write everything but what I'm suppose to be writing. But this time it's totally worth it, I swear; it makes up for my lack of attention span, oh yes. As I pitched it to shutterbug_12:

earlwyn: i have 1000 words of an sga au that is not my big bang
earlwyn: nor the thing about rodney being a genie
earlwyn: which i will totally write, btw
shutterbug_12: that was my next question
earlwyn: it's john and rodney in STATESVILLE
shutterbug_12: I don't know this Statesville place.
earlwyn: joliet state prison?
shutterbug_12: Not ringing any bells.
earlwyn: like, the scariest maximum security prison in the us?
shutterbug_12: Nope, but I believe you.
earlwyn: whatev. john and rodney meet in prison. it's going to be awesome.

( I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die | ~900 words )

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Save me from myself!

2009-05-13T18:45:07Z

I keep going back and forth on which offer from which university I want to accept and the indecision is driving me crazy. I even went so far as to make a Pros/Cons list earlier, which is just. I never write Pros/Cons lists. The pressure, oh god! It breaks my brain.

In order to stave off incipent panic attack #82, I figured I needed some self-inflicted intervension in the form of John and Rodney. So. The first five people to leave a John/Rodney prompt will get ficlets from me.

Because boys are adorable and stress-free. And procrastination is necessary sometimes. :)

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SPOCK!

2009-05-12T06:42:56Z

Tonight I saw Star Trek and man oh man, I do not know what my cousin's problem was. (He was at the New York premier and when I asked him what he thought, he went, "Meh" like some sort of blind and deaf loser.) I mean, Spock! SPOCK. *epic flail-y arms*

So confession time: Spock was my very first character crush ever. At age three, sitting on the floor in front of the tv with my dad in the background giving a running commentary on the episodes. I totally fell for the ears and the awesome logic-y know-how (though mostly the ears). Embarrassing but true!

And then Spock in the movie: he had me at ( this one thing ) and then re-cemented my crush for good with ( the other thing ). Though the plotpoint with the whole ( whatever thing ) was (a) totally awesomely melodramtic and (b) made me want to give Spock a giant hug. I also really liked ( this one surprisingly not-Spock-related point ).

Tomorrow I am seeing it again but with the IMAX Experience. Which will make it ten times better. Sitting front row center with the bass of explosion rattling the seat beneath me? Oh yeah. I need fic now.

Funny movie-going anecdote: we were sitting in the front row (because I like the front row, not because the theatre was packed -- though it was! On a Monday night too!) and a group of guys came to sit next to us. One guy was questioning if his friend was okay with the seat choice, and his friend replied, "Oh yeah, man, this way I can feel like I'm actually going warp speed!" My people. ♥

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SGA Meta Recs?

2009-05-11T04:49:36Z

Long before I started watching SGA, I read metafandom. (This is going somewhere, I promise.) And reading metafandom, it didn't exactly escape my notice that, uh, SGA fandom likes to discuss things -- a lot. And now I've reached the point in my fannish experience that I'd like to know about some of those discussions.

(And jesus christ, I feel like I'm four again and working up the awkward courage to ask my mum what sex is all about. This amount of hesitancy is unnecessary and embarrassing, really, my god.)

So. Issues in SGA. Namely, um, the sexism and colonialization bits. I've read some meta on it (particularly this one, which jump-started these questions from the back-burner of my mind to front and centre) and I don't get it. I'd really, really liked to get it. Because my knee-jerk reaction right now is to flatly dismiss and disagree (I like my show; I like the characters; I'm disgustingly content and high on new fannish joy; etc.) but I know I don't have all the pieces yet and therefore blanket dismissal is unfair. I want those missing pieces.

My urge for dismissal stems from the fact that I don't know why SGA would strike anyone as a show that would be socially aware enough to make anti-coloniazation statements or a show that would capably handle strong female characters that have more than a supporting role. The military isn't exactly billed as the world's best bet for cultural respect and more screen-time, development, and backstory alloted to the female characters risks screentime, development, and backstory alloted to John and Rodney, for whom much of SGA fandom seems to have massively epic flailing love. It feels to me like asking the show to do something it was never designed to do, and more, it feels hypocritical, like the show can't win with fans either way.

I mean, for the most part, I'm fairly pleased with SGA. The characters seem to have good, steady development; the international expedition looks, for much of the time, like an international expedition; there's more continuity than I'm used to seeing from other shows I've given my fannish devotion to; etc. There's a lot of things SGA does well in my book. I'm a little unnerved to think I might be in the minority amongst its fans who think so.

Is this just a matter of differing viewpoints and opinions or am I missing something? Is there other meta out there that outlines the arguments clearly and with examples that I should read? I need a little SGA Meta 101, here.

Any other good meta recs would be welcomed as well. I totally want to get my thinky-fu on, and I have a hard time finding things to read that kickstart that.

---

In other news, for Mother's Day, I bought my mum a popover pan and Alton Brown's cookbook in the devilish hopes that now she will make me popovers on a regular basis. Gifts: awesome for passive-aggressive wheedling. :)

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A Dog's Breakfast

2009-05-04T05:48:04Z

So I have the sinking feeling that I should really make my way over to my local friendly DVD shop and get myself a copy of A Dog's Breakfast to watch. It seems like you can't call yourself a David Hewlett fan without watching his movie. (Or it could be that I just reached that conclusion while reading this fic. Oh, Patrick. ♥) Is this true?

It also seems like while I'm at said local DVD shop (which is Best Buy -- I honestly don't know why I'm trying to pretend otherwise) I should nab me a copy of SG-1. I need something to do while I keep dragging my feet on watching season five of SGA.

Because this is what I do with things I love that I know end: I just stop watching in hopes that if I do it will never technically end for me. One of those tree-falls-in-the-woods things. Plus, season four was just, like, brain-meltingly awesome, and basically should be subtitled The Tragic Lovesong of John Sheppard and His Epic Love for Rodney McKay. (I realize the "I can't" is known far and wide through fandom but it's brand new to me and I think I watched that scene about seven times on repeat before finally watching the rest of the episode and may in fact have rolled around on the living room floor a little bit while frightening Sam with my high-pitched squeals. Just sayin'.) Season five is going to need to work pretty damn hard to top that. And I don't want it to be over. Is The Shrine really worth that? Is Vegas? I just don't know.

Besides, Jack O'Neill and I need to do some bonding. (The Minnesotan accent gets all thick when he's being sarcastic and it makes me chortle into my strudel hotdish with Midwestern-bred glee. Minnesotans! On televsion! The world is a crazy place.)

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This. Yes. This.

2009-05-03T03:19:08Z

Oh, Stephen. ♥ ♥

"I finally know now, as I easily knew then, that the most important thing is love. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether that love is for someone of your own sex or not. Gay issues are important and I shall come to them in a moment, but they shrivel like a salted snail when compared to the towering question of love. Gay people sometimes believe (to this very day, would you credit it, young Stephen?) that the preponderance of obstacles and terrors they encounter in their lives and relationships is intimately connected with the fact of their being gay. As it happens at least 90% of their problems are to do with love and love alone: the lack of it, the denial of it, the inequality of it, the missed reciprocity in it, the horrors and heartaches of it. Love cold, love hot, love fresh, love stale, love scorned, love missed, love denied, love betrayed ... the great joke of sexuality is that these problems bedevil straight people just as much as gay. The 10% of extra suffering and complexity that uniquely confronts the gay person is certainly not incidental or trifling, but it must be understood that love comes first. This is tough for straight people to work out."

Stephen Fry knows how to make my chestular area feel all tight and squeezy.

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CSS and all that jazz

2009-05-03T01:00:14Z

Quick query about dreamwidth: does anyone have a link to a tutorial/explanatory post regarding layout conversion from lj to dw? I read the wiki notes on portability and availability and I know the options will expand in a few weeks as more people work with the codes, but I'm trying to figure out what new sorts of CSS and site navigation I will need to learn in order to pretty up my dreamwidth. Anyone have tips and/or links? Got it! ♥

I've been debating for, oh, the past few months really, about getting a website. Most of the fics I've been writing (I have been writing! I swear!) will massively exceed the character limit on entries (See: writing! Really long things!) and I'm one of those people who likes to read a whole story in one go, no unnecessary part-hopping required. I'd also like a more structured archive for my fic as tags can be a bit unwieldy to navigate.

So. For those of you who have websites:

Do they work well for you? Is there a particular sitehost I should check out? If I wanted to archive fic and non-streaming video files (for future downloading purposes), what sort of bandwidth am I looking at here? Any Do's/Don't's For Beginners you want to recommend?

My two main concerns are price and ease of design. I'm not completely clueless when it comes to code but I'm, uh, you know, fandom-taught on those things; I know enough to get by. I don't really want to need to learn, like, Perl in order to have someplace to keep fics. I don't need to learn Perl, right, guys?

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Grand Return?

2009-05-01T02:55:22Z

So you know how sometimes life gets so busy and you keep meaning to post about it but then you get distracted and a new thing happens and a new thing happens and a new thing happens, and suddenly you have no idea where to start anymore so you just never post? Yeah, that's not really what happened here. I just, um, have had nothing of interest to say for a long time.

But -- but! I have things to say now. Such as: omg fandom, I've missed you! And: I have made some changes for my lj! And: John Sheppard, you a such an asshole for making me fall in love with you!

So, so, hey guys. How are you? What's new? I'll tell you what's new with me.

Thing One: SGA and I have fallen in love and I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT IT that I can't even, oh man, I love it. I've watched through season four right now. I'm holding off on season five so I can get all my thoughts down first and hopefully get in on some mutual squee. Some of you guys will want to mutually squee with me, right?

Thing Two: I polished up my lj for this big ol' grand return thing I'm doing. I'm going to try to split my lj between fannish things and real life things a little more, and a new look should follow along with that. Check it, yo: earlwyn.

Thing Three: I'm earlwyn over on dreamwidth, now. Come say hi. I'm super excited about the idea of dreamwidth and having a site that supports both diversity and interconnectivity. I don't plan to leave lj in the near future, nor do I plan to let this journal become a secondary journal right now. I will be using both as co-primary journals and crossposting, but that may eventually change depending on (a) what new changes livejournal makes down the road, and (b) where most of fandom hangs. But shiny! Shiny, shiny dreamwidth.

Thing Four: To follow along with this whole sheep behaviour thing, I got, um, a twitter account. Why you would want to have a direct channel into my stream of conscious, I have no idea, but: here I am!

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