entirely ruined her disposition with books

+ So I overslept, which meant I ran out the door, which meant that I didn't take my pills, which means that I will probably be feeling like I want to die at about 1:00 when my brain chemistry starts FREAKING OUT. Oh, anti-depressants. The things you do to me.

+ Anyway! I have a question for y'all who are X-Files-y inclined.

( x-files question )


+ And another question: if I want to change the text on my journal so that all of it (in the entries/comments) is in a darker font so that I can read it a little better (I love the color scheme, but it does require some eye-straining), what code do I need to look for in the CSS? I've changed a few colors, I thought, but nothing seems to have changed, so I must be changing the wrong thing, I guess? Any thoughts?


+ snickfic's latest fic revived all of my Jo Harvelle feelings and now I want ALL the fic where Jo's interacting with Dean (shippy or non, I don't even care). Any recs, y'all?


+ I miss Leverage already.

+ And a quick poll:

[Poll #1815188]

+ First of all, it is absolutely unacceptable that Dean Devlin keeps letting his writers write dialogue that keeps talking about the Donnelly boys. Every time he does it, I am plunged into despairing love for my prematurely cancelled show. Also, the Doctor Who reference was absolutely perfect. Leverage is such geeky love.

+ As happy as I am that Pan Am is back, I have two complaints: ( spoilers )

+ As for Shameless, ( spoilers )

+ Y'all, this episode of The Good Wife was so delightful! ( spoilers )

+ First of all, it is absolutely unacceptable that Dean Devlin keeps letting his writers write dialogue that keeps talking about the Donnelly boys. Every time he does it, I am plunged into despairing love for my prematurely cancelled show. Also, the Doctor Who reference was absolutely perfect. Leverage is such geeky love.

+ As happy as I am that Pan Am is back, I have two complaints: ( spoilers )

+ As for Shameless, ( spoilers )

+ Y'all, this episode of The Good Wife was so delightful! ( spoilers )

Because I have a few, and none of them are Yuletide related. They're all just stuff I found while browsing AO3 while bored at work.

Leverage:

Techno-Wizardry. "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." Alec is on board with this argument. A little ficlet about Hardison being a Tech God. Because he is.

FANDOM IS SRS BZNESS. So then, because he’s Hardison, he created a fandom. post-the Gold Job. A meta, geek-love celebration of fandom and its ways, all issuing forth from Hardison’s brain of perfectness. If you have any familiarity with this fandom at all you must read this. OMG I CAN’T.

four times hardison told his nana he was sorry, and one time he said he was (but he totally wasn’t) Sometimes, a geeky fanboy has to do what a geeky fanboy has to do. Obviously my new favorite subgenre is “Hardison participates in fandom with bonus fandom meta!” fic. Because, y’all, Hardison is so one of us.

Life in theTwenty-First Century. Alec Hardison, if pressed, would probably suggest that he subscribes to a post-modern definition of identity. Hardison figures out who he is, sexually and otherwise, via fandom. I think ladyofthelog in particular would be interested in this one.

Nu!Trek:

Your Mom. In which Kirk, Sulu and Chekov feel guilty for no good reason, Spock feels bewildered, and McCoy feels an aneurysm coming on. If everyone listened to Bones, their whole lives would be better. Basically, male bonding, only Spock isn’t so good at that.

In Which the Enterprise Is Like a Village. Turns out, despite the vast emptiness of space, and the worryingly illusory protection offered even by Starfleet's finest vessel, and the sheer likelihood of being taken out by an unexpected cosmic event (sure, those nebulae look pretty now but up-close they're just a disaster waiting to happen) and/or Klingon attack (McCoy's sure it's going to happen any day now) and/or new and fatal alien disease (probably sexually transmitted; probably Kirk's fault), life on the Enterprise isn't as far off a village as you might expect. Gen!space!family!times. Basically: Nakama 101.

That’s What Friends Are For. The Enterprise crew takes take of each other. They are friends, they went through thick and thin together, and they are violently protective of theirs. They are family. Everyone loves everyone else and everyone is BFFs and everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

Harry Potter:

journals and ice-cream series. Draco Malfoy: ex-Death Eater, former bigot, divorcee, and single father. His wife left him for Viktor Krum, his children worship the Weasleys who clash with the décor, something is rotten at Hogwarts, and he doesn't really know what he's doing. But maybe he's getting the hang of it. Draco in this fic has absolutely nothing to do with Draco in canon. Maybe less than nothing. But this series is fun. And silly. And occasionally strangely moving. I don't even have any particular feelings for Draco, and I enjoyed this. It's fun.

Dollhouse:

Whatever Remains, However Improbable. Victor and Sierra are imprinted as Holmes and Watson, but the engagement does not go as planned. For fans both of Dollhouse and Arthur Conan Doyle. Only the most basic working knowledge of DH is required to enjoy this fic. Which you should read because it is DELIGHTFUL.

Y'all, I am behind to the point that I'm not even going to try to catch up on my flist, so if there's something you really want me to see, you'll have to link me to it. I'm too overwhelmed to try to wade through everything. This is why I try not to get behind.

Anyway! I heard from the doctor and apparently the reason I've been feeling so tired/wonky/dizzy recently is because I have a Vitamin D deficiency. Fun times! The average healthy person's is 50--mine's 10.5. So. I've got a prescription, so hopefully that'll be taken care of soon. Meanwhile I just haven't been feeling that great. Not flat-out bad, just kind of blah.

I have, however, been catching up on Leverage, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy that show and how much I passionately love Parker and Hardison and how much I love the dysfunctional little family vibe of the team and how huge my crush is on Aldis Hodge (CALL ME!). Other than that, I've been doing a bunch of nothing.

So I'll throw some randomness at you, as is my wont. Sometimes I sit around and think about fics I would like to read. Here are some I have been thinking about this week.

+ Buffy and Spike (and Dawn and possibly Andrew) watch The Vampire Diaries. Spike’s favorite character is Katherine. Obviously. Though he’s becoming fonder of Elena all the time, especially when she starts training to be able to fight. Basically, he appreciates all the ladies and how awesome they are, but thinks all the guys are gits (well, maybe not Ric. He kind of wishes he had his own Ric, but he won’t admit it). Buffy understands the appeal of both Stefan and Damon, and Dawn is a huuuge fan of Anna. Andrew thinks that Damon isn’t nearly as cool as Spike.

+ Buffy gets sick and everyone takes care of her. BECAUSE BUFFY IS MY WOOBIE, OKAY? I want to see Buffy wrapped up in blankets and waited on hand and foot. Why is there so little awesome h/c involving Buffy?

+ The Leverage team goes on a road trip. Nate and Sophie end up playing the beleaguered parents while the kids sit in the back seat and fight. Hardison and Eliot definitely need to fight over who’s on whose side (or who is touching whom or whatever), and Parker needs to ask if they’re there yet a lot. Bonus points if Nate and/or Sophie actually refers to them as “kids.” Because I am obsessed with them as this weird little family, okay?

+ More Eliot-gets-roped-into-helping-Parker-negotiate-her-relationship-with-Hardison fic. Because I think I've read everything in that category on AO3, but there needs to be MORE. Eliot being the world's most reluctant matchmaker/wingman/whatever is my FAVORITE THING.

+ Hardison meets Mac from Veronica Mars. They hack something together. Anything. I am not picky.

+ Any Happy Endings fic, especially involving Brad and Jane, because they are the best. Is there any fic for this show? There should be fic for this show.

+ Ann and Ben have a conversation about what Ben did for Leslie in last week's episode (the trial one). Because there should be way, way more Ann-and-Ben conversations. That end up devolving into a conversation about how awesome Leslie is. (Unless this happened in the episode from last night? Was there an episode last night? I haven't gotten to download Thursday night tv yet because I was actually being social).

+ Damon decorates his room. WHERE DID ALL THE DECORATIVE SOAPS COME FROM? Seriously, though, there has to be a story behind that. Hopefully involving Damon shopping at, like, Bed, Bath and Beyond or Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware or something. I can only imagine how much Damon would start drooling if he walked into a Restoration Hardware. He would die. Damon/Any Kind of Domesticity has become my Ultimate TVD Kink. I don’t even know when that happened.


Feel free to catch me up on your lives in the comments--I'm always interested. Or share stories you've always wanted to read that no one writes. Anything. I'm cool.

This is the greatest thing that's ever been invented in the history of ever, and y'all should all do it. I'm so excited! My requests are here. Some of them are incredibly esoteric (I don't expect anyone to actually do the Press Gang or William/Lux stuff, but I threw them out there just in case). Now I have to decide whose I'm going to fulfill!

Can I also just add that I'm tickled pink at all the Leverage requests, especially the Parker/Hardison ones? I ship them so hard. I can't wait to go back through when everyone's written their stuff!

No, really. I love it when people get it. This made me unreasonably happy.

I found this via deadbrowalking and thought I'd share. This is pulled from a MUCH longer Q&A here.

@619: I personally HATE fanfic so I was wondering..... 1)How do YOU feel about fan fiction? 2)Does it irk you that so many people "borrow" your characters and use them in their own crappy stories? 3)Do you think of fanfic as a form of flattery? 4)Do the other writers and the actors feel the same way?

1.) I think fanfic is the sign of a healthy show. Here's what it boils down to: you're telling me that in today's crowded media space, our show made someone love it so much they take time out of their own life to talk about it? Holy. Crap.

To be fair, I have a somewhat different attitude toward media/fans than most people. I think what TV/corporate media had wrong for a long time was how they understood the idea of a "water cooler show." They saw it as making the audience talk about their show, on their terms. So any fan-created media is them losing control of their material. I see this more as the natural evolution of culture in a shared digital age. I will be blunt -- other than the satisfaction of our own creative urges (and all that entails: the quest for perfection, artistry, craft, etc), our job in media is to give you stuff to talk about in your conversations, to integrate into your social circle in whatever way you see fit. I doubt that's TNT's official stance, btw, but they are much cooler about this stuff than most companies.

2.) As far as "borrowing" our characters -- to paraphrase Alan Moore, they didn't go anywhere. There they are, sitting right up on the shelf. Waiting for us to let them loose again. Besides, how many people read a fanfic story? A couple hundred, tops? We have, on average 3.5 million viewers, well into the 4 million range when you get the DVR numbers in. I just don't see someone taking control of our Ideaspace through sheer force of Slashfic.

Sure, a lot of fanfic is crap. Of course it's crap. It's written by people who are not professional writers. If I paint, what I paint is crap. Does that mean I should give up painting and displaying stuff in my neighborhood art show?

3.) Is fanfic flattery? Again, depends on how you define flattery. If someone's writing fanfic with intention of currying favor for some ... er, frankly unguessable benefit, then they're really engaged in an exercise in futility. If you mean flattery as in: it's flattering to think someone is so entertained by our work that it inspires them to talk about it and create around it, then aces.

4.) Most writers and actors don't feel this way. Some, including writers I both like personally and greatly admire, hate the idea of fanfic.

Look, end of day, you should always be trying to create your own material. But fanfic, etc, is a different process than original creation -- which I think is the source of a lot of the controversy.

People who do original creations assume the fan is taking some sort of unearned ownership, somehow implying their act is the same/as difficult as the original act of creation. Which, of course, tees them off (doesn't tee me off, but I'm a very relaxed and often drunk guy).

And some fanfic humans are under the impression that creating fanfic is the same creative process as creating original material -- and are sometimes frustrated that they're not accorded the same respect as the original creators. That's also wrong. Fanfic to me is spiritually much closer to the fan-created music videos.

The basic rule I follow here is one I learned in stand-up comedy: Always punch UP. I am a relatively successful typing human whose words are physically produced using millions of dollars and is distributed nationally by a massive billion dollar corporation to millions of people. Exactly how is a free web page with a 1000 word story about Eliot and Hardison fighting a trans-dimensional incursion of Elves hurting my brand, exactly?

Tell you what -- if some fanfic writer is so good they manage to amass a million-person audience with their web-distributed free stories using my characters, I am going to consider that evolution in action and hire that bastard. Or, at the very least, urge them to go create their own show. But odds are it ain't gonna happen. And that's okay. We write for different reasons.

Wow, that response could be its own blog post. I may break it out later, and shine it a bit.

This makes me love Leverage (PARKER AND HARDISON AND ELIOT, Y'ALL!) even more than I already did.

Still job searching. Still half-frustrated, half-depressed. So, once again, let's talk of pleasanter things.

Like TV. I haven't done a TV post in a while, but I've been watching some stuff lately and have some new shiny toys.

( Let's talk Leverage - maybe spoilers? )



And then last night I finally got around to watching the pilot for Glee--also very shiny.  ( Glee - spoilers for the first episode )



For a much better (more nuanced and occasionally darker) view of high school life, I want to reccomend to everyone my latest obsession: Press Gang.  I finished it several months ago, but I've never gotten around to writing about it; I thought this would be a good time.

The show is a British "children's show" (really more young adult than anything--the characters are around 15-18 for most of the series) from the late 80s/early 90s, and every episode is written by Steve Moffet, he of Doctor Who fame.  SM wrote my favorite episode of that show--"Blink," of course--and has some other solid ones, but if you're hesitant on him, you should check out PG to see what he can do.  I absolutely adore this show.  ( Press Gang ramblings )

Wow, y'all.  That was like the most teal deer thing ever.  I apologize profusely.  I doubt any of you will read all of that.  Anyways!

I'm going to take care of a lot of replies I need to get to tonight.  And for those of you who might be waiting for the next chapter of "Love and Blackmail," my apologies.  I know exactly where I'm going with it, so it'll get finished and soon, but I'm having a hard time feeling motivated.  I'm tired all the time and never really want to leave the house, and I can't make myself do anything constructive.  Hopefully, I'll get over that soon.