entirely ruined her disposition with books

Stop what you are doing right this minute and go and read this fic. IT IS THE FIC I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR. Remember that graphic that popped up on tumblr with the Parks and Rec AU where Leslie is the president and Ben is her Secret Service agent? And remember how I tagged it begging the universe to provide me with fic? THE UNIVERSE HAS COME THROUGH. THERE IS NOW PRESIDENTAL!CANDIDATE!LESLIE/SECRET!SERVICE!AGENT!BEN FIC. GO READ IIIIIIIT. NOW.

I had forgotten how much fun Buffy Anne Summers is to write. MY GIIIIIIIIIIIRL. And all of her issues and baggage and slaughtering of the English language and strength and wonderfulness. Gah. I love her.

This has been a post.

It's gorgeous and warm outside and I'm wearing a sundress and Lil Sis and I cleaned ALL the things and I'm going to the grocery and the pharmacy later and then going to do my taxes and make some phone calls, and I feel like an adult! So productive!

Also did I mention that I went to see In the Heights and it was flawless and I fell in love? And that I've been listening to the original cast recording nonstop ever since? And that I think that the tour cast is better than the original, especially the girl who plays Nina?

AND DOCTOR WHO SOON. AND GAME OF THRONES. AND BORGIAS. AND OTHER THINGS THAT ARE EXCELLENT. And soon Parks and Rec will be back and so will Vampire Diaries and I have heard things that make me think there will be some EXCELLENT BONNIE DEVELOPMENT, and have I mentioned that I love television?

In short, this is a good day, and I hope it's good for y'all, too!

Oh, haaaaaaiiiiii. It’s one of those posts where I talk about how much I fail at eljay. Which is a lot. So let’s skip that part and get right to me asking how y’all are. Everything okay? Anything awesome/important that I’ve missed? What is going on with you?

Here’s what is going on with me.

Top TenFifteen Things That Are Awesome at the Moment
1. Ramin Karimloo’s existence. Yes, this really does need to be number one.
2. My family continues to be amazing. I feel like I should not be this big of a fan of my own family, but I am. Whatever. We’re awesome.
3. Working on my book! Going to the library, not hooking up to the internet, actually working. And I have decided that I will KEEP ON WRITING even when (inevitably) I hit the point when I realize that the book is stupid and worthless and no one would ever, ever want to read it. I mean, this is just the beginning, and who knows how long I can keep this up, but hopefully I’ll develop some will power? Hopefully?
4. SPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING. THERE ARE FLOWERS. IT IS WARM. I AM SO HAPPY. It’s kind of sad how much influence the weather has on my mood. I was sitting in the library on the second floor looking out the big windows and the grass was so green I thought I was going to cry.
5. Grace/Rich OTP and their flawless, flawless scenes
6. Rereading A Song of Ice and Fire. I had forgotten how easy it is to fly through these books. SUPER READABLE.
7. DOCTOR WHO SOON SOON SOON
8. Parks and Rec continues to be flawless and the happiest show on television with beautiful OTP times and Ron Swanson being excellent and Amy Poehler being my hero and lots more people starting to watch it. If you aren’t watching this show, I have nothing to say to you. I feel towards you the way the entirety of Pawnee feels about people who don’t appreciate Lil Sebastian (speaking of which, I want a t-shirt. I don’t even wear t-shirts, but I would wear that one).
9. Freya Mavor’s face. How is she possible? I don’t understand. I still think that if they insist on casting a blonde girl for the new Buffy reboot (instead of going with my race!swap idea), they should cast her, regardless of the fact that she is British. I think she’s the only person at this point that I would forgive for not being SMG.
10. Persephone Magazine changing their layout so that I can ACTUALLY READ IT. This website is what Jezebel wishes it were. Except better.
11. Watching The X-Files for the first time and the mytharc actually showing up. I love worldbuilding!
12. I’m going to In the Heights this weekend! Yay! I don’t know any of the music, but I’m super excited, because I hear excellent things.
13. Riding in my truck with the windows down and singing Marina and the Diamonds songs on the top of my lungs
14. My family made beignets on Sunday. NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.
15. The Being Human finale. This would be higher up the list except that it was a couple of weeks ago now. But still. Well played, Toby Whithouse. Well played.


Top TenNine Things That Suck at the Moment
1. The world is actually a mess. I can’t even address it—I get too overwhelmed. But I keep hearing Yeats in my head: “For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
2. Steve Moffat’s ridiculous sexism coming through in an actual episode. HAHAHA ELEVEN TELLING AMY TO PUT ON TROUSERS. Except that’s not funny at all, Moff. Don’t do this to me. Seriously—don’t.
3. My boss is ridiculous *eyeroll*
4. Allergies impending. I feel them coming on. The one downside of spring arriving.
5. I actually do fail at lj. I just get overwhelmed by thinking about catching up with my flist, and it’s easier to avoid. I apologize for being a very bad friend.
6. No idea what I’ll be writing for seasonal_spuffy. Haven’t been in a BtVS frame of mind for a while.
7. Community continues to fail at race so hard that it ruins episodes that HAVE MY FUTURE HUSBAND AS A GUEST STAR. Seriously, Dan Harmon. We need to have a word.
8. Gas is ridiculously expensive. *sigh*
9. I am not married to Ramin Karimloo.

Also, I need to tell you a story about how awesome my mama is. ( cut for length )

This calls for all capslocks:

I AM CURRENTLY DOWNLOADING A MOVIE STARRING:

EMILY BLUNT

BILL NIGHY

RUPERT GRINT

MARTIN FREEMAN

RUPERT EVERETT

HOW IS SUCH A THING POSSIBLE? I MIGHT DIE FROM AN OVERDOSE OF AWESOME. AND I NEVER EVEN KNEW IT EXISTED. CURSE YOU, AMERICA, FOR NOT RELEASING BRITISH MOVIES.

AND TOMORROW I'M GOING TO DOWNLOAD A MOVIE STARRING RUPERT GRINT AND ROBERT SHEEHAN. AGAIN I ASK YOU: HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

I am back from vacation, freckled and internet-having! Despite the fact that I managed to get a sunburn rash the likes of which I have never seen (despite wearing SPF 50 at the time. Woe is me and my lily-white skin!) and stung by a jellyfish, I had quite a good time at the beach with my family. The sand was powder-soft, the water was the perfect temperature, and I got to eat lots of fried shrimp! Also, there was reading and sleeping in late and watching of old movies and the writing of a beginning for my novel. And a newfound addiction to the most fun game on the planet, bananagrams (it's like Scrabble, only way faster and more fun! Yay!). I may also have rewatched "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang" during the eleven-hour ride back home. How will we survive till the Christmas special?

But alas, now I am back to real life, and that's never a good thing. The BFF is back in town, though, and that is good. And now I get to catch up with all of y'all lovely people. It'll take me a few days to catch up on my flist, so if something dreadfully ~important happened while I was out of touch, feel free to link me here. Surprisingly, I didn't really miss the internet while I was gone, though I did miss y'all. So catch me up on your lives!

If you know my feelings about Dollhouse at all, you must have thought about how incredibly much I would be freaking out over this episode. AND YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.

I might flail so hard that I die. Just to warn you.

( Spoilers liek whoa )

Now I feel bad that my first (almost completed and still looking for a beta!) Victor/Sierra fic is so angsty. I need to write something fluffy and pretty to make up for it. And I need more icons of the two of them. Pretty ones.

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.