and it's contagious

Some fairly random miscellany to dump. In no particular order:

i. In the spirit of procrastination, I'm rewatching a Best Of Flashpoint. To my vague surprise I actively ship Ed/Greg this time, and my crush on Jules may be bigger than my crush on Ed. Possibly this calls for one of those "fictional women I have crushes on" posts; I am not doing one right this second only because I don't have crushes on any of the women in due South exceptmaybevictoria and Fraser in a dress does not actually fix this terrible problem.

ii. A fic rec: Three of Cups, which is a Harry/Dumbledore fic but please, please don't let that stop you. I went in to beta it expecting to put on crackfic goggles to spare myself the pain, and instead between beta corrections found myself typing things to the tune of, "Why didn't JKR follow through on these themes?? My god this is AMAZING," so yes. It comes really, really recommended.

iii. I didn't hear about it until today, but it's sure as hell worth mentioning: there's this neuroscience survey about fandom going around. It wants to examine the innate biological differences between male and female brains; it's condescendingly fascinated by fandom phenomenons like Kink Bingo; it's written by people who are outside the fandom and obviously don't know how to even begin dealing with fandom discourse. DON'T TAKE IT. Here is an in-depth explanation; here are some helpful links to discussion. I wanted to see what the actual survey questions are (at the moment; they keep changing, which should let the methodology speak for itself) and it's possible to go through the survey without answering any of the questions, but I did this in the knowledge that they do have my IP address logged now.

I think there were actual Emma-Watson-circa-GoF eyebrow gymnastics going on while I was reading through the survey. There were the out of left field questions; there were your usual "We assume you must read slash for a particular set of reasons, listed below, and we want you to chose from them without additional input space" questions; there were the "obviously all slash has a dom and a sub character; it's time for a heterosexual assumptions party!" questions; there was fabulous question 5, What is your relationship status? for which the only responses were married, single, in a committed long-term relationship, and other, which kind of boggles me because even Cosmo and, um, possibly Facebook, know better than that.

I am really particularly fond of question 20, though. It wants to know if you can remember a number of seemingly arbitrary things, the last of which is the first time you felt guilty about a sexual feeling, and this kind of sums up the whole problem for me, that assumption. Most, if not all, of the other things listed there are apparently normal things that one might have memories of, although I can't say what my favourite TV show in sixth grade was because we didn't have TV, and it's entirely possible that someone taking the survey won't yet have a first kiss to remember, and &c. Am I supposed to have felt guilty about a sexual feeling? I'm sure it's all tied up (argh unintentional pun forgive me) with Kink Bingo and with enjoying slash and all those other funny fandom practices! There must be some guilt in there somewhere. And you know what? No. Fuck that noise.

In the main when people outside of fandom try to talk about fandom -- the perennial and recurring "wow, slash! what a strange little subculture! how those heterosexual white women in their thirties like to spend their free time, golly!" article blurbs, the recent School Library Journal article that appears to believe that fanfic is the province of Harry Potter and Twilight, and that if you tell your middle schooler to simply google 'fan fiction' you might have even the slimmest chance of not turning up some porn on the first page -- I find it ... I don't know what word I'm looking for. I hear the tone of condescension and rather than getting my hackles raised I mostly just feel condescension in return. In this particular case, though, I want to firmly escort the survey-makers the hell off my lawn, or whatever the appropriate metaphor is; I think I'm finally tired of being qualified and explained away by people who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.

warning: this post is useless

I just made the accidental discovery that I actually have the first two seasons of Stargate Atlantis on DVD. (I did buy s1! And s2 was given by a friend! But it was ages ago and went right out of my head.)

My point here is that I have about a billionty due South fics to write and I'm about to return to school and run out of time to do anything non-academic, but: Canadians! some guy with a gun and emotional inarticulation and funny hair! wacky hijinks! IN SPACE! Despite the fact that the show was generally rubbish unless it was about Rodney being trapped underwater or dealing with his sister or nearly ascending or communing with whales or, y'know, all those other things Rodney does, and despite the fact that I used SGA fic as a gateway into dS fandom and that doing it in reverse would probably be a trainwreck of me never sleeping again from fic overload, I am ... deeply tempted.

I need to just write more of the stuff I'm already working on and not give myself any extra fannish stuff. Otherwise Fraser and RayK will end up in Atlantis (is it just an American military presence? if so, Fraser is civilian crew and does diplomatic missions in a Teyla-esque capacity and wears a red shirt akin to Elizabeth's) and then my brain would explode. Meanwhile Ronon and Dief become friends. I MEAN NO ARGH.

Possibly I will just panic and watch Hard Core Logo again only this time I know I will cry at the end. I want to write the massive s2 AU. I want to write the massive s2 AU.