a conspiracy of cartographers

i. Today I finished Mockingjay. Then I went searching for reaction posts, as you do, and was mildly pleased to discover that pretty much everyone had the same reactions I did, even unto the numbness at the end. ( Brief & spoilery. )

ii. Which means I am in need of uplifting things! Thankfully my brain is still full of Star Trek (and THEY ARE NOT THE HELL YOUR WHALES, which I think is my new cheering-self-up mantra); today's offer is Ensign Sue Must Die, a 32-page webcomic about Ensign Sue, mirror!Ensign Sue (who is omg SO EVIL), and the completely bewildered crew of the Enterprise. I came away from it with the strong desire for a plushie Spock in that comic's design.

iii. My father informed me the other day over the phone that he has a new TV show obsession! Considering that most of the TV my parents like has been introduced to them by me (namely Slings & Arrows, Life on Mars, Firefly, and in my mum's case White Collar; what they all have in common is that my parents enjoy the characters) I was seized by slight trepidation. The show? Heroes. Oh my god, I can't even. My dad reportedly loves Claire and Hiro, neither of which are surprising; he is always in the market for kickass blonde chicks, and he's obsessed with time travel. In the throes of Star Trek love, I asked excitedly if he'd met Sylar yet! What the hell, I don't even care about Sylar. I did tell him to stop watching after first season, but ... apparently when I visit my parents next week, I will be watching Heroes! How is my life so strange.

iv. In other things I am looking forward to: tomorrow were_duck and themeletor and I are going to see Adam Lambert in concert! I am mildly fond of Adam but mostly I feel like this is an ~important fannish experience~ and I am RIDICULOUSLY excited about it.

Hmm. This entry still feels kind of weird and disjointed, probably from the combination of Mockingjay and the suddenly cold cloudy weather. Still: webcomics! My father watching stupid telly! ADAM LAMBERT WITH FANGIRLS! I believe now is the time to listen to string quartet versions of Lady Gaga and un-numb myself.

Closing ye olde tabs, which means it is time for linkspam with commentary!

+ Series 6 Doctor Who to be split in two, which I'm sure everyone and their grandmother already knows. I am totally fine with a halfway cliffhanger, because it means More Plot, and, god help me, I actually trust Moffat with plot. (I should probably learn from the past, though; I mean, RTD's s1 finale was great, and then ... well.) Mostly, though, I love that from this article I have discovered that Karen Gillan is taller than Moffat. But I suspect that Karen Gillan is taller than everyone.

+ David Tennant is in a thing called Fright Night! I know absolutely nothing about it, but I am digging it regardless, because [a] David Tennant looks like Jack Sparrow's pale spindly cousin, [b] Colin Farrel is an evil vampire or something? BWAHAHA and [c] ANTON YELCHIN! As a high schooler who battles vampire Colin Farrell with weirdly bearded David Tennant! I am cheerfully resigned to the fact that I now base my choice of entertainment by how much the very concept makes me laugh like a hyena in public spaces.

+ Peter Wingfield answers Highlander questions, and man, I'm pretty happy that he's still willing to talk about Methos' stupid face twelve years later. I wish the questions were numbered, because then I could shriek about my favourite answers in shorthand. In any case, I am a bit in love with him talking about Methos the optimist and how he desperately wants to believe in love, oh my god; I also love what he said about whether Methos was forced to join the Horsemen. Basically, I am kind of thrilled when Peter Wingfield talks about Methos, because I inevitably end up sitting there feeling smug and fuzzily justified in how I read Methos. YAY.

+ Gaiman's 'Sandman' to be adapted as a TV show. It sounds pretty preliminary at this point, so mostly I am just going to sit here and hope that [a] they get Neil involved in the project and [b] holy god they don't bring Kripke on as showrunner -- or, if they do, that he sticks to the goddamn script and does not kill all the ladies. (To be honest, though, I am mostly just wedded to the idea of Benedict Cumberbatch as Dream and Ashley Greene as Death. Don't look at me like that, it'd be great.)

+ String quartet cover of Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro', which I have been listening to pretty much on loop for two days straight. Which is funny, because I like a lot of Lady Gaga songs more, but believe you me, Paparazzi and Poker Face sound freaking weird in string quartet, and Bad Romance just makes me want to sing along to it. I don't care that much for the actual version of Alejandro, but damn, this one is gorgeous.

I am tearing joyfully through Star Trek! I am fascinated. (Yes, thank you, Spock, you can stop providing my internal narration now.) I don't know exactly what switch flipped in my brain to make me suddenly mainline TOS; when the reboot film came out last year, I loved the hell out of it, because it was a genuinely fun movie, and I had enough fannish osmosis and cultural inheritance to ping on pretty much every one of the callbacks -- but I read a couple of fics, watched part of The Naked Time on YouTube, and wandered off on my merry way.

Now I can't even fathom not finishing The Naked Time. It's one of the greatest things I have ever seen, not comparatively but on some weird absolute level where I sit in a joyful daze, wondering how the hell this ended up on my screen. Whatever switch has been flipped, it's been flipped hard, and I am really, really enjoying watching my fannish inheritance.

I'm also enjoying it on two levels. One of the levels is the one where I watch it with what I call my Little Kid Brain. My Little Kid Brain, weirdly, doesn't usually work for children's movies; it works for things that are not necessarily aimed at children at all, but are so fucking absurd that I have to shut off critical/cynical brain functions in order to enjoy it. And Star Trek suddenly becomes amazing: it doesn't matter that there's no science in the science, that the walls are made of Styrofoam and cardboard, that the tribbles are inanimate fluffballs that cost a penny a pop, that internal logic is often completely fucked (which is why Spock spends a lot of time looking mildly pained at the proceedings) -- because it's pure idfic on screen! There is hurt/comfort and mind control and so much crying and unnecessary dramatics and ridiculous-looking aliens! My Little Kid Brain loves this shit.

The second level is my fascinated-by-fandom level. Obviously there's overlap here, because I am having the pure weird enjoyment of witnessing the first instances of, oh, Aliens Made Them Do It and sexpollen and sci-fi mind control and all that tasty goodness, and sometimes I can't actually believe they managed to get this stuff onscreen, let alone in the '60s. It's just fun spotting all the clichés and having that vertigo moment of realizing that, no, these aren't clichés. They started it. It's wonderful.

And, on that note, highlights of this crazy show: ( The Naked Time, Mirror Mirror, Journey to Babel, This Side of Paradise, Patterns of Force, Plato's Stepchildren, The Menagerie, & Turnabout Intruder. It's like I CAN'T STOP WATCHING. )

And on that note, I'm putting a brief hiatus on my watching, first because I'm also trying to do about five other things at the same time, and second because I clearly need to write that fic right now.

In terms of what I have taken away so far -- apart from the ficcing urge, quelle surprise --is that I have discovered is that Spock is one of my favorite characters ever. I was going to try figuring out where in the continuum of Favorite Character Traits he was, and then I realized that Spock is extremely intelligent, pretty weird, reads fairly queer, isn't strictly human, and is terrible at talking about emotions, and ... well. He was even evil that one time! I think Spock and Methos and Eleven should hang out. They'd have a good time. I bet Spock would love their historical anecdotes. Anyway.

Writing writing.

Having now watched The Trouble with Tribbles, these are my deep and serious observations:

( Cut because it got a bit long! Mostly inconsequential squee. Apparently I really love this show, which should surprise exactly no one. )

Also, two alternate versions of the episode: We Has Tribbles and Also Troubles and The Trouble With Tribbles by Edward Gorey. The latter pretty much does sum up my feelings on Tribbles. Their purring does not work on me. PERHAPS I AM KLINGON.

i. Things that are disconcerting and hilarious when rewatching X2 for the first time in years: [a] the discovery that Mystique is, in fact, played by Roxie from Eastwick, oh my god I have seen Roxie BLUE and NAKED, my life is a little more complete now; [b] Peter Wingfield is totally randomly Stryker's second-in-command? and my brain has just as much trouble computing him as a soldier as it does whenever I see John Sheppard's ridiculous face. Apparently, the more stuff I watch, the smaller the acting pool appears to be. I don't think I'm complaining, though.

ii. WHITE COLLAR. :D ( 2x07: UNMITIGATED JOY, mostly. )

I'm not quite sure how this came about -- probably it came into my head from the combination of a discussion on rereading Harry Potter and something I saw in the Thirty Days of Fanfic meme that's going around -- but I have been thinking about Fandom Firsts. Okay, you've got a new fandom: what was the first fic you remember reading? Did it make any lasting impact on your experience with said fandom? &c.

Here are some of mine!

( Harry Potter, Good Omens, SGA, Doctor Who, due South, and Highlander. Most of these are RIDICULOUS. But I happily own my fannish absurdity! )

And what about you guys? If you do absurd things like imprint on old fic enough to remember it, I'd be fascinated to hear what it is. And seriously, don't be embarrassed. My stuff is all old school slash or Eliza Snape, okay, I will really not judge you.

I haven't talked about White Collar in a while! So I think it is time for some talk of that.

( 2x04-06: In which Aria loves Mozzie, Sara, and Peter Burke's FACE. )

In other news, THERE IS A JUMPING SPIDER FROLICKING ON MY BED. IT IS HUGE AND AWFUL. I am therefore now going to escape the house, get brunch, and hope like hell that the huge jumping spider has frolicked off somewhere NOT MY ROOM by the time I return.

I occasionally do the srs biznes version of talking about my WIPs, but this way has been making the rounds again, and is much more fun.

( Eight WIPs beneath the cut! Sometimes I wish that I could write short fic. )

Things I have done this week:

1. Cleaned ALL THE THINGS. (Or at least many of them.)
2. Watched Sanctuary.

Let me tell you about item two! Sanctuary is basically what would happen if Torchwood was a grassroots Canadian organization that employed people who were actually professional enough to not sleep with each other. In case that makes it sound less awesome than Torchwood, I hasten to add that the part of the tea boy is played by Bigfoot, and that the part of the immortal in charge of the organization is played by a badass, competent woman who happens to also be Amanda Tapping.

Amanda Tapping would probably have been enough incentive to get me to at least give the show a go, but we haven't even started our Vancouver Bingo yet! The Lestrade-esque police detective is Kavan Smith (Lorne from SGA), Amanda Tapping's dad is Jim Byrnes (Joe Dawson; I think my joy could be heard from space), Bigfoot is Christopher Heyerdahl (Todd the Wraith, and Halling, and ... probably secretly the entire SGA cast, because he's awesome like that) and he also plays Jack the Ripper, oh my god; and, like the cherry on the awesomecake, Peter Wingfield is James Watson. Who is Sherlock Holmes. Look, it's complicated.

The point is, it was pretty fucking inevitable that I wrote some Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper when the canon gave it to me like a shiny gift of awesome. Um, knowledge of the canon is mildly a good idea? IDK, I think you can probably read it anyway.

Dissect the Suppositions, John Druitt/James Watson. Night after night, I poured my insights out to you, never knowing that the target of my manhunt was the man who dissected my suppositions.


For my next trick, I'll write time-traveling Sherlock!Holmes/Babylon 5!Jack the Ripper. No, not really. Well, probably not. Shut up, I know I have a problem.

Today: Prop 8 was overturned, as I'm sure you all already know, judging from the happyflailing going around my corner of the internet. (I think this is my favourite newslink, if only for the picture of all the happy screaming people.) Of course it's now just going to bump its way up to the Supreme Court, but, honestly, it's about damn time.

Yesterday: I spent an afternoon of wit and tomfoolery, succinctly described by oliviacirce here and by sasha_feather here, but I see now that they are both locked. If you are on their lists, yay! If not, suffice it to say that I suggested performing exorcisms with possums, getting turkeys high before cooking them, and fulfilled my weekly quota of saying quotable things.

I also showed Olivia Comes a Horseman/Revelation 6:8, and because we watch shows in delightfully similar ways, we clutched at each other and yelled a lot about ex-boyfriends and then speculated at length about Methos' kinks. I have not converted her to the Ways of Highlander, but I am fairly sure I have converted her to the Ways of Methos, and that is all I can ever ask.

And White Collar happened! Not with Olivia, I mean, just in general. I do not have insightful or spoilery things to say, but I do want to state for the record that I LOVE MOZZIE. Oh Moz. <3

Lastly, a link: this comic summarizing Christopher Nolan films. MY DEAD WIIIIFE. (The Momento panel makes me laugh until I cry.)