a conspiracy of cartographers

My poor computer. The battery is now so dead that when I unplug the hibernating laptop to carry it places, it shuts down entirely and has to reboot. Luckily, Firefox remembers my million browser tabs.

Also, I watched yesterday's Doctor Who! ( 5x09: OH MOFF TEIM, HOW SO CRUEL? )

I am going for dinner now, but if I have time later, I'll post vid recs from last night's vid party. Last night's SIX HOUR VID PARTY. It was awesome.

Know what I'm doing instead of packing? I'm reading all the G'Kar/Londo fic on the AO3. I haven't come across any tentacle porn yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time, considering the probable Venn diagram of Centauri biology and fandom sensibilities. Possibly someone needs to save me from myself.

To save this post from pointlessness (too laaaate) it is time for a poll, because I am genuinely curious as to how many of you know how much of what I'm talking about when I start nattering on about various fannish things. (I am not necessarily asking if you are fannishly involved yourself, nor even if you have seen the shows in question, just if you are not lost when I start talking about them.)

1. Today Remix Redux is live! It's the first year I've actually participated; it was good fun, although next year I won't be in the middle of panicking about graduation while I write, and hopefully that will alleviate some of the tension. In any case, reveals are in a week, and in the meantime, I received a remix for Three From the Track called Turnings (The Simple Gifts Remix). Run, do not walk, to read it, I'm serious. It's about Ellen Drew, for a start, which delights me; it's also brilliant for making me feel like I understand Merriman and the Drew children about a thousand times better now. It's a wonderful remix of my fic, but it's also just a wonderful remix of the Dark is Rising Sequence as a whole, and I adore it.

2. Speaking of ficathons, did you know that there are currently signups for one called multiverse5000, which deals in crossovers of books, movies, TV shows and comic books/graphic novels that involve space, space travel, other planets, &c &c. I'm not sure why I was surprised to find that a vast majority of my fandoms, peripheral or otherwise, deal with SPACE; all I know is that the prompt list is great, and that I may have said "OH. MY. GOD" aloud in sheer joy at one of the prompts I claimed. For your edification, and also to remind myself:

June 16: Doctor Who/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: There's an article for each of his incarnations.
June 20: Babylon 5/Doctor Who: Morden asks the Master, "What do you want?"

I assume that the former will be really fun and cracky, and, uh, the latter made me shriek with joy. It has already grown a plot. Possibly one where the Master realizes he's being used and raises hell. (I ... may have unresolved Londo issues. Film at eleven!) Anyway, like I didn't have enough to write already, there's that now too.

3. In random, awesome news, someone made epic diagrams of the mind-bending cartography of the TARDIS. I may be mildly in love.


I bet I can finish Babylon 5 today. I only have five episodes left! Then I will probably make a Show Is Awesome post, because I apparently really want to talk about it. :D

i. Link o' the day, courtesy of seeing it in the National Gallery and having a good laugh with my parents, Giovanni Emo, by Bellini. "He looks emo!" my mum said, and though I am sad that Signore Giovanni doesn't come with scenester bangs, it's still hilarious.

ii. Hair is cut! Car is mostly unpacked! Room is a complete mess, but I am studiously ignoring it and instead doing my best to mainline the rest of Babylon 5 before I abscond for WisCon. Here's what I'm discovering, to my horror: I think I want to do watchalong meta commentary. For the whole thing. I just love it so much, and am so thinky about it, that I want an excuse to watch it again. And I don't yet know if I have a ficcing urge, but I definitely have a fannish urge, which during the summer -- or possibly for a much more extended period, now that I'm done with school unless and until I want a graduate degree -- also manifests as a write-lots-of-meta urge. Ahhhh.

iii. Relatedly, the clearest sign I am getting dangerously fannish about something: a poll!


I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THIS SHOW. :D (Except not about s5. Except for the part where I ship Londo/G'Kar every waking moment now. WHAT.)

Quite belatedly, two episodes' worth of thoughts on Doctor Who: ( Vampires of Venice & Amy's Choice, or, respectively, Aria's least favourite and possibly most favourite episodes so far. )

What everyone has been linking to (and what doesn't necessarily deserve a signal-boost, but I am nevertheless enjoying the discussion it's generating): Diana Gabaldon's anti-fanfic blogpost.

I'm pretty sure that ye olde fandom circles have already covered all the ways that she is Wrong On The Internet -- everything from the flawed analogy of the creepy neighbor to her misinformed understanding of copyright law to the heinous tone of having the moral high ground for being Published For Reals and not writing any filthy, aesthetically displeasing fanwork -- but the point that made me tremble with rage was the assumption that fanfic is practice, that being Published For Monies is the only way to be a Legit Writer, and that if we're writing other people's characters we're just too lazy/uncreative/what-have-you to make up our own.

So let's break this down for a moment. In part this particular point got to me because, growing up, my parents were always supportive of my writing but also always at me to stop fucking around with fic and get some Legitimate Writing done. Eventually my rote defense became "It's practice! I'm getting feedback so that when I write my own stuff I'll already have the craft down." And for a while I even bought into this response myself, but ... One is not better than the other, and putting fanfic down on questions of morality or legitimacy or aesthetics is spectacularly missing every point. I only speak for myself here, obviously, but I write fanfic because I love interacting and having dialogue with the creative works that are close to my heart, and because being in a community of people who want to do the same thing is awesome beyond words.

Not entirely separately, I do want to be Published For Monies. Not all the stories in my head are dialogues with already-existing work, and while the fic-writing and the original-writing compulsion are related, I derive slightly different joys from each. I figure, if someone will pay me to do something that I love, that's excellent. (I also figure, if the universe turns out to be made of puppies and rainbows, I might end up having a tiny Yuletide fandom for my books or something. And that would be amazing.) But being Published For Monies doesn't make me a more Legit Writer, it just means I get money instead of comment threads. And even if I do manage to get published, I'm absolutely going to do what a handful of awesome fannish people do already, and keep writing fanfic.

So, with all due respect, fuck your legitimacy and moral policing, Ms. Gabaldon.

...And if that was too srs biznes, a couple of links!

1. A list of derivative works, like, y'know, Shakespeare and a bunch of musicals. Obviously new copyright law shifts the paradigm a bit, so I don't know how well it technically stands as a defense of transformative works, but it does get the damn point across.
2. Anti-fanfic bingo card. There's a bingo card for EVERYTHING, isn't there? It's sort of amazing how many of these Diana Gabaldon managed to go through.

I may or may not have sprained or stress-fractured my wrist! With luck I just bruised it heavily. Anyway, pain aside, I am always fascinated by how the bits of my body that I take for granted throw the whole system off if they get out of whack. Case in point: my right wrist is the one I injured, and wow, washing my hair became a very delicate and awkward operation.

In other news, something that I am stealing pretty much wholesale from oliviacirce: I'm not technically participating in three_weeks_for_dw, because while I think it's an awesome concept and I'm trying to compile as many cool links as I can, I want to keep crossposting, if only because I know enough of you still have LJ as your default reading list, and I don't want to get lost in the shuffle. Nevertheless, three_weeks_for_dw is awesome, and it comes with this meme:

What kind of topics/entries would you like to see me posting about? Any particular questions you've always wanted to ask me but have resisted because the answer would be a huge essay? Ever want to wind me up and watch me go on a particular topic? Anything you've heard me say "I should write that entry about $foo I've been meaning to write" and have been patiently waiting for?

LOLWHUT. I just hit an episode in Babylon 5 where a scary, scary interrogator had a strangely familiar voice. "He sounds like the guy who played the philosophical Bolt brother in Red White or Blue!" I said to myself, and lo, IMDb says that it's the same guy. I am starting to think that Fraser got off really easy. Yikes, interrogator guy.

Apparently I can play mid-90s awesome TV show bingo? IDEK.

Emerging from the end-of-the-academic-year haze to post a handful of links!

i. Sarah Jane Adventures casting spoiler! [WARNING: even the link text is spoilery.] I am hugely psyched about this, although mostly about the old school part of the casting spoiler. It makes me want to get caught up on SJA. Actually, it makes me want to rewatch all of SJA, because I don't mind Rani and I adore how awesome Clyde becomes, but I love me some Maria.

ii. LIGHTNING IN THE ICELANDIC VOLCANO. I think I sat and stared in awe at those photographs for minutes on end, because -- nature is amazing, guys.

iii. ❝i've always wanted to tell you❞
because I like doing these memes sometimes! And because it's going around, so why not.

It's Doctor Who day! Again! IT'S HAPPENING EVERY WEEK, HOW AWESOME IS THAT.

( 5x02: I think I loved it a bit less than everyone else seems to, but I am still quite fond. ) Yeah, still excited for Moff time. :D