a conspiracy of cartographers

This morning I awoke to the shrieking of my friends after they'd opened their fandom valentines from me. I still have a few to give to people I won't see until classes tomorrow, but for the most part I am done and vastly pleased with the whole endeavor.

I never really thought of Valentine's Day as a giftfic day before, but I am starting to suspect that everything can be improved by making it a giftfic day. Here is a full list of Canadian Six Degrees Valentines, all of which are fuzzy and delightful and cause me to make small noises of joy; I did this one from Kowalski to Fraser, which I link not so much for my card as because my recipient wrote a reply from Fraser that completely melts my heart.

The Vagina Monologues last night were pretty excellent too! Perhaps weird overcommericalized holidays are what you make of them.

Involuntary hiatus already over, because of the world's fastest ninja lightning IT guys.

My hard drive was completely eaten by spybots, apparently [and the second I return to LJ, my computer finds and destroys its first trojan of the new hard drive! COINCIDENCE I THINK NOT; urge to leave entirely: rising]. So far the casualties seem to be minimal thanks to the wonder of external hard drives -- I think the only thing I need to go into deep mourning for is Firefox's browse history, although the jury's still out on iTunes.

Unrelatedly, we're supposed to get lots of snow tonight! YAY.

Life is kind of absurd.

Know what I love? The Canadian Six Degrees Valentine's Day Exchange, that's what. I received mine today, and upon reading it was promptly informed that I was glowing blindingly. This is an accurate assessment: it is amazing.

( Scan & text behind cut: a Valentine from Ray & Ray to Fraser. \o/!!! )

How do I completely adore this? Let me count the ways! We'll start with the one where I got a card TO FRASER FROM RAYS. The affectionate bickering fills me with joy, as does their cheerful vandalization of a cute if traditional card to more accurately reflect their actual relationship. (He TELLS US stories! He finishes OUR sentences WHICH IS A LOT ANNOYING!) It just -- mere words cannot accurately express how wonderful it is. Imagine me flapping my hands with delight. :DDD

I am made of happy, not least because there is SNOW tonight. Mostly, though, skdsjkds WHITE COLLAR. ( 1x10! Spoilers: IT JUST KEEPS GETTING MORE LIKE FIC. )

I need to sleep! Also my White Collar reactions tend to be fairly succinct, even in my own head. But when a show makes me grin so hard my face hurts, it at least deserves a tiny cut tag. ( 1x09! )

Okay, sleeeeep.

Things have been absolutely mad for the past few days; rayruz and I helped inanimategrace move a dorm room's worth of stuff through various locales in and around Philadelphia, which is officially my least favourite city to drive in ever even if I only had to sit shotgun and navigate. Since returning home I have been in a Babylon 5-watching coma and getting nothing done, but I am slowly recovering.

While I was away from the internet, interesting & important things have been happening! Here is a quick link roundup, in roughly descending order of importance:

i. A good list of donation links for Haiti; I'm sure everyone's already seen it, but it can't hurt to signal-boost some more. The entire fandom mobilization makes me glow. I should probably shuffle belatedly over to the bidding, but in the meantime I've been using the cell texting option; bless technology, guys.

ii. The majority of slashers identify as queer! I am not sure how accurate those results actually are, but as melannen says in the post, so far there is nothing better or more comprehensive. Anyway, I am really happy to see this, because while I suspected that the "slashers are all straight white housewives" notion was probably outdated, it's nice to have a few numbers besides my own flist/rlist demographics.

iii. Festivids Masterlist! I love getting a whole influx of new vids at once, and I am hoping that at reveal time there will be tasty downloads. Everything here is really hugely great, and I haven't gone through them all, but I am particularly enamored of Here It Goes Back Again [Back to the Future] & tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow [Slings & Arrows].

iv. DIAMOND OCEANS. I mean, it's possible that Uranus &/or Neptune could have diamond oceans. This concept is just so vastly bogglingly awesome that I keep staring at the article in sheer joy.

v. The view out my window. Weather.com even promises more snow this week! Time for me to break out the Victoria's Secret incidental music and the Narnia soundtrack and go trudging gleefully through the snow.

I am so stupidly happy right now! I should not be overjoyed at being back in this falling-apart house with its non-working heat, but I am. To be fair, in large part my joy stems from an impromptu party my in-house friends held in my room late into the night, that at least two of them want to watch Tennant's Hamlet with me, and that I spent most of yesterday afternoon watching The End of Time and then the first two episodes of Life On Mars with feverbeats. I have not watched Life On Mars since ... summer '08? I forgot how incredibly wonderful it is. It is so good that I am not even having Slings & Arrows withdrawal! (Slings & Arrows withdrawal is what happens when I don't watch it for ... mm, two months or so. I can quote most of first season, ask me how!)

I also watched the Spice World film with my dad the other night (no, I don't know either) and it was a fun exercise in British Actor Bingo: Richard E Grant! The woman who played Ida in Impossible Planet/Satan Pit! Cameos by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, as you do! Roger Moore ominously stroking increasingly improbable small animals! UNEXPECTED NAOKO MORI! Plus unexpected Mark McKinney, because I cannot escape the Canadians. Anyway, that ... took me back a decade and change, and I may have cried with laughter.

It's probably far too late to save this post, but in a vain effort, I have a FIC (& ART) REC: Boundary Conditions, White Collar, Neal/Peter/Elizabeth: That casual arrogance of perfect obedience: Show me which rule I've broken. Show me which line I've overstepped. I feel like saying "It's by Fahye" should be good enough to get everyone to click it, but: it is about obedience and control and Elizabeth Burke, which are basically my three favourite things about the show, and the accompanying art is gorgeous. I'm also fairly sure there are no specific spoilers, so as long as you've seen any of the show this should be readable.

And now: breakfast! and hot chocolate! in the cold! YAY.

i. I learned last night that apparently John Barrowman and Neil Patrick Harris are having some kind of epic Twitter battle. My conscious mind thought that was kind of amusing and moved on, but my subconscious mind thought it would be fun to give me a dream about Barrowman finding my LJ/DW. For those of you playing along at home, a couple months ago I had a dream where CKR did the same -- only that time my reaction was "Oh my god, I'd better hide all the F/K fic NOW." In my Barrowman-has-found-the-blog dream, I merely thought, "...well, I guess I'd better tone down on making fun of him." BARROWMAN. *shakes fist*

ii. I'm ... starting to feel like my brain might explode, because my WIP list is almost literally 50/50 due South and Doctor Who fics. My general fannish mode is sort of -- I don't know, one steady relationship with some fun flings thrown in. I have no idea how to manage two steady boyfriends! I'm sure I can learn, but it's still a little terrifying. (Clearly the solution is to write about Time Lord!Fraser having space adventures with Rays, while meanwhile the Doctor and the Master have become stuck on an ice planet and are forced to go on a sled trip to look for the Hand of Franklin, the only bit of technology that can help them escape from that rock. CLEARLY.)

iii. I have been listening to Here and Now [music/lyrics] on repeat, because it's everything I want to say about Ten's ending rolled up into a concentrated ball of musical awesome. Meanwhile I have also been staring at these lines of poem and remembering that, while I may not be adjusted to Eleven yet, I am in fact really excited for MOFF TEIM. Yay!

And now, an End of Time screencap recap! (Yes, both parts, because I'm shallow thorough like that.) This is not idle capping in vain, though, oh no. Well, mostly it is; I love staring at David Tennant and John Simm. But besides that, I have also suddenly rediscovered the crazy fever that takes hold when I have new Doctor Who food for thought and am seized with the desperate urge to write. I need to organize my thoughts; for that, I have to rewatch; and, in order to rewatch without someone holding my hand, I must pause every five seconds to take a screencap and say something about it.

In the process of this write-up -- which took literally all day, I might add; oh, the ridiculous labors of love I do for Doctor Who -- I discovered that I actually adore these episodes. To teeny tiny ridiculous flawed pieces.

This is mostly a Doctor/Master recap; to do the whole thing would be insane. Er, allons-y. ( Spoilers, obviously; extremely rambly meta, as tends to happen with me and Doctor/Master; image-heavy (88 caps) and not for the slow of browser. )

( End of Time part II. )

I still want to write that Doctor/Master fic I wanted to after seeing part one -- all of my notes are still frighteningly pertinent -- but since I don't think it's a fix-it from a place of "oh Rusty, wtf are you doing?" any longer, I'm going to have to sit down and talk with it a while rather than banging it out.

Tell me what you guys thought.