sarren

My cat woke me at dawn, like usual. And got sprayed with water, as usual. It’s a thing we do.

I realised that my exposed hand was freezing – at some point during the night I had taken off the gloves I sleep in when it’s very cold. Like, they didn’t just work themselves off, they were placed together in the bed next to me. Previously I’ve occasionally woken up in the morning without the jumper I’d worn to bed, or the pyjama top, or even, on one memorable occasion, without my pyjama bottoms, which was super weird. But taking off the gloves and apparently deliberately putting them down together is new.

It was 1.5°, not, like, arctic conditions or anything, but when I put the gloves back on my fingers felt all uncomfortably tingly as they started to warm up. I am a special snowflake, clearly.

Procrastinating about writing my uni report by posting to LJ. Which is a step forward because for weeks I've been procrastinating about writing my assignment by thinking about posting to LJ and then procrastinating about posting to LJ by going on tumblr etc.

And watching all the telly in the world. Those nine days I where I couldn't do much but lie on the couch with my bad eye covered I watched more telly than in the entire year previously. (disclaimer: was in Germany for five of those months), I've (mostly) caught up on shows I was behind on and now I have all these new shows.

Currently airing shows I am watching:

Grimm
Haven
Sleepy Hollow
By Any Means
Supernatural
Atlantis
Agents of SHIELD
Misfits
Castle
Person of Interest
The Walking Dead
Once Upon a Time
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Arrow
White Collar
Elementary
Dracula

*cries*

We got through four episodes of The Fades last night, and only stopped at 1.15am because we ran out of episodes on the mediagate. It being an awesome British show, there are only two eps left of the season, sadly.

I highly recommend everything about this show. The plot, the writing, the characters, the look and feel. The horror.


Hee, but if you're like me and love, love, love the relationships, The Fades has an BFF relationship between the 17/18 year old main character and his BFF. Even when Paul seems to be getting himself a completely adorable girlfriend, he says to Mac "No matter what happens with Jay, you'll always be more important."


I have always, always, before I even knew what slash was, hell, before I knew what sex was, been all about two characters bonding together for life, against all odds. It doesn't have to be sexual, they just have to be the most important person in the world each other. It's why I love Temeraire so much. Laurence and Temeraire are bonded for life. It's why my all time favourite scene of anything ever is in the fourth book of Jennifer Roberson's Cheysuli series, when the teenage boy, who'd been devastated that he hadn't got his lir (bonded animal) at puberty like other kids of his clan, finally, FINALLY finds him and the wolf come running into his arms (short version), and it is the BEST SCENE EVER.

It's why I love BFFs that have been devoted to each other their whole lives, without necessarily having to slash them, like Shawn&Gus from Psych. Or Paul&Mac from The Fades.

( Paul&Mac. or Paul/Mac. BEING ADORABLE )

I'm sorry, I know I'm breaking the fandom 'cool' rule here but OMG my Green Wing Yuletide fic got recced on epic_recs!!!!!


EVEN MORE COOLNESS. PR Zed has posted the Batman vid she made me for Sweet Charity and it is MADE OF AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!

It's about the FRIENDSHIP between Batman and Jim Gordon and the timing! and the clips! and the music! are all PERFECT.

Everybody watch it and see how BRILLIANT it is!!!!!!!!


Find more videos like this on BAM Vid Vault

In terms of my normal engagement with LJ, I have been all but GONE for the past three weeks. I will probably get around to a Real Life update but briefly, I have been finishing up at my old job and upon occasion, interacting socially with friends and family.

Fannishly, I spent three weeks writing two fics for Yuletide in a fandom so rare that possibly only my recipient will ever read them, and I am honestly totally happy with that because they were her gift and she’s really excited about them.

Then I wrote a Pinch hit fic in two nights in an only marginally less obscure fandom and have a few comments on it already, so yay! All three fics have really challenged me and have stretched me as a writer and I’ve really enjoyed the experience.

In between writing and socialising I was reading a fabulous The Devil Wears Prada novel called Truth or Measure. I have not seen the film, and have zero interest in the fashion world, but good femslash is too rare to pass up. Telanu (famous in HP fandom for the Tea Series) has been writing (and occasionally reccing) awesome Miranda/Andy fics for long enough now that I can officially say I have a femslash fandom.

And AFTER I uploaded my Yuletide fics I allowed myself to go see what all the fuss is about with Merlin. OH, MY! Cutest gayest cracktastic show ever!!! Managed to find time to read a few of the fics cupidsbow recced on crack_van and they are indeed awesome, and I am SO happy that this is clearly the next Megafandom.

And of course the Yuletide archive opened less than 10 hours ago. My plan of reading specific fandoms first was immediately derailed because when I started reading the facility for going straight to the fandom of your choice was down - you had to load the ‘fandoms by alphabetical order’ page - and what I've found is this is working for me - I have to flick past every story in every fandom, and so what I've found myself doing is reading fics I might not have otherwise because the summary has caught my eye, or just because I've *noticed* the fandom when I otherwise would have skipped over it – an absolutely gorgeous Guarding Tess fic, for example. It’s also been more arbitrary, because I’m eager to see *all* the shiny, I’ve left some fics or fandoms that haven’t immediately leaped out at me, but I know I’ll get back to later.

So for my first round of recs, A - I , starting with my two faves, a hilarious IT Crowd fic and a lovely Guarding Tess romance.

( A - I )

- After the PMS from hell last week, followed by a weekend of euphoric energy and mad productivity, my body has now completed the cycle with annoying inconvenient physical symptoms of which I have only this to say. Ow. A lot. And also, see how I'm stupidly not asleep? This mindset where I go to work no matter how shit I feel (I blame 7 years of shift work) is really something I'm going to have to lose. Stupid headache today = 3 hours to type up the notes from a teleconference. Not a shining example of efficiency. Also my boss came out his office twice to stare at me worriedly and tell me to go home.

- Needless to say, got nothing productive done tonight, except beta reading a short fic. Then watched a couple more episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures with Dragonfly. This is a really good show, if you get past the pilot. Which I didn't, first time I tried it. I'm glad angriest told me to get over myself and just watch it already. And kid friendly of course.

- My beta says my 7000 word Batman fic needs more "Gothamic atmosphere" and my Gordon needs to be more "coppy". I totally agree, and I am not even grumpy - I'm having so much fun writing this.

- One of my lecturers last semester said that Australia has the most restricted press of any democracy. I said, disbelievingly, surely not worse than America? The Australian, on Seven's refusal to show the booked and paid for Get Up ad at the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

- Spent $14 a 'connector' to enable my modem to be plugged directly into the wall so I could test if it was the phone line causing the internet speed from hell. Only to realise as I pulled out the double adapter from my old school phone jack that the modem had the right jack already to be able to plug in in the first place *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* I think the iinet IT person and I completely confused each other. I blame her a little bit for assuming that the jack had to be the small one you get now, and for it not occurring to her to just ask the idiot customer, what is your modem plugged into now? And I blame me a lot for teh stoopid. Long story short, bolded because, hell I'd be skimming this waffle, the land line is faulty and killing our internet, therefore our land line is currently disconnected. I am contactable pretty much all the time by email anyway, and of course, we have our mobiles.

I'm not really a thinky person, and thus never feel I have anything to contribute to panels. I was persuaded to be on a panel at this year's Swancon because I was under the impression that I just had to get up and talk about The Persuaders. In fact that was not the case, as the panel was about dead fandoms generally. But as it was still just talking about TV shows I had a really fun time anyway. I would have liked to have had more control over keeping the panel on topic, and I really like Cricketk's idea about a specific chair for panels. I know some experienced people take on that role automatically and usually those are the most well organised panels. Where this falls down, is panels made up of newbies, or less extroverted people who are there to talk about their area of experience/interest, or people who don't feel comfortable 'crowd wrangling', as Cricket put it. Or worst case scenario when you get experts who just want to hear themselves talk, or talk about themselves and no one else gets a word in edgewise, which pisses off both the audience and the co-panellists.

So, what I'm thinking is, this is something I'd be good at. I have no problem telling people to shut up, and I'm a pretty good organiser. So I guess what I need to do is watch and learn and also go on some panels, as long as they talk about tv shows, slash or the internet.

Actually, could we please have Naomi Novik over? That would be helpful, I can talk about Temeraire!

...and apparently it's 41 degrees outside. (106 F)

Now I fancy a nice hot cup of tea.

Maybe I should turn on the aircon and stop behaving like a crazy person. And maybe put some clothes on.

Last night I was horribly sore so when I went to bed I made sure I lay carefully, evenly on my back. I slept well, and woke in the morning in exactly the same position.

Except my pajama top was now only attached to me by one arm.

Weird.

It's currently 14.7 degrees outside.

I'm not a big wuss for not wanting to go hang the washing out, am I?