Is JJ Abrams the new Joss Whedon? That would explain why I lost interest in FRINGE 30 seconds after I finished watching the pilot (also my kneejerk instinct to slap people telling me how good it is and shout “Get over it!” See all: LOST, the new STAR TREK...).

Release date for The Road pushed back: how about never? Would that be a good release date? *shudder*

Review of new MacBook and MacBook Pro - I wants it, Precious, I waaaaaaaaaaants.

Ooooooh, and this, too, Precious.

Hey, I’m going to see Let the Right One In tomorrow night. Maybe I should bring spare underpants.

There’s gonna be a new GI Joe comic and I am… reasonably excited (shut up, I was 12 in 1985. What’s your excuse?).

There’s gonna be new V series and I am… afraid it’s going to suck (shut up, I was 12 in 1985.).

Q&A with Paul Gross. PASSCHENDAELE opens tomorrow. And I need a poppy.

Filed under “self-evident propositions”: Gerard Butler is hot. Rain is wet. The new Star Trek movie will be a piece of shit.

Also a piece of shit: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but it was nice to see Karen Allen again.

New Doctor Who set for Easter 2009 (wait, isn’t there going to be a Christmas special this year – ‘hold the roast a sec, Ma, I’ve got to set the download’). Doctor Who and I are officially broken up but I can be talked into pity sex viewing if there’s enough beer.

This link fell into my browser from the link faerie fairoriana but it is literally too funny not to re-post: Staying Alive by the BeeGees could save your life (don’t nobody tell Dennis Leary. On second thought…).

We only had to wait 436 years but the Spanish Riding School admits its first female riders:

The country's prestigious Spanish Riding School, for centuries a bastion of masculinity, is modernizing: On Wednesday, the 436-year-old institution officially presented its first female riders-in-training… .
Allowing women to sit in the saddles marks a distinct break with tradition. But for Elisabeth Guertler, the director, opening up the exclusive club reflects the realities of modern life.
“What speaks against it?” she asked reporters. “Today, ladies and gentlemen both have to earn their keep and prove themselves.”

I did not see inside the Spanish Riding School when I visited Vienna in March. Maybe it’s time for a return trip…

Dear God, I’m such a fucking nerd (see also, "self-evident proposition" above, QED, etc.).

Finally, fic meme by way of cofax7: Sometimes it's ok to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fic - favorites you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most.

Okay, here goes:

Watershed – Sarah Connor reflects on the way her world has changed. Set between the last two scenes of THE TERMINATOR. I wrote it all in the second person while trying out some new stuff stylistically and it mostly works. Someday, I’ll write the second half, including the scene that got me started on the story in the first place. And, y'know, Sarah Connor.

Pinocchio Does Outer Space - ALIEN RESURRECTION - it’s all from Call’s point of view so I got to make Ripley the badassest badass in every scene she’s in (‘cause Call’s the only one who knows just how bad Xeno-Ripley can be). The story’s really about friendship and responsibility and how those things bring together and jar apart people who care for each other.

Undercover Blues - Farscape - Wrote it for a ficathon and I hated the character and I found the very idea the prompt represented revolting so I tried to cheat but the story came together like a piece of clockwork anyway.

Mother Wolf and Cub, vol. 1: Devil’s Bargain - Farscape - pastiche a-go-go. Take one cup FARSCAPE, add one cup Ogami Itto, one cup the Bride, combine with gratuitous child-death and stir until thoroughly blended: Aeryn Sun Iron Samurai style. Maybe the fanfic I’ve written that I love the most. Try as I might (and I’ve been trying for four years), I’ve never been able to write a sequel.

Out of Their Clothes - Farscape - my first attempt at writing sex (at least where other people could see) done on a dare. The writing horrifies me now but the sex holds up pretty well, I think.

For more of my fic, click here.

tricksy HTML, how I hates you

More Joy Day is a fucking awesome idea. We could all use more joy, more often.

Today is also "no really, you will finish or at least get a respectable leg up on chapter three" day. And, well, I'm 2,000 words into what is going to be the chapter from hell and while I spin off into the ether, wondering what the hell I was thinking and how anyone could be interested and all those other thoughts writers have on days when the writing Is Not Going Well, I thought there might be a TSCC fan out there who might get a kick out of reading a snippet from the enormous Sarah Connor Chronicles fic that is currently marinating on my hard drive. That said, this snippet itself is... not exactly joyous, eh?

( Untitled TSCC fic, rated teen for language, spoilers for movies/series to date )

When your first reaction to an otherwise perfectly sweet story is "dude, you just got a puppy - you are so not spending the rest of the day in bed snogging your gf" are you a) officially old or b) someone who knows too much about dogs or c) no fun at all?

I met the Fellowship of the Bean at Sbux (it was a meeting of the complete set, too - whoo) and I wrote poetry. I wrote a lot of poetry - three new poems today alone. Finished them today, anyway. They and two of their friends are off to the class anthology, one other is being held back to send to the Poetry Review of Ireland: more because I believe my collection of rejection slips needs to start somewhere than I think it's something someone would publish. Then again, I'm still shocked that serious people take my poetry seriously, so maybe they'll love it.

Meanwhile, today's Bunny Comic is awesome.

And because I actually worked today, I get to play! God, it's been so long since I've done this, I've forgotten how you format these things... (and I have "Space Oddity" on my iPod? Huh).

Title: Watershed (1/2)
Rating: PG (harsh language, implied violence)
Spoilers: The Terminator
Characters: Sarah Connor
Summary: There's a moment when the future becomes real and it's not pleasant.
Author's notes: When bored, I play with narrative voice. If you don't like stories in the 2nd person, this is not the fic for you.

---

( You’re nervous when you arrive for your ultrasound )

Some of the peeps on my flist are doing this More Joy Day thing, which I think is cool because the world needs more joy. But rather than offer new joy, I thought I'd go back into my backlogged of unfinished fanfics I promised people and clear some out.

So, from back in August (and thassalia will tell you this isn't the longest it's taken me to finish a fic by a long shot), a series of ficlets that arose from the Any Two Characters Likes and Dislikes. I think the idea was to do like a sentence for what each character liked and disliked about the other but that mostly didn't happen because brevity may be the soul of wit but you won't find it much in my Lj (draw your own conclusions).

Without further ado:

Miles Vorkosigan on Buffy Summers (Barrayar/BtVS)

Aeryn Sun on Kara Thrace (Farscape/BSG)

Chiana on Kara Thrace (Farsacpe/BSG)

Zhaan on Barbara Gordon (Farscape/Birds of Prey)

Mal Reynolds on Elizabeth Bennet Darcy (Firefly/Pride and Prejudice)

And finally, Cordelia Naismith on Padme Amidala (Barrayar/Star Wars).

My flist is an ecclectic bunch.

1) Rose and the Tenth Doctor were lovers.

2) Good fanfic about Rose and the Doctor does not exist.

3) The idea of Ianto/Jack slash is both conventional and boring.

4) The essential bourgeois conservatism of fandom is revealed by the fact that fanfic embraces the idea of incestuous homosexual relationships but not threesomes - even when one of the characters involved is canonically omnisexual.

5) Being shocking for the sake of being shocking is neither shocking nor iconoclastic nor interesting.

6) Torchwood does the "effect top secret job has on your private life" beats better than Spooks.

In other news: internal monologue - still Welsh.

Heheh - according to the pretentious li'l git, I have the honour of having sent her (via LJ) the least work safe e-mail she's ever read at the office.

*snicker*

Really, if she thinks that's NSFW, the stuff I write at the office would probably kill her stone dead. PG's such a delicate flower really.... *weg*

Because I promised thassalia I would, I hereby offer to

Write drabbles involing your favourite fictitious fandom pairings

Appparently, while I was in Italy, a meme went through LJ where people came up with their wild and wacky and improbable couples (although I'm not entirely clear on how this is different from normal fandom 'ships). So, if you submit your favourite unlikely, uncanonical, or x-over couples and I will write a drabble about them - unless I have no idea who you're talking about. Then you're just out of luck. So... ladies and gentlemen, start your imaginations.

Title: Pinocchio Does Outer Space
Author: Crankygrrl
Rating: Adult (harsh language is used)
Word Count: 2,388
Request Answered: Ripley and Call
Recipient: Lizzen
Spoilers: Alien Resurrection
Authors Notes: All spellings are Canadian like the author and not typos. Unless they're typos.

Apologies for the delay.
( Pinocchio Does Outer Space )

Title: Slave to Time
Author: Crankygrrl
Recipient: Kernezelda (who’s got to be tired of getting me as a writer by now)
Rating: PG (harsh language, implied violence)
Fandoms: Battlestar Galactica, Farscape
Summary: Crichton’s on a mission, Starbuck’s in a jam and the fate of us all hangs in the balance.

Author’s note: Thanks to Feldman and Thassalia for the beta.

---

Crichton wanted to know why the godlike aliens always picked on him to clean up their messes. Sure, freeze time or bounce you light years across the galaxy — no problem. But why was it that whenever someone was threatening the fabric of space-time, it always John Crichton who always got the, how did they put it in Dirty Harry — the dren end of the stick?

( read more )