sometimes you need a story

I just got a call saying she died. My sister is going to let me know when the funeral is so I can try and make arrangements to be there.

I think it hasn't quite hit me yet that she's gone.


http://amalthia.dreamwidth.org/589745.html#comments

I just heard from my sister that my grandmother on my mom's side of the family has fallen into a coma and it doesn't look good. :( I've known for a few weeks now that my grandmother was dying but I've been kind of trying not to think about it and distract myself because it's hard being thousands of miles away and being unable to do anything beyond calling to say hi.

I'm going to have to look and see if there are any tickets for sell. I get the feeling I'm going to have to fly down to San Antonio sometime this upcoming week or next week. :(

Assuming, I can find an open seat.

I'm going to focus on homework now.


http://amalthia.dreamwidth.org/589339.html#comments

your ears tuned to the roar
Supernatural; Jo, Ellen; pg; spoilers through 5.10; 1,510 words
In which Jo grows up.

Thanks to angelgazing for handholding and title-wrangling.

( your ears tuned to the roar )

~*~

Feedback is adored.

~*~

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/98389.html. people have commented there.

Supernatural Meta

Supernatural Thoughts by faye_dartmouth I thought faye did an excellent job of detailing a bit of what's happening in SPN. If you're having a blast with season 4 and 5 I do not recommend this meta. For me it appealed because while I still watch the show I still miss season 1 and 2 of SPN and this post did a great job of articulating some of what I miss.


Harry Potter

Theft of Assets, Destruction of Property by helenish (Draco/Neville) INSTANT REC!!!! I could not stop reading once I started! I loved the plot, character voices, and I really loved the ending. :)


Merlin

The Knights Have a Thousand Eyes by stakeaclaim INSTANT REC!!! I loved the plot, character voices, and mostly I just loved seeing Merlin and author from the outsider pov and this had some funny moments!


Shadows of Truth by cat_77 (Gen) I had a blast reading this story. I loved the character voices, the action, plot, and how everyone pulled together. Good adventure story.


Different perceptions by gonrie (Gen) I loved seeing Arthur and Merlin's friendship from multiple povs.


Star Trek Reboot

Terminal Point by posyvanilla (Kirk/Spock) I liked the plot and character voices.


Repeat Offender by seperis (Kirk/Spock) I really liked the character voices and the plot.


Supernatural

A Surprise or Two by dreamlittleyo (Sam/Dean) This was very hot and her evilSam was perfectly ruthless.


Mistaken for Strangers by bellatemple (Gen) I really liked the original character and it had good character moments.




http://amalthia.dreamwidth.org/589274.html#comments

Sigh. My cake didn't rise, and worse, it tastes like failure.

*crosses that recipe off the list*

On the upside, there was reviewing of yuletide source. Now I just have to figure out what I'm writing.

***

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Is the term Redneck considered offensive? Because I use that term quite loosely describe a lot of guys in the south, especially in Texas and someone pointed out to me recently that it's considered offensive. So it was kind of a surprise to me because I'd always considered it a descriptor for anyone that likes fishing/hunting, beer, and big trucks. And may or may not be uneducated.

EDIT: the masses have spoken! :)

Based on the responses it's safe to conclude that yes using "Redneck" can be offensive so I should only use it with good friends and family, or if I really want to insult someone. Thanks everyone who responded!


http://amalthia.dreamwidth.org/588975.html#comments

Okay, this is the plan for hiatus:

1. yuletide
2. Broken Toys
3. the 5.10 story I'm working on right now (I keep having to stop because it's making me cry! That never happens to me when I write!)
4. The Dean-Michael dream story
5. Drought Conditions (casefile)
6. Nothing but Winter in my Cup (casefile)
7. the Dean/Sam/Pam story

That's quite a lot, considering November and December are usually the time of my fannish malaise.

This song is not helping with the crying, iTunes!

Now, though, I think I am going to bake a cake.

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/98022.html. people have commented there.

We are starting this years InsaneJournal holiday sale. From now until the end of the day Friday, November 27 we are going to be holding a sale on Self-Committed[paid] accounts and Extra Userpics.

The prices are be as follows

Self-Committed[paid]
1 Month -> $5
6 Month -> $15 $10
12 Month -> $25 $18

Extra Userpicx
6 Month -> $10 $5
12 Month -> $20 $15

Then on Friday November 27th from 8am until 4pm (Eastern US time) we will be running a very special sale on Permanently Insane accounts.

Oy, this day. Or, well, yesterday, at this point. The less said, the better. And did I mention I got my period this morning? oy.

I left work late - I think I was the only person left in the office - and all I wanted was to come home and watch this week's Friday Night Lights. But the file I dl'd wouldn't play on WMP or QT or even VLC. I updated DivX and it wouldn't play on that either. So I deleted it, rebooted, and redownloaded, and it worked.

I thought I might actually get through the episode without crying. I don't know why I thought that. I don't think it's ever happened, and it certainly did not happen tonight.

Friday Night Lights: A Sort of Homecoming

( spoilers )

***

Okay, I just asked this in meret's comments, but ( spoilers for SPN s5 that's aired so far )

***

*yawn*

Man, I totally need to sleep.

***

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Supernatural: Abandon All Hope

Okay, so I tried to do a rant section and a non-rant section of this post, but the ranty stuff kept intruding. So while I really liked many aspects of this episode, the rage kept intruding. Just so you know.

( spoilers )

***

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So I watched the Space promo for tonight's SPN.

( spoilers for the promo, speculation for the episode )

On a similar, but not quite the same note, faye_dartmouth has an interesting post about the issues she has with the show in s4 and s5, and while I don't agree with a lot of it (I am more optimistic about how the end game will play out, at least in terms of Sam and Dean and their relationship), I think her point about the apocalypse is sound.

The thing is, they used to connect with the people they saved - they used to save people because people needed saving, and they used to get some satisfaction out of it. At least Dean did, and I think Sam was getting there.

Stopping the apocalypse means, yes, saving 6 billion people, but it also tends to make them 6 billion faceless, unknowable people. I said this way back in season 2, but this kind of arc always draws things inward and narrows the world when it should expand it out - instead of concentrating on saving people! hunting things! Sam and Dean are themselves hunted and in need of saving, and the lack of connection with the people they are saving hurts the show as much as the fact that they can't really go all out and give us a real apocalypse. Last week's episode was a nod towards earlier seasons, when they did connect with the people they saved, but now they spend too much time being backed into corners and having to save themselves, and it's just less compelling to me that way (the same thing happened in the later seasons of BtVS and Angel, so it's not like I wasn't expecting it).

( casting spoilers for tonight's episode )

Meh. I am PMSing and cranky. Hopefully tonight's episode won't give me more reason to be.

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/96852.html. people have commented there.

Criminal Minds

( spoilers )

Glee

*facepalm*

Could we have one woman on the show who isn't crazy, scheming, manipulative, or simply around to serve the men's storylines?

Also, ( spoilers )

***

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Work = busy and will be from now until 12/1, when we have our board meeting. I just wish they'd stop springing surprise!committee meetings on me at the last minute. The time to tell me you need a committee meeting is two months ago, when I was scheduling all the other committee meetings. Not yesterday afternoon. Oy.

So my writing brain is pretty fried and probably will be until after 12/1. At least yuletide source has been acquired, and will probably be reviewed numerous times.

Tonight, I left work right at 5 pm (usually I saunter out at about 5:15) so I could get home and change because I was meeting fleurdeleo for a super sekrit sneak preview of "Nine". Except that apparently, the super sekrit sneak preview of "Nine" was last Tuesday night, and she'd confused the dates. So we went to the diner for dinner and chit chat.

Since I was home by 8, I stopped off at Associated and bought some dried cranberries and slivered almonds and an orange so I could make innie_darling's orange-cranberry-almond loaf, and it smells absolutely fantastic. Tastes good too, although my oven apparently runs hot and I probably shouldn't have cooked it the full 55 minutes, because the edges are overdone. Ah, me. I should have learned from the banana bread. But otherwise it is very tasty.

So writing might not be happening, but at least there is baking?

In TV news, I watched The Good Wife and ( spoilers )

***

There's something adorably failtastic about Peyton Manning and Alyson Hannigan in those MasterCard commercials.

*hides from amberlynne*

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/96271.html. people have commented there.

1) For anyone looking to buy a laptop or netbook, you may be interested in the results of this study which indicated Asus and Toshiba are the most reliable models, but that regardless of brand, 1 in 3 laptops fails to last 3 years. I wish they'd also done a study on desktops which are presumably less vulnerable to accidents. Aside from the fact that these expensive purchases are exceedingly unreliable, what most made me blanch was the idea of the monumental amount of waste being generated by so many short-lived machines.

2) In more optimistic news, health care costs may go down if successful vaccines are developed, and apparently there are a lot of major ones in the pipeline.

"Among other possible vaccines out in the coming years: herpes simplex, rheumatoid arthritis and a better seasonal influenza vaccine. A malaria vaccine -- a development that would revolutionize public health around the globe if successful -- could be on the market in the next several years."

3) When looking at the tags being used so far at the AO3, I got the immediate mental image of the classic comedy/tragedy masks (Angst! Humor!). However, I was also quite struck by how many stories are apparently carrying the humor tag – far, far more than for some other stories we commonly see like an AU or crossover. It's not that we rarely see funny stories in fandoms, but I rarely see stories advertised as such (whereas, by comparison, people label their stuff "crackfic" quite often). So I just thought I'd throw the question out there: what percentage of what you read or write would you consider to be a humor story?

I woke up this morning at 4:52 am and had one of those middle of the night freakouts. Ugh. Then I fell back to sleep and dreamt that the train I was on derailed. Thanks for that, brain! Nobody was hurt - it was just a convenient excuse for me to be unable to get to work. Clearly I need to be independently wealthy so I can stay home all day and watch dvds and read fic. WHY HAS THE UNIVERSE NOT SEEN FIT TO PROVIDE ME WITH THIS LIFESTYLE?

***

I am not a Sheldon/Penny shipper (or, as some of them call it, Shenny. Which will never stop being hilarious), but if I were, last night's Big Bang Theory would have put me over the moon. As it was, I thought it was hilarious. ( spoilers )

Actually, I did read a casting spoiler for BBT, ( casting spoiler )

Castle as always, was adorable. ( spoiler )

***

So I am victoria_p aka musesfool at AOOO. I've been fiddling around with uploading stuff and I think the importer is nifty, even if you still have to do a shitload of editing once you've imported stuff (stripping out headers and code etc.) and adding fandom and character tags etc.

I will probably attempt to upload the year of stuff that I never managed to put up on my site before I switched to the WordPress version, but I just can't be arsed to move everything. I've got over 700 stories, and even if I don't bother with drabbles and first line ficlets etc., that's still probably, like, 500 stories. That just ain't gonna happen.

Otoh, if there's some way to import the non-LJ remix archives, I would be all over that, because I don't want to lose those stories but I also can't maintain that database. Hmm...

***

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It's exciting to see contributions surging into the Archive of Our Own now that open beta has begun. I have hopes for the archive being a one-stop, highly searchable site for all kinds of fan content. LJ and its clones may be really good blogging/interaction sites but they're lousy for actually finding things. And unlike the Buffyverse, SPN fandom is not rife with archives.

Speaking of one-stop shops for fannish content, in case others weren't aware of it, Clicker.com is a search engine for finding places to see TV content online. Just type in the show you want to see and it'll show what episodes are available and where. You can also create playlists.

I was boggled today when I read this article about men, women and power at work. Funny how the entire thing is written to demonstrate how men are merely well meaning but baffled and women are always at fault for creating problems at work. Case in point:

"“Men often seem to think (heroically) that they should be masters at the conversation–that they should know the ‘right’ things to say.” His advice to men and women: “Be more curious about each other and their experiences."

It's heroic to be self-centered and domineering in a conversation! Who knew?

"Meanwhile, women’s tendency to be super-serious (as men perceive them, at least) compounds the workplace dysfunction. “Women can make anything a chore,” a former Microsoft executive told me. “They’re too serious and don’t seem to understand that work is a game.”"

It's wrong to be serious about serious matters! Now there's a rather fitting explanation for why our economy's in the state it's in. I look forward to the way men will turn unemployment into a game.
( Read more... )

copracat gave me the following words to talk about:

discussion
I love discussion! Debate! Argument! I have been known to debate whether it's day or night! I've been known to dispute things I agree with, just to keep the conversation going! I have been known to pull out the dictionary to win arguments! To me, it's a normal mode of discourse, the back and forth, the rambling tangents that help me figure out what I think about things, and that occasionally change my mind. I started out in online fandom on discussion newsgroups, and discussion of the sources I love is what I came to online fandom for, and even more than the fanfic is what makes me feel engaged and excited about a source. I mean, fic can be a solitary pleasure - amirite, lurkers? - you never have to interact if you don't want to, but discussion - you need someone else to bounce ideas and theories off of, to multiply squee and talk you down from rage. At least, I do. Once I don't have someone to discuss a source with, I don't stop loving it, but I may stop being fannishly active about it. It's the lifeblood of my fannishness. Even fic, in a way, is a discussion - with canon, with fanon, with my own stories and other people's - and it certainly fosters discussion and relationships - a lot of the people I am friends with now, I met through leaving or receiving comments on fic, or on posts about sources we have in common. Discussion! It's what's for dinner awesome!

Xander
Okay, so I mentioned above that I came to internet fandom via discussion newsgroups, and the second of those was alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer, soon after Becoming 2 aired. That was the summer of Xander Lied! A flamewar discussion that went on so long as to become legendary. I was on Xander's side, of course. I still don't think he did anything wrong in that particular situation, but I don't really want to revisit the topic here and now.

Anyway. What I love about Xander is that even though he has no special powers, no special destiny, he's just a nerdy loser who somehow never even gets trained in basic self-defense, he throws himself into the fight over and over again, because once he knows what's out there in the dark, he can't not. He can be bitter and angry and resentful, he can hold a grudge, but he's also loyal, funny, and kind, and smarter than he looks, and he will have your back when you need him when the apocalypse comes knocking, and he'll find a way to help you win. Because he's awesome like that. Xander! ♥

rock
I don't even know what to say - music is so fragmented these days, so niche marketed that it seems almost ridiculous to talk about rock'n'roll and have it mean something. I mean, the history of rock, of R&B, of country, of doo-wop and Motown - it's all rock to me on one level, before it splits out into genres. Most of what I listen to is rock - alternative rock (or modern rock, as we called it in the '80s), classic rock, hard rock, southern rock, angry chick rock, pop rock - right this minute, my iPod is playing "Love Reign O'er Me" as covered by Pearl Jam. I am less hung up on genre than I was as an indier-than-thou teenager - nowadays, I like what I like, mostly without regard to the labels the music comes with - and I wish there were more public outlets for that kind of mixing and mingling. Have I mentioned that NY radio sucks? So I don't really listen to it anymore, and that makes me sad.

New York (it's one word, Frank says so)
Frank! I love New York! There's just something wonderfully alive about walking down the street here - on one of those unexpectedly warm days in February, or when it's a beautiful spring day in March, or a cold crisp night in November - there's an energy, a powerful belief that anything could happen at any moment, and that even though we don't know each other, on that street in that moment, we are all in this together. It's corny, but I do feel like my heart swells with love sometimes when I walk down the street, even when I'm just going to CVS or picking up my laundry or whatever. I love the neighborhood I live in, where I can walk to the movies, to the bookstore, to a great bagel place and more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. Where I can hop on a bus or subway to go to someone else's neighborhood. I find it energizing, even though it is also very fatiguing sometimes to live here.

poetry
I love poetry. I find the way it uses language fascinating, the way words and images can double back on themselves, invert, subvert. The way so much emotion can be packed into something tiny, something regimented, something that is both subject to and free from rules. I love that it can contain itself and its opposite, ideas that seem jumbled but with the right rhythm, it all makes sense. I think my fascination with playing with structure and tone in stories comes from my love of poetry. I write to the rhythm in my head.

***

*yawn*

I am very tired. I dreamt last night that I woke up late for work (at 8:46 am, which is usually when I'm arriving at the office), and called in to say I was late, and then I woke up *in the dream* and went to work and told one of my co-workers about it. Even in my dreams I have anxiety dreams. I don't even know.

***

I posted a story last night:

swim in my blood when it's warm
Supernatural; Sam/Dean; pg; spoilers through 5.04; 3,434 words
Sam's seeing everything clearly now.

Talking about playing with structure - this is built around the five senses, and started out mostly as a way to make myself write more sensory detail, more vivid imagery, so it's pretty plotless and very schmoopy and features the staples of my oeuvre: boys doing laundry,brotherly banter, insults, and references to Pinky and the Brain.

***

Ugh. I suppose I should work now. Sigh.

***

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I just ran across a story that used apostrophes in the place of quotations. I'm still rather sure that in 99% of the cases quotations are required at the beginning of dialogue and at the end of the dialogue. It's not even something that's easy to fix because you can't just replace all the quotations with apostrophes without messing up the apostrophes in the story. grrrr

I'm normally not a grammar nazi but in this case I'll make an exception. It's ugly formatting and not proper writing!

EDIT: it appears that this type of formatting is common in the UK. I didn't know that, but I do still prefer regular quotes so you don't get sentences that look like this.

(random sentence that I modified)

'They do.' She slipped into the galley, moving soundless on little bare feet. 'I'm hungry.'


http://amalthia.dreamwidth.org/588723.html#comments

swim in my blood when it's warm
Supernatural; Sam/Dean; pg; spoilers through 5.04; 3,434 words
Sam's seeing everything clearly now.

Thanks to luzdeestrellas for betaing and to angelgazing and amberlynne for handholding.

( swim in my blood when it's warm )

~*~

Feedback is adored.

~*~

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/95677.html. people have commented there.

Holy shit, you guys, I was so panicked about a couple of the sources I offered to write (not being able to do them justice) that I totally blanked on some of the things I did offer, and OMG YOU GUYS, I GOT THE BEST YULETIDE ASSIGNMENT EVER!!!

Ahem.

Assuming it's not like two years ago, where they snatch the awesome from my greedy little hands, that is.

Of course, I realize now that I don't actually, um, own the source. That shall have to be remedied shortly. But ZOMG! YULETIDE ASSIGNMENT = AWESOME!

I mean, I'm sure 500 words in I will hate it with the fiery vengeance of a thousand suns, but, you know, right now, the shiny hasn't worn off yet. *g*

If otoh, you have stumbled over here because I am your (probably not very awesome, sorry!) yuletide assignment, here is my dear writer letter.

To reiterate, optional details are optional, and please have fun. I'm sure whatever you do will be awesome, because I asked for four awesome fandoms!

***

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