To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Amazing wind-powered creatures made of PVC pipe. They're REALLY COOL, you should watch the video.

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( Shipping meme )

Dear Mother Nature,

In case it's escaped your notice, this is Nashville. Will you quit with the snow already? Good grief.

Shiveringly yours,
Me

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Dear Long, Clause-Laden Sentences in the Fic I Am Writing,

Where are you coming from? How can I make you stop? One or two for effect are nice, but the fic is starting to read like a Cormac McCarthy novel (only with punctuation), and that is NOT A GOOD THING.

Yours in desperation for periods,
Me

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Dear Jack of All Trades

HOW did you get the Marquis de Sade episode past the censors? I...wow. Just wow.

Astonished,
Me

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Icon meme from fallingtowers. Let me know if you want your own.


Caprica getting nuked to oblivion by the Cylons in the BSG miniseries. The quotation is the title to an exceptionally bitter autobiography by a WWI vet, who basically spends the book lambasting everything about the English social order of the time, the war, etc. etc. It seemed appropriately tumultuous for the beginning of BSG.


My favorite Astaire/Rogers publicity photo (from Roberta) paired with lyrics from Swing Time's "The Way You Look Tonight." The pose comes from the "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" dance, which also happens to be my favorite, 'cause I love gloriously slow dances. It came out of my epic icon-making spree. I don't really post about the films much anymore, but I keep it around for somewhat sentimental reasons (always the best reasons for Fred and Ginger, aren't they?).


Scully yelling "Noooooooo!" as Mulder gets shot in "Monday." A product of my sporadic rewatch this past spring; mostly I find the image amusing, because Big Nos are generally hilarious to me.


One of my favorite events from B5: Ivanova, Delenn, and Lyta staging a rescue of Sheridan after he dies at Z'ha'dum. Okay, so it's not successful, but for 1997 or whenever this aired, it's still pretty awesome that they're taking over the war. "Strength" is also an accurate descriptor; not only are they strong in the face of personal grief over Sheridan's apparent death and the consequent near-fracturing of the alliance, all three of them are strong characters in their own ways.


Peter and Olivia from Fringe talking to the nutty Star Trek fan in...uh, whatever episode that was. Late S1, I think maybe "The Road Not Taken"? Anyway, the fact that Peter's enough of a fan to play along with the crazy informant by telling him to live long and prosper makes me giggle. (P.S. Fringe returns tomorrow! Eeeeee!)

Welcome to the Create Your Own Fake TV Show Meme from mylittleredgirl, who gave me this most excellent list of actors with which to cast my pretend series:
Claudia Christian
Jerry Doyle
Chi McBride
Terry Farrell
Grace Park
Paul Gross
Jessica Steen

I decided I needed more than seven characters (why, yes, I do like huge ensemble shows, why do you ask?), so I added Susan Coyne, Lee Pace, and Mary McDonnell in small/reoccurring roles.

Not very far into this, I realized that I was getting most of my ideas from other TV shows. Specifically, this pretty much mashes up Babylon 5 and Atlantis, with maybe a bit of due South for spice, and a scoop of BSG's paranoia, because this is 2010 and paranoia is in style. I decided to just run with the derivations, not to mention the typecasting I put some of the actors through, so you will likely recognize certain elements. But we are well into the postmodern era now, and one of the hallmarks of postmodern storytelling is pastiche, so in fact I am just being all highbrow and literary. I have a master's degree in this stuff, so I should know. ;)

(But seriously. When you need a security-conscious, humanity-first president who is nevertheless probably not actively evil, who ELSE are you going to choose besides Mary McDonnell? I ask you.)

I, er, also realized that I know nothing about diplomacy, so making five of my characters diplomats may not have been the smartest move...but I'm forging on anyway. It's probably a good thing that the closest I would ever get to writing this is, like, fluffy shipfic for some of the characters or possibly fic where the three aides have a weekly standing date to bitch about their bosses down at the bar.

For the most part, the actors here are supposed to be playing pretty close to their actual ages as of 2010. However, two of them just stepped out of a time-warp from 1994 'cause, well, that show is the only thing I've ever seen them in, and I like to have decent mental pictures of my characters, okay?

Beyond the Stars



( Are you sure you want to eat that? )

( Meme Rules )

I usually take a lot of pictures on trips, but I was in "too lazy to even pull out the camera" mode on this last one, so there were only about thirty. Of them, ten turned out acceptably.

NYC: Flowers, ships, rain, and fire escapes.

In other news, yesterday I finally, finally, FINALLY had success at finding shoes after months of searching high and low. I try to have two pairs of sandals (one brown, one black) and either two pairs of boots or one pair of boots and one of winter shoes (same color schema), all of which look nice with business casual stuff and yet are still comfortable enough to walk around in and preferably hike up any mountains that need hiking. Unfortunately, ALL of my shoes basically decided to die at the same time. I had my brown sandals (starting to come apart) and an extra pair of brown winter shoes that are less than comfortable, and that was it. I'm going to get the sandals stitched back together and the hole in the bottom of my brown boots patched up, but that still left the problem of black versions of each of them.

Let me preface this by saying that I loathe shoe shopping. ( Boring whining. But there is a picture at the end. )

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I saw this meme somewhere, and though I know I've done it for other fandoms, I don't think I've done it for B5.

One True Pairing Ship: Ivanova/Garibaldi. Oh, ship of my heart. They might well be my OTP of OTPs, actually; I've certainly written more about them than any other pairing in recent memory. Individually, each of them make me go OMGYES (admittedly, Ivanova more than Garibaldi, but he's no slouch), and together it's like an OMGYES explosion of flirty, playful, snarky, cynical awesome.
Canon Ship: Ivanova/Marcus. I think if it had ever been requited, I wouldn't be nearly as interested, and of course I can't see any other way for it to end than the way it did. But its epic tragedy is certainly very appealing.
If this happens I'll stab my eyes out with a spork Ship: Bester/Garibaldi. I get the whole hatesex thing, but I just don't see Garibaldi doing anything besides murdering him.
You are one sick bastard Ship: Vir/Lennier/Na'Toth (hehehehehehe) (But you know it would be hilarious awesome!)
I dabble a little Ship: Ivanova/Delenn and Ivanova/Talia
It's like a car crash Ship: Delenn/Lennier. I love it so much more than the canon, but we all know it could only end in tears.
Tickles my fancy but not sold just yet Ship: G'Kar/Londo
Makes no canon sense but why the Hell not Ship: Sinclair/Talia and G'Kar/Catherine Sakai
Everyone else loves it but I just don't feel it Ship: Sheridan/Delenn. I think I've gone on enough about that already.

Today, another participatory bout of fannish navel-gazing!

I don't participate in the annual Remix challenge, because as I've said, challenges and fests and whatnot--anything with a deadline--make fic, which I write for fun, feel too much like work. (I like a big wall of separation between the two, okay?) However, that doesn't mean I don't sometimes wonder which one of my fics someone might remix, and if so, what they might do with it.

So, flist, which would you pick? If you also respond with a link to your fic (or post this in your journal), then I'll tell you which of yours I'd remix and how.

Seen around the internet. This meme was supposed to involve posting snippets from current works in progress with no explanation attached, but I kind of forgot about that when I was writing this post. So you get explanations.

( B5, Bones, Corner Gas, Northern Exposure )

loneraven gave me six icons to talk about. Comment if you want your own set.



I think this was one of the first icons I made after I learned how to use Photoshop--it's one of the oldest I have, anyway. I thought Chiana-as-Sancho-Panza looked really cool, with her gray skin and those bright colors. Plus she looks kind of dubious about something, which is always a useful icon to have. I should use it more.



This is the cover illustration from Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple. To be honest, aside from wearing purple, I will probably not be much like the old woman in the book/poem, but I use it as a kind of all-purpose "I am totally acting like an old lady" icon.



The photo came from a stock photography website, but I altered it from daylight to twilight. The text is from one of my favorite poems, Yeats's "The Wild Swans at Coole." The icon has a lot of uses--posts about poetry, photography, Irish stuff, autumn...it's quite versatile. And pretty.



Oh, Northern Exposure. I have several icons from that show, but I think this is my favorite. It's from the season four gag reel, an outtake from "Mud and Blood," when Maggie offers to scratch Joel's mosquito-bitten back as part of her vow to be a more positive person. I don't have my DVDs with me at the moment, but I think in the outtake, Rob Morrow makes some kind of joke, and Janine Turner splashes water over his head in retaliation. It's even more adorable than the part that made it into the episode. I just love the smiles each of them are wearing, and the sense of playfulness in the picture. I also like the documentation that episode provides of the softening of Maggie and Joel's relationship around that time in the show, after the bitterness of the Mike episodes but before they started dating.



This one is kind of a joke. When I started out to make an icon based on the "What do you hear?"/"Nothing but the rain" call and response between Papadama and Starbuck, I was originally going to do something a bit more moody, with rain on a window or something. But then I found that umbrella at a stock photo site, and fell in love with it. I figured it would go with the words and be kind of amusing to boot (can you imagine Starbuck with anything as wussy as an umbrella?), so there you have it.



My newest icon, since I am going through an X-Files renaissance. The shot is from a very early episode, where they're wandering through a field to get to some crop circles. I used Photoshop to give it a blue sky and then age it a bit. I like the sense of urgency--they're running toward something, and Scully is doggedly keeping up with Mulder-on-a-quest, and it's kind of mysterious. I've always liked pictures of people in fields, too. I'm not really sure why.

From alethialia:

Today has been declared lurker amnesty day (by me!) Have you read me but never commented? Do you surf by occasionally? Here for the ficinsanity? Say hello! You are under no obligation to ever comment or delurk again, but here's a chance to do so in a post just for that.

I love talking to people via LJ comments. Welcome!

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I...think I might be finished with my revisions to chapters 1-3? Maybe? Well, okay, not exactly. There are two or three spots in chapter three that probably do need to be revised, but I'll need to talk with my director some more before I can figure out how to do that, exactly. And I'm still giving the whole thing to my committee on Friday, so we'll see what they have to say about it. (Perhaps that they see no problems with those spots! That's probably asking too much.)

My entry at the holiday love meme.

I'm having a lot of fun posting anonymously to others' spaces on it, so be sure to sign up and post your link!

I am joining queenofthorns's love meme. My thread is here.

Speaking of memes, there are still several unguessed in the favorite characters meme. And I know there are some of you who would have no trouble guessing the ones that remain.