Amy is setting up twicetoldfandom, an incredibly cool idea for a 'thon wherein writers are assigned pieces of art and have to come up with a story revolving around it. Except -- here's the twist -- each piece of art will be assigned to two (at least) writers, the idea being to see how many different stories each picture provokes, and how different writers are inspired in different ways.

At the moment, she's just polling to gauge general interest, but she'll need writers and artists, so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, go check it out, by all means.

I am rather stressed this weekend, because it's finals time, I've got two papers to write and cumulative exam to study for, and I've just started my period so I'm all hormoney and anxious anyway. On the bright side, I have The Hitcher on DVD, because, yay! Stupid slasher movie with Sean Bean! What's not awesome there? And as soon as I've got at least one of these two papers written, I shall watch it. Probably tomorrow night, because with finals this week, I've got no classes on Monday.

I might get drunk, too. Or I might save that for after exams.

I honestly cannot stop staring at this icon. I love it SO MUCH. It's my new default; that's how much I love it and how perfect it is for my journal.

zvi_likes_tv has a fucking amazing post on race in fandom here. Just...read it. It's awesome.

And now I am seriously going to get to work on my word count for the day. NOVEL >:(

Off to take care of any apps I might've got since last week, so I thought I'd do another pimping post, just because I'm shameless like that. Also, because I might want to recruit a co-mod at some point. *g*

A little over a week ago, I set up greetingsfrom. It's not quite an RPG -- though I've set up an adjoining comm by way of providing that opportunity, RP being something that can evolve pretty naturally out of that kind of a situation. The main focus is on the creative production.

The idea is basically a combination of the prompt comms out there and comms like LJ Secret etc -- except instead of just creating the front of the postcard, you have to create both sides. For those not confident in their graphics skills, along with the three text prompts, a pre-cropped image is provided. I put the prompts up only once a month at the moment; it's less pressure all around that way, though I'm considering making it every other week. Might throw that out to the comm at large and see what the response is.

Rather than a minimum word count, we have a maximum one -- after all, it's meant to be postcards, so you can't write epics. They can be messages directed at someone in particular, or they can be general ficlets, but they can't be more than 200 words.

A lot of major fandoms have several members already -- Grey's and BSG are pretty well-represented, as is West Wing -- but some big fandoms are empty save, like, one person. We only have a Sam for SPN, for example, and a Teyla for the Stargates. And poor sink_or_swim is all alone in her representation of all of anime, which is just tragic.

Anyway, it's looking to be completely awesome. And you should all go check it out.

Oh fuck my wisdom teeth are killing me. D: Now that I'm finally getting everything sorted with Kaiser I need to see about getting them removed, because ARGH.

And I've finally got the RPG portion and the OOC portion set up, so I feel okay about pimping it for realz: greetingsfrom is really getting off the ground, and I am so excited about it, and you should all at least go read the main comm, because the postcards are so cool and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

So I've seen this variation on the current fic meme and it seemed awesome. It's Women's History Month (the existence of which I have issues with for much the same reasons that I have issues with Black History Month, but that's a diatribe for another time and mostly boils down to this is a nice idea, but it shouldn't have to exist because we should be learning about women's and black history the other eleven months of the year, too) and International Women Day in particular. So here are some stories of mine that I'm proud of which are all genfic, centered on female characters.

Great Adventures was just a ficlet, originally, for that 'Description Character' meme that went 'round about a year ago -- someone asked for 'On-Vacation Buffy', and I ended up with this, in which after her death in "The Gift" Buffy winds up in Narnia. Well, it's still a ficlet, I don't know why I said it was. But I'm still really proud of it; I think the voice is very reminiscent of Lewis, and everyone I know who's read it has loved the Slayer being referred to as "Daughter of Lilith".

Five Dates Abigail Chase Regrets Going On was a birthday present for roz_mcclure, and it still cracks me up. I'm honestly really surprised I haven't done more with Abigail, ficwise, given that she is pretty much clearly a character who was created JUST FOR ME, what with being smart and pragmatic and not letting anyone boss her around and kicking ass when it's called for and being a big history dork and oh yeah, WORKING IN A MUSEUM IN DC.

Light that lingers in a quiet room is post-Serenity Zoe-centric fic, about different characters' perceptions of Zoe and how she's dealing with Wash's death. Again, I feel like I've done really well with the voices in this fic -- Zoe herself is a very, very hard character to write, honestly, because she's not a wordy woman and she's not a woman given to much introspection or really possessing any other traits that make a character approachable for a writer, but I think the abstract approach to her, of looking at her through everyone else's eyes, works very well both for the character and the period in which the story takes place.

Seem'd a part of joyous Spring is LotR, written for the Rohirrim-athon of a few years back, for _redpanda_ (whose fic was so wonderful, and who was so up on Tolkien, that I wasn't a little nervous about it, and that she loved it made me happy as hell). I have issues with Eowyn -- and especially with the fannish attitude I've encountered sometimes that she's the only noteworthy female character Tolkien ever created -- but I really, really love this fic. I tried hard to be sympathetic to her here, and I found, to my surprise, that I managed it, and that I really did feel for her by the end. I still adore the language of it, and that feeling of Rohan that we got in the films, of someplace lonely, wild, and proud.

So awhile back there was that trend of 'Twenty Random Facts About [Character]' ficlet thingys, and I wrote Veinte hechos aleatorios de Teresa Moreno, which I am still inordinately fond of. In the Teresa vein, there is also The Devil In Winter, which is about Teresa and the partisans during the English retreat which is taking place when the series begins. Teresa is one of my favorite characters out there, and I love both the book and movie versions of her, though each is a very different animal. The second story is the movie Teresa, more, the older, colder, more calculating creature, and the first the younger, more hot-tempered one of the books.

Meet It and Live It, a BtVS/Doctor Who crossover, was just written recently and it usually takes me about a million years to get stuff up on the fic blog, so I'm linking to the lj entry instead. Liz gave me a piece of feedback on this which cracked me up and summed up how I felt writing it -- namely that they were all perfectly in-character and so naturally she wanted to smack them all. That was possibly the comment I treasured most, because I worry that I fall into the trap sometimes of blindness to the flaws of my favorite characters. I feel like this was really honest to both the universes, and of course that's its biggest acheivement and its biggest flaw, because as much as I love them all, they're all really kind of dickish as well, and honestly that's part of what I love about them most of the time.

I have a thinky post planned, about what I'm proudest of in my own writing in general, and what I think my strengths are, but that's a story for another time. Right now I am hungry, and also contemplating booze.

SO BASICALLY you should all go join dramadramaduck. Which is so cracktastic and low-maintenance that if the notion of an RPG intimidates you, this one will not at all, because it's basically just LJ-ing, only pretending to be a fictional character while you do it.

And right now there is about a 4:1 anime/manga-to-not character ratio, and that makes me feel self-conscious and sad.

I have already talked deviousli into applying for House. I WILL KEEP AT THE REST OF YOU UNTIL YOU JOIN.

Oh god. Now I'm considering bringing that one teenaged!McGonagall in my head into it. She is talking about making cat macros using photographs of herself in animagus form. OH MINERVA.

Low-drama! The good crack! Many, many major fandoms that really, really need to be better-represented! DON'T MAKE ME GET A POKING STICK.

...oh, that's right, asshole, just ignore the sign on the that says 'don't press the button to open the door automatically unless you really need to, because we need to keep the air in'. I HOPE SOMEONE FEEDS YOU A PIE MADE OUT OF YOUR CHILDREN.

My god I'm bored. We had the crazy between-classes rush, and now it's dead and I'm bored. And exhausted.

• I know there are a few of you tea snobs on my flist, so you may be interested in the fabulous stephsicola's blog The Tea Scoop! Which can also be found syndicated at theteascoop, so you never even have to leave the comfort of your lj.
  
• Happy birthday to the fantastically awesome cesario! \o/ You are great and fabulous and fun to talk to and just generally wonderful. And I have some birthday fic in progress but as the new semester starts today it will be a little belated.
  
• Mason has a delay in opening today, but only until 10, which means all my classes are still on schedule and I have to deal with driving in this. Which hopefully the roads shouldn't be too bad themselves, but the other drivers will be insane, mark my words. Because here in NoVA we cannot deal with two inches of snow.
  
• On the bright side, I fell asleep super-early last night, so I am up (relatively) bright and early this morning, which gives me plenty of time to get ready and navigate to Mason, and then hang out and possibly get some writing/prewriting done.
  
• I think that's pretty much all I got.

IT'S CHRISTMAS IN MY TIMEZONE YAY.

Also hey roz_mcclure I've been re-reading Henry VI and MARGARET OF ANJOU WAS AWESOME OKAY. God I love her so much. More specifically for Roz, don't I recall you saying something about us getting together sometime this year? BECAUSE YES. And you know if you came here we could go to the Folger! *tempts*

ANYWAY. We bought cinnamon buns earlier and my sister and I split a bottle of wine and now I'm going to go to bed. And if you really love me you will join heybb as a Christmas present to me. Because it will be great.

So, yeah. It's kind of a Christmas-that's-not for me this year, and maybe I will try to explain that sentiment later but it seems to be one that a lot of people I know are having, so maybe you know. It's not bad, it's just...not what I expect Christmas to be, exactly. Which is in theory bittersweet, but mostly just okay.

I DON'T KNOW, I'M TIRED. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT! AND WHATNOT!

1. The brand-new furnace? The one my parents spent thousands of dollars on just a couple of weeks ago?
   
   Has died. That Mom said sparks came out of the circuit breaker when it popped off and she was smelling something like burning electronics also indicates that a) it has died spectacularly and b) more my theory than anything else, but that it's more the wiring than the furnace itself.
   
   We haven't told Dad yet. This is because if we did, I really do think he would snap.
   
2. This is the single greatest thing in the universe ever. It's a mecha anime based on A Little Princess. Let me repeat that: A MECHA ANIME BASED ON A LITTLE PRINCESS.
   
   A Little Princess, but with ROBOTS. JUST THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A FEW MOMENTS AND TRY TO TELL ME IT'S NOT AWESOME.
   
   I am torrenting a fansub as I write this.
   
3. Mom's working on Thanksgiving. D: But she's working in the evening, so we're going to have a nice smallish lunch, since Rita's not coming home until Christmas anyway. Then in the evening Dad, Doug, and I are going to go see Casino Royale. AWESOME.
   
4. I'm making an appointment with the campus counseling center, since there are some sexuality issues I'm dealing with lately. Or, rather, a bunch of issues are coming to a head, and I want to at least talk to someone else about them.
   
5. Ooh, that reminds me, I need to call in a refill of my prescription.
   
6. I need to double-check when my Batman paper is due. If it's tomorrow, I really need to get cracking. If it's Thursday...I should still get cracking, but I probably won't.
   
7. Oh my god, all you have to do now to get fansubs is torrent them. I remember when you had to walk fifteen miles through the snow, uphill both ways, for videotaped fansubs, and you were glad to get them. No, seriously, I still have my old-school VHS fansubs of Sailormoon in my closet. Including the first series, and that shit was really hard to get fansubbed, yo.
   
   What an age we live in.
   
8. Continuing on the topic of the greatest things in the history of EVER, monimala wrote a story called Close Your Eyes and Think of England, which is Veronica Mars/James Bond. I was going to share the last line with you, but oh my god, I don't want to ruin it.

weekend_battle is starting to whir to life, yay! So hopefully in a few more weekends it should be humming along nicely. You should all go check it out, it will be lots of fun and it's multi-fannish and yes. </pimping>

A wee bit belatedly, happy birthday to katemonkey!

Also I got woken up early this morning by the buzzer, and it was that kind of situation where it's early enough that you shouldn't be up but late enough that you're not really going to get any sleep if you try again because your alarm will go off soon. I HATE THAT. But it was my package from Amazon (US), featuring a paperback of The Beekeeper's Appentice, which is not to be found anywhere in London, apparently, and my Pride and Prejudice dvd.

So that's okay.

Also, zombieslash. Any slash in which zombies are featured. Doesn't have to be the zombies you're slashing, there just have to be zombies. WHAT IS NOT TO LOVE.

And now whiichever of my flatmates is in the shower needs to get out. &fistshake;