Just the start of it all

(and only not yaoi because everyone's already linked that blog entry written by the feminist going through Slash Shock)

( very meandering tl;dr that's sort of about the economy and sort of about LJ )

For a change, I am going to spam you on a Wednesday. 'Cos this week really finishes tomorrow, not Friday. Or because (my comics geeking having moved up another notch to checking the Internet to find out what's coming out) I have discovered that it seems the only thing worth buying tomorrow is Angel. Or because I've had the whole night to myself to listen to audios. Take your pick; they're all true.

1. Arthur C. Clarke.

Arthur C. Clarke is dead, just in case you've been hiding under a rock (this is the first time I found out about something like this from my flist, which felt a bit weird tbh). This makes me quite sad -- he was the first author I did my now traditional "read nothing but this person's books for several months until you run out" thing to, back when I was ... about eleven maybe? I forget now -- but I must confess it's a rather abstract sort of sadness: he "had a good innings", as they say, and (this feels horrendously selfish) it doesn't feel like we've been deprived of any great works he had yet to produce.

I think Rendezvous with Rama is my favourite, when all's said and done. Very good at sensawunda, was Clarke.

Let's all build a space elevator and name it after him.

2. Gallifrey (the audio series, not the planet)

So, after the Pandora plotline wrapped up for some reason I never got round to carrying on with the rest of the third series ... until now.

( Spoilers for <i>Gallifrey</i> chapters twelve to fourteen )

3. Crotchwoot

( 2x10 )

( 2x11 )

( Random eps 12 and 13 speculation but no non-trailer spoilers )

... so, wait, when they said the next BBC3 ep was Friday, they meant this Friday? So we're going to end up way ahead of BBC2, surely.

4. Friday

Signups for the EDA ficathon close on Friday night, everyone. (Officially speaking; I won't actually be online 'til some time on Saturday.)

Incidentally, I am deeply ambivalent about this strike thing. LJ has always been dumb, I don't like the removal of Basic on principle, I don't think the strike will be effective as anything other than a way for people to feel better about their powerlessness. I probably won't be posting on Friday itself, just out of not being online much more than anything.

EmuchlaterTA: OK, so this puts me pretty firmly in the anti-boycott camp (seen via a comment on neadods). Though I don't subscribe to the OMG!Good-Friday-on-purpose tinhattery -- if it is the choice of Russian anti-semites, then it seems more likely they'd be going with Orthodox Easter which is apparently not until next month.

New Comics Day spam

( Angel: After the Fall #4 )

( House of M: Avengers #5 )

Buying HoMA got me a crappy free Marvel plug themselves thingy called "Marvel's Best Selling Authors". It led off on their Stephen King adaptation but very quickly we were at Laurrell K Hamilton and "OMG we got Orson Scott Card to write Iron Man". Fail.

I badly want Cable and Deadpool #50 but last week it had sold out by the time I got to my LCS (and my not-quite-so-L CS had closed down completely in the month since I last went there, which scared me a bit) and they hadn't got any new ones in with this week's comics, which is a bit disappointing. Anyone know where I might find scans?

Random (i.e. largely DW) spam

Oh, my flist is so much more manageable now I'm not watching doctorwho and the big fic comms. Yay! *hugs you all*

Things that are lolarious: Watching crappy music TV and seeing Eric Roberts turn up in an Akon/Eminem video. Oh, TVM Master, you are quite lame really ...

Have just started reading Trading Futures because it's supposed to be good fun it's apparently got good Anji and I need to nail her characterisation so I can have a fourth stalled Martha-slash fic on my hard drive I want to, because I want to (thanks Billie). I get that it's meant to be "what if the Doctor was James Bond?" but so far the whole non-violent action man who uses brains and improvisation to sort things out is giving me more of a MacGyver vibe ...

( Minor Torchwood-eps-with-Martha-in-them spoilers )

Meme spam

I don't normally do "tell me about my fic" memes for various reasons, but this one does look like it might have entertaining results if anyone does want to have a go (been all over the place, but last seen with astrogirl2):

The thing is, when people look for stories, they always make it sound like badfic. Now, often that's because it really is badfic, but sometimes it's good and they just suck at describing the story.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to summarize badly any one (or more!) of my stories and I'll try to guess which it is. You could even pretend you don't remember the pairing or fandom to make it harder to guess.

(Almost all my Who fics are at the Teaspoon -- I'm about to belatedly add my not-so-awesome LoM drabbles-of-awesome -- if you wanna refresh your memory, but I think that kind of defeats the point.)

ETA: point-and-laugh link spam

Oh, this is special. (It's the overelaborate rules for a forum for people who like those Twilight books [the chaste Mormon vampire ones] a whole lot, but don't really like the Internet at all. Seen via The Smooter Report.)

ETA2: Ashes to Ashes spam

( Fairly minor spoilers for 2x4 )

Poll #1144804 A silly poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

Which of these say the worst about my character?

Also, I have tidied up my flist a bit, mainly to try and make it readable in the time I have available for reading it. If you're reading this, you are almost certainly still on there. Mainly I've unwatched a bunch of big comms and dropped a few unmutual people{*} who I've gradually lost interest in reading. However, I have decided to drop my previously policy of being desperate for approval friending back anyone who friends me, and have retroactively applied this ever so slightly. If any of the people I have cut are reading: It's not you, it's me, etc. etc.

Please consider this all of a defriending amnesty, opportunity to tell me that I should be putting you on my not-the-OG-any-more filter, and chance for you to moan at me for whatever.

{*} I didn't mean that in the Prisoner sense, but heh.

ETA: All this talk of a huge Who spoiler -- is it one of those ones that's going to turn out to be completely unavoidable (as in, the sort of thing that my Mum is going to ask what I think about next time I see her, because even she'll have heard) and I should just give in and find out?

ETA2: ( I caved pathetically; reaction to massive Who spoiler ahead )

I've been online over a decade now, so I feel fairly confident I've got this right:





(honestly not inspired by any one individual)

(ETA: Obviously if you're on my flist, you're in the (100-x)% in whatever category you're in.)

So, I've finally caught up with LJ -- skip=340, FFS, though to be fair a lot of that was ihasatardis -- which won't be news to those of you I've spammed with responses to ancient posts/comments, and I've discovered this whole business of the adult rating nonsense.

The whole thing is deeply silly, because all you have to do is lie and say "Yes, I am old enough", just like when you want to read the porny fics on Teaspoon or ASCEM on Google Groups or whatever, and I can't really see that it does anything other than cover LJ's collective arse.

Having said which, I have gone back and changed the setting on a few of my fics, because I can just about buy that it's about helping people choose what they do and don't want to see, even though I was already doing that with the ratings and warnings in the headers and the cuts. But if it's going to become the de facto standard for how that's done I'll fall in line.

I very much approve of meyerlemon's idea of making up birthday dates for profiles, and wish I had thought of it before I went and put in my real one but set to "don't show anybody". Perhaps Who fandom should collectively set ours to 23rd November 1963?

Haven't written any fic yet this weekend, and I really ought to be doing work stuff, but the good people of F_W have managed to give me a That-Spoiler/Martha/Donna OT3 bunny, so we'll see where that goes.

ETA: It occurs me that I still don't really understand how the little thumbs-up things at Teaspoon work. Can anyone enlighten me?