Here's a list of fics that I've enjoyed over the past few weeks.

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So I was awake and not particularly sleepy when Bruce woke up this morning, so we decided to go down to Fry's and maybe hopefully get him a mouse that both works with his computer and that he likes. While we were there, I saw they had the Microsoft ergonomic mouse on sale for $50, down from $80, and since my wrist and forearm having been hurting a lot lately, I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm really not sure what I think of it so far. For one thing, I'm annoyed that instead of having a flash drive type USB receiver like almost all the other mice nowdays, it has a clunky old receiver on a cord. Not a huge problem except that I already have a receiver like that for my keyboard (and old mouse, which I'm obviously not using at the moment), so now I have to have two of those plugged in.

The mouse itself is...interesting. It's going to be difficult to get used to, and with the way it was hurting me a bit ago, I'm not sure I really want to. Have any of you had experience with this mouse (the 6000, in case Microsoft makes any other ergo ones) or any other ergonomic mice? What are your thoughts?

Rome is AMAZING. There are ruins and museums everywhere, bright sunshine, great food, and Ilana has been the most gracious hostess imaginable. The afternoon I got here (an hour late! The train between fiumocini airport and Termini station was crazy delayed!) was blazingly hot and beautiful. Ilana's apartment is terribly cute, up above a cafe on the plaza, with a pefect perpetual cool breeze. After dumping my bags, we scuttled around the pantheon and the trevi fountian and dined on sublime lasagne. The gelato here is heavenly. Pure, distilled flavor. So far we have tried rice, whiskey, lemon cream, champagne, grapefruit and peach in various combinations. SO GOOD. Also? Adorable red purse on the cheap. No mean feat as the exchange rate means most things cost DOUBLE here.
Day two saw us at the campari museum, dazzled by statues of philosphers, amazons and goddesses. My favorites were the Athenas and Dianas, but the Gorgon and the Dying Gaul were VERY striking. Introduced Ilana to Bones, had tasty spicy eggplant pizza for lunch, visited st. Peters and other Catholic landmarks and collapsed into blissful napping.
Today we cleaned house, went to an enormous fleamarket and shopped our hearts out, splashed in fountains and had a wonderful dinner near my new hostel. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! This is most definitely my favorite part of the vacation. ♥ ♥

PS. SARAH HI! DELIVERED THE PACKAGE, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ETC. Used my portion to buy you a little something at the flea market. Any time free the weekend of the 25th so I can give it to you?

PPS. Somewhere in there I won a tiny stuffed hamburger for shooting down all the cans but one (very stubborn, surely weighted!!!) at a game booth at the fair by the river. Ilana tells me it's there all summer long- bars and dancing and clothing stalls and impossible fair games. Had a wonderful time exploring it. I've likely forgotten other things too, but I'm a bit fuzzy with food and sleepyness and bliss. More tomorrow, postcars soon etc.

OMG SQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEe!! Squeee squeee and one more Oh god our neighbors must HATE us but it's just so damn good we can't help ourselves!SQUEEE!

( Also, added to my large collection of entirely random but eminently amusing quotes: )

In summary, this finale is LOVE!

...In other fanning news, Psych is back, w00t! Missed it! And SGA has returned as well, hazaah! (and Keller is annoying me, GRRRR...but I'll save that rant for another time)

Last one for my day! Fly By Night - John/Teyla - PG, prmpt: flying

G'night!

1. I have a headache. :( *takes advil and diet pepsi* I have been using my headphones a lot since buying them. It makes translating videos so much easier! But wearing them for long periods of time tends to make my ears hurt or give me an outright headache. Though I think this one was exacerbated by "there's someone WRONG on the internet" syndrome. Bleh. :p

2. I translated the first five minutes of the next video I'm working on and there were only twenty-one lines of dialogue! I hope the rest of the video is like this! I get paid a flat rate no matter how much dialogue there is. :) Regardless, it was the easiest five minutes I've ever done. I didn't even have to pause and rewind once, as the lines were spaced far enough apart that I could type while the video was running.

3. I don't know how fruit can go from rock hard to omg eat now before it goes bad! in one night, but such was the fate of our peaches. These are store-bought, not farmers' market (we didn't go yesterday). So I ate one and the last banana and will try and eat the other today.

4. The new del.icio.us extension for Firefox (well, new to me, as I was only using the basic one before FF3) has a thing in the bottom right corner that shows when someone posts a link for you. nixwilliams has been marking lots of links for me, so it's very exciting! (I have really been enjoying his links, too. Lots of thinky stuff. I think I friended too many people on delicious who post a lot of fanfic links and so my eyes tend to glaze over it all now. I may have to trim a little so it's not so overwhelming.)

5. I miss having anatsuno online! Now there's long stretches where no one's in chat. This is wrong!

6. I finished making my soundtrack for my Match fic. Decided I'm going to write up commentary for it, and commentary for the fic itself as well, before posting. So I'll probably post everything sometime in the next few days.

7. Things are finally sorted (or getting there) with livelongnmarry. The high bidder decided they wanted their money back, so I'm transferring the winning bid to busaikko. And since rawiyaparand got me all nostalgic about Judewan stuff, she's going to match the high bid and I'll write fic for her as well. :D So my auction experience is ending on a happy note after all, yay.

8. I had to translate this song for my site this week and I got totally hooked on it. It's typical Hello! Project nonsense (here's the lyrics if you're curious what they're on about), but very earwormy.

TITLE: Winning Hands
SUMMARY: Teyla doesn't want the marines to walk in on them.
CATEGORY: threesome, RST, fluff
RATING: R
NOTES: Lost City Found prompt - Emmagan/Mitchell/Sheppard - "I can definitely see the benefits of strip poker." One of my own choices for prompts.

Winning Hands

Teyla asks Sheppard to lock the door. He does so with a grin. "Don't want the marines to walk in?"

"I believe you would prefer them not to, John," she says with a wry smile before she drops neatly into a sitting pose on the floor beside the low table they're using in this rec room. "Colonel Mitchell, please deal."

( Cam begins to deal out the pack, slick cardboard sliding out from nimble fingers. )

Thanks to neke who nominated my icon at iawards. :)

So the whole fandom should be free from any differing opinions or any form of criticism thing is going around again in SGA fandom. Five millionth verse same as the first. The people complaining are not actually anyone I would have encountered otherwise, except that the OP commented on a post of mine specifically to tell me they were making a post in response. I guess so I could come over and be chastised or something. *eyeroll*

Here's the thing. I don't write reviews because I'm out to hurt people's feelings or to crush their spirit or make sure they never write in this town again. I'm not sure why I would want to do that. I'm not sure why that's the only reason people can imagine for wanting to talk about writing. The OP said I "enjoy writing scathing reviews", and well, no. I don't, actually. I enjoy writing reviews. Period. It's much more enjoyable writing 100% positive squeeful reviews, if for no other reason than there's no worry of wank or hurt feelings. But I also enjoy talking about what didn't work, whether on a technical level or on a personal level. I enjoy betaing, too, because editing is fun, and it makes for better stories. I don't enjoy betaing because I love to send back drafts covered in (metaphorical) red ink just to see the look on the writer's face when they see what needs to be changed.

The arguments I keep seeing about how fandom is fundamentally different than any other sort of writing just don't make sense to me. In this day and age of Google alerts, if I write a book review on my journal, much less on Amazon, there's a high chance that the author might actually find it and read it. And just because they're a professional doesn't mean they are any more equipped to handle criticism than someone in fandom. (Seriously. I have seen plenty of fans who are more professional than some professional writers.) And yeah, no one is paying for fanfic, but they're still investing time, which I don't think is inherently less valuable. (Not to mention, one doesn't need to spend money to read something professionally published. I can feel just as disappointed with a library book as one I've purchased. For me, it has little to do with the money spent. (Although the more expensive something is, the more I will feel disappointment for what I paid!))

And...I do feel like reviews are providing a useful service. If I were just talking to myself, maybe I'd decide it was too much trouble to write down my thoughts on everything, but people read them, even people who are not particularly interested in reading the fics themselves. (I know I do the same myself. I read recs and reviews of things (be they fanfic or novels/manga/movies/whatever) whether I have any intention of reading/watching the source, just because it's interesting to read people's opinions on things.)

So what it comes down to is two groups of people who have fundamentally incompatible ways of interacting with fandom. People on one side can't bear for any critical comments to exist and think it's rude and mean to say anything not positive, and people on the other believe that criticism has a place in fandom just as it does elsewhere. Of course I'm going to choose the group who agrees with me! There is no compromise. I'm doing my thing over here on my own space, and the "solution" is for me to stop doing things my way and do things their way.

Anyway! I really hadn't meant to ramble on quite that long, and my main point was going to be something that darkrosetiger brought up on my last post, which is that sometimes it may be confusing just from the rating I give a fic as to whether it's just not my thing or is rated down because of technical problems. I think this is mainly problematic for things rated a 2, because it's the rating where everything goes that I'm just not that excited about, so it is a pretty wide mix of things. But at the same time, all the rating represents is my own enjoyment of the fic (and I do detail what each rating means on my profile page).

If you're unwilling to click the cut tag because of possible spoilers, what sort of information would you like to see outside of the cut? I am not talking about basic header info like warnings, MPAA rating, or pairing, because I figure if you really need to know that (and I do try to give a summary that makes the pairing clear), you can click the fic link and read the author's headers. But like, I know my cut tag blurbs can suck at times, because I just sort of put whatever there. :p

Would you like the cut tag to be more specific in terms of why it was rated the way it was (without being spoilery)? Nancy's suggestion was a separate rating for technical and one for subjective stuff, but I feel like if I did that I would feel compelled to go back through all the hundreds of fics I've read and re-rate them so they all match up. So I'm thinking maybe still keep the overall score, but just be clearer before the cut/in the cut tag.

I was thinking about doing this in poll form, but I'm actually more interested in hearing ideas of what you think would be more helpful in that regard.

Well, I think that Project Don't-Die-In-Sydney can reasonably be called a success, despite how mashed my feet and calves feel right now.

( Short version: I think I walked about 15km this weekend, and I'm still mobile. Long version: Click here. )

Title: Breathe In Breathe Out
Author: renisanz
Summary: Ronon Dex misses being able to speak. One shot.
Category: Comfort/Pre-ship
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~1,400
Warning/Spoilers: “The Seed”
Disclaimer: I don't own these character, and no copyright infringement is intended; not making any money.
Notes: This story is set a few days after “The Seed.” Ronon is still getting over his bruised larynx. I thought this would be shorter and more. . . passionate, but the muse said otherwise. Story title is from the song “Breathe In Breathe Out” by Mat Kearney.

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I've been posting on other people's comments all day. Guess I should do my own post.

( Spoilers for Dr Horrible )

-______________________- I am so sleepy. Like really worn out. That could have something to do with it being 1 in the morning or it could have something to do with me not eating anything today besides half a pizza and a muffin.

kosenki is visiting and it's a lot of fun introducing my favourite people to my other favourite people. The worlds collide. So far we have seen two films and hung out with my friends a whole lot. Tomorrow the plan is to go sailing (unless it's too windy DDD: *fingers crossed*) and to watch Batman Begins and Hellboy. I'm worried about how frustrating my lack of tourguiding skills can be. "uhhhhhh that is the... uhhhhhhhhh... the .... Bob what is that?"

I have found a whole bunch of new things in Umbrella Academy that I love since I got the volume. I was a comic fan long before I was a My Chemical Romance fan. From that point of view, it's a really good comic. I can see this being a book I read over and over. It's funny and clever and so well written (every time I read it I am filled with pride that Gerard can do THIS too. Multi talented our boy is) and the art is so fantastic. I really like Gabriel Ba's style. The way he draws The Horror reminds me of Moop Moop! ALSO Brian Schecter gets special thanks! <3333333 My breakout OTP is Seance/The Horror because I'm a freak like that.


I shall leave you with a quote from Paddy that made me and Gráinne choke on our fries:

"Sinead got her AIDS count done. She said she has one AID. I don't know if she was joking or not."

And a picture of me in Camden, pre coffee:

( with bonus Dee and Paddy's arm! )

newkidfan has put together a beautiful, beautiful trailer for No Parachute (Mel's also done a cover for it, oh my god), and it is on the list of the 1,001 things you have to see before you die. It's the story as I really, sincerely hope it could be in its best form, with all my verbal fumbling and ambiguity stripped away.



download | watch | tell Mel how awesome she is!

I've been doodling on a sequel/prequel, because one should be written and also Mel has been asking for it, so I thought I'd put up part of the tiny bit I have typed. (Also, I haven't been very ficcish lately, other than racing to finish sgabigbang, which is a hell of a lot of fic, but I haven't been ficcish here, if you understand.)

( sequel/prequel snippet )

TITLE: Heartseed, Homeseed
SUMMARY: He'd missed Atlantis.
CATEGORY: Episode epilogue for The Seed
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: 5.02 - The Seed
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, making no money, don't sue, etc.
NOTES: For the Lost City Found prompt battle, to the prompt - Beckett, Sheppard & Sheppard/Emmagan - "you're the hero"/"you brought her home", which was requested of me by azure_horizon. Thanks for the prompt, hon! It gave me the opportunity to fill in a few gaps in the ep that I felt needed addressing...

( Heartseed, Homeseed )

So, all this hype about Batman? Believe it. There's so much I just /love/ about the movie, very few things I didn't like. Going to see it again this week, whenever Bri has time to, since she wasn't able to make it today.

And, surprisingly, Gubby made it into town on time! When I found out he was coming down this morning, instead of last night, I had my doubts about him making it to the movie on time. But he did.

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis.
Title: No Parachute
Characters: Elizabeth, John, Rodney.
Pairing: John/Rodney.
About: Trailer for the wonderful story No Parachute by aesc. Without a doubt, one of my favorite Stargate: Atlantis fics. I cannot recommend it enough.
Music: Suite from "Restless" by Christopher Beck, from the "Once More, With Feeling" soundtrack.

download avi. divx. 24MB. length: 1:19mn. If you download, please take the time to comment. Thank you.

To aesc.

( imeem embed )

It's not alpha'd. It's not beta'd. It's due in finished form in less than a week.

I even feel bad about posting this because I'm going to get mocked for "not having it finished."

Hey all--I'm super confused about BSG. I watched the webisodes at sci-fi, but I couldn't find the pilot anywhere, so I started to watch the first episode. It began with the "Previously on..." and was immediately so complicated that I had no idea what was going on. I made a more determined effort to find the pilot, and it's just not available anywhere (I don't really torrent). Also the webisodes don't seem to be related at all?

I dunno, sci-fi dot com. You should not give me the crappy three minute webisodes if you want me to watch the show. You should give me the pilot episode and get me hooked. I'm just not going to pay $22 at Amazon for your pilot episode, man.

Also: At Amazon, on the Unbox main page--Top selling tv series: 1. Battlestar Gallactica. 2. Stargate Atlantis.

Yay!

Urg. Shouldn't have gone this weekend. Even the morning show was packed out and we had to sit in the second row. We sat to the side, so I didn't get too dizzy (we were originally sitting in the middle and that was very, very bad), but my neck hurt from having to look up at the screen, and when you're that close, it's hard to focus on things. It made it a very long two and a half hours.

( Spoilers )

We saw previews for The Watchmen, Terminator something or other, a movie about cops who kill people, and...something else. Nothing looked super exciting, but they're not exactly advertising my type of film during these summer blockbusters. I am somewhat curious about Terminator. I never saw the third one, and I haven't been watching the show, but now I feel like maybe I should.