I have commited commentfic in the form of an episode tag for 5.10 over at the spoilery meme that goes under a cut.

( So here's the cut )


This is still in the vein of SPN-related stuff, but it ain't spoilery unless we still count 4.10, and we don't, do we? Check out the angels Falling meteor shower!



Jesus, it just took me forty minutes just to post these two things because the cuts weren't frigging working! Effe you, LJ.

I said I was gonna post about 5.10 today, and I have a little time now, so I'm using it...

I have a lot to say about last night's SPN. So much so, in fact, that I'm feeling a little daunted by the amount of stuff. So I'm thinking I'll sleep on it, forget half of it, and then write a normal-sized post tomorrow-ish ;-P

And for now just cheat. BY POSTING THIS YEAR'S MERLIN'S CIN SKIT, FOR IT IS AWESOME!


It is so... iconable. You know, like quotable, but with icons!

A quick note because it's too cool/geeky to leave this simmering. I was hunting for a reference for the show Merlin, and as usual I was having no luck with the BBC site or the great oracle (google). A helpful fan pointed me towards this: an official map of Camelot, drawn LotR-style, with all the places, borders and stuff. Awesome.

From the land of head colds and sore throats, I bring you a flaily, gushing author rec. And I'm only on aspirin, so I ain't pinning this on any cold-medicine nonsense, it's pure unadulterated genius, is what it is ;-D.

So, here's a little background to how come I'm this excited. Last night, feeling all miserable and sniffly, I went hunting for fic. Specifically, shiny new Castiel h/c. And I didn't find any that didn't set my teeth on edge with the prose or the characterization (or that wasn't a far AU, but I didn't want AU or anything funny. I wanted canon-compliant gen Castiel h/c, but I could settle for Dean/Cas slash and skip the sex like I always do).

So I ended up at Astolat's site, reading some of her Merlin fic.

Well, obviously I had given up on the SPN fic finding game, I was desperate for something I hadn't read already, and despite the heavy slant towards slash, Astolat writes such truly brilliant fic every damn time that I always enjoy it. Giggling my way through Arthur's and Merlin's exasperation with each other, I found myself wishing she shipped (or at least tried her hand at) Dean/Cas.

This morning? unoshot , who's relatively new to the whole SPN fic lark, posted a longish (I want more! MOOOORE!) canon-compliant gen Castiel h/c fic, with Sam pov, Dean being Dean, with everyone so perfectly in character really, in her usual lovely and very eloquent prose, and even the mode of the Whump was something I've been secretly waiting for since the beginning of the season. 5.03, to be specific.

You need to read all of her fics. Then regale her with praise, so she writes more.

I recommend in primis Aurora Borealis, which is a pg13 SPN/The Last Unicorn fusion. Now, I gather this is a pretty famous book for all you native English speakers... I hadn't even heard about it until I found this fic, but one thing I can say it's that the fic itself? Is bloody brilliant and I enjoyed it immensely. And makes me want to hunt down the book (!) and read it. And if you haven't seen season five, this one's perfectly safe, since it follows the events in the book rather than the show (if I'm honest it's also the reason I've started fantasizing about a Merlin/SPN fusion, I believe).

Secondly, you need to read In Excelsis and then The Mountains In Reply (Mountains is the new Cas h/c one), which are both pg13, and gen, and I need a thesaurus here because I can't keep chirping "bloody brilliant" like some ignorant baffoon, really. In fact, you know what? I think I'll go and read them again right now... you know, to find the proper praise to convince you *shifty eyes*.

I just read an interview with Anthony Steward Head where he said Dollhouse got picked up again after Fox cancelled it. So, not daring to hope, I went on wheadonesque and... well, found out nothing about this supposed "pick up", but I did find out that They (TPTB? looks too sophisticated to be fan made) put up a site for Rossum Corp, including an ad that is so subtly creepy if you've been following Dollhouse that it'll give you the chills. And apparently there's some treasure hunt going on where you have to crack clues for extra content, including phone calls that end with the remote-wipe sound (!). It sounds all very cool and new-media-savvy, but if I start another obsession I might have to give up sleep and/or food, so I'm staying away for now ;-P

I'm in the middle of getting a head cold. Maybe. I've been in limbo two days now. Don't get me wrong, of course I don't want to get a head cold, but I'm starting to wish my body would make up it's mind, either throw off the bug once and for all, or get through it. Meh.

Went to the doctor yesterday to get rid of some moles, thinking it was going to be laser, but the good doc took out (with obvious I-get-to-play-with-a-new-toy-yay relish) something that looked like one of those kitchen creme-brulee torches- it was actually a spray can of liquid nitrogen. She flash-freezed the moles. No blood, no band aids, it stung like a insertverybadword and then they swelled up some, and the ride back in the car was pretty uncomfortable. My mom, who's had the laser done before, said the burning feeling would last about a day, but with nitrogen it went away after just a couple of hours, actually. Here's to hoping they fall off like they're supposed to in a few days.

You know what rocked last week?

You know what else rocked last week? SGU!

Oh, you know what else is pretty awesome? House. But House is a known "awesome" quantity, so that's hardly surprising ;-P

Last night I got ambushed by an utterly, decadently self-indulging piece of Merlin fic with no redeeming quality whatsoever. Then this morning I realized that by changing it around a bit, it could turn into a character exploration piece. Then tonight I realized that if I merged it with that SPN fusion bunny I had, hopping around plotless, I could get one whole fic out of the two of them.

I have the how, the why and the when. I just need the who. Given my limited knowledge of Arthurian lore, I'm inclined to crib the villain from the SPN part of the equation (Mostly I'm afraid of picking someone from what I find on wikipedia and then that someone turning out to be a very unsuitable villain in sixty% of the lore) though I fear it would make the whole thing a bit unbalanced. Either way, this one I'm tempted to actually write ;-P

It perplexes, yet diverts, me that Arthur's armour should warrant less bids than Merlin's scarf on e-bay... and such low ones too! Go on, people, it's for charity!

As for the subject of SPN 5.09( just a quick thought )

...since I've done this, but I'm currently pushing my way through a fic that has a very intriguing idea/premise, but is marred by some of the purplest prose I've had the misfortune to set my eyes on in a good long while. And last time it was on badfic_quotes , yo.

I have to see how it goes on, but share my pain: it honest-to-god has the phrase "chocolate colored eyes". In fact, have the whole sentence, it's a pretty good indication of what I'm dealing with: Sam pushed himself up on one elbow and his chocolate coloured eyes squinted through the darkness.

I made the sort of noise a body does when you're walking along, minding your business, and suddenly a fly commits hara kiri by flying directly into your mouth. Huh. That metaphore works also on the physical level, now that I think about it. ;-P

In other news, today I stumbled upon what might just be the finest piece of Trolling I've ever beheld. A fangirl mentioned in her journal that she'd heard somewhere that Kripke had said in an interview that Castiel keeps his coat on at all times because he thinks his wings are ugly.

...

The question here is, who's the troll? The fangirl or the Krip Himself? I love the idea of Kripke sending that into the net and sitting back to enjoy the results; either way, very lulzy. :-D

Can't embed the videos for this one because they need their context, but two gauranteed to put a smile on your face:

SPN vid, Holding out for a Hero, Starring Sam as the damsel in distress and featuring all the guys. Sparkly and funny as hell. (clips up to 5.07)

Stephen Colbert's My formidable opponent, with a guest spot by Al Gore. Gotta start working on those gills, people!

Trying desperatly to focus on thesis writing. Fells like trying to hold a bunch of eels in a bucket, argh!!!

Why is it called New Delhi, you might ask? Where is old Delhi? Turns out, old Delhi is right there in the center of New Delhi- it's just the oldest part of the city. Features the Red Fort and a humongous market/bazar, several important places of worship (including the biggest mosque of all asia and the biggest Sikh temple).

The pavilions in the Red Fort are lovely. White marble structures, where a stream of clear water (called the stream of paradise) would flow in the middle of the rooms to cool them down in the summer heat (I find that particularly romantic!). There's some pictures at the wiki link.

Another site we visited, one of the symbols of Delhi, is the Qutb Minar, a massive open mosque that at one point was supposed to be doubled but the mogul king financing the project died and... you know how those things go. It houses a rod of iron dating back to the four hundreds that has never rusted, a scientific curio that is still a bit of a mistery.

We didn't have a lot of time in Delhi. We only drove by Connaught Place and the Presidential palace (not that you can visit the palace, mind you), and up and down the embassys' road a few times, which is about as nice and luxurious as you can find anywhere. We dd walk around Dilli Haat, which is a government-sponsored market where artisans from all the states can sell their goods directly (and tourists don't run the risk of getting mobbed like a normal bazar).

J. and A. wanted to see Gandhi's memorial (because "it's multimedia!") over Humayun's tomb (which I wanted to see). We went to pay our respects to Gandhi, in the end, which was an experience I liked. You can walk in the grounds of the last house he lived in, and there's a landmark in the place where he was killed, and information about his life etc. The multimedia stuff, however, was an absolute waste of time. As I tried to explain to J., multimedia is generally codeword in museums for "kiddie stuff", and this was no exception. She didn't really believe me until she saw it for herself, I guess. But, as that was the low-point for me of the entire trip, you can comparatively see how it was all pretty great.

Delhi is, like any other major indian city, under construction. Make that, under hyperbolic construction. They're building an underground metro service, overpasses and bigger roads, and skyscrapers, shiny modern buildings everywhere. What they lack is better organization/funds to restore/maintain what they already have, which in many cases could be lovely but is left run down.

Back from hot, sunny, dusty India to cold, rainy and very windy home. Man, I wish I could have stayed! One of the things I love about going to India (for the grand total of two, count 'em, 2 times I've been there! Clearly I'm an expert) is going native. It's only a cosmetic change, wearing the local clothes and such, but it really makes it into a special place where I can forget about RL for awhile.

I didn't take a camera (!) because I was going with my father (whose special pleasure is taking lots and lots and lots of pictures) and his wife and A., who can be described as my step sister though we've never lived together (but hey, our parents are married, so!) and A. is a professional photographer (or at least trying to scrape by on her photography alone). Between the two of them the pictures of our trip count over two thousand, I believe, so I'm covered.

But one thing I did on my last day (because I couldn't get the time to do it before) was to get my hands painted with henna. It's called Mahendi, and it's a decoration that women get for special occasions, mostly weddings but even fancy parties and the like. They put a paste on that's like icing, then you let it dry for a couple of hours (holding very still, so as not to disrupt the desing), and then scrape it off and the tincture remains on for a week to ten days (depending on how often and how thouroughly you wash your hands, the quality of the henna, blah blah blah). In india I got a lot of compliments for it, but in Europe people keep thinking I've either permanently tattooed my hands and boggle thinking I'm completely crazy, or think I've somehow damaged/burned/scarred my hands and therefore politely keep their eyes averted and ignore them completely.

I've taken some pictures with my webcam (imagine the quality!) to show you anyways, 'cause in a few more days it'll be gone forever and... I want to show them off a bit before that happens.

( so, pictures under the cut... )

Before the internet card runs out! In Jaipur, The Pink City, After having risen at five am to go see the Taj Mahal at sunrise in Agra. So very worth everything, from the long flight, to the long car trips, to the hassle of getting all the legal stuff settled. Internet is available but Strider doesn't play well with the power adapter. Will try another one when I get the chance. Meanwhile, no shows of any kind! And you can't get a connection at Munich airport unless you make one online with a credit card... which i don't have! eight hour return layover looking more and more daunting O_O (still very very worth it though ;-)

24 hours from now the first leg of my subsequent 24 hour journey to India begins! The trip would not take nearly as much if I didn't have to spend a whole afternoon in Munich waiting for my flight to Delhi, or if my father hadn't decided to go directly from Delhi airport down to Agra, which is a four-five hour drive. The opportunity to go went something like this:
Dad: I'm going to India for business.
Me: Okie dokie.
Dad: I want to take a week off while I'm there and do some turisty things. Want to come with me?
Me: HELL YEAH.

Netbook!Strider is coming with me. I'm counting on there being wireless in the hotels, so maybe an update from there is possible. My biggest hope is that the wireless in Munich airport doesn't block stuff like LJ (oh, man, and Torrents! please do not be blocking torrents!) otherwise it's going to be a looong afternoon. On the plus side, apparently Munch has won the prize for best connecting airport in 2009 (hum, yay?). There's also places you can visit that are near there, but I doubt I'll go, since it's freezing there (by my standards, of course: it's like ten degrees ;-P) and I'm going to be equipped primarly for temperatures around 30 degrees. I am looking forward to the heat in a way I cannot describe, and I'm not even sarcastic: I genuinely love heat, and the sudden autumn (and ten degree drop from one day to the next) got me down somewhat. One extra week of high summer! Yes, yes YES!

In honor of my trip, have some Bollywood vids!

I keep getting these ideas for really complicated fusions/crossovers that would take a lot of effort to come out as glorious as my mind would like to picture them. For example I want to write a Merlin/SPN fusion where the Winchesters are hunters of magical creatures whose family was torn apart by a sorcerer they privately call Yellow Eyes, and who are called to Camelot by Uther for his no-magic revamp. John was the best tracker/hunter to ever serve under the king during the first war against magic, so now he wants the boys. Oh, and Castiel is a druid who saved Dean from a nasty witch. I'm a little in love with the idea, but it has no plot, so...

For some reason I also want to write a crossover between SPN and SGU. I haven't posted about SGU, and that... is prety much a summary right there of my fannish enthusiasm for that show. I checked it out because of one thing, and I keep watching it because of one thing only: Robert Carslyle. I have no urge to seek fic for it, or any other kind of fannish thing. I'm basically waiting to see if they make up their minds and have his character turn evil or merely sociophatic. But for some reason I have this very clear image of Castiel appearing on the space-ship and everyone freaking out, thinking he's an Ancient, while he doesn't really pay them any attention (wait, now that I've typed that out, I think my subconcious might have something to do with this particular urge ;-P). Again, no real plot. Might make it a drabble, though.

Still, I'm to spend all of Friday in an airport/airplane and netbook!Strider will come with me. If there's places to plug in, fic has a seventy percent probability of happening :-D

Of course, what I really should be doing is writing my thesis. Maybe I should set up a sort of nanowrimo scheme to do that. *ponders*

The war against inertia is, well, moving along, so that's already a partial victory ;-P

To distract me from the impending yet inevitable doom of my computer, I've mainlined all of Glee, and whoa but it is such a sparkly, sparkly, show! And man, that Will Shuster is pretty fly (on his feet) for a white guy ;-P

Going to the opposite end of the entertainment spectrum, have you been watching Dollhouse? Because it's really brilliant, and creepy, and brilliantly creepy *fangirls*.

I've seen people complaining that the premise squicks them, or that they can't get a handle on which character they should sympathize with, but that's missing the point. It's like complaining that Lost was too strange (btw, it's still an argument I understand: I stopped watching Lost because it was getting too convoluted and strange). The premise of Dollhouse is supposed to squick you. And each week they set out to show you just how much more creepier it can get in there. Sympathetic characters? There isn't one there that doesn't have at least something about them that is just plain despicable. They also have their good points. They're complicated characters, and very interesting, and it is a show that is willing to go there, especially in this second season (heard Fox loosened the reins on the Joss W. and it shows). This week is supposed to be a particularly disturbing and powerful episode, so I thought I'd share some thinky thoughts before it airs (and maybe making you want to check it out?)

I'm not going to go all out and meta this show, because it would take me too long, and because I can take the lazy path and link you to two very thoughtful posts that really highlighted just how many layers this show has. Read Power and Redemption and The strange and difficult path of feminist dudes.

Oh, btw, Fox has officially stated that they've airing the full run of episodes they've ordered. It hasn't been cancelled.

Computer status: still slowly wasting away like some doe-eyed victorian waif with consumption. It wasn't the butler msn messenger after all, or not just that. It's driving me bonkers.

Yesterday was a bad day because it was a complete waste. I tried to break out of a vicious circle of going to bed around two am and getting up past eleven by getting up at eight sharp and then my brain was so useless the whole day I couldn't get anything done. Ended up sleeping all afternoon. If this keeps up graduating in december seems laughably impossible. To cheer myself up I mainlined some Glee (shiny! no deep thinking needed!) and today I'm determined to get some serious work down.

It's been very cold, very windy and very rainy these past three days. I've been surviving on what food I have in the house, but I might need to go out and scavange shop very soon.

I'll end this with a pretty picture of a french marble statue from 1923. If you've been anywhere near spn fandom in the last year or so you've heard of the line in the bible where the angels of the Lord gazed on the daughters of man and saw that they were fair and took them as wives... yes, today we hide our wing!porn on the net and under pseudonyms, but people used to have it hanging about all around their houses and gardens ;-P I especially love the craftmanship in the legs and the feet: they look so fleshy.

The latest installment in "Anniehow's computer drama" has had a new twist. Apparently now the evil butler msn messenger did it. So for now I'm keeping it at arm's length. Except, I need messenger. *ponders mythical quest for fully functioning computer*

Speaking of more fannish things, I've figured out I have a very specific button in my fannish preferences labeled "John Winchester character study mediated through the medium of Dean h/c". It's a pretty big button, done up in an eye-catching bright color, if I want to drag this metaphor out ;-P Point is, I read a fic that not only pushed this button, but leaned on it and then sello-taped it down and ran away giggling while I was stuck there gasping in delight. Gen, pre-series, case-fic, plotty story, gripping writing, and 'effed up Winchesters. Could you possibly ask for more? Read Deguello, by oselle

Re: computer problems. My friend-who-knows-way-more-about-computers-than-me came over yesterday and together we did a big round of maintenance. Opened it up and vacuumed the inside (found a sizable spider in there. wtf spider? you're not going to get much fly traffic inside a computer!) which cleared the rattling noises, defragged the hard drive which makes it run much faster, and re-installed the video card (image card? I'm not sure what's the proper term in english) which cleared up the hiccups and the little wheezing noises it did at start-up... for all of twelve hours *headdesk*

Today I'm back to having problems. Though now we know it's definitely an issue with the video card. Should be easy, right? Get a new one, grumble about unforeseen expense, install, download new drives, etc... WRONG! Seeing as this device was nearly-top-of-the-line four years ago when I bought it, it is now so woefully archaic that not only they don't even make them anymore, but the technology's different so they don't make an equivalent that would slot inside my computer anymore. My only hope is to find someone who's selling a used-but-functioning one *tears hair out*

Aaanyway, this cheered me up considerably. I downloaded it and have already watched it more times than I care to admit. (here's the full, original song if you're interested ;-P) Oh, Merlin fandom! You're almost as shiny and care-free as canon show is!

Experiencing some computer problems recently. Today it took four tries just to boot windows, and now I'm afraid of turning it off and being unable to revive it (OMG what would I do??). Good thing I now have Strider, my unexpected!netbook to provide backup. Strider doesn't have an antivirus, though, so that needs to be rectified *makes note*

I fear it's more of a hardware issue than a software thing. I keep running virus and malware scans to be sure, and they all come up clean, but my friend who knows more about computers than I do says it's unlikely that it's hardware (apparently hardware malfunctions don't have shades of gray, it either works or not at all? I'm not sure I buy it). We'll see.

Banged my wrist pretty hard two days ago and it still hurts. Not in a oh-god-make-it-stop as much as a oh-right-shouldn't-be-doing-that-yet way. in the first thirty seconds after it happened my immediate concern was "if it's broken how the hell am I going to drive myself to the hospital if I can't use one hand? No way I'm calling an ambulance for something this stupid", then I managed to unclench my fingers and investigate the damage, and I realized that I had nicked the skin right over one of the veins and there was a tiny drop of blood, and right then and there I had an epiphany: imagine how awful it would be to accidentally cut yourself across the wrist and have people think you were trying to commit suicide when, really, you were not. And if you went through it mostly ok but they had to stitch you up you'd go then through life with the same scars as an attempted suicide. It's one of those "ways you could die" that never ever occurred to me.

Right now it looks like I jammed an epi-pen right on my wrist or something. Hardly concerning.

Bah, here, have some Bradley James goofing off with his camera, which is always adorkable.

Plus Katie Mcgrath joking that she doesn't get to snog anyone... unlike her maidservant ;-P

And! Katie and Angel doing slashy commentary on Arthur/Merlin (and themselves!).