It's snowing again! SNOW. ING. And it's starting to stick on the ground. I'm just not going to think about it.

If you are in Forever Knight fandom, or interested in writing for it, signups for fkficfest/fkficfest close at midnight Pacific time (but you have a grace period 'til morning to get your signup in!). The one year I did it, I really enjoyed it, both the writing process and the gift fic I received. I haven't felt close enough to FK in the years since to participate again, but it's a well-run, fun little exchange.

I need to write something for month_of_meta if I'm going to! I'm really delighted that so many people have come back for Year 2 (or joined us anew!).

And I've made a good start on my wcpairings fic at last. I have a plot, and I know where I'm going. Now it's just a matter of getting there ...

... but I am so sleepy. Stupidly sleepy. I have been all day. Cannot concentrate on writing or anything else. Maybe I should have taken a nap. Maybe I should give up on being useful and go to bed.

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Hey, anyone out there want to spoil me totally for the Supernatural finale? And the current season in general? :D I had been thinking that I might get caught up someday (especially if they changed some of the things that made me quit the show!), but, no, by now I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to. But I'm curious, damn it. Tell me of it!

ETA: I do have a fairly detailed answer now in the DW comments; don't let that stop you from commenting if you feel like it, though.

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I finally got caught up on Once Upon a Time! Basically I agree with most of veleda_k's thoughts (spoilers at the link, obviously) and discuss my own reaction in the comments. (Nonspoilery: I really enjoyed some storylines, kinda side-eyed others.)

I also watched the first season of Rizzoli & Isles, which I really enjoyed a lot. It's a rather formulaic, episode-of-the-week detective show, but it's fun and bantery and I love the characters. However, I only made it 5 minutes into the first episode of season two because ( of minor spoilers.Collapse ) And I've also heard, secondhand, that the show jumps the shark in season two, so perhaps it's better to leave myself with my pleasant memories of season one.

Because I really did enjoy season one! I particularly enjoyed that Jane Rizzoli is written in a way that reads a lot more like "male TV character" than "female TV character": emotionally closed off and snarky and not really into the traditional trappings of femininity (well, the TV version of "unfeminine", anyway), with a particular kind of physical badassitude that you don't see very often with female characters. I mean, obviously Action Girls are not what you'd call rare, but the thing about Jane is that she gets dirty and messed up and hurt, not in a sexy way but more of an "oh, shit!" kind of way. And she never, ever has to be rescued, even in situations where I'd be totally expecting, on any other show, that a male character would ride in and save her. So I really liked that, and I really enjoyed the ensemble, and maybe someday I'll pick the show up and watch more of it.

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... but at least I'll put it under a cut so you can avoid. :D

So the news broke today that the S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show has definitely been picked up for fall. Which is very cool and made of yay!

( And then there's the wet-blanket part. If you are avoiding ALL spoilers, this is mildly spoilery, but only for castingCollapse )

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Apropos of nothing, I realized this afternoon that there is a feature I would LOVE to see on AO3: a "crosspost" line in the fic upload window, where you can put in a link to the fic posted elsewhere (on LJ, ff.net or whatnot). Wouldn't that be neat? Is it just me that wants it? Because you can follow people from AO3 to other blogging and posting services, but it's handy to have a simple way to do it, especially when their handles are different in different places.

Anyway, I've been lurking in Avengers/Iron Man fandom the last week or so. ( No spoilers, but just general rambling about Tumblr fandomCollapse )

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/895539.html with comments.

I finally wrote another one for ComFest (h/c fic fest on whitecollarhc, after having a bunch of inspiring prompts open in tabs for a week ...

Title: Post-Op
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing: Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Word Count: 2300
Summary: In ComFest, kanarek13 left this P/E/N prompt: Neal and El bring Peter home from a hospital (injury, surgery, I leave the reason he ended up in a hospital up to the author) and in the safety and privacy of their home they can finally let go of all the angst and uncertainty of the past few days/weeks.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/798332

( Post-OpCollapse )

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For those of you on my flist who are playing Fallen London:

Are you participating in Knife and Candle? If so, tell me who you are in the game! I won't do anything nefarious with that information. Not at all. muahahahaha.

If not, do you want an invite?

Basically I just need more opponents so I can stop stabbing the same person over and over; I'm starting to feel guilty about it. :P

ETA: Also, my "character" name is my real name (I would love to rename myself now that I'm participating in social actions, but I don't think that's an option). Here's my profile.

SON OF ETA: Okay, I think I'm going to need to stop sending invites for the moment, as I'm starting to feel insecure about my dwindling pool of knife tokens. (You can still ask, but I might wait a day or two until I - hopefully - regain a few.)

I hope I don't regret this.

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Yesterday I went for a long walk on the creek in the spring sunshine. (The fact that you can still walk easily and safely on the creek ice is one of the many symptoms that we're stuck in Narnia this year: always winter, never Christmas!) Along the way I heard a birdsong I've never heard before, which made me pause to try to figure out what was making it -- I'm always interested in seeing something new. And it was a really odd song, a cheerful twitter that would occasionally shift to a low raspy tone. Eventually I located the culprit, a northern shrike perched in the top of an aspen on the bank. (Here is a singing shrike - it shifts to the raspy note at about 0:39.) I was ridiculously excited about this, since I knew that shrikes are all over Alaska but I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen one, and definitely not here.

So I had to share this exciting discovery when I got home.

Me: I saw a shrike today!
Husband: What's a shrike?

I was prepared for this, so I launched into an explanation.

Me: It's a small predatory bird, about the size of a jay -- here, I can get the birdbook and show you a picture --
Him: Could you be a little less specific? Okay, it's a bird. Got it.

Undaunted, I showed him the picture in the book.

Him: Okay, so it's a gray bird.
Me: ... yes, it's a gray bird.

He finds my fascination with plants and animals completely baffling, because to him there are few things less interesting than identifying songbirds by sound or figuring out the finer points of distinction between willows and alders. (But it's fun!)

On a completely different subject, I cannot get over how strange and wrong it feels to reblog uncut spoiler posts about the new Iron Man movie on Tumblr. I know it's how things work over there and people filter things via tags, but it feels like the worst kind of fannish etiquette failure to me. (If you want to follow me there, my tumblr is icefallstudio. The original idea when I created it a year or so ago was that I'd post my art there, but that hasn't really happened - although it may eventually! - so at the moment I'm just using it for reblogging IM3 squeeflail.)

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Phew, so, yesterday I did an art show (it went well; there was a good turnout and I shared a table with the ever-awesome ellenmillion) and then somehow got talked into going to the 9:45 showing of Iron Man 3 with some friends. At one point I was wondering what the hell I had been thinking, because I was exhausted and hungry and my feet hurt, and mostly I just wanted to go home and decompress. I figured there was about a 50-50 chance that as soon as I got settled in a dark theatre seat, I'd fall asleep. But ... IRON MAN!

( Long, spoilery, a bit of RL ick at the beginningCollapse )

ETA: Another thing I hadn't realized until I ran across someone on Tumblr talking about it: ( More very spoilery spoilers!Collapse )

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/894718.html with comments.

Iron Man 3 opens this weekend. :D :D :D

I almost never go see movies in the theatre anymore (I seem to average about 1 a year) but this is definitely not a case where I want to wait for DVD. :D

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/894163.html with comments.

Title: Scattershot
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 4800
Pairing: gen
Summary: Peter and Neal investigate shady doings at a veterinary clinic, and things go wrong, of course. For this prompt at Comfest 2013 on whitecollarhc.
Crossposted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/779393
Notes: This fic is full of medical handwavium. Much as I tried to be accurate (well, to the extent that Google allows) I'm not sure if any of this would actually work this way in reality.

( ScattershotCollapse )

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/893683.html with comments.

I'm still kinda on the fence about PoI in general, mostly because it keeps sliding towards the moral event horizon in ways I'm uncomfortable with. But then Thursday night's episode happened.

( SpoilersCollapse )

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This is a direct follow-up to frith_in_thorns's Jack-of-Smiles. (Content warning for darkness and graphic violence in the original; not so much in this one, but they're dealing with the aftermath of that.)

After sending this part to Frith a couple of weeks ago, I'd planned to write more, but since that's not really happening, I figured this could stand on its own as a complete story anyway. As always, the Fallen London masterpost is here.

Title: Hunting Jack in Polythreme
Word Count: 1800
Summary: Peter's not dealing well with the Jack-of-Smiles incident. And so Neal finds himself stowed away on a ship in the middle of the vast black zee.



( Hunting Jack in PolythremeCollapse )

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/892959.html with comments.

This made me laugh until I cried. (Note: Not worksafe due to language and simulated gore.)

Normally I don't like to link to videos without providing context, except I'm not sure what the context in this case actually IS. It's two guys playing a surgeon simulator game, both using the same controller? aaaand that's pretty much all the context I've got.


(Direct link)

And the (much longer) sequel using the full version of the game:

(Direct link to sequel)

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I had to find out which D&D character I would be.

According to the test, I am: Neutral Good Halfling Druid (6th Level)

(LOL'ing at the "halfling" part. I suppose that's why there was a question about how tall you are.)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 8
Dexterity- 9
Constitution- 11
Intelligence- 16
Wisdom- 12
Charisma- 15

( Detailed resultsCollapse )

I dispute the "best" in the alignment description (I used to prefer playing chaotic good characters, myself, although I do agree that neutral good is an excellent fit for me).

But I would totally have fun as a halfling druid!

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How much of a nerd am I? THIS MUCH OF A NERD: I found myself tonight pondering which D&D alignments would fit the White Collar characters. If you haven't played D&D, the alignments are described on Wikipedia.

My picks ...

Peter: Lawful Good
Neal: Chaotic Good
Mozzie: Chaotic Neutral
Elizabeth: Neutral Good

I think you could make a case for both Mozzie and Elizabeth tending in a Chaotic Good direction, but I like them better where I've got them.

The supporting characters are harder. ( Put under a cut for mention of spoilery season four charactersCollapse )

What do you think? Am I forgetting anyone?

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Signups are open for Not Prime Time! This is an exchange for medium-sized fandoms -- too big for Yuletide, too small to have a lot of exchanges of their own. Fandoms which are eligible (and may be of interest to some of you) include White Collar, Highlander, Person of Interest, the Vorkosigan books, Dresden Files, Hawaii 5-0 ...

You can look at the tag set here to see what was nominated as an eligible fandom.

The only catch is that you have to be willing to request and offer a minimum of 3 fandoms (doesn't have to be the same ones), so it's not so good if you're monofannish.

I think I'm probably going to sign up, but I'm not sure what I'm signing up for, other than White Collar.

Signups are currently ongoing for month_of_meta/month_of_meta. And we have meta brainstorming posts that are hardly being used -- if you can think of some meta ideas (specific to your fandom, or generally fannish) that you'd like to see someone write, post them and see if you get any takers! I put in a few of my own ideas to get everyone started, different ones on LJ and DW, because I am sneaky like that. *g* (LJ brainstorming post / DW brainstorming post.) And feel free to mention Month of Meta in your various fandoms, if you are so inclined (and thank you so much to those of you who have already done so!); the more people who know about it, the more participation we'll get!

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/891421.html with comments.

lunabee34 has just opened up an All Fanwork Gateverse Extravaganza in her journal -- leave prompts, choose prompts, create things -- and spread the word! On LJ and on DW. As she says: "I think it would be wonderful if we could get the fannish momentum rolling in the Gateverse again." I don't know if I'll make anything, but I'm going to try to think of some prompts. If you're interested, pass it around, and go leave some prompts and/or pick one up! (Any kind of fanworks are welcome -- fic, art, vids, meta, etc.)

My "breakup" with SGA is still so very weird to me, because I've never left a fandom so acrimoniously before -- I mean, not in the sense that I had a huge flounce or anything, but I was incredibly bitter and unhappy when I left (due in part, I realized only years later, to mental issues completely unrelated to the fandom, much like my unhappiness with White Collar fandom last year ... but, in SGA, there were legitimate things going on that were making me miserable, and it took me a long time to get over the upset).

It feels particularly strange because those characters lived so very noisily in my head for years. I wrote more (and longer) for SGA than I've ever written for any fandom; I suspect it's a record that's going to stand forever, because during the time that I was most heavily into SGA (2006-08), I was doing little original writing, so I was able to devote my 24/7 creative efforts to writing novel-length stories in a way that I'm not able to do now that I'm writing ... actual novels. *g*

Normally I'm very warm-fuzzy about my old fannish crushes and revisit them on a semi-regular basis, but I haven't really been tempted to do that with SGA ... yet. I think I'm mostly over it now -- my memories are basically good ones, and I made a lot of friends I would never have met otherwise. I don't really feel the bitterness anymore; I mostly just remember the good times. I was watching some old music videos the other day, which was something I hadn't been able to do for years. And the idea of dipping a toe back into the fandom again is no longer anathema to me -- actually, I think it might be fun, and I'll be perusing prompts to see if anything jumps up and bites me. (Actually, one of the meta prompts already has!)

Also, thank you to everyone who commented with suggestions for fitzwiggity in the previous post -- she says it was very helpful. :)

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/891338.html with comments.

Hello, flist! fitzwiggity asked me via PM if I know anything about gluten, dairy & sugar-free cooking (all three at once), and I don't, so I said that I would ask on LJ/DW. A member of her family has had to cut out all three, and she is looking for recipes, tips or resources. If you have anything handy, that would be helpful! You can either comment to this post or PM her on LJ.

This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/891020.html with comments.