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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Honi Soit Qui Mal's Tight Pants' LiveJournal:
| Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 | |
| 10:20 am | TV Snark: Drop Dead Dana--This Time It's Personal? I celebrated completion of a big project by a) getting two new ideas for Firefly fics (both War Story-oriented) and b) watching far too much TV by Other Means: a whole disk of Breaking Bad, and the first episode of Drop Dead Diva. (Cut in case anybody's planning to watch this later and wants to be unspoiled, although to summarize a vital point: Sean Maher is only in it for, like, a minute, but he looks fabulous and has great haberdashery. Unless, of course, "Sean Maher's Suit, Quality Of" IS a spoiler.) ( Read more... ) I'm actually sort of surprised there isn't more Lifetime-show-based femslash, possibly created by just throwing all the characters on all the shows into a large tub of butterscotch pudding, because you sure can't say there aren't lots of female characters in these shows. Not-awesome, and not-kickass, by some measures, but those can be retrofitted. I guess the characters spend a lot of time worrying about whether they're going to get married to men, or if This Marriage Can be Saved, and Army Wives are defined by wife-hood, but Lifetimers also spend a lot of time getting cancer and taking care of kids with horrible diseases and stuff like that, which is not inherently incompatible with female love interests. |
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | |
| 8:50 pm | Diamonds and Cannonballs I mentioned before on my LJ how much Agatha Christie's cri de coeur, in the voice of her MarySue Ariadne Oliver, resonated with me. Oliver was constantly finding herself in the position of thinking she had finished a detective story, then being 20,000 words short and having to have the heroine kidnapped again or have another inept murder attempt made. ("Do you have any idea how hard it is to murder somebody by balancing a cannonball on top of a door?") Still not much actual writing done on That Stupid Story, but today, while re-reading a rather stolid book about Trollope, it came to me. The Eustace Diamonds! Because it's *exactly* the sort of thing Sleer would do, although Lizzie Eustace wasn't up against the combined, or rather oblivious and tangential, forces of The Operative, Saffron, Vila, Mal, Avon, and Jayne. And what happens to Sleer is much worse than marrying Mr. Emilius. I've also remarked that one of my favorite patterns is "Blood Simple," where all sorts of nefarious things are going on at the same time, not only for different reasons but with most of the characters *never* finding out information relevant to their own situation that the audience eventually gathers. |
| Saturday, July 11th, 2009 | |
| 5:33 pm | The New Shiny Still far fewer yard sales than I expected. If anything, I would consider that the economy would turn the yard sale into a sort of methane cogeneration (old crap into electricity, or at least electric bills). But perhaps eveyrone is hefting the waffle iron and deciding it's not really surplus to requirements because they can save a lot of money by making waffles instead of going out for brunch? But I did manage to find a few sales today (...why is there no Centralized Yard Sale Directory that transmits to your desktop Yard Sale Widget within your designated radius?). Something you may not know about me is that I am an immense label whore, so even though I need more jeans like Noah needed more Chance of Precip, I bought a pair of A/X jeans with metal fly buttons. Which I plan to take to Writercon, although it may be having too much faith to believe that the TSA can reliably distinguish between a button fly and a submachine gun. I also bought a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt with the largest embroidered logo EVER. I mean, it's bigger (comparatively) than my slow-cooker! For a few moments I contemplated bringing my changeable-taffeta skirt and devore velvet top for the Writercon It's hard to describe the print--it's a dark-colored patchwork that looks sorta like Sonia Delaunay stained glass, if you see what I mean. So the plan is to wear it over swoopy black pants (the Fortuny pleated ones, if I can find where I cleverly organized them) wrapped over with a sash at low-waist level. It *really* needs a long ebony cigarette holder and a headache band, but is not getting them. I'm wearing black ballet pumps and packing my black beaded slippers, so the test is whether I opt for looks or danceability--probably the latter because every party I've ever been to at a con has the average illumination level of a coal mine. |
| Friday, July 10th, 2009 | |
| 10:57 am | More Spectator Fandom I still think that the studio made a huge mistake not releasing HBP in November. I'm seeing a distinct lack of anticipatory hysteria in my list--I mean, for some of the earlier flicks, my pals would already have been lined up to buy tickets and would have their opening-night costumes finished a week in advance. The Wall Street Journal reckons it's because everyone in the officially targeted age group has Gone Over to the Twilight Side. Sad, if true. |
| 10:06 am | Six Degrees of Fandom (A K/S Is Still a Kiss) I was skimming over my flist (and dlist, or whatever you call it) and, out of the corner of my eye, I *thought* what I saw was a reference to Kirk Bingo. Once that was straightened out, I realized that, WITHOUT HAVING SEEN THE MOVIE OR ANY EPISODES OF THE SHOW, I could probably make up the card: *"He's dead, Jim" *Kobayashi Maru test *Prime (...Choice, Select, Cutter, Canner...) Directive *Starfleet Academy *T'hy'la *Arena *Tribbles *Bonanza Syndrome in Space ("first I'll save 'er, then I'll Keeler") *"Beam me up, Scotty" *"Fascinating, Captain!" *IDIC *"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a {...]" *Redshirts *Mind-meld *Pon Farr Well, OK, maybe not the whole card. Meanwhile, here's a tiny BtVS ficlet (G-rated, Cheer Up Emo Spike!) ( Read more... ) And an inferential spoiler for Another Show: ( Read more... ) |
| Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | |
| 11:37 pm | TV Snark: Little Dorrit, or Andrew Bloody Davies' Fault I should have KNOWN better, but I watched the first four episodes of the recent (and unfortunately topical--it's the one with Merdle) BBC adaptation of "Little Dorrit." I loved Christine Izzard's adaptation, with Derek Jacobi perfection its ownself as Arthur Clennam, and I've hated everything Andrew Davies has ever gotten his paws into. As the credits flash on yet another episode of Public Domain Theater, I am reminded that when Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe were courting, after a series of Sabbath meals with the elder Millers, Monroe asked if there wasn't some other part of the matzoh one coudl make soup out of. Just for variety. (Cut for length, it's about Georgian and Victorian novels for heaven's sake, nothing to frighten the horses.) ( Read more... ) I couldn't help having my Fandom goggles on though--Macfadyen looks kinda like John Sheppard. John Chivery is played by Russell Tovey (he's very good, although I did rather think he'd react to Amy's rejection by ripping her throat out), Rigaud-Blandois etc. by Andy Serkis, and Jenny Wren the Doll's Dressmaker by Eve Myles. (I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when her agent explained that they thought she was perfect for girl!Smike.) |
| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | |
| 1:25 pm | We Admitted We Are Powerless Over Being a Total Div It's only...about three weeks until Writercon! And I descended to the Scary Basement and was vy. chuffed to find out that my carry-on bag is actually small enough to be used as a carry-on bag. I splashed out madly and spent $2 on a new tote bag which is small enough to be used as one's Second Piece to be carried on. It's a bright green millefiore print and has lots of compartments, including zipper compartments for wallet. I also found my two Writercon file folders, consolidated them, checked to see that I have the confirmation number for the hotel room and the receipt for con registration, and, for that touch of complete madness, *put the file folder in the new tote bag.* Despite the sound injunction "Beware of all Enterprises that require new clothes"* I was unable to resist the July 4 sale at the local store where sleeveless tops ("vests" in the UK sense) illegibly embellished with "Writing Stories on the Sky" in paillettes were for sale. AFAIK there was only one yard sale this Saturday. I wore my Redemption '01 t-shirt, which strictly speaking I'm not entitled to because I didn't GO there, it was a gift from Pat Carter, who did. The yard retailer recognized the Liberator, and said that B7 was his favorite show. He said that fairly recently, he worked with Sally Knyvette, "who's a director now, you know" (I didn't!) and "she's completely mental!". There was also, in light of the holiday weekend, a rare *Friday* sale, where I very nearly bought a pair of black lace wings to wear to the cocktail party, but I talked myself out of it on the grounds that they probably wouldn't fit into the suitcase, and anyway, I'd have a helluva time explaining to the TSA guy exactly why I wanted a pair of black wings. (I just read the latest Jack Reacher opus, which starts off with a checklist of Handy-Dandy Suicide Bomber spotting tips, and "inappropriate clothing" and "black clothing" are included, and I should hate to be considered a person in need of black wings because I intend to send myself to Hell in the *short* run.) And of course it's a yard sale! So I can't go back and expiate Non-Buyer's Remorse! However, I *did* buy a Plane Book--this is a finely drawn category because of course it can't be something I can't stand to read, but it should be something I can stand to *give up* and leave on the Orphan Table. I'm reducing my Book Inventory this time because a) I'm traveling with alizarin_nyc, \o/ and b) I don't think it's very likely that I'll go to a major city and end up NOT BUYING ANY BOOKS when I'm there, do you? entropy_house: I will be bringing the t-shirts you made for me! So thank you again! *Which is why movie!Uhura still wears the teensy miniskirt uniform |
| Monday, July 6th, 2009 | |
| 7:14 pm | Meta: Extremely Oblique Discussion Man, you know you've been in fandom too long when YOU DON'T READ COMICS. EVER. And you still know comics spoilers. So, in a phrase I never thought I'd utter, behind the cut for comics spoilers, and I guess if I said *which* one then THAT would be a spoiler. But, well, there might be spoilers in comments, so be careful, 'k? ( Read more... ) |
| Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | |
| 1:35 pm | Om Nom Nom: Pulled Pork a la Two Deadly Sins This is sort of a culinary DVD commentary track, explaining the differences between the plan and the result. Which, as Jayne said, ain't ever been exactly similar. (Cut for length, and discussion of unhealthful foods). ( Read more... ) So there you have it. Two sins for the price of one: sloth and gluttony! |
| Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | |
| 3:49 pm | TV Meta: Flashback! What a Feeling! flashback in the narrative and not the PTSD sense, so I think it's OK to be frivolous about it. Spurred on by the announcement that the four shot but unshown episodes of "Dirty Sexy Money" will be broadcast starting on July 18, and that Gina Torres will be in at least one of them, I turned to Hulu. At the relevant time, Hulu had episodes 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 of Season 2 (I'd already seen all of S1 on DVD). I intensified the Fox-ching* effect by clicking on Episode 10 first because it was in the upper left of the screen. (Cut for length) ( Read more... ) *I.e., burn the episodes to yarrow stalks and throw them up in the air |
| 12:00 am | Freudian Ship! I just saw a comment in a thread about Star Trek:Reboot that referred to "ST:AOS". Kirk/Maturin: "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor AND a spy"? |
| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | |
| 8:19 pm | Meta: And In a Dark-Brown Voice, She Said "LOLCats" Although I realize that "slash is about 'hey, what's it like being queer in this world'?" is not a universally held opinion, I'm always cheered to see that I agree with people with more fan cred that I have. gloss linked to this, http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/6 ( Read more... ) |
| 12:01 pm | Meta: Femslash ToTTBoTB? Ummm, I said I was going to post this yesterday and didn't, under the heading of Blah de Vivre, but better late etc. I just found out that I'll be doing two programs at Writercon--a Firefly session-cum-Mudder's-Milk party on Saturday night at 10, and Saturday 2 pm on slash: queer, gay, both, neither, IDEK? And for the latter, I contemplated making up Top of the Tops, Bottom of the Bottoms game boards (or a big one for the front of the room). Cut for length, I don't think anything triggery is going on here. ( Read more... ) |
| Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | |
| 9:08 pm | Meta: Does This Fridge Have a Trigger? WARNING: I put part of this entry behind a cut for possibly triggering content, but the cut didn't work, so caveat. There have been a lot of times during my stay in Fandonia where I said "hmmm, practically nobody agrees with me" but not that many when I changed my mind. However, I *have* changed my mind and will either add warnings about potential triggers or said that AFAIK the common triggers are not present. Mind you, I pretty much never *do* write anything with common triggers. I don't like warnings but then I don't like summaries, pairings listings, or story headers *either* so it's a subset of not really liking a common fannish way of doing things. I'm reminded of last year's election for LJ reps, where one creep deliberately used an icon that he knew could trigger epileptic seizures. The difference between a squick and a trigger is the difference between an icon that can disturb the electrical firing of a susceptible person's brain, and an icon (or layout, or header) that somebody just finds ugly or tasteless. So I'm going to stop and think about potential triggers, although let me say in advance that you're on your own for squicks. What this debate has highlighted for me is that fannish interaction has very few tactics for negotiating a consensus. There are modes of both positive and negative dog-piling, but a lot less about "OK, you've convinced me, now I'm going to try doing better." In part, it's because of the limitations of written communications, but there's a risk that "You're right, I was wrong, sorry" will be greeted by "How dare you patronize me like that?" Mind you, I know that the risk doesn't justify responding to someone's accurate identification of the factual error or thoughtless statement in your post with "Yeah? You're ugly, your mother dresses you funny, and I hope you die and your cat eats you," although that's a temptation to which I am quite prone. I'll be talking about the problem of idiosyncratic triggers under the cut, but what I've really changed my mind about is that I've been persuaded by the argument that although we can never know in advance every possible thing that will be triggering, if we had a consensus on what constitutes common triggers, then writers could choose to bear those in mind when drafting warnings. During the debate, I saw a lot of assertions that everybody knows what the accepted warnings are--but I also saw a lot of different lists of those warnings everybody knows about. In particular, I can easily believe that MPREG is a common squick, but I really can't believe that it's a trigger, because there are a lot of terrible things that occur in the real world; that some fans have been affected by on an ongoing basis; and that are harmful for them to read about. NB: behind a cut because possibly triggering topics are discussed here. And potentially triggering topics might also come up in comments.The examples are not intended to represent particular individual fans, just to make the discussion sound more personal than algebraic--e.g., "This happened to Judy" not "This happened to C." ( Read more... ) |
| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | |
| 1:07 pm | Interviewed by Lunabee34! Here are my interview questions from lunabee34. As per the meme, them as wants to be interviewed, ask for questions. 1. Current favorite recipe? Not really a recipe, but the other day I shelled my allotment of peas from the CSA, sauteed them with panir, and threw all the leftover multiculti harissa* into the pan, and heated up some rotis from the South Asian grocery store. Man, that was good. 2. The song you wish you could excise from the universe? "I-yi-yi-yi-yi will always love you." Or "I know that my heart will go on"--Not a big fan of melisma in entertainment contexts. (I don't go to religious services so I don't encounter it in liturgical settings.) 3. Most unpopular fannish opinion? OTP-itis is bad for fandom. The map is not the territory, and the label on the can is not the peaches. 4. Remodeling project you'd most like to undertake on your home? Arson? Nooo, let me be upbeat about this! I'd sort of like to move all the office stuff into what is now the living room, take down the saggy wallpaper in the office (I SUCK at hanging wallpaper, especially in a room with 12' ceilings), paint and sponge the walls, and move all the living room stuff into the office. 5. Favorite scent? If you mean "scent" in the sense of intentional perfume, Opium. I hate all Calvin Klein perfumes with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, which is weird because the best lipstick I ever had was CK Mauve from the 1980s Calvin Klein color cosmetics line. If you mean "smell" probably some cliched food item like butter-cinnamon-vanilla or, indeed, barbecue. *Trick out a base of Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce with not-very-hot-but-yummy jalapeno sauce from 99 cent store, extra chopped garlic, lemon pepper, sugar, and chili powder (for the cumin). |
| Friday, June 19th, 2009 | |
| 5:09 pm | Om Nom Nom: Moroccan Creamsicle Arnold Palmer I ate all the leftover poached apricots-and-nectarines from last night's dinner, but there was still a lot of vanilla-orange syrup left over. I sort of thought about getting some more soft fruit and doing a Master Sauce thing (i.e., just keep poaching more fruit until the syrup applies for U.N. membership) but I *also* had cold tea in the teapot, so I put the tea in the fridge and mixed up a cocktail of strong tea/syrup/sparkling water. Yummy, but it takes a lot of syrup to really make an impact. They never have a seltzer siphon anyplace where I'm in a position to buy one, but I'm sort of thinking about getting one in order to be able to make Odd Soft Drinks That Do Not Come in Containers that Have to Be Recycled. I'm sort of thinking about Mint Gingerale or Pomegranate Lemonade sort of things. |
| 2:09 pm | Om Nom Nom: OccamFail Just finished making a batch of Carottes a la Grecque (to be served cold; 2/3 of a package of Factitious Baby Carrots poached with wine, a little tomato puree, a finely chopped garlic scape*, sugar, lemon pepper, and fennel seeds--it's supposed to be coriander seeds but I don't have any because I don't really like them). I had half a bottle of prosecco left over from dinner with alizarin_nyc last night (I recorked it with an aluminum-foil plug, and it's still surprisingly fizzy). I realize that the simplest solution would just be to *drink* it but I basically don't drink, don't like wine very much, and like champagne-type wine less than still wine, so... Not that I ever actually manage to do it, but The Plan is to make a big pot of soup and batch of bread every Sunday, and to freeze containers of soup so I can have different kinds for soup-and-sandwich lunches. In which case, a nice salad or vegetable dish on the side would be welcome. There's still a bunch of wine left, so I'm thinking maybe chicken cutlet with mushrooms in wine sauce... *Roughly speaking, Scallion With Super-Powers |
| Sunday, June 14th, 2009 | |
| 10:44 am | Secret Sharers Research continues...not apace, but continues nonetheless...on the AustenPornFic. Leading me to muse that if you look at a bloke who has five daughters to marry off without the funds to do so according to his own standards; who has little communication with his wife; and who has some in-laws he really doesn't care for, you have either Pride and Prejudice or Fiddler on the Roof. (In the latter case, they are NOT KIDDING about the prejudice.) By Tevye's standards, Mr. Bennet *is* a rich man, and he does viddy-viddy-vum all day long, although whatever Mr. Bennet is reading it is probably not the Torah. |
| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | |
| 10:49 pm | SYTYCD: Friends Don't Make Friends Pretend to be Crash Test Dummies OK, that's it, between wanting to watch this and wanting to watch Dollhouse (and, for that matter, SYTYCD-Fall) this fall, I've decided to cave and buy a digital-compatible TV. Not that I'm not still mad that they didn't handle it the way the color TV transition was handled in my remote youth (i.e., if you bought a new TV set, you'd get to see the whizzy new colors, and if you didn't, you'd see the same old b&w programming you were used to). (Spoiler cut!) BestBuy had a huge heap of converter boxes for $50, but I read the teensy print on the box and it says you might need a splitter and results depend on having the right kind of antenna, whatever THAT is, and I'm not going up on the roof to install an antenna (or for any other purpose, for that matter). Adam Shankman is my ideal of a dance contest judge. He always has something kind and affirmative to say, and if there's something less-positive he wants to say afterwards, it's a legitimate critique of something that a dancer could improve. Although anybody who doesn't scream automatically looks better. ( Read more... ) |
| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | |
| 5:24 pm | You Know You've Been in Fandom Too Long When... Picking a book to take on the train to Broadway Workout tonight, I grabbed Pride and Prejudice, which I'm re-reading as background for the AustenPorn. I realized that I couldn't remember the first names of any of the men except Darcy. (For the record, it's William Collins, Charles Bingley, and George Wickham.) And then I mused about whether Fitzwilliam-William makes them secret sharers like Liam-William the Bloody (Awful Poet). Stop me before I kill again... |