When you see this, post five seven unpopular fandom opinions in your journal.

1. [Doctor Who] I adore Steven Moffat and all his DW episodes (except for the fourth season two-parter, because no amount of fangirlism can get me to appreciate River), so I'm actually curious to see what he'll do with Eleven. I'll miss Tennant like hell, but I'll definitely give the next series a chance.

2. [Torchwood] I hate Torchwood. I've watched several episodes, and I should like it, really—I love Jack, and James Marsters was in it, even, I should've been all over that, but...no. The team fails, and even Jack fails, and Owen fails, and Gwen fails oh God, so hard, and the plotlines are ridiculous, and they're all amazingly inefficient and terrible at their jobs, and just, what the hell were you high on when you allowed this to happen, RTD?

( Harry Potter, Star Trek, Merlin, et al. )


I signed up to write two reel_merlin fics: Laws of Attraction and Imagine Me & You. *headdesk* I think it's a masochism thing. But hey, I have until September—I may actually finish them, who knows?

Oh, and just because it's being debated everywhere: Michael Jackson died. The rumour outbreak broke the internet—including, but not limited to, LJ, Twitter, E! and CNN. I'm pretty sure ohnotheydidnt did the LJ-breaking; the comm was inaccessible for a while before the whole site crashed down. Damn, I really wanted to read people's comments on the matter. Way to go, ONTD!

I feel sorry for the bazillion people who bought tickets for his 'This Is It' 2010 tour, anyhow. The man's musical talent was respect-worthy regardless of personal taste, even if his private life was a godawful mess.

(PSA: Guys, sarahtales' LJ—most of you remember her as the Drop Dead Gorgeous author—was hacked, just like copperbadge's and shoebox_project. As usual, all her entries were deleted; don't click on the links you see there.)

And just because I do this every year:

Happy Towel Day! (Alas, not a Thursday this year.)

Also, happy Lilac Day! The happy folks over at howdotheyrise have started their celebration already, and I find myself dying to reread Night Watch—I haven't done that since the release of Half Blood Prince, which was when I bought the damned thing; I read half the book while waiting in line. (My first Pratchett. *tear*)

Random links of the day:

1) I'm On A Ship (I'm on a Boat, Star Trek XI-style). Made of win.

2) Extended Serenity gag reel, which for some reason or another I found myself watching, like, 15 different times this week. And quoting extensively. All the time. It's funnier if you've seen the movie, or if you like Nathan Fillion, but it's also pretty damn funny if you haven't, and if you're a sad, deprived soul who has no idea who the man is. If that is the case, watch this and remedy this fortunately curable condition as soon as possible.

3) Ickle Twilight/Buffy crossover, with a bonus Something Blue reference. *grins* I was linked to it from this fanficrants rant, which definitely deserves a click all on its own.

4) I've set up a fanfiction recs Twitter account here. As you can imagine, it's mostly Merlin and Harry Potter, but there are a couple of other fandoms there somewhere.

(I don't have the patience to do the awesome reasons-for-reccing thing that afterthree did at Coffee and Chocolate, and that thirty2flavors and inksplotched did at atasteof, but I do have too many fic links bookmarked—so yay for Twitter's 140-character limit!)

Oh, there's lots of Star Trek, too. Obviously.

This fandom is taking over my life, guys, it's not even funny. I think I've said this about far too many fandoms way too many times. I'm downloading all the movies and all the series while impatiently waiting for the remastered DVDs to come out in Brazil (May 27th!). *sighs* This is my brain on Trek. THEY HAVE PON FARR, PEOPLE. How can a fandom that has an official name for AMTDI fic not be awesome?

I've never been a Trekkie—I know nothing of the old series apart from the occasional tidbit, and of course the fact that Kirk/Spock was the Slash Ship to Start All Slash Ships. (I'm all for that, incidentally. And the subtext made me laugh out loud way too many times.)

I've just watched J. J. Abrams' Star Trek and shit, it's made of AWESOME. It's also possibly the Wibbly-Wobbly-Timey-Wimiest movie I've ever seen, even though it's totally anti-WWTW logic, of course. Here's my two cents: ( Are you out of your Vulcan mind? )

I liked this movie far (FAR) more than I did any of the latest Star Wars flicks (which I didn't hate, except for most of Hayden Christensen's bits). Watch and learn, Lucas. This is how a decent director works his actors! This is how a competent plot-maker (and J. J. Abrams is nothing if not a superb plot-maker) develops his story! ... Oh man, I loved this so hard. I'm still on a major geek high.

I watched Angels & Demons right before Star Trek, and I can't decide if I hate The Da Vinci Code or this one more. This one had worse plot devices and lamer action sequences, even though the plot itself was better—more credible, I guess. Tom Hanks had some particularly horrible bits. The burning scene was cool, though. *grins* Of the two books, A&D is probably better; the two movies are pretty much equally bad, but this one doesn't have Ian McKellen.

A Half-Blood Prince trailer showed right before Angels & Demons. As usual, I'm doing my best not to be excited, and not to let myself think that this movie could actually be decent. I know it won't work, but I can still try. *grins* Man, they're going to fuck up the book's plot so thoroughly, it's not even going to be funny. I can hardly wait.

Regarding yesterday's season finales: I haven't watched Grey's Anatomy at all this season, but I know what happened, and yay! Finally! As for Supernatural, oh my God, that was mind-boggling and brilliant and almost entirely unexpected. I loved it! I thought they'd ruined the show's next season with this larger-than-life season plot, but they didn't. I'm happy.

Overall, it's been a good day to be a geek. *beams*

Happy wedding day, oxymoron! I hope everything goes well ♥

I'm a big fan of character-driven fiction. It's not that I think plot is unimportant, but it's secondary—a plot has to be truly dazzling to make me ignore severely underdeveloped characters. (Lord of the Rings anyone?)

So yeah, character-centric > plot-centric. This applies to movies, TV series, books, fanfiction, you name it. I'd take Closer over Catch Me If You Can (and Havemercy over City of Bones, and Dexter over Alias, and Drop Dead Gorgeous over Draco Sinister) any day. Shit, I just fandom-dated myself really badly by mentioning that fic, didn't I.

By 'character-centric,' I don't mean plotless—it's mostly that the plot exists to push along the character development, and not the other way around.

( Issues of the Week, BSG, genfic and Dollhouse )

Just to clarify, I don't consider 'plot-driven' an insult or anything. Nevertheless, I do believe bad writers don't try to write character-centric stories nearly as often as they do plot-driven ones (maybe it's easier to settle for the latter, because plot-driven fiction is the norm, and to part with that you need a firmer crafting hand, to have at least some idea of what you're doing? I'm not sure).

...And then Stephenie Meyer comes along with a primarily character-driven universe that has little to no plot or character development for at least 70% of any given book in the series, and I...I don't even know what to do with that.

Anyhow! I've rambled on for long enough. Do any of you guys have a preference? Is this a distinction that matters to you—in published fiction, fanfiction, or TV?

(Unrelated: Geek pride ftw!)

Ladida. Hello again, LJ! I haven't posted twice in a row since Election Day—and I don't remember what the last time before that was. But don't mind me—it's just that, among other things, my UR fic exchange prompt is driving me crazy. I mean, dancing-on-the-hills, why-so-serious, stabbing-my-wife-and-son-in-a-deserted-hotel crazy. Seriously.

Also, I so very dearly wish Britney Spears' Womanizer wouldn't get stuck in my head at least twice a day. I blame defexxx, who listens to it all day long. It so doesn't help.

Meme stolen from firstlightofeos, and pretty much everyone on my flist:

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Count how many you have read.
3) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.

( The Big Read list )

49! *grins* And no, firstlightofeos, you definitely don't get bonus points for reading one of these in more than one language—if that were the case, I'd get two bonus points for the Bible alone, and a few for several others in the list *laughs*

I've started at least fifteen of the ones I haven't read, and, with the exception of five or so, I own the entire list. *sighs* I really need to finish reading all the books I bought while travelling. Damn.

In other news, Cruz has effectively replaced Opera as my browser of choice.

20 days until Christmas! And nine days until Runi arrives! Man, I love December.

I'm in London! *grins* I've done few interesting things other than shopping so far, mostly because I came with my father, stepmother, uncle, godmother, and three brothers. We're doing many of the traditional touristy things I tend to run away screaming from — London Eye, Madame Toussauds, etc. Oh well.

As per instructions on inksplotched's LJ:

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride - preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."

I have a special love for Goldman's highly amusing 'edits' in the PB book, so here's one:

But from a narrative point of view, in 105 pages nothing happens. Except this: 'What with one thing and another, three years passed.'

...dude, I have no Princess Bride icons? Fail!

I spent a ridiculous amount of time last month organising my iTunes library; now that inksplotched and neverwiser have posted an iTunes meme... well, I couldn't not do it.

( iTunes stats )

In other news, I finally got around to reading Antony and Cleopatra. Colleen McCullough's seven-book series Masters of Rome is LOVE.

firstlightofeos's spring break is almost over. I wonder what I'll do in Palo Alto while she's studying. Hmm.

I'm almost done with three of the categories I signed up to judge in the Hourglass Awards. Only four to go! Yay. *rolls eyes*

- Reply to this post, and I will pick five/six of your icons.
- Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
- Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
- This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee. Whoo!

It took me too long to stop to write this post, so I ended up with three sets of icons. *facepalm* Right. Sorry for the length.

( The icons Chelle chose )

( The icons Sara chose )

( The icons Runi chose )