The following links are some of the many, many reasons why I've been going, "Jesus, I'd kill to be at Comic-Con" for the past couple of days, thanks to Twitter and the (admittedly far too many) geeks Twitter users I happen to follow.

(On the very, very bright side, firstlightofeos, moon_dancing, afterthree, oxys_kai_moros, nancy_downs, inksplotched and I have made plans to attend next year's Comic-Con together, which will be all kinds of brilliant!)

I'm excited for Iron Man 2 and Avatar and Fringe and of course the next two (:D!) Star Trek movies and oh God, watching Comic-Con news from afar is short-circuiting my obsessive brain. There's way too much geekery out there I want to watch. Crap.

( Links: Comic-Con costumes, Russell T. Davies, Firefly, Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods, The Guild, V, Chuck, True Blood, Twilight, Twitter )

Star Trek: SEE 'Make Kirk/Spock Canon' petition. I pretty much fully agree with sunhawk's thoughts on the matter, so I'll just sit here in my quiet internet corner and headdesk away.

Star Trek: Reboot fic recs of the must-read variety: We Reach Our Apogee Slowly by kowaiyoukai (Spock/Uhura, Kirk/Spock pre-slash, WIP), You'll Get There in the End (It Just Takes a While) by seperis (Kirk/Spock), Don't Last Like the Feeling by anowlinsunshine (Spock/Uhura, Kirk/Spock), Common Bond by florahart (Sarek/Winona). Also, rageprufrock's D: (RPS, Chris/Zach). Yes. I know. It's RPS. Shut up. [For more ST:TOR recs, click here.]

Incidentally, I neglected to make a Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince reaction post, despite my promise to afterthree that I would, so here's the gist of what I would've said: the movie was hilarious; I still don't like Gambon's Dumbledore; I enjoyed a lot of the movie, but the last third of it or so were just plain painful. I wasn't a big fan of the cave scene or Dumbledore's death. This wasn't my favourite movie, but it wasn't the worst of the batch. In a word: meh. EDIT: cleolinda has said it best in her Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in 15 Minutes, really. Heeee.

Ending on a random note, in case any of you somehow missed this link in the past few days, click to watch Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up, or: Rick-Rolling, Nirvana-style.

I spent the last few days judging Romance and NC-17 fics for the Hourglass Awards. Two things:

1) I'm astonished at how normal most of the sex in Harry Potter fanfiction is. Sure, there are plenty of squicky/strange/Squid-related fics out there, but for the most part it's just very, very normal sex, with the occasional contraceptive charm or conjured lube or simply misused motor oil. After spending the last few weeks immersed in pon farr/touch telepathy fic, it all just seems insanely straightforward. Not that it's a bad thing or anything, but I kept half-waiting for people to meld, or someone's eyes to turn golden and make shit explode.

2) I dislike most sappy NC-17 fics, but good God, overly sappy Sirius/Remus fics annoy me more than sap in pretty much any other ship. I don't mean the cute, clichéd, shit-we-had-inadvisable-drunken-sex-and-I-realised-I've-been-in-love-with-you-all-along kind; it's the "I wuv you, Siri-poo" ones that make me want to claw my fucking eyes out. Ugh.

But then again, maybe the excessive ~puppy love~ doesn't annoy other people as much as it does me. So: poll!

Poll #1427435 Marauder nicknames
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 56

Which of the following Marauder-era nicknames would you willingly use in a (non-parody) HP fic?

I'm ridiculously excited for U2's new tour—their first concert was full of hiccoughs (e.g. they failed spectacularly at One and With or Without You, which they've been playing for years), but they seem to have sorted themselves out, and things are looking good! They even played Electrical Storm twice! (Well, except for that godawful I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight remix. What are they thinking?)

I'm on holidays, which is totally brilliant :D I'm in São Paulo for the HBP release, and I've been hanging out with friends whom I rarely see, so yay!

Gah. I've been reading too much Harry Potter fic. I miss Star Trek and Merlin. *twitches* Withdrawal. Seriously. God, this is sad.

In other news, I'm completely in love with the icon I used to make this post.

ETA Guys, guys, Kali set out to explore Twilight-esque purple prose, and managed to come up with a true wonder of Doctor Who cheesefic, hosted here. It is without a doubt the worst piece of fanfiction she's even posted—and yes, I'm totally counting the find-replace "Harry Potter" one. ♥ It's a work of art. You're an amazing goddess, Kali. I...have no words. *snerk*

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.

I don't usually pimp fandom memes, but this one's awesome:

Fandom Superlatives!
SUMMER 2009 EDITION: GO VOTE

Among other categories, we have: Most Likely to Succeed in World Domination • Most Likely to Not Even Notice the Apocalypse (Donna!) • Most Likely to Bring New People to the Fandom • Basic Instinct Award (Most Likely to be Killed by a Jealous Lover) • Best Season Finale • Show Most Likely to Have a Musical Episode • Show You've Converted the Most Viewers To • Best Opening Sequence or Titles • Most Likely to Snap and Kill Everyone One Day • Best Mentor • Character Who Would Have the Best Blog (is there even any doubt? *grins*) • Character You Most Wanted to Die Who Didn't • Most Likely to Start an Orgy • Damsel in the Most Distress (*snerk* I love it that Arthur's nominated for this) • Best Monster • Most Promising New Series • Most Powerful/Well Done Death

They're in dire need of Harry Potter/Doctor Who/Merlin/Dr. Horrible/Star Trek love, you guys. Seriously, last time I checked Chris Pine wasn't even nominated for 'Most GQ,' which is just wrong. God, this meme is reminding me of several fandoms I didn't remember I liked! Go vote! :D

This meme is making me realise how little fandom-variety there is in my LJ icons. This is most distressing :|

( In which I ramble about Heroes seasons 1-3 )

(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!)

When I first joined the Harry Potter fandom, I was kind of insanely anti-slash. This certainly had a bit to do with my über-religious upbringing—I just felt like slash didn't belong in Harry Potter. I saw no signs of it in canon; HP was a children's book, really, and any kind of NC-17 fanfiction was just a bit too odd for my liking. Adding gay sex to the mix was just an extra squick.

It's kind of hilarious to look back now.

( My (tl;dr) thoughts on yaoi, let me show you them. )

...Whoa, long entry is long. Sorry about that.

The new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon, was leaked two weeks early and I have it and oh my God it's AWESOME. I've been squeeing with firstlightofeos for a while now. I'm ridiculously happy right now. *dances*!

My poor roommates will have to live through two months of me listening to this on repeat every single day. Oh well. Sorry, guys. I feel bad for you, I do, but...yeah.

There's a verse in Unknown Caller that goes "Force-quit, and move to Trash." I'm so amused. ("Force quit" is Mac-speak for "control-alt-del.") *snerk*

Also, there's a track called Magnificent—a word that in and of itself reminds me of Donna Noble—and it starts something like this: I was born to be with you / In the space and time / After that, and ever after / I haven't had a clue. It cracked me up. Okay, so maybe it's 'this' space and time or whatever, maybe I misheard it, but it still made me laugh a great deal *grins*

afterthree gave me five topics to ramble about, so I'll get to that before I forget.

Comment on this post and I will give you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

( UR.org )

( Dumbledore & Albus/Gellert )

( Runi )

( *actions in asterisk* )

( Mac )

So I ended up having my copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard shipped to firstlightofeos's house rather than to Brazil—I'm still not sure exactly why I did that—and I had to read the Portuguese version while impatiently waiting for her to get to Brazil (which will happen in ten days).

I loved it! The tales themselves are adorable, and I can totally imagine wizarding children having this read to them. Dumbledore's commentary was very, very interesting—I can hardly wait to add everything to the wiki *grins*

But oh my God, what the fuck was up with his commentary to The Tale of the Three Brothers? It made me laugh so hard at times—Dumbledore, you arse, you idiot, the evidently careful research you spew on the topic of the Elder Wand is evidence enough that you never believed the BS of which you're trying to convince the reader. (Because, of course, these notes were written for an outside reader who had no idea of Dumbledore's past and of his personal involvement in the Hallows Quest.)

And therein, I think, lies my biggest in-universe issue with the commentary: JKR mentions in the introduction that Dumbledore's comments were left in his will to the Hogwarts archives, which ties in nicely with Scrimgeour's statement to the trio in DH7. However, when commenting on The Warlock's Hairy Heart, he makes a gratuitous offhand mention to Voldemort's creation of Horcruxes. This makes no sense. Dumbledore had every book that as much as mentioned Horcruxes removed from the Hogwarts library, and he died before Voldemort was defeated. Why would he reveal his knowledge of Voldemort's Horcruxes? Why would he even mention a theme he hated so viscerally? The mention served no practical purpose in the commentary (also because anyone who's read JKR's interviews on the subject knows exactly what a Horcrux is). Bah!

(Yes, I realise this is the canon nazi in me speaking, and I know no one noticed/cared. It still bugs me.)

That being said, The Warlock's Hairy Heart is, by far, my favourite of the Beedle tales. (Obviously.)