I'm officially obsessed. I've been known to watch a bunch of Youtube videos, Google interviews, rewatch DVDs etc. for hours on end whenever I really love an actor/show/movie/whatever, but this Star Trek thing is quickly spinning out of what little control I ever manage to have over my (admittedly far too frequent) obsessions. I love this fandom! It's exciting! And so shiny! Yay lens flare! There's Quinto talking about zeitgeist, Pine's fucking aplomb, and then Urban goes and talks about the Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumvirate and that's it, I'm screwed, and totally, totally hooked.

I never thought I'd be so girly—Jesus, I've been having lengthy discussions with my roommate, wendybarrie_, on the relative merits of Karl Urban, Chris Pine and Zach Quinto's bloody EYEBROWS. *has clearly lost her mind* I've watched more interviews than I could possibly remember, and I've been following ontd_startrek posts like a deranged lunatic. (A deranged lunatic who knows way too many GQMF macros, e.g. this and this, for her own good, which may or may not make the whole thing much worse.)

So yes. I'm watching TOS (and loving it!) and reading Trek fic and ogling Pine/Quinto picspams when I should be reading Hourglass Awards fics. *headdesk* Yay. I CHAIN-WATCHED HEROES exclusively because of Sylar (okay, and Eccleston), man, this is a new and alarming low. Next thing you know, I'll be renting The Princess Diaries 2 because of Chris Pine. If I do that, someone please shoot me. Please. I'm begging you.

Speaking of which: sarahtales's Star Trek parody, which cannot be pimped enough. :D

There's a new True Blood episode coming this weekend! Should be interesting. I couldn't care less about Sookie/Bill, but more Eric = happy Chris, so yay season 2!

Via sullensiren: Men Who Stay Up All Night to Watch Girls While They Sleep (graph)

Merlin crackfic rec: Best Intentions Aside, by derryere (Modern!AU, Merlin is a Harry/Draco fanartist and Arthur finds out.)

...Shit, I think I've become a Trekkie.

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!)

I'm back to Law School! I thought it would be slightly odd to return here after my prolonged holidays, but it wasn't—not at all. I promptly started making lists and schedules, planning the next two years in advance and everything. I decided to leave university minoring in both Greek and Latin Culture and International Politics. I picked a pretty good schedule for myself this semester, with fifteen 2-hour lectures every week. (No one is allowed to have more than thirty hours a week.)

And then I got here today—first day of classes. I was wolfing down a ridiculously bad salad while rushing down a flight of stairs from my second class to the third, and just...stopped. No. I don't want to be driven insane every semester until I finish Law School. I've made peace with being bored out of my mind by most subjects I'll have to study, but I cannot let myself get insanely overworked while I'm at it. I'll take only thirteen lectures. Hmph.

Yesterday I started a Gilmore Girls marathon. I've always thought the show was all right, even though I've never adored it or anything, but I'd only caught random episodes on TV. So I watched season 1 and some of season 2; my opinion remains the same, but I've caught myself speaking and thinking in Lorelai-like logic alarmingly often in the past twenty-four hours. *laughs*

In other news, Breaking Dawn came out last weekend. It was predictably horrible, and I was extremely amused by many Twilighters' hatred of it. It's almost like they came to their senses a little! J. K. Rowling's recently announced The Tales of Beedle the Bard (coming out in December, yay! It's nice to expect a JKR book again!) surpassed the number of Amazon pre-orders for Breaking Dawn within hours, of course. *rolls eyes* And still the media insist on comparing the two. Oy, get some perspective. Stephenie Meyer makes Rowling seem like great literature, and that's saying something.

(Oh, and I'd take 'Albus Severus' over 'Renesmee Carlie' any day. *laughs*)

Today is Bono's birthday! I hope he had an awesome day ♥

Hourglass voting ends tonight. Ho hum. I still have a few fics to go, but I'm pretty sure I'll finish in time; I hope other people do, too. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the results! I do so wish oxys_kai_moros wouldn't be away for the weekend, but oh well—we can wait until Monday. *takes a deep breath*

In other news, there will in all likelihood be a new Shoebox chapter next week. And of course I'm NOT EXCITED. NOT AT ALL. The possibility doesn't even give me an irresistible urge (*snerk*) for CAPSLOCKING SHIT. SQUEE.

Arthur (dianaprallon's two-year-old son) is sick—it's so frustrating. He looks sad and tired most of the time when he has a temperature. (You can tell he's really tired when he can hardly sing along to the Potter Puppet Pals video The Mysterious Ticking Noise.) Powerlessness sucks. Grah.

Mother's Day starts in a few hours, so... queenofbabble: I know you've been insanely busy, and that we hardly ever get to talk these days, but I hope you get life sorted out. And stuff. :)

I joined ontd_twilight a couple of weeks ago. I'm still not sure what to make of the Twilight fandom. I wonder if they will ever run out of wankage; it's amusing that they haven't already, considering that the books have considerably less wank fodder than, say, Harry Potter. And Smeyer herself is so mockable and ridiculous that just ... I don't know, I don't get it. And it's starting to get less entertaining to point and laugh, because the wank gets repetitive and boring. Also, I'd had enough of ship wars for a lifetime long before I read Twilight.

I'm also rather excited with the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy, which pleased me more than anything since Meredith on morphine in very early season 3.

I have this song stuck in my head, thanks to anokam.

Arthur's taken some Tylenol, and is looking perkier. Yay!

Stephenie Meyer is currently number one on the poll for Time's list of most influential people this past year. Oh dear God. Please click on the link above and give people below her a fighting chance—Twilight fans seem to have undertaken the task to get her to the top, and it's just...*facepalms repeatedly* No. Wrong. It's Harry Potter: Best Animated Independent Foreign Language Documentary all over again. Only worse.

Go ahead, give Meyer the '1' she deserves. *nudges*

Also, here are some ideas of people you may want to give high ratings to:

Stephen Colbert (naturally);

Jon Stewart (obviously *fangirls*);

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO (because I adore him, and I'm currently minutes away from his house);

Bono (because I had to);

Jimbo Wales, creator of Wikipedia (because you all know I secretly have an altar at home where I make daily sacrifices to him);

Al Gore (because he's cool).

There are several other in/famous people, of course, from Amy Winehouse to Nelson Mandela. Take your pick. But *fumes* not Stephenie Meyer. Edit: Oh look, people agree with me *grins*

Speaking of which, I read the Twilight series this week. It was every bit as awful and cringe-worthy as everyone told me it would be, and also highly entertaining. At least now I can follow (and contribute to) the constant debates at UR with _thirty2flavors, inksplotched, callmepatsy and others.

In my last post, I asked for top 5 lists; I will try to post some of them in every post from now on.

( Five ships and the songs I associate with them, as requested by Liz, with download links )

So... that ended up being ridiculously long. Plus, it took me a while to upload all the songs, so I won't do any more top 5 lists tonight. I promise the next ones will be briefer *laughs* And oh look, in the time it took me to finish this post, Rain got the #1 spot from Meyer, by a small margin. This probably isn't cause for celebration, though *grins*

moon_dancing arrives tomorrow! *bounces*

ETA, April 14th Stephen Colbert is #1, and Jon Stewart is #2! Smeyer's been kicked to the 39th spot. Brilliant.