{ split subject }

projectjulie has suffered for quite some time from a lack of attention and a profound incoherence in its purpose and audience. I never much wanted a blog, or even an online journal, and if dipped my toe into such waters it was mostly incidental. what I want is a hub and an archive, a nexus for all the people and things to which I'm connected. so I'm making it official: this LJ is now merely a clearinghouse and a placeholder (akin to a "digital lifestyle aggregator," in web2.0-speak). I'll continue moblogging pix and tweets here (twitter, it turns out, is exactly the microscopic and immediate degree of blogging that engages me). in other words: nothing much has changed vis å vis the dearth of meaningful content, except that comments are turned back ON for mobile posts, since I plan for those to be the only ones (or perhaps I'll still make flocked entries once in a while, we shall see).

what I've loved most about lj, as an interface, is its capacity to foster and nurture intimacy across time and space. but, as in all things, we reap what we sow, and these days I'm not expending the effort to make it fulfilling for this purpose. this is an inevitable side-effect of being a dissertator: in order to finish my PhD, which is monastic and all-consuming, I have to learn to be a worse friend. all I can say is that it's painful, but necessary.

CONTENT
- my diss and other updates about my academic progress and accomplishments remain at cyborganize
- after adamantly resisting for years, I'm suddenly quite taken with Facebook, and am exploring how to make it as comprehensive a nerve center as possible for my personal and professional presence
- and to reiterate the sidebar links (and then some), you can also find me on www, ourchart, friendster, imeem, youtube, bliptv, flickr, delicious (fannish/personal/professional), gcal, plazes, librarything -- or all of these aggregated at profilactic (or jaiku)

FRIENDS
- I've done some defriending -- let me reiterate that I have affection for all of you, and this move is wholly motivated by my regrettable need to pare down my online life
- by the same token, I'm extending unfriending amnesty: if you'd like to remove me now, especially given the devolution this journal, please feel free to do so, with no hard feelings
- I remain committed to reading my flist and everyone on it faithfully, though you'll have to continue to forgive my minimal commenting
- I still have a lot of long-term catch-up reading to do, mostly fic, which may or may not ever happen

( FANDOM )

[this post will be future-dated]

I seriously just jotted down this recent roadtrip conversation on a sticky note in 2 minutes, so I figured I might as well post it here (the ongoing official LJ hiatus notwithstanding), along with a few other fannish tidbits I should share.

It came in the aftermath of watching the trailer for the new BSG spinoff Caprica[!], which is SO LOLARIOUSLY BAD that it boggles the mind. THE CYLONS WERE CREATED BY MAN: TO CURE THEIR MANPAIN! This is potentially good for me, time management wise, because if the trailer is any indication the show may actually be too unappealing for me to even sit through, much less get excited about -- despite the enticing presence of my faves Atia and Trixie portraying Wife #1 and Wife #2.

Anyway, my roadtrip buddy asked me to define "manpain":
Angst about how hard it is to be a straight white man. Straight white men have lots of big important responsibilities, like saving the world and protecting ladies and children. The great weight of these responsibilities hurts them in their deep and delicate souls.

This definition is moreover, I think, a good rationalization of why manpain annoys me on on male but not on female characters. When women (Kara Thrace or Sarah Cameron, for example) can be characterized as exhibiting manpain, it's because THEY have lots of big important responsibilities, like saving the world and protecting ladies and children, and that's actually kinda cool.

What's NOT cool is, in pirateygoodness's words, "a show entirely about boys and the wives and/or daughters that occasionally show up to make them furrow their brows":


Also:

1. I've had almost no time to work on my LATE hot_toaster ficathon story, which I originally intended to start in late June. This in itself is a perfect testament to all the ways that the current rhythm of my life supports making vids and multimedia crack but not real fic writing. I'm determined clear part of this week to finish a draft, though.

2. Despite being so undeserving, I received the stunning Hybrid POV Cyloncest fic lab'ring to discharge an active heat from tellitslant!

3. I have an actual plane ticket to vividcon (Thursday-Monday) -- though I still may not get into the con proper.

4. I have two vid reviews posts planned for cyborganize in anticipation -- one all BSG -- but in the meantime let me point you to heyiya's articulate and flattering notes about some projects she, I, and beccatoria have finished recently.

5. In case you haven't heard, there's an epic wankstorm in progress -- suffice it to say that FanHistorydotcom is bad, and you should support the OTW's upcoming wiki instead.

i. this primary season has been painful (even though so far I've avoided voting, since I'm registered in Michigan). I've been at a loss for how to engage or respond or even articulate the crippling double-binds. so because fandom is my orientation and my native language:

deborah_judge and I (egged on by iamsab) are thrilled to present: majoritython, the women and people of color in politics challenge! we hope that this 'thon, for fanworks featuring fictional characters and real people who rule or govern or hold civil office, will redress in some small way the negativity and divisiveness, sexism and racism currently stirred up around people of color and women in power.

you can read all about Majority Rules here. this is right up the alley of plenty of folks on my flist (you know who you are), and I WANT YOU to participate. even if you aren't able to sign-up, you can contribute by trying your hand at some creative googling and inventing prompts. and by PIMPING, pretty please?! this has the potential to reach a vast number of fandoms, but only if we have help spreading the word (I've got chamalla_dreams, cj_fangrrl, and rpfs covered -- choc_fic or vidding, anyone?).

my condition for myself when committing to running this, time-management wise, was that I wasn't allowed to submit. but then I accidentally listened to a song. yeah, I may very well have signed up to make my 1st vid (though whether I'll actually finish it is another matter altogether). SHUT UP. it's a movie vid (of complete crack). I may very well have it story-boarded and meta-noted in my head. like my 0th vid, it may be something that nobody else is ever able to love a fraction as much as I do.

ii. in other news that's fit to print: I am creeping toward mental, emotional, and spiritual preparedness for the BSG premiere. inspiration has struck about my S4 project: for each episode, I plan to create some document or artifact (in keeping with the archival theme) that inserts the GIRLSLASH GOGGLES into the narrative. please send any ideas or requests by way of thearchive2.

iii. if you're feeling only a small fraction of the love I'm feeling for fandom right now (or, you know, the frustration with livejournal), consider making a small donation to become a member of the Organization for Transformative Works. OTW is building the next great home for fanworks, a not-for-profit archive with an infrastructure that supports and protects our values.

iv. the computer store gave Pythia back, all "your drive passed the hardware test." I figured my troubleshooting skills had gotten rusty. then I got her home and, yup, the hard drive is indeed still broken. so today it's back to the shop (I explained to them about writing zeros, and my poor baby made the crunching/clicking sound on cue). although rather lobotomized without it, I'm in good spirits, all things considered -- poojapooja saved what little sanity I have left by loaning me her old Vaio. and I get a new keyboard/top case out of the whole affair, and possibly Leopard, and the new memory I bought is installed, so in a few more days it will be practically like having a whole new lappy!

while I'm on the subject of technology: what platform would you recommend for an academic who needs to create a multimedia portfolio in a user-friendly fashion? blog architecture is not really flexible enough to create an archive that includes text, films, etc. there must be some social media site that offers CMS-style functionality in a web 2.0 front-end, while being more professionally-oriented than the likes of Vox or Nexo and shinier than ourmedia?

v. the photo meme (again): Ask me to take pictures of any aspect of my life that you're interested in/curious about -- it can be anything from my favourite shirt, to my cell phone [ED: it can't actually be my cell phone, because I use that to take the pictures].

attendance, meatspace: ljconscript, _plasticity_, coffeejunkii
attendance, cyberspace: aeonian

( chat transcript, sekrit ficwank redacted, RAZOR SPOILERS )

new in projectjulie:
• mandysbitch asks me: Who the F**K Are You? in an elaborate interview about my fannish orientation, wherein you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about fictocriticism, girlslash goggles, and doppelcest...
• Laura and Tory have smokin' hot sex: the sequel! plus, one week till part three (which I might have accidentally written a complete 2000+ word draft of in a single afternoon -- who are you and what have you done with julie!?).
• an ultimately rather perfunctory meta post about gender and femslash that's been on my list for quite a while but for some unknown reason got written today.

as enamored as I am of OTP 2.0, I secretly love how the sheer size of bsg_femslash's Kara/Laura tag gives the statistical lie to our talk of this being an ensemble rather than OTP-based fandom. 81 uses, with Laura/Tory, Laura/Maya, and Laura/Six tied for second-place pairing with 15 or 16. take that, Starbuck!

and it makes me reminisce about how we got here. yeah, for a minute we were all aflutter about the prospect of becoming a Major Femslash Fandom, and maybe in the end that didn't materialize. but it will always be *my* major femslash fandom, top to bottom, start to closed canon (the point when I finish passing the torch, or whenever I complete the season 4 fic that I really hope I won't be compelled to write). in the beginning (through mid-2005, we're talking) there were the trailblazers, like meeshy who created the comm and yahoogroup and minerva_fan who introduced us to our OTP and others who've been faithful supporters all along (jennyo, tellitslant, sheepfairy, ariestess and shatterpath). in the middle, there were my people (including thenewhope, queen wrangler of femslashers), who called ourselves the Quorum of Five, which has since largely disintegrated in ways that I mourn, and in other ways deepened into friendships that are no longer necessarily or primarily about BSG femslash.

and then a funny thing happened: I don't know where these folks came from or how they got here, but all of a sudden there was this whole new generation of baby BSG femslashers around! and they pimped and betaed and squeed at and sometimes fell in love with each other, and really built a community. it makes me all flaily-happy, so I'm going to attempt to introduce you. ( Read more... )

if this made you too feel all warm and fuzzy inside, consider writing something for the Season Three Battle or helping del.icio.us the masterlist...

as a footnote, I wish I'd done a similar catalogue of SVU fandom back in the day (or did I? I know I made heathers chronicle me the oral history, pre-2004). it was my glorious first LJ fandom, and left a hole in my heart when it met its untimely demise. R.I.P. Olivia Benson! it dawned on me, recently, that I need to disabuse myself of my notions of being a femslash fandom BNF expert. ralst has taken livejournal by storm, more power to her, and I have the utmost respect for the work she's put into passion_perfect, turning it into an empire unto itself and the engine behind the static archive. P&P has picked up where SVU left off (partly by dissipating and partly by veering off into more obscure shows), not with all the same people but with all the delightful snark. that's gotta be the mainstream of femslash, insofar as there is one, and I'm not participating in the comm even as a lurker. it's so obviously not ME -- not the fandoms, not the writing style, not the approach. I guess I'm at peace with being what theholyinnocent calls a pretentious twat? it just worries me, with this dissertation, that the things that make a lot of femslash meaningful are alien to me (though I can, you know, understand them, just not organically -- and I still love a good lesbian romance novel, for the record, it's just that I never read them anymore).

and finally, you guys! BEST. SEQUEL. EVER. seriously, I squealed like a little girl during the preview at The Invasion. I might spontaneously combust when the movie comes out! (I was an Elizabethan fangirl first.)

i. calling all girlslashers: you know you have to watch Damages, right? I mean, you can trust afterellen if you don't want to take my word for it (click the "Damages" tag for more), but seriously? this is the most mind-meltingly gay series to come to summer cable in recent memory. picture The Devil Wears Prada as a serious serial drama, then substitute high-powered law firm for high-powered fashion mag, turn Meryl Streep into Glenn Close and make her character about five times as scary, and you will begin to comprehend the power of this OTP.

if that image isn't enough for you, here are ( a couple ubergay things that happened in the pilot ) it's getting good critical buzz, but honestly I wasn't overly impressed by the clunky, derivative anti-corporate thriller plot. Ted Danson is so endearing as Evil CEO that you almost want HIM to win! but OH PATTY. go ahead, DL it and see for yourself. and then join damages_fx.

ii. someone is clearly falling down on the job, because it was only by accident that I found tallulah71's new BSG vid Sunday Bloody Sunday. and yeah, I also went, "really? isn't that a bit heavy-handed?" but it turned out to be everything one could possibly want from a vid to that song. I said, in my comment, that she managed to make it simultaneously a biting political commentary and a heart-wrenching emotional juggernaut. and there are these beautiful sequences of parallel clips in it about humans and cylons, in hate and in love. (oh, and iamsab said, "it had really good 'people pointing guns at each other while trembling.' not just Lee. he's usually the trembler.") it gives me chills, man, every time.

seriously, this deserves to be part of the pantheon of Big Name BSG Vids. I'm pretty sure I've seen most of the ones that get recced right and left, but if there are any other new ones like THIS out there that I don't know about, please rectify the oversight. (no Adama/Roslin or Kara/Lee, kthnx.)

also, you should watch jarrow's Snape vid, along with everything Brad Neely ever does. TRUST ME. Professor Snake is totally my girlfriend!

iii. I got a haircut and lost half my sprout. TRAUMA. to be fair, Miguel did ask me three times if I was sure I wanted him to cut it. thing is, I DID want him to do something with it. really, I wanted for him to have some overarching artistic concept. or at least, to cut only the three inches he showed me with his fingers, and not the six inches he actually lobbed off. I won't even have enough for tiny pigtails for a week or two; luckily I have the flower clip and there's one and only one hairstyle I can do in the meantime, with the remaining spit of curls flipped up so it somewhat covers the unfortunate spikes. of the good: the back is perfectly fauxhawked, just how I want to keep it for the foreseeable future. I just don't know HOW I'll keep it this way while the top grows back out enough to work with, because I don't really feel like paying $30 a pop to maintain it (I can mohawk by myself, but not fauxhawk). this is why I started Operation Grownup Haircut 18 months in advance of interviews, I suppose. pictures not forthcoming.

iv. also, after exercising heretofore untapped reserves of willpower in the various eyewear boutiques where I shopped for sunglasses, I accidentally bought new glasses frames at Lenscrafters. I pick them up tomorrow, and I'm rather trepidatious, because can they really be the ubertrendy Frames of Ultimate Destiny that I was trying to hold out for?? but they were subtly cateyed metallic pink with (woefully logoed and undecorated) orangey plastic sides, and maybe it's enough for them to be the Frames of Opportunity, because did I really want to put new $500 lenses in year-old frames (however magenta)? pictures forthcoming (I hope).

v. (as seen on twitter) we saw Jorja Fox (again) at Brite Spot! she's such Silverlake hipster dyke and it makes me very very happy. we're not maintaining a very high volume of celebrity sightings, around here, but Jorja's always a good one.

vi. I have NOT read Book 7, nor am I planning to do so anytime soon, but I HAVE read all your Book 7 reaction posts. which means I am spoiled for *everything* that happens, hurrah! it traumatizes me (despite said fandom's current wankopalypse) that I'm apparently so utterly out of HP fandom. I mean, I still have a tag! I did see the movie! *clings*

vii. I accidentally did this:



it's accurate, I think, except I might technically be slightly stronger on the J, and I/E is pretty much a tossup.

viii. I retired a whole mess of icons, leaving me slightly shellshocked, but now I have so much space for shinies! (c.f. temporary Damages icon that I threw together; nyuszi has promised more and better). but I cannot, for the life of me, find the girlslashy Grey's icons. WTF, people?? my kingdom for a good Addison/Cally square. also, some combination of Ugly Betty's Alexis/Wilhemina/Christina (I found Betty/Amanda). and I wouldn't mind some Teen Girl Squad. SEND HELP.

ix. the Which LOLcat Are You? results page is genius. it's like a zillion times better than the quiz itself (which gave me icanhazcheezburger cat, when *clearly* I am but-I-eated-it cat).

x. lest you think I'm spending ALL my time writing long, pointless lj entries, look how I've started posting tiny bits of my dissertation @ cyborganize. go team me!

BSG dog tags. Before (with prototype that I colored in which didn't work, for size comparison), during (in the toaster oven, appropriately enough), and after.







project instigated and materials provided by my friend boy!julie (shrinky dink party!).

I AM OFFICIALLY OBSESSED WITH FANVIDS. please send help good SVU vids for my diss chapter (I probably just need one). (OR! I could write the conclusion about vidding. that would give me more time to think about it since I'm doing that chapter last.)

for those playing along at home, this all happened in the past year, when I cautiously dipped my toe into the wonderful world of BSG vids (plus the occassional girlslash vid or metavid, thanks cathexys). but mostly since monday (see the previous post). and then blacksquirrel showed up here with her massive archive (which she has bequeathed to me) and we've been watching vids every spare minute (jarrow I showed off your girlslash vids!).

I joined vidding. it's entirely possible that I need to go to vividcon (OK, I just looked up the date, August 10-12 in Chicago, which really doesn't work with my schedule).

when I have TIME to watch and learn about vids, however, is an entirely different matter. *headdesk*

now's probably when I should show you this, if I haven't already forced you to watch it -- MY metavid from David Eick's BSG videoblog (a class project):

1. my web empire sites are back up, halleluia! I'm having the urge to create some sort of hyperlinked visual map of my cyberbody (see below re: unproductive procrastination).

2. since I took my orals, I've forgotten how to do work. compounding the calamitousness of this situation is the fact that I've also apparently forgotten how to procrastinate via livejournal. traditionally it's been my morning activity, and with the way I've been sleeping I've lost mornings altogether. clearly the wise course would include some sort of filter or compromise, but I just WANT to read all of it, deeply. one less draconian strategy I've been testing is to split the flist into journals, communities and feeds and read them separately. this has the added bonus of allowing me to do some helpful empirical analysis of my unwieldy lj commitments:

hypothesis: fanfic reading/feedbacking comprises the majority of my lj-time (thus, a round of unfriending would do little to reduce the total).

relative percentages, in number of posts (approximate)
P=50% (200-300 per week)
Y=40%
C=10% (at MOST)

relative percentages, in time (approximate)
P=70% (200-300 per week)
Y=18%
C=12% (and about 90% of this is the combination of bsg_femslash, metafandom, and femslash_today, with a little bit of femslash100 thrown in [and galacticanews if I WERE reading it, which I was forced to stop doing] -- the other 50 or so comms I'm watching have virtually no impact)

conclusions: I spend a greater proportion of my lj-time reading personal journals than I expected! now, the data is somewhat misleading because I've discovered, also unexpectedly, that I actually read more fic off people's personal journals than off communities (particularly, fic which requires thoughtful consideration and comments, and which is thus most time-consuming). so this is perhaps more a refinement of the initial hypothesis than a refutation. feeds is, incidentally, the most heterogeneous category, as it includes both personal blogs by friends that I read faithfully, elaborate professional things that I need to pay attention to but mostly skim, and junk that I almost totally ignore -- hence why Y takes much less time than P, despite having almost as many posts (also, Y almost never involves leaving comments).

tonight, I was feeling a crisis coming on, so I pulled out feeds and comms and blew through 10 days of them in a couple of hours. this leaves me with the thinned-out journals-only flist to read for a while (until I catch up to today), which is a relief.

3. to file under: things I did to procrastinate when I SHOULD be catching up on livejournal, I checked out imeem while putting together a screening and it completely ATE MY BRAIN. I'm now planning to rerun my BSG vlog there, serially (two segments per week, starting may 1). for first time or repeat viewers who'd like to watch it in manageable doses: morebsg_vlog

p.s. why does the fanvid about Hera and all her lesbian mommies (particularly the cylon ones -- interpret that how you will) not exist?? (I do LOVE Babies but it's disconcertingly heterosexual -- like, I'd sort of forgotten that there were actually straight parents on that show.) (this query is related to my conference paper).

4. also (same file), I just signed up for remixthedrabble. plus I wrote this. *facepalm*

5. see what I mean about bad sleep habits?! it's 4am and I'm just now finishing up tonight's todo list. which, incidentally, did NOT include completing the conference presentation -- I'm not entirely sure when that's going to happen. (in my defense, I'm usually somewhat more responsible than this -- it's just that it's crunch time because tomorrow alistern and blacksquirrel arrive!!!)

so I'm working on the BSG talk. you'll all get to read it soon, with its accompanying "Hera Has Six Mommies" screencap series. but I'm trying to find a lost source and it's driving me CRAZY! maybe you can help:

we all remember the infamous Gaius/Caprica/Three threesome, right? I swear I remember reading somewhere (possibly in an article, but possibly chez beccatoria) that Ron Moore talked about how Cylons have a very different conception of privacy (and by extension, sexuality?) than humans. but there doesn't seem to be much in the "Hero" podcast (though I've yet to listen to it myself). plus there was a brief interview with Lucy Lawless somewhere that spoiled for the threesome long before it happened, and I've been through galacticanews back into september and can't find that either! the internet can be so frustrating.

I'm woefully behind on lj again, for no good reason. and I've been keeping this list of things I'd like to post about, if I were ever to have time to post, which I don't for the foreseeable future (blah blah insanity-until-mid-march-cakes, see cyborganize and tvhere for updates). so I might as well do one of those entries where I make a list of the things I'll tell you more about at some later date (or not):

i. speaking of behindness, of necessity I've been bookmarking a whole bunch of your fic for a rainy day, including everything yuletide (nor have I gotten to much of anything on the previous list *facepalm*). my apologies!

ii. I feel a bit like the apocryphal lesbian with the U-Haul, that is, all this talk with iamsab of weddings and babies (the things that clyde_man, for the record, has never wanted with anyone, least of all me) is perhaps ridiculously premature. but the thing is, it works in surprising ways (surprisingly rich and quotidian ways). and I don't believe that comes along very often in a lifetime.

iii. you should join this thing that wearemany discovered. it's totally addictive! you can update it from the site or by IM or txt (though I'm having trouble setting that up) or software with a little blurb about what you're doing. and there are multiple ways to track people, too, that I'm still figuring out (there's some sort of RSS feed of me, for example eta: twitter_pjulie -- and there'll be another one that includes me plus all my friends, I think, WHEN I HAVE THEM) -- don't you want to keep track of me?? and it's far less big brother-ish than plazes, though I'm also still addicted to that. also, I went ahead and joined OurChart. *eyeroll*

iv. shananaomi made girls gay for us as requested! your votes were taken into account.

v. I spontaneously switched from Eudora to Mail without quite realizing what was happening. I mean, I like Mail, but Eudora and I have been together for over 10 years! but there was the import mailboxes button, and *bloop* I'm joining the 21st century.

vi. my best and only LA celebrity sighting this trip was Ethan Phillips -- aka Neelix on Voyager! actually em did the spotting with her special kung fu, since it's a challenge to recognize him without the elaborate makeup. he sat down next to us at Cafe 101 on my first and samdonne's last morning. BUT MEANWHILE EM SAW GRACE PARK! she stood in line behind her at Starbucks; tragically, I was not with her at the time.

vii. I have "crazy BSG dreams" on my list, but the dreams were ages ago and now I've totally forgotten them! eta: and then LAST night I dreamed and dreamed about hanging out with Mary McDonnell. it was sort of wonderful and sort of torturous.

viii. I've been contemplating writing up an eloquent position statement on the flailing over how Kara's recent "tomcatting around" is out of character and/or bad and wrong, neither of which I believe is true. but that's fatally low on the list of priorities. so all you get is this snip from an email to mandysbitch: a) I DON'T think Kara is a bad person. I think she's being true to the parameters of her relationship -- Anders makes clear that he knows about this arrangement and accepts it. I have a VERY hard time blaming folks for being in love with two people [see further: my strange lack of h8 for McDreamy]. the way she's handling it may seem like a rationalization, but it's one that works for her and her partner, and I don't think Lee's proposal that they both leave their spouses is any more objectively moral (in fact, Lee is perhaps a BIGGER dick, as he seems to have NO concern for Dee's feelings). b) well, many would say this IS out of character for Kara, and offer various evidence from her earlier dalliances (basically that Gaius is the only random hookup she had, and even then she was thinking of Lee, and she has been anything but callous with others' affections and her own). OK fine, but I STILL think there's some underlying sexist disapproval of the promiscuous woman going on here. although Kara hasn't had many onscreen hookups, her promiscuity was always implied, and that's always been one of my FAVORITE things about her character. (plus somebody made Brokeback Galactica [Lee/Anders], which is totally FTW!)

ix. we were watching Big Love as a family in Ptown, joking about clyde_man and hir three wives (only s/he swapped pixieslap for me in boston, so we were never all there simultaneously). I'm the 2nd, but I don't think I'm much like nikki. lucky is totally barb, except for how clyde has to be bill+barb, what with being the breadwinner plus the one who does all the cooking and scheduling. it was really quite adorable. then we mapped it out for Shoemoney Haus too! in that version, I'm very much margene, which makes perfect sense.

x. have I mentioned that I love television? everything (see the list in my sidebar) is starting up again, yay. plus I have this ambitious list of things to learn, which goes something like:

The Book Group (UK)
Elizabeth I (miniseries, Helen Mirren)
Bleak House (miniseries, Gillian Anderson)
Yin Yang Yo (Disney cartoon that steph's in)
Freaks and Geeks
30 Rock
Veronica Mars seasons 2+3
At the Hotel (miniseries, Canada)
Kink (documentary, Canda)
The Office (US), with clyde_man

I'm still not sure where to find the canadian ones, so holler if you can help. also, I need Passion Fish and everything else with Mary McDonnell, pretty please. youtube has a whole bunch of clips of her on ER!

I'm back in Providence as of JUST NOW, if that wasn't apparent...

dear BSG fandom,

I'm in desperate need of downloads/captures of parts 6-8 of Mary McDonnell's Q&A on scifi.com!

and webisodes 9 and 10! (which never showed up on tvtorrents, for some reason)

plus, season 3 vlogs (except the first one -- I've got that somehow)

also, deleted scenes from season 2 (what I have is a single 350mb file [S2_5_Deleted.avi] from this torrent, which as far as I can tell is NOT the same as the scenes that are currently on scifi.com? and I also believe neither are the same as the ones on the DVD(s) -- or ARE they from the 2.5 release? can anyone clarify?)

and I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the cast photoshoot video from TV Guide

CAN YOU HELP???

as per this gift economy of ours, I'm offering up YSI links for the goodies that I DO have in my possession -- get 'em while they're hot:

- webisodes 1-7 (8 wouldn't fit, but I have it so holler if it's important)
- season 1 deleted scenes (scifi.com)
- Grace Park Q&A parts 1-4 (complete), Mary McDonnell Q&A parts 1-5 (of 8 so far)
- comicon panel video // the peabodys vlog and a bad quality video of the acceptance speech // RDM on podcasting
- MTR panel audio // 2 Katee radio interviews // MM on the Today Show

love,
projectjulie

this is speculation, but it's based on at least one major spoiler, so if you're spoiler-free you probably want to skip it. it's all interwoven with my drabble series (which I'm rather in love with) -- but here it is in prose, signed and dated, so later we can all see how I did vis a vis what actually happens.

( BSG spec )

and here's the thing: much of the pleasure of BSG for me, through season 2, was the way it surprised me with the sorts of brilliant connections it made. I felt like the writers were so much smarter than me, that there was no way for me to predict where they were going because it would be more complex than anything I could imagine. and I don't feel that way any more this season. since Epiphanies, they've been throwing out cool stunt after cool stunt at the expense of the development and coherence of the mytharc. at this point, I'm pretty sure that MY theory is more interesting than whatever they've come up with, and that disappoints me.

relatedly, I don't think there's any way for BSG's mythology to remain intelligible if Roslin's cancer doesn't return (unless, perhaps, jennyo gets her pony and Roslin and Baltar swap places as good guy/bad guy, but that seems even less likely). someone else could take over the role of the dying leader, conceivably, but if Hera is supposed to be the first of a hybrid race who will eventually colonize Earth and become us (iamsab's theory, but not only hers), her blood obviously can't be a miracle cure for cancer since we still get it.

there are things afoot. thoroughly mundane things which nonetheless have major ramifications for my life:

i. clyde_man left hir miserable job. s/he took a fat severance package which means s/he gets paid for months and months, and isn't even *allowed* to work until 2007. so this is for the win. but it changes plans, perhaps makes the future even more nebulous. clyde's in Provincetown with partner lucky for most of december (NB: the idea of hir staying with me for part of this interim period never even came up), which means I'll be holidaying there and probably not passing through NYC at all over break. clyde has employment irons in the fire in Jersey, and none elsewhere at this point, so we're still stuck with this ongoing conundrum where s/he needs to figure out what s/he wants and needs in life and I need to be here in Providence for the foreseeable future, writing. so, continuing limbo.

ii. meanwhile I had a long talk with iamsab on IM last night, which is a rare treat, and was still all giddy today. still all awed at this love. I mean wtf? this requitedness shit NEVER happens to me. and right now everything is one-step-at-a-time, but I know there are some difficult conversations with clyde on the horizon. or rather, I have a disconcerting premonition that down the road, profound personal decisions will end up being determined for me by the geographic vagaries of the academic job market. presuming I don't manage to consolidate everyone in the vicinity of Boston, which is probably a pipe dream. I'd move to LA in a second if I got an offer, but that's equally true of NYC or Baltimore or wherever clyde may be. and unfortunately, it may very well be equally true of Missouri or New Mexico or Montana or whoever wants to put me on a tenure track (presuming anybody even does).

iii. complicating foresight further is the fact that Brown recently announced that they'd prefer to yank 6th year funding for grad students across the board, thank you very much (until now I was assured that a 6th year was to be expected, although it's not guaranteed IN WRITING). I'm fortunate enough that money will never be a dealbreaker for me personally -- but still, the bastards! I'm scrambling to figure out whether I can get special dispensation to be nominated for a diss fellowship for next year (my fifth) instead of the year after (the planned timeline), so that I don't miss the opportunity for a fellowship entirely. this would be simpler if I'd taken my exams already, like I was vaguely supposed to -- but honestly I don't think there's anything I could have done differently. I'm a cylon person, not a theorywanking automaton, and I won't apologize for that. if/when I'm on fellowship I don't have to work and can theoretically BE wherever I want, though the smart choice would be wherever I can actually write, and now that question mark might be looming much sooner than expected. and I might also have to write a dissertation abstract, like, yesterday. but I'm tripping gaily forward with the exams, in any case -- I desperately need to write this giant field essay. starting tomorrow.

iv. I may very well get a cat. not a kitten, as that would be insane with the constant demand for attention and the destroying of things and the ensuing need to realistically get two kittens, but a calm and cuddly adult cat. I've been holding out for a dog (a little fluffy handbag dog), but it's increasingly clear that a lifestyle that can accommodate one is still a long way off. cats are simpler, and I have come to like them, and they can climb up into my loft bed, and I have many friends here who would take a cat for weeks or months if I'm traveling. what brought this on is that my cousin's girlfriend is fostering a mama cat and two kittens that she found stray. the mama (they call her Sophie) is apparently very sweet (clearly socialized with humans, not a feral cat) and black with white belly and paws (not my favorite cat coloring -- I'm partial to spots and/or stripes, as in all things -- but really the former is more important), and they're looking for a home for her. I'm meeting said cat on saturday, and if we like each other and I'm not allergic I may really take the plunge.

bonus miscellaneous and less mundane thing:

v. I did my presentation for the Female Sexuality Workshop last week (twice). they only gave me 50 min. to cover alternative sexuality/relationships, which is a little ridiculous, but all my investment in outlining last spring did pay off because I have this puppy honed to a science (to mix metaphors?). Harvard coming up on thursday, where I get 2 hours -- and I talked to the organizer on the phone last week re: my previous round of workshops, and she said, "you changed me and my friends' lives. you don't know, it's just a couple hours of your time, but it totally opened up our worlds" -- which was unimaginably gratifying. it's such a little thing I do, and something I enjoy so much -- sharing my perspective and experiences. so needless to say, if YOU have any sexuality-related and/or personal questions, feel free to fire at will.

and now, mundane eljayish things which have only the most minor ramifications for my life:

vi. I've returned to the present! I believe that I am once again more or less caught up on lj (*with the exception of sitcomathon fics, and a handful of tabs still currently open). that took ALL fucking weekend. I didn't comment much during the blitz, but rest assured that I read faithfully as always. I know I say this EVERY time, but srsly I can NEVER let this happen again. if you are joining me for any of my travels, please make sure/understand when I take the time to keep up with my flist. you'd think it would be a boon to my schoolwork to let lj slide for a bit so I can focus, but it just disrupts my rhythm in the long run. I'm tempted to try to actually log this (stopwatch! spreadsheet!), but probably 75% of the time commitment is BSG fandom (split relatively evenly between articles/discussion posts and fic FB, give or take on any particular week) -- so you're not the problem, dearest flist. possibly I'm getting a wee bit burned out on BSG, in fact, but hopefully that's just the erstwhile behindness talking, because otherwise I'd be at a loss for what to do about it (NB: I am taking a week off vlogging for thanksgiving).

vii. meanwhile, I wrote three drabbles [scroll to the bottom], with one a week in the works for the near future. yes yes, I KNOW. except I'm kind of in love with my tiny distopian AU based on "Torn" (which has parentheses). plus, leavethesky wrote the best BSG spec EVER! and sheepfairy reminded me that we should be upset that Caprica apparently dumped Boomer for Three (the mesmerizing blondness of Three/Six distracted me from cylon!OTP, I admit). where is Boomer when she's not doing naked tai chi?!? *riots* *riots about all other continuity issues too, just for good measure*

viii. ashfjrhglkljskh *DED* notpiecebypiece is totally right that part 5 of Mary McDonnell's Q&A is OFF THE HOOK! MIDDLE-AGED SEX! CRAAAAAAAAAZED FANGIRLS! sadly, Mary also confirms that she does not want to make out with me (she really is astonishingly gracious about it) -- so there goes my last 1% shred of hope. and may I just say: if we're going to talk about age bias in TV sexuality, can we please talk about middle-aged (her words) characters having sex with younger characters, and not just them respectively doing it with each other?! kthnxbye. (and awwwwwwwwww Mary/Katee story in part 3!!! and also she is NOT shipping R/A, ha! it's "unfathomable" for Roslin to "get involved with a MAN at this point in her life." IJS) (I haven't been able to figure out how to capture the files since they went flash -- does anybody know how I can get my hot little hands on bootleg videos?)

ix. ummmmmmm I friended back I think one or two more galacticans, but if you're not one of them and you friended me and you care if I friend you back, give a holler and I'll see what I can do. I might also have defriended a couple of people -- not because I don't think you're lovely!

x. I never meme myself because I don't have the time, but this one is easy because YOU have to do all the work! I'm sure I could think up better questions but then it wouldn't be a meme. I am marking the freebies (those which are either [O] for obvious or [A] for given away above).

( stalker meme! )

eta: nobody did the quiz! that's OK, I didn't really answer anyone else's quiz.

when I started writing this two hours ago, I did not expect it to be nearly so long and elaborate. xxx

i. I precipitated a grading crisis, yet again. you'd think I'd know better by now. anyway, I survived. but in the process of desperately trying to avoid the papers, I inadvertently started writing a 7-part BSG drabble series based on "Torn" (and whatever is to come). apparently the quest for Earth is inextricably linked to girlsex in my twisted mind. believe me, this is the LAST thing I have time for right now, and I'm extremely disappointed in myself. but there's nothing for it now but to press on (The Word probably always needed a part 13, anyway).

ii. not only did I start new fic, which is NOT ALLOWED, I actually sat down and wrote frakking META about it. *headdesk*

iii. but is it any wonder I'm obsessed, when my girl is dressing up as Boomer?!? it's a tragedy that I wasn't there, in that same outfit. there are many copies!

iv. I had a dream that Tory left Laura for Maya, because Laura wasn't treating her right. wtf is that about? obviously *I* would never leave Laura, no matter how much she took me for granted. also I had a dream that MM cut her hair, and when I woke up I was very happy that it wasn't true.

v. GO BLUE. I can't quite believe we actually did it.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! remember how I wouldn't shut up about Angelina Jolie/Katie Holmes rpfs?!? well, the celestial spheres can finally return to alignment because fickitten went and did it!!!

Behind Closed Doors is meaty and chilling and subtle and hopeful all at once. it tells their story believably and unflinchingly, and it will break your heart a little. run, Katie!

to celebrate this happy occasion, I inaugurated my scanner to record the aforementioned OK! Weekly article for posterity.

and oh dear lord, last night I dreamt that I spent the day with RON MOORE. me and several friends had won some sort of contest for a screenwriting workshop. so we were supposed to finish an (as far as I can tell, fabricated -- something about Lee/Kara UST after she gets back with the arrow, but not like on the show) episode as an exercise. I talked about how I adore the precision of a good TV narrative, but I wasn't particularly inspired by the constraints of this particular scenario. I chastised him about certain secondary characters [confidential to quasiradiant: your paramedic Ishaye (sp?) is coming back in S.3! did you know that's Jamie Bamber's wife?] who could have been MORE GAY -- such as Cain. I did not, however, mention fanfic to him, even though he has said he doesn't mind, because cathexys says not to! [confidential to my unconscious: give me Mary next time, pretty please!]

I cried more than usual during NPR this morning. everyone is talking about where they were. I was woken up by sirens in brooklyn, after the first plane. none of it seemed real, on TV, and I didn't understand what had happened until later.

there's almost nothing I love more than being surrounded by the thick twang of a quebecois accent, than waking my brain up to forgotten words and phrases, than a truly bilingual city, where in every shop you're greeted "bonjour hi." visiting in the summer, I wonder why I haven't moved here long ago, and then we hit a cold and rainy august sunday and I remember. it's the projectjulie and laliu show here in montreal, as our other school buddies who came for the wedding have either departed or been folded into family time. instead of venturing back out in the damp, we just marathonned four hours of BSG -- KLG2 through The Farm -- and I fell in love with the craft of this arc all over again: such elegance of multi-threaded pacing. the back half of the season shows even worse in comparison -- you can see all the frayed continuity (where the frak is the theology?? do the geminese not care about their dying prophet's miracle cure? is the cylon god as confused as he seems, or is Six just pulling augury out of her ass?). it doesn't give me much faith that TPTB can pull off TV anything like that good with S.3.

tomorrow the summer is ending, as I'm en route back to Providence via Westchester (long trip, long story -- basically the other car in the caravan is full). I'm more than ready to stop this running around (what are you running away from? my mother asks), but I'm bringing a cold (or probably my biannual sinus infection, at this point, which can't be cured until I come home to my antibiotics on tuesday), so that makes me cranky. wish me bon voyage.

SNAKES ON CRACK!!!

also

muthafuckin snake, get off my dick! [nipple/tongue/ass/eyeball/neck]

also

SPORKS ON A PLANE!!!

yes, it was snakes in a movie theater with heathers and lonejaguar!! I wanted to make them write girlslash on a plane with me, on principle (orgasms are a good way to relieve stress/grief, and all), but it doesn't look like that's actually going to happen. we're being lazy!

in honor of the greatest movie ever made, I bring you snakes in a fake TV religion:

And unto the leader, they gave a vision of serpents, numbering two and ten, as a sign of things to come.
~ The Book of Pythia

which is to say that winging its way to me through the mail is my shiny new black macbook, named Pythia after the head priestess of Delphi and voice of the oracle, along with my video ipod Ros (short for Laura Roslin), which is inscribed "there are many copies" (heeeeee, she's a cylon!) along with my email addy and phone number. HURRAH! stay tuned for a post hawking a 3-year-old 12" powerbook 867MHz. plus along with the ipod rebate there's a printer rebate, so I went ahead and ordered a new printer/scanner/copier, which means I can scan things! I'm taking requests.

did you know that the original Battlestar Galactica was heavily based on Mormon theology??

I didn't think so! I had no idea either, until ljconscript enlightened me (she's not such a luddite that she won't talk to the internet when it serves her purposes). thanks to her links, I learned:

• the majority of Mormon beliefs, church practices and ceremonies are not described in The Book of Mormon... While the Book of Mormon may teach that there is only one true God (Alma 11:26-29), other Mormon documents say that there are many Gods (Mormon Doctrine, page 163)

• In both Battlestar Galactica and the LDS, the political structure consists of a Council (or Quorum) of the Twelve, and a President.

• The Book of Mormon describes the journey of a "thirteenth tribe." There were twelve tribes of Israel and the prophet Lehi took a remnant of the tribe of Joseph (creating a "lost thirteenth tribe") and somehow travelled from the middle east to North America around 600 BC.

• the name Kobol is made up of the rearranged letters making up the word Kolob, which is the star "nearest unto the throne of God," or the name of the planet where the Mormons' god, Elohim, is from.

(and less relevant to the new BSG, but even kookier)
• The LDS believes that God was once a man on another planet (sometimes referred to as Kolob) who followed the Mormon teachings, died, rose to the third level of heaven and eventually became a God, just as they teach that if you follow the Mormon teachings here on Earth you may eventually become the God of your own world after death.

much of this is reiterated in another essay, and if you're interested you might also want to check out the Wikipedia entry on Kolob and this article on religion in BSG which discusses the Mormon connection.

there's only a small amount of information about this at the Battlestar Wiki -- maybe someone should add a page? apparently Ron Moore has said that he is aware of the Mormon influences on the original series, but deliberately diversified the religious perspectives for the reimagined series (I don't have the source for that).

now, this obscure factoid has at least two very exciting ramifications. one is that I am yet again* proved to be psychic! because of course in my xover fic of doom the Colonials become BFFs with the Mormons when they arrive at Earth and they end up settling on a reservation in Utah. the other is that my desperate hankering for a BSG/Big Love xover (whether related or unrelated to the aforementioned story) now looks marginally less farfetched. wooooo Mormons! the Scientologists of the 19th Century!**

* the first time was when I arbitrarily designated Boomer number Eight in my first BSG fic, ha!
** no offense to any Mormons or Scientologists, OK?

it's at least 95 degrees outside, breaking 90 inside my apartment, and I've fled to *bucks for some iced tea and AC. unfortunately, given that these are my only five days in providence out of three months, most of the puttering I have to do involves being in the house. the heat is supposed to break in a matter of hours, anyway, so there's always tomorrow (you're only a day away!).

I'm embroiled in an internal debate about whether, in the long run of the short term, I want to live in providence or move to Boston. Boston has the advantage of being a real city, one which is certainly growing on me, and when I'm away I never quite believe that I actually like it in providence. it took me three years to get here, but I do. last night I did dinner and a movie (A Scanner Darkly 80 [that's a smiley]) with kore, slowmend, laliu, and J + friend; tonight is dinner and TV (Eureka, that new sci-fi show?) with _mesk and maybe Gill and whoever else turns up. I'll also see more of objet_petit_a who I caught up with on monday, and ljconscript and one or two other friends who are in town -- the rest are off to parts unknown, or at least haven't emailed me back. my other half, _plasticity_, is still at theory camp. *weeps*

but I digress -- mainly, this is a double fandom post! *waves to femslash_today*

I've made no secret of my crazed obsession with doppelcestuous girlslash. well thanks to iamsab, this genre now has a THEME SONG.

Nellie McKay - Clonie [right-click save-as]

( lyrics )

may this inspire you to hitherto unknown heights of doppelcest inspiration, my friends. (and oh, the fanvids that could be made!)

secondarily, OMG SUGAR RUSH! compared to South of Nowhere (the US teen lesbian drama with a virtually identical cast of characters), the first season was entertaining but didn't do that much for me. yes, the British show was grittier, and had better writing, acting, and editing, but it tended toward the farcical, and Sugar was so reprehensible that I couldn't get emotionally invested in the romance. well, they have rectified all of this, launching the second season (now 6 eps in) with a totally reconfigured and far more satisfying structure. and more sex!

( here there be spoilers )

so yeah, I'm rather beside myself with love for this show. many more caps from the third ep are here. meanwhile, I'm watching House S.1 (and a bit of Conviction, but it's truly atrocious), to be followed by Nip/Tuck S.1 with clyde_man. and J asked how I was surviving with TV on summer hiatus -- ha!

(I purged about 20 icons -- I'm not quite sure how I managed it -- uploaded some new ones but I still have ROOM omg!)

eta: OMG OMG again! _mesk just showed me this AMAZING Roslin vid by beccatoria that I missed somehow. I am dying of squee! I'll be the first to admit that I'm not particularly vid-enabled, but I have been watching and enjoying a number of BSG vids. see my YouTube faves (or holler if you want other stuff). while I'm here I should also re-rec my favorite vid of all time, Every You Every Me (Starbuck/Roslin) by tallulah71.

eta2: OK, Eureka is atrocious -- it's no wonder the non-initiated have trouble believing that BSG is actually a good show. however, it does have Maya (Erica Cerra) as an absurdly hot ass-kicking sheriff with giant guns (eta: thrace_ brings us screencaps!) -- um, yes, I do have a type. I'm writing Deputy Jo/Maya doppelcest in my head -- but I shall try to restrain myself as I'm already many drabbles and fics behind.

the BSG preview was intriguing (lots of babies! not enough Roslin). I'm actually concerned about what will become of me if S.3 is as compelling as S.2.