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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.

OK, so Elizabeth spent a lot of the movie having manpain, which is not my favorite Elizabeth, and there were some battles with Spain and stuff. honestly I couldn't see any of that very clearly because I was DAZZLED BY THE GAY.

what this movie is about, dear readers, and I swear I had no idea that I should expect this going in, is the F/M/F conduit lesbian affair to end all conduit lesbian affairs! srsly, Walter Raleigh is just a big giant dildo that Elizabeth and Bess want to use to fuck each other. I hope that's not a spoiler.

there is only one way I can cope with my almost incomprehensible levels of squee, and that is to screencap the HELL out of this baby (the wink! the bath scene! the kiss on the neck! and in the last shot THEY HAVE A BABY TOGETHER), but unfortunately I've tried about 4 different torrents and all the video files seem bogus. I'm giving up for now, but if you could point me toward a direct download I'd be much obliged. I want fic, drabbles, icons, and so on!!!

I've been a procrastinatey mess. layout for Top Secret Project is here (the BSG logo is a photoshop brush I finagled from this, if anyone wants it). I narrowly avoided starting a vid-a-day cataloguing/reviewing project at 2am the other night, beginning with important BSG gen vids (I estimate there are about 50 of these, so it's no small feat). instead I'm going to start using fanworksfinder as my behind-the-scenes vid watching diary (and in case I didn't mention: my BSG vid ideas dump). any day would be a good day to finish the really very minor revisions that are hanging over my head, because I have to write a smut draft to send to mandysbitch by friday.

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!

i. I forgot to commemorate my eljayversary! it's june 11. apparently I didn't celebrate last year either, so, no memes here. but still, I love you lj!

ii. over the past three days I undertook a semi-massive redesign of my fanfic empire. baby pink is now chartreuse, purple is now darker purple, brighter and less cloying, everything matches projectjulie.net, and I'm SO much happier. even *I* get sick of pink sometimes. this was perhaps not my finest hour in time management, but the project was on the list so I was bound to do it imminently in the course of my procrastination, anyway.

in addition to converting my color scheme, I indexed all my fanstuff in del.icio.us (which took FOREVER -- but it was worth it). I would HIGHLY recommend this system to anyone who has to maintain a fic index! you get a front end for easily adding things, and then this doohicky enables you to dump the lists automatically into your own pages (my example). (NB: this won't work within LJ, because it doesn't allow javascript.) so I now know some interesting statistics:

- I've written more stories than I thought -- 16 (with 3 more to come this year)
- my remixthedrabble entry was my 50th drabble! *confetti*
- between writing it and making other people write it, I have personally generated a LOT of doppelcest
- I really am more obsessed with BSG than with anything ever

- most importantly: I think I've missed some presents, oh noes! normally I'm pretty OCD about filing them, but I feel like I've been leaving a fair number of meme prompts lately, and I can't imagine nobody has gifted me anything since Five Things went around last fall (oh wait, michellek's commentfic!). if you remember writing me something in the recent past, however tiny (or EVER writing me anything that isn't on this list), PLEASE PLEASE give a shout! since I make every attempt to delegate ideas before I break down and write them myself, presents are an especially important part of my fanfic life.

I also customized cyborganize to look like the drupal site. next up: converting ALL my old fanfic and personal links to del.icio.us. I'll leave that till a future bout of procrastination.

iii. while I was happy not to be overscheduled during my whirlwind visit to new york, in retrospect I could have been a more aggressive planner. I missed about three close friends in ways that were probably avoidable, and I'm so sad about that. not to mention all the folks I didn't even have time to contact! nonetheless, I was overjoyed to catch up with T, girlboymusic + furies (during her brief wakefulness -- wish it had worked out for longer!), D + LC, katia, thenewhope + quasiradiant, and bounce_n_jiggle + nerd_dog.

I'm coming to the realization that I have an abnormally large number of friends. I'm not sure how to talk about that without sounding self-aggrandizing -- just, it's a constant struggle to maintain my relationships with all these people who I dearly love. at some point in life my strategies in this department may have to radically change. for the moment, I'm thinking about my holiday cards.

relatedly, I'm zipping through my flist right now (catching up once more) and I feel like I'm not commenting much. but believe me when I say that I'm the most obsessive-compulsive lj-er ever, and if you're on it that means I'm reading your posts avidly. if I'm forced to filter or defriend again I'll let you know.

iv. july 1, folks!! now's a good time to start watching majoritython for news about my shenanigans in and around la casa shoemoney (especially concerning one very special inhabitant) and its virtual environs. does anyone in LA want to take me or let me take them to a yoga class once a week?

v. I'm posting Big Love prompts at sisterwives. if you've ever had any inclination to slash that show, please do so now! and if you're not watching it, get on that asap!

plus, I just added a bunch of stuff to my femslash fanvids playlist. help me find more on imeem!

( imeem playlist )

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):