the night has a thousand saxaphones

So one of my main guilty pleasures in the last four or five months has been My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'm pretty much convinced it's one of the better things going right now. It's also basically everything a feminist could possibly want out of a kids cartoon.

But I just watched Dragon Quest, and I gotta say... I think they fucked up. Gender-based analysis of this episode plz? Where am I to find such a thing?

Ep under cut.

( Dragon Quest )

(I just realized that my current "feminism" icon is completely inapropos for "I think this may be perpetuating some really terrible stereotypes of masculinity," but I don't think I have one for that...)

If you read George RR Martin's Game of Thrones, or if you watched the first episode of the miniseries, or if you have even contemplated doing either one, hth's meta is absolutely non-optional required reading. It's long but articulate and amazing, and includes an explanation of the consistent ethical stance and worldview of the series, meta on the characters of Drogo, Daenerys, and Cersei, the society of Westeros vs. the Dothraki, issues of institutionalized rape and consent, and (obviously), That Scene.

It's really really good.

I'm feeling babbly today.

* Investigation into the effects of zat'ni'ktel fire on the common Peep, by Dr. Samantha Carter. (Look, nothing with a title like that needs a detailed rec, okay?)

( Thinky Thoughts )

( Johnny Weir, Adam Lambert, and Evan Lysacek. The boys sure are pretty this year )

( The news coverage of CPAC was so fun to watch over these last few days )

Another thank you to everybody who sent birthday wishes!

Those of you who are having some of the same problems I am these days might want to read Seven Tried and True Ways to Stifle Your Creativity.

Why I would not have greenlit Dollhouse does the best job I have seen of dissecting exactly why Dollhouse is so very very disappointing. Those of you who know me know that I hate disliking something without being able to articulate why, so. This is why.

And for those of you who, like me, are watching Dollhouse in the vain hopes that it will improve, or who, also like me, watched Merlin and hoped forlornly that the Next Big Fandom would be something with a little less cheese and a lot more weight, I feel the need to remind you that NBC's new show, Kings, premieres on March 15th.

It's a re-working of the story of David, as in "David and Goliath," as in "David and Jonathan." It stars Ian McShane, so right there you know at least one character will fucking rock, and I saw the first twenty minutes of it at Comic-con, so I can tell you that the look of it, visually, is just phenomenal. No cheesy campy CGI dragons here- this is a pseudo-modern AU setting with utterly gorgeous outdoors location shoots and lush sets and beautiful camera work and the whole thing is just nice to look at in a way that goes well beyond the (admittedly in some cases very pretty) pretty people. And it has the advantage of both being a story that I would watch even if there were no slash potential at all- because the story of David is a good story and the potential for action plus political intrigue plus intense emotional portrayals of psychologically fascinating people plus really interesting worldbuilding is enough to make me sit up and pay attention- but also having slash potential out the wazoo- because, you know David and Jonathan.

I know I cannot wave my wand and make this the Next Big Fandom, especially given the crappy job NBC is doing promoting it, but I would if I could, and I'm begging you all to check it out.

Awesome day with wendy yesterday. Gymnastic superstars tour thing! About one-third high-energy exhibition, one-third amateurish Cirque-du-Soliel knock off, one-third truly crappy concert, yet somehow combined for way more entertainment value than I anticipated. Also, much better ratio of barely pubescent girls to hot hunks without shirts than I was expecting. It is good to be pandered to!

( Cut for politics )

All I am saying, really, is this:
-That there are conservatives and Republicans who do not identify in these ways because they're uninformed, or reactionary, or xenophobic, or religious wackjobs, or stupid, or evil.
-That there are some that share my basic worldview, my thought processes, my way of thinking about the world, who I would find intellectual equals and valuable conversation partners and admirable antagonists... and that while I obviously know that, I perhaps do not really hear it as often or sincerely as I should.
-That party labels are not inherently tied to rightness or wrongness of ideas or policies, or even to basic worldviews or values.
-That I sincerely hope that if political labels slip from my original conception as radically as they have for him, I will have the same courage he does to step back and consider with intellectual honesty and clarity.

( Passage, Connie Willis )

I kind of adore character meta that comes from different ways of organizing/categorizing characters, by whatever psychological classification you use. I could eat that type of meta up with a spoon.

( Take, for example, Harry Potter Hogwarts houses - Torchwood, Dr Who, SPN, SGA, SG1 )

( Or Myers-Briggs, for instance )

( But I just read another categorization framework I found interesting )

( So let's apply it to Jack and Daniel )

( Why I find this interesting: )

Jesus, I will SHUT UP now.

Apparently I only like weddings when they are socially subversive.

Except that is completely and totally the wrong word since the entire point is to become NOT subversive anymore, but I am wiped today and incapable of phrasing myself correctly.

( Overlong political ranting )

That embarrassing outburst of emotion was at least half caused by PMS, plus the frustration of living in Texas surrounded by trucks with McCain bumper stickers. Or at least, the overuse of italics was. Pay me no mind, I'll be calm and rational again in two days.

Other random awesomeness, related to fandom: I googled for that SGA story, "take clothes off as directed," and stumbled on this: I'm In Ur Bookmarks, Stealin' Ur Tags!: Closed Communities and Their Influence On Consistent Vocabularies In User Developed Folksonomies. (pdf warning, html here) Which is really totally awesome, in a "fandom is so sociologically fascinating" kind of way, even I could have *told* her all those things about consistent community vocabularies.

( This stuff is SO FUNNY. I am dying of laughter over here. )
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( I just watched 8 episodes straight of Dexter. )
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fleshflutter's Mini-nano has me on the edge of my seat. I am TERRIFIED for both of the boys right now. This is the most gripping WIP I've ever read, and I just can't stop thinking about it. Is it tomorrow yet?
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Prisoners in Camp Kim in the American Conservative. First-hand accounts of North Korea utterly fascinate me. It's just... a truly, inconceivably bizarre situation, one of those things that it's almost impossible to conceive of as existing in the same world as yourself, you know?
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Don't forget to let me send you a card.

kay, so, I went to Wincon and I had the best time of my entire life. For serious, bar absolutley nothing. And I came out of Wincon with thousands and thousands of meta thinky thoughts and plot bunnies, and dozens of people who were so cool to meet who I really really want to meet again, and I discussed things with people that I just don't discuss with Real Life Non Fandom people, and it was intelligent and interesting and engaging and a complete and total relief in that "things that I find worth devoting headspace to are being validated rather than mocked, and my porn habits disgust no one" sort of way. Which? WINS.

And it's funny, because I had a choice between going to Wincon last weekend or going to that actual big commercial Supernatural convention next weekend, with Nathan Filion and Jared Padalecki and other cool people and... I'm really glad I made the choice I did. Because as cool as it would be to just stand next to Jared (and seriously, there are not enough men that tall in the world) what I really really NEED right now in my life are friends, not celebrity autographs. And I rarely actually make friends, in that, while I am fine at a little bit of chit-chat about the weather or whatever, I almost never feel like I have crossed that nebulous line from "awkward performance of social small talk ritual" to "really enjoying someone's company and wanting to be their friend" and that was happening all over the damn place at Wincon and it makes me happy. Happy in a way that might somewhat indicate my social patheticness and need for validation at this particular moment in my life, but whatever because it was FUN! Also? This will sound weird and melodramatic but there was this lovely fresh "out of the closet" sort of breeze about it, in that I devote TONS of headspace to things that I basically admit to nobody, so being friends with fangirls? Is a huge relief of that particular little neurosis.

( So I met really really cool people and had fun )

( And there were panels that were awesome )

( and I kept getting these thinky thoughts )

( And this weekend might have made me slightly more sex-obsessed than even before )

So in short, I had a BLAST. And in the week since Wincon I have been applying for (and not being contacted for, or turned down for) jobs at a fairly steady rate, and have just been devouring lj- back archives of fics and recs and meta from all these people I met at the con and I've been leaving comments like whoah which I never used to do and it's been so much fun I haven't even written anything of my own, either journal-wise or fic wise.

Except that I did drabble (prompt: any X-over, "You've just been out-geeked!"). Is it weird that my first fic ever posted online is such a random drabble? It just BIT me, and now there's this huge X-over fic idea in my head. And of course, I proofread poorly, so now the only peice of my writing that exists on the internet contains Offenses Against Verb Tense the like of which people rant about in badfic conversations. It's fun, hitting "post" and then promptly feeling like Exhibit A in The Need for Betas, isn't it?

Episode reactions to come, as well as other stuff. Maybe, at some point, I will actually write fic? I want to, now.