ange

And this is a numbered list of things I have to say:

1. There are a lot of awesome ST XI vids around, and I am COMPLETELY impressed, especially since the vids are awesome despite the source being the same shitty telesynced copy that I've got (the one that cuts the screen down on all sides so it's not so much STAR TREK, as "AR TRE" the movie populated by sometimes headless people in extreme close up). In summation: damn I can't wait for the DVD.

2. Connected to the above: the crappiest thing about the telesynced copy? THEY CUT OUT SULU'S SWORD EXTENDING. I have good money to spend on this DVD, bring it on.

( Pull my teeth before I'll bite my tongue )

5. hey 42Below Feijoa ILU.









6. After the fiasco at the older relative's earlier tonight, I spent the uncomfortable after-dinner portion of the evening in the corner with my laptop. So I used his bandwidth allotment to download porn, I win, the end.

And also hearthands.

The amount of trek love around this corner of the internet is really more glee-making than I can say. And it's not just newTrek! People are suddenly discovering favourite old TOS stories and putting them on rec lists! Reading the Star Trek tie-in novels! And talking about them! I could wallow on the internet all day!

New fans of old Trek, here are some things that have been well-loved by me that I haven't seen pop up already:
In newTrek, I haven't met a pairing I didn't like or have any time for. In TOS? There can be only one (apart from Uhura/Chapel). See this ship manifesto (thanks, Killa!) for why.

Cathy German. She writes gen, but gen so full of love that it will stun you. She writes about the Enterprise and its crew with both idealism and loving mockery, and as it turns out, that's how I like it best. She is also why I've spent all afternoon in the Orion archives.
You should read There Would Be Others for love of the command trio. And Speaking the Language, for love of Scotty. You should read This story, for love of a random ensign; this one, for general hilarity; and this one to break your heart.
Don't forget this one, for the aforementioned love and mockery. You should read everything else she has written as well.

As far as the tie-in novels go, read this tag and this post, with comments for a mountain of recommendations. Personally, I think you should start with Diane Duane, (Spock's World, My Enemy, My Ally and The Wounded Sky among others), and Diane Carey's prequel books, Best Destiny and Final Frontier.

Oh, Star Trek. How I have loved you. And how I hate coding.

New Star Trek movie! \o/ I've been waiting for this forever! Or, ever since that first preview which had absolutely nothing Trek in it at all (it was Nasa radio noise and some guys in suits drilling) until Leonard Nimoy's voice intoned "Space...the final frontier" and I had to make an effort to stop my face from leaking. I embrace the very strong cheese that is TOS, and don't know why Leonard Nimoy's voice should make me feel weepy. Except, now that I think of it, that I probably would have been able to pick his voice out in a dark room from the time I first started school. I've known these characters a long time. I'm invested, damn it all.

( Spoilers elicit an emotional reaction )

I'm helpless in the face of Star Trek, man. They had me at "beep".

Hey! I got a Dreamwidth code - apparently just by having an OpenID that got picked out of a hat, or whatever the digital equivalent is - so I am now ange over there (and my, am I glad to be rid of the numbers). I feel kind of guilty for swiping the code when there are so few around at the moment and not being a very active member of the fannish community, so I guess it was the kick in the pants I needed to get posting again.

State of the fandom?

Fandom that:
- makes me laugh and want to buy the world a coke = Leverage.
- makes me wince ideologically and slightly obsess like a nutjob with slight over-investment issues = Supernatural
- makes me want to snort sugar out of little packets and throw glitter in great clouds around my couch and its surrounding area = Merlin

all in the privacy and concealment of my own home, you understand.

Lately, I have decided to consciously focus on the happy. This would have seemed like a no-brainer, but, well. No.

Other things:

Thanks to cupiscent for reccing Orisha recently (great haircut btw, doll) andbossymarmalade for, y'know, writing.

And you guys, would yet another rec list with commentary be handy and/or useful? I have links to so much greatness in so many fandoms, and I'm thinking of doing something with all of them. Or is it del.ic.ious or nothing these days?

I don't want to type "been a while" out of quotation marks, and so I won't.  If I have to gnaw off my fingers at the second knuckle, so be it. News: I'm back at school, doing post-grad in English, the way I should have the first time.  But you know what I really miss?  fandom.  And you! 

For I am a solver of conundrums. 

• Re. John flipping a coin to decide whether or not to go to Atlantis:
  
  O'Neill tells Sheppard to make his decision by the end of their flight.  Later, after the flight, Sheppard is shown flipping a coin. Ergo, John Sheppard did NOT flip a coin to decide to go to Atlantis.  He decided to go to Atlantis because he didn't want to look like a blouse wearing wussypants in front of O'Neill. He then sat around on a lawn flipping a coin because, pre-Atlantis, John Sheppard was a sad bastard with no mates.

• Re. how they got Ronon to fit into a space suit and helmet at the start of "Aurora" given that, y'know, Ronon's kinda big, and so's his hair: 
  
  I've watched this scene very closely a number of times, and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that they didn't get him to fit into a spacesuit at all.  If it's possible to actually *see* Ronon in this scene, I'll eat the 10 pack of CD-Rs on my desk.

You didn't know you wanted to know, did you?

In other news, I've missed you.  How've you been?

So, I recently rejoined the internet after an extended real life holiday, and Numb3rs has swept me away.  Not surprising really, given that I have a long-standing mania for curly-headed geeks and the gun-totin' hotties that love them.  I also have a mania for other curly-headed geeks who love curly-headed geeks ("curly-headed geeks" being the obvious constant in this equation), because god knows  I'm nothing if not easy. 

Now I'm sort of wondering whether the reason SG-1 never grabbed me viscerally, despite the quality of a lot of the stories I've read, may have been  Daniel Jackson's lamentable lack of curl. 

( Any road. )

In other news, emo boys snogging on a dare.  I don't have a lot to add except that I tried to explain to a friend about the emo boys snogging on a dare, and she looked at me quizzically and asked me if it was stuffed.  We sort of stared at each other for a bit, then I confessed that I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, and she said couldn't imagine a live deer lying there and putting up with boys snogging on it. wtf, man.

But! Snogging, yes.  Go read Making Sure, because cupiscent has always done it right. When you're done, read Bare Naked.  Because she hasn't stopped. *g*

Randomly,  I spent some time last week cleaning out my picture folders and I realised I'm nostalgic for old school popfandom.  You know the huge neon  watermarks that used to get plastered over concert pictures, that everyone always complained about?  They made me feel all misty. As in, "aww, there's  "jc'n'me4evaandevaandeva@hotmail.com" in hot pink right across their chests!  Those were the days! Where'd those days go? " etc.  Which is completely insane, so I don't suppose I can go throwing stones at people who think snogs and roadkill go hand in hand anytime soon.

I've been more than a little tongue-tied when it comes to things LJ, lately.  My words don't come out write, if you know what I mean.  Real life's been depressing (am being, for all intents and purposes, evicted by way of rent increase; am clean, quiet and responsible with bills; can I come stay on your couch?) and disillusioning. Add  the fact that I'm finding it hard to write a shopping list these days, stir well and serve warm.  But. Onward and upward;  let your smile be your umbrella, etc.
 
Fandomly speaking, ever since reading Killa's wonderful essay in ship_manifesto, I've had an embarrassingly geeky resurgence of Trek love.  Which always seems to happen when things get quiet, truth be told. I don't know if I should put it down to  the unrelenting cheese, the abundance of primary colours and sparkles in the costumes and set (even the bedspreads in sickbay are spangly, I swear), or the fact that everyone wears too much eyeliner, but I just keep coming back to the Original Series. 

I'm not sure quite what it says about me that I'm more ashamed of liking Trek than I am of liking boybands, but there it is.  I will say that my (continuing, if quieter now) love of popslash has spoiled me a bit. Mainly in terms of crack levels.  In popslash, whatever your freaky kink is, you're never alone.  Boys turn into girls, or grow wings, or travel everywhich way in time to meet (and bed) themselves.  I've read more than one Justin/Justin, for Christ's sake.  Now, TOS is a fandom where this kind of stuff is half an inch from canon.  Kirk's consciousness is transferred into a woman's body!  Kirk rides a shoddy transporter beam and is split into good fembot Kirk and bad caveman Kirk! Kirk gets exchanged for his parallel universe counterpart!  Kirk gets duplicated and he and his android doppelganger lie naked on a table together! And they both wear too much eyeliner!  All of this is *in the damn show*.  But can I find *one* measly Kirk/Kirk story, anywhere?  No.  I can't.  And it's starting to make me feel like some sort of deviant. I can't be the only one with this idea!  What's with the lack of crack?  When it's handed to you on a platter?  I ask you.

Hunh.  Not so wordless, apparently.  Yay for refuge in spangled trivia.

I'm wondering if anyone else on earth gets zen from Dick Wolf shows.  It's Wednesday, and tonight on TV3, it is the night of Dick Wolf: Law and Order: Sport's Utility Vehicle, followed directly by Original Recipe.  I look forward to this every week. 

Now, I'm well aware that cop-shows part ways with reality in important procedural, legal and scientific ways.  I just don't care. In fact, I think the lack of realism is GREAT.  If these shows were accurate they'd never be able to tell me whodunnit and bring me the closure and resolution that the real world never does in under an hour, and really, that's all I want.  I don't even care if the the perp gets off on a technicality or slips the net and is never brought to justice, as long as they solve the mystery and tie up all the loose ends in a nice little bow for me.  It's like a two hour break from my brain.

I like Criminal Intent too, but we're between seasons.  I have no hour of Zen on Sunday nights anymore.  It pains me.

I'm quite prepared to be alone in this.  As a Gimli fan.

Mmm.  I'm tired and punchy.  Fact is, I'm still sick and it's wearing me down, but my days are full, full, full.  I'm writing and teaching and working and rehearsing a play for early September at Bats Theatre.  It's quite a physical piece and I'm pretty sure rehearsals are making the glandular fever worse, but sometimes, timing sucks. It's one of those: "Look, I'll fall down when I have *time*, okay?" things.  On the upside, it's fun, even if I can only do about a third of what everyone else is doing.  We're re-writing my part to make it easier for me, which I'm happy about.  I don't think I'm up to climbing circus ropes right now.  I already fell off the trapeze.

I spent this weekend visiting a friend in New Plymouth and I rode home yesterday on the Bus that Time Forgot. It was a night journey so there was bugger all to see out the window; the spotlight on my seat didn't work so I couldn't read anything; I wasn't sleepy and all the other passengers were zombies. Seven freaking hours of Shania Twain interspersed with static on the radio and lots of dark nothing.

I spent an hour resisting the urge to leap to my feet and ask if anyone wanted to play noughts and crosses, and three years yearning for the sweet embrace of the grave, and also a toilet.

But my weekend was great. I caught up with Cal, and ( we saw Troy. There were pretty people with thighs. )

In other fandom news, I had DSL over the weekend, and took the opportunity to put the footage_project to the use God intended. Thanks and love to everyone involved! I watched things that people have been talking about for years and I've never had the opportunity to see, what with living in the other hemisphere and everything. The Making of Pop! Everything that everyone's said about this show ever is absolutely true. Am full of mocking affection, with particular love and giggles for the timbertrick and Justin's earnest pronouncements about carrying the message of pop to the world. Love love love.

The HP kids just came on the news. Sweet baby Jesus, they've grown up well.