Entries tagged with personal

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So, I kinda ran away and joined tumblr...

I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that -- I've also been dealing with my first full-time job (over a year now!) and various other life changes -- but definitely part of it is that once I joined tumblr, it kinda sucked up a lot of my fannish time.

There's so much fannish energy on there. It moves incredibly fast and you have to run to keep up. And re-joining Supernatural fandom has been... weird. And complicated. All the more so because I'm watching for different reasons now than I was back the first time I was watching the show. And the show is this emotionally-confusing combination of amazing and problematic.

...Robert Berens (new writer for S9), though, is an absolute gem.

But there just isn't all that much activity or enthusiasm for SPN on LJ or DW these days (not that I've found, at least), and there is a ton on tumblr, so that's been where I've been having most of my fandom conversations for the last year+.

Another factor is that I'm not watching as much media these days. The only other show I've been keeping up with on the week-to-week basis is The Vampire Diaries, which just had the season finale this last week, which was suitable epic, in true TVD-style. Well, and Cosmos, which is wall-to-wall awesome science beauty.

But I'm behind on every other show -- like Elementary, Agents of SHIELD, Revenge -- or have given up entirely -- like with Once Upon a Time or Teen Wolf.

Now that we're into summer show haitus, I'm going to try to catch up on media (definitely catching up on AoS -- it sounds like it went from 'good' to 'AWESOME' while I wasn't paying attention), and I'm going to try to keep up on DW and LJ.

I'm seeing a couple of interesting new shows in the works for next season -- Agent Carter (!) and Constantine both look very intriguing. Not sure if I watch to check out The Flash and Gotham or not, though. Indecisive.

I'll definitely be watching the (potentially final) seasons of TVD and SPN. Sleepy Hollow is on my list, too, for sure. It also sounds like Arrow has really gotten people interested, so I kinda want to check some of that out over the summer. I watched and enjoyed the first season of Orphan Black but haven't watched any of the second yet apart from the premiere -- I'm thinking I want to save it up and marathon it. I feel like it's the kind of show that would reward that kind of viewing more than week-to-week.

I'm going to Vividcon in August, and very excited about it. Don't know if I'll have a vid in Premieres or not. It depends on if I end up having enough time to finish one.

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personal

USA Independence Day Fireworks

I went to Portland's fireworks display last night; took some pictures.

Total of thirty-seven, in a gallery here on my livejournal.

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Personal & LA Trip in a month

So, I may have impulsively bought a ticket to see Kris Allen at the LA Spring Fair next month. Partly because I have the chance to meet up with some fandom people, which should be fun, but also because I have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off next quarter, so it just seems like I should take advantage of that.

And I love his voice.

Plus, I need to do something fun for myself. This last quarter has been killing me (I have gotten so many stress headaches) and I really need to have something that will let me recharge. And I've never regretted taking fannish trips - seeing Joey Fatone in RENT in 2002, seeing David Tennant in Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost, going to Vividcon. It's always worth it.

I will be getting into LA on Saturday the 16th and then leaving on Monday the 18th.

It's going to be my fourth time seeing him in concert. That might not sound like a lot to many people, but I have never seen anyone in concert that many times before.

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personal

Personal: atheism's impact on me

Something of a ramble, prompted in part by my brother (who has become very committed to his new Christian church over the last few years) wondering why I became an atheist. Thinking about that has made me think about the ways that being atheist has changed the way that I relate to the world and to art.

( Read more... )

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personal,
tv: glee

Glee 3.3

( spoilers for Glee; well, mostly ramblings on faith/lack of faith, really )

Current Location: at home
Current Music: snoring cats

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personal

Good Morning! Or Late Evening!

My very first post at Dreamwidth... really exciting. If only I could think of something significant to say. Apart from a great big shout-out and much love to

par_avion for getting me my invite so that I could still be

butterfly.

Well, I have had almost ten years over at livejournal (and I expect to be there for a while yet, as many people do not plan on moving... at least not right away!) and I hope to spend at least as long on this site.

I am a fannish girl: give me my Jossverse or my Being Human. I've been in fandom all my life. My parents played D&D and went to Star Trek conventions - my dad still goes out to Klingon karaoke when he feels the urge.

I love 'shipping, mostly of best friends though there are exceptions. For the non-canon relationships, I drift toward Buffy/Xander (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or Shawn/Gus (Psych). For canon relationships, I love Doctor/Rose (Doctor Who), Lois/Clark (any incarnation, but currently Smallville). I'm desperately hoping that Angela and Jack will get back together on Bones.

The late Dr. Amber Volakis was my favorite ever character on House. I think that Joss' new series Dollhouse rocks and one of my favorite personal memories in life is getting the chance to go to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see David Tennant play Hamlet (my breath has never been so taken).

When I take political tests, I always end up being so far to the liberal and socialist part of the square that no political leader in history is close to me. I'm bisexual and atheist (and the second one was harder to come out about). I went through a depressing period of my life a few years back that I'm still recovering from, but I love people and I love stories. The world is beautiful.

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Updates and whatnot:

Late last night, I posted a Jack/David fic -- I'm always unsure when the best time to post things is, but 10 p.m. is probably not it.

verb_noire has raised $7,381 to date, which is pretty awesome. Other cool things that I am reminded of: I'm picking up some sweet book recs from

50books_poc and film recs from

12films_poc.

One of the sweetest films I can remember seeing, which was written and directed by Alice Wu, is Saving Face, a romantic comedy about Wil, a Chinese-American lesbian, that deals with both her romance and her family (her mother, primarily). I haven't yet mentioned it on the comm because I'd want to rewatch it first (which means that I need to re-rent it from netflix).

I first saw it when I asked for recommendation of gay/lesbian movies where no one died and this movie, like Imagine Me and You delighted me with its delicate touch (oh, and as a fannish side note, IM&Y has Lena Hedley (who plays Sarah Connor in the current series) as one of the romantic leads and Angel Colby (Gwen on Merlin) as a potential LI character for someone else at the end). Saving Face has complex and believable characters and I really adored the resolution.

Bookwise, when we read books for the 'American Dream' class I recently took, the books that stayed with me the longest were "Typical American" by Gish Jen and "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry. "The Great Gatsby" was overrated (Gatby=stalker! Also, the narrator is a cold, selfish jerk) and though "Grapes of Wrath" was better than I expected, it still wasn't all that compelling (though, as we had time constraints, we watched the movie for that, so probably the book is better). There were also several short stories/essays, though I only recall that one of them was that Horatio Alger thing. In a later class, we did get the chance to read/talk about MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" which was even more awesome than I recalled it being.

"Typical American", which starts with a Chinese exchange student coming to America just before the Chinese Revolution, was engaging and drew me deeply into protagonists' perspectives, with two very vivid female characters who grow and change throughout, and an ending that offers the potential for a brighter future without unrealistically typing things up in the bow. "A Raisin in the Sun", which I really want to see performed as a play now, really makes me ache for the characters (the class was interesting, because the first half was all -- "white guys! white guys all over the place! only white guys have a voice!" and then the second half was the opposite and it was amazing was a relief it was not to be reading from that perspective anymore).

Pictures for "Planet of the Dead" (the upcoming Doctor Who special) are out. David Tennant remains pretty.

Current Mood: cynical

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Because culture says that women never look good enough.

I'm mostly putting this here as a personal reminder of how Western (specifically American, in this case) society works to destroy female self-image.

At the Iwanex Studio website, under their portfolio section, you can see some of the retouched photos of celebrities that they've done... when you scroll over the image, you can see what the picture looked like before it was photoshopped. See Cameron Diaz's breasts reshaped and her arms and legs made smaller! See freckles disappear! See Julia Stiles' breasts and hips grow! Watch as women are given uniform 'hourglass' figures!

They fuck with some guys' appearances, too, but not to the same extent.

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tiny quiz results thing

So, if you've been around here for a while, you know that I generally post quiz results on the fourth of never, but this one that I just took hit me as so incredibly right that I had to share it.

( Read more... )

I'd totally want an orangutan. They're awesome.

Also, DirecTV finally let me choose Dollhouse as a series to record (Sarah Connor comes back the same day. *bounces*). I'm choosing to view the Friday the 13th start as good luck, because my dad says that it is. If you're Irish (which I am, somewhat). He may or may not have been pulling that out of his ass.

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Stuff from 2008 (plus, bonus Christmas Vid for Doctor Who)

Vids I've Done:

( 12 vids in chronological order (7 Doctor Who) )

Bonus Christmas vid for Doctor Who (spoilers for Christmas specials 2005-08):

Fics I've Done

( 10 stories (9 Doctor Who) )

Fannish Highlights from 2008

( 10 items )

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Because David Tennant is awesome (and pretty): much GIP'ness

The icon accompanying this post is by

mctime_lord.

( other new icons that you may see me using in the coming days, all DW or DT-related )

Current Mood: happy

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personal

I officially have a sister now!

My brother is all married and I am snatching a moment in the hotel's business center to share my joy with you.

Yay!

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Personal: trip excitement; some other stuff

The pre-trip excitement is starting to get to me, I think. I'm getting all nervous and fluttery and incapable of sleep. I want to already be in Chicago, hanging out with vidding-type people.

A little while ago, I think I said something along the lines of "Oh, now that "Journey's End" has aired, I may never have another Doctor/Rose vid idea" and now I've ended up making two vids for them that are sitting on my external HD, mocking me. Um. Yes. So, those may appear after VividCon. I'm going to try to release the Donna vid that I'm working on first, but one of the D/R ones may slip out. Because. Apparently, I find them even more interesting now. Possibly my rewatching is to blame for this. ( Read more... )

Because of VVC, I'm not posting a Doctor Who episode review this upcoming Saturday. I'll be writing about "Aliens of London"/"World War Three" on the 23rd. I'm really enjoying doing these. There are so many connecting strands and so many consistent character pieces.

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Personal: Vividcon, weddings, and Hamlet

I have three upcoming trips, one of which I only decided to do quite recently. Since there are people on my flist who are also going to two of these places, I thought I would share information and etc.

VividCon: which is next week (eee!) in Chicago. I'm leaving the fourteenth and getting back the eighteenth. I anticipate having much fun (vids! Yay!).

My brother's wedding: October 18th, California. He's getting married to a funny, smart and pretty woman. I've only met her a couple of times, but she made a great impression on me. I think they have the chance to be really happy with each other.

Hamlet (!) and Love's Labor's Lost: October 20-21. I'm pretty much going straight from my brother's wedding to this (I've already gotten my plane ticket). I'm going to see David Tennant as Hamlet. Eeee! I'm kinda ridiculously excited about this. I'm flying into London and then there's a bus out to Stratford. I'm staying in a guesthouse with antigone921 and we're going to be seeing LLL on the 20th and Hamlet on the 21st (along with, apparently, quite a few other DT fans on that same night). There are tentative plans for a bunch of us to get together for lunch on the day of Hamlet. On the 22nd, I'm going to take the bus back to London, where I'm thinking of staying at a youth hostel, as those are fairly cheap (I've found one online that looks good). I'm going to be in London on the 23rd all day (my grandmother made me promise to go to the British Museum), and then I'm flying back to the USA on Friday the 24th.

Where I will, presumably, collapse from happy exhaustion.

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personal

IBARW: also, I wish I could find a good song for Henry

It's International Blog Against Racism Week.

I couldn't really think of anything to write about for it, so I hadn't done anything. I find racism, like other forms of bigotry, constantly startling. It's so obviously wrong to judge a person as worth less because of their skin color, but society does it constantly. It pushes it into us through media and through culture and trains us to believe it, too. I try question myself about it. I try to always listen when other people say that something is racist.

It's not something that I know from the inside. I'm a woman and I'm queer, but I'm white. I don't sit around and think of myself as being 'white', but that's part of the privilege of it.

I was arrested for shoplifting as a teen and got, basically, a slap on the hand for it (I had to write a letter of apology). If I weren't a white girl, would my sentence have been so lenient?

As a vidder, I'm aware that the characters that I've vidded that are white definitely outnumber the characters of color that I've made vids about. I've only made two character study vids that feature CoC (Tosh from Torchwood; Gunn from Angel). I have a few others in various states of progress (Teyla from Stargate: Atlantis; Martha from Doctor Who/Torchwood; Mickey from Doctor Who; Mimi from Rent; Boomer from Battlestar Galactica) but there's no telling when any of those will get finished. The CS vids that I've made that feature white characters vastly outnumber these. That's something that I do want to continue to work on.

The best that I think I can do is try, see where I may be failing to measure up, and then try some more.

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Doctor Who plans and other various notes:

I watched the rest of "Doctor Horrible" and found it to be quite a good critique of the 'Nice Guy' and why he really isn't. That was enjoyable in a painful way.

I've made plans to do a rewatch of Doctor Who which will feature the following key elements in each episode review:

a) whether or not the episode passes the Bechdel Test (at least two women talk to each other about something other than a man).
b) clothes and their hidden meanings.
c) Bunnies! Okay, no. I lie. There will be no bunnies. There may be kitties.
d) the Doctor as Lonely God.
e) character evolution (and, related to that, relationship evolution). You might think that this would be related to d), but it really isn't.
f) foreshadowing and/or anvils.
e) squee about how pretty the show is (a section that can include: actors, lighting, color correction, editing, directing, writing and more).

Bought that Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking book that I've been wanting to read for ages. I'm looking forward to checking that out.

Current Mood: accomplished

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personal

(no subject)

I have successfully installed a replacement keyboard on my laptop! Yay! My shift keys work without insane workarounds. My 'a' no longer sticks. 'Enter' no longer requires twice the force of every other key. Yay!

*cheers*

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personal

Personal: At my new address, still unpacking.

I have to say, moving this week was possibly the best choice -- it's before summer quarter starts, so I have time but it is very handily between the two parts of the Doctor Who finale, so I can't think the possibilities to death.

It'll probably be a while before everything settles down, but we're getting there. School starts up again the week of the 14th (though my first class isn't until the 15th). Vividcon is next month (*squees*).

Saw Hancock; may have a new OT3.

Okay, back to unpacking and organizing.

Current Mood: good

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Personal: just some thoughts on the occasion of California

( Spoilers for Queer as Folk UK )

QaF2 is about homophobia and saying, "Fuck it. I've had enough." About Vince telling Stuart that Alexander's father is dying and Stuart saying, "Good." It's about that feeling that I had back in 2004, when eleven fucking states passed measures to 'protect' straight marriage -- that fuck you, you assholes, fuck you all feeling (I can remember wanting to throw up). Not what I'm feeling today, right now, not with California doing something right. But I still feel it sometimes.

Sometimes, I am so tired of being queer and living in this world. Sometimes, I am so tired of being a woman and living in this world. Sometimes, I am so tired of being a person and living in this fucking world.

Homophobia. Sexism. Racism. Classism. It's out there. Sometimes, it feels like it's everywhere.

One man. One woman. I still see it on cars. People saying that fewer than ten gay characters over the course of fifty episodes of television is 'overdoing' it. The way women get discarded or mistreated in too many places and in too many ways to name. Michelle Obama getting called Barack Obama's "baby mama" by Fox News (or the button bullshit that was done at the Texas GOP Convention). This world can be so depressing sometimes.

Sometimes.

And sometimes there are moments when the light seems a little brighter, because this time another person or group of people was willing to admit that everyone counts as a complete person with all the rights and privileges and respect that should bring. That's what California is doing right now -- making the light just a little bit brighter so that we can all see a little bit better.

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personal

Personal: Enacting the Bajoran Rite of Separation

As some of you know, I've been in a relationship with my roommate (jic) for almost three years now (our anniversary would have been this Memorial Day). Just tonight, we have agreed to no longer be in a relationship for reasons of irreconcilable differences. As neither of us harbor any ill will toward the other because of this, we're choosing to be utter geeks and this Saturday night are kicking off our Rite of Separation at Darcelle's (a Las Vegas-style cabaret in Portland, Oregon).

Anyone who lives in or near Portland who would like to join us is very welcome. The celebration itself will be continuing for four days afterward, both at our home and on our respective ljs.