stellaluna

I've started using Twitter again recently, so if you're interested in my random thoughts about things like Leverage and the ongoing need for more caffeine, you can follow me there.

(It's mostly scarletts_awry's fault, but discovering that Timothy Hutton uses Twitter helped too.)

Also, have a meme:

Ask me my fannish Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. And I will answer them all in a new post.

Hey, y'all.

Real life continues to interfere with my best intentions to post more regularly. The main issue is that, along with being busy at work, I'm struggling with some insomnia/sleep issues that are doing a very good job of draining my physical and emotional energy.

But I'm working on it. I still want to write an entry about "Yahrzeit." Maybe not quite a review, but some thoughts, mostly about Hawkes.

And in happier news: Leverage S2 premiere in four days!! Nate and Sophie and Hardison and Parker and Nate's hats. I am ecstatic.

Finally, I have two Dreamwidth invite codes to offer. Comment here if you'd like one! First come, first served.

Porn Battle VIII is gearing up and is taking prompts through 7:00 p.m UK time on Friday, June 5.

You can contribute prompts even if you don't plan to write anything, or don't know if you want to do so. If you do want to write something, you can pick as many prompts as you like once the Battle moves into its next phase, and they don't have to be any longer than what will fit into a comment. On Dreamwidth, that's approximately 2,750 words -- and you don't need to have a Dreamwidth account to contribute.

I will not be writing, but I've contributed prompts here and here.

If you're curious, those prompts are as follows.

First Group:

CSI:NY, Mac/Danny, revenant, restless, stasis
CSI:NY, Stella/Hawkes, escape, whisper, steam, coffee, tangle, pulse
CSI:NY, Stella/Quinn, secret, cat-and-mouse, balance, bed, sheets, takeout, rain, bridge, snow, mouth, thighs, waiting

DC Comics, Kate Kane/Renee Montoya, hidden, masks, silk, throat, panic

Leverage, Nate/Sophie, godhead, confess, wrists, kneel, liminal, gun, Getty, breathe, spaces, teeth, priest, confessional
Leverage, Parker/Hardison, game, couch, soda, smile, geek, bungee, magic, xBox, digital, chest
Leverage, Parker/Maggie, gift, scent, touch, highwire

Second Group:

CSI:NY, Stella/Mac, bonds, whisper, hollow, curve, blood
CSI:NY, Hawkes/Mac, first, wait, moment, fingers, ache

Leverage, Nate/Sterling, past, wounds, drink, truth, weapon
Leverage, Sophie/Maggie, secrets, shared, spaces, lies

The Middleman, Wendy/Lacey, friends, trust, paint, mouth

Neverwhere, Richard/the Marquis de Carabas, night, rooftop, sleight-of-hand, stories

RPS, Project Runway, Jerell/Suede, aftermath, liquor, workroom
RPS, Project Runway, Emmett McCarthy/Tim Gunn, hands, touch, voice

I got to spend a long weekend with scarletts_awry a few weeks ago, and it was amazing. We went to the symphony and the botanical gardens, and had sushi one night, and held hands while we drank beer and watched Leverage, and went shopping, and did lots of other things. And I tried grits for the first time and they were amazing.

We are definitely going to do this again as soon as possible.

I've gotten a Dreamwidth account. As of right now, I haven't started cross-posting, and I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with it, but if you're over there and you feel inclined, add me. I want to be able to keep track of people no matter which way the winds might blow.

I also have an account on Goodreads, which I have been using and which I've grown quite fond of, so if you're over there and/or you like the idea of the site and want to see what's on my various bookshelves, go check it out.

If you've heard the concerns floating around today about the LJ staff layoffs that happened in their San Francisco office, this press release seems to make things much more clear (at least as much as any corporate press release will ever do).

LJ is not going away; certainly, it's not going to vanish overnight.

That said, make sure to back up your journals periodically. (You should do this anyway.) Information about how to do that can be found at liz_marcs's journal here. (link via scarletts_awry)

Also, this seems as good a time as any to point out where else I can be found.

I have an account at InsaneJournal here.

I also have an account at Scribbld here.

Both of those are just placeholder accounts for now.

• the season finale of Project Runway (subtitle: shut up, Kenley)



• the American version of Life on Mars (subtitle: Harvey Keitel, how are you so awesome?)



• those YA novel recs I started thinking about doing, oh, months ago



• the upcoming premiere of 30 Rock and the general awesomeness thereof



• the general awesomeness of Pushing Daisies
  
  
• what else I've been watching on TV or reading lately

(Posting this will, with luck, increase the chances of my actually doing so.)

The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write in (or think I should), and give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, Ancient Rome, etc). I will then explain what story from your chosen fandom I would write for your chosen type of AU.

Regarding the "or think I should" part, please keep this to fandoms you know I actually have some degree of familiarity with. If you ask me for, say, Star Trek or bandom or Stargate, I got nothing.

However, I am perfectly happy to describe more than one AU idea for a given fandom, so don't feel like you have to skip over this or come up with something else if someone has already mentioned yours.

Okay, right now I really fail at thinkpositive30. But I'm going to try to backtrack through the week and make up for all the days I've missed.

I'll start with today's good thing, because it's the most important, and I don't want it to get lost down at the bottom of the post.

You've probably already heard, either from the news or from the million times it's been linked to on your flist, but California State Supreme Court has ruled that the same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. Hooray for my state, and hooray for Governor Schwarzenegger, who announced after the ruling that he has no plans to overturn it.

This is a real, true good thing. Seriously, I got all weepy when I first read it this morning, and I'm getting teary-eyed again now just typing this. Little by little, it's changing.

Okay, now for good things from the rest of the week.

Sunday (May 11):

gin200168 and I got up early so we could go to the Studio City Farmers Market, where we bought pumpkin bread and hummus and various other good things. We got Korean pancakes for breakfast, and after we were done shopping, we snagged a picnic table and had them along with some strawberries.

Afterward, we stopped back at my place so we could drop things off, and so we could stop by Starbucks, because I needed my coffee. Then we went downtown to Little Tokyo, and spent the next few hours at the Japanese Village Plaza and Fugetsu-Do Confectionary. We got a ton of yummy and cheap Japanese food, including some of Fugetsu-Do's amazing mochi, and I bought a few pretty dishes in one of the little stores (I'm into mismatched dishware) and a Haiku anthology. We also got...Gin, what were the little pancake things? I can't remember the name. We got hot, freshly-made little pancake things with red bean paste, and sat by the fountain to eat them. By then, the morning fog had burned off and the sun was out, and it was turning into a gorgeous day.

(and scarletts_awry, given your love for Asian food, we should totally go here when you visit next.)

I also appear to have inadvertently started a Maneki Neko (Lucky Cat) collection. I already had two standard ones that Gin had given me, and on Sunday I picked out a fat little purple one in one store, and then the store with the dishes had really cheap lucky cats, so I got one holding a pink marble and a little black one, and then it turned out the little black one came as a set, so...yeah. They're all sitting on my coffee table right now, smiling at me. I'm picky about tchotchkes, but I'm utterly charmed by lucky cats. And I was pleased to discover, after the fact, that the purple ones are supposed to bring a person artistic strength.

It was just a really good day all around, and we spent the evening watching Eureka.

Monday (May 12):

Gin had to go home today, but we had time in the morning to go out for breakfast one last time, and to make another Target run so that I could snag the cardigan I had decided I wanted.

After she left for the airport, I hung around the house, then finally managed to get some writing done, and I was actually able to finish the story that I'd been trying to work on forever. It was such an enormous relief to see it all fall into place, and posting it was a weight off my shoulders.

Now Gin is back home and I miss her, but we had a great visit, and got a chance to have a lot of good conversations and do some sorely-needed catching-up.

Tuesday (May 13):

Back to work today, unfortunately, but nothing had exploded in my absence, which was good.

I also started reading Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which is really a most excellent novel.

Wednesday (May 14):

"Taxi" was another great episode in what's been a fabulous season. While I'll be sad to see the season finale next week, I'm also looking forward to it, and looking forward to what will happen next once S5 rolls around.

(Also, I can't believe we're heading into a fifth season, and that they're approaching their 100th episode. Blows my mind, it really does. Where has the time gone?)

...and I believe that gets me all caught up. scarletts_awry, you may have pulled ahead briefly, but don't start counting those chickens just yet.

So. Um. It would appear that I suddenly have a shiny new fandom.

gin200168 has been pimping Eureka to me and telling me over and over again how much I would like it, and although I wasn't exactly disagreeing, I wasn't really giving it much thought, either. But she brought her DVDs with her, and last night she showed me the pilot. Tonight we watched episodes two and three.

And...suddenly I am hooked. Okay, not exactly "suddenly." I was already liking it a lot after just the pilot, and my affection for the show only grew as I continued to watch. I like the characters a lot, and am quite taken by the premise and setting. The show is just...the best word I can come up with is charming. I am charmed by it. It charms me.

I like Jack Carter a lot, but so far I think Henry is my favorite character. He's just so...oh. So decent. He's a good man. (And complex, too, which I like. In fact, all the characters are pleasingly complex, even after just three episodes.)

Did I need another fandom? No, I did not. But it seems that I have one anyway.

Is anyone else out there on the flist into this show? Speak up if you are!

(Um, so gin200168 is already all smug about this, and she's going to be even more so once she reads this post. Which, normally I would not indulge or encourage her in this, but fuck it. It's a DAMN GOOD SHOW. Plus I'm feeling all gleeful with that initial burst of new-shiny-fandom starry-eyed love.)

In other news, we went to the Getty today, and it was awesome, as always. Saw a fabulous photography exhibit of work by a German photographer named August Sander, who did most of his work during and around the Weimar Republic era. Gorgeous stuff, and often unexpectedly moving, in part because of the character and history that gets revealed in the photographs, and in part because we know what's coming for these people; the shadow of Hitler and the War and everything else is already on them, even if they don't know it yet, and it's impossible not to try to read that in the faces of secretaries and farmers and government functionaries, of the members of a theater company and a Jewish composer and of two young girls on a country road.

Tomorrow is the Sunday morning farmer's market and shopping in Little Tokyo, and a Target run. And possibly a mall run, depending.

Today's other good thing is that I am now confident that there is no way scarletts_awry is going to win, not now that she's woken the lizard brain.

I'm just saying.

Meme ganked from melina123 and various other flist people:

So I was adding some new interests to my LJ profile (because I, uh... have some new interests. Yes.) and found myself feeling defensive every time I typed a female name, thinking, basically, FUCK YOU, SHE'S AWESOME, because I felt as if someone somewhere was going to be criticizing my love for them.

So, anyway, then I made a list of women who make me want to say FUCK YOU, SHE'S AWESOME. They are far from the only women who are awesome, or the only women people need to be told to step off of, but they are the top ten I feel that way about, right now, off the top of my head.

If you want to argue with me about the awesomeness of any of these women, I am afraid I will simply be referring you to the subject line. THAT IS ALL.

~~~

So! Tell me who's awesome in your book! Post your own list if you like! FUCK YOU, SHE'S AWESOME!

My list (and no, I didn't limit myself to ten):

Stella Bonasera (CSI:NY)
Martha Jones (Doctor Who and Torchwood)
Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who)
Toshiko Sato (Torchwood)
Gwen Cooper (Torchwood)
Suzie Costello (Torchwood)
Liz Lemon (30 Rock)
Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Willow Rosenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Tara Maclay (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Anya Jenkins (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada)
Emily (The Devil Wears Prada)
Selina Kyle (DC Universe)
Sasha Bordeaux (DC Universe)
Helena Bertinelli (DC Universe)
Renee Montoya (DC Universe)
Chuck Charles (Pushing Daisies)
Olive Snook (Pushing Daisies)