worryingly jolly batman

labellementeuse @ 2015-11-22T07:55:00

2015-11-21T19:10:53Z

( I've been marathoning Jessica Jones, which I recommend, and I have two spoilery-ish thoughts. some discussion of suicidal themes )

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labellementeuse @ 2013-09-26T18:03:00

2013-09-26T08:09:07Z

( Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. )

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labellementeuse @ 2013-01-06T21:10:00

2013-01-06T08:41:24Z

So owlbeer and I spent yesterday watching all of the episodes of the current season of Fringe except the three that will air later this month. This is Fringe's final season; they were warned that it would be, so this is a wrap-up season. I have a few thoughts under the cut, but without being spoilery (I hope?) I will say that I think it really, really benefited from being marathoned in the same way shows like Lost have benefited from that for me.

( spoilery as all get-out through 5x10 )

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The Structural Problem with Urban Fantasy Serial Media

2012-08-31T11:16:53Z

I outlined this to my flatmate tonight while I was doing the dishes so it's not fully thought-out or anything but it's a complete thought, so I thought I'd make it a post.

( extremely general tone spoilers for Being Human UK, the Dresden Files novels, and Mike Carey's Felix Castor books )

End o' rant. I need to catch up with the Toby Daye books so I can see how they fit into my Grandiose Theory.

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labellementeuse @ 2012-05-15T19:12:00

2012-05-15T07:27:36Z

1. Today in horrifyingly on the nose song choices for hockey RPF vids-in-my-head: The Hold Steady, Boys & Girls in America.

That's just depressing to be honest. Moving on.

2. I watched a couple of trailers yesterday. They were both for dystopias, which apparently is a thing now. Dystopias are not my favourite, but if you're going to have one I want it to have a rural countrified focus, so.

This is Beasts of the Southern Wild, a movie trailer which just looks really really good.

Okay so this is the new JJ Abrams/Eric Kripke show. Yeah, I just said JJ Abrams/Eric Kripke show, and millions of fangirls just screamed and went reflexively for knives. Also, it's almost a direct ripoff of the premise of S M Stirling's Emberverse, i.e. "one day technology stops working for mysterious faffy reasons and physics is broken". Only the storyline looks to have 100% fewer Wiccans and lesbians, which is a real shame. Possibly less mediaeval military tactics though, and uh, there's going to be archery and swordfighting, and also a female lead, and also it's going to be about family, and yes. Yes, I will definitely be watching it, although I am going to try the china_shop-patented don't-trust-JJ method of remaining emotionally uninvolved.

I was going to do some fic recs but everyone I know in hockey fandom I'm pretty sure stalks the tags like me, so no point really. The devil one that was sort of an SPN fusion was really pretty great even though I usually hate that kind of thing - depressing starcrossed-by-species shit. Angels, demons, whatever. I don't have a problem with vampires and werewolves; I don't know if that's because humans can always become vampires or werewolves, but I think the real issue is that angels and demons (particularly evil-by-nature or pure-by-nature) types are just so distant from humanity in needs, desires, motivations. Vampires might live for ages but their desires are pretty simple and not so different from humanity's. Demons? Yeah, not so much.

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labellementeuse @ 2012-05-05T21:36:00

2012-05-05T09:50:49Z

( The Good Wife 3x22 )

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labellementeuse @ 2012-05-04T21:52:00

2012-05-04T10:55:41Z

1. Vid rec: In the Bullpen, by caramarie. The Avengers, Black Widow-centric. -- this is a really FABULOUS Natasha vid. &NATASHA;;;;; ilher so much and SO DOES THIS VID - brilliant song choice - and there is also the elegant beauty of it being a vid finished and posted before the movie even came out in the US. Don't you find that satisfying? I find that satisfying.

2. I made a bunch of icons. Mostly hockey icons and a few Fringe icons. The hockey ones are all Blackhawks core or Corey, basically because those are the people of whom the Blackhawks media people take pretty photos.

1. 2. 3.

( about 45 icons )

Uh, I don't know if there are communities or whatever where these should go? Probably not. Usual rules of engagement apply: want, take, have, credit is nice but not necessary, comments wildly adored.

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This is a fannish post about fannish things!

2012-04-13T09:13:39Z

1. Check out these amazing Star Wars shooting pics. Third to last, 106, 99, every single picture with Carrie Fisher in it ...

2. Brandon Bollig giving Andrew Shaw a piggyback ride. And this one's for owlbeer who sent me an email saying "Patrick Kane has a nice smile sometimes": Yeah, he does, although I think actually Corey Crawford's is better.

3. I think it's absolutely amazing the amount of technology and information infrastructure that exists around professional sports in the US. Yesterday I downloaded the NHL's official app and I could listen to radio of any of the playoff games while simultaneously getting updates on all the rest. It told me what times the games were on in local time without even asking me my timezone (I suppose this is more general "wow technology", but). This afternoon I streamed a game less-than-legally and within something like half an hour I could watch video highlights, flick through a gallery of photos from that match, see interviews with the coach and some of the players, read all of this stat information, read game recaps, etc etc etc. It's just so speedy. Terribly, punnily titled recaps are up within - I haven't timed it but it's like five minutes of the game finishing. It's all very impressive (to me). -- I mean compare it to a TV show; if I want to get a recap of Grey's Anatomy I can get a weecap at TWOP within, what, 24 hours? and a full-length recap a week later. Screencaps? No organised way to get screencaps, wait for someone to do it somewhere, scour the internet. What was that song? When does that shit go on hearditontv? Wikipedia update? pfft. IT'S JUST ALL VERY SOMETHING.

4. My toes are cold. That's not real interesting or fannish but I wanted to share.

5. It's Fandom Appreciation Week! I'm running late but here are my three-recs-by-strangers for the week (I took "haven't read to before" to mean "before the last 24–48 hours", natch).

How Much You Mean It, Sports Night, Dan/Casey, Dana/Calvin, by scripted_sra
This is just really fun! One of my favourite media sources last year was Sports Night which I got from ... uh, someone (Dewey, Provider of All that is Good?) ... at g/t. I read a whole lot of fic and noodled over the way older fandoms do really have a distinctive style, so it was interesting from that perspective to read fic written for an older fandom, but from a more modern angle. (This is an Everyone Knows They're Dating fic.)

Five Things Everyone Really Didn't Need To Know about Kaner and Tazer's Sex Live, Thanks, by grim_lupine, Hockey RPF, Kaner/Tazer, background Duncs/Seabs (ofc)
What it says on the tin and surprisingly hot considering voyeurism is a turnoff for me. I love this stupid pairing, argh.

Steph/Jason art by malla13
Uh ... my fannish pursuits are not very adventurous rn so I just cruised tumblr tags until I found some art I liked, but this is really neat. And pretty hot.

6. I love the new LJ spoiler cuts the way they work in comments, so you can click and have them expand inline. However, I dislike the way now, if you click into someone's entry, the cut doesn't autoexpand and you have to click it and reload the whole page. (If it was click-to-expand inline this would be great because you could expand and hide cuts according to what you'd seen/what you were interested in, but I lost a comment this evening because I clicked on a cut when I was already in a post and it reloaded the page. Boo.)

7. I need some hockey RPF icons. Are there icon posts somewhere or do I need to suck it up and DIY? Also is there a newsletter comm?

8. I was going to do a thoughts-on-anon-memes post but I'm tired so it's not going to happen, but if anyone's interested remind me at a future date.

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labellementeuse @ 2012-04-01T08:29:00

2012-03-31T20:32:29Z

( tiny, not even really spoilery comment about Fringe )

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labellementeuse @ 2012-03-11T12:13:00

2012-03-10T23:34:34Z

This is a post on Fringe that I've been noodling over for awhile. Spoilers up til the most recent episode and, I'm just warning you, it is not a very happy post.
( Read more... )

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labellementeuse @ 2012-02-21T22:18:00

2012-02-21T09:43:20Z

1. I have raced through all of Parks & Recreation (thanks owlbeer and china_shop, purveyors of excellent things & good lunch companions to boot). If we share TV tastes, I highly recommend it, although I also recommend skipping the first season. It's stuffed with hilarity and team spirit and delightfully quirky characters who are flawed but not in ways that make them unlikeable, rather the opposite.

2. Uh, I started watching Merlin again. We aren't talking about this, but if anyone has any fic recs, I'd appreciate them. Semi-relatedly, I am annoyed that there aren't good screencaps of Morgana in her S1-S2 low-cut dresses. It's not that I'm awful and objectifying (yes I am), but her breasts have actually been relevant to conversations I've had recently and it bugs me that I can't link to them on any tissue-thin pretext. *glumface* Morgana is the prettiest, that is all.

3. ( this week's Fringe )

4. Food-wise, can anyone give me some really good vegetarian or beef-based slow cooker recipes? I have a Māori class Tuesday and Wednesday nights to which I am trying to take dinner rather than buy it, and I found that slow-cooking a casserole on Tuesday and then taking it to class and leaving it in the fridge overnight was a really good, low-commitment and tasty option. Unfortunately I only have one decent slow-cooked beef stew recipe, and I'm in the market for more.

5. I am massively behind on LJ and DW, so if I've missed something important could you let me know? <3

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labellementeuse @ 2012-01-14T23:08:00

2012-01-14T10:26:18Z

( this week's Fringe, Vampire Diaries )

I made some gifs for this new Canadian show, a six-ep miniseries that's aired two episodes, called Bomb Girls. If you have some free time and are looking for something femslashy, I HIGHLY recommend it. It follows the lives of four women who work in a munitions factory during the second World War, so it has a lot of great stuff like feminism and women's stories and also, I am very very hopeful, some canon gay. It may yet end in a horrible Brokeback Mountain way, who knows, but for now it seems really sweet. The acting is ... not flawless, I fear, but the costumes are great and it has an awesome period feel. Give it a go - it's only two episodes right now anyway, painless and easy to get into. (I can supply links on request.)

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got to get a Fringe icon.

2011-11-13T06:45:58Z

After a conversation at I did a tumblr photoset (like a graphic, but for lazy and unartistic people) about My Feelings about Donna Noble, based around a quote from Deep Wizardry. Unsurprisingly I've been a little verklempt all day. Donna :(

Fringe commentary below the cut. And by commentary, I really mean, random vowel sounds.

( Fringe 5x06, Those We Left Behind )

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Aunty Mena's Knock-Off Noodles

2011-09-18T10:28:52Z

So there's this vegetarian/vegan restaurant on Cuba St called Aunty Mena's and although I am not vegetarian I ate there awhile ago with my friend Clare who is a vegetarian and had this thing called curry noodle and it was totally. delicious.

It was very fresh, not at all limp or soggy cauliflower and broccoli and carrots on fried thick noodles covered in a curry sauce with vege balls and what I think was tofu but I'm not actually sure. It is completely delicious and I urge you to try it next time you're on Cuba St and don't know what you want for lunch or dinner. Really, really good stuff.

Anyway I also like the fresh udon sold by a lady at our Saturday market and wanted to do something different with them than just shove them in a laksa, so, I googled a bit and messed around with some tofu and I came up with this: a really very good knock-off. It's not quite the same as the original dish, which is a little sweeter and has potatoes and also their vege balls are AMAZING, but it's really pretty good.

( read on for the recipe! )

In other news:

( generic RL update )

- And speaking of milk what would you do if you had a cup of cream and half a cup of coconut milk and a litre of blue top that you needed to use in the next couple of days?

( generic fannish/teevee update )

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labellementeuse @ 2011-05-14T18:06:00

2011-05-14T06:13:22Z

1. The other thing that is bugging me about new!LJ is the way that the "post to LJ" button in the menu bar at the top is now exactly where "friends list" used to be. I don't even post from LJ anymore, so this is extra bonus annoying.

2. My parents kicked us out of the house tonight because they're playing cards with their friends, and I was going to go to the Mean Girls Rape Crisis screening, but I think instead imma donate the $10 and stay in and catch up on Doctor Who and Game of Thrones.

3. It really bugs me that I'm going to be watching Game of Thrones without having read ASOIAF first, but GDI I've tried it and tried it and I just don't like it. But I desperately need another fantasy show, so.

4. We semi sort-of committed to a flat we looked at last week, and then I looked at it again today and was like, uh, the kitchen's smaller (and grosser) than I remember it and as for those floorboards and the insulation ... but. My sister LOVES it and I do quite like it so we're going to try to do a negotiaty thing where I'm like, I'd love it for a couple of years, but would you consider redoing the kitchen which my dad (former building contractor) would supervise, and in exchange maybe we'll paint it because it desperately needs painting? (This isn't as off-the-wall as it sounds because he mentioned redoing the bathroom in a couple months, which does need doing but not as badly as the kitchen.)

5. So uh, good luck with that, self. A bit scary but I feel like I can't be always lumping that stuff onto my parents, so.

6. Thanks so much for everyone's power and internet recs! You are all super super helpful (and the nearly unanimous rec for Powershop was very convincing).

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How to lose a fan in ten episodes

2010-12-10T12:17:10Z

labellementeuse: how was Bones?
lady_larla: well i was less put off by it than i thought i would be
lady_larla: it healed a bit of the pain from the 100th episode. but my heart did break a bit for brennan
labellementeuse: awwww :(
lady_larla: i know, sadness, but i think maybe they can actually progress a bit from now.. it somehow feels like emotionally the show had got a bit stuck and this episode was a good place to progress from , i dunno
labellementeuse: that's really optimistic
labellementeuse: because I know what you mean by emotionally stuck.
lady_larla: yeh it was just ohh poor booth and brennan , poor brennan does she know what she's missing for at least 10 episodes now, and you know after a point you say well ffs decide what you're gonna do with it and actually just do it and lets just see where that takes us, im tired of the sad droopy pathetic faces. i watch bones cause i love the jokes and camaraderie and the fact that they try to find hope in the sad horrible cases, and all you're giving me is misery, gah. ok rant over ( i hope)
labellementeuse: hee
labellementeuse: good rant!
labellementeuse: I totes know what you mean.
lady_larla: yay! i like it when people understand without examples!
labellementeuse: <3
lady_larla: <3
lady_larla: I am how ever fed up of Daisy, i say this with whatever kindness i have left.
labellementeuse: aw!
labellementeuse: Daisy!
labellementeuse: I like her! what did she do?
lady_larla: Somehow she rubs me the wrong way, i like her in small doses. I think she's brilliant, but unlike with Brennan who sort of really just had know clue with stuff, Daisy just makes me feel more like really ? she's sneaky and lovable in the course of a 3 ep run and just i dunno, i think she is good in small doses, they've just had her as the "squintern" a lot this season and her squealing is getting to me. i don't dislike her, but i want more of the magic of the others, i thought that was actually working really well.
lady_larla: Also for my second rant of the day- are we ever going to see Zach again they left that on a cliff hanger and it was frustrating and sad, fix it ..grrr...
lady_larla: ( i am obviously on a roll tonight)
labellementeuse: hee, you ARE
labellementeuse: pent up Bones rage!

The point here is that Bones has always had a lot of good will from me but I feel like I agree more and more with Tas. It seems like it's becoming increasingly socially conservative: Bones has stopped being the voice of it-may-seem-weird-to-you-but-it's-normal-to-them in all situations except in the situations where it makes Bones look like an idiot (hello, Jersey Shore!). Meanwhile Seeley has continued to spout parochial conservative good ole boy judgementalism. Also Bones never shoots people or kicks them in the head anymore. Short version: man, I still love Hodgins and Angela, but I feel like no-one else on the show is the person they were when I started watching, and not in a good way. (And when was the last time Jack spouted a conspiracy theory, anyway? Oh yeah, that's right, they erased that entire significant and interesting aspect of his character which also offered a challenging voice to Booth in a thin pretext related to the worst move the show ever made.)

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I said don't worry, it's not gonna hurt

2010-09-29T10:38:20Z

china_shop keeps spamming her flist with White Collar screencaps, which is pretty fabulous, and I ended up making some icons out of her caps. Thank you China!

1. 2. 3. ( a few more under the cut )

A couple of episodes of all the new shows I'm watching have aired, I thought I'd talk about them a little bit. What I say will be, IMO, basically non-spoilery, but I know I have some really spoilerphobic people on my flist so I'll be cutting anyway. Which reminds me: I am basically chill about spoilers unless they're, like, Sirius dies at the end of OotP, so it's really hard for me to tell what's going to ruin someone's enjoyment. However, my aim is to NOT do that, so if I spoil you, please let me know and I'll do my best to modify my behaviour.

( Hellcats )

I'm going to talk about Nikita outside a cut because I really want people to watch this show. I nearly didn't start watching this show, and I know why: all the promos I saw made it look like this kind of grim show that was about one woman going it alone and being grim and sad and having an ambiguous morality, and she would be surrounded by men with even more ambiguous moralities, and it would be harsh and cruel and sad. And I thought to myself: ugh.

However, that is not what the show is about at all. Nikita isn't going it alone; she does interact with other women all the time, and one in particular; and also, Nikita is funny and chill and does not mangst all over the place (although if any character was entitled, it would be her). Maggie Q has this amazing, warm, expressive face and this show is just a lot more obviously influenced by shows like Dark Angel than I thought it would be. So y'all: I really really recommend that you watch this show. 1x03 would be a perfect pimping episode, and dammit, I just realised that if I'd started watching this show when the pilot aired I'd have been able to pimp it at get__together. Blast.

My point here: watch this show. Watch it watch it watch it.

( Hawai'i Five-0 )

I have nothing to say about Undercovers because only the pilot has aired, except to say that it was as cute and funny as I was expecting and I really enjoyed it.

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labellementeuse @ 2010-09-21T17:22:00

2010-09-21T05:53:45Z

Insta-rec: A Charming Man, a Castiel-centric vid by giandujakiss - I don't get this vid at all, I need to watch it ten or fifteen more times (or read a commentary or something), but this vid is excellent, really well put together. Slight overtones of Dean/Castiel, if you're squinting, but I think you can read it as a gen vid.

SPN starts again in a few days and I'm super-excited! When was the last time I was excited for the premiere of, hell, any show? IDEK. Which reminds me: a post about what I'm watching this season! Gosh.

( New shows I'm going to try/am trying: )
Returning shows:
Supernatural
Grey's - Maybe; I stopped watching half-way through last season (Izzy and Alex break up, I break up with show), but they had a killer finale.
Brothers & Sisters - Mmmmaybe? I kind of got sucked in last season?
Community
Modern Family
Gossip Girl - Probably not, but I hear they're in Paris for the premiere and that I do want to see.
Vampire Diaries, Bones & the Big Bang Theory - I'll let my flatmate download these so they don't count against my share of the bandwidth, probs. *guilty face* I've been watching Entourage for the same reason.

In other news, last night I went to bed at five and slept till 8:30 the next morning. It was lovely. I was late to the doctor's, but who gives a fuck? Bliss.

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labellementeuse @ 2010-09-18T16:45:00

2010-09-18T04:48:50Z

( my favourite thing about the Vampire Diaries (spoiler through 1x17) )

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icon dump

2010-06-16T12:52:00Z

I made a largeish bunch of icons today.

1-4: Young Wizards
4-15: Community
16-88: Persons Unknown, which is a new summer show (will be thirteen episodes only so you should all watch it while it's hot! A bit like Lost in construction except really and truly only one season, pre-planned. I'm enjoying it.)

Teasers:

( Away we go )

Credits: Fonts come from Kevin & Amanda's Free Fonts. Bad typesetting on the text-only icons is by me. Icon table generated by ze icon table generator. I did the capping.

Rules of Engagement: Keyword crediting is nice, but commenting is much nicer. Icons may be freely adapted without credit, but if you do please let me know so I can see! Textless icons may be considered bases and used as such.

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labellementeuse @ 2010-06-14T17:51:00

2010-06-14T06:14:02Z

1. Apropos of nothing, a poll:

View Poll: #3451

I read The Hobbit first, of course - in fact, it's the first book I remember reading to myself, and it was a great favourite of mine, so much so that it took me several months to read LOTR after my mother gave it to me. I just didn't trust that Frodo kid.

2. I feel like I haven't done any silly memes for ages! So I stole this one off aria

Give me a fandom, and I'll give you

1. The first character I fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I would shag anytime:
6. The character I'd want to be like:
7. The character I'd slap:
8. A pairing that I love:
9. A pairing that I despise:
10. Favorite character:
11. My five favorite things about the fandom:
12. My five least favorite things about the fandom:
13. My five favorite characters:
14. My five least favorite characters:
15. My five favorite pairings:
16. My five least favorite pairings:
17. The character I am most like:
18. My deep, dark fandom secret:

3. I have finally gotten around to doing some Dreamwidth-related things:

A. Filling up the zillion icon spots that came with the paid account someone bought me, and right now I feel awful because I can't remember who it was or whether or not it was an anon. Either way, if whoever it was is reading this now, 1) if I ever knew who you were and I've forgotten, I'm so sorry that I'm an asshole! and 2) either way, I'm still very grateful. Because of this, I now really want that tell-me-about-6-of-your-icons meme to come back around and I'm cursing the fact that it just went by two weeks ago. Oh, comic timing.

B. Organising my tags. You know how LJ has that merge tags thing that sucks? Yeah. Tag management on Dreamwidth actually works and it is really really good, so I have been going back through - still not quite done, I think I'm through to w though, which is really quite good!

C. Pursuant to B., I imported all my old LJ entries. This is a round-about way of saying that if you're looking for something I wrote (unlikely but you never know), labellementeuse is the best place to go for it; it's where the tags are most likely to be coherently organised, although I fear I can't guarantee anything.

Also, and I probably should have asked BEFORE I did this, but what that means is that if you have commented on my journal in the past, those comments are now also archived at Dreamwidth. I believe they can still be accessed through openID and the usual deletey stuff done to them if you so wish, so it's functionally not a big change to the status quo, but nevertheless. If you have a problem with your comments having been imported, please let me know.

D. I think of myself as living at DW now, so while I will continue to crosspost to LJ and read over there (apart from anything else all the good TV comms are over there), I'm trying as much as I can to move whatever can be moved over to Dreamwidth. So if you have a Dreamwidth, please add me over there! Let me know who you are if your names are radically different.

4. I marathoned the whole of Community this weekend! It is very very funny and generally recommended, altho' I have a few reservations about some things.

5. Relatedly, I know there are people who identify as ace on my flist. Are any of you aware of any meta about either Sheldon from TBBT or Abed from Community, or both, in the context of fandom's approach to asexuality? (I think this is the thing that has really bothered me: I think Sheldon/Penny and Abed/Troy are super, super cute pairings and I'm a little bit worried about that. But then again, can't men relate the same way to women as they do to men* without being asexual? Isn't that the dream?)

* Not that Sheldon does, but I think he's supposed to

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oh mother

2010-03-11T02:47:22Z

In the continuing-ish saga of my mother finding out that TV can actually be an amazing thing, awhile ago my mother watched the first season of Veronica Mars, which she enjoyed. Then I bought the whole series. Since then she watched through the whole series and came and said 'So when can I get season 4?' She was actually sort of devastated when I told her it had been cancelled, and then watched the whole thing again from the beginning. (My mother has previously displayed similar obsessive behaviour towards Outrageous Fortune and has also enjoyed, in my company, Firefly and Buffy. IIRC she was so-so on Angel.)

I tell you all this so you can get context for the following email:

I ahve just bought this vid –if you are very good tyou can come round and wat h it with me

found a nice girl at JBs who likes the same stuff as us. She recommended moonlight and also Joseph someone’s Doll... something. God i really ahve to do mysomethng about my memory! Typos hers, not mine

I am pretty freaking proud that I managed to get Joss Whedon's Dollhouse out of Joseph Someone's Doll... Something, y'all (but I want to know who this woman is who thinks Moonlight was worth anyone's time. OTOH, my mother did think Logan was really hot, so she'll probably suck her in.)

Anyway, on that note, can anyone recommend some TV that I can recommend to my mother in order to quell her disappointment when she finds out that Moonlight and Dollhouse together will only add up to, what, 39 episodes? Stuff I've watched, stuff I haven't watched, it's all good. I think I might try her on Party Down (she thought the dude who played Dick was amazing, for some reason) and the Dresden Files, which I have somewhere around here... SUCH a shame Rob Thomas didn't end up doing that US adaptation of Outrageous, because that would have been like the perfect whatever.

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labellementeuse @ 2009-11-09T20:04:00

2009-11-09T07:04:24Z

( dear lovely yuletider )

dear flist: yes, I requested SGU. You wanna make something of it, huh, huh? Also, because apparently this is an Issue this year, I am posting my letter now because that way I can include a link in my sign-up, and since I personally spent hours and hours and HOURS last year scrolling through the Yuletide Letter post last year, I want to encourage behaviour that makes me NOT have to do that. Because: UGH.

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labellementeuse @ 2009-07-31T23:12:00

2009-07-31T12:11:54Z

I did an IBARW post about te reo Māori yesterday on LJ and forgot to crosspost it, so if you missed it, you can see it here.

Here are some links I've enjoyed this IBARW:

this and this by syncope @ LJ, on Native American invisibility and appropriation in the USA.

Children/YA books with POC MCs and/or authors, plus links on the topic by sparkymonster which obviously as a children's lit major, is really interesting to me. I also found this one really good, but I'm wary of linking to it because it's a post about POCs having conversations with POCs, and as a Pākehā/white woman I fear that I may be guilty of cultural appropriation or exotification. So I'm putting that out there, and while I'm at it I will mention that I think sparkymonster is a fantastic writer - she's one of those LJ people who I stalk for good writing on a range of topics without having friended (I have a thing about friending people who don't know me which results in me being a CREEPY STALKER - I am sure any number of people with LJtoys have been weirded out by me reading their journals on a semi-daily basis.) Anyway, her posts on the broad topics of race & fandom are always eloquent.

Describing COCS Without Using The Big Words in fantasy - uses examples from Harry Potter specifically (and positively.) Interesting for me - the writer talks about how in the UK editions of HP there are a wide range of subtle clues that Dean is black (dreadlocks (but I thought that was Lee Jordan!), supporting a particular football team) in the same way that there are subtle clues that the Weasleys are white (redheads, freckles) and the Patils are of SEAsian extraction (specific surname, sari-like ballgowns IIRC). Meanwhile in the US editions of the earlier novels he is specifically labelled black. The poster reasonably takes issue with this as implying that the default for characters is white, and it's only when a character is non-white that their race needs to be specified. I agree with that - but I'm pretty sure that I did not realise that Dean was black until I saw some of the earlier movies. I'm not sure what conclusions I should draw from that because it implies to me that the US editor was correct that foreign readers were unlikely to pick up on more subtle racial clues, and isn't it better to have a diverse cast than to allow readers to whitewash it? So, I don't know. However, good post.

That's it because I've been madly busy with school lately. D: Today my 7 seasons of Buffy arrived in the post (collector's editions! for $130 plus postage! As-new condition!) so my productivity's been down the drain a little bit. I also saw the ballet (La Sylphide, plus dances from Napoli) which I very much enjoyed - classical ballet (all-original choreography from the 1800s) but extremely accessible stuff for people who don't know ballet, IMO. Oh, and I wrote an essay in about an hour (but it was only 1500 words.)

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