Companions Only
(fabulous art by: This Illustrated Life)

To be more accurate, this journal is half-locked. Fanfiction and fandom posts will still be unlocked, so if you're only here for my fics, feel free to friend me anonymously like so many of you have. If you want in on the oh-so-exciting locked posts, drop me a line on this post, tell me why you want in (as in where you know me from) and I'll see what I can do. I'm not too picky, but I like to have some control over who reads what. I don't have friending notifications on, so if you add me I'm not likely to notice unless you point it out.

Aaand I'm off! Soon enough, anyway. London & Paris with goldy_dollar, shinyopals, starlightmoonla and lorelaisquared! Probably with cameos from mildlyconfused, erethesunrises and anythingbutgrey! Among other things we'll be going to Hogwarts, heading out to Stratford and Oxford, seeing naked people on stage, and complaining about the weather.



I'm gone until the 29th, and I'm not bringing a computer so it's unlikely I'll be around much. I'll see you all when I get back in time for my existential crisis! Don't have too much fun without me.

YES PLZ OMG

I LOVE BOTH KAREN GILLAN AND COMMUNITY

MAKE IT HAPPEN, NBC

Internet I feel you should know I am currently on a bus on my way to ComicCon dressed vaguely as Rose Tyler circa New Earth. My friend who previously told me she was going to be Amy Pond is not, apparently. Also, Patrick Stewart has been replaced with William Shatner, which LOL. Jamie Bamber is also going to be there which I suspect would be exciting to most people but just makes me pressed that they got him and not Freema Agyeman.

That is about all. Carry on.

P&R and The Office are the two NBC comedies that have yet to be renewed. I'm sure The Office will get at least a 9th season, hopefully as a final season. P&R I am confident about as well. Rumours point to a shortened season for P&R, but... I can't hate, because s3 was far and away their pinnacle and it was a shortened season. So maybe a shortened season would be good for the show. I just hope it's not a final season, because I think if The Office can drag itself into s9 like a beached whale, P&R deserves to make at least s6. (SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE?)

Which brings me to COMMUNITY BEING PICKED UP FOR (AT LEAST) 13 EPISODES YESSSSSSSSS. Some people are calling this a "soft cancellation" or whatever, but tbqh I am just happy to have an s4 at all, whether it's a full season or not. And like I said for P&R, maybe the potential for 13 excellent episodes outweighs the potential for ... 13 excellent episodes and 9 episodes of filler. So IDK EITHER WAY. #FOURSEASONSANDAGRADUATION? God bless your inability to pick up any pilots that have any success, NBC.



Lastly in TV news, Mindy Kaling's pilot got picked up for a full season order over on Fox! I want it to be good so badly, though I won't be totally surprised if it's not. However, from the thing I saw, the starring cast (so excluding the guest stars like Ed Helms etc) was two men and four women, counting Mindy. Literally twice the number of women? UNHEARD OF WITCHCRAFT. I mean it'll depend on what the show is like etc, the actresses could be comparatively minor compared to the male roles, but that is a pretty rare unicorn, even for female-lead shows.

I was gonna write about something else but this post is already huge.

In news unrelated to puppies, I keep meaning to do a big round-up post with my thoughts on TV lately (GOT, Community, The Office, P&R...) and being too lazy to do so. I may never get to it, so if you want to know my thoughts on any of those for whatever reason go ahead and ask.

I did see The Avengers last night in an attempt to stay hip and with it, so ( here are some thoughts on that. )

SO. LEGEND OF KORRA.



I actually watched the 2-episode premiere of this before I went back and watched A:TLA which I think gave me probably a different perspective on it than most people.

( Spoilers for all the aired episodes. )

Also -- does anyone know where to find Korra icons that aren't the animated ONTD-style gif icons?

!

I don't know who you are, but thank you! That's very generous! Un-anon yourself so I can thank you personally!

I went to the game tonight! My dad's birthday is on the 13th which means playoff tickets are a great gift... if we make the playoffs.

We were down 2-0 after about seven minutes and I was ready to come home and make a sulky post about how them playing "I Am The Doctor" in the arena during warm-up was the most exciting part. (Somewhere, the BBC is super pressed!)

BUT THEN WE WOKE UP CAME BACK IN THE SECOND AND TIED IT. AND THEN I BASICALLY DID NOT BREATHE AGAIN UNTIL WE WON IN OVERTIME.



It's been a LONG time since I went to a hockey game and even longer since I went to a playoff game that we won, and in overtime !!!!!! so I am now psyched and a bit hoarse. It's possible I literally hopped up and down on the spot screaming when we won.

lol the funniest part though was having sweetcherrytree text me that the Pens were up 9-3. WHAT? LOLLLLLL. I'm super pressed that the 3 series I'm following all played on the same night. But LOL PENGUINS, WTF?

In conclusion, go Sens go.

ETA: I FEEL LIKE MANY OF YOU MAY NEED TO REFERENCE THIS POST ABOUT CANADIANS AND HOCKEY.

I was in Chapters yesterday with a friend and we ended up in the ~young-adult~ section. I have no beef with YA stuff, except that I wish the publishing industry would get them some better graphic artists because there sure are some serious DeviantART-style failures going on. Anyway, the first thing I noticed was this, a ~novelization~ of Hamlet by some guy named John Marsden. I don't object on any kind of moral level or anything, but I did find it hilarious, and flipping to a random page brought me to a description of Polonius as an "indispensable" member of the court renowned for his great advice, so I think teens of the world are still better off reading Wikipedia when studying for their Hamlet quiz.

Anyway, beside it was this:



I've definitely seen this book many times before but for some reason it never occurred to me to flip through it and see what happened at the end. AND THIS WAS A GRAVE OVERSIGHT, BECAUSE IT WAS THE BEST.

And that is how I knew this was the best book in the world.

It was also only $5, so I seriously considered buying it and doing a more in-depth review type thing because I'm sure it would be hilarious. But I felt pretty weird about the idea that the first book I buy as an English graduate would be bad Shakespeare fanfic, so I did not. Try not to all storm your local bookstores at once in search of this masterpiece.

It's that time of year again! The time when I force communities to host ficathons because I want one!



Go forth and prompt and fill and such.

I guess Hugo nominations are out?

For the people on my flist who don't know, the Hugos are some supposedly-prestigious-but-only-if-you're-a-scifi-nerd-on-the-internet-I-think award for scifi stuff. As someone who generally gives no shits about awards, the Hugos have an unprecedented capacity to make me butthurt. It's partly the Ron Swanson thing, and partly the fact that fandom like to wave them around as incontestable proof of something's quality. As a not-unrelated point, the Hugo awards love Steven Moffat.

So anyway, someone told me earlier that this year's crop for the "short drama presentation" category included "The Doctor's Wife" (fine), "The Girl Who Waited" (yes plz!)... and "A Good Man Goes To War". I kind of grumbled about how at least it's not "Let's Kill Hitler" or "The Wedding of River Song".

( BUT I JUST FOUND OUT THE REMAINING 4TH NOMINEE. )

I don't really expect anyone to have an answer for me but:

Since LJ changed its comment pages to be useless and horrible, I've been using my layout for everything. It has one of those pop-up icon selector thingies and that's how I usually select my icons. Buuuut in the last day or two, suddenly any icon with an apostrophe in the keywords can't really be selected? The apostrophe seems to break and instead displays as "&39;" or something, and if I click that icon in the selector and then go back to the comment, the comment is still posted with a default icon.

( Here's a screenshot to illustrate what I mean. )

This has worked for like literally years and then just stopped abruptly so I imagine it'd be something with LJ and not the code but... idk, figured I'd throw it out there. I would ask the person who made the layout, but I think they have since left LJ, the comm looks dead.

We've known for a while that Chris Chibnall is writing an ep for s7 of Doctor Who, but at least the "no two-parters" rule meant that it'd be an individual episode. Right? So at least we would only be subjected to him once. SMALL MERCIES.

But apparently not, because he is writing both 7x02 and 7x04.



lol so this means the first half of s7, the Ponds' grand finale, is 40% Moffat and 40% Chibnall.

I miss writing fic. I realize it is not very productive to say that and then do nothing about it, but it's true. I have ideas that float around in my head for days but I never sit down to write them, even though it's not like I'm doing something more productive. I think part of the problem is that most of the ideas I have these days are longer than the average one-shot, which makes me intimidated before I start so I don't even bother. I got very used to being able to shunt a fic off to Frances when I was frustrated with a scene, lirl.

I also wish ficathons -- specifically comment ficathons but even more generally -- were still a thing, but they seem to have been largely wiped out by Tumblr. I've seen a couple comment ficathons recently, but they're nowhere near as populated as they were two years ago and most of the fandoms/prompts were for things I don't read/write fic for anyway.

There's no real point to this post other than to whine about it I guess. IT IS NO ONE'S FAULT BUT MY OWN, though I do wish I had pages of prompts to scroll through and then get frustrated over not writing lol. I am also sure it is no coincidence that I suddenly miss fic writing when I have an essay to be writing. ISN'T THAT ALWAYS THE WAY?

I guess the moral of this post is, are there any active ficathons right now? Or even fic memes more exciting than "give me a prompt"? Hmmm.