I have a million more recs under the cut. Oh my god. I love Yuletide forever.

Out of the cut for extra awesome: so far my top three are On Friends, Partners, and Other Unattractive Beasts (again! still!), The Midnight Special, and By the Hideyn Scrybe Ywrit, which I have not yet finished but I am loving. They are all long, plotty fics about terrible selfish people doing foolish things for each other with crime and violence. So, you know.

( too many fandoms to list, I think. )

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Here is a two-minute clip from what I assume is near the beginning of The End of Time part 2. And, um. Wow, I kind of dig it. I am sure it falls apart again about two seconds after the clip ends, but in the meantime, I, um. I'm just really easy for the CGI and the costuming, all right?

I love how my Who squee is really intricately bound with actually hating most of it and wanting to salvage a few bits to create awesome. I have a page of notes and manic longfic energy to spare. Good job, self.

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/60154.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

I have been staring at screens for alarming stretches of time! Besides trawling Yuletide all day (tomorrow I am actually attempting to go alphabetically, & also making a concerted effort to go through the whole dSSS archive), I also watched SO MUCH TELLY. There was the traditional debate about holiday films, which ended in screenings of It's a Wonderful Life and Muppet Christmas Carol -- two films that I have never actually watched the same year before, and the unexpected synchronicity was weird. There was also, to my great delight, the Christmas episode of QI, wherein I learned that watching David Tennant and Bill Bailey sit next to each other is actually hazardous for my health, since I about died laughing. To my faint horror I seem to have finally processed that David's leaving, and have taken the opportunity to get all starry-eyed about him all over again.

And then of course there was Doctor Who. ( As usual, it all falls apart about five minutes before the end ... ) Um. Brb, I think I have to go write down preliminary fic notes and wonder whether I need to resign myself to doing another fucking virtual season over J-term. At least I only have to wait until New Year's. /o\

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I am full of so much glowy holiday spirit I don't know what to do with it! My giftfics this year are splendiferous. I only received the one Yuletide story, but that's all right, because i. I only wrote one and that's karmically sound; ii. I also have my due South Seekrit Santa; and iii. I would not trade in these fics for the world. They're just. Sdldfskd.

First, I opened my holiday card from wintercreek this morning; on the outside of the card is a charming little picture of two guys on a sleigh ride through a snowy woods, and on the inside is a holiday letter from Fraser and Ray. How wonderful is that? They told me about their impractical Christmas tree, and that Dief says 'hi'. I think I want letters from fictional characters all the time, because it's awesome beyond words. Thanks, wintercreek, it's absolutely wonderful. <3

And that was just the preliminaries!

My Yuletide: But Rather Darkness Visible [Doctor Who/Young Wizards]
How do I love this story? Let me count the ways. Let's start with the one where it's a Doctor Who/Young Wizards crossover. I strongly suspect that whoever wrote this story either has me friended or follows me (so HEY THERE, ANON, I LOVE YOU) because how long have I been nattering on about how I need to write exactly this? Of course I was never going to, and now someone has, for me, better than I could've! The mythological blending is perfect, there are Shakespeare metaphors and of course a Star Wars joke, and both Dairine and Ten are absolutely pitch-perfect. I can't stop beaming.

My dSSS: loquacious (loh-KWEY-shuhs) [due South]
Fraser/Kowalski established-relationship fic, post-series. I am completely in love with this Ray; Fraser feels somehow incidental to the story, which I love, because there's a point in the narrative where Stella tells Ray that the Mountie's been good for him, and spectacularly misses the point. What I really love about it, though, is that each section header starts with a long word that Ray then uses sometime in that section, which -- I was not previously aware how easy I am for Ray making beautiful paragraphs! I really am. And the ending is whipped cream topping off the awesomecake.

Now with that metaphor I'm off to have breakfast with the folks. The Archive is slow like a very slow thing right now from all the Yuletide traffic, so I'm going to give it a rest for a few hours (during which I might even come up with some sort of attack plan for how I'll organize my read-through); and of course there's the rest of dSSS to read. Plus the physical present exchange with my parents.

I'm an extremely happy Aria! I hope all of your Yuletides/other holiday practices/normal days are going wonderfully too.

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/59476.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

My little brother found my journal a couple of days ago. If there are some really weird anonymous comments on here, that is why. It is usually best to ignore him. YOU HEARD ME, ELI.

*

Yuletide has arrived, and we totally killed the servers. At least one of my stories is surpassed wildly by the other fic written to the same prompt. But I'm lucky in that because it's the one fic I would rather have read than written. So I am not even all that jealous.

I wrote four fics this year, all three others being full pinch hits. One of my pinch hits was much longer than my actual story, sadly. I think it would be PRETTY EASY to guess mine for those who have been getting Yuletide bulletins on the filter, but, you know, other people are free to try. Since I didn't really make dark_agenda this year, I'm already planning one NYR. How healthy is that? Um, not very. But hell, why not.

*

My gifts:

Both for Gunnerkrigg Court, and both Annie/Kat to some degree, and both so lovely and sweet! I am so grateful to my authors, who both clearly read my letter inside and out and gave me exactly, exactly what I was looking for.

* Turn is -- it feels like Young Wizards fic, or at least the conclusion does. Annie and Kat are very Nita and Kit about getting together, which is a compliment, believe me, and the robot cameos and Reynardine's characterization are delicious. And they ended it with the antimony sigil!

* Conversations About Boys, which features these lines that I wish to frame on my wall, The older they got, the harder it was not to feel awkward when they were together. Not awkward-bad. Just awkward-awkward. Kat figured that it must be down to biology, or one of the more annoying, squishy-soft sciences. Annie's just worried that Kat picks bad boys. Out of concern! Kind, impartial concern, and also, TRUE LOVE. Teenaged, hilarious, sweet, and very them. And packed full of science metaphors.

Some things I've managed to read so far that I liked:

( a billion recs. eli, seriously, stop reading this entry )

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Yuletide Madness is open to just about everyone this year. I have one free Archive invite for this purpose! Feel free to comment. (I also have DW invites, but this is less relevant.)

~

I'm rereading City and the City while I fantasize about being able to write my Yuletide treat without crying a lot in frustration and pain, and, you know, the more I know about the Balkans, the better it is. Not because the Allegory is so Meaningful, but because, nonallegorically, I actually totally buy the worldbuilding. I have spent the last few weeks immersed in the cities of the Ottoman Empire, and they did some wild stuff! And the funny thing is, there is a total historical double consciousness about Balkan cities -- there's the one thread, about 'European' history, and there's the other about 'Arab' history, and the second is selfcontained and the scholars do not talk to the European scholars too much (as far as I can tell) and the linguistic histories are off the wall. Just as a sample of what I'm talking about, my final paper was on the Sephardim, and I read a bunch of papers asserting with total confidence that Ladino was a) a Jewish Romance language that became heavily influenced by Arabic when it moved to the Ottoman empire, and then diversified, and b) exactly the same as Castilian Spanish except with Hebrew characters. IDEK. It is entirely possible that Bèsz and Illitan could be very similar languages who come from different, overlapping sprachbunds. It is entirely possible that there's a huge archaeological dig in the middle of town no one knows shit about because no one studies the area because people are dicks. I may have gotten a little off track there. Someone please tell me I can't be a Central Asia/Balkans historian when I grow up.

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Yuletide panic: it makes me sign up to pinch-hit for due South Seekrit Santa. /o\

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/58070.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

I am horribly restless, and having no luck working on my Yuletide, so instead a meme stolen from feverbeats:

Name a fandom, and I'll tell you:
01. The first character I fell in love with:
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
03. The character I would shag anytime:
04. The character I'd slap:
05. My 3 favorite characters:
06. My 3 favorite pairings.:
07. The character I'm most like:
08. The coolest thing about the canon:
09. The lamest thing about the canon:
10. My guiltiest pleasure in this fandom:
11. The story I wish I could read:
12. The story I wish I had written/still want to write:

HAVE AT IT. I am all for mindless enthusiastic things right now.

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/57847.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

More on newredshoes's post. The 'Old Testament' God is, yes, angry and arbitrary and harsh and strange. Guess what? Not only are those all words that can be applied to Jesus and the New Testament God, ( here are some other things the Old Testament God is. )

Job's a big part of the Old Testament, no question, but so is Jonah. Don't be a jackass and try to remember that mercy and goodness are not inventions that rolled around in zero AD.

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newredshoes wrote an amazing post about being a Jew corrected: being a diasporic Jew, particularly in America. I listen when y'all talk, Roga & Marina, I promise! Occasionally! corrected again: her experience of being a Jew, which I relate to a lot and what this does, and doesn't, entail, and you should definitely read it.

~

So, I have a cold or the flu, or something. And I was supposed to drive home yesterday, but I couldn't, because, see aforementioned cold, so I thought blessing in disguise, maybe I'll actually get some work done instead, but instead I've just kind of miserably pottered around the house for two days, and now my tongue is numb and I can't concentrate, and instead of being at home where my mother could make me warm foods, I am shuttling between the library and my filthy apartment wishing for death.

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The #1 thing I really hate about buckling-down-and-writing-papers days: my brain decides that, in between the ten-minute bursts of productivity, it has to come up with every brilliant thing I should be writing instead, right now. For example, I spent most of this morning slowly constructing sprawling plotty post-ep7 White Collar fic.

Then my brain took a sharp turn and thought, "You know what would be really awesome? Kate-from-White-Collar/Victoria-from-due-South fic!" No but really that would be fabulous. Find the gold! Get the girl! Leave your lovesick pretty boy standing devastated on a train platform!

I think I need to get food. And to step the hell away from the internet.

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/57124.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

And re: Eastwick: well, that should teach me to watch two half-season cliffhanger episodes in one day. I know Paul Gross makes me hide behind my hands sometimes, but dear god, I spent 90% of that episode cowering and peering through my fingers. I suppose it doesn't count if it was out of terror rather than embarrassment? My heart was rabbiting like crazy.

On the bright side, how Jamie has given a brief, concise, and kind of awesome definition of what exactly Darryl is, which if nothing else will be helpful for, say, that due South crossover I keep threatening to write one of these days.

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/56928.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

I said I needed to be off the grid until Friday, barring Eastwick later tonight, but, uh, WHITE COLLAR, OH MY GOD. By which I mean I am all caught up, and I was completely on board, a little more each episode, but that last one -- I may have just sat, staring at the ceiling, stunned, for a solid minute.

Non-spoilery thoughts: I am so in love with Elizabeth, and I OT3 them so hard. (Meanwhile, Kate looks like a younger and less attractive version of Elizabeth. Why? Was the makeup department feeling lazy? Is this supposed to say weird psychological things about Neal and Peter? Do I just imagine that Kate looks like Elizabeth? I have no idea!) Much more importantly, in the last, hm, two or so episodes, I kept on thinking Neal and Peter were about to kiss and having a moment of total cognitive dissonance when they didn't. That's ridiculousawesome.

Spoilery thoughts: ( fsdsf;lfsjhfsd ZOMG. )

...So yeah! I'm invested. TALK TO ME. :D

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White Collar, guys! I am always behind the curve on TV shows, and the only reason I started watching this one is because ... um, I ran out of SGA, I didn't want to catch up on Merlin, and I can recite most of s3/4 due South backwards; but I wanted to do something not-taxing with my brain before I embark on a sort of compressed hell week that's doing a good seminar paper in two days. To be fair, I also started watching White Collar because I just finished catching up on Chuck, a show whose virtues are quiet enough that I usually forget about them, but I needed to get to the episodes with Scott Bakula in. (One day I will make a useless chart about how everything I watch these days can somehow sneakily be traced back to C6D; bless BSG, really.)

My POINT, though, is ... a few points, actually, one of which goes, "I think I'm starting a collection of OT3s." I'm not sure this actually counts unless I'm actively fannish about them, but I'm only two episodes into White Collar and holy god you don't need to convince me that Neal/Peter/Elizabeth needs to happen. I could potentially get really enthusiastic about this show, because I've only seen two hours of it but I am SO IN LOVE with all three of them.

Unfortunately my potential enthusiasm does need to stay mostly potential for now, because I need to go off the grid until I write my seminar paper. The only fannish thing I'm allowed to do is my Yuletide. And, um, Eastwick. But that's it.

Originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/56329.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.

This is kind of a shitty week for gender. There's massive transphobia going on around the recent reapparance of Victoria Bitter -- he's definitely, 100% identifying as a man, and a lot of jackasses on FW are refusing to acknowledge this and calling him "she" because, shockingly, as even he has admitted, he was born a girl. Listen, I don't like Sarah Palin, but that doesn't mean I get to call her a man. I don't like Richard Nixon, but that doesn't make him a woman. I don't like VB, but that doesn't make him anything but a man.

And then -- SO AWESOMELY, right -- LJ decides to remove the Unspecified option for the gender field. So they can gender target their ads. There's nothing like that magical cocktail of transphobia and sexism to make my day delicious and full of enthusiasm. I've turned off my LJ autopayments and set my gender to Unspecified. If they go through with this patch, I won't be turning them back on.

This shit must stop.

ETA: They caved; see the above link. Then I went to Hulu to watch the Daily Show and was confronted with ( this. )

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